Many are so quick to say the system is broken, that the government doesn’t work, or that it is all just going into the garbage. Perhaps Adams saw that such a feeling is not uncommon among those who do not understand the government.
“A free government is a complicated piece of machinery, the nice and exact [...]
“Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of it! If you do not, I shall repent it in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it!”
So,
“Trust No Man Living With Power to Endanger the Public Liberty”
but [...]
“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.”
“But perhaps it might be more exactly true and natural to say, that the king, the aristocracy, and the people, as soon as ever they felt themselves secure in the possession of their power, would begin to abuse it.”
We live in the time of a president who is taking and has taken as much criticism as any in history. What, then, would one who took at least as much in his own time even without the benefit of CNN and FOX? Perhaps he would be a little sympathetic:
“No man who ever held the [...]
As journalists are subpoenaed to release sources to courts in a number of situations from government to sports in recent weeks, Adams may just have objected vehemently.
“But none of the means of information are more sacred, or have been cherished with more tenderness and care by the settlers of America, than the press. Care [...]
No Child Left Behind passed with presumably the best of intentions, but exists with the worst of results. Adams, though, certainly believed that public education is worth the expense on tax payers.
“Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane [...]
Would he have tolerated wire tapping of US citizens even in the name of the war on terrorism? Is it so different from the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798?
“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever”
“Be not intimidated…nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled [...]
What might he think of the military action in Iraq? Would he oppose it?
“Have you ever found in history, one single example of a Nation thoroughly corrupted that was afterwards restored to virtue?… And without virtue, there can be no political liberty….Will you tell me how to prevent riches from becoming the effects of [...]
How might Adams have felt about anti-gay marriage legislation?
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian religion.”
“That the desires of the majority of the people are often for the injustice and inhumanity against the minority is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole [...]