xxLiberty Quote

Adams, Samuel - In all free States the Constitution is fixed; and as the supreme Legislative derives its Power and Authority from the Constitution, it cannot overleap the Bounds of it without destroying its own foundation. - Massachusetts House of Representatives to the Speakers of the Other Houses of Representatives (Feb. 11, 1768), in 1 WRITINGS OF SAMUEL ADAMS 185 (Cushing ed.) Adams, Samuel (1722-1803) - And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions. - during the Massachusetts’ U.S. Constitutional ratification convention, 178, DEBATES AND PROCEEDINGS IN THE CONVENTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, HELD IN THE YEAR 1788, at 86-87 (Pierce & Hale ed., Boston 1850). Adler, Alfred – It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them. ALABAMA CONSTITUTION - That every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state. - article I, section 26. ALASKA CONSTITUTION - A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. - article I, section 19. Allen, Ethan (American Revolutionary Hero, organized the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont) - There is not anything, which has contributed so much to delude mankind in religious matters, as mistaken apprehensions concerning supernatural inspiration or revelation; not considering that all true religion originates from reason, and cannot otherwise be understood, but by the exercise and improvement of it. - REASON, THE ONLY ORACLE OF MAN. AMERICAN INFORMATION NEWSLETTER - Government dictated integration is as bad as government dictated segregation. AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE (SECOND) - The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of decision so branding it. “No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.” - 16 AM JUR. 2D § 177, § 256. Badnarik, Michael – I am a very peaceful man. I love people and am known for my gregarious personality. However, if you try to confiscate my guns, I will feel compelled to give them to you, one bullet at a time. - GOOD TO BE KING, 2004. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Adams, Pres. John - Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion...in private self-defense. - A DEFENSE OF THE Adams, Pres. John - Elections, especially of representatives and counselors, should be annual, there not being in the whole circle of the sciences a maxim more infallible than this, “where annual elections end, there slavery begins.” These great men ... should be (chosen) once a year—Like bubbles on the sea of matter bourne, they rise, they break, and to the sea return. This will teach them the great political virtues of humility, patience, and moderation, without which every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey. Adams, Samuel - A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Such power should be watched with a jealous eye. Adams, Samuel - In all free States the Constitution is fixed; and as the supreme Legislative derives its Power and Authority from the Constitution, it cannot overleap the Bounds of it without destroying its own foundation. - Massachusetts House of Representatives to the Speakers of the Other Houses of Representatives (Feb. 11, 1768), in 1 WRITINGS OF SAMUEL ADAMS 185 (Cushing ed.) Adams, Samuel – It is always dangerous to the liberties of the people to have an army stationed among them, over which they have no control ... The Militia is composed of free Citizens. There is therefore no danger of their making use of their Power to the destruction of their own Rights, or suffering others to invade them. - 3 SAMUEL ADAMS, WRITINGS 251 (Henry A. Cushing ed., 1906). Adams, Samuel - Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that “if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom,” it is a very serious consideration ... that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event. - 1771. Adams, Samuel (1722-1803) - And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; or to raise standing armies, unless when necessary for the defence of the United States, or of some one or more of them; or to prevent the people from petitioning, in a 3 peaceable and orderly manner, the federal legislature, for a redress of grievances; or to subject the people to unreasonable searches and seizures of their persons, papers or possessions. - during the Massachusetts’ U.S. Constitutional ratification convention, 178, DEBATES AND PROCEEDINGS IN THE CONVENTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS, HELD IN THE YEAR 1788, at 86-87 (Pierce & Hale ed., Boston 1850). Adams, Samuel (1722-1803; American patriot) - If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen. - Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776. Adler, Alfred – It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them. Adler, Jonathan H. - Through the rapid proliferation of laws reaching every corner of human existence, “the government is manufacturing more criminals now than ever before.” The list of illegal activities includes more minutiae than one would think possible. Beer-makers are barred from listing alcohol content on bottles, and liquor distilleries cannot advertise on TV. Filling one’s own prairie pothole can land a property owner in jail, as can protecting private property from unlawful intruders. Placing handbills in neighbors’ mailboxes is strictly prohibited, and attempting to sell nectarines of an improper size is a federal offense. Companies are no longer allowed to give salaried professionals partial days off without pay, and in Texas it is a crime to call oneself an interior designer without the government’s permission. It is perhaps easier to recount all that remains legal than all that is now prohibited. - Tyranny Now, LIBERTY, p. 55, November, 1994. ALABAMA CONSTITUTION - That every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state. - article I, section 26. ALABAMA CONSTITUTION – That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, and when government assumes other functions, it is usurpation and oppression. - article I. ALASKA CONSTITUTION - A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. - article I, section 19. Arenburg, Gerald (Executive Director National Association of Chiefs of Police) - [Y]ou are more likely to find a policeman when you run a red light than when you need him in a violent situation. - quoted by David B. Kopel, THE SAMURAI, THE MOUNTIE, AND THE COWBOY: SHOULD AMERICA ADOPT THE GUN CONTROLS OF OTHER DEMOCRACIES? p. 376 (1992). ARIZONA CONSTITUTION - ... governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights. - article I, section 2. ARIZONA CONSTITUTION - The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself or the State shall not be impaired, but nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing individuals or corporations to organize, maintain, or employ an armed body of men. - article II, section 26. ARKANSAS CONSTITUTION - The citizens of this State shall have the right to keep and bear arms for their common defense. - article II, section 5. Badnarik, Michael - If I give you a forty five percent chance at lethal injection, a fifty percent chance at the electric chair, and a five percent chance for escape which are you going to vote for? The electric chair, because you're likely to win? Bandow, Doug (columnist, author, and senior fellow at the CATO Institute) - In fact, as guarantor of global peace the U.N. has been a flop. . . . Peacekeeping became a simple effort to separate combatants, like in Cyprus, who had tired of fighting. True, Washington adopted a U.N. fig leaf for both the Korean and Iraqi wars, but it was America that ran both campaigns. The U.N. flag was for show. Where the U.N. itself has attempted to do more—in Somalia and Bosnia, for instance—the results have not been pretty. . . . In fact, it is the institution itself—an unaccountable global bureaucracy with an appetite for self-aggrandizement and disdain for cost-consciousness—that is flawed. . . . Entrusting an organization most noted for its incompetence and corruption with serious power would not likely bring world peace. Allowing the United Nations to suck America and other Western states into more Bosnias and Somalias would only compound foreign tragedies. . . . Theoretically worthy organizations like the World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization, and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization have been wracked by infighting, incompetence, cronyism, and corruption. Moreover, for years the numerically strong Third World states hijacked much of the U.N. bureaucracy to promote ... attempts to mandate international redistribution of resources to autocratic governments of small state and stifle the Western media’s activities in the same nations. . . . Congress should act, over the president’s veto if necessary, to stop forcing U.S. taxpayers to fund the U.N.’s bloated bureaucracy and Mr. Boutros-Ghali’s inflated global ambitions. - Seeing the U.N. plain, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, Thursday, June 29, 1995. Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates – [I]f anti-gun laws explain low Japanese homicide rates, why does Taiwan (where gun possession is a capital offense) have a higher murder rate than the U.S? Why does Russia also have much higher homicide rates, despite a longtime, highly stringent gun control policy and the adoption by the Soviet Army of different caliber weapons than any Western nation, a measure which hampered soldiers returning with souvenirs from World War II and later wars from obtaining ammunition? (c) Austria, Israel, and Switzerland, which have gun possession rates equaling or exceeding those in the U.S., have homicide rates fully as low or lower than the highly gun-restrictive nations of Western Europe. An Israeli criminologist notes that Israel’s murder “rates are ... much lower than in the United States ... despite the greater availability of guns to law-abiding [Israeli] civilians.”... in Israel if you legally possess a firearm (by loan or licensure), you are allowed to carry it on your person (concealed or unconcealed). The police even recommend you carry it [concealed] because then the gun is protected from thieves or children. The result is that in any big crowd of citizens, there are some people with their personal handguns on them (usually concealed). American massacres, in which dozens of unarmed victims are mowed down before police can arrive, astound Israelis, who note what occurred at a Jerusalem [crowd spot] some weeks before the California McDonald’s massacre: three terrorists who attempted to machine-gun the throng managed to kill only one victim before being shot down by handgun-carrying Israelis. Presented to the press the next day, the surviving terrorist complained that his group had not realized that Israeli civilians were armed. The terrorists had planned to machine-gun a succession of crowd spots, thinking that they would be able to escape before the police or army could arrive to deal with them. - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1239-40 (1996). Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates – [L]ate eighteenth century Americans, being classically educated, took as gospel Aristotle’s lessons that basic to tyrants is “mistrust of the people; hence they deprive them of arms,” and that confiscation of the Athenians’ personal arms had been instrumental to the tyrannies of Pisistratus and the Thirty. Far from being an anachronism, possession of arms served importantly and recently to protect political speech and action even in our own nation, as veterans of the civil rights struggle in the South have attested. Based on actual experience in the South, it has been observed that armed self-defense brings police intervention and martyrdom does not. Public authorities and influential elites may be content to see unarmed victims injured or slain, if the violence can be so confined. But when victims can arm themselves, authorities feel compelled to take action, lest incidents lead to widespread bloodshed and disorder. Indeed, it has been argued that the personal right to defensive arms is particularly relevant in a century which has seen almost 160 million unarmed civilians murdered by governments or by private groups or militias acting with government acquiescence or encouragement. - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1230-31 (1996). Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates – [T]he very concept that the Amendment guaranteed only a right of the states or related to their militias appears to have been completely unknown before the twentieth century. That the individual right interpretation was the common understanding is shown by the earliest American legal commentary on the Second Amendment. - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1219 (1996). Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates – American anti-gun advocates manifest an elitist contempt for ordinary citizens by their portrayal of the common person as a potential murderer. This myth asserts that most murders are committed, not by criminals, but by ordinary people; therefore, if guns were banned most potential murderers would docilely comply with the ban, and most disputes would end in fistfights at worst. ... [M]urderers are highly aberrant. They tend to have lifelong histories of felony, extreme violence, and other hazardous behaviors (toward themselves as well as those around them), including car and gun accidents, substance abuse, and psychopathology. ... 70-80% of those charged with murder had prior adult records, with an average adult criminal career of six or more years, including four major adult felony arrests. Indeed, over 10% of accused murderers were actually out on pretrial release, that is, they were awaiting trial on some other offense when the murder was committed. - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1244-45 (1996). Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates – Anti-gun activists’ radical disconnection from, lack of empathy for, and willingness to use legal coercion and incarceration to suppress the culture that produced and that still supports the Second Amendment are potentially disastrous for a pluralistic society. - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1218 (1996). Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates – The criminological evidence ... shows: (a) that victims who use firearms in self-defense are much less likely to be injured—or to be robbed, raped, or assaulted—than are victims who comply or who resist with other weapons; (b) that handguns are used by good citizens in self-defense at least hundreds of thousands of times annually; and (c) that felons fear and take steps to avoid armed victims. - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1228 (1996). Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates – The eighteenth century usage of “regulate” had the more specialized meaning of “practiced in the use of arms, properly trained, and/or disciplined.” - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1208 (1996) citing Robert Dowlut, The Right to Arms, 36 OKLA L. REV. 65, 92 n. 133 (1983). Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates – The most recent and exhaustive data analysis concludes that handguns are used by victims to defend themselves about three times more often than they are misused by criminals in violent crime. ... Particularly impressive support for this conclusion has been supplied through its endorsement by an eminent criminologist who is deeply opposed to gun ownership, ... 34% of the convicts “said they had been scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim, ... and about two-thirds (69%) had at least one acquaintance who had this experience.”... 34% of the felons said that in contemplating a crime they either “often” or “regularly” worried that they “[m]ight get shot at by the victim”; and 57% agreed that “[m]ost criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.”... the felons most frightened “about confronting an armed victim” were those “from states with the greatest relative number of privately owned firearms”; while, on the other hand, the highest robbery rates are in the jurisdictions which are most restrictive of gun ownership. Finally, recent data establish that Handgun Control, Inc. is wrong in advising submission as invariably the best strategy for victims of rape or robbery: “the best defense against injury is to put up no defense—give them what they want or run.” Analysis of nationwide victimization data gathered for the U.S. Department of Justice shows that, far from defensive gun use endangering gun-armed victims, those who resist with guns are injured far less often than either those who submit or those who resist with other weapons. Of course, gun-armed resisters are also much less likely to be robbed, raped, or otherwise harmed. - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1242-45 (1996). Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates - To discriminate among the constitutional rights that one is willing to defend is ruinous to the credibility of those who exhort or hector public officials to honor rights with which those officials may disagree or which they may wish to disregard. - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1147 (1996). Barnett, Randy E. and Don B. Kates (Randy E. Barnett is the Austin B. Fletcher professor of law at Boston University, and Don B. Kates is an attorney in San Francisco, CA, LL.B. Yale 1966) – [T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms is to be treated the same as the other rights of the people specified in the Constitution—no more and no less. Like the other rights mentioned in the Bill of Rights, it is a right to be asserted by individuals against infringement by government. Like other rights in the Bill of Rights, it is not absolute, but neither is it a hollow shell which legislatures can ignore with impunity. - Under Fire: The New Consensus on the Second Amendment, 45 EMORY L. J. 1139, 1142 (1996). Bastiat, Claude Frederic - If goods are not allowed to cross international borders, soldiers will. Bastiat, Claude Frederic - If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner. Bastiat, Claude Frederic - It is always beneficial for a nation to specialize in what it can produce best and then trade with others to acquire goods at costs lower than it would take to produce them at home. Bastiat, Claude Frederic - Life, Liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place. - THE LAW (1850). Bastiat, Claude Frederic - Often the masses are plundered and do not know it. Bastiat, Claude Frederic – The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. - THE LAW. Beam, Judge (U.S. Circuit Judge, 8th Cir.) - I disagree that Cases v. United States, 131 F.2d 916 (1st Cir. 1942); United States v. Warin, 530 F.2d 103 (6th Cir. 1976); United States v. Oakes, 564 F.2d 394 (10th Cir. 1977); and United States v. Nelson, 859 F.2d 1318 (8th Cir. 1988) properly interpret the Constitution or the Supreme Court’s holding in United States v. Miller ... insofar as they say that Congress has the power to prohibit an individual from possessing any type of firearm, even when kept for lawful purposes. Judge Gibson’s opinion seems to adopt that premise and with that holding, I disagree. - United States v. Hale, 978 F.2d 1016, 1021 (8th Cir. 1992) (Beam, J. concurring specially). Bennet, George - [T]he distinctive difference between a freeman and a slave was a right to possess arms, not so much, as had been stated, for the purpose of defending his property as his liberty. - 41 T. C. HANSARD, THE PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES FROM THE YEAR 1803 TO THE PRESENT TIME 1130-31 (1819). Bingham, Congressman John A. (R-OH; drafter of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) – Mr. Speaker, that the scope and meaning of the limitations imposed by the first section, fourteenth amendment of the Constitution may be more fully understood, permit me to say that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States ... are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States. Those eight amendments are as follows. ... These eight articles I have shown never were limitations upon the power of the States, until made so by the fourteenth amendment. The words of that amendment ... are an express prohibition upon every state in the Union. - CONG. GLOBE, 39th Congress, 1st Session, 2765 (1866). Black, Justice Hugo Lafayette (1886-1971) - My study of the historical events that culminated in the Fourteenth Amendment, and the expressions of those who sponsored and favored, as well as those who opposed its submission and passage, persuades me that one of the chief objects that the provisions of the Amendment's first section, separately, and as a whole, were intended to accomplish was to make the Bill of Rights, applicable to the states. ... I would follow what I believe was the original purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment—to extend to all the people of the nation the complete protection of the Bill of Rights. To hold that this Court can determine what, if any, provisions of the Bill of Rights will be enforced, and if so to what degree, is to frustrate the great design of a written Constitution. - Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 72, 89 (Dissent) (1947). Blackstone, Sir William (1725-1780; British jurist and legal scholar) - Of the absolute rights of individuals: ... 5. The fifth and last auxiliary rights of the subject ... is that of having arms for their defense. . . . - 1 W. BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES 123. Bland, Theodore - I have founded my hopes to the single object of securing (in terrorem) the great and essential rights of freemen from the encroachments of Power—so far as to authorize resistance when they should be either openly attacked or insidiously undermined. - letter to Patrick Henry, March 19, 1790, 3 PATRICK HENRY417-18 (1951). Boaz, David – Bureaucrats and politicians are just as self-interested as the rest of us. – What Big Government Is All About, THE FREEMAN, April, 1997, p. 210. Boaz, David – Maybe that’s because guns are sold at a profit, while schools are provided by the government. - In response to Jocelyn Elders statement, “It is often easier for our children to obtain a gun than it is to find a good school.” Boaz, David and Morris Barrett (Morris Barrett is a New York writer) - Education Department figures show that the average private elementary school tuition in America is less than $2,500. The average tuition for all private schools, elementary and secondary, is $3,116, or less than half of the cost per pupil in the average public school, $6,857. - WHAT WOULD A SCHOOL VOUCHER BUY? The Real Cost of Private Schools, CATO INSTITUTE BRIEFING PAPER No. 25, March, 1996. Bolick, Clint - Trickle-down civil rights in the form of racial preferences does nothing to solve those core problems. Preferences sprinkle benefits on the most-advantaged members of designated groups while doing nothing to aid the truly disadvantaged. Bonner, Elena (Widow of Sakharov) - The point is that the communist goal is fixed and changeless—it never varies one iota from their objective of world domination, but if we judge them only by the direction in which they seem to be going, we shall be deceived. Bovard, James – Americans’ liberty is perishing beneath the constant growth of government power. Federal, state, and local government’s are confiscating citizens’ property, trampling their rights, and decimating their opportunities more than ever before. - LOST RIGHTS. Bovard, James – Giving countries money that will be badly used is worse than not giving them any money at all. Bovard, James – Money-laundering statutes epitomize how the government has shirked going after violent criminals and instead is routinely impaling innocent citizen and penny ante misfits in order to maximize its number of convictions. If the government cannot catch the guilty, at least it can scourge the innocent. - Laundering: The Criminalization of Everything, FREEDOM DAILY, August 1997, p. 24. Boycott Taxes! Brandeis, Justice Louis - Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means--to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal--would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face. - Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, dissent (1928) Brennan, Justice (U.S. Supreme Court) - [T]he term “the people” [in the Constitution] is better understood as a rhetorical counterpoint “to the government,” such that rights that were reserved to “the people” were to protect all those subject to “the government” ... “The people” are “the governed.” - U.S.v. Verdugo-Urquirdez, (1990) (Dissent). Brennan, Justice William and Thurgood Marshall – [T]he framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to “create” rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be pre-existing. - United States v. Verdugo- Urquidez, 494 U.S. 259, 288 (1990) (dissent). Brown, Michael (Associate Professor of Education at the University of California Santa Barbara) - If, out of the kindness of their heart someone sees the conditions you have dealt with and they want to help you, that’s fine.... But if they don’t want to help you, that’s fine too. You should never put your confidence in affirmative action. Burris, Alan - Tariffs, quotas and other import restrictions protect the business of the rich at the expense of high cost of living for the poor. Their intent is to deprive you of the right to choose, and to force you to buy the high-priced inferior products of politically favored companies. - A Liberty Primer Bursor, Scott - An armed populace ... is the best means of defending the state, sensitizing the government to the rights of the people, preserving civil order and the natural right of self-defense, and cultivating the moral character essential to self-government. – Note: Toward a Functional Framework for Interpreting the Second Amendment, 74 TEX. L. REV. 1125, 1146-49 (1996). Cain, Representative Richard (North Carolina, U.S. House of Representatives, and black leader) - I do not ask any legislation for the colored people of this nation that is not applied to the white people. All that I ask is equal laws, equal legislation, and equal rights throughout the length and breadth of this land. - quoted by Terry Eastland and William J. Bennett, COUNTING BY RACE, (New York: Basic Books Inc., 1979). CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION - All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require. - article 2, section 1. Campaign reform has never done anything except to entrench incumbents, stifle free speech, and make running for office a rich man’s privilege. Carey, Drew (TV actor, stand up comic, author, libertarian) – The less government, the better. As far as your personal goals are and what you actually do with your life, it should never have to do with the government. You should never depend on the government for your retirement, your financial security, for anything. If you do, you’re screwed. ... That’s all the government should be. - REASON Celente, Gerald (Trend Forecaster) - Governments become emboldened by their failures. - May 22, 2009 interview on CNBC Chase, Justice Samuel P. (signer of the Declaration of Independence) - The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts. - 1796. Chew, Joseph T. - Expecting a carjacker or rapist or drug pusher to care that his possession or use of a gun is unlawful is like expecting a terrorist to care that his car bomb is taking up two parking spaces. Churchill, Winston - The inherent virtue of communism is the equal sharing of miseries. Cicero, Marcus Tullius - Civilized people are taught by logic, barbarians by necessity, communities by tradition; and the lesson is inculcated even in wild beasts by nature itself. They learn that they have to defend their own bodies and persons and lives from violence of any and every kind by all the means within their power. Cicero, Marcus Tullius - To know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child. Cicero, Marcus Tullius - Whenever, therefore, the profession of arms becomes a distinct order in the state ... the end of the social compact is defeated.... No free government was ever founded, or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defence of the state. ... Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen. - The Citizens of America, STATE GAZETTE (Charleston), September 8, 1788. Citizens without firearms live or die at the whim of governments with firearms. Clark, J. Reuben, Jr. (U.S. Ambassador) - [T]he [United Nations] Charter specifically provides for the waging of wars and for our participation therein.... The Charter is a war document not a peace document. - in his 1945 preliminary analysis of the U.N. Charter, quoted by William Norman Grigg, More Soldiers Saying “No!”, THE NEW AMERICAN, p. 19, December 11, 1995. Clay, Henry - The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity—unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity. Clinton, Hillary Rodham - Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments. It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them or denying them their freedom or dignity because of peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions. - speaking at the United Nations Women’s Conference in Beijing, China; quoted by Paul Greenberg in the CONSERVATIVE CHRONICLE, September 20, 1995. Clinton, Pres. William J. - [The United States] can’t be so fixed on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans. - during a press conference March 1, 1993, in Piscataway, NJ, quoted in the BOSTON GLOBE, March 3, 1993, page 3; USA TODAY, March 11, 1993. Clinton, Pres. William J. - I hope very much that others who will be tempted to join cults and become involved with people like Koresh will be deterred by the horrible scenes they have seen. - spoken one day after the fiery massacre of the Branch Davidians at Waco, TX regarding Clinton’s idea of the “lesson to be learned” from the incident. Clinton, Pres. William J. - The Constitution is a radical document ... it is the job of government to rein in people’s rights. - spoken on MTV, 1992; quoted in THE PROPONENT, February, 1996. Clinton, Pres. William J. (U.S. President, served January, 1993-present, Democrat) – When we got organized as a country and we wrote a radical Constitution with a radical Bill of rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly ... And so a lot of people say there’s too much personal freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it. That’s what we did... - spoken on MTV, Enough is Enough, March 22, 1994. Collin, Nicholas (Reverend from Philadelphia) - [T]hat congress shall never disarm any citizen, unless such as are or have been in actual rebellion. - written under the penname “A Foreign Spectator”, Remarks on the Amendments to the Federal Constitutions. COLORADO CONSTITUTION - The people of this state have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves, as a free, sovereign and independent state; and to alter and abolish their constitution and form of government whenever they may deem it necessary to their safety and happiness .... - article 2, section 2. Colorado Supreme Court - The overbreadth doctrine is applicable to legislative enactments which threaten the exercise of fundamental or express constitutional rights, such as ... the right to keep and bear arms. - People v. Garcia, 595 P.2d 228, 230 (1979) (en banc). Congress - The rate of pay for the offices referred to under section 703(a)(2)(B) of Ethics Reform Act of 1989 (5 U.S.C. 5318 note) shall be the rate of pay that would be payable for each such office if the provisions of section 703(a)(2)(B) and 1101(a)(1)(A) of such act (5 U.S.C. 5318 note and 5305) had not been enacted. - a provision in the 1992 appropriations bill giving senators a $23,200 a year pay raise. Congress, Joint Economic Committee - The federal government is losing billions of dollars of tax revenue by imposing a 28 percent capital gains rate. ... If the capital gains tax rate had remained at 20 percent and capital gains realizations had continued to grow at a 12 percent annual rate between 1986 and 1992, as they did between 1980 and 1985, the federal government would have collected $70 billion more in revenues over the period even at the lower tax rate. - Capital Crimes: The Impact of the 1986 Capital Gains Tax Hike, 1993. Congressional Record Vol. 90 Sec. 271 (b)(1) p.2243 (1939) - Under this bill we are trying our best to eliminate tax returns for some 30,000,000 of our individual taxpayers by allowing them to use the so-called W-2 form, which results in the taxpayer not computing his own tax but having his tax

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