
Source: An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966), p. 107
Source: In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action, (2013), p. 180
Source: An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966), p. 107
Letter to the Editor, in The New York Times (1971)
“Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”
Remarks at the National Conference of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO (30 March 1981)) (source: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1981/33081b.htm)
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985)
“A Government protected by foreigners will never be accepted by a free people.”
Political Aphorisms, Moral and Philosophical Thoughts (1848)
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.
According to the Jefferson Library, this is among the many statements misattributed to Jefferson. http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Category:Spurious_Quotations
Misattributed
International Journalism Festival http://www.journalismfestival.com/news/heather-brooke-antitrust-legislation-needed-to-keep-the-internet-free/ Interview with Fabio Chiusi, 12 April 2012.
Attributed, In the Media
Fourth Annual Message (3 December 1888)
Context: Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government; but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.
He mocks the people who proposes that the Government shall protect the rich and that they in turn will care for the laboring poor. Any intermediary between the people and their Government or the least delegation of the care and protection the Government owes to the humblest citizen in the land makes the boast of free institutions a glittering delusion and the pretended boon of American citizenship a shameless imposition.