Quotations for Presidents Day February 20, 2012
Source: a selection from the compilation of quotations about "Presidents, Kings, Tyrants, & Despots" from the Online Library of Liberty Collection
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Jefferson feared that it would only be
a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated
into a form of “elective despotism” (1785)
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Because Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) thought it would be only a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated into an “elective despotism,” he warned that citizens should act now in order to make sure that “the wolf [was kept] out of the fold”:
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Quotations on Presidents, Kings, Tyrants, and Despots:
- (19 February, 2012) Viscount Bryce on how the President in wartime becomes “a sort of dictator” (1888)
- (2 January, 2012) Tocqueville on the “New Despotism” (1837)
- (31 October, 2011) John Adams on how absolute power intoxicates those who excercise that power (1814)
- (14 June, 2010) Tocqueville on the form of despotism the government would assume in democratic America (1840)
- (15 March, 2010) Jefferson on how Congress misuses the inter-state commerce and general welfare clauses to promote the centralization of power (1825)
- (7 December, 2009) Jefferson feared that it would only be a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated into a form of “elective despotism” (1785)
- (25 February, 2008) George Washington warns that the knee jerk reaction of citizens to problems is to seek a solution in the creation of a “new monarch”(1786)
- (21 February, 2007) George Washington warns the nation in his Farewell Address, that love of power will tend to create a real despotism in America unless proper checks and balances are maintained to limit government power (1796)
- (19 December, 2005) Thomas Jefferson opposed vehemently the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798 which granted the President enormous powers showing that the government had become a tyranny which desired to govern with "a rod of iron" (1798)
- (2 November, 2004) James Bryce believed that the Founders intended that the American President would be “a reduced and improved copy of the English king” (1885)