To find inspiring alternatives to Barack’s inaugural drivel, one must look back a few years.
Obama champions the dominant past — the eras without liberty or individualism. If we’re to have a future, we must look to some of our past presidents’ comments about the value and nature of freedom.
Today we have small leaders with small ideas. Freedom is a fragile thing. Like all abusers or tyrants, the leaders a majority of us have empowered to push us around and keep advancing the line of collective slavery away from individual liberty may go one step too far. And then the greatest ideas that have animated human beings at their best will once again rise to the surface.
Consider the thoughts and sentiments of past presidents, who sought (with varying degrees of consistency) to put America on the right course. The further back you go, the truer this is—although some of the more recent presidents at least said some good things.
File these away for future reference, because eventually people will recognize the only course to follow is the opposite of what today’s rulers preach.
And take these thoughts as a refreshing alternative to the toxic and relentless daily attacks on individual liberty that is the reality of the Obama, post-American presidency.
Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples’ liberty’s teeth.
George Washington, first U.S. President
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
John Adams, second U.S. President
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson, third U.S. President
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
James Madison, fourth U.S. President
The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.
Andrew Jackson, seventh U.S. President
In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.
Abraham Lincoln, 16th U.S. President
Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.
Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th U.S. President
The free man cannot be long an ignorant man.
William McKinley, 25th U.S. President
Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing.
Calvin Coolidge, 30th U.S. President
Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.
Harry S. Truman, 33rd U.S. President
If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th U.S. President
The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital… the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy.
John F. Kennedy, 35th U.S. President
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
Gerald R. Ford, 38th U.S. President
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
Ronald Reagan, 40th U.S. President
The choice to live up to the best within you is always present. It is not the dominant spirit of our own times; but it can be the spirit of any future time — for any one individual or society as a whole.
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