" . . . nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the penshioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, lusury, foppery, selfishness, meanness and downright venality swallow up the whole society." - John Adams
Further, it was not just the founding leaders who were well-informed about their constitution and approaching threats to its protections. By 1830, when the French jurist Tocqueville traveled America, he wrote admiringly of the citizenry, observing that even the backwoodsman was far more well-read and informed than those in other parts of the world, and that they understood their Constitution, and had with them a Bible and a newspaper. Today, with all modern means of communication, Americans possess little understanding of threats to their liberty and, thus, risk losing it to charlatans whose only goal is power.