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June 30, 2016 by Jeff (ILoveCapitalism)

This quote is brilliant:

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered…. I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.

It’s usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson. It pops up on well-meaning Internet sites which favor liberty and sound money. Recent example here.

Unfortunately, Jefferson scholars say it’s a fake.

The first part of the quotation…has not been found anywhere in Thomas Jefferson’s writings…the words “inflation” and “deflation” are not documented until after Jefferson’s lifetime.

[The second and third parts are loose paraphrases of Jefferson…] The first known occurrence in print of the spurious first part with the two other quotations is in 1948…

Chalk it up to “Things that Jefferson should and probably would say, if he could see us now.” And always Google your quotes from dead people; especially if they’re too good to be true.

Addendum: Even though the Community Conservatives article linked above used a fake Jefferson quote, it had a number of other good things to say. For just one, it is the first place where I have seen the phrase “political/financial complex” to describe the elites who (mostly) rule us today.

I myself use (and I had the experience of coining) the phrase “Big Government / Big Banking complex.” Saying “political/financial complex” conveys the same idea – in fewer words. (But the same number of syllables. Odd.)

UPDATE and shifting topic, since this is sort of a Random Thoughts post: Here’s anti-Brexit harpie Christiane Amanpour trying to play ‘gotcha’ with Daniel Hannan of the pro-Brexit campaign, for nine minutes.

It’s a bit tragic. Hannan is clearly telling the truth and making good points. But Amanpour’s thinking is so cliched, so stuck, so “canalized” on her You Are All Racists narrative, that she can hardly let him talk, and ends up interviewing herself. She must have felt that she was scoring points on Hannan; others of us shake our heads at her foolishness and incompetence.

Filed Under: Big Government Follies, Freedom, Great Americans, Media Bias Tagged With: big banking, Big Government Follies, brexit, christiane amanpour, danial hannan, false quotes, media bias, political/financial complex, thomas jefferson

Food for thought

May 26, 2013 by Jeff (ILoveCapitalism)

Happy Memorial Day, er, weekend! And a big Thank You to GP commenter heliotrope for the following, which he posted as part of a longer comment, some ten days ago. I must warn that it’s not exactly cheery; but neither is the state of America these days.

In an environment of enabling corruption, these words are tested:

“Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
― Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome

“A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”
― Edmund Burke

“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.”
― Aristophanes, Plutus

“Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

“Why should he watch the hideous corruption of his soul?”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

Obama, Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder have made “not knowing” an art form. They learn of bad things by an occasional glance at the TV where the news is reporting it. That is the modus operandi of corruption. Unlike Ghandi, their minds are open to walking through by all manner of dirty feet, so long as there is no record kept or chain of evidence linking to them.

Filed Under: Democratic Scandals, Government Accountability & Ethics, History, Random Thoughts, We The People Tagged With: Democratic scandals, edmund burke, Hillary Clinton, mahatma gandhi, Obama, quotes, tacitus, thomas jefferson

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