3 – “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

4 – And finally “If a Central Bank is ever created in America - Through Inflation and Deflation it will rob the people.” Thomas Jefferson

The point of this entry is to remind myself that freedom isn’t free and that the best and the brightest of our Founding Father’s warned us 240 years ago not to be complacent about our finances or our liberties. So in re-reading the accumulated works of the great man I am struck with the central fact that we, as a nation, have wandered so far from his ideals as to not be recognizable by him should he pass this way again.

Take the first quote: That “good government” should be “frugal” and “wise” and not steal from one class of people in order to give to another. If that be so then what we have that passes as our government today is neither wise nor frugal and, by extension then, is not “good government”.

His second quote is eerily coming true today. Are not the appointed “czars” of this industry and that not tyranny? Have we not succumbed, under the aegis of security, to the storm trooper mentality of a Homeland Security answerable to no one?

Quote #3: Is not Health Care, OSHA, FEMA, and all the other alphabet soup agencies, including the Fed and Treasury, the czars mentioned above, etc, etc, a thinly veiled “wasting” of our labors and a transition of power away from the people?

That final quote #4 is not directly attributable to Jefferson but, by constant recitation, it is credited to him. And I have to ask myself – with all this benign over site by my government, do I really feel richer, safer and freer?

Do you?