Keep Us Free

Liberty Quiz Results - Federal Debt

The latest installment of The Liberty Quiz has closed.  The true/false question was:  "The founding fathers considered it the patriotic duty of the next generation to pay off the national debt of the present generation."

72.7% of you voted FALSE.
27.3% of you voted TRUE.

The correct answer is FALSE.  The founding fathers considered debt to be the equivalent of voluntary servitude.  They believed that in the normal course of things, our nation should never function on borrowed funds.

"The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pockets to pay for it would make our country one of the happiest on earth.  Experience during the [revolutionary] war proved this; and I think every man will remember that, under all the privations it obliged him to submit to during that period, he slept sounder and awoke happier than he can do now."  ~Thomas Jefferson

The founders understood that extraordinary circumstances sometimes warranted the use of debt, but they were emphatic that the wars, economic problems, and debts of one generation should be paid for by the generation that incurred them.  They wanted the rising generation to be genuinely free - both politically and economically.  And they felt that the passing on of federal debt from one generation to the next would be a means of imposing on the next generation the curse of taxation without representation - the very thing the founders freed us from.  The paying off of debt by the generation in which it was incurred happened from our founding up until this current generation.

The United States federal debt for 2006 was $8,366,862,634,494.  Thanks to our current out-of-control government, many generations will be taxed without representation.  And both Republicans and Democrats want to implement new multi-billion dollar programs to add to this debt.

Quiz Results - Office for Profit

Last weeks Liberty Quiz asked the question, "Who said the following: 'I am apprehensive, therefore, perhaps too apprehensive, that the government of these states may in future times end in monarchy.  But this catastrophe, I think, may be long delayed, if in our proposed system we do not sow the seeds of contention, faction, and tumult, by making our posts of honor places of profit.'"

55.6% chose "Benjamin Franklin"
11.1% chose "nobody"
33.3% chose "Samuel Adams"

The correct answer is Benjamin Franklin.

And it appears that his apprehension was well-founded.  We creep ever closer to becoming a socialist monarchy because our politicians have become masters of reaping personal benefit from public office.

Be sure to check out the new quiz.

Quiz Results - Entangling Alliances

The second Liberty Quiz has closed.  The question was:  "America's founding fathers favored a foreign policy that kept our country free from alliances with other countries."

81% of you answered TRUE.
19% of you answered FALSE.

The correct answer is TRUE.  Our founding fathers did indeed favor a foreign policy of separatism, not to be confused with isolationism.

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible...Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?  Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?"  ~George Washington

"Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [the American republic's] heart be, her benedictions, and her prayers be.  But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.  She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.  She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.  She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.  She well knows that by once enlisting under foreign banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.  The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force...She might become the dictatress of the world.  She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit..."  ~John Quincy Adams

Be sure to check out the new quiz.