Although times change people and their motivations do not. We seem to be in a world where large corporations, the military and big government are becoming more powerful while ordinary people are becoming less empowered. Much of our acceptance is that we enjoy peace and are distracted in our personal economic battles to maximize our resources and get the most for our dollar. In my lifetime I have witnessed the growth of all these large entities, while many Americans now find themselves battling over a smaller and smaller piece of the economic pie leftovers. If we are to learn anything from the past it is that we are not alone in our concerns and that our actions or inaction have great consequences. A few quotes--hopefully to remind us that complacency and comfort may come at a very high price if we are not vigilant in our efforts to protect personal freedom.
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.” – Abraham Lincoln, from a November 21, 1864 letter to Colonel William F. Elkins
“By this means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.” – Lord John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Consequences of Peace”
“I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by it’s system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world… no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men.” – Woodrow Wilson
“The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debts.” – Henry Ford
“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, in his book “Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went”, 1975
“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” – Benjamin Disraeli, First Prime Minister of Britain
“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will one day reach himself.” – Thomas Paine
“If you’re in a card game and you can’t figure out who the patsy is, you’re it.” – Warren Buffett
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1755
“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.” – James Madison
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