What was our Country founded upon? The ideal of TRUE LIBERTY.
100% correct.
But what makes up TRUE LIBERTY? That is the next logical question.
Our famous founders and other noted statesmen of history so often quoted generally agreed on one global concept regarding the preservation of Liberty. It is Virtue.
"No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and . . . . their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice . . . . These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government."
Thomas Jefferson
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
Benjamin Franklin
"Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppresive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people."
George Washington
"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."
James Madison
"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
Patrick Henry
"[I]t is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue."
John Adams
"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man."
Samuel Adams
"Without virtue there can be no liberty."
Benjamin Rush
"What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."
Edmund Burke
The point of the great American Experiment isn't Liberty, but VIRTUOUS Liberty! I'm a fan of that. Promoting or accepting gay marriage is not a virtuous pursuit. Banning gay marriage...Sure, it restricts liberty, but it does not restrict Virtuous Liberty. Virtuous Liberty encompasses the things that are good, right, just, moral and pure by definition. Is gay marriage good, right, just, moral and pure? (the real question of the day). Our answer is linked to and dependent on our worldview, which vary and can be debated.
