John Adams: Founding Father and American Hero
John Adams’ courage, intellect, wisdom, and honesty are legendary. He willingly sacrificed his own comfort and desires in order to help shape the great American legacy of liberty. As his birthday is on October 30, this week is a good time to learn a little about this great statesman and patriot. Here is a 90 second introduction to an American hero.
"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned, and bought it for us, at the expence of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.
"And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have right from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know -- but besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to that most dreaded, and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.
"Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents and trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust is insidiously betray'd, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority, that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys and trustees. And the preservation of the means of knowledge, among the lowest ranks, is of more importance to the public, than all the property of all the rich men in the country." ~ John Adams
