“The weak in mind or body require guidance, support and protection; they must obey and work for those who protect and guide them—they have a natural right to guardians, committees, teachers or masters. Nature has made them slaves, all that law and government can do, is to regulate, modify and mitigate their slavery.”

— George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 178

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George Fitzhugh 52

American activist 1806–1881

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“We conclude that about nineteen out of every twenty individuals have ‘a natural and inalienable right’ to be taken care of and protected; to have guardians, trustees, husbands, or masters; in other words, they have the natural and inalienable right to be slaves.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), pp. 102-103

“Laws are not manufactured. They are not imposed. They are rules of action existing from everlasting to everlasting. He who resists them, resists himself. He commits suicide. The nature of man requires sovereignty. Government must govern. To obey is life. To disobey is death. Organized government is the expression of the life of the commonwealth. Into your hands is entrusted the grave responsibility of its protection and perpetuation.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Law and Order (1920)

“Men who long for freedom begin the attempt to obtain it by entreating their masters to be kind enough to protect them by modifying the laws which these masters themselves have created!
But times and tempers are changed.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Source: Law and Authority (1886), I
Context: Men who long for freedom begin the attempt to obtain it by entreating their masters to be kind enough to protect them by modifying the laws which these masters themselves have created!
But times and tempers are changed. Rebels are everywhere to be found who no longer wish to obey the law without knowing whence it comes, what are its uses, and whither arises the obligation to submit to it, and the reverence with which it is encompassed. The rebels of our day are criticizing the very foundations of society which have hitherto been held sacred, and first and foremost amongst them that fetish, law.
The critics analyze the sources of law, and find there either a god, product of the terrors of the savage, and stupid, paltry, and malicious as the priests who vouch for its supernatural origin, or else, bloodshed, conquest by fire and sword. They study the characteristics of law, and instead of perpetual growth corresponding to that of the human race, they find its distinctive trait to be immobility, a tendency to crystallize what should be modified and developed day by day.

“The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that—however bloody—can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.”

Lysander Spooner book No Treason

Source: No Treason (1867–1870), No. I, p. 9

“Prosecution of the criminal and education of the ignorant are the remedies. It is fundamental that freedom is not to be secured by disobedience to law. Even the freedom of the slave depended on the supremacy of the Constitution. There is no mystery about this. They who sin are the servants of sin. They who break the laws are the slaves of their own kind. It is not for the advantage of others that the citizen is abjured to obey the laws, but for his own advantage. That what he claims a right to do to others, that must he admit others have a right to do to him. His obedience is his own protection. He is not submitting himself to the dictates of others, but responding to the requirements of his own nature.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Law and Order (1920)

“Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them.”

Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850) French classical liberal theorist, political economist, and member of the French assembly

“As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the Governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

“And Lincoln said that if you believe in the Fugitive Slave Act being required by Article IV, you must also believe that the protection of the slave owner and the territories deserves federal protection; the two arguments were perfectly parallel. Douglas said it didn’t matter how the Supreme Court in the abstract decided the question of slavery in the territories; if the slave owner went to the territory, he had to get local regulations to protect his property.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

“Wherever the government goes, the Constitution goes, and wherever the Constitution goes, the protections that it guarantees restrain the government and requires it to protect those rights.”

Andrew P. Napolitano (1950) American judge and syndicated columnist

Judge Napolitano on Hannity and Colmes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bejmEG_t9mI, discussing the Supreme Court rulings on the scope of the protections in the Constitution.
Context: The Constitution applies to persons, not just citizens. If you read the Constitution, its protections are not limited to Americans. And that was written intentionally, because at the time it was written, they didn't know what Native Americans would be. When the post civil war amendments were added, they didn't know how blacks would be considered, because they had a decision of the Supreme Court called Dred Scott, that said blacks are not persons. So in order to make sure the Constitution protected every human being: American, alien; citizen, non-citizen; lawful combatant, enemy combatant; innocent, guilty; those who wish us well, those who wish us ill... they use the broadest possible language, to make it clear: Wherever the government goes, the Constitution goes, and wherever the Constitution goes, the protections that it guarantees restrain the government and requires it to protect those rights.

“The natural right of property far from being protected, is systematically violated, and both government and law seem to exist chiefly or solely, in order to protect and organize the most efficacious means of protecting the violation….”

Thomas Hodgskin (1787–1869) British writer

Source: The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted (1832), p. 53

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