Good Quotes To Ponder

"Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people."
-- Thomas Jefferson --

Translation: if the government is big enough to provide everything you need, then it is also big enough to take away everything you need.

"That [tyrannical government] power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?"
-- French historian Alexis de Tocqueville --

Translation: if the government takes care of every basic need, then why would people need to bother with anything?  Dependence upon government breeds ignorance, and ignorance opens the door to government abuse.

"With respect to the two words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."
-- James Madison --

The idea of the government providing for the 'general welfare' of the nation has been grossly overstated and misinterpreted from the Founders' intention.  Madison makes this quite clear, seemingly predicting the efforts of today's Democrat party to be all things to all people.

What Obama and the Democrats are trying to do is a perversion of the foundational pillars of America and the American way of life.  Responsibility belongs in the hands of the people, not the government.  That's why I say that we're currently in the middle of a battle for the soul of America.

Personally, I prefer the America the Founders envisioned.  How about you?

There's my two cents.