“You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.”Uhhm... Charles Beard was a bloody socialist. To him the American Revolution was an aristocratic con-job on the people in order to protect elite economic interests. Later in his career he realized that class warfare didn't pay so well as to put the mouths of the Founders into defense of the New Deal.
-Charles A. Beard
Be careful with Bartlett's...
Didn’t matter who said it to me...it was the truth of the saying...he probably meant the bits about overthrowing powers that the governed feel are tyranical..but spouting off about what the founders thought about an armed citizenry, and the need for virtue, and the necessity of guarding liberty will certainly get you a bad reputation nowadays in some quarters! They don’t want to hear it!