As election nears, the chasm between the American Founders and Barack Obama widens. Here’s what Thomas Jefferson – principal author of The Declaration of Independence, America’s third president and in many respects its first libertarian conservative chief executive – said in an 1816 letter about taxation and the taking of wealth from those who earned it to give to those who didn’t:
“To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association — the guarantee to every one of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”
I have no doubt but that Jefferson, who of his National Democratic defeat of the Federalists in 1801, also said “God forbid that we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion,” will have something like this to say in a year or so should there be an Obama administration:
“Our fellow citizens have been led hoodwinked from their principles by a most extraordinary combination of circumstances. But the band is removed, and they now see for themselves.”
That is, of course, assuming that a year into the Obama reign he has not succeeded with the assistance of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic majority in Congress in making America into a repressive North American version of Hugo Chavez’ Venzuelan workers paradise. Such criticism will not be allowed in that case.
HT: The Heritage Foundation’s The Foundry blog.
