A President's Day Meditation

Here are some quotes from the individuals we recognize today along with some commentary from yours truly…

George Washington

1) Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

Sounds like our first president just explained the Patriot Act and the FISA “compromise.”

2) Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Oh, and speaking of “the devil,” I actually thought this was a good column by MoDo about “Deadeye Dick.”

3) Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

And in that vein, here once more is the report of Lawrence O’Donnell’s “smackdown” of Bushco hack Marc Thiessen (who never does answer O’Donnell’s question about Bushco, by the way, after Thiessen makes that scurrilous charge that Obama is making us “less safe” – class act by Joe Scar to hoot down O’Donnell and cut his mic).

4) The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

I guess there are a lot of directions I could go with this one, but when I think of “burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments,” I think of TARP (full disclosure: I supported TARP originally because I thought it would be accompanied by legislation allowing “underwater” mortgage holders to restructure their principal amounts so they could keep their homes…silly me).

And as noted here, Dem Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio is sponsoring legislation that would “impose a 50 percent tax on all bonuses — both cash and stock pay-outs — in excess of $25,000 given to executives at firms that received taxpayer-funded assistance through the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008” (another great idea likely to die an unnatural death due to the filibuster).

General Washington also said some stuff about “God and guns” that I’ll leave to posterity for now.

Abraham Lincoln

1) Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

Would that our elected officials had remembered that before they voted for this (or this).

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

Oh, and that reminds me – any idea of what those “Tea Party” nutballs are up to these days (here)?

3) Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

We already knew what our first president would have thought of the Patriot Act and the FISA “compromise.” Now we know what our sixteenth would have thought also.

4) I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

Interesting (Was Lincoln a closet supporter of PETA? Just kidding). And I’m just noting this as long as the New York Times just wrote that magazine piece about our founding fathers supposedly embracing only Christianity…sounds like it wasn’t a sticking point to Honest Abe.

And finally, here’s a bonus…

5) That, “all men are created equal” is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help save it. If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot, than surrender it. “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”

File this under “be careful what you wish for,” however noble a sentiment it may be.