July 4th Reflections

With the 4th of July upon us, we should reflect on what we have as a country that no other country in recorded history has, has ever achieved and may never be seen again. 

What we see today in our government, is a government that deliberately uses government agencies as a weapon against their opposition.  We have a president that is using the DOJ, IRS,EPA and other government agencies to silence any opposition.  Once they silence the opposition, then they will silence you.  What we are seeing today is Tyranny taking place that is attempting change, redefine, and fundamentally change our way of government.  With that being said, it is time to reflect upon some quotes from Thomas Jefferson and from Alexis de Tocqueville who traveled America in the 1830's and wrote "Democracy in America".  Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian.  From Thomas Jefferson we have the following:

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.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. 

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. 

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories 

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. 

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. 

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. 

From Alexis de Tocqueville we have the following.  His quotes apply today and unless we awaken, we will all become serfs of government.  

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” 

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that 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. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.” 

“When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . .  It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.” 

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” 

Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” 

“Every nation that has ended in tyranny has come to that end by way of good order. It certainly does not follow from this that peoples should scorn public peace, but neither should they be satisfied with that and nothing more. A nation that asks nothing of government but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains.”

“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”