Posted on 02/05/2011 6:18:31 AM PST by Jacquerie
The duty of citizenship includes a positive obligation to recognize and respect the Rights of others. Today, much of the electorate selects representatives based on proven ability to plunder or suppress the property of fellow Americans.
The “debt of protection,” IMHO is a moral debt we owe to God. Along with His given right to self government, we have the duty to govern according to a standard higher than mere human will and whatever political deals our Congressmen can devise. Our federal Government was brought into being to ensure our unalienable rights. Rather, it has clearly sought to crush these rights. There is no moral obligation to obey laws in violation of the rights given to us by God.
Constitution ping!
Excellent!
Thanks for a MOST EXCELLENT post!!
Oh, how far we have strayed from the path.
When the common American was protective of his Natural Rights, when we sang from the same sheet of music so to speak, our prosperity and general happiness was assured.
Today, I wonder what single digit percentage of Americans even know the purpose of government, to ensure our Natural Rights.
On the bright side, I think a real awakening is taking place. Perhaps because of the Obamamao’s daily assault on our liberties, the people are starting to notice and refer to our founding principles.
Excellent find. Thanks for posting it.
From the article:
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
THAT ladies and gentlemen is why we simply MUST rid ourselves of the yoke placed on us in 1913 under Woodrow Wilson! I refer here to the communist inspired, class warfare inducing, progressive income tax!
What person can feel TRULY free to express himself in the public square while we have an organization called the IRS which can utterly destroy that person at a mere whim? In fact, what person can feel secure in ANY of the things Madison refers to under that condition?
PLEASE join me in the effort rid our nation of this curse and return taxation to a form much more in keeping with what our founders envisioned!
Thanks for the ping.
More activity, no weeping.
Thanks for the ping.
More activity, no weeping.
Not any more!
Kill the outrageous business killing Estate Tax!!
Families work their butts off to accumulate base for their business (farms, buildings, businesses) only to be screwed by hungry prostitucians out of their livelihood.
Some "stimulus"!!!
Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.
If I have the timeline right, he wrote this after an intense period of study in 1791. He dove into political philosophy and history, including Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Strabo, Dionysius Halicarnassus, Livy, and Plutarch. His modern sources included Montesquieu, Gibbon.
Anyway, he came away agreeing with Aristotle that the preservation or destruction of the constitution depended on the maintenance and renewal of its principles.
Especially as Madison defined property.
Couldn't be a more timely, or important, statement than that.
Thanks for the ping!
ABSOLUTELY!
The fairtax would do this permanently!
The right to property IS the right to liberty! Without the former it is not possible to have the latter!
With regard to your quote on the "idea" vs. the "real estate," Madison pointed out that same concept in the following observation:
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
May we take the Madisonian wisdom and contrast it with the prevailing wisdom (ignorance) of today?
The American idea, as encapsulated in its Declaration of Independence and structured into a Constitution for self-government, more liberty and opportunity, more productivity, and more goods and services than the world ever has seen.
To utilize Madison again, it happened under what he called "the benign influence of a responsible government."
While Europe struggled with oppressive government intervention, the genius Founders of America recognized enduring truths about human nature, the human tendency to abuse power, and the possibilities of liberty for individuals. Richard Frothingham's 1872 "History of the Rise of the Republic of the United States," Page 14, contained the following footnote item on the condition of citizens of France:
"Footnote 1. M. de Champagny (Dublin Review, April, 1868) says of France, 'We were and are unable to go from Paris to Neuilly; or dine more than twenty together; or have in our portmanteau three copies of the same tract; or lend a book to a friend: or put a patch of mortar on our own house, if it stands in the street; or kill a partridge; or plant a tree near the road-side; or take coal out of our own land: or tench three or four children to read, . .. without permission from the civil government.'
Clearly the government of France laid an oppressive regulatory and tax burden on citizens, robbing them of their Creator-endowed liberty and enjoyment thereof. Frothingham observed that such coercive power constituted "a noble form robbed of its lifegiving spirit."
Thomas Jefferson warned Americans:
"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39
Note Jefferson's very last thought here. He declares that when government taxing and debt have reached certain levels, in order for individuals to survive, then their chosen "employment" becomes "hiring ourselves to rivet their (the government's) chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers."
Think about it: in the Year 2011, where are America's levels of employment highest? Is it in the once-thriving private sector, or in the ever-increasing government sector? Have we reached that final phase of what Jefferson described as a logical end to what begins as letting "our rulers load us with perpetual debt"--a state where we actually become participants by "hiring ourselves" to make slaves of our fellow citizens?
Madison's "National Gazette" remarks are pertinent for today. Thank you for highlighting them, for they highlight and distinguish America's founding ideas from those of all regimes who deny the concept of God-given individual rights.
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