In his first Inaugural Adress on March 4, 1801 Thomas Jefferson said that a “wise and frugal government…shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”
How would Thomas Jefferson feel about some of Barack Obama’s recent promises (bribes) offered to the electorate in 2008? What would he think of a man who openly declares that he will take oil companies’ profits, and redistribute those profits to those who didn’t earn them?
Had our government left us free to regulate our own pursuits of industry and improvement we would not be paying $4.00 per gallon for gas. We wouldn’t be funding our enemies. We would be extracting our own resources from our land. We would have more nuclear power plants and cheaper electricity. Don’t people get it.
Could Thomas Jefferson have contemplated what would become of the government he fought so hard to establish?
Update 10/28/08: Now that Barack Obama is openly promising to redistribute the wealth, this post has even more meaning. Socialism is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Not by a long shot.
