Reflections on John Adams and Tax Day (2008)

And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that the people preserve the spirit of resistance? The remedy is to set them [the rulers] right as to the facts….  The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

—Thomas Jefferson

The full quote from Mr. Jefferson can be found in a number of places on the Web, but be advised as you fire up your browser: Homeland Security will probably be looking over your shoulder. Strange how far we’ve gone down Tyranny Road without so much as a peep from the general nonlibertarian population—perhaps such lack of resistance is explained by another Jeffersonian passage:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Which, as we all know, is from the Declaration of Independence. Continue reading →