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FFQF: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Debt

Everyone knows the famous saying by Ben Franklin, that the only things that are certain in life are death and taxes. Which one is worse? Heh.

(Hat tip: Patriot Humor)

My FFQF today comes from an email I recently received from Wallbuilders, David Barton’s group. As usual, his stuff is choc-full of quotations from the Founding Fathers. The email and the quotations are so good, I would like to share it all with my readers today. “JOIN A TEA PARTY TODAY!”

Next week there will be thousands of TEA parties (Taxed Enough Already) across the nation. In a relatively short period of time, we have seen an explosive increase in government spending and national debt.

Previous generations avoided these unhealthy practices, being guided by wise political leaders who understood the blessings of frugality and the dangers of debt.

For example, Alexander Hamilton — America’s first Secretary of the Treasury and also a signer of the Constitution — wisely declared:

Allow a government to decline paying its debts and you overthrow all public morality — you unhinge all the principles that preserve the limits of free constitutions.

Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibly the incurring of any new debt.

George Washington similarly warned:

Avoid occasions of expense… and avoid likewise the accumulation of debt not only by shunning occasions of expense but by vigorous exertions to discharge the debts, not throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.

Perhaps no Founding Father was as forthright on this topic as Thomas Jefferson:

If the debt should be swelled to a formidable size, we shall be committed to the career of debt, corruption, and rottenness. . . . The discharge of the debt, therefore, is vital to the destinies of our government.

The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. I. . . place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.

Jefferson even wisely foresaw where America generally finds itself today:

I am not among those who fear the people… [A]nd to preserve their independence we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy [frugality] and liberty, or profusion [excess spending] and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, our people must come to labor sixteen hours in twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these hours to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread. The [forerunner] of this is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.

Millions of citizens, following the example of America’s early residents, have finally decided to draw a line and raise their voice against the government’s exorbitant spending and exploding debt. On April 15, citizens at more than 1,000 locations across the country will be sponsoring TEA parties.

If you want to participate with your fellow citizens, go to http://www.teapartyday.com/ to find a location near you.

[*] You may notice that Hamilton is quoted here as advocating the elimination, and not the accumulation, of public debt here. Indeed, there are many, many such statement throughout Hamilton’s writings. This goes directly against what we have been taught for decades in our history textbooks, and what many people are being led to believe through Thomas DiLorenzo’s writings on Hamilton.

I have (finally) posted the second installment of my critical examination of DiLorenzo’s claims, here.

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