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...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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it...it is their
right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government
, and to
provide new Guards for their future security. ... --The
Declaration of Independence
"We could have pursued no other course without
dishonor. And sad as the results have been, if it had all to be done
over again, we should be compelled to act in precisely the same
manner." --General Robert E. Lee, C.S.A. [cited in The Memorial Volume of Jefferson Davis by J.
William Jones, 1889, Sprinkle Publications, p. 309]
"The Civil War wasn't just a victory of North
over South; it was a victory for centralized government over the states
and federalism. It destroyed the ability of the states to protect
themselves against the destruction of their reserved powers. Must we all
be happy about this? [Abraham] Lincoln himself -- the real Lincoln, that
is -- would have deprecated the unintended results of the war. Though he
sometimes resorted to dictatorial methods, he never meant to create a
totalitarian state. It's tragic that slavery was intertwined with a good
cause, and scandalous that those who defend that cause today should be
smeared as partisans of slavery. But the verdict of history must not be
left to the simple-minded and the demagogic." --Joseph Sobran (syndicated columnist)
[www.sobran.com]
"Like most war leaders, he [Lincoln] grossly
distorted and exaggerated the motives of his enemy. He constantly insisted that the South wanted to
“destroy” the Union, when it merely wanted to withdraw from it.
He called honorable
men like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee “traitors,” though they never
betrayed anyone in their lives. He accused the South of “aggression,” when
it was the South that was being invaded, and truly destroyed, by the Union
armies. Having assured the country that he had neither the power nor the
inclination to disturb slavery, Lincoln made the destruction of slavery
his lofty war aim in the middle of the war."
---Joseph Sobran ( http://www.sobran.com
)
"A nation preserved with
liberty trampled underfoot is much worse than a nation in fragments but
with the spirit of liberty still alive. Southerners persistently
claim that their rebellion is for the purpose of preserving this form of
government." --Private John H. Haley, 17th Maine Regiment, USA
"If the right of
secession be denied...and the denial enforced by the sword of coercion;
the nature of the polity is changed, and freedom is at its end. It
is no longer a government by consent, but a government of force.
Conquest is substituted compact, and the dream of liberty is over."
--Albert Taylor Bledsoe, from Is Davis a
Traitor?
"If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I
would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side."
--Ulysses S. Grant
"I have no purpose, directly or
indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States
where it exists. I believe I
have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do
so."--Abraham Lincoln. March 4,
1861 Inaugural
address
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save
the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could
save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could
save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by
freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do
about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to
save the Union." --Abraham Lincoln in
an 1862 letter to Horace Greeley
on his
justification for the Northern War of Aggression against the
constitutional secession of the South. In September 1862, he issued the
Emancipation Proclamation (effective Jan. 1, 1863).
"The Gettysburg speech was at once the
shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest
emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even
remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget
that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in
it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this:
that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to
the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the
people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue . The
Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination;
it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern
themselves." --H.L. Mencken ( HL
Mencken )
"People separated from their history are
easily persuaded." --Karl Marx
Why did the North want a war? Read
below the reasoned thought of the time...
The predicament in
which both the Government and the commerce of the country are placed,
through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly
understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester [England]
can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less
cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his
advantage...If the importations of the counrty are made through Southern
ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of
the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons, to be
transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our
importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the
lost of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works,
conducted at the cost of many huindred millions of dollars, to turn into
our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common
ruin. So do our manufacturers...Once at New Orleans, goods
may be distributed over the whole country duty-free. The
process is perfectly simple... The commercial bearing of the
question has acted upon the North...We now see clearly whither we are
tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an
abstract question---one of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved
or delegated powers of the State or Federal government, but of
material existence and moral position both at home and
abroad.....We were divided and confused till our pockets
were touched.
---New York Times
March
30, 1861
The Southern Confederacy will
not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without
it? Literally nothing....It is very clear that the South gains by
this process, and we lose. No---we MUST NOT "let the South go."
----Union Democrat , Manchester, NH, February
19, 1861
From a story entitled: "What shall be done for a
revenue?"
That either revenue from duties
must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be
closed to importations from abroad....If neither of these things be done,
our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which
supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to
carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next
crop of corn is ripe.....Allow rail road iron to be entered at Savannah
with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern
Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would
be imported at New York; the railroads would be supplied from the southern
ports. ---New York Evening Post March 12,
1861, recorded in Northern Editorials on Secession,
Howard C. Perkins, ed., 1965, pp. 598-599.
"Surrender means that the history of this heroic
struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained
by Northern school teachers; will learn from Northern school books
their version of the War; will be impressed by all the influences of
history and to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed
veterans as fit subjects for derision."
Gen. Pat Cleburne CSA
In 1788, the Massachusetts state convention ratified entry into the
Union by a vote of just 187 to 168. Let us suppose that, a couple of years
later, a second vote has rescinded the first, and Massachusetts
respectfully announced: “Upon further consideration, we have decided that
belonging to the Union is not in the state’s best interest.“ I wonder if
anyone can imagine George Washington issuing the following proclamation:
“ It has come to my attention that Massachusetts intends to depart the
Union. I declare Massachusetts in rebellion! I am requesting the Governors
of the states to muster armies which are to proceed to Massachusetts and
invade it. I am dispatching federal warships to blockade Boston Harbor.
Upon capture, the city is to be burned to the ground. Federal commanders
shall torch other Massachusetts cities and towns as they see fit.
“I, George Washington, do further declare, that because the people of
Massachusetts have perpetrated this brazen treason, all their rights are
forthwith revoked. Of course, if any Massachusetts resident disavows his
state’s dastardly decision, and swears an oath of loyalty to the federal
government, his rights shall be restored. Such cases excepted, federal
soldiers should feel free to loot any Massachusetts home. Crops not seized
for army provisions should be destroyed without regards to the needs of
the rebels and their families. After all, war is hell.
“And to citizens of other states, take warning! Consorting with the
Massachusetts rebels will not be tolerated. It has come to my attention,
in fact, that certain leaders and legislators in New Hampshire and
Connecticut have expressed sympathy for their cause ! I am ordering
federal troops to round up these “border state “ turncoats. They will
jailed without hearings. I hereby revoke the right of habeas corpus just
accorded under the Constitution. In times as these, suspicion alone shall
be suitable cause for imprisonment....”
No one believes Washington would have issued such a proclamation. And
if he had, he would have swung from a tree. True, Lincoln did not state
things so bluntly, but the foregoing accurately reflects Yankee policy.
What had changed between 1789 and 1861 to warrant such a response?
--James Perloff, from Southern Partisan 2nd Quarter
1997
Full Perloff Article: "A Yankee Apology"
The belief in the
possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient
and dangerous of human illusions. --Robert Lynd
At 4:30 a.m. on the 12 of April, 1861,
General Pierre G. T. Beauregard directed his Confederate gunners to open
fire on Fort Sumter. Thirty-four hours later a white flag flying over the
fort ended the bombardment.The only casualty was a horse. It was a
bloodless opening to the bloodiest war in American history. American homes
became armies headquarters. American churches and school houses sheltered
the dying, and huge foraging armies swept across American farms and burned
American towns. Americans slaughtered one another wholesale, in their own
cornfields and peach orchards, along familiar roads and beside rivers with
old American names. More than 3 million Americans fought in this war, and
over 600,000 men, 2 percent of the total population died as a result of
it. Tens of thousands more were wounded and maimed beyond recognition. In
two days at Shiloh, on the banks of the Tennessee River, more American men
fell than in all previous wars combined. At Cold Harbor, some 7000
Americans fell in twenty minutes. Men who had never strayed more than
twenty miles from their front doors now found themselves fighting epic
battles hundreds of miles from home. Between 1861 and 1865, there were
over 10,000 battles and skirmishes fought on American soil, and we killed
each other in great numbers - if only to become the kind of country that
supposedly could no longer envision how that was possible. ---Unknown
In order to continue
his boycott, Mfume is now tapping into an ugly instinct: the desire of the
victor to dominate the vanquished. Make no mistake, the NAACP boycott is
no longer about putting historical emblems in proper historical
perspective-it's about blotting them out of existence. But what next?
Shall we eliminate the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers? Shall we
pretend they never existed? --Greenville [South Carolina]
News, 5/19/00
War || Government &
Founder's Wisdom
|| Left
Media || Contemporary
Government
"The powers delegated by the
proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those
which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.
The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war,
peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the
several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course
of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people,
and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State.
--James Madison, author of our Constitution, in
Federalist Paper No.
45
"But ambitious encroachments of the federal
government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite
the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be
signals of general alarm. Every government would espouse the common cause.
A correspondence would be opened. Plans of resistance would be concerted.
One spirit would animate and conduct the whole. The same combinations, in
short, would result from an apprehension of the federal, as was produced
by the dread of a foreign, yoke; and unless the projected innovations
should be voluntarily renounced, the same appeal to a trial of force would
be made in the one case as was made in the other. But what degree of
madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity."
--James Madison, Federalist Paper No.
46
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to
time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... Resistance to tyrants is obedience
to God." --Thomas Jefferson
"If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of
servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in
peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands
which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity
forget that ye were our countrymen." --Samuel
Adams
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and
then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms
in the physical. --Thomas Jefferson
Government is not reason. It is not eloquence.
It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master.
--George Washington
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at
the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin
them. --Thomas Jefferson
There is no truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to
the whole world. --Thomas Jefferson
It is not by the consolidation, or
concentration, of powers, but by their distribution that good government
is effected. --Thomas Jefferson
I am not a friend to a very energetic
government. It is always oppressive. --Thomas
Jefferson (letter to James Madison 1787 in response to
Hamliton's Federalist Paper No.
23
)
"With respect to the words 'general welfare,' I have always
regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers (enumerated in the
Constitution) connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited
sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which
there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."
--James Madison [The US
Supreme Court has found the meaning of "general welfare" in the
Constitution to be much more elastic than did Mr. Madison. But as the
"author of the Constitution," what does he know? --editor]
What country can preserve its liberties if its
rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the
spirit of resistance? --Thomas Jefferson
Parties are...censors of the conduct of each
other, and useful watchmen for the public. Men by their constitutions are
naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the
people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher
classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence
in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although
not the most wise, depository of the public interests. In every country
these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think,
speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them,
therefore,...Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats
and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties
still, and pursue the same object. --Thomas
Jefferson
"It is dangerous to be right
when the government is wrong." --Voltaire
I may disagree with
what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say
it. --Voltaire
"Bad laws are the
worst sort of tyranny." --Edmund
Burke
"A democracy
cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can
only exist until the voters discover that they can vote
themselves
money from the public treasure. From that moment on the
majority
always votes for the candidates promising the most money
from the
public treasury, with the result that a democracy always
collapses
over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
The average age
of the world's
great civilizations has been two hundred years. These
nations have progressed through the following sequence:
from bondage
to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage,
from
courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from
abundance to
selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from
complacency to
apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to
bondage."
--Lord Alexander Tytler on the fall of the
Athenian republic
War || Government & Founder's Wisdom || Left Media || Contemporary
Government
THE CONSTITUTION
Today, when a concerted effort is made to
obliterate this point, it cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on
private individuals-- that it does not prescribe the conduct of
private individuals, only the conduct of the government- that it is not a
charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection
against the government. -- Ayn Rand
"The poor Constitution itself is hardly paid
any attention to. It's
necessary to ignore it because most of what government does
these days is clearly unconstitutional. The original
idea, as expressed by James Madison, was that states
would do 95 percent of the governing. Today, they are
little more than administrative subdivisions of the central empire." --Charley
Reese
"The Constitution didn't 'grow'; it was never supposed to. Written
law must be stable, or it isn't law. A government that
can change the very meaning of old words is
tyrannical. What really happened -- fairly recently,
in historical terms -- is that the courts were taken over by liberal
zealots who saw the judiciary as a potential instrument of raw power.
After all, justices are appointed for life; they don't face the people
at the polls and can t be held responsible for the consequences of
their rulings. So by disguising their desires as constitutional mandates,
the courts have been able to impose their will on the whole country,
uninhibited by reason, tradition, or any other force." --Joseph Sobran
"A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to
mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had
written it." --Sen. Sam Ervin
"The most successful revolutions aren't those that are celebrated
with
parades and banners, drums and trumpets, cannons and
fireworks. The
really successful revolutions are those that occur quietly,
unnoticed,
uncommemorated. We don't celebrate the day the United
States
Constitution was destroyed; it didn't happen on a specific
date, and
most Americans still don't realize it happened at
all. We don't say
the Constitution has ceased to exist; we merely say that
it's a
'living document.' But it amounts to the same thing."
--Joseph Sobran
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent
revolution inevitable. -- John Kennedy
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be
construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
--9th Amendment to the United
States Constitution.
"The powers not delegated to the
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
--10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
BIG
GOVERNMENT
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big
enough to take it all away. --Barry Goldwater
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the
pursuit of justice is no virtue." --Barry Goldwater
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only
an intellectual could ignore or evade it. -- Thomas
Sowell
Asking an incumbent member of Congress to vote for term limits is a bit
like asking a chicken to vote for Colonel Sanders.
--Bob Inglis, 1995http://www.termlimits.org/
"Giving money and power to government is like
giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." --P.J.
O'Rourke
MULTI-CULTURALISM
To move cabin, push button of the wishing
floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press the
number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by natural
order. Button retaining pressed position shows received command
-- Elevator
Instructions, Madrid, Spain
Readers: Does this make a case for an
Official Language for the USA? I'd hate to see the above writer translate
the US Constitution. --editor
http://www.us-english.org/
"Our founders...recognized that only a virtuous people would deserve
the continued blessings of liberty that had been bestowed upon them.
Moreover, virtually all of our nation's founders believed that a virtuous
people was a necessary pre-condition for self-government, and that virtue
could not be had or sustained without religion. President
Washington...noted in his Farewell Address that 'reason and experience
both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion
of religious principle.' Benjamin Rush was even more blunt: 'Where there
is no religion, there will be no morals'. ...Since about the middle of the
past century, the connection between religion and the public schools has
been severed, with the predictable result that our public schools today
too often fail in their most important task of inculcating moral virtue in
the next generation of citizens, even when they succeed in outfitting our
children with useful job and other skills. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once
noted, 'Education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest
menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with
reason but with no morals'," --John C. Eastman
TAXES
There are words that can transform the most
big-spending liberal in Congress, who has for decades been blithely adding
to the soaring national debt, into someone who proclaims the need to
reduce that debt at all costs. Those magic words are 'tax cut'. ... Silly
talk about how much people will 'receive' from a tax cut ignores the fact
that they are receiving nothing. They are simply keeping money that they
earned. --Thomas Sowell
Passive
activity income does not include the following: Income for an activity
that is not a passive activity
. -- IRS form 8583,
Passive Activity Loss Limitation
"The hardest thing in the world
to understand is the income tax." - Albert
Einstein
"I just wanted to speak to
you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last
sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of
paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to
include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would
be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in
section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven
feet of books. --Ronald Reagan
"In
1950, the tax burden on the typical American family was about 5percent of
their annual income. Today, the government burden on families is about
40%. Translation: If taxes had stayed at the 1950 level, millions of
mothers could return to the full-time care of their homes
and children with little or no reduction in family income. And according
to a series of recent studies and surveys, that's where most of
them have decided they would prefer to be: at home, raising their children.
Those institutions -- marriage, family, religion, schools -- that
historically have preserved our social learning curves and served as
bulwarks against moral degeneration, are under broad attack, and crumbling.
It is not a priority of liberals to stop this assault." --Linda
Bowles
"The federal government cannot maintain a
budget surplus any more than an alcoholic can leave a fresh bottle of
whiskey untouched in the cupboard." --Rep. Ron
Paul
Government
PLUNDER
"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." --Joseph
Sobran
Now since man is
naturally inclined to avoid pain- and since labor is pain in itself- it
follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than
work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions,
neither religion nor morality can stop it. When, then, does plunder stop?
It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor. It is
evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its
collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to
work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish
plunder. --Frederic
Bastiat
When under the
pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the
citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct
his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the
common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from
this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and
calculating. --Frederic
Bastiat
The state is the
great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody
else. --Frederic Bastiat
"In general the art of government consists in taking as much
money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other."
--Voltaire
All government, in its essence, is organized
exploitation, and in virtually all of its existing forms it is the
implacable enemy of every industrious and well-disposed man.
--H.L. Mencken
Government, in its very essence, is opposed to
all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and
against change...[T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of
government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its
constant and bitter opposition. --H.L.
Mencken
Taxes are not just about money. Every tax
represents a transfer of power and freedom from the people to the
government. The underlying premise of every tax is that the money will do
more good in the hands of government than in the hands of the people who
earned it. --Linda Bowles (syndicated columnist)
Today the taxing power, rather than chattel
slavery, is the instrument by which the parasitical element of the
population subsists. And that element, which includes politicians, panics
at the slightest reduction in the state's power to plunder. Once you start
liberating taxpayers, even a little tiny bit, nobody knows where it may
end. --Joseph Sobran (syndicated
columnist)
"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can
always depend upon the support of Paul." --George Bernard
Shaw (1856-1950) -- (1944),
Everybody's Political What's What?
"Is
the United States a free country? Not by traditional measures. In the
history of Western civilization, freedom has an economic meaning and a
legal meaning. The United States fails both measures of freedom. April 15
-- Tax Day -- has come to symbolize America's lack of economic freedom.
Americans have no more claim to their incomes than did medieval serfs. The
most successful Americans are comparable to slaves." ---Paul Craig
Roberts
"The reason this
country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is
because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for
nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country.
A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. If
children were forced to learn about the Constitution, about how government
works, about how this nation came into being, about taxes and about how
government forever threatens the cause of liberty perhaps we wouldn't see
so many foolish ideas coming out of the mouths of silly old men."
--Lyn Nofziger
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Wisdom || Left Media || Contemporary Government
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