Did You Know?

Thomas Jefferson cautioned, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”

Mr. Jefferson also declared:  “If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.”  and, “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”   Well, We The People will remain silent no longer. 

For any student of the Declaration of Independence, it is obvious that biased lawmaking was never intended to be part of the day-to-day operations of the United States of America and run contrary to the purpose and statement of principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

Mr. Jefferson instructed, “On every question of construction [let us] carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debate, 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.” 

Daniel Webster cautioned, “It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the People against the dangers of good intentions… There are men, in all ages… who mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters… They think there need be but little restraint upon themselves…. The love of power may sink too deep in their own hearts….” 

As Mr. Jefferson expressed, “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Did you know our Founding Fathers believed they were bound together by the bonds of brotherhood?  The 1776 Declaration of Independence closes with: “…we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” With this evident love for and trust in each other, it is easy to see that true reason “the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” is to protect the People not from each other but from the unwanted intrusion of government and tyranny. 

As Mr. Jefferson so succinctly put it, “The strongest reason for the People to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” 

Do not allow the government to convince you that it knows what is best for you. As Mr. Jefferson said, “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”

Benjamin Franklin advised, “Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” 

We can do better. We can be stronger. We must educate ourselves. James Madison said, “A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”

Mr. Jefferson expressed, “I know of no safe depositor of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion [freedom of choice], the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretions by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

Did you know that the principles of the original Declaration of Independence and America were not founded on any one “religion” but in “theology” and “natural rights”?

Did you know our Founding Fathers believed in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and that we have a “Creator”?  They also believed in “divine Providence”—the protective care and guidance of a divine supreme force—and they made that pledge of their lives and sacred honor to each other in the Declaration, “with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence…” 

George Washington said that the adoption of the Constitution “will demonstrate as visibly the finger of Providence as any possible event in the course of human affairs can ever designate it.”

Mr. Franklin declared, “I have so much faith in the general government of the world by Providence, that I can hardly conceive a transaction [the framing of the Constitution] of such momentous importance to the welfare of millions…should…pass without being in some degree influenced, guided, and governed by that omnipotent…and beneficent Ruler in whom all inferior spirits live, and move, and have their being.” 

As Alexander Hamilton so eloquently expressed, “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” 

What would you do…? What could be possible for your life if you too believed in the guiding, protecting presence of divine Providence as our Founding Fathers did?  They brought forth “a new nation, conceived in Liberty” … What good, what greatness, what miraculous things could you do?

Mr. Washington expressed, “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is a force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.” 

However, regardless of how enslaved and powerless the People may feel, no matter how overrun by the government and how lost our American Democracy appears to be, as Mr. Washington reminds us, the People are “its only keepers,” and We must do as he commands and “raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair” for “the power under the Constitution will always be in the People… and whenever it is executed contrary to their interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their servants can and undoubtedly will be recalled.”