|
2009 May 15
|
"Emergency does not create power.
Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish
the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved.
The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency.
Its grants of power to the federal government and
its limitations of the power of the States
were determined in the light of emergency,
and they are not altered by emergency." |
"The Constitution of the United States is a law
for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace,
and covers with the shield of its protection
all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.
No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences,
was ever invented by the wit of man than
that any of its provisions can be suspended
during any of the great exigencies of government.
Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism,
but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false;
for the government, within the Constitution,
has all the powers granted to it,
which are necessary to preserve its existence;
as has been happily proved by the result
of the great effort to throw off its just authority." |
"It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing
the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact
between those who govern and those that are governed:
but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before
the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed,
there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist,
and consequently there could originally exist no governors
to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the
individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right,
entered into a compact with each other to produce a government:
and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise,
and the only principle on which they have a right to exist." |
|
2009 May 14
|
"In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men,
the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government
to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control
itself." |
"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." |
"If newsmen do not tell the truth as they see it
because it might make waves, or if their bosses decide
something should or should not be broadcast
because of Washington or Main Street consequences,
we have dishonored ourselves and
we have lost the First Amendment by default." |
|
2009 May 13
|
"Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of 'emergency'.
It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist
sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men
striving to get on horseback. And 'emergency' became the justification
of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the
greatest achievement that demagoguery attains." |
"When a government controls both
the economic power of individuals
and the coercive power of the state ...
this violates a fundamental rule of happy living:
Never let the people with all the money and
the people with all the guns be the same people." |
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison
without formulating any charge known to the law, and
particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers,
is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation
of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." |
|
2009 May 12
|
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death." |
"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." |
"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly." |
|
2009 May 11
|
"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." |
"Laws are maintained in credit,
not because they are essentially just,
but because they are laws.
It is the mystical foundation
of their authority;
they have none other." |
"A constitution is not the act of a government,
but of a people constituting a government;
and government without a constitution is power without a right.
All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning.
It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources.
All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation.
Time does not alter the nature and quality of either." |
|
|
|
