FHU New Insights USA
Vol 12 • Issue 8 August 2006
Hypnotic Christianity? When a person can be hypnotized to think they are Napoleon, then surely it is possible to trick the masses into believing they are saved.
If you have survived the pressures that would convert you to a false salvation, you can see clearly how misguided others are. Since you can see what is controlling them, you can also see that they are not your enemy, but what controls them is. How can you be confused and upset with them after you realize this? You will be patient with them, knowing that what got inside them wants you to react with resentment so that it can get inside you also. You will soon stop doubting yourself when you realize this and feel confident in the natural faith with which you were born.
Trusting that wordless knowing enables you to see truly, and believe truly in what the light in your heart reveals. True faith fails when the babble of prayerful repetition gets in the way of the heart’s wordless message. There is true life in this wordless-knowing and holding fast is the true faith. Then, God rewards you with stronger faith and patience for things to come.
Faith is the basis of patience and patience appears as a non-response to the world. >>>>>>>It separates you from taking shape from evil as it joins and then strengthens your relationship to God, who can be trusted to reveal things as they really are.
Waiting in the shadows and watching for the first sign of your wavering is that other god, whose words cause you to read false meanings into everything and makes sure you react like a wind-up toy.
Alas, for those of you who live by emotion and therefore fail to see clearly. You believe falsely and that false belief separates you from Reality. Up pops resentment and impatience with your fellow beings. >>>>>>>A wrong self grows up inside you that thrives on judgment and is ashamed of the Light. Everything that goes wrong with your life does so as the result of a misguided faith.
Angry emotion lies at the root of disbelief and self-doubt. Conversely, doubt causes the emotions that intensify hopeless despair. >>>>>>>Even though the Holy Writ is in itself pure, a rigid “by the book faith” will dull your outlook and perception of what is real, >>>>>>>so that you are excited into believing that you are saved when you are not. Salvation is blocked by excitement or intense study when >>>>>>>it can come only through the stillness of the receptive heart.
Even when you believe in the worst—and you do so compulsively—you cannot make yourself disbelieve it. >>>>>>>After all, you have become a sensual believer.
Therefore, when others assure you that all will be well, and you know it is a lie, what choice do you have but to cling to it because it is all you have. Emotional believers will never find God...
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Alan Keyes
It's commonly believed that there are two kinds of conservatives: (1) economic conservatives, and (2) social conservatives. We hear this distinction frequently in American political life, particularly in the media.
As a result, many conservatives tend to identify themselves as either economic conservatives (focusing mainly on economic issues, usually from a free-market perspective), or social conservatives (emphasizing mainly social issues, usually from the perspective of proven tradition).
Alan Keyes, however, transcends such widely-used distinctions.
He considers himself a "moral conservative" — that is, he sees both economic and social concerns from an overriding moral perspective, without which neither realm can be governed wisely.
He further believes that public-policy solutions in both realms center in the same broad moral considerations — and that without such moral emphasis, all elements of society, government, education, and culture tend unavoidably to deteriorate, no matter whether "economic" or "social."
This theme of moral implications that underlie all human problems can be found consistently in all of Dr. Keyes' speeches, writings, and pursuits.
The following is typical of Dr. Keyes' moral perspective:
Most of our costly government welfare programs aim to deal with problems related to the breakdown of moral standards and self-discipline. We will go bankrupt as a nation if we continue trying to pay the ever-increasing costs of society's moral disintegration. We must end government programs like the family-destroying welfare system and sex-education courses that encourage promiscuity. These programs actually hasten the moral breakdown.
Our first priority should be restoring the moral support for the marriage-based, two-parent family.
I think that's vital to the future of the country. I believe that we need to mobilize folks, and get them to think in faith terms, instead of in terms of selfish interest.
I think most of our politics in recent years has been about "vote your money," "vote your pocketbook," "vote your jobs." These are critically important issues — but the truth is, when we think it through, that a lot of the money issues we face are rooted in the fact that we have to spend large amounts of money compensating for our moral defects, for the breakdown of the family structure, the rise in crime and violence, the increases in poverty that come about because of the decline in the family structure.
We're paying a deep, huge cost for the moral weakness of society, and then we act as if that's a money problem. I don't believe it is, and I think we know it's not.
We need to start addressing the real underlying cause of these challenges and to recapture a sense of the moral foundation, so that we can restore the moral discipline, restore the sense of commitment to true family life that then provides the basis for economic strength in our communities, for better performance for our children in our schools, for a greater sense of responsibility on the part of parents toward those children, and so forth and so on. We know that these are the keys to real progress, and it's time we got out and voted like we know.
Consequently, Dr. Keyes defines the role of a national leader in these words:
America's most pressing problems are rooted in the decline of our moral identity. Crime, rampant illegitimacy, the deteriorating environment in many of our schools, and especially the spectacle of national shame that unfolded during the 90's in the Clinton White House, all these can be traced to lack of respect for moral principle.
Since we are in the throes of a national moral identity crisis, we can no longer follow leaders for whom the moral challenge facing this nation is an afterthought. We need leaders who can articulate a principled vision of who we are and aspire to be.
Personally, I agree with him.
Such words have caused observers like Dr. Ronald Walters, professor of political science at Maryland University, to say, "Keyes has become the voice for moral issues" in the Republican Party.
As a result, "It will be very difficult for Republicans to dismiss him because he has been seen as a legitimate voice for the Christian right," Walters said. (See "Understanding Alan Keyes," Lee Hubbard, New York Beacon, May 17, 2000.)
But even though Alan Keyes can accurately be labeled a "moral conservative" for his recurring focus on America's moral crisis, he himself once told an interviewer,
Actually, when I describe myself, I think first, "I am a Christian." Then I think, "I'm an American." And then somewhere down the line I think, "I'm a Republican." Because the party label is, in some sense, for me, incidental. It is not essential. I am not a Republican because being a Republican is somehow intrinsically good; that would be nonsensical, I think. Parties are instruments. They are tools. Being instruments or tools, they have no intrinsic worth. They have worth only in terms of those things which they help us to realize and achieve in the way of things that are good results for the country, and good results overall in terms of those standards we believe are right and wrong.
He added, parenthetically, "And so, the first things in my life are things that have to do with the duties to God, to country, and to family."
To hear Dr. Keyes speak on the relationship between moral principle and economic and social problems, see his National Press Club speech, delivered Feb. 7, 2000, in Washington, D.C.
See next: Pro-life leader
Source: http://www.alankeyes.com/about/conservative.php
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It's clear and simple. As a people, both through the judges and through our willingness to take certain approaches to our understanding of politics and human beings, we are in fact turning our backs on the moral principles the country is based on, and the whole understanding of the universe that those principles require, starting with the fact that the universe is created by God--not evolved by, in some mindless way--and as a result, it cannot be understood, in totality, by the mechanisms of science. They can understand certain things, but when it comes to human behavior, human liberty, and the difference between right and wrong, science is of no help to us, and we must rely upon those forms of knowledge which transcend it.
That's fundamental. A civilization that has abandoned its most fundamental premises cannot hope to survive. And as a people, for instance, the simple premise of the country is founded, "We are all created equal, and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." It's profound. It implies, by the way, that we acknowledge, as a people, the existence and authority of God
http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/transcript.php?id=424
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KEYES: Of course not. Let me ask you a question, or I'll ask all people of Christian conscience out there: "You're down to your last crust of bread, and the only way that you can get some money to feed yourself is to go out and commit murder, or make a pornographic movie. Do you do it?"
CALLER: Of course not.
KEYES: Of course not! You'd rather die. That's something we've forgotten, as Christian people. We think this is some kind of game, and we get to choose our comfort. Christ died on the Cross. Right?
CALLER: With all due respect, though, Dr.--
KEYES: And that means that--well, let me finish, though, because the thought that I'm expressing is very simple. You follow what is right, and you leave the rest to God. We're faithless people, because we think that only by our acting and the choices human beings make will things turn out one way or another. It's by God's will. It may be God's will to save America. But let me ask you a question. What if it's not?
If it's not God's will that this country--which has offended deeply, by the way--the blood of the innocent cries out from the ground of America. By the tens of millions, it cries. We are a people guilty of grave wickedness, and if God's judgment is coming against us, we can see why.
But the question is, if He has a will to save the country, it will be saved. If He doesn't, it won't. But where should we stand? Should we stand trying to save it, when He doesn't want to, or should we stand trying to do what's right?
http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/transcript.php?id=424
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
KEYES: Well, let me ask you a question, though, because I think sometimes people misunderstand the meaning of Christian charity, and they think that Christian charity means "helping people take care of their bodies." Is that what it means? So that, if we make everybody comfortable in a physical way, we've achieved a charitable result?
That's actually not Christian charity. Christian charity is to show true love for another, and that means that you share the truth of God and our salvation by Jesus Christ with everyone. And doing good deeds--works of corporal mercy, as they are called--must be in the service of spreading that Gospel by the example of our love, but the example of our love is not intended to produce a material result, but to open the heart to a spiritual reality.
So, the mere fact that somebody is helping take care of people's bodies does not help, if in other respects they stand for lies that deny the existence of God, that deny the justice of God, that deny the authority of God, that deny our salvation through God's love in Jesus Christ. If people are behaving in a way that contradicts the fundamental tenets of God's will as revealed through the Scripture and His law in our nature, then it doesn't matter if they're out saving people's bodies. They're destroying their true lives.
And that's, unhappily, the position in which the Democrats now find themselves. They put on the mask of compassion and concern, and meanwhile they adopt policy steps that have, through the destruction of our moral fiber, utterly destroyed the capacity of people to do for and take care of themselves.
That has been the end result of our government welfare system that has systematically--for instance, in the black community--destroyed the family structure. They are now standing for homosexual marriage and other things that will, again, assault the sense of obligation and responsibility that must be at the heart and basis of family life. So, pretending all kinds of good desires for people, they actually champion those principles of moral evil that will destroy them, and destroy our society along with them.
So, no. I don't think that proves anything, because then you're willing to take the tradeoff they offer. They'll take care of our bodies, so long as we destroy both our own souls and that of our nation. And Christ warned us against accepting that bargain. There ain't nothing Christian about it.
KEYES: I don't understand what you mean when you say they have criminalized abortion. God criminalized abortion--the same God who gave us our inalienable rights. "We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That's God's dictate.
And if you say that it's okay to disregard God's commandment with respect to life and the right that flows from His will with respect to life when it comes to the child in the womb, why not when it comes to your life? Why not disregard His authority when it comes to other inalienable rights, including those that require government by consent, and due process in courts of law? If God's authority means nothing when it comes to the life of that child in the womb, then why does it mean anything when it comes to any of our other claims to rights and decency?
This is the problem. You talk as if it's some arbitrary decision on the part of Republicans. No. The principle on which our whole way of life is based contradicts the so-called "right" to abortion, so we can either have that "right" and abandon the principle of our country, or we can hold on to the country's principle.
I'm not saying that. Republicans aren't saying that. That's a logical fact, and in order to deal with it, you have to tell me I'm wrong, that the country does not in fact require that we respect these basic and inalienable rights, that they are fictions invented by human will, and that when human beings change their minds, those rights disappear.
But if that's the case with the child in the womb, then I suppose it's the case with people we want to enslave, too, so we can turn our backs on that, and if we get enough people behind us, we could restore slavery, and we wouldn't any longer have the argument that it was a contradiction of the most fundamental, God-given right, to enslave other human beings.
See, you can't have it all ways. And what we're doing right now, we want to preserve rights insofar as we get to exercise them, but then we want to disregard them when it's convenient for us, and when we want to have abortions and other stuff.
You can't do it that way. The principle is either true, or it's not. And if it's true, then it restricts our conduct, and we ought to respect it.
CALLER: Anyhow, my comment for Ambassador Keyes is I am driving down the highway laughing, and patting on the steering wheel, and rejoicing, because no one else is saying these things! The Christians in this country have been deceived into thinking they have to bargain away what's true, and what's right, and play the game--and I'm gonna hang up after my comment, but I'm rejoicing to hear someone telling the truth. Thank you, Dr. Keyes.
KEYES: Well, thank you. Appreciate it.
KEYES: Well, I think the fact that we're not gonna find somebody perfect--which is true. We all fall short of the glory. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't look around for the best person available, to stand for those things which are right.
The second point, about people with experience in government, I think experience in some sense with politics and government is a good thing, but on the other hand, if that experience has led to the erosion of conviction, if it has led to innumerable compromises of principle, if it has led, as it does in our politics now, to placing ambition ahead of everything else, then we shouldn't be looking for people with that kind of experience, because that kind of experience is harmful, and it's going to be hurtful to the country, that we would elect leaders of that kind.
We'd never want to put ourselves in a position where we're going to exclude, let's say, an Abraham Lincoln because we've adopted a criteria that requires that people be professional pols rather than ordinary citizens. Sometimes, out of the body of our citizens will come the kind of understanding and wisdom we need, rather than out of the body of those who have dedicated themselves, over the last 40, 50 years, to a false understanding of what our politics is all about.
And I'm afraid a lot of our politicians have surrendered to that false understanding--the belief that it's all interest group stuff, that it doesn't involve principle, that morality should be no part of it, and so forth and so on. You hear that kind of stuff from Republicans as well as Democrats, and that, I think, is a serious problem.
So, what people ought to be considering is the question of whether or not, first of all, people are standing for the right things, and have done so--not just with their mouths, but with their careers. And this is one of the questions I ask myself when I look at some of these people who are offering themselves for our choice, standing forward like Mitt Romney, to say he's all pro-life and stuff, and I'm saying, "I've been fighting in the pro-life trenches for a long time, but never saw him there. As a matter of fact, saw him on the other side." He suddenly shows up, and it's okay to be converted, but even St. Paul wasn't offered leadership in the Christian community the moment he came off the road to Damascus. It took, in fact, quite a lot of time and a sacrifice that nearly cost him his life, so that people could see by deeds and fruits, not just by words, that he had in fact been transformed.
So I think these Johnny-come-latelies who show up saying, "I'm now mouthing the words you all want to hear"--we live in a time when they can take polls and focus groups and then come up with those words. That doesn't prove a thing. And I think I'm looking for somebody who stands forward and says, "Here are my wounds. I got this wound in the battle we fought for life at this time. I got this wound in the battle we fought against embryonic stem cell research. I got these wounds and made these sacrifices in the battle we had to fight against homosexual marriage in this place, and that." And I look at the candidates who are now on offer, and guess what? I don't see wounds on any of them.
CALLER: The problem with the truth that Dr. Keyes dispenses is it forces an apathetic, reluctant, lukewarm listener--it causes him to have to take some kind of action. And what we need in America today is somebody to wake the church up, wake Christian folk up and get us to realize that the cost of freedom is shed blood. It began with Jesus on the cross for us. And to preserve our liberty, we're going have to answer our call to servant-hood and sacrifice and remember the second commandment to put others before ourselves.
FOLGER: Well said. Dr. Keyes, I'll let you respond.
KEYES: I think that that's entirely true. We have come into a period when the profession of Christian faith must again be sacrificial--when we must realize that Good Friday precedes resurrection, and we're called to walk in Christ's footsteps on both days. And He calls us to salvation, but as witnesses of His truth, He also calls us a sacrificial dedication to His Father's will, and that includes in our vocation as citizens.
FOLGER: Well said. Dr. Alan Keyes is our guest. The lines are pretty full, but there may be one open now, at (800) 733-9829.
KEYES: Well, I think what is clear from the behavior of the Democrats is that they regard the Constitution as a scrap of paper to be trampled underfoot whenever it serves their political turn.
The Founders gave us a single executive who would be our commander-in-chief, who would confront the world in foreign policy terms, because they knew that a nation will be torn apart if it has several heads when it confronts the rest of the world--if it can be picked apart by people who can play Americans off against one another so that we don't have consistent policy. That was debated during the Constitutional Convention, and the idea of a plural executive, in which you have people able to run off and do their own thing in military security and foreign policy, was rejected.
Now, what Nancy Pelosi is doing, in other words, is completely violating the tenets of the separation of powers and offering opportunities for our most deadly enemies to then believe that they'll be able to set Americans off against each other so they can get away with continuing their murderous behavior. And I think that that is so dangerous to the Constitution and to our national security that Americans need to wake up and call the Democrats to account. They don't have the right to put the security of this country on the table in play as a pawn of their political ambitions, and they ought to stop.
FOLGER: What do you say about Rosie O'Donnell, certainly not an elected official, but one who's outspoken against America. Any comments on that?
KEYES: Well, I don't know. We have had amongst these people in the Hollywood set all these folks who have been borderline traitors for the longest time. We can remember Jane Fonda running around with the people in North Vietnam, and so forth and so on. I think that we live in a country where people have freedom of speech. If they want to blather on in insane and illogical ways, they can do so. My worry is, however, when folks start to take them seriously, and then give them credibility in our politics and elsewhere, that could lead to disastrous results.
So, I think we have to be warned against letting these people influence our understanding of our policies or ourselves. And that will be a sufficient response to the danger that they pose.
KEYES: Well, I think that I have felt over course of time--and trying to finish this book was terribly important. It's called The Theology of Freedom, and it's about the very things you're talking about. I aim to show in the book and to get people to think hard about the fact that there is a biblical foundation for our constitutional system and that when we depart from the truths and the understanding of, say, natural law and natural rights that are derived from that Biblical understanding, we depart from the only foundation that can keep this republic alive.
My aim in doing this is to try to get Christians to wake up, to realize that there is no secular basis for maintaining this republic--that we must witness to and represent with our votes our understanding of the right basis which includes reverence and respect for God. We have the right to do that. We have the obligation to do that. And we shouldn't be talked out of it by these people who are trying to establish state atheism as the religion of America, so that they can, in effect, destroy the argument that actually gives the people the right to govern themselves.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
KEYES: Of course not. Let me ask you a question, or I'll ask all people of Christian conscience out there: "You're down to your last crust of bread, and the only way that you can get some money to feed yourself is to go out and commit murder, or make a pornographic movie. Do you do it?"
CALLER: Of course not.
KEYES: Of course not! You'd rather die. That's something we've forgotten, as Christian people. We think this is some kind of game, and we get to choose our comfort. Christ died on the Cross. Right?
CALLER: With all due respect, though, Dr.--
KEYES: And that means that--well, let me finish, though, because the thought that I'm expressing is very simple. You must follow what is right and you leave the rest to God. We're faithless people, because we think that only by our acting and the choices human beings make will things turn out one way or another. It's by God's will. It may be God's will to save America. But let me ask you a question. What if it's not?
If it's not God's will that this country--which has offended deeply, by the way--the blood of the innocent cries out from the ground of America. By the tens of millions, it cries. We are a people guilty of grave wickedness, and if God's judgment is coming against us, we can see why.
But the question is, if He has a will to save the country, it will be saved. If He doesn't, it won't. But where should we stand? Should we stand trying to save it, when He doesn't want to, or should we stand trying to do what's right?
http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/transcript.php?id=424
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
KEYES: Well, let me ask you a question, though, because I think sometimes people misunderstand the meaning of Christian charity, and they think that Christian charity means "helping people take care of their bodies." Is that what it means? So that, if we make everybody comfortable in a physical way, we've achieved a charitable result?
That's actually not Christian charity. Christian charity is to show true love for another, and that means that you share the truth of God and our salvation by Jesus Christ with everyone. And doing good deeds--works of corporal mercy, as they are called--must be in the service of spreading that Gospel by the example of our love, but the example of our love is not intended to produce a material result, but to open the heart to a spiritual reality.
So, the mere fact that somebody is helping take care of people's bodies does not help, if in other respects they stand for lies that deny the existence of God, that deny the justice of God, that deny the authority of God, that deny our salvation through God's love in Jesus Christ. If people are behaving in a way that contradicts the fundamental tenets of God's will as revealed through the Scripture and His law in our nature, then it doesn't matter if they're out saving people's bodies. They're destroying their true lives.
And that's, unhappily, the position in which the Democrats now find themselves. They put on the mask of compassion and concern, and meanwhile they adopt policy steps that have, through the destruction of our moral fiber, utterly destroyed the capacity of people to do for and take care of themselves.
That has been the end result of our government welfare system that has systematically--for instance, in the black community--destroyed the family structure. They are now standing for homosexual marriage and other things that will, again, assault the sense of obligation and responsibility that must be at the heart and basis of family life. So, pretending all kinds of good desires for people, they actually champion those principles of moral evil that will destroy them, and destroy our society along with them.
So, no. I don't think that proves anything, because then you're willing to take the tradeoff they offer. They'll take care of our bodies, so long as we destroy both our own souls and that of our nation. And Christ warned us against accepting that bargain. There ain't nothing Christian about it.
KEYES: I don't understand what you mean when you say they have criminalized abortion. God criminalized abortion--the same God who gave us our inalienable rights. "We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That's God's dictate.
And if you say that it's okay to disregard God's commandment with respect to life and the right that flows from His will with respect to life when it comes to the child in the womb, why not when it comes to your life? Why not disregard His authority when it comes to other inalienable rights, including those that require government by consent, and due process in courts of law? If God's authority means nothing when it comes to the life of that child in the womb, then why does it mean anything when it comes to any of our other claims to rights and decency?
This is the problem. You talk as if it's some arbitrary decision on the part of Republicans. No. The principle on which our whole way of life is based contradicts the so-called "right" to abortion, so we can either have that "right" and abandon the principle of our country, or we can hold on to the country's principle.
I'm not saying that. Republicans aren't saying that. That's a logical fact, and in order to deal with it, you have to tell me I'm wrong, that the country does not in fact require that we respect these basic and inalienable rights, that they are fictions invented by human will, and that when human beings change their minds, those rights disappear.
But if that's the case with the child in the womb, then I suppose it's the case with people we want to enslave, too, so we can turn our backs on that, and if we get enough people behind us, we could restore slavery, and we wouldn't any longer have the argument that it was a contradiction of the most fundamental, God-given right, to enslave other human beings.
See, you can't have it all ways. And what we're doing right now, we want to preserve rights insofar as we get to exercise them, but then we want to disregard them when it's convenient for us, and when we want to have abortions and other stuff.
You can't do it that way. The principle is either true, or it's not. And if it's true, then it restricts our conduct, and we ought to respect it.
CALLER: Anyhow, my comment for Ambassador Keyes is I am driving down the highway laughing, and patting on the steering wheel, and rejoicing, because no one else is saying these things! The Christians in this country have been deceived into thinking they have to bargain away what's true, and what's right, and play the game--and I'm gonna hang up after my comment, but I'm rejoicing to hear someone telling the truth. Thank you, Dr. Keyes.
KEYES: Well, thank you. Appreciate it.
KEYES: Well, I think the fact that we're not gonna find somebody perfect--which is true. We all fall short of the glory. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't look around for the best person available, to stand for those things which are right.
The second point, about people with experience in government, I think experience in some sense with politics and government is a good thing, but on the other hand, if that experience has led to the erosion of conviction, if it has led to innumerable compromises of principle, if it has led, as it does in our politics now, to placing ambition ahead of everything else, then we shouldn't be looking for people with that kind of experience, because that kind of experience is harmful, and it's going to be hurtful to the country, that we would elect leaders of that kind.
We'd never want to put ourselves in a position where we're going to exclude, let's say, an Abraham Lincoln because we've adopted a criteria that requires that people be professional pols rather than ordinary citizens. Sometimes, out of the body of our citizens will come the kind of understanding and wisdom we need, rather than out of the body of those who have dedicated themselves, over the last 40, 50 years, to a false understanding of what our politics is all about.
And I'm afraid a lot of our politicians have surrendered to that false understanding--the belief that it's all interest group stuff, that it doesn't involve principle, that morality should be no part of it, and so forth and so on. You hear that kind of stuff from Republicans as well as Democrats, and that, I think, is a serious problem.
So, what people ought to be considering is the question of whether or not, first of all, people are standing for the right things, and have done so--not just with their mouths, but with their careers. And this is one of the questions I ask myself when I look at some of these people who are offering themselves for our choice, standing forward like Mitt Romney, to say he's all pro-life and stuff, and I'm saying, "I've been fighting in the pro-life trenches for a long time, but never saw him there. As a matter of fact, saw him on the other side." He suddenly shows up, and it's okay to be converted, but even St. Paul wasn't offered leadership in the Christian community the moment he came off the road to Damascus. It took, in fact, quite a lot of time and a sacrifice that nearly cost him his life, so that people could see by deeds and fruits, not just by words, that he had in fact been transformed.
So I think these Johnny-come-latelies who show up saying, "I'm now mouthing the words you all want to hear"--we live in a time when they can take polls and focus groups and then come up with those words. That doesn't prove a thing. And I think I'm looking for somebody who stands forward and says, "Here are my wounds. I got this wound in the battle we fought for life at this time. I got this wound in the battle we fought against embryonic stem cell research. I got these wounds and made these sacrifices in the battle we had to fight against homosexual marriage in this place, and that." And I look at the candidates who are now on offer, and guess what? I don't see wounds on any of them.
CALLER: The problem with the truth that Dr. Keyes dispenses is it forces an apathetic, reluctant, lukewarm listener--it causes him to have to take some kind of action. And what we need in America today is somebody to wake the church up, wake Christian folk up and get us to realize that the cost of freedom is shed blood. It began with Jesus on the cross for us. And to preserve our liberty, we're going have to answer our call to servant-hood and sacrifice and remember the second commandment to put others before ourselves.
FOLGER: Well said. Dr. Keyes, I'll let you respond.
KEYES: I think that that's entirely true. We have come into a period when the profession of Christian faith must again be sacrificial--when we must realize that Good Friday precedes resurrection, and we're called to walk in Christ's footsteps on both days. And He calls us to salvation, but as witnesses of His truth, He also calls us a sacrificial dedication to His Father's will, and that includes in our vocation as citizens.
FOLGER: Well said. Dr. Alan Keyes is our guest. The lines are pretty full, but there may be one open now, at (800) 733-9829.
KEYES: Well, I think what is clear from the behavior of the Democrats is that they regard the Constitution as a scrap of paper to be trampled underfoot whenever it serves their political turn.
The Founders gave us a single executive who would be our commander-in-chief, who would confront the world in foreign policy terms, because they knew that a nation will be torn apart if it has several heads when it confronts the rest of the world--if it can be picked apart by people who can play Americans off against one another so that we don't have consistent policy. That was debated during the Constitutional Convention, and the idea of a plural executive, in which you have people able to run off and do their own thing in military security and foreign policy, was rejected.
Now, what Nancy Pelosi is doing, in other words, is completely violating the tenets of the separation of powers and offering opportunities for our most deadly enemies to then believe that they'll be able to set Americans off against each other so they can get away with continuing their murderous behavior. And I think that that is so dangerous to the Constitution and to our national security that Americans need to wake up and call the Democrats to account. They don't have the right to put the security of this country on the table in play as a pawn of their political ambitions, and they ought to stop.
FOLGER: What do you say about Rosie O'Donnell, certainly not an elected official, but one who's outspoken against America. Any comments on that?
KEYES: Well, I don't know. We have had amongst these people in the Hollywood set all these folks who have been borderline traitors for the longest time. We can remember Jane Fonda running around with the people in North Vietnam, and so forth and so on. I think that we live in a country where people have freedom of speech. If they want to blather on in insane and illogical ways, they can do so. My worry is, however, when folks start to take them seriously, and then give them credibility in our politics and elsewhere, that could lead to disastrous results.
So, I think we have to be warned against letting these people influence our understanding of our policies or ourselves. And that will be a sufficient response to the danger that they pose.
KEYES: Well, I think that I have felt over course of time--and trying to finish this book was terribly important. It's called >>>The Theology of Freedom, and it's about the very things you're talking about. I aim to show in the book and to get people to think hard about the fact that there is a biblical foundation for our constitutional system and that when we depart from the truths and the understanding of, say, natural law and natural rights that are derived from that Biblical understanding, we depart from the only foundation that can keep this republic alive.
My aim in doing this is to try to get Christians to wake up, to realize that there is no secular basis for maintaining this republic--that we must witness to and represent with our votes our understanding of the right basis which includes reverence and respect for God. We have the right to do that. We have the obligation to do that. And we shouldn't be talked out of it by these people who are trying to establish state atheism as the religion of America, so that they can, in effect, destroy the argument that actually gives the people the right to govern themselves.
http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/transcript.php?id=424
As a result, many conservatives tend to identify themselves as either economic conservatives (focusing mainly on economic issues, usually from a free-market perspective), or social conservatives (emphasizing mainly social issues, usually from the perspective of proven tradition).
Alan Keyes, however, transcends such widely-used distinctions.
He considers himself a "moral conservative" — that is, he sees both economic and social concerns from an overriding moral perspective, without which neither realm can be governed wisely.
He further believes that public-policy solutions in both realms center in the same broad moral considerations — and that without such moral emphasis, all elements of society, government, education, and culture tend unavoidably to deteriorate, no matter whether "economic" or "social."
This theme of moral implications that underlie all human problems can be found consistently in all of Dr. Keyes' speeches, writings, and pursuits.
The following is typical of Dr. Keyes' moral perspective:
Most of our costly government welfare programs aim to deal with problems related to the breakdown of moral standards and self-discipline. We will go bankrupt as a nation if we continue trying to pay the ever-increasing costs of society's moral disintegration. We must end government programs like the family-destroying welfare system and sex-education courses that encourage promiscuity. These programs actually hasten the moral breakdown.
Our first priority should be restoring the moral support for the marriage-based, two-parent family.
I think that's vital to the future of the country. I believe that we need to mobilize folks, and get them to think in faith terms, instead of in terms of selfish interest.
I think most of our politics in recent years has been about "vote your money," "vote your pocketbook," "vote your jobs." These are critically important issues — but the truth is, when we think it through, that a lot of the money issues we face are rooted in the fact that we have to spend large amounts of money compensating for our moral defects, for the breakdown of the family structure, the rise in crime and violence, the increases in poverty that come about because of the decline in the family structure.
We're paying a deep, huge cost for the moral weakness of society, and then we act as if that's a money problem. I don't believe it is, and I think we know it's not.
We need to start addressing the real underlying cause of these challenges and to recapture a sense of the moral foundation, so that we can restore the moral discipline, restore the sense of commitment to true family life that then provides the basis for economic strength in our communities, for better performance for our children in our schools, for a greater sense of responsibility on the part of parents toward those children, and so forth and so on. We know that these are the keys to real progress, and it's time we got out and voted like we know.
Consequently, Dr. Keyes defines the role of a national leader in these words:
America's most pressing problems are rooted in the decline of our moral identity. Crime, rampant illegitimacy, the deteriorating environment in many of our schools, and especially the spectacle of national shame that unfolded during the 90's in the Clinton White House, all these can be traced to lack of respect for moral principle.
Since we are in the throes of a national moral identity crisis, we can no longer follow leaders for whom the moral challenge facing this nation is an afterthought. We need leaders who can articulate a principled vision of who we are and aspire to be.
Personally, I agree with him.
Such words have caused observers like Dr. Ronald Walters, professor of political science at Maryland University, to say, "Keyes has become the voice for moral issues" in the Republican Party.
As a result, "It will be very difficult for Republicans to dismiss him because he has been seen as a legitimate voice for the Christian right," Walters said. (See "Understanding Alan Keyes," Lee Hubbard, New York Beacon, May 17, 2000.)
But even though Alan Keyes can accurately be labeled a "moral conservative" for his recurring focus on America's moral crisis, he himself once told an interviewer,
Actually, when I describe myself, I think first, "I am a Christian." Then I think, "I'm an American." And then somewhere down the line I think, "I'm a Republican." Because the party label is, in some sense, for me, incidental. It is not essential. I am not a Republican because being a Republican is somehow intrinsically good; that would be nonsensical, I think. Parties are instruments. They are tools. Being instruments or tools, they have no intrinsic worth. They have worth only in terms of those things which they help us to realize and achieve in the way of things that are good results for the country, and good results overall in terms of those standards we believe are right and wrong.
He added, parenthetically, "And so, the first things in my life are things that have to do with the duties to God, to country, and to family."
To hear Dr. Keyes speak on the relationship between moral principle and economic and social problems, see his National Press Club speech, delivered Feb. 7, 2000, in Washington, D.C.
See next: Pro-life leader
Source: http://www.alankeyes.com/about/conservative.php
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It's clear and simple. As a people, both through the judges and through our willingness to take certain approaches to our understanding of politics and human beings, we are in fact turning our backs on the moral principles the country is based on, and the whole understanding of the universe that those principles require, starting with the fact that the universe is created by God--not evolved by, in some mindless way--and as a result, it cannot be understood, in totality, by the mechanisms of science. They can understand certain things, but when it comes to human behavior, human liberty, and the difference between right and wrong, science is of no help to us, and we must rely upon those forms of knowledge which transcend it.
That's fundamental. A civilization that has abandoned its most fundamental premises cannot hope to survive. And as a people, for instance, the simple premise of the country is founded, "We are all created equal, and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." It's profound. It implies, by the way, that we acknowledge, as a people, the existence and authority of God
http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/transcript.php?id=424
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
KEYES: Of course not. Let me ask you a question, or I'll ask all people of Christian conscience out there: "You're down to your last crust of bread, and the only way that you can get some money to feed yourself is to go out and commit murder, or make a pornographic movie. Do you do it?"
CALLER: Of course not.
KEYES: Of course not! You'd rather die. That's something we've forgotten, as Christian people. We think this is some kind of game, and we get to choose our comfort. Christ died on the Cross. Right?
CALLER: With all due respect, though, Dr.--
KEYES: And that means that--well, let me finish, though, because the thought that I'm expressing is very simple. You follow what is right, and you leave the rest to God. We're faithless people, because we think that only by our acting and the choices human beings make will things turn out one way or another. It's by God's will. It may be God's will to save America. But let me ask you a question. What if it's not?
If it's not God's will that this country--which has offended deeply, by the way--the blood of the innocent cries out from the ground of America. By the tens of millions, it cries. We are a people guilty of grave wickedness, and if God's judgment is coming against us, we can see why.
But the question is, if He has a will to save the country, it will be saved. If He doesn't, it won't. But where should we stand? Should we stand trying to save it, when He doesn't want to, or should we stand trying to do what's right?
http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/transcript.php?id=424
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
KEYES: Well, let me ask you a question, though, because I think sometimes people misunderstand the meaning of Christian charity, and they think that Christian charity means "helping people take care of their bodies." Is that what it means? So that, if we make everybody comfortable in a physical way, we've achieved a charitable result?
That's actually not Christian charity. Christian charity is to show true love for another, and that means that you share the truth of God and our salvation by Jesus Christ with everyone. And doing good deeds--works of corporal mercy, as they are called--must be in the service of spreading that Gospel by the example of our love, but the example of our love is not intended to produce a material result, but to open the heart to a spiritual reality.
So, the mere fact that somebody is helping take care of people's bodies does not help, if in other respects they stand for lies that deny the existence of God, that deny the justice of God, that deny the authority of God, that deny our salvation through God's love in Jesus Christ. If people are behaving in a way that contradicts the fundamental tenets of God's will as revealed through the Scripture and His law in our nature, then it doesn't matter if they're out saving people's bodies. They're destroying their true lives.
And that's, unhappily, the position in which the Democrats now find themselves. They put on the mask of compassion and concern, and meanwhile they adopt policy steps that have, through the destruction of our moral fiber, utterly destroyed the capacity of people to do for and take care of themselves.
That has been the end result of our government welfare system that has systematically--for instance, in the black community--destroyed the family structure. They are now standing for homosexual marriage and other things that will, again, assault the sense of obligation and responsibility that must be at the heart and basis of family life. So, pretending all kinds of good desires for people, they actually champion those principles of moral evil that will destroy them, and destroy our society along with them.
So, no. I don't think that proves anything, because then you're willing to take the tradeoff they offer. They'll take care of our bodies, so long as we destroy both our own souls and that of our nation. And Christ warned us against accepting that bargain. There ain't nothing Christian about it.
KEYES: I don't understand what you mean when you say they have criminalized abortion. God criminalized abortion--the same God who gave us our inalienable rights. "We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That's God's dictate.
And if you say that it's okay to disregard God's commandment with respect to life and the right that flows from His will with respect to life when it comes to the child in the womb, why not when it comes to your life? Why not disregard His authority when it comes to other inalienable rights, including those that require government by consent, and due process in courts of law? If God's authority means nothing when it comes to the life of that child in the womb, then why does it mean anything when it comes to any of our other claims to rights and decency?
This is the problem. You talk as if it's some arbitrary decision on the part of Republicans. No. The principle on which our whole way of life is based contradicts the so-called "right" to abortion, so we can either have that "right" and abandon the principle of our country, or we can hold on to the country's principle.
I'm not saying that. Republicans aren't saying that. That's a logical fact, and in order to deal with it, you have to tell me I'm wrong, that the country does not in fact require that we respect these basic and inalienable rights, that they are fictions invented by human will, and that when human beings change their minds, those rights disappear.
But if that's the case with the child in the womb, then I suppose it's the case with people we want to enslave, too, so we can turn our backs on that, and if we get enough people behind us, we could restore slavery, and we wouldn't any longer have the argument that it was a contradiction of the most fundamental, God-given right, to enslave other human beings.
See, you can't have it all ways. And what we're doing right now, we want to preserve rights insofar as we get to exercise them, but then we want to disregard them when it's convenient for us, and when we want to have abortions and other stuff.
You can't do it that way. The principle is either true, or it's not. And if it's true, then it restricts our conduct, and we ought to respect it.
CALLER: Anyhow, my comment for Ambassador Keyes is I am driving down the highway laughing, and patting on the steering wheel, and rejoicing, because no one else is saying these things! The Christians in this country have been deceived into thinking they have to bargain away what's true, and what's right, and play the game--and I'm gonna hang up after my comment, but I'm rejoicing to hear someone telling the truth. Thank you, Dr. Keyes.
KEYES: Well, thank you. Appreciate it.
KEYES: Well, I think the fact that we're not gonna find somebody perfect--which is true. We all fall short of the glory. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't look around for the best person available, to stand for those things which are right.
The second point, about people with experience in government, I think experience in some sense with politics and government is a good thing, but on the other hand, if that experience has led to the erosion of conviction, if it has led to innumerable compromises of principle, if it has led, as it does in our politics now, to placing ambition ahead of everything else, then we shouldn't be looking for people with that kind of experience, because that kind of experience is harmful, and it's going to be hurtful to the country, that we would elect leaders of that kind.
We'd never want to put ourselves in a position where we're going to exclude, let's say, an Abraham Lincoln because we've adopted a criteria that requires that people be professional pols rather than ordinary citizens. Sometimes, out of the body of our citizens will come the kind of understanding and wisdom we need, rather than out of the body of those who have dedicated themselves, over the last 40, 50 years, to a false understanding of what our politics is all about.
And I'm afraid a lot of our politicians have surrendered to that false understanding--the belief that it's all interest group stuff, that it doesn't involve principle, that morality should be no part of it, and so forth and so on. You hear that kind of stuff from Republicans as well as Democrats, and that, I think, is a serious problem.
So, what people ought to be considering is the question of whether or not, first of all, people are standing for the right things, and have done so--not just with their mouths, but with their careers. And this is one of the questions I ask myself when I look at some of these people who are offering themselves for our choice, standing forward like Mitt Romney, to say he's all pro-life and stuff, and I'm saying, "I've been fighting in the pro-life trenches for a long time, but never saw him there. As a matter of fact, saw him on the other side." He suddenly shows up, and it's okay to be converted, but even St. Paul wasn't offered leadership in the Christian community the moment he came off the road to Damascus. It took, in fact, quite a lot of time and a sacrifice that nearly cost him his life, so that people could see by deeds and fruits, not just by words, that he had in fact been transformed.
So I think these Johnny-come-latelies who show up saying, "I'm now mouthing the words you all want to hear"--we live in a time when they can take polls and focus groups and then come up with those words. That doesn't prove a thing. And I think I'm looking for somebody who stands forward and says, "Here are my wounds. I got this wound in the battle we fought for life at this time. I got this wound in the battle we fought against embryonic stem cell research. I got these wounds and made these sacrifices in the battle we had to fight against homosexual marriage in this place, and that." And I look at the candidates who are now on offer, and guess what? I don't see wounds on any of them.
CALLER: The problem with the truth that Dr. Keyes dispenses is it forces an apathetic, reluctant, lukewarm listener--it causes him to have to take some kind of action. And what we need in America today is somebody to wake the church up, wake Christian folk up and get us to realize that the cost of freedom is shed blood. It began with Jesus on the cross for us. And to preserve our liberty, we're going have to answer our call to servant-hood and sacrifice and remember the second commandment to put others before ourselves.
FOLGER: Well said. Dr. Keyes, I'll let you respond.
KEYES: I think that that's entirely true. We have come into a period when the profession of Christian faith must again be sacrificial--when we must realize that Good Friday precedes resurrection, and we're called to walk in Christ's footsteps on both days. And He calls us to salvation, but as witnesses of His truth, He also calls us a sacrificial dedication to His Father's will, and that includes in our vocation as citizens.
FOLGER: Well said. Dr. Alan Keyes is our guest. The lines are pretty full, but there may be one open now, at (800) 733-9829.
KEYES: Well, I think what is clear from the behavior of the Democrats is that they regard the Constitution as a scrap of paper to be trampled underfoot whenever it serves their political turn.
The Founders gave us a single executive who would be our commander-in-chief, who would confront the world in foreign policy terms, because they knew that a nation will be torn apart if it has several heads when it confronts the rest of the world--if it can be picked apart by people who can play Americans off against one another so that we don't have consistent policy. That was debated during the Constitutional Convention, and the idea of a plural executive, in which you have people able to run off and do their own thing in military security and foreign policy, was rejected.
Now, what Nancy Pelosi is doing, in other words, is completely violating the tenets of the separation of powers and offering opportunities for our most deadly enemies to then believe that they'll be able to set Americans off against each other so they can get away with continuing their murderous behavior. And I think that that is so dangerous to the Constitution and to our national security that Americans need to wake up and call the Democrats to account. They don't have the right to put the security of this country on the table in play as a pawn of their political ambitions, and they ought to stop.
FOLGER: What do you say about Rosie O'Donnell, certainly not an elected official, but one who's outspoken against America. Any comments on that?
KEYES: Well, I don't know. We have had amongst these people in the Hollywood set all these folks who have been borderline traitors for the longest time. We can remember Jane Fonda running around with the people in North Vietnam, and so forth and so on. I think that we live in a country where people have freedom of speech. If they want to blather on in insane and illogical ways, they can do so. My worry is, however, when folks start to take them seriously, and then give them credibility in our politics and elsewhere, that could lead to disastrous results.
So, I think we have to be warned against letting these people influence our understanding of our policies or ourselves. And that will be a sufficient response to the danger that they pose.
KEYES: Well, I think that I have felt over course of time--and trying to finish this book was terribly important. It's called The Theology of Freedom, and it's about the very things you're talking about. I aim to show in the book and to get people to think hard about the fact that there is a biblical foundation for our constitutional system and that when we depart from the truths and the understanding of, say, natural law and natural rights that are derived from that Biblical understanding, we depart from the only foundation that can keep this republic alive.
My aim in doing this is to try to get Christians to wake up, to realize that there is no secular basis for maintaining this republic--that we must witness to and represent with our votes our understanding of the right basis which includes reverence and respect for God. We have the right to do that. We have the obligation to do that. And we shouldn't be talked out of it by these people who are trying to establish state atheism as the religion of America, so that they can, in effect, destroy the argument that actually gives the people the right to govern themselves.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
KEYES: Of course not. Let me ask you a question, or I'll ask all people of Christian conscience out there: "You're down to your last crust of bread, and the only way that you can get some money to feed yourself is to go out and commit murder, or make a pornographic movie. Do you do it?"
CALLER: Of course not.
KEYES: Of course not! You'd rather die. That's something we've forgotten, as Christian people. We think this is some kind of game, and we get to choose our comfort. Christ died on the Cross. Right?
CALLER: With all due respect, though, Dr.--
KEYES: And that means that--well, let me finish, though, because the thought that I'm expressing is very simple. You must follow what is right and you leave the rest to God. We're faithless people, because we think that only by our acting and the choices human beings make will things turn out one way or another. It's by God's will. It may be God's will to save America. But let me ask you a question. What if it's not?
If it's not God's will that this country--which has offended deeply, by the way--the blood of the innocent cries out from the ground of America. By the tens of millions, it cries. We are a people guilty of grave wickedness, and if God's judgment is coming against us, we can see why.
But the question is, if He has a will to save the country, it will be saved. If He doesn't, it won't. But where should we stand? Should we stand trying to save it, when He doesn't want to, or should we stand trying to do what's right?
http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/transcript.php?id=424
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
KEYES: Well, let me ask you a question, though, because I think sometimes people misunderstand the meaning of Christian charity, and they think that Christian charity means "helping people take care of their bodies." Is that what it means? So that, if we make everybody comfortable in a physical way, we've achieved a charitable result?
That's actually not Christian charity. Christian charity is to show true love for another, and that means that you share the truth of God and our salvation by Jesus Christ with everyone. And doing good deeds--works of corporal mercy, as they are called--must be in the service of spreading that Gospel by the example of our love, but the example of our love is not intended to produce a material result, but to open the heart to a spiritual reality.
So, the mere fact that somebody is helping take care of people's bodies does not help, if in other respects they stand for lies that deny the existence of God, that deny the justice of God, that deny the authority of God, that deny our salvation through God's love in Jesus Christ. If people are behaving in a way that contradicts the fundamental tenets of God's will as revealed through the Scripture and His law in our nature, then it doesn't matter if they're out saving people's bodies. They're destroying their true lives.
And that's, unhappily, the position in which the Democrats now find themselves. They put on the mask of compassion and concern, and meanwhile they adopt policy steps that have, through the destruction of our moral fiber, utterly destroyed the capacity of people to do for and take care of themselves.
That has been the end result of our government welfare system that has systematically--for instance, in the black community--destroyed the family structure. They are now standing for homosexual marriage and other things that will, again, assault the sense of obligation and responsibility that must be at the heart and basis of family life. So, pretending all kinds of good desires for people, they actually champion those principles of moral evil that will destroy them, and destroy our society along with them.
So, no. I don't think that proves anything, because then you're willing to take the tradeoff they offer. They'll take care of our bodies, so long as we destroy both our own souls and that of our nation. And Christ warned us against accepting that bargain. There ain't nothing Christian about it.
KEYES: I don't understand what you mean when you say they have criminalized abortion. God criminalized abortion--the same God who gave us our inalienable rights. "We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." That's God's dictate.
And if you say that it's okay to disregard God's commandment with respect to life and the right that flows from His will with respect to life when it comes to the child in the womb, why not when it comes to your life? Why not disregard His authority when it comes to other inalienable rights, including those that require government by consent, and due process in courts of law? If God's authority means nothing when it comes to the life of that child in the womb, then why does it mean anything when it comes to any of our other claims to rights and decency?
This is the problem. You talk as if it's some arbitrary decision on the part of Republicans. No. The principle on which our whole way of life is based contradicts the so-called "right" to abortion, so we can either have that "right" and abandon the principle of our country, or we can hold on to the country's principle.
I'm not saying that. Republicans aren't saying that. That's a logical fact, and in order to deal with it, you have to tell me I'm wrong, that the country does not in fact require that we respect these basic and inalienable rights, that they are fictions invented by human will, and that when human beings change their minds, those rights disappear.
But if that's the case with the child in the womb, then I suppose it's the case with people we want to enslave, too, so we can turn our backs on that, and if we get enough people behind us, we could restore slavery, and we wouldn't any longer have the argument that it was a contradiction of the most fundamental, God-given right, to enslave other human beings.
See, you can't have it all ways. And what we're doing right now, we want to preserve rights insofar as we get to exercise them, but then we want to disregard them when it's convenient for us, and when we want to have abortions and other stuff.
You can't do it that way. The principle is either true, or it's not. And if it's true, then it restricts our conduct, and we ought to respect it.
CALLER: Anyhow, my comment for Ambassador Keyes is I am driving down the highway laughing, and patting on the steering wheel, and rejoicing, because no one else is saying these things! The Christians in this country have been deceived into thinking they have to bargain away what's true, and what's right, and play the game--and I'm gonna hang up after my comment, but I'm rejoicing to hear someone telling the truth. Thank you, Dr. Keyes.
KEYES: Well, thank you. Appreciate it.
KEYES: Well, I think the fact that we're not gonna find somebody perfect--which is true. We all fall short of the glory. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't look around for the best person available, to stand for those things which are right.
The second point, about people with experience in government, I think experience in some sense with politics and government is a good thing, but on the other hand, if that experience has led to the erosion of conviction, if it has led to innumerable compromises of principle, if it has led, as it does in our politics now, to placing ambition ahead of everything else, then we shouldn't be looking for people with that kind of experience, because that kind of experience is harmful, and it's going to be hurtful to the country, that we would elect leaders of that kind.
We'd never want to put ourselves in a position where we're going to exclude, let's say, an Abraham Lincoln because we've adopted a criteria that requires that people be professional pols rather than ordinary citizens. Sometimes, out of the body of our citizens will come the kind of understanding and wisdom we need, rather than out of the body of those who have dedicated themselves, over the last 40, 50 years, to a false understanding of what our politics is all about.
And I'm afraid a lot of our politicians have surrendered to that false understanding--the belief that it's all interest group stuff, that it doesn't involve principle, that morality should be no part of it, and so forth and so on. You hear that kind of stuff from Republicans as well as Democrats, and that, I think, is a serious problem.
So, what people ought to be considering is the question of whether or not, first of all, people are standing for the right things, and have done so--not just with their mouths, but with their careers. And this is one of the questions I ask myself when I look at some of these people who are offering themselves for our choice, standing forward like Mitt Romney, to say he's all pro-life and stuff, and I'm saying, "I've been fighting in the pro-life trenches for a long time, but never saw him there. As a matter of fact, saw him on the other side." He suddenly shows up, and it's okay to be converted, but even St. Paul wasn't offered leadership in the Christian community the moment he came off the road to Damascus. It took, in fact, quite a lot of time and a sacrifice that nearly cost him his life, so that people could see by deeds and fruits, not just by words, that he had in fact been transformed.
So I think these Johnny-come-latelies who show up saying, "I'm now mouthing the words you all want to hear"--we live in a time when they can take polls and focus groups and then come up with those words. That doesn't prove a thing. And I think I'm looking for somebody who stands forward and says, "Here are my wounds. I got this wound in the battle we fought for life at this time. I got this wound in the battle we fought against embryonic stem cell research. I got these wounds and made these sacrifices in the battle we had to fight against homosexual marriage in this place, and that." And I look at the candidates who are now on offer, and guess what? I don't see wounds on any of them.
CALLER: The problem with the truth that Dr. Keyes dispenses is it forces an apathetic, reluctant, lukewarm listener--it causes him to have to take some kind of action. And what we need in America today is somebody to wake the church up, wake Christian folk up and get us to realize that the cost of freedom is shed blood. It began with Jesus on the cross for us. And to preserve our liberty, we're going have to answer our call to servant-hood and sacrifice and remember the second commandment to put others before ourselves.
FOLGER: Well said. Dr. Keyes, I'll let you respond.
KEYES: I think that that's entirely true. We have come into a period when the profession of Christian faith must again be sacrificial--when we must realize that Good Friday precedes resurrection, and we're called to walk in Christ's footsteps on both days. And He calls us to salvation, but as witnesses of His truth, He also calls us a sacrificial dedication to His Father's will, and that includes in our vocation as citizens.
FOLGER: Well said. Dr. Alan Keyes is our guest. The lines are pretty full, but there may be one open now, at (800) 733-9829.
KEYES: Well, I think what is clear from the behavior of the Democrats is that they regard the Constitution as a scrap of paper to be trampled underfoot whenever it serves their political turn.
The Founders gave us a single executive who would be our commander-in-chief, who would confront the world in foreign policy terms, because they knew that a nation will be torn apart if it has several heads when it confronts the rest of the world--if it can be picked apart by people who can play Americans off against one another so that we don't have consistent policy. That was debated during the Constitutional Convention, and the idea of a plural executive, in which you have people able to run off and do their own thing in military security and foreign policy, was rejected.
Now, what Nancy Pelosi is doing, in other words, is completely violating the tenets of the separation of powers and offering opportunities for our most deadly enemies to then believe that they'll be able to set Americans off against each other so they can get away with continuing their murderous behavior. And I think that that is so dangerous to the Constitution and to our national security that Americans need to wake up and call the Democrats to account. They don't have the right to put the security of this country on the table in play as a pawn of their political ambitions, and they ought to stop.
FOLGER: What do you say about Rosie O'Donnell, certainly not an elected official, but one who's outspoken against America. Any comments on that?
KEYES: Well, I don't know. We have had amongst these people in the Hollywood set all these folks who have been borderline traitors for the longest time. We can remember Jane Fonda running around with the people in North Vietnam, and so forth and so on. I think that we live in a country where people have freedom of speech. If they want to blather on in insane and illogical ways, they can do so. My worry is, however, when folks start to take them seriously, and then give them credibility in our politics and elsewhere, that could lead to disastrous results.
So, I think we have to be warned against letting these people influence our understanding of our policies or ourselves. And that will be a sufficient response to the danger that they pose.
KEYES: Well, I think that I have felt over course of time--and trying to finish this book was terribly important. It's called >>>The Theology of Freedom, and it's about the very things you're talking about. I aim to show in the book and to get people to think hard about the fact that there is a biblical foundation for our constitutional system and that when we depart from the truths and the understanding of, say, natural law and natural rights that are derived from that Biblical understanding, we depart from the only foundation that can keep this republic alive.
My aim in doing this is to try to get Christians to wake up, to realize that there is no secular basis for maintaining this republic--that we must witness to and represent with our votes our understanding of the right basis which includes reverence and respect for God. We have the right to do that. We have the obligation to do that. And we shouldn't be talked out of it by these people who are trying to establish state atheism as the religion of America, so that they can, in effect, destroy the argument that actually gives the people the right to govern themselves.
http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/transcript.php?id=424
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Thomas Jefferson Quotes
“The tree of Liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants and patriots it is it’s natural manure”! ~Thomas Jefferson
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. Thomas Jefferson
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. Thomas Jefferson
As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also. Thomas Jefferson
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government. Thomas Jefferson
Delay is preferable to error. Thomas Jefferson
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. Thomas Jefferson
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it. Thomas Jefferson
Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. Thomas Jefferson
Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do. Thomas Jefferson
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. Thomas Jefferson
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Thomas Jefferson
Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. Thomas Jefferson
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. Thomas Jefferson
Every generation needs a new revolution. Thomas Jefferson
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. Thomas Jefferson
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor. Thomas Jefferson
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. Thomas Jefferson
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. Thomas Jefferson
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism. Thomas Jefferson
He who knows best knows how little he knows. Thomas Jefferson
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. Thomas Jefferson
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is. Thomas Jefferson
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Thomas Jefferson
How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. Thomas Jefferson
I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind. Thomas Jefferson
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us. Thomas Jefferson
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another. Thomas Jefferson
I cannot live without books. Thomas Jefferson
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. Thomas Jefferson
I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it. Thomas Jefferson
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. Thomas Jefferson
I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office. Thomas Jefferson
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. Thomas Jefferson
I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another. Thomas Jefferson
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. Thomas Jefferson
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be. Thomas Jefferson
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. Thomas Jefferson
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. Thomas Jefferson
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. Thomas Jefferson
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. Thomas Jefferson
I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. 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
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. Thomas Jefferson
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way. Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. Thomas Jefferson
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? Thomas Jefferson
If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. Thomas Jefferson
Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong. Thomas Jefferson
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical (highly unrealistic) idea.
Thomas Jefferson
God... has formed us moral agents ...that we may promote the happiness (virtue) of those with whom He has placed us in a society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacred their rights, bodily and mentally, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own. Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, 1814. ME 14:197
Peace, prosperity, liberty, and morals have an intimate connection.
Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1813. ME:384
The order of nature is that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue. -Thomas Jefferson to M. Correa de Serra, 1814: ME 19:210
"Without virtue, happiness cannot be." --Thomas Jefferson to Amos J. Cook, 1816. ME 14:405
"Liberty... is the great parent of science and of virtue; and... a nation will be great in both always in proportion as it is free." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Willard, 1789. ME 7:329
"Truth is certainly a branch of morality, and a very important one to society." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:139
"Truth is the first object." --Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Maese, 1809. ME 12:232
"Follow truth as the only safe guide, and... eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819. ME 15:234
"He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted indeed in some degree to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call Common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules." --Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1787. ME 6:257, Papers 12:15
"How necessary was the care of the Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our constitution as that no errors of reasoning or of speculation might lead us astray from its observance in practice." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:139
"Morals were too essential to the happiness of man, to be risked on the uncertain combinations of the head. [Nature] laid their foundation, therefore, in sentiment, not in science." --Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 1786. ME 5:443
"I believe... that [justice] is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise Creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1816. ME 15:76
"I sincerely... believe... in the general existence of a moral instinct. I think it the brightest gem with which the human character is studded, and the want of it as more degrading than the most hideous of the bodily deformities." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:143
"The moral sense [is] the first excellence of well-organized man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1823. ME 15:418
"The moral law of our nature... [is] the moral law to which man has been subjected by his Creator, and of which his feelings or conscience, as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793. ME 3:228
"Conscience [is] the only sure clue which will eternally guide a man clear of all doubts and inconsistencies." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1789. ME 7:350, Papers 15:118
"[It is a] general truth that great men will think alike and act alike, though without intercommunication." --Thomas Jefferson to William B. Giles, 1796. ME 9:326
"The true fountains of evidence [are] the head and heart of every rational and honest man. It is there nature has written her moral laws, and where every man may read them for himself." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793. ME 3:229
"Egoism, in a broader sense, has been... presented as the source of moral action. It has been said that we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bind up the wounds of the man beaten by thieves, pour oil and wine into them, set him on our own beast and bring him to the inn, because we receive ourselves pleasure from these acts... These good acts give us pleasure, but how happens it that they give us pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses... The Creator would indeed have been a bungling artist had he intended man for a social animal without planting in him social dispositions. It is true they are not planted in every man, because there is no rule without exceptions; but it is false reasoning which converts exceptions into the general rule." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:141
"That a man owes no duty to which he is not urged by some impulsive feeling... is correct, if referred to the standard of general feeling in the given case, and not to the feeling of a single individual." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:144
"Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:140
"The practice of morality being necessary for the well-being of society, [our Creator] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain." --Thomas Jefferson to James Fishback, 1809. ME 12:315
"The want or imperfection of the moral sense in some men, like the want or imperfection of the senses of sight and hearing in others, is no proof that it is a general characteristic of the species." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:142
"The non-existence of justice is not to be inferred from the fact that the same act is deemed virtuous and right in one society which is held vicious and wrong in another; because as the circumstances and opinions of different societies vary, so the acts which may do them right or wrong must vary also; for virtue does not consist in the act we do, but in the end it is to effect." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1816. ME 15:76
"Circumstances must always yield to substance." --Thomas Jefferson: Batture at New Orleans, 1812. ME 18:76
"Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us." --Thomas Jefferson to James Breckenridge, 1822. ME 15:363
"A conviction that we are right accomplishes half the difficulty of correcting wrong." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Thweat, 1821. ME 15:307
"Everyone is bound to bear witness, where wrong has been done." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1824. ME 19:449
"The laws of [our] country... in offenses within their cognizance, compel those who have knowledge of a fact to declare it for the purposes of justice and of the general good and safety of society. And certainly, where wrong has been done, he who knows and conceals the doer of it makes himself an accomplice, and justly censurable as such." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1825. ME 19:469
"A bold, unequivocal virtue is the best handmaid even to ambition, and would carry [one] further, in the end, than [the pursuit of a] temporizing, wavering policy." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1789. ME 7:380, Papers 15:190
"Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them." --Thomas Jefferson to Francois de Marbois, 1817. ME 15:131
"Principle will, in... most... cases open the way for us to correct conclusion." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:71
"Principles conscientiously adopted [should] not be given up." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793. (*) ME 1:332
"When principles are well understood, their application is less embarrassing." --Thomas Jefferson to Gouverneur Morris, 1793. ME 9:36
"A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom and harmony." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1801. ME 10:255
"The only exact testimony of a man is his actions, leaving the reader to pronounce on them his own judgment." --Thomas Jefferson to L. H. Girardin, 1815. ME 14: 295
"Our Saviour... has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to Him who can alone see into them." --Thomas Jefferson to Martin Van Buren, 1824. ME 16:55
"The entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant... Everything is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practice of virtue. When any signal act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity and conceive an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions; and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise. But exercise produces habit, and in the instance of which we speak, the exercise being of the moral feelings, produces a habit of thinking and acting virtuously." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, 1771. ME 4:237, Papers 1:76
"Considering history as a moral exercise, her lessons would be too infrequent if confined to real life. Of those recorded by historians few incidents have been attended with such circumstances as to excite in any high degree this sympathetic emotion of virtue. We are, therefore, wisely framed to be as warmly interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The spacious field of imagination is thus laid open to our use, and lessons may be formed to illustrate and carry home to the heart every moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics and divinity that ever were written." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, 1771. ME 4:239, Papers 1:77
"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:223
"The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:28
"Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:397
"Most virtues when carried beyond certain bounds degenerate into vices." --Thomas Jefferson to Chastellux, 1785.
"It is reasonable that every one who asks justice should do justice." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792. ME 16:227
"The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset." --Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 1786. ME 5:439
"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792. ME 16:263
"Moral duties [are] as obligatory on nations as on individuals." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1808. ME 1:480
"The laws of humanity make it a duty for nations, as well as individuals, to succor those whom accident and distress have thrown upon them." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1807. ME 11:144
"The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature accompany them into a state of society, and the aggregate of the duties of all the individuals composing the society constitutes the duties of that society towards any other; so that between society and society the same moral duties exist as did between the individuals composing them while in an unassociated state, and their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation. Compacts, then, between nation and nation are obligatory on them by the same moral law which obliges individuals to observe their compacts." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793. ME 3:228
"We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural, 1805. ME 3:375
"Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1806. FE 8:477
"Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality." --Thomas Jefferson to James Maury, 1815. ME 14:313
"So invariably do the laws of nature create our duties and interests, that when they seem to be at variance, we ought to suspect some fallacy in our reasonings." --Thomas Jefferson to Jean Baptiste Say, 1804. ME 11:3
"I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man." --Thomas Jefferson to Valentine de Foronda, 1809. ME 12:320
"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately." --Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816. FE 10:68
"If the morality of one man produces a just line of conduct in him acting individually, why should not the morality of one hundred men produce a just line of conduct in them acting together?" --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:450, Papers 15:367
"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.
"When we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of society... Liberty, truth, probity (integrity and uprightness; honesty), honor, are declared to be the four cardinal principles of society. I believe... that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816. ME 14:490
"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality." --Thomas Jefferson to James Fishback, 1809. ME 12:315
"Is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:360
An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens. It should be noted, that when Jefferson speaks of "science," he is often referring to knowledge or learning in general.
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:207
"The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes." --Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779. FE 2:221, Papers 2:526
"The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1810. ME 12:417
"The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801. ME 3:322
"Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Apportionment Bill, 1792. ME 3:211
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384
"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.
"No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1821. ME 19:408
"Light and liberty go together." --Thomas Jefferson to Tench Coxe, 1795.
"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Madison Version FE 4:480
"[I have] a conviction that science is important to the preservation of our republican government, and that it is also essential to its protection against foreign power." --Thomas Jefferson to -----, 1821. ME 15:340
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789. ME 7:253
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.
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” (Quoting Cesare Beccaria)
The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.
The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.
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.
To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s 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 every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. (Back then!)
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. Thomas Jefferson
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. Thomas Jefferson
As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also. Thomas Jefferson
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government. Thomas Jefferson
Delay is preferable to error. Thomas Jefferson
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. Thomas Jefferson
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it. Thomas Jefferson
Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. Thomas Jefferson
Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do. Thomas Jefferson
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. Thomas Jefferson
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Thomas Jefferson
Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. Thomas Jefferson
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. Thomas Jefferson
Every generation needs a new revolution. Thomas Jefferson
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. Thomas Jefferson
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor. Thomas Jefferson
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. Thomas Jefferson
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. Thomas Jefferson
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism. Thomas Jefferson
He who knows best knows how little he knows. Thomas Jefferson
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. Thomas Jefferson
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is. Thomas Jefferson
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Thomas Jefferson
How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. Thomas Jefferson
I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind. Thomas Jefferson
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us. Thomas Jefferson
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another. Thomas Jefferson
I cannot live without books. Thomas Jefferson
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. Thomas Jefferson
I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it. Thomas Jefferson
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. Thomas Jefferson
I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office. Thomas Jefferson
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. Thomas Jefferson
I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another. Thomas Jefferson
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. Thomas Jefferson
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be. Thomas Jefferson
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. Thomas Jefferson
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. Thomas Jefferson
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. Thomas Jefferson
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. Thomas Jefferson
I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. 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
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. Thomas Jefferson
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way. Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it. Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. Thomas Jefferson
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? Thomas Jefferson
If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. Thomas Jefferson
Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong. Thomas Jefferson
To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical (highly unrealistic) idea.
Thomas Jefferson
God... has formed us moral agents ...that we may promote the happiness (virtue) of those with whom He has placed us in a society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacred their rights, bodily and mentally, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own. Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, 1814. ME 14:197
Peace, prosperity, liberty, and morals have an intimate connection.
Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1813. ME:384
The order of nature is that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue. -Thomas Jefferson to M. Correa de Serra, 1814: ME 19:210
"Without virtue, happiness cannot be." --Thomas Jefferson to Amos J. Cook, 1816. ME 14:405
"Liberty... is the great parent of science and of virtue; and... a nation will be great in both always in proportion as it is free." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Willard, 1789. ME 7:329
"Truth is certainly a branch of morality, and a very important one to society." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:139
"Truth is the first object." --Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Maese, 1809. ME 12:232
"Follow truth as the only safe guide, and... eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819. ME 15:234
"He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted indeed in some degree to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call Common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules." --Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1787. ME 6:257, Papers 12:15
"How necessary was the care of the Creator in making the moral principle so much a part of our constitution as that no errors of reasoning or of speculation might lead us astray from its observance in practice." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:139
"Morals were too essential to the happiness of man, to be risked on the uncertain combinations of the head. [Nature] laid their foundation, therefore, in sentiment, not in science." --Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 1786. ME 5:443
"I believe... that [justice] is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise Creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1816. ME 15:76
"I sincerely... believe... in the general existence of a moral instinct. I think it the brightest gem with which the human character is studded, and the want of it as more degrading than the most hideous of the bodily deformities." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:143
"The moral sense [is] the first excellence of well-organized man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1823. ME 15:418
"The moral law of our nature... [is] the moral law to which man has been subjected by his Creator, and of which his feelings or conscience, as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793. ME 3:228
"Conscience [is] the only sure clue which will eternally guide a man clear of all doubts and inconsistencies." --Thomas Jefferson to George Washington, 1789. ME 7:350, Papers 15:118
"[It is a] general truth that great men will think alike and act alike, though without intercommunication." --Thomas Jefferson to William B. Giles, 1796. ME 9:326
"The true fountains of evidence [are] the head and heart of every rational and honest man. It is there nature has written her moral laws, and where every man may read them for himself." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793. ME 3:229
"Egoism, in a broader sense, has been... presented as the source of moral action. It has been said that we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bind up the wounds of the man beaten by thieves, pour oil and wine into them, set him on our own beast and bring him to the inn, because we receive ourselves pleasure from these acts... These good acts give us pleasure, but how happens it that they give us pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses... The Creator would indeed have been a bungling artist had he intended man for a social animal without planting in him social dispositions. It is true they are not planted in every man, because there is no rule without exceptions; but it is false reasoning which converts exceptions into the general rule." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:141
"That a man owes no duty to which he is not urged by some impulsive feeling... is correct, if referred to the standard of general feeling in the given case, and not to the feeling of a single individual." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:144
"Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:140
"The practice of morality being necessary for the well-being of society, [our Creator] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain." --Thomas Jefferson to James Fishback, 1809. ME 12:315
"The want or imperfection of the moral sense in some men, like the want or imperfection of the senses of sight and hearing in others, is no proof that it is a general characteristic of the species." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. ME 14:142
"The non-existence of justice is not to be inferred from the fact that the same act is deemed virtuous and right in one society which is held vicious and wrong in another; because as the circumstances and opinions of different societies vary, so the acts which may do them right or wrong must vary also; for virtue does not consist in the act we do, but in the end it is to effect." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1816. ME 15:76
"Circumstances must always yield to substance." --Thomas Jefferson: Batture at New Orleans, 1812. ME 18:76
"Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us." --Thomas Jefferson to James Breckenridge, 1822. ME 15:363
"A conviction that we are right accomplishes half the difficulty of correcting wrong." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Thweat, 1821. ME 15:307
"Everyone is bound to bear witness, where wrong has been done." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1824. ME 19:449
"The laws of [our] country... in offenses within their cognizance, compel those who have knowledge of a fact to declare it for the purposes of justice and of the general good and safety of society. And certainly, where wrong has been done, he who knows and conceals the doer of it makes himself an accomplice, and justly censurable as such." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1825. ME 19:469
"A bold, unequivocal virtue is the best handmaid even to ambition, and would carry [one] further, in the end, than [the pursuit of a] temporizing, wavering policy." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1789. ME 7:380, Papers 15:190
"Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them." --Thomas Jefferson to Francois de Marbois, 1817. ME 15:131
"Principle will, in... most... cases open the way for us to correct conclusion." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:71
"Principles conscientiously adopted [should] not be given up." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793. (*) ME 1:332
"When principles are well understood, their application is less embarrassing." --Thomas Jefferson to Gouverneur Morris, 1793. ME 9:36
"A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40
"Unequivocal in principle, reasonable in manner, we shall be able I hope to do a great deal of good to the cause of freedom and harmony." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1801. ME 10:255
"The only exact testimony of a man is his actions, leaving the reader to pronounce on them his own judgment." --Thomas Jefferson to L. H. Girardin, 1815. ME 14: 295
"Our Saviour... has taught us to judge the tree by its fruit, and to leave motives to Him who can alone see into them." --Thomas Jefferson to Martin Van Buren, 1824. ME 16:55
"The entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant... Everything is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practice of virtue. When any signal act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity and conceive an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions; and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise. But exercise produces habit, and in the instance of which we speak, the exercise being of the moral feelings, produces a habit of thinking and acting virtuously." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, 1771. ME 4:237, Papers 1:76
"Considering history as a moral exercise, her lessons would be too infrequent if confined to real life. Of those recorded by historians few incidents have been attended with such circumstances as to excite in any high degree this sympathetic emotion of virtue. We are, therefore, wisely framed to be as warmly interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The spacious field of imagination is thus laid open to our use, and lessons may be formed to illustrate and carry home to the heart every moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics and divinity that ever were written." --Thomas Jefferson to Robert Skipwith, 1771. ME 4:239, Papers 1:77
"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:223
"The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:28
"Mischief may be done negatively as well as positively." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:397
"Most virtues when carried beyond certain bounds degenerate into vices." --Thomas Jefferson to Chastellux, 1785.
"It is reasonable that every one who asks justice should do justice." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792. ME 16:227
"The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset." --Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 1786. ME 5:439
"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792. ME 16:263
"Moral duties [are] as obligatory on nations as on individuals." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1808. ME 1:480
"The laws of humanity make it a duty for nations, as well as individuals, to succor those whom accident and distress have thrown upon them." --Thomas Jefferson to Albert Gallatin, 1807. ME 11:144
"The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature accompany them into a state of society, and the aggregate of the duties of all the individuals composing the society constitutes the duties of that society towards any other; so that between society and society the same moral duties exist as did between the individuals composing them while in an unassociated state, and their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation. Compacts, then, between nation and nation are obligatory on them by the same moral law which obliges individuals to observe their compacts." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793. ME 3:228
"We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties." --Thomas Jefferson: 2nd Inaugural, 1805. ME 3:375
"Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1806. FE 8:477
"Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality." --Thomas Jefferson to James Maury, 1815. ME 14:313
"So invariably do the laws of nature create our duties and interests, that when they seem to be at variance, we ought to suspect some fallacy in our reasonings." --Thomas Jefferson to Jean Baptiste Say, 1804. ME 11:3
"I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man." --Thomas Jefferson to Valentine de Foronda, 1809. ME 12:320
"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately." --Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1816. FE 10:68
"If the morality of one man produces a just line of conduct in him acting individually, why should not the morality of one hundred men produce a just line of conduct in them acting together?" --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789. ME 7:450, Papers 15:367
"What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.
"When we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of society... Liberty, truth, probity (integrity and uprightness; honesty), honor, are declared to be the four cardinal principles of society. I believe... that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816. ME 14:490
"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to murder, steal, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should not intermeddle with the particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with morality." --Thomas Jefferson to James Fishback, 1809. ME 12:315
"Is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:360
An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens. It should be noted, that when Jefferson speaks of "science," he is often referring to knowledge or learning in general.
"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:207
"The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes." --Thomas Jefferson: Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779. FE 2:221, Papers 2:526
"The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1810. ME 12:417
"The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801. ME 3:322
"Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on Apportionment Bill, 1792. ME 3:211
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384
"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree." --Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.
"No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1821. ME 19:408
"Light and liberty go together." --Thomas Jefferson to Tench Coxe, 1795.
"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Madison Version FE 4:480
"[I have] a conviction that science is important to the preservation of our republican government, and that it is also essential to its protection against foreign power." --Thomas Jefferson to -----, 1821. ME 15:340
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789. ME 7:253
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.
“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” (Quoting Cesare Beccaria)
The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.
The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.
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.
To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s 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 every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. (Back then!)
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