When America was great
Exclusive: Joseph Farah gets help with his column from eminently reliable sources

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Posted: February 14, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

By Joseph Farah
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I'm not going to talk about Barack Obama today.

I'm not going to say a word about Nancy Pelosi.

I'm not going to mention the name Harry Reid.

I'm not going to tell you what I think of the so-called "stimulus package" or where I think they should shove it.

I'm not going to tell you about the threat the so-called "Fairness Doctrine" poses to our First Amendment and free speech in this country.

I'm not going to warn you about the hazards of government redistribution of wealth.

I'm not going to tell you what I think of the crooks, charlatans and con artists being appointed to major positions of power in Washington.

I'm not going to say where I think the insanity in Washington is leading us all.

I'm not going to tell you why government's notions about solving a debt crisis by increasing debt won't work.

I'm not going to tell you about the nature of government and the dangers of entrusting it with too much authority.

I'm not going to tell you what I think we should do with the parasites in the nation's capital and the others seduced into dependency by those vermin.

Instead, what I'm going to give you today is some wisdom.

It's not my own wisdom.

It's the wisdom and insight of some of our prominent Founding Fathers – those who left us with the legacy of liberty – if only we were bright enough to keep it.

"Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
– John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814

"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; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity and happiness require it."
– John Adams, "Thoughts on Government," 1776

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
– Benjamin Franklin, "On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor," November 1766
"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years."
– Thomas Jefferson, September 6, 1789

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories."
– Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
– Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824

And that's my column for a Saturday morning – or, should I say, "our" column.