newgeezer
Since Jul 27, 2000
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"Why is it that, next to the birth-day of the Saviour of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [4th of July]? . . . Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birth-day of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birth-day of the Saviour? That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth? That it laid the corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?" ---John Quincy Adams, 61st Anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration, Newburyport, July 4, 1837.John Quincy Adams, who reaped the first fruits of liberty of American Independence, served as our nation's 5th president from 1825-1829 and served in the House of Representatives from 1830-1848. He often reminded his colleagues of the humble beginnings from where we came. |
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"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." ---Thomas Jefferson to W. Jarvis, 1820. |
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