Virtue and Liberty

"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy...  While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader...  If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved.  This will be their great security."   ~ Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

"Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself...  I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited.  There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics:  As government expands, liberty contracts."  ~ Ronald Wilson Reagan   (1911-2004)

"Suspicious of welfare addiction, feeble justice and high taxes, totally committed to preserving it's own national sovereignty, unabashedly Christian in a world part secular and part muslim, suspicious of the Great Global Warming panic, it was unique.  These strengths have been fading for some time ... weakened by the failure of American's conservative party - the Republicans - to fight on the cultural and moral fronts.  They preferred to posture on the world stage.  And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World .... Where now is our last best hope on earth?  ~ Peter Hitchens, Mail Online, UK