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Originally posted by whiteraven
One thing that needs to be pointed out is that in a free society we get to see warts and all.
For the most part that is.
Our friends blush at some of the history and our enemies smear us with some of our history.
The history of the not so free world is not up for grabs in the same way.
Now I will finish reading the thread.
(PS)
Above said in a London Banker Accent....
[edit on 8-4-2010 by whiteraven]
"Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless... the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is [now] while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion."-- Thomas Jefferson
"...And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have not time to think, no means of calling the mismanager's to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers..." (Thomas Jefferson) THE MAKING OF AMERICA, p. 395