The Founders Speak

THE POINT by Peter Daou
Issue 13- March 20, 2004

The Founders Speak

John Adams comments on the administration’s Enron and Halliburton ties:

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men. John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776

Benjamin Franklin comments on John Ashcroft’s abuse of the Patriot Act:

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

Thomas Jefferson comments on Bush pumping his fist before addressing the nation on the eve of the Iraq war:

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Melish, January 13, 1813

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson comment on the administration’s antipathy to science and the arts:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, 1780

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816

Thomas Jefferson comments on Bush’s disregard for the constitutional separation of church and state:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Thomas Jefferson, letter to a Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, Connecticut, January 1, 1802

James Madison comments on how Bush’s polarizing policies and brash personality weaken America:

America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat. James Madison, Federalist No. 14, November 30, 1787

George Washington and James Madison comment on the Bush administration stifling criticism by suggesting that all critics of their foreign policy are “unpatriotic”:

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree. James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, July 11, 1787

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796

Peter Daou



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