Quote of the Day -- On Our Nation and Concentrated Wealth

The Founding Fathers on religion and our government?

Here you go. Here's one of our Founding Fathers and how serious he took the separation of church and state:



Faith based initiatives?  Funded by government?

I don't think so.

What they didn't tell us in school about the "Founding Fathers"

Two quotes from two of the Founders:

"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government. Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy. Their turbulent and uncontroling disposition requires checks.” --Alexander Hamilton

“The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer. … In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability.” --James Madison

What does this have to do with anything?

It seems the Republican Party's efforts to get less and less of us voting in elections fits in with what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

It's wrong--deeply--but with this little bit of information alone, you get a strong sense of their intentions. Of course, far fewer of us had as much education then as we do now, too, so that's in our favor.

The fact is, where we are right now is that we have to get the big, ugly, corrupting influence of "campaign contributions" out of our election system and so, our government. As it stands, our legislators are bought by the corporations and wealthy, along with their legislation and so, our laws and finally, our government.

Quote of the day

"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain." --Thomas Jefferson, 1809

An email going around about changing Congress

Have you received this email on changing our Congress? The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple. The people demanded it. That was in 1971...before computers, before e-mail, before cell phones, etc. We can now communicate with one another far quicker. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land...all because of public pressure. Congressional Reform Act of 2011 1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office. 2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose. 3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just like the rest of us. 4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%. 5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people. 6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people. 7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this current contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress should be an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work. I have to say, it seems like a great idea to me and, I'd bet, to most Americans.

Founding Father James Madison, on war

"Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." ----James Madison, the essential author of Constitution.

Quote of the day--on government and the "delclaration of rights"

"By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline." ..........Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, February 7, 1788, Papers, 12:571

As the Beach Boys used to sing:  "Wouldn't it be nice?"

Oh, and Mr. Obama, we really would like that habeas corpus back.

Permanently.


I took this quote, too, from that blog of which I just became aware:  http://www.nocorprule.blogspot.com/

Quote of the day--on guns today

Today, the amazing thing about the reaction to the Giffords shooting is that virtually all the discussion about how to prevent a recurrence has been focusing on improving the tone of our political discourse. That would certainly be great. But you do not hear much about the fact that Jared Loughner came to Giffords’s sweet gathering with a semiautomatic weapon that he was able to buy legally because the law restricting their sale expired in 2004 and Congress did not have the guts to face up to the National Rifle Association and extend it.


If Loughner had gone to the Safeway carrying a regular pistol, the kind most Americans think of when they think of the right to bear arms, Giffords would probably still have been shot and we would still be having that conversation about whether it was a sane idea to put her Congressional district in the cross hairs of a rifle on the Internet.

But we might not have lost a federal judge, a 76-year-old church volunteer, two elderly women, Giffords’s 30-year-old constituent services director and a 9-year-old girl who had recently been elected to the student council at her school and went to the event because she wanted to see how democracy worked.

Loughner’s gun, a 9-millimeter Glock, is extremely easy to fire over and over, and it can carry a 30-bullet clip. It is “not suited for hunting or personal protection,” said Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign. “What it’s good for is killing and injuring a lot of people quickly.”

America has a long, terrible history of political assassinations and attempts at political assassination. What we did not have until now is a history of attempted political assassination that took the lives of a large number of innocent bystanders. The difference is not about the Second Amendment. It’s about a technology the founding fathers could never have imagined.

--Gail Collins, The New York Times

Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10collins.html?src=me&ref=general

Quote of the day II--from the same earlier article

"... from Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to John Adams: 'Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.'"  --Dr. Jean Houston

Link to original article:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jean-houston/beyond-the-pathology-of-h_b_721610.html?ref=fb&src=sp

On this day, July 2, 1776--The Declaration of Independence

Today, officially, in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was signed. That, of course, is basically what we celebrate each year with our "Independence Day" and "4th of July" celebrations. And here is the 2nd sentence of that important document, of which we are all so familiar: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. And we're so proud of that. Right? But let's be clear, folks--we can repeat that line and we can be proud of it, sure, but this nation, the United States of America, has NEVER believed and exercised that "all men are created equal". Let's be serious and honest here. Women fought for years to get their equality. Then African-Americans had to fight for over 300 years to get theirs. And even to this day there are people fighting for the very equal rights of simply being able to visit their "significant other" in the hospital and the right to inherit, should they die and finally, of course, for the very equal right to commit to and marry whomever they please, whatever their sex. So don't for a minute think that the United States is now or ever has been a place where "all men"--all people--"are created equal". It's bullshit. We never have been and we still aren't, right up to today. That said, enjoy your holiday weekend anyway, folks, but let's keep pushing for what we could be--for what we think we are and for what we tell everyone we are and already have.

Quote of the day--separation of church and state

As Article 11 of the 1797 treaty first-President George Washington and Founding Father negotiated (and John Adams signed) with the Barbary pirates put it:

"The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."


Just to be clear.


Link to original post here:
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/the-great-republican-rollback