We've all heard sayings about people "turning over in their grave" if they could see what is happening. I really believe that if our former Presidents could see what's going on in our country right now, they would be sick. Some of them would say that it's the beginning of the end - an end that they predicted. Others would say that it's time for the common people to take matters into their own hands before everything they worked for is irretrievably lost.
I know many people here at the Kos have been accused of being anti-democracy or unpatriotic or even worse. I guess my whole point in this brief diary is to say that if that's true, we are in really good company. There are thousands of predictions and warnings about the fate of America - from former Presidents and other wise persons. I picked these out because to me, they go to the heart of the matter. If you have any others, please feel free to add to the list
"No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence."
George Washington
"The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure."
George Washington
"My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth."
George Washington
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
John Adams
"Power always thinks... that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws."
John Adams
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." Thomas Jefferson
"Nations of eternal war expend all their energies... in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people."
Thomas Jefferson
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
James Madison
"The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war."
James Madison
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries."
James Madison
"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
James Madison
"Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
James Madison
"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."
John Quincy Adams
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln
"Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."
Abraham Lincoln
"What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself."
Abraham Lincoln
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
Abraham Lincoln
"I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something."
Woodrow Wilson
"The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy."
Woodrow Wilson
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power."
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security."
Dwight D. Eisenhower