Notable Quotes:

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer Present or Not guilty.
- Theodore Roosevelt


“I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion is already born”. Ronald Reagan.


"Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice, and is as necessary
for the support of societies as natural affection is for the
support of families".
-- Benjamin Rush (letter to His Fellow Contrymen: On Patriotism,
20 October 1773)


"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare
but only those specifically enumerated."
--Thomas Jefferson


I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)


We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816


The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)


The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)


There is nothing more unequal, than the equal treatment of unequal people.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)


Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)


A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. ~ George Templteon Strong


"When the federal government is held to its proper constitutionally
limited functions, tax reform will take care of itself."
--Rep. Ron Paul


Jurors should acquit, even against the judge's instruction...
if exercising their judgement with discretion and honesty
they have a clear conviction the charge of the court is wrong.
-- Alexander Hamilton, 1804


It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict
according to his own best understanding, judgement and conscience,
though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court.
--John Adams, 1771


I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man
by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1789


It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made
by men of their choice, if the laws are so voluminous that they
cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood;
if they... undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows
what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow
-- James Madison


"Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long
and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival."
--Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill


"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and
degraded sense of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war,
is worse. [...] A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing
which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety, is a
miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept
so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice
have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the
affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle
for the one against the other."
--John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)


"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win
without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and
not too costly; you may come to the moment when you have to fight with all the odds
against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case.
You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than
live as slaves."
--Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill


"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right."

-- Martin Luther King Jr.


There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs—partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs…
There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.

-Booker T. Washington


"A democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner."
--Anonymous


"Every major gun confiscation known to history has been followed by the erection of a totalitarian regime. It's not as if we didn't have a little history on the matter. When they come for our guns, we'll know what they're about."
--Francis W. Porretto


“With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” — James Madison in a letter to James Robertson


In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia, James Madison stood on the floor of the House to object saying:

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” — James Madison, 4 Annals of Congress 179, 1794


“[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.” — James Madison


“To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816


“A wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” — Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801


You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
~~~ The late Dr. Adrian Rogers , 1931 to 2005 ~~~

"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."
-- Thomas Jefferson


}}>> James Madison's Thoughts on the General Welfare Clause.<<{{

Mr. MADISON. It is supposed, by some gentlemen, that Congress have authority not only to grant bounties in the sense here used, merely as a commutation for drawback, but even to grant them under a power by virtue of which they may do any thing which they may think conducive to the general welfare! This, sir, in my mind, raises the important and fundamental question, whether the general terms which have been cited are to be considered as a sort of caption, or general description of the specified powers; and as having no further meaning, and giving no further powers, than what is found in that specification, or as an abstract and indefinite delegation of power extending to all cases whatever -- to all such, at least, as will admit the application of money -- which is giving as much latitude as any government could well desire.

I, sir, have always conceived -- I believe those who proposed the Constitution conceived -- it is still more fully known, and more material to observe, that those who ratified the Constitution conceived -- that this is not an indefinite government, deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers -- but a limited government, tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms.

It is to be recollected that the terms "common defence and general welfare," as here used, are not novel terms, first introduced into this Constitution. They are terms familiar in their construction, and well known to the people of America. They are repeatedly found in the old Articles of Confederation, where, although they are susceptible of as great a latitude as can be given them by the context here, it was never supposed or pretended that they conveyed any such power as is now assigned to them. On the contrary, it was always considered clear and certain that the old Congress was limited to the enumerated powers, and that the enumeration limited and explained the general terms. I ask the gentlemen themselves, whether it was ever supposed or suspected that the old Congress could give away the money of the states to bounties to encourage agriculture, or for any other purpose they pleased. If such a power had been possessed by that body, it would have been much less impotent, or have borne a very different character from that universally ascribed to it.

The novel idea now annexed to those terms, and never before entertained by the friends or enemies of the government, will have a further consequence, which cannot have been taken into the view of the gentlemen. Their construction would not only give Congress the complete legislative power I have stated, -- it would do more; it would supersede all the restrictions understood at present to lie, in their power with respect to a judiciary. It would put it in the power of Congress to establish courts throughout the United States, with cognizance of suits between citizen and citizen, and in all cases whatsoever.

This, sir, seems to be demonstrable; for if the clause in question really authorizes Congress to do whatever they think fit, provided it be for the general welfare, of which they are to judge, and money can be applied to it, Congress must have power to create and support a judiciary establishment, with a jurisdiction extending to all cases favorable, in their opinion, to the general welfare, in the same manner as they have power to pass laws, and apply money providing in any other way for the general welfare. I shall be reminded, perhaps, that, according to the terms of the Constitution, the judicial power is to extend to certain cases only, not to all cases. But this circumstance can have no effect in the argument, it being presupposed by the gentlemen, that the specification of certain objects does not limit the import of the general terms. Taking these terms as an abstract and indefinite grant of power, they comprise all the objectsof legislative regulations -- as well such as fall under the judiciary article in the Constitution as those falling immediately under the legislative article; and if the partial enumeration of objects in the legislative article does not, as these gentlemen contend, limit the general power, neither will it be limited by the partial enumeration of objects in the judiciary article.

There are consequences, sir, still more extensive, which, as they follow dearly from the doctrine combated, must either be admitted, or the doctrine must be given up. If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands; they may a point teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads; in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.
The language held in various discussions of this house is a proof that the doctrine in question was never entertained by this body. Arguments, wherever the subject would permit, have constantly been drawn from the peculiar nature of this government, as limited to certain enumerated powers, instead of extending, like other governments, to all cases not particularly excepted. In a very late instance -- I mean the debate on the representation bill -- it must be remembered that an argument much used, particularly by gentlemen from Massachusetts, against the ratio of 1 for 30,000, was, that this government was unlike the state governments, which had an indefinite variety of objects within their power; that it had a small number of objects only to attend to; and therefore, that a smaller number of representatives would be sufficient to administer it.

Arguments have been advanced to show that because, in the regulation of trade, indirect and eventual encouragement is given to manufactures, therefore Congress have power to give money in direct bounties, or to grant it in any other way that would answer the same purpose. But surely, sir, there is a great and obvious difference, which it cannot be necessary to enlarge upon. A duty laid on imported implements of husbandry would, in its operation, be an indirect tax on exported produce; but will any one say that, by virtue of a mere power to lay duties on imports, Congress might go directly to the produce or implements of agriculture, or to the articles exported? It is true, duties on exports are expressly prohibited; but if there were no article forbidding them, a power directly to tax exports could never be deduced from a power to tax imports, although such a power might indirectly and incidentally affect exports.

In short, sir, without going farther into the subject. Which I should not have here touched at all but for the reasons already mentioned, I venture to declare it as my opinion, that, were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America; and what inferences might be drawn, or what consequences ensue, from such a step, it is incumbent on us all to consider.

How far have succeeding generations, and this generation in particular, departed from the core principles of America’s founding? So far that our corrupt oath-breaking politicians scoff at any who dare raise a mere question that might suggest any limitation on the scope of their personal power. Madison, along with the entire founding generation, would be appalled. We now have a lawless government that totally ignores the clear purposes of our Constitution and seeks to control every single aspect of our lives.

Perhaps if “We the People” could find the will and the strength to force our politicians back within their proper jurisdiction, these "public servants" could then find the time to do their real job, which according to the cornerstone of the organic law of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, is to secure the God-given and unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to all.

Perhaps they could then find a way to fulfill their duty, sworn before God, to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution, which states as its ultimate purpose: “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."
-- James Madison