With the reading and research I'm doing on the founding of this country, I stumbled across this quote. I'm finding many parallels.
If the liberties of America are ever completely ruined, of which in my opinion there is now the utmost danger, it will in all probability be the consequence of a mistaken notion of prudence, which leads men to acquiesce in measures of the most destructive tendency for the sake of present ease.
When designs are formed to raze the very foundation of a free government, those few who are to erect their grandure and fortunes upon the general ruin, will employ every art to sooth the devoted people into a state of indolence, inattention and security…
They are alarmed at nothing so much, as attempts to awaken the people to jealousy and watchfulness; and it has been a game played over and over again, to hold up the men who would rouse their fellow citizens and countrymen to a sense of their real danger, and spirit them to the most zealous activity in the use of all proper means for the preservation of the public liberty, as ‘pretended patriots,’ ‘intemperate politicians,’ rash, hot-headed men, Incendiaries, wretched desperadoes, who, as was said of the best of men, would turn the world upside down, or have done it already.
~ Samuel Adams
1771 Boston Gazette essay
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