Founders Quote Daily from Patriot Post

"Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty ought to have it ever before his eyes that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it." --James Madison, Federalist No. 41

Sunday 19 April is Patriots Day

and Mark Alexander, one of the smartest individuals I've read to date, has some insight. I've excerpted some salient paragraphs, but you really should just make the jump and read the whole thing.

From the Patriot Post:

Right-Wing Extremists
By Mark Alexander

My fellow Patriot "right-wing extremists" (or as Barack Obama prefers to describe you, those "bitterly clinging to guns or religion"), it is no small irony that, in the same week the central government demands payment of any income tax they hadn't already withheld (read: "pilfered") from our paychecks for redistribution, we observe Patriots Day.

April 19th marks the 234th anniversary of the early morning ride of Paul Revere and William Dawes to Concord, Massachusetts, in order to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that British troops were coming to arrest them and seize their weapons. Revere was captured but Dawes and Samuel Prescott, who had joined them along the way, escaped and continued toward Concord. Dawes later fell from his horse, but Prescott, who knew the area well enough to navigate at night, made it to Concord in time to warn the Sons of Liberty.

Protests had been taking place since 1765 over increased taxation and other indignities, resulting most notably in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, when colonists boarded three ships in Boston Harbor and threw English tea overboard. The grievances against the imperial authorities were many, but they found their voice in one familiar phrase: "No taxation without representation."

In the early dawn of April 19th, Captain John Parker, commander of the militiamen at Lexington, ordered, "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they want a war let it begin here." And it did -- American Minutemen fired the "shot heard round the world," as immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting the British on Lexington Green and at Concord's Old North Bridge.

A year later, American Patriots formalized their grievances in the Declaration of Independence, and some 3 percent of the colonists took up arms to battle the well equipped British regulars for almost eight years, until victory was won.

In 1787, our Patriot founders codified a Constitution of Government for their hard-won republic. For almost 150 years, our Constitution stood true to its original intent, just as our Founders, and more important, "the people," had willed it. But
constitutional rule of law suffered repeated humiliation during the Great Depression, as FDR used the economic crisis as cover to implement "change," ostensibly at the behest of "hope."

The result was a "Living Constitution" for a Dying Republic.

In the 1930s, FDR launched myriad socialist programs and redefined the role of the central government. He proposed to pay for his folly through excess taxation, proclaiming, "Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle." (Of course, that wasn't an "American principle," but a paraphrase of Karl Marx's Communist maxim, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.")

As more Patriots across the nation take a lesson from our Founders, and make the leap from tactical skirmishes to a unified strategic front, protests will become far more focused and effective.

If I might make a humble suggestion, insisting on the restoration of constitutional rule of law is a worthy unified strategic objective.

While most of my colleagues at the nation's premier think tank, The Heritage Foundation, have yet to be profiled by DHS as anarchists, their organization has done precisely what I believe every Patriot should do.

Though Heritage will remain on the front lines of the war of ideas, producing some of the best policy analysis available anywhere, they are renewing their strategic emphasis on "First Principles."

Their revised statement of purpose notes: "We face an education system that upholds mediocrity in the name of relativism; an ever-expanding and centralized government, unmoored from constitutional limits; judges openly making laws and shaping society based on pop-philosophy rather than serious jurisprudence; and growing confusion over America's legitimate role in the world, made all the more apparent by the fundamental threat posed by radical Islamists. At the root of all these problems is a pervasive doubt about the core principles that define America and ought to inform our politics and policy."

A Conservative

“I would define a conservative, first as one who believes in the Constitution as it is written. That takes care of free speech, freedom of religion, the right to petition the government, the right to keep and bear arms and, in the words of William O. Douglas in one of his saner moments, ‘the right to be let alone.
Second, a conservative believes in small, limited government at every level. Along with this he believes strongly in individual responsibility. That is, a person or a family should take care of itself and turn for help to government only when all other means have been exhausted. It also means that society, before government, has a duty to take care of its own. Government should be a resource of last resort.
Third, a conservative believes taxes should be levied for the purpose of financing the limited responsibilities of government such as providing for the common defense, catching and incarcerating criminals, minting money and filling potholes. Taxes should not be levied for the purpose of redistributing wealth...
One other thing I think a conservative believes is that the parents, not government, are and should be responsible for the upbringing and behavior of their children.” —Lyn Nofziger