Trusting a politician’s word (or not)

They say that actions speak louder than words, but most times all we have to go on are words. Words inspire, words convince us to agree or disagree, and words, and only words, are what we first hear from politicians. The problem is, everything is upside down in America now. What was once the central core of Republican political ethics has been tossed aside, often to the Democratic Party, and vice versa. Following are some apt quotes for our times by some of our nation’s past great leaders. Try and remember what party these presidents were members of, it may surprise you.Lincoln: “The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves — in their separate and individual capacities.”Eisenhower: “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are … a few … millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”Teddy Roosevelt: “We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers. Wherever in any business the prosperity of the business man is obtained by lowering the wages of his workmen and charging an excessive price to the consumers we wish to interfere and stop such practices.”JFK: “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”Jefferson: “I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”Lincoln: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”Lincoln: “And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states, and parts of states, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.”Nixon: ” Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any job that a man can do.”Lincoln: “Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.”FDR: “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”Lincoln: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”Nixon: “Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.”Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”Jefferson: “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”Eisenhower: “Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels — men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.” Peter Riva, formerly of Amenia Union, lives in New Mexico.