Thomas Jefferson on Government today

The Wisdom of Thomas Jefferson applied to our Congress and the Obama stimulus plan:

(~My own little comments added in parentheses)

Congress / Government
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
~(..and fly on public airlines Mrs. Pelosi?)

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
~(less government interference in our life is better)

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

No government ought to be without censors.

Power

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
~(ambitious men who seek power for themselves seek to make the people dependent on government programs)

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
~(This is why we need term limitations to stop these lifers from running ours)

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.
~(Why do these people spend millions/ billions to take a job making a few hundred thousand a year?)

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Liberty vs Tyranny

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
~(we must speak up for ourselves now!)

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
~(speak up for the rights of others, because they are coming to take your rights away next!)

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

Bill of Rights

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Fairness Doctrine

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Information is the currency of democracy.

(The Liberals seek to stop conservative talk radio from enlightening the people about liberal actions and the free expression of ideas between people across the nation. Senator Stabineux (D- Michigan) is the leading advocate of the Fairness Doctrine. Most people don't know that her husband is the former V.P. of failed liberal radio network Air America. They couldn't beat Rush, Sean, and Mark Levin in the ratings, so she will use her power to defeat them for her husband's cause. Anyone else see a gross misuse of power?)

The Obama Stimulus Plan

Delay is preferable to error.
~(why such a hurry Mr. President? Are you afraid people will find out what's really in your plan?)

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
~(this power grab by the federal government will destroy our future)

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.
~(yet we are now about to adopt a European socialist economic plan? Why?)

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
~(we don't believe in your plan and the ideas within Mr. President! Why force us to pay for them?)

Media

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Consequences of our Foolishness

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.