Pick Your Favorite Quote: Old Hickory or the Bible

Here are two interesting quotes.

The first is from the New International Version of the Bible, and it’s been circulating among right wingers over email. Have fun with it.

The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left.

The second quote – and this one is serious – is from President Andrew Jackson’s remarkable farewell address in March of 1837. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have leaders who still cherished the Constitution and understood the danger of excessive government?

It is well known that there have always been those amongst us who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government, and experience would seem to indicate that there is a tendency on the part of this Government to overstep the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitution. …There is, perhaps, no one of the powers conferred on the Federal Government so liable to abuse as the taxing power. …Congress has no right under the Constitution to take money from the people unless it is required to execute some one of the specific powers intrusted to the Government; and if they raise more than is necessary for such purposes, it is an abuse of the power of taxation, and unjust and oppressive. …Plain as these principles appear to be, you will yet find there is a constant effort to induce the General Government to go beyond the limits of its taxing power and to impose unnecessary burdens upon the people. …There is but one safe rule, and that is to confine the General Government rigidly within the sphere of its appropriate duties. It has no power to raise a revenue or impose taxes except for the purposes enumerated in the Constitution, and if its income is found to exceed these wants it should be forthwith reduced and the burden of the people so far lightened.