If They Could Speak Today and We Would Listen...

The men referred to as the “founding fathers” of our country expressed opinions and ideas, I believe, worthy of consideration for this generation’s current affairs nationally and internationally.
In recent political debate many opinions have been bantered about concerning our defensive posture as a nation.
In The Writings of George Washington by Jared Sparks (1837) Vol. 12, page 38, in A Speech to Both Houses of Congress, dated Dec. 30, 1793, George Washington had following advice to the leaders of the young nation:
“I cannot recommend to your notice measures for the fulfillment of our duties to the rest of the world without again pressing upon you the necessity of placing ourselves in a condition of complete defense and of exacting from them the fulfillment of their duties towards us.
The United States ought not to indulge a persuasion that contrary to the order of human events they will for ever keep at a distance those painful appeals to arms with which the history of every other nation abounds. There is a rank due to the United States among nations which will be withheld if not absolutely lost by the reputation of weakness. If we desire to avoid insult we must be able to repel it if we desire to secure peace one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity it must be known that we are at all times ready for war.”
Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on Virginia, Vol. 8, p. 362, had this to say about the potential for abuse of government:
“Nor should our Assembly be deluded by the integrality of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of people; when they will purchase the voices of and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on each side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
Jefferson also wrote in a letter written from Monticello on March 6, 1822 to Jedediah Morse, a New England pastor, and “Father of American
Geography”: “The present is a case where, if ever, we are to guard against ourselves; not against ourselves as we are, but as we may be; for who can now imagine what we may become under circumstances not now imaginable?”
Jefferson wrote to Moses Robinson, Revolutionary War soldier, Chief Justice of Vermont Supreme Court, and Governor of Vermont, on Mar. 23, 1801: “I sincerely wish with you, we could see our government so secured as to depend less on the character of the person in whose hands it is trusted. Bad men will sometimes get in (Presidency), and with such an immense patronage, may make great progress in corrupting the public mind and principles. This is a subject with which wisdom and patriotism should be occupied.”
Finally, some thoughts from a newspaper of the time:
An article in the Daily Advertiser of New York printed on September 24, 1787, titled “A Revolution Effected by Good Sense and Deliberation,” stated:
“Perhaps the greatest, if not the only difficulty, which will arise against the adoption of this New Federal System of Government, will be made by those ambitious citizens, in the different States, who either now are in power, or who will practice their political wiles on the ignorant and unsuspicious part of the people, in order to obtain their own private purposes. It is a lamentable consideration, that men of this stamp too frequently, by the folly and blindness of the people, are put in the exercise of such offices as give them a very dangerous degree of influence – Hence the social compact is often violated, and sometimes dissolved.”
To borrow a Bible directive from Revelation 3:22 -”He that hath an ear, let him hear…