What is the Direction of American Democracy?

While I have never identified with the libertarians, I’ve always believed in minimizing Government intervention. During this time of unprecedented involvement by our Federal Government, it’s useful to reflect on some pertinent quotes on the subject from influential Americans over the last 200 years:

“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.”
— Benjamin Franklin, 1776

“We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute.”
— Thomas Paine, 1785

“Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated.”
— Thomas Jefferson, 1787

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.”
— James Madison, 1792

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
— James Madison, 1794

“A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, 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, 1801

“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 1854

“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.”
— Grover Cleveland, 1875

“Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent.”
— Louis Brandeis, 1921

“The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it’s good-by to the Bill of Rights.”
— H.L. Mencken, 1932

“If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that, if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that too.”
— William Somerset Maughan, 1941