John Philpot Curran
By Alan Sexton
Fasten your seatbelts, folks, I’m on a tare.
The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance. While the title I have chosen represents only one among many and differently attributed variations of this wise observation, accurate phrasing and attribution are of less importance when compared to the urgency and importance each one of us must place upon understanding–and embodying–the unchanging among variations message. Continue reading
By Alan Sexton
Compelled by current events, I present for your objective consideration the following. Make of these observations and warnings from history whatever you will, folks: Continue reading
Our legislators are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him;
~Thomas Jefferson, Letter To Francis W. Gilmer, at Monticello, June 7, 1816. Continue reading
I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” [XIIth amendment.] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.
~Thomas Jefferson, Letter to George Washington, February 15, 1791, Opinion on Bill for Establishing a National Bank Continue reading
That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.
~Excerpted from the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, authored by James Madison Continue reading
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
~ Calvin Coolidge, Speech on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926 Continue reading
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License of the press is no proof of liberty. When a people are corrupted, the press may be made an engine to complete their ruin; and it is now notorious, that the ministry are daily employing it, to increase and establish corruption, and to pluck up virtue by the roots. Continue reading
The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; Continue reading
What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense. And that the language of our Constitution is already undergoing interpretations unknown to its founders, will I believe appear to all unbiased Enquirers into the history of its origin and adoption. Not to look farther for an example, take the word “consolidate” in the Address of the Convention prefixed to the Constitution. It there and then meant to give strength and solidity to the Union of the States. In its current & controversial application it means a destruction of the States, by transfusing their powers into the government of the Union. Continue reading
Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:10
