"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
Founders' wisdom ping.
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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."
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.