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How John Adams Predicted Bernie Sanders and His Acolytes
americanthinker.com ^ | 2/3/16 | William Sullivan

Posted on 08/20/2017 6:49:27 AM PDT by cotton1706

In 1787, Adams published his three-volume work, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America.  In the opening chapter of Volume III, he predicts, with eerie precision, the why and how of Bernie Sanders and his acolytes.   In brief summation of its entirety, this introductory chapter is an argument for a nation built upon a separation of powers and laws based upon unalienable individual rights, in contrast to a nation built upon a single, unchecked legislative body of representatives that could impose the will of a mob.   Here, Adams responds to seventeenth-century journalist Marchamont Nedham, who makes the contention that a legislative body, enacting the will of a majority, is a suitable means of governance, because people, in general, “never think of usurping over other men’s rights, but mind which way to preserve their own.”   “[I]f the people never, jointly nor severally, think of usurping the rights of others, what occasion can there be for any government at all?” Adams asks.  “Are there no robberies, burglaries, murders, adulteries, thefts, nor cheats….  Is not a great part, I will not say the greatest part, of men detected every day in some disposition or other, stronger or weaker, more or less, to usurp over other men’s rights?”

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 08/20/2017 6:49:27 AM PDT by cotton1706
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To: cotton1706
Got "Culture"?

 

"I do not like the reappearance of the Jesuits....
Shall we not have regular swarms of them here, in as many disguises as only a king
of the gipsies can assume, dressed as printers, publishers, writers and schoolmasters?
If ever there was a body of men who merited damnation on earth and in Hell,
it is this society of Loyola’s.
Nevertheless, we are compelled by our system of religious toleration
to offer them an asylum."

--John Adams to Thomas Jefferson; May, 1816

2 posted on 08/20/2017 6:59:28 AM PDT by HLPhat (It takes a Republic TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS - not a populist Tyranny of the Majority)
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To: cotton1706; Pharmboy; Doctor Raoul; indcons; Chani; thefactor; blam; aculeus; ELS; mainepatsfan; ...
The RevWar/Colonial History/General Washington ping list.

Founders' wisdom ping.

Please FreepMail me if you want to be added to or removed from this low volume ping list. Ping requests gladly accepted.

Recessional of the Sons of the American Revolution:
“Until we meet again, let us remember our obligations to our
forefathers who gave us our Constitution, the Bill of Rights,
an independent Supreme Court and a nation of free men.”

Dr. Benjamin Franklin, when asked if we had a republic or a monarchy, replied "A Republic, if you can keep it."

And that's one statue they better not touch! The other is located near that "rude bridge that arched the flood."

3 posted on 08/20/2017 8:06:09 AM PDT by NonValueAdded (#DeplorableMe #BitterClinger #HillNO! #cishet #MyPresident #MAGA #Winning #covfefe)
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To: cotton1706

I always thought it boiled down to the following quote -
which I thought was from Benjamin Franklin but was then said to be from a Scot, Alexander Fraser Tytler, also known as Lord Woodhouselee:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

Now they say Tytler never wrote it at all: http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html

Whoever wrote it, he was on to something.


4 posted on 08/20/2017 9:47:00 AM PDT by vladimir998 (Apparently I'm still living in your head rent free. At least now it isn't empty.)
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To: vladimir998

I was just chuckling at the thought that maybe the founders should not have written about how the republic would fail because the communists/Marxists are doing exactly what they said to bring it about.

Did they write about how to keep it? My favorite quote of Adams’:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Message from John Adams to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massacusetts

http://www.beliefnet.com/resourcelib/docs/115/Message_from_John_Adams_to_the_Officers_of_the_First_Brigade_1.html

I have a funny feeling there will never be a monument to honor him in DC.


5 posted on 08/20/2017 10:44:28 AM PDT by huldah1776 ( Vote Pro-life! Allow God to bless America before He avenges the death of the innocent.)
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To: NonValueAdded
Thank you for alluding to the Concord memorial...
 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s "Concord Hymn" was written at the request of the Battle Monument Committee.  At Concord’s Independence Day celebration on July 4, 1837 it was first read, then sung as a hymn by a local choir.

I have studied Emerson’s works and believe the Concord Hymn is his finest poem.  The poem exalts the patriots who fought for our freedom.  Yet it also respects the English "foe" who also deserve our salute as brave warriors.

Emerson's use of the word "shaft" is very artful.   It describes the monument being raised to the heavens in tribute, and yet it also suggests the shaft in the ground where the heroes are laid to rest.

If you have not yet visited this site in Concord, Massachusetts, you owe to yourself to do so.  It will surely stir the heart of any FReeper.


17 posted on 12/17/2016 6:12:03 AM PST by poconopundit (Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string. Emerson)

6 posted on 08/20/2017 6:56:20 PM PDT by poconopundit (CNN is... Corruption News Neglected)
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To: poconopundit
If you have not yet visited this site in Concord, Massachusetts, you owe to yourself to do so.

Is there anyone left in Massachusetts who would take up the cause of the "embattled farmers"?

7 posted on 08/21/2017 10:42:42 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
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To: afraidfortherepublic
Is there anyone left in Massachusetts who would take up the cause of the "embattled farmers"?

Not many. But embattled Patriots, quite a few will take up the cause -- unless, of course, you're Tom Brady, friend of the POTUS.

I'm originally from Mass. My brothers who still live there are flaming Leftists, so I love to email them: "Tom Brady: now there's a real smart guy." That drives 'em nuts. Cognitive dissonance.

8 posted on 08/21/2017 1:33:50 PM PDT by poconopundit (CNN is... Corruption News Neglected)
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To: HLPhat

Jesuits, trouble then and trouble ahead.

Catholics worship them as if they were deities.

Adams called ‘em like he saw ‘em.


9 posted on 08/21/2017 3:34:32 PM PDT by BatGuano (You don't think I'd go into combat with loose change in my pocket, do ya?)
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