Yes, I recall you posting this same page (the Crockett attribution) a while back. On the face of it, it's has a certain nobility, in the same sort of seductive manner as much of Heinlein's 'crochety old man' pronouncements of individual liberties (cf. Farnham's Freehold, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, ad naus.).

Unfortunately, this morning finds me at Penn State's Pattee Library, where Internet access is free and unlimited in time, but (for reasons understood only by the sysops, if at all) cutting and pasting from window to window has been disabled. Thus, though I would like to link to the URL of the Google search I just did for this speech, it's too bloody long to retype. [search parameters = Crockett + "not yours to give" + "House of Representatives" ^ speech]. 185 hits came back, all of which appear to reproduce, word for word, the same excerpt from the biography as the one you've linked to - near thetop of the list was here. It wasn't until page 5 before I found a date given for the speech itself - 1828. Interesting (if not necessarily ironic) that the same entire passage from the Crockett biography is reproduced within, and used as rationale for, this opinion against government compensation to the survivors of the 9/11/01 victims. (By the way, Tom, here's a site you might have some fun perusing, which I found on page 7 of my search).



Owing in part to the apocryphal Lincoln quote recently posted, I found myself dubious about the veracity of the original attribution - in plain language: did Davey Crockett actually make this speech? Some hesitant steps through Google eventually got me to The Library of Congress' American Memory Collection, and the search query. Using "Crockett 1828" as terms, it returned 500 hits, all from the Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 1828 - 1829, which I am currently browsing while stopping occasionally to type this. It would be a great deal easier, as you will see if you attempt the same, if the naval widow were not anonymous. My reading of the business of the 20th Congress so far leads me to think that quite a lot of it considered petitions for relief from Revolutionary and War of 1812 veterans or their heirs and assigns - to scan each of these for some sign of a bill being defeated is a daunting task, but necessary to pinpoint the date of Crockett's speech, so that it may be searched for in the Register of Debates, the grand- (or great-grand)parent of the Congressional Record.

As I say, a daunting task, but one which might prove edifying. For the time being, hoever, let's assume that Rep. Crockett actually did convince his colleagues to defeat a certain bill for the relief of a naval widow with that short speech. The remainder of the biographical excerpt, the long-winded soul-baring tale told "later" to "a friend", has absolutely no chance of being independently verified. There is, by the way, no reference to
"Horatio Bunce" to be found via Google that is not at least a paraphrase of this same biographical excerpt. Nevertheless, many truisms (not to mention cliches) can be taught equally well by the use of fiction as that of fact - even fiction disguised or misconstrued as fact. So we will leave, for now, the veracity of the quote.

It should be relatively easy to see that this is not 1828; the business of Congress is quite a bit more complicated now than it was then. It seems, from the number of website which quote the Crockett episode, that many people believe the nature and scope of the government's business has not - moreover, should have not - changed in all that time. That is the crux of this debate: "Should government levy taxes for the purpose of redistribution to those in need, or should that function be left to the private sector?"

Those whose own states of mind resonate to Crockett's 175-year-old utterances would probably answer "No, because the Constitution does not allow it." Here is a long detailed semantic argument based on Article I, Section 8 (using the Crockett episode as a preface, which is how I found it). It concludes, in essence, that "the general welfare" is not provided for because the recipients are individuals.

As I am running short of time, I will have to continue in another post on the justification of government vs private assistance. Meanwhile... it seems to me that if a Constitutional challenge could have been mounted, based on such an argument (Art. !, Sec. 8), it would have been. To the best of my admittedly sketchy knowledge, nothing of the kind has occurred since the early days of the New Deal.