Our Founders

This site is not a history book about our founders.  There are many sources for that kind of information.  What is significant about them [and other influential people since] in the context of this site is what they said about this country and its underpinnings.  I will share those thoughts here.

What They [And Other Influencial Leaders] Have Said

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”  President John Adams

“All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.” George Washington

“The people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.  If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature. … If the next centennial does not find us a great nation . . . it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”  President James Garfield

[A letter to an American friend on May 23, 1857] “A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote for the candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship.” Lord Thomas B. Macaulay, English Historian, Essayist and Statesman, 1800-1859

“It is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand.” President John Adams

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” President John Adams

“No human society has ever been able to maintain both order and freedom, both cohesiveness and liberty apart from the moral precepts of the Christian religion…. Should our Republic ever forget this fundamental precept of governance…this great experiment will then surely be doomed.” [First U. S.] Chief Justice John Jay

“Christianity is the most persecuted religion worldwide.”  In other comments at a meeting of the German Protestant Church on 11/4/12, she emphasized that Germany needs to protect Christian minorities as part of its foreign policy.  Merkel, the daughter of a pastor, also spoke out against strict separation of church and state and said Europe was built on Christian foundations.”  German Prime Chancellor Angela Merkel, 2012 {Included here because of the statement emphasized by me — i.e., our religious, even Christian, underpinnings stem from even earlier roots than the founding of our country: to Europeon ancestral countries that were dominant in the early years of America’s foundation}

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American … There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag … We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”  President Theodore Roosevelt 1907 {Today, any public official — probably particularly a president or a candidate for president — uttering these exact same words would be considered an intolerant bigot, and excoriated in the media}

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[I may post other quotations here from time to time.  If I do, I will add them here, and I will refer to those additions in a Blog post.]