Thoughts on Independence Day, Part 2

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. — GEORGE WASHINGTON

The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. — JOHN ADAMS

Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things. — ALEXANDER HAMILTON

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one. — ALEXANDER HAMILTON (NOTE: I really don’t like those “TWEET THIS” features, but in this case… TWEET THIS QUOTE!!!!)

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them. — THOMAS JEFFERSON

“The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that, too they would never forget.” ― David McCullough, 1776