Does Character Matter? Ask the Founders

There are countless reports of relationships Barack Hussein Obama has maintained through his climb up the political ladder. Racist preachers, unrepentant terrorists such as William Ayers and other members of the Weather Underground and even Mr. Resko, a convicted criminal. There is enough evidence, all very easily found with just a few minutes spent with Google, that one would think that Americans would be resoundingly rejecting Obama. And yet, many Americans seem to think that either past associations don't matter or are confused as to why these past relationships should matter.

The obvious answer to why the past associations matter is that they help to show the character of the person, in this case Obama. But rather than take my word for it, take a few minutes to read the words of some folks who risked everything, including their lives, to form this great nation.

Thomas Jefferson: "It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution... If a nation expects to be ignorant---and free---in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be... The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."

John Adams: "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom... If we suffer [the minds of young people] to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives... We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other... We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections."

Samuel Adams: "The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men... Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters... If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation... [N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt...No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders... Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual---or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country... Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness."

May the Lord bless and keep us all.