In honor of this most important day in our history, I include below a selection of quotes from our Founding Fathers concerning their thoughts at the time of the drafting and, later, of the significance of the Declaration of Independence. And with the sad news of Jesse Helms’ passing — who now shares with Jefferson the distinction of being a great American who died on our nation’s “birth day” — I end with an appropriate quote from him.
Richard Henry Lee, Resolution in Congress, June 7, 1776:
“Resolved: That these colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective colonies for their consideration and approbation.”
John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776:
“It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more. You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.”
Stephen Hopkins (Rhode Island Delegate), at the Signing of the Declaration:
“My hand trembles, but my heart does not.”
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Samuel Adams Wells, May 12, 1821:
“The Declaration of Independence… [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.”
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, September 12, 1821:
“[T]he flames kindled on the 4 of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.”
James Madison, letter to Thomas Jefferson, February 8, 1825:
“On the distinctive principles of the Government …of the U. States, the best guides are to be found in…The Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental Act of Union of these States.”
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Richard Henry Lee, May 8, 1825:
“This was the object of the Declaration of Independence: Not to find out new principles or new arguments never before thought of not merely to say things which had never been said before but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing it was intended to be an expression of the American mind and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion.”
Jesse Helms, Address to the United Nations, January 20, 2000:
“What the Secretary General calls `rights beyond borders,’ we in America call `inalienable rights.’ We are endowed with those `inalienable rights’ as Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence, not by kings or despots, but by our Creator.
“The sovereignty of nations must be respected. But nations derive their sovereignty - their legitimacy - from the consent of the governed. Thus, it follows, that nations can lose their legitimacy when they rule WITHOUT the consent of the governed; they deservedly discard their sovereignty by brutally oppressing their people….”
“…This is WHY Americans reject the idea of a sovereign United Nations that presumes to be the source of legitimacy for the United States Government’s policies, foreign or domestic. There is only ONE SOURCE of legitimacy of the American government’s policies - and that is THE CONSENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.”
…but they do ruin lots of people’s livelihoods with the panics they cause: “Tomato scare may be mistake”
(HT: Lew Rockwell blog)
On foreign policy, I am somewhere between Ronald Reagan and Ron Paul. But what lots of people don’t understand is that Reagan is closer to Paul than to Bush and McCain.
Do read this fine article by Nikolas Gvosdev: “Gipper Anxiety -The Struggle Over What Would Reagan Do.”
My brother, serving in the Air Force over in Afghanistan, just sent me an article from Newsweek and asked for my opinion. Overall, Fareed Zakaria’s “True Or False: We Need A Wartime President” is a very good article. Though I have a few quibbles. Here is my not-so-detailed but pointed response:
I agree with much of this editorial. Al Qaeda and “terrorism” never posed an existential threat to us, even at the height of its powers. We are “at war” — illegitimately and unconstitutionally so — b/c the President has put us to war, over Congress’s unjust acquiescence. Bush sees himself as a “war time President” b/c he sees the terrorist threat as existential, as does McCain, even though they are wrong. Who knows the long-term consequences of their actions — the “blowback” that will result to our country? What everyone agrees Bush should have done and did do — the shutting off of terrorist financial sources, limited counter-terrorist strikes, some appropriate defensive precautions, etc. — have been effective and were needed. But where the Administration has greatly exceeded its mandate and arrogated to itself unconstitutional powers — overthrowing foreign sovereigns w/o legal justification (i.e. congressional Declarations of War), thus creating power voids in an unstable region that we are even now trying to atone for like the boy with not enough fingers to put in the dike, greatly subverting the privacy rights of American citizens, denying habeas corpus to people, citizens and foreigners alike accused of terrorist connections w/o proving the assertion in court, thus making folks disappear for years with no connection to the outside world, including their own legal counsel, etc. – these things will have dire long-term consequences on our nation and its moral standing in the world, imo.
The “War on Terror” is hopelessly vague, with no end in sight and no defined enemy, except for those who the powers-that-be want to define as such. Terrorism is clearly a threat, but not an existential one, and not one that should normally require military action. It is rather one that requires defensive police and intelligence actions, w/ occasional offensive strikes on hard, well defined targets. The wide broom approach is unjust, immoral, repulsive to any lover of liberty and human decency, and will ultimately be counterproductive, imo.
Oh, and Kennedy deserves much blame for Vietnam, even if LBJ is the ass who escalated that other wrong-headed war. Kennedy put us there in the first place. Everything else followed.
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For more on where I am coming from, see the following:
From Ron Paul’s weekly “Texas Straight Talk” column:
Iraq or the Economy?
What is the importance of the war in Iraq relative to other current issues? This is a question I am often asked, especially as Americans continue to become increasingly aware that something is very wrong with the economy. The difficulty with the way the question is often asked relates to the perception that we are somehow able to divide such issues, or to isolate the cost of war into arbitrarily defined areas such as national security or international relations. War is an all-encompassing governmental activity. The impact of war on our ability to defend ourselves from future attack, and upon America ’s standing in the world, is only a mere fraction of the total overall effect that war has on our nation and the policies of its government.
The cost of this particular war is enormous, and therefore its of great importance. There is no single issue that is more important at this particular time. The war has, of course, made us less safe as a nation and damaged our credibility with allies and hostile nations alike. Moreover, years of growing deficits have been spurred on by the high price tag of war, and the decision to pay that price primarily by supplemental spending rather than traditional “on-budget” accounting.
War takes what would otherwise be productive economic capacity and transfers both that capacity, and the wealth it would generate in normal, peaceful, times into far less economically viable activities. It also impacts budget priorities in ways that are detrimental to our nation. I have often pointed to the fact that we are building bridges in Iraq while they are collapsing in the United States .
All war, but most particularly war funded by monetary inflation, bleeds a country in multiple ways. Obviously, many of the young people who are in the military literally give their blood, and sometimes their lives, fighting in wars of this type. Meanwhile, those who do not fight the war, but fund it, are forced to pay both the immediate costs, as well as seeing their long term purchasing power erode, as the twin pillars of debt and inflation are foisted upon the backs of current taxpayers and future generations. Neither conspiracy nor coincidence explains steep increases in the price of gas as the war drags on. No, this is simply a reality of the inflationary policies that, among other things, make this war possible.
As people are continually asked to choose whether our nation’s teetering economy or the failed foreign policy of the past several decades is most important as we look forward, it is well for those of us who understand that these two issues are closely linked, to continue to explain this fact to our fellow citizens. To fix the problem requires a proper diagnosis.
UPDATE: Check out this nine-minute interview that aired last night on ABC News just before Ron Paul’s speech.
From Ron Paul:
Friday, June 13, 2008
Over the past 17 months you and I delivered a message of freedom, the likes of which American politics has not seen in decades. With the primary season now over, the presidential campaign has come to an end. But the Revolution has only begun.
Today I am happy to announce the official launch of the Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty. Please visit our new website and join us: http://www.campaignforliberty.com
Over the next few months I will be developing a program, assembling a team, and announcing new and exciting projects. We will have a permanent presence on the American political landscape. That I promise you.
Right now, I need your patience and support. I want the Campaign for Liberty to be a grassroots campaign; so your energy, your creativity, your feedback, and your participation are essential.
Together, we will educate our fellow Americans in freedom, sound money, non-interventionism, and free markets. We will write commentaries and broadcast videos on the news of the day. And I’ll work with friends whom I respect to design materials for homeschoolers.
Politically, we will expand the great work of our precinct leader program. We will make our presence felt at every level of government. We will keep an eye on Congress, and lobby against legislation that threatens us. And we will identify and support candidates who champion our great ideas.
“In the final analysis,” I wrote in my new book The Revolution: A Manifesto, “the last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them.”
Our time has come to act on these words.May future generations look back on our work and say that these were men and women who, in a moment of great crisis, stood up to their politicians, the opinion-makers, and the establishment, and saved their country.
For liberty,
RON PAUL
P.S. Please join me. Go to our website, www.campaignforliberty.com, and become a member of the Campaign for Liberty. Our goal is 100,000 members by September. Can we reach it?
Exxon made $10.9 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2008. Sounds like a lot, but context is everything.
This graphic at The Oath provides that context:
As The Oath sums it up, that’s nearly $3 paid in taxes for every dollar of profit. Do read the rest his analysis here. It is well worth it.
In my previous post, I shared the news that I have been included in a list of principled conservatives who have publicly registered strong criticisms or even outright opposition to the Iraq War. In these series of post at the Flynn Files blog, Dan Flynn has included quotes with links to the articles from which they came.
Accordingly, I thought it worthwhile to list some more things I have said on the subject here below (the first was selected for citation at Flynn Files):
What do various conservative thinkers such Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley, General Norman Schwarzkopf, Tom Clancy, former Majority Leader Dick Armey, Rep. Ron Paul, George Will, Jack Kemp, Joe Sobran, and yours truly all have in common?
The answer: We have all voiced strongly principled criticisms — and often even outright opposition – to the present Iraq War.
And further, we are all the subject of a series of posts at the Flynn Files blog, featuring quotes from now 50 — with more to come — conservative critics of the Iraq War. Read the first 25 quotes here, and the second here.
Dan Flynn tells me he ultimately plans to post quotes from 100 such critics — one batch of 25 quotes per week. I am cited in the second batch.
I am truly humbled to be listed in such esteemed company, and am grateful to Dan for honoring me in this way.
The real “Dream Ticket” - and more plausible than you might think.
“Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by coercion and tyranny at home. Our Christian ideals cannot be exported to other lands by dollars and guns. Persuasion and example are the methods taught by the Carpenter of Nazareth, and if we believe in Christianity we should try to advance our ideals by his methods. We cannot practice might and force abroad and retain freedom at home. We cannot talk world cooperation and practice power politics.”
~Rep. Howard Buffet, Sen. Robert Taft’s Campaign Manager, 1952
(HT: Lew Rockwell)
So, I got myself into a debate over at Flynn Files about whether or not the Bush Administration’s war on Iraq is consistent with conservative principles. Naturally, this touches very much on the question of the war’s constitutionality.
My argument is that the war is plainly unconstitutional, of course. (For even more on this issue, see my “Best of Borg Blog” link in the header above and scroll down to the “War and the Constitution” section.) The response from Mr. Boggs was classic:
“…With all the lawyers in the White House though, I doubt this is near the constitutional issue you want to make it…”
Is there anything left to do but to give a great big horselaugh at this point?!
Clearly, as the rest of his comment makes clear, this is one of those Proverbs 26:4-5 cases, so I will say no more there. I’ve been down that fruitless road far too many times to waste my breath further.
But for those not so foolish, I’ll wrap up this post by remarking that this little episode reminded me of that moment in the Republican debate in Dearborn, Michigan last October when presidential wannabe Mitt Romney was asked if he’d seek congressional approval before bombing Iran. His response:
“You sit down with your attorneys and they tell you what you have to do…”
How pathetically choice!
Ron Paul’s response then is also a perfect conclusion now:
“This idea of going and talking to attorneys totally baffles me. Why don’t we just open up the Constitution and read it? You’re not allowed to go to war without a declaration of war.”
This is so good I had to copy it here in its entirety:
“One of the most important news stories in all of history has been ignored by the MSM. The report, by a professional astronomer, on the planet Jupiter says that “Jupiter’s recent outbreak of red spots is likely related to large scale climate change as the gas giant is getting warmer near the equator.” This report follows earlier ones, from others, informing us that Mars is also undergoing increased global warming, with the melting of the polar ice cap. There are some crazy people out there who will try to convince you that such phenomena - along with global warming here on Earth - is evidence of more widespread solar influences. But Al Gore and his statist cronies tell us otherwise; that global warming is the product of human excess in the production of CO2. And since Al Gore has a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar - and what do the crazies have to back their claims except observable evidence? - we are left with the unavoidable conclusion that Mars and Jupiter, just like Earth, are burdened by human beings. Obese Jovians with their SUVs, air-conditioners, and aerosol sprays, are destroying their planet just as we irresponsible Earthlings are doing here.”
I was very tempted there for awhile to jump on the Bob Barr bandwagon. But the more I consider it, the less likely I am to vote for Barr for President.
It is partly Barr’s fault, and partly the fact that he is running on the LP ticket. Now, the Libertarians have it all over the Republicans, that’s for sure. But they still make me uneasy sometimes.
So, I am leaning towards pulling the lever for the Constitution Party again. You could do much worse than voting for Chuck Baldwin (by, for instance, choosing the nominee for the GOP, Dems, Greens, Socialists, etc), and I know that I would be proud to do so. Not as proud as I was when I voted for Ron Paul, but proud nonetheless.
This evening, Samuel rode his bike for the first time ever without training wheels!
And this proud papa is happy to say that he did much, much better than I anticipated, only wrecking a couple times when cutting trns to close to the curb. And each time the little - but growing oh-so-fast - man got right back up and rode on. :)
I don’t care to post much - as said, I’m too constipated about things to do so - but a link to the following article seems a must. It is too good to not bring attention to, at least in the small fashion of this blog.
So, please read Christianity in Eclipse by Laurence Vance. As he says in his opening paragraph: “among Christians one continues to find some of the greatest apologists for the state, its leaders, its institutions, and its evil doings.”
I decided over a month ago that I was too constipated to bother blogging much. I’m speaking figuratively, of course. Then I have been so busy it hasn’t mattered; I couldn’t blog much, or even at all really, even if I had wanted to. But if anything I’m even more constipated now, even though I arguably have some time available.
I’ll hold my tongue from saying anything more here that I might later regret, but I thought I’d just let anyone out there who isn’t similarly constipated know. Not sure when, if, or in what form I’ll be back. Ta ta.
