New Order?

They [who] seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers…call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.”  Franklin Delano Roosevelt March 15, 1941

In 2007, my son Ryan (standing in the center) and fellow student council members from Mesa High School visited Washington, DC. Yesterday, I happened across this old photo of their visit to the FDR Memorial. 

I find it ironic that the man who presided over such a huge expansion of the US federal government would utter these profound words. Now, seventy four years since President Roosevelt made this somewhat prophetic statement, there is ample evidence that a few people in politically elite circles are trying very hard to consolidate power over our lives into the hands of a very few.

FDR

On this day in 1865: President Lincoln Dies

AbrahamLincoln

On April 15, 1865, “at 7:22 a.m., Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, dies from a bullet wound inflicted the night before by John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer. The president’s death came only six days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.”

Source: History.com

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Source: BrainyQuote

Happy Birthday Thomas Jefferson!

Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was born on this day, April 13th, in 1743, in Shadwell, VA.  He died on Independence Day, July 4, 1826, the same day as John Adams. The two men, at times fellow Patriots, bitter enemies and respectful friends, were the last surviving “founding fathers” who stood up to the British crown and established the United States of America.

A few Thomas Jefferson quotes which I recommend to you, beginning with the famous phrase he penned in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

Enjoy more Thomas Jefferson quotes at BrainyQuote.com.

May we all heed Thomas Jefferson’s advice and walk very far, dreaming of the future, basking in the warm sunshine of freedom to which he dedicated his life!

We Must Protect Freedom from Extinction

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States

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George Washington: Freemen or Slaves

“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army—Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; this is all we can expect—We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our own Country’s Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions—The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny meditated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.”

George Washington, First President of the United States of America.  From “General Orders”, July 2, 1776.