There Is Tyranny

clipped from jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. (Back then!) When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality. Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.