Contributed by: filbert Monday, February 28 2011 @ 03:29 PM CST
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.
If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.
Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.
They are reactionary.
Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary founders.
— Calvin Coolidge, 1926 (As quoted on page 18-19 of America by Heart by Sarah Palin)
(Re-formatting to a more bloggish format is mine)