Firearms Rights - Fuel for the Fire

Quotes on Firearms Rights

Here are some of my favorite quotes on the right to bear arms. If you like these, surf over to my fortunes collection where you can download them in a couple of cookie files.
When only cops have guns, it's called a "police state".

Love your country, but never trust its government.

-- Robert A. Heinlein.
"The power to tax involves the power to destroy;...the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create...."

-- Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others."

-- Thomas Jefferson
"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"

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1 Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334
"The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good"

-- George Washington
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed."

-- Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers at 184-188
"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest."

-- Mahatma Gandhi
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient... The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."

-- Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue."

-- Barry Goldwater
"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, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
The people of the various provinces are strictly forbidden to have in their possession any swords, short swords, bows, spears, firearms, or other types of arms. The possession of unnecessary implements makes difficult the collection of taxes and dues and tends to foment uprisings.

-- Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Shogun, August 1588
"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it."

-- Abraham Lincoln, 4 April 1861
"One of the ordinary modes, by which tyrants accomplish their purposes without resistance, is, by disarming the people, and making it an offense to keep arms."

-- Constitutional scholar Joseph Story, 1840
"The bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being..."

-- J.G.A. Pocock, describing the beliefs of the founders of the U.S.
Men trained in arms from their infancy, and animated by the love of liberty, will afford neither a cheap or easy conquest.

-- From the Declaration of the Continental Congress, July 1775.
"As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives [only] moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion to your walks."

-- Thomas Jefferson, writing to his teenaged nephew.
No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.

-- 16 Am. Jur. Sec. 177 late 2d, Sec 256
"The state calls its own violence `law', but that of the individual `crime'"

-- Max Stirner
"Taking my gun away because I might shoot someone is like cutting my tongue out because I might yell `Fire!' in a crowded theater."

-- Peter Venetoklis
...Virtually never are murderers the ordinary, law-abiding people against whom gun bans are aimed. Almost without exception, murderers are extreme aberrants with lifelong histories of crime, substance abuse, psychopathology, mental retardation and/or irrational violence against those around them, as well as other hazardous behavior, e.g., automobile and gun accidents."

-- Don B. Kates, writing on statistical patterns in gun crime
"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom."

-- John F. Kennedy
The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."

-- Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story of the John Marshall Court
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."

-- George Washington, in a speech of January 7, 1790
"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves ... and include all men capable of bearing arms."

-- Senator Richard Henry Lee, 1788, on "militia" in the 2nd Amendment
"...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est." [...a sword never kills anybody; it's a tool in the killer's hand.]

-- (Lucius Annaeus) Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC-65 AD),
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.

-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book
No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave.

-- "Political Disquisitions", a British republican tract of 1774-1775
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.

-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787
& what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787
"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined."

-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 5 1788
Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence? Where is the difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our own direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defence be the *real* object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?

-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 9 1788
"To disarm the people... was the best and most effectual way to enslave them."

-- George Mason, speech of June 14, 1788
"The great object is, that every man be armed. [...] Every one who is able may have a gun."

-- Patrick Henry, speech of June 14 1788
Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.

-- "M.T. Cicero", in a newspaper letter of 1788 touching the "militia"
referred to in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United states who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms...

-- Samuel Adams, in "Phila. Independent Gazetteer", August 20, 1789
The danger (where there is any) from armed citizens, is only to the *government*, not to *society*; and as long as they have nothing to revenge in the government (which they cannot have while it is in their own hands) there are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage.

-- Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93
[The disarming of citizens] has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression.

-- Joel Barlow, "Advice to the Privileged Orders", 1792-93
A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

-- John Stuart Mill, writing on the U.S. Civil War in 1862
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.

-- Attributed to Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)
Every Communist must grasp the truth, 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'

-- Mao Tse-tung, 1938, inadvertently endorsing the Second Amendment.
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. [...] The Militia comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense.

-- Majority Supreme Court opinion in "U.S. vs. Miller" (1939)
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

-- Robert A. Heinlein, "Beyond This Horizon", 1942
The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to permit the conquered Eastern peoples to have arms. History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.

-- Hitler, April 11 1942
The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.

-- A.E. Van Vogt, "The Weapon Shops Of Isher", ASF December 1942
Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon -- so long as there is no answer to it -- gives claws to the weak.

-- George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", 1945
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. [...] the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

-- Hubert H. Humphrey, 1960
No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion that the use of firearms in crime was very much less when there were no controls of any sort and when anyone, convicted criminal or lunatic, could buy any type of firearm without restriction. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with a far greater use of this weapon in crime than ever before.

-- Colin Greenwood, in the study "Firearms Control", 1972
Let us hope our weapons are never needed --but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government -- and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."

-- Edward Abbey, "Abbey's Road", 1979
If I were to select a jack-booted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick BATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms].

-- U.S. Representative John Dingell, 1980
.. a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen...

-- Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)
The conclusion is thus inescapable that the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.

-- Report of the Subcommittee On The Constitution of the Committee On
The Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Congress, second session
(February, 1982), SuDoc# Y4.J 89/2: Ar 5/5
In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the "collective" right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of "the people" to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.

-- Stephen P. Halbrook, "That Every Man Be Armed", 1984
To make inexpensive guns impossible to get is to say that you're putting a money test on getting a gun. It's racism in its worst form.

-- Roy Innis, president of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 1988
I don't like the idea that the police department seems bent on kepping a pool of unarmed victims available for the predations of the criminal class.

-- David Mohler, 1989, on being denied a carry permit in NYC
Americans have the will to resist because you have weapons. If you don't have a gun, freedom of speech has no power.

-- Yoshimi Ishikawa, Japanese author, in the LA Times 15 Oct 1992
You know why there's a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.

-- Rush Limbaugh, in a moment of unaccustomed profundity 17 Aug 1993
The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

-- Albert Gallatin, Oct 7 1789
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

-- John F. Kennedy

The top 10 political quotes of 2012.

10) “This was not a preplanned, premeditated attack. . . . It was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video.”

– Ambassador Susan Rice incorrectly blaming an anti-Islam video for inciting an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in September.

9) "President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob."

– Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum in February.

8) “How they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years?”

– Vice President Joe Biden in October, trying to criticize Republicans while inadvertently admitting that the middle class suffered through the Obama-Biden administration’s entire first four-year term.

7) “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

– President Barack Obama in July.

6) "We went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women."

– Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in an October debate with Obama.

5) "You hit a reset button for the fall campaign; everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

– Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom in March explaining how the candidate could change his image after winning the Republican nomination.

4) “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

– Obama to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in March, unknowingly recorded on an open microphone.

3) “What does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”

– Rush Limbaugh on Sandra Fluke’s advocacy for free contraception.

2) "If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

– Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri in August.

1) “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. . . . My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

– Romney at a secretly taped Florida fundraiser in May.

email:dlightman@mcclatchydc.com; twitter @davidlightman

Congress Scuttled Pearl Harbor Day

Rule #28 2011 - Congress pushed aside National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (Barring consideration of any measure that “expresses appreciation, commends, congratulates, celebrates, recognizes the accomplishments of, or celebrates the anniversary of, an entity, event, group, individual, institution, team or government program; or acknowledges or recognizes a period of time for such purposes”)

While the government may have forgotten about Dec. 7th, 1941, I urge the American public to not forget that day.  Do not forsake the over 3500 men and women that lost their lives on that day.  If you forsake them you have forsaken all of our parents, grandparents and great grand parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, friends and neighbors.  Forsake them and you have forsaken yourselves.

We at Zombified Times would like to salute all those that served in WWII and all those that gave the ultimate sacrifice on December 7th, 1941.  We will not forget.

Lincolns Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum

The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions:
Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois
January 27, 1838

As a subject for the remarks of the evening, the perpetuation of our political institutions, is selected.

In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American People, find our account running, under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.--We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them--they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their's was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it?--At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth, and an insult to our intelligence, to deny. Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana;--they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former, nor the burning suns of the latter;--they are not the creature of climate-- neither are they confined to the slave-holding, or the non-slave- holding States. Alike, they spring up among the pleasure hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order loving citizens of the land of steady habits.--Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country.

It would be tedious, as well as useless, to recount the horrors of all of them. Those happening in the State of Mississippi, and at St. Louis, are, perhaps, the most dangerous in example and revolting to humanity. In the Mississippi case, they first commenced by hanging the regular gamblers; a set of men, certainly not following for a livelihood, a very useful, or very honest occupation; but one which, so far from being forbidden by the laws, was actually licensed by an act of the Legislature, passed but a single year before. Next, negroes, suspected of conspiring to raise an insurrection, were caught up and hanged in all parts of the State: then, white men, supposed to be leagued with the negroes; and finally, strangers, from neighboring States, going thither on business, were, in many instances subjected to the same fate. Thus went on this process of hanging, from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers; till, dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every road side; and in numbers almost sufficient, to rival the native Spanish moss of the country, as a drapery of the forest.

Turn, then, to that horror-striking scene at St. Louis. A single victim was only sacrificed there. His story is very short; and is, perhaps, the most highly tragic, if anything of its length, that has ever been witnessed in real life. A mulatto man, by the name of McIntosh, was seized in the street, dragged to the suburbs of the city, chained to a tree, and actually burned to death; and all within a single hour from the time he had been a freeman, attending to his own business, and at peace with the world.

Such are the effects of mob law; and such as the scenes, becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order; and the stories of which, have even now grown too familiar, to attract any thing more, than an idle remark.

But you are, perhaps, ready to ask, "What has this to do with the perpetuation of our political institutions?" I answer, it has much to do with it. Its direct consequences are, comparatively speaking, but a small evil; and much of its danger consists, in the proneness of our minds, to regard its direct, as its only consequences. Abstractly considered, the hanging of the gamblers at Vicksburg, was of but little consequence. They constitute a portion of population, that is worse than useless in any community; and their death, if no pernicious example be set by it, is never matter of reasonable regret with any one. If they were annually swept, from the stage of existence, by the plague or small pox, honest men would, perhaps, be much profited, by the operation.--Similar too, is the correct reasoning, in regard to the burning of the negro at St. Louis. He had forfeited his life, by the perpetuation of an outrageous murder, upon one of the most worthy and respectable citizens of the city; and had not he died as he did, he must have died by the sentence of the law, in a very short time afterwards. As to him alone, it was as well the way it was, as it could otherwise have been.--But the example in either case, was fearful.--When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn some one who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of to-morrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. And not only so; the innocent, those who have ever set their faces against violations of law in every shape, alike with the guilty, fall victims to the ravages of mob law; and thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded. But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil.--By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained.--Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed--I mean the attachment of the People. Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last. By such things, the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it; and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak, to make their friendship effectual. At such a time and under such circumstances, men of sufficient talent and ambition will not be wanting to seize the opportunity, strike the blow, and overturn that fair fabric, which for the last half century, has been the fondest hope, of the lovers of freedom, throughout the world.

I know the American People are much attached to their Government;--I know they would suffer much for its sake;--I know they would endure evils long and patiently, before they would ever think of exchanging it for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.

Here then, is one point at which danger may be expected.

The question recurs, "how shall we fortify against it?" The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;--let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap--let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;--let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

While ever a state of feeling, such as this, shall universally, or even, very generally prevail throughout the nation, vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom.

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made.--I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay; but, till then, let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any case that arises, as for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism, one of two positions is necessarily true; that is, the thing is right within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all good citizens; or, it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by legal enactments; and in neither case, is the interposition of mob law, either necessary, justifiable, or excusable.

But, it may be asked, why suppose danger to our political institutions? Have we not preserved them for more than fifty years? And why may we not for fifty times as long?

We hope there is no sufficient reason. We hope all dangers may be overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise, would itself be extremely dangerous. There are now, and will hereafter be, many causes, dangerous in their tendency, which have not existed heretofore; and which are not too insignificant to merit attention. That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now, is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed, and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all, to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.--Then, all that sought celebrity and fame, and distinction, expected to find them in the success of that experiment. Their all was staked upon it:-- their destiny was inseparably linked with it. Their ambition aspired to display before an admiring world, a practical demonstration of the truth of a proposition, which had hitherto been considered, at best no better, than problematical; namely, the capability of a people to govern themselves. If they succeeded, they were to be immortalized; their names were to be transferred to counties and cities, and rivers and mountains; and to be revered and sung, and toasted through all time. If they failed, they were to be called knaves and fools, and fanatics for a fleeting hour; then to sink and be forgotten. They succeeded. The experiment is successful; and thousands have won their deathless names in making it so. But the game is caught; and I believe it is true, that with the catching, end the pleasures of the chase. This field of glory is harvested, and the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they, too, will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up amongst us. And, when they do, they will as naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them. The question then, is, can that gratification be found in supporting and maintaining an edifice that has been erected by others? Most certainly it cannot. Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would inspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?--Never! Towering genius distains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.--It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.

Here, then, is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such a one as could not have well existed heretofore.

Another reason which once was; but which, to the same extent, is now no more, has done much in maintaining our institutions thus far. I mean the powerful influence which the interesting scenes of the revolution had upon the passions of the people as distinguished from their judgment. By this influence, the jealousy, envy, and avarice, incident to our nature, and so common to a state of peace, prosperity, and conscious strength, were, for the time, in a great measure smothered and rendered inactive; while the deep-rooted principles of hate, and the powerful motive of revenge, instead of being turned against each other, were directed exclusively against the British nation. And thus, from the force of circumstances, the basest principles of our nature, were either made to lie dormant, or to become the active agents in the advancement of the noblest cause--that of establishing and maintaining civil and religious liberty.

But this state of feeling must fade, is fading, has faded, with the circumstances that produced it.

I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. In history, we hope, they will be read of, and recounted, so long as the bible shall be read;-- but even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it heretofore has been. Even then, they cannot be so universally known, nor so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or brother, a living history was to be found in every family-- a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related--a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned.--But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foeman could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls. They are gone.--They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all-resistless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage; unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more.

They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall, unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars, hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defence.--Let those materials be moulded into general intelligence, sound morality, and in particular, a reverence for the constitution and laws: and, that we improved to the last; that we remained free to the last; that we revered his name to the last; that, during his long sleep, we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or desecrate his resting place; shall be that which to learn the last trump shall awaken our WASHINGTON.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Other Presidential Candidates - 2012

Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party: "Bring the Troops Home!"

Gary Johnson is the former Republican governor of New Mexico. He served as governor from 1995 to 2003, and was known for his liberal use of the veto pen. He takes credit for the fact that in 2003, New Mexico was one of only four states with a balanced budget.

Jill Stein of the Green Party: "An End to Corporate Rule"

Jill Stein is a Massachusetts physician who entered the political arena through her advocacy around issues of environmental health. She ran for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 against Mitt Romney, and has been active in campaigns to protect children from toxic pollution and to reform campaign finance laws in Massachusetts. Stein's campaign is proposing a "Green New Deal" which is "an emergency four part program of specific solutions for moving America quickly out of crisis into the secure green future."






Virgil Goode of the Constitution Party: "Citizenship Matters"

Virgil Goode represented Virginia's 5th district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 to 2009. He was originally elected as a Democrat, then became an independent, and switched to the Republican Party in 2002. Goode is the nominee of the right-wing Constitution Party, and his platform focuses on restoring "constitutional principles."

Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party: Congress and the White House "On a Retainer to Wall Street"

Ross "Rocky" Anderson is a lawyer and the former mayor of Salt Lake City, serving two terms from 2000 to 2004. He is running for president in the progressive Justice Party, and his campaign is focusing on protecting the environment, improving the economy, ending the wars, and protecting and expanding civil and human rights. Anderson proposes a raise in the minimum wage, immigration reform including amnesty and more paths to citizenship, a financial transaction tax on Wall Street, and ending corporate welfare among other initiatives.

DNC wants to have the President make "Corporate Profit" illegal.

So now the DNC wants to have the President make "Corporate Profit" illegal.
So lets put that in your employers perspective.  Company Abc makes a product that is needed by many other manufactures but not widely available.  Joe the CEO and owner of Abc, finally turned a profit since opening 10 years ago.  He employs 125 people and all make 25k and up and Joe has taken a 100k a year salary, enough to take care of his family while his wife works at the plant for free managing the books.  Although the profit was only a million dollars,  Joe needs to repair some of the equipment that is 10 years old and make upgrades to keep up with demand.  A normal company uses that profit to fix and upgrade the equipment but under the "Corporate Profit" Ban the DNC wants Joe would not give that money to upgrade or fix equipment or even give raises to his employees, he would give 28% to the IRS, $280,000.  The repairs would cost almost $1.1 million and he would have been able to finance the rest but now he no longer has the capital to do this.  The remainder would be split up under the suggested legislation to all non-management employees....what about Joe? The company?  No profit?  No need to stay in business.  Hello 125 unemployed people..welcome to the new world order.

I have seen several people who were self employed and doing great four plus years ago and now they are in the red, barely able to keep business open, or already closed.  You can blame Bush if you would like, but you are also probably not a business owner, an employer, but Bush isn't signing current legislation and things are not getting better, they are getting worse and they are not going to get better on this current track and please do not compare to Not-for-profit.  They get their money from corporate sponsors, tax payer dollars and fund raising (Top CEO NFP Pay: Partners HealthCare System-James Mongan, CEO $3,421,870 and Top Employee NFP pay: Yale University David Swensen, chief investment officer $4,389,727, that is correct Yale is a Non-For-Profit).  Enough said.

Biden aka Ghost Rider