If you accept any other premise, then you have lost the argument.
Excellent post. Thanks for putting it up. ‘Pod.
——the Founders’ liberty is.-—
I would advise looking into the ad hoc founders of Texas. Theirs is a view for strong consideration in addition to the original 13
History & Ethics 101. Elementary forms of this should be taught at the earliest ages and full blown by Junior High and High School along with the Bible. Not in government schools, but in home schools or in free market schools where parents pay to have their demands met or they go elsewhere.
On another thread today, the posted article's headline promotes certain presidential candidates for 2016 as being "good for America."
". . . good for America"?
Not a single word about whether either would be good for the cause of liberty, either in America or the world!
When "the People" explore their qualifications for the American presidency at this critical juncture in America's history, we might consult an excerpted portion of the 1801 Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson for guidance on the seriousness of the undertaking:
(Excerpt) "Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."
Now, the question is: which 2016 potential candidate possesses both the intellectual and underlying philosophical qualifications to lead us to "retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety"?
Combine Jefferson's assertions with those cited in Hall's writing herein, and one can understand the critical times we are in--times which may well determine whether the light of liberty is extinguished, or whether, with strong and enlightened leadership, its flame may be relighted.