The Founders On Conservatism

The quotes below were taken from: www.marklevinshow.com
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• "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• "Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• "[T]he powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its
  jurisdiction."
  -- James Madison, Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention [June 6, 1788]

• ...[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
  --James Madison

• "...the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
  -- Benjamin Franklin

• "No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous."
  -- Benjamin Franklin, Principles of Trade, 1774

• "Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

• "Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."
  -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

• "They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
  --Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

• "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it."
  -- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 4, September 11, 1777

• "The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."
  -- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787

• "To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace."
  -- George Washington, First Annual Message, January 8, 1790

• "One single object. . . [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Edward Livingston, March 25, 1825

• "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

• "To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

• " 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."
  -- Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1776

• "The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society."
  -- Thomas Jefferson

• "[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights."
  -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia [1782]

George Will On Senator McCain

The column below was taken from IndyStar.com, where it appeared on January 20, 2008.
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In 2004, one of John McCain's closest associates, John Weaver, spoke to John Kerry about the possibility of McCain running as Kerry's vice presidential running mate. In "No Excuses," Bob Shrum's memoir of his role in numerous presidential campaigns, including Kerry's, Shrum writes that Weaver assured Kerry that "McCain was serious about the possibility of teaming up with him," and Kerry approached McCain. He, however, was more serious about seeking the 2008 Republican nomination.

But was it unreasonable for Kerry to think McCain might be comfortable on a Democratic ticket? Not really.

In ABC's New Hampshire debate, McCain said: "Why shouldn't we be able to reimport drugs from Canada?" A conservative's answer is:

That amounts to importing Canada's price controls, a large step toward a system in which some medicines would be inexpensive but many others -- new pain-relieving, life-extending pharmaceuticals -- would be unavailable. Setting drug prices by government fiat rather than market forces results in huge reductions of funding for research and development of new drugs. McCain's evident aim is to reduce pharmaceutical companies' profits. But if all those profits were subtracted from the nation's health care bill, the pharmaceutical component of that bill would be reduced only from 10 percent to 8 percent -- and innovation would stop, taking a terrible toll in unnecessary suffering and premature death. When McCain explains that trade-off to voters, he will actually have engaged in straight talk.

There are decent, intelligent people who believe that equity or efficiency or both are often served by government setting prices. In America, such people are called Democrats.

Because McCain is a "maverick" -- the media encomium reserved for Republicans who reject important Republican principles -- he would be a conciliatory president. He has indeed worked with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform, with Russ Feingold on restricting political speech (McCain-Feingold) and with Kennedy and John Edwards -- a trial lawyer drawn to an enlargement of opportunities for litigation -- on the "patients' bill of rights."

McCain is, however, an unlikely conciliator because he is quick to denigrate the motives, and hence the characters, of those who oppose him. He promiscuously accuses others of "corruption," the ubiquity of which he says justifies McCain-Feingold's expansive government regulation of the quantity, timing and content of campaign speech.

McCain says he would nominate Supreme Court justices similar to Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito. But how likely is he to nominate jurists who resemble those four: They consider his signature achievement constitutionally dubious.

When the Supreme Court upheld McCain-Feingold 5-4, Scalia and Thomas were in the minority. That was before Alito replaced Sandra Day O'Connor, who was in the majority. Two years later, McCain filed his own brief supporting federal suppression of a right-to-life group's issue advertisement in Wisconsin because it mentioned a candidate for federal office during the McCain-Feingold blackout period prior to an election. The court ruled 5-4 against McCain's position, with Alito in the majority.

In the New Hampshire debate, McCain asserted that corruption is the reason drugs currently cannot be reimported from Canada. The reason is "the power of the pharmaceutical companies." When Mitt Romney interjected, "Don't turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys," McCain replied, "Well, they are."

There is a place in American politics for moralizers who think in such Manichaean simplicities. That place is in the Democratic Party, where people who talk like McCain are considered not mavericks but mainstream.

Republicans are supposed to eschew demagogic aspersions concerning complicated economic matters. But applause greets faux "straight talk" that brands as "bad" the industry responsible for the facts that polio is no longer a scourge, that childhood leukemia is no longer a death sentence, that depression and other mental illnesses are treatable diseases, that the rate of heart attacks and heart failures has been cut more than in half in 50 years.

When McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced legislation empowering Congress to comprehensively regulate U.S. industries' emissions of greenhouse gases in order to "prevent catastrophic global warming," they co-authored an op-ed column that radiated McCainian intolerance of disagreement. It said that a U.N. panel's report "puts the final nail in denial's coffin about the problem of global warming." Concerning the question of whether human activity is causing catastrophic warming, they said, "the debate has ended."

Interesting, is it not, that no one considers it necessary to insist that "the debate has ended" about whether the Earth is round. People insist that a debate stop only when they are afraid of what might be learned if it continues.

Will is an ABC commentator and Washington Post columnist. Contact him at georgewill@washpost.com

DOJ Brief In DC Gun Case A Disaster For Gun Rights

It was expected that the Department of Justice would file a brief regarding the pending DC gun ban case before the US Supreme Court. The brief was filed on January 12, and came out of the office of Paul Clement, US Solicitor General.

While a section of the brief vigorously supports the individual right view of the Second Amendment, another section titled “Congress Has Authority To Prohibit Particular Types Of Firearms, Such As Machineguns” contains language that is nothing short of a disaster for gun rights advocates. Here is a sentence from the section: “Such a categorical approach would cast doubt on the constitutionality of the current federal machinegun ban, as well as on Congress’s general authority to protect the public safety by identifying and proscribing particularly dangerous weapons.”

It is hard to imagine what kind of firearm would be beyond the reach of Congress to ban, in the name of public safety, if the Court were to adopt the view of the Solicitor General.

Rather than advancing gun rights, the brief has set down the ground rules under which gun-banning politicians will boldly proclaim that according to the "pro-Second" Amendment Administration of President Bush, they can ban or regulate any firearm deemed a threat to public safety.

It is now likely that the District will concede that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to firearms, but will quote the brief of the Solicitor General to support the District’s ban on handguns, because the District believes handguns pose public safety dangers.

It is true that for years, politicians, mostly Democrats, have always appealed to public safety whenever they wanted to advance some gun control scheme, but now with the imprimatur of a “pro-gun” Republican administration, those Democratic politicians have gained some legitimacy.