Are We Following Our Founding Father's Advice?

Originally Posted by Benjamin Franklin

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Originally Posted by Benjamin Franklin

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!

Originally Posted by John Adams

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

Originally Posted by John Adams

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.

Originally Posted by John Adams

Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

Originally Posted by John Adams

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.

Originally Posted by Alexander Hamilton

A feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever may be its theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.

Originally Posted by Thomas Jefferson

A rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive.

Originally Posted by Thomas Jefferson

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of 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."

Originally Posted by Thomas Jefferson

"The way to have safe government is not to trust it all to the one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent....To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and it's foreign and federal relations..... The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and administration of what concerns the State generally. The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all it's subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best."

Originally Posted by Zar333

I think the founding fathers are more like the corporate and government heads of today then we like to think.

Ben Franklin and the rest were some of the largest land holders and had the most to gain economically from breaking their ties with England. So they pushed the country into war and a lot of everyday folk lost their lives.

I like to believe their motivations were pure, but the British had some solid complaints. The amount of tax that the English in England paid was insane compared to what was paid in the colonies, and a great deal of it went to support the colonies.

And what is with all the French hate in America? Everyone needs to remember that they are pretty much the direct cause of victory in the Revolution.

Originally Posted by Zar333

But doesn't most of the world do the same?