Learn from our Founding Fathers
Commentary by Tom Daniels

This week, it occurred to me that words from the past would best serve us.

As you read each quote think about how it would apply to the state of our nation today. The best gift of the past is that it gives us the opportunity to learn from it. The first time something happens it can be considered a mistake, but to do the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is considered insanity or just plain stupid.

“A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.” — Theodore Roosevelt
“What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty...Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.” — Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.

For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero, from a speech to the Roman Senate.

“The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.” — Theodore Roosevelt

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” — Thomas Jefferson

“The longer deterrence succeeds, the more difficult it is to demonstrate what made it work.”
— Henry Kissinger

“Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.”
— James Madison

“Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty, teeth and keystone under independence. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable. The very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”
— George Washington, in a speech to Congress, Jan. 7, 1790.

“It’s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, ‘We based all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government.’ This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves.”
— Ronald Reagan.

Tom Daniels is a sophomore education major from Fort Worth. He can be contacted at (b.t.daniels@student.tcu.edu).

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