The turning point for me was after being deployed to the Middle East for Desert Shield / Desert Storm believing the reasons our government gave us only to discover that they were all lies or fabrications. I was so upset that I questioned the oath I took. I decided to become a scholar of the constitution to understand what it was I took an oath to uphold and defend, leading to learning about the true founding principles upon which our Constitutional Republic was established.

Our founding fathers, and many of the ideologies they studied to come up with a new way to establish a Republic, all warned against trusting government.

My research and studies provided plenty of reasons to not trust government:

“A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government; and government without a constitution is power without a right. All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must be either delegated, or assumed. There are not other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation. Time does not alter the nature and quality of either.” ~ Thomas Paine (1737-1809) US Founding father, pamphleteer, author

“In short, it is the greatest Absurdity to suppose it in the Power of one or any Number of Men, at the entering into Society, to renounce their essential natural Rights or the Means of preserving those Rights, when the grand End of civil Government, from the very Nature of its Institution, is for the Support, Protection and Defense of those very Rights: The principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property.” ~ Samuel Adams (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution."

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.” ~ Samuel Adams (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution."

“The most formidable weapons against errors of every kind is reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.” ~ Thomas Paine (1737-1809) US Founding father, pamphleteer, author

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

“I do believe that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Source: letter to Richard Price, January 8, 1789

“In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.... O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people!” ~ Patrick Henry (1736-1799) US Founding Father

“All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” ~ James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President Source: speech at the Constitutional Convention, July 11, 1787

“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.” ~ James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President Source: Federalist #57

“There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises. To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable. Sir, in my opinion, it would be hazarding the public faith in a manner contrary to every idea of prudence.” ~ James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President Source: Speech in Congress, 22 April 1790

“A government that does not trust it's law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is itself unworthy of trust.” ~ James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President

“I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. -- From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.” ~ Daniel Webster (1782-1852) US Senator Source: June 1, 1837; Works 1:403

“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.” ~ John Adams (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President Source: 'Novanglus', 'Boston Gazette' 06 Feb 1775

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.” ~ John Adams (1735-1826) Founding Father, 2nd US President

“How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!” ~ Samuel Adams (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution." Source: letter to John Pitts, January 21, 1776

“Blind submission to the Administration of the government is not devotion to the country or the Constitution. The administration is not the government.” ~ Edward G. Ryan (1810-1880) Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.” ~ Pericles (495-429 BC) "The Olympian"

“What assurance have we that our masters will or can keep the promise which induced us to sell ourselves? Let us not be deceived by phrases about 'Man taking charge of his own destiny'. All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of the others. They will be simply men; none perfect; some greedy, cruel and dishonest. The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be. Have we discovered some new reason why, this time, power should not corrupt as it has done before?” ~ C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), British novelist Willing Slaves of the Welfare State, first published in The Observer on July 20, 1958

“Love your country, but never trust its government.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer

“Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer

“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” ~ Gideon J. Tucker (1826-1899) American lawyer, newspaper editor, politician

“One's first step in wisdom is to question everything -- and one's last is to come to terms with everything.” ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) German scientist, professor, satirist and Anglophile

“Death is better, a milder fate than tyranny.” ~ Aeschylus (525-456 BC) Greek playwright

“The Americans of 1776 were among the first men in modern society to defend rather than to seek an open society and constitutional liberty.... Perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of this political theory sits in its deep-seated conservatism. However radical the principles of the Revolution may have seemed to the rest of the world, in the minds of the colonists they were thoroughly preservative and respectful of the past.” ~ Clinton Rossiter Source: Seedtime of the Republic, 1953

“As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant of the people... The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people.” ~ Jeffrey R. Snyder American attorney, author Source: A Nation of Cowards, 113 Public Interest (Fall 1993)

“A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.” ~ Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher

“Both Oligarch and Tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of arms.” ~ Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher