Principle 2

“Rights are either Godgiven as part of the Divine Plan, or they are granted by government as part of the political plan. Reason, necessity, tradition and religious convictions all lead me to accept the divine origin of these rights. If we accept the premise that human rights are granted by government, then we must be willing to accept the corollary that they can be denied by government. I, for one, shall never accept that premise.” – Ezra Taft Benson, “The Proper Role of Government”

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.” – Frederick Bastiat, 1850, The Law

God has given man freedoms that government should protect, NOT infringe upon.

Destruction of individual rights in the name of security and welfare is a breach of the government’s contract with “the people”, yet this happens regularly by our current Federal Government. In George Washington’s day as President there were 350 employees of the Federal Government serving about 3 million people, with one person serving 8,600 people (one person serves 107 people today).

By today’s standards Washington should have added 27,650 more federal employees to his 350. These figures are atrocious, as are the 650+ official Federal Government Agencies in existence.

Government cannot create wealth!

Our national debt is beyond recoverable, yet government agents continue to borrow against our children’s and grandchildren’s future. Today a child born in this country has $500,000 in taxes that they will never get a benefit from. This is immoral, and the Founders warned against it.

“I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.” – Thomas Jefferson

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Kercheval

“The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pocket to pay for it, would make of our country one of the happiest upon earth. Experience during the war proved this; as I think every man will remember that under all the privations it obliged him to submit to during that period he slept sounder, and awaked happier than he can do now.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to Alexander Donald, July 28, 1787. — The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 11, p. 633 (1955).

“But what madness must it be to run in debt for these superfluities? We are offered by the terms of this sale, six months’ credit; and that, perhaps, has induced some of us to attend it, because we cannot spare the ready money, and hope now to be fine without it. But, ah, think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty. If you cannot pay at the time, you will be ashamed to see your creditor; you will be in fear when you speak to him; you will make poor, pitiful, sneaking excuses, and, by degrees, come to lose your veracity, and sink into base, downright lying; for The second vice is lying, the first is running in debt” – The Works of Benjamin Franklin. Edited by Jared Sparks. Vol. 2. (Boston, 1836), 2:92-103.

We must continue to demand a free-market economy with a minimum set of government regulations

“We should avoid. . . the depreciation of our currency; but I conceive this end would be answered, as far as might be necessary, by stipulating that all money payments should be made in gold and silver, being the common medium of commerce among nations.” – George Washington

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson

“We are overdone with banking institutions, which have banished the precious metals, and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium. . . These have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness. . . [These] are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied.” – Bergh, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 12:337-38