The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.

Our liberties depend on our preserving the integrity of the Constitution and the mechanisms it established to deter tyranny. To the extent we dismantle those safeguards, we imperil our freedoms. When the political class is filled with those who are ideologically committed to certain political ends irrespective of the legality of the means used to achieve them, our system of checks and balances breaks down, which is one reason John Adams warned, 'Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.' November's elections cannot come fast enough.

So that the executive and legislative branches of the national government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every where the state sovereignties are represented; and the national sovereignty, as such, has no representation.

Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!

The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals.. it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government...it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen's protection against the government.

Let us then...under God, trust our cause to our swords.