Founders Quote, 28-29 April 2025

A pair of quotes on we, the People, by Alexander Hamilton...

(1) The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority. - Federalist No. 22, 1787

(2) It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the Public Good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend they always reason right about the means of promoting it. - Federalist No. 71, 1788

On the first quote, I agree; all power in government (and the rights of the people) must arise from the consent of the governed. On the second, I also agree; Hamilton reminds us that even the worst ideas can come from good intentions.

Founders' Quotes, 31 March-1 April 2025

A pair of quotes on the topic of liberty....

(1) The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Stephens Smith — 1787

(2) In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. - John Adams, Inaugural Address, 1797

Liberty is one of the hallmarks of America - the liberty to think as one wishes to, to speak their mind, to read and listen to do what they wish within the bounds of the law. Not of society, the law.

But to ensure the law is fair and just, there must be liberty with which to fulfill its' promises.

Founders' Quotes, 29-30 March 2025

Law: Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country. - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #25, 1787

Laws of Nature: To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature....Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind. - Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775

On the law, Hamilton is dead-to-rights correct in that, while its' easy for elected officials to add duties for the government to perform (especially if not enumerated in the Constitution) it is very hard for government to dispense of them as Donald Trump is finding out first-hand. With regards to the laws of nature, Hamilton is also correct in that, here in America, our rights do not derive from the benevolence of government. They derive from our sovereign rights as human beings, rights given to us from our Creator. Government's function is not to restrict them willy-nilly but to protect them at whatever cost.

Founders' Quote, 8 March 2025

Equal laws protecting equal rights; the best guarantee of loyalty and love of country. - James Madison, letter to Jacob de la Motta, 1820

Madison's right; when everyone plays by the same rules and the same things apply to everyone, a country will thrive. Simple as that.

Founders' Quotes, 6-7 March 2025

(1) Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. - John Adams, Defense of the Constitution — 1787

(2) Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. - John Adams, Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law — 1765

Education is an important part of what makes (or should make) America that shining beacon on the hill, in that only an educated people can understand, respect and revere the freedoms and liberties we Americans take for granted. Of course, there's always a debate on what should be taught; that isn't new...what is new is that for decades the Left had a near-monopoly on education and only in the past few years have conservatives begun making inroads back into the educational sphere.

Founders' Quotes, 4-5 March 2025

(1) We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. - Benjamin Franklin, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence — 1776

(2) 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 deaths. - James Madison, Federalist No. 10 — 1787

On the first point: consider the circumstances of the Declaration's signing. Had the Revolution failed, anyone found to have led or helped lead would've likely faced either a long prison sentence or a one-way trip to the gallows bar. Thus Franklin's words were a reminder to the others that if either they succeed and America becomes its' own nation or they hang together in failure.

On the second point: Madison reminds us that America is not a democracy as many like to tout but a constitutional republic w/democratic features, limited powers, and rights guaranteed by God to the people thereof not to be traded and dealed out as favors but as rights guaranteed by law.