Join the Revolution

Many of our campaign materials say “Join the Revolution” and have Revolutionary War imagery on them. The reason for this is that we want to restore the same sort of government that the Founding Fathers of the United States wanted. We’d like citizens today to start thinking like the free people that they were at the time of the Revolutionary War.

Here are a few quotes from the Founding Fathers to help modern citizens understand the sort of government they wanted for the United States:

Thomas Jefferson

“A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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.” -Thomas Jefferson

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” -Thomas Jefferson

“We, I hope, shall adhere to our republican government and keep it to its original principles by narrowly watching it.” – Thomas Jefferson

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” -Thomas Jefferson

“Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both always in proportion as it is free.” -Thomas Jefferson

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds, we’ll have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for another till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” -Thomas Jefferson

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” -Thomas Jefferson

“It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.” -Thomas Jefferson

“No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.” -Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Franklin

“It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.” -Benjamin Franklin

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. Sell not liberty to purchase power.” -Benjamin Franklin

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Benjamin Franklin

George Washington

“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered deeply, finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” -George Washington

“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” -George Washington

We, and many other people, want to start a new revolution that restores the government of Iowa and of the United States back to the small, limited government that predominated for most of our nation’s history.