Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28, 2007 – The founder of an organization that provides comfortable and functional adaptive clothing to wounded servicemembers is being honored for her efforts. Ginger Dosedel, an Air Force wife and founder of the group "Sew Much Comfort,"� is one of the National Military Family Association's 2007 Very Important Patriots, an honor for which a friend secretly nominated her. "I was very surprised and honored,"� Dosedel said. "It's nice when recognition comes from a friend unexpectedly."� Sew Much Comfort provides clothing specially adapted for wounded troops recovering in military hospitals. Off-the-rack clothing often doesn't accommodate medical devices. She...

Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen, people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. -- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1781)

No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous. -- Benjamin Franklin and George Whaley (Principles of Trade, 1774)

WASHINGTON, July 10, 2007 – She’s only 11 years old, but Bailey Reese has logged more community service than many Americans twice her age, all to ensure servicemembers know their sacrifices are appreciated. Bailey Reese, 11, was recently chosen as one of three American Girl doll company’s 2007 Real Girls of the Year for her efforts to thank servicemembers for their sacrifices. She does this through Hero Hugs, which she founded in 2003. She was joined in Los Angeles by Hero the bear, Hero Hugs’ stuffed mascot (left) and American Girl’s 2007 Doll of the Year, Nicki Fleming. Courtesy...

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. -- John Adams (in Defense of the British Soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre, 4 December 1770)

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. -- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781)

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof - Lev. XXV, v. X Inscription on the Liberty Bell, from Leviticus 25:10

The Sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. -- Thomas Paine (Common Sense, 1776)

Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind! -- George Washington (letter to James Warren, 31 March 1779)

Each individual of the society has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property, according to standing laws. He is obliged, consequently, to contribute his share to the expense of this protection; and to give his personal service, or an equivalent, when necessary. But no part of the property of any individual can, with justice, be taken from him, or applied to public uses, without his own consent, or that of the representative body of the people. In fine, the people of this commonwealth are not controllable by any other laws than...

Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear. -- James Madison (responding to his niece asking what was wrong, 28 June 1836

Liberty is a word which, according as it is used, comprehends the most good and the most evil of any in the world. Justly understood it is sacred next to those which we appropriate in divine adoration; but in the mouths of some it means anything, which enervate a necessary government; excite a jealousy of the rulers who are our own choice, and keep society in confusion for want of a power sufficiently concentered to promote good. -- Oliver Ellsworth (A Landholder, No. III, 19 November 1787)

On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to William Johnson, 12 June 1823)

They are of the People, and return again to mix with the People, having no more durable preeminence than the different Grains of Sand in an Hourglass. Such an Assembly cannot easily become dangerous to Liberty. They are the Servants of the People, sent together to do the People's Business, and promote the public Welfare; their Powers must be sufficient, or their Duties cannot be performed. They have no profitable Appointments, but a mere Payment of daily Wages, such as are scarcely equivalent to their Expences; so that, having no Chance for great Places, and enormous Salaries or Pensions, as...

In our progress toward political happiness my station is new; and if I may use the expression, I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct wch. may not hereafter be drawn into precedent. -- George Washington (letter to Catherine MacAulay, 9 January 1790)

Religion in a Family is at once its brightest Ornament & its best Security. -- Samuel Adams (letter to Thomas Wells, 22 November 1780)

The state governments have a full superintendence and control over the immense mass of local interests of their respective states, which connect themselves with the feelings, the affections, the municipal institutions, and the internal arrangements of the whole population. They possess, too, the immediate administration of justice in all cases, civil and criminal, which concern the property, personal rights, and peaceful pursuits of their own citizens. -- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. -- John Adams (Inaugural Address, March 1797)

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have past at home in the bosom of my family. -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Francis Willis Jr., 18 April 1790

I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? -- Benjamin Franklin (Motion for Prayers in the Constitutional Convention, 28 June 1787)

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. -- James Madison (Federalist No. 51, 8 February 1788)

But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity. -- James Madison (Federalist No. 46, 29 January 1788)

If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's. -- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Maria Cosway, 1786)

First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in humble and enduring scenes of private life. Pious, just humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform dignified, and commanding; his example was as edifying to all around him as were the effects of that example lasting; correct throughout, vice shuddered in his presence and virtue always felt his fostering hand. The purity of his private charter gave effulgence to his public virtues;. Such was the man for whom our nation morns -- John Marshall (official eulogy of George Washington, delivered by Richard...

America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat. -- James Madison (Federalist No. 14, 30 November 1787)

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth. -- George Washington (letter to James Madison, 2 March 1788)

[N]or did I believe until lately, that it was within the bonds of probability; hardly within those of possibility, that, while I was using my utmost exertions to establish a national character of our own, independent, as far as our obligations, and justice would permit, of every nation of the earth; and wished, by steering a steady course, to preserve this Country from the horrors of a desolating war, that I should be accused of being the enemy of one Nation, and subject to the influence of another; and to prove it, that every act of my administration would be...

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. -- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)

I am principled against this kind of traffic in the human species...and to disperse the families I have an aversion. -- George Washington (letter to Robert Lewis, 18 August 1799)

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. -- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 1, 19 December 1776)

So that the executive and legislative branches of the national government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every where the state sovereignties are represented; and the national sovereignty, as such, has no representation. -- Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape - that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other...

Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own. -- Thomas Jefferson (Rights of British America, 1774)

Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech. Reference: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Labaree, ed., vol. 1 (27)

It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another [for the Executive] to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government; and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in the same hands. -- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 71, 18 March 1788)

"If a well-regulated militia be the most natural defense of a free country, it ought certainly to be under the regulation and at the disposal of that body which is constituted the guardian of the national security. If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia in the same body ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions. If the federal government can command the aid of the militia in those emergencies which call for the military arm in support of the civil magistrate, it can the...

"[W]e are confirmed in the opinion, that the present age would be deficient in their duty to God, their posterity and themselves, if they do not establish an American republic. This is the only form of government we wish to see established; for we can never be willingly subject to any other King than He who, being possessed of infinite wisdom, goodness and rectitude, is alone fit to possess unlimited power." Instructions of Malden, Massachusetts for a Declaration of Independence, 27 May 1776 Reference: Documents of American Histroy, Commager, vol. 1 (97)

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 in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 5 June 1778)

"The ingredients which constitute energy in the Executive are, first, unity; secondly, duration; thirdly, an adequate provision for its support; fourthly, competent powers. ... The ingredients which constitute safety in the republican sense are, first, a due dependence on the people, secondly, a due responsibility." -- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 70, 14 March 1788) Reference: The Federalist

To prevent crimes, is the noblest end and aim of criminal jurisprudence. To punish them, is one of the means necessary for the accomplishment of this noble end and aim. -- James Wilson (Of the Study of the Law in the United States, Circa 1790)

The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. . . . How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers? -- John Adams (Diary, 2 June 1778)

"His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble." -- Thomas Jefferson (on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones, 2 January 1814) Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America (1319)

[T]he President, who errs as other men do, but errs with integrity. -- Thomas Jefferson (on George Washington in a letter to William Branch Giles, 31 December 1795)

"The tendency of a national bank is to increase public and private credit. The former gives power to the state, for the protection of its rights and interests: and the latter facilitates and extends the operations of commerce among individuals. Industry is increased, commodities are multiplied, agriculture and manufacturers flourish: and herein consists the true wealth and prosperity of a state." -- Alexander Hamilton (Report on Manufactures, 1790) Reference: The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., 362.

In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any. -- James Madison (Federalist No. 14, 30 November 1787)

I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better. -- Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson, on Jefferson, in, 1800)

"It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly and at stated seasons, to worship the Supreme Being, the great Creator and Preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience; or for his religion profession of sentiments; provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship...." Massachusetts Bill of Rights, Part the First, 1780 Reference: Documents of American History, Commager,...

I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery. -- Patrick Henry (letter to Robert Pleasants, 18 January 1773)

Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities. -- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 34, 4 January 1788)

"And you will, by the dignity of your Conduct, afford occasion for Posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to Mankind, had this day been wanting, the World had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining." -- George Washington (The Newburgh Address, 2 January 1783) Reference: George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. (221)