Money. It is said money is what makes the world go ’round. It is said that ‘money is the root of all evil.’ But the proper phrase is ‘Love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” 1 Tim 6 :10
This piece is about honesty, integrity, character, about service to the public and should be engraved on the heart of every public servant. Davy Crockett was not some fictional character from Americana lore, he was a real person and he served in the making of our country. What I find interesting is the effort this man made to recognize his own ignorance, with the help of another learned man, and then overcome this ignorance and recognizing how respecting the US Constitution and faithfully executing it had different meanings than “what felt good at the time.” Especially when it came to using money that was not his to give away in so-called charitable ventures.
It is apparent to many that our political system is broken and corrupted as many of our so-called “representatives” and “judges” have sold out to their own ideas and not the ideals and laws put forth by our Founding Documents. Now, influence, power and favor are simply purchased with money. After all, it takes money to make money. But it would be great if it was as simple as that. But it is not simple money being used as in advertising or promotion to earn a profit. This is about crony capitalism buying tax breaks, e.g. the NFL on profits and real estate taxes, about criminal favors and escaping various crimes simply because money buys favors or applies threats in appropriate places, or greases palms to get lucrative and long lasting contracts as government suppliers at prices that no one seems to investigate, audit, or care about in the least. It is not about corporate bailouts and putting the failures of business people, management and directors, on the shoulders of the tax payer.
No one cares much these days about personal honor, code of ethics, integrity, morals. The Almighty Buck cures all because it buys all. Or so these sick people think. They are the ones who have gone to the dark side. But they forget and they try to hide from the consequences of their actions by claiming there is no God, or there is no heaven or hell. Just like Bill and Hillary and others like them might think they are skating free and pulling a fast one on the public, they conveniently forget that there will come a judgment day. There will come a JUDGMENT DAY! – Mongoose
Crockett on the Power to Make Charitable Donations
History’s immortals sometimes offer a glimpse of their greatness in events other than those that granted them immortality.
Tennessee militia colonel David Crockett, perhaps best known for his role in the 1836 defense of the Alamo, also served three terms in the United States Congress between 1827 and 1835. Nationally known during his lifetime as a political representative of the frontier, Crockett apparently came by that reputation honestly, inasmuch as he was not above listening to his constituents. The following excerpt from an 1884 biography by Edward Sylvester Ellis, The Life of Colonel David Crockett, if accurate, might reveal how his own rural electorate taught him the importance of adhering to the Constitution and the perils of ignoring its restrictions.
Crockett was then the lion of Washington. I was a great admirer of his character, and, having several friends who were intimate with him, I found no difficulty in making his acquaintance. I was fascinated with him, and he seemed to take a fancy to me.
I was one day in the lobby of the House of Representatives when a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support, rather, as I thought, because it afforded the speakers a fine opportunity for display than from the necessity of convincing anybody, for it seemed to me that everybody favored it. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose. Everybody expected, of course, that he was going to make one of his characteristic speeches in support of the bill. He commenced:
“Mr. Speaker — I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him. This government can owe no debts but for services rendered, and at a stipulated price. If it is a debt, how much is it? Has it been audited, and the amount due ascertained? If it is a debt, this is not the place to present it for payment, or to have its merits examined. If it is a debt, we owe more than we can ever hope to pay, for we owe the widow of every soldier who fought in the War of 1812 precisely the same amount. There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor; but if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never hear of any of these large debts to them. Sir, this is no debt. The government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much of our own money as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.”
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Ignorance is Bliss 