“What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing.”
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
— Robert Anson Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1965)
Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, inspiration for the move The Patriot, was the best tactician of the Revolution...and opposed to preemptive war
As to war, I am and always was a great enemy, at the same time a warrior the greater part of my life, and were I young again, should still be a warrior while ever this country should be invaded and I lived — a Defensive war I think a righteous war to Defend my life & property & that of my family, in my own opinion, is right & justifiable in the sight of God.
An offensive war, I believe to be wrong and would therefore have nothing to do with it, having no right to meddle with another man’s property, his ox or his ass, his man servant or his maid servant or anything this is his. Neither does he have a right to meddle with anything that is mine, if he does I have a right to defend it by force.
— Brigadier General Daniel Morgan of the American Revolutionary War, letter to Miles Etting (1798)
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.
Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.
— James Bovard, “Individual Rights“, Sacramento Bee (1994)
A right is not what someone gives you;
it’s what no one can take from you.
– Ramsey Clark, U. S. Attorney General, New York Times, 2 October 1977
The founders intended the Constitution to apply to Americans, aliens, citizens, non-citizens, lawful combatants, enemy combatants, innocents, the guilty, those who wish us well, and those who wish us ill.
The Constitution applies to persons, not just citizens.
If you read the Constitution, its protections are not limited to Americans.
And that was written intentionally, because at the time it was written, they didn’t know what Native Americans would be.
When the post civil war amendments were added, they didn’t know how blacks would be considered, because they had a decision of the Supreme Court called Dred Scott, that said blacks are not persons.
So in order to make sure the Constitution protected every human being:
…they use the broadest possible language,
to make it clear:
Wherever the government goes,
the Constitution goes,
and wherever the Constitution goes,
the protections that it guarantees restrain the government
and requires it to protect those rights.
— Judge Andrew Napolitano
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
— George Mason, Virginia Declaration of Rights, (1776)
Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today?
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.
– Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
But Now You Know
Words of the Sentient 