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2007 July 27
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"Liberty is not a matter of words,
but a positive and important condition of society.
Its greatest safeguard after placing its foundations in a popular base,
is in the checks and balances imposed on the public servants." |
"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." |
"That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.
It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment." |
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2007 July 26
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"My kind of loyalty was to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death." |
"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 the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression." |
"Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely
according to conscience, above all liberties." |
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2007 July 25
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"The government of the absolute majority is but the government of the strongest interests; and when not effectively checked, is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised... [To read the Constitution is to realize that] no free system was ever farther removed from the principle that the absolute majority, without check or limitation, ought to govern." |
"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the
people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited;
the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government
power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the
Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights." |
"Too many Americans have twisted
the sensible right to pursue happiness
into the delusion that we are entitled
to a guarantee of happiness.
If we don't get exactly what we want,
we assume someone must be violating our rights.
We're no longer willing to write off
some of life's disappointments to simple bad luck." |
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2007 July 24
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"Can the real Constitution be restored? Probably not.
Too many Americans depend on government money under
programs the Constitution doesn't authorize, and
money talks with an eloquence Shakespeare could only envy.
Ignorant people don't understand The Federalist Papers,
but they understand government checks with their names on them." |
"It is not the function of the government
to keep the citizen from falling into error;
it is the function of the citizen to keep
the government from falling into error." |
"There is as much chance of repealing the 18th Amendment
as there is for a humming-bird to fly to the planet Mars
with the Washington Monument tied to its tail." |
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2007 July 23
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"Our constitutions purport to be established
by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people'
consent to such government as the constitutions authorize.
But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory.
It has no existence in fact.
Government is in reality established by the few;
and these few assume the consent of all the rest,
without any such consent being actually given." |
"Liberty cannot be caged into a charter or handed on ready-made to the next generation. Each generation must recreate liberty for its own times. Whether or not we establish freedom rests with ourselves." |
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women;
when it dies there, no Constitution, no court,
can even do much to help it." |
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