Words of our Founding Fathers: Echoed by Palin, Contradicted by Obama

As I was reading the transcript of Sarah Palin's farewell speech made in Alaska on Sunday, these words, in particular, stood out to me:

Be wary of accepting government largess. It doesn't come free, and often, accepting it takes away everything that is free; melting into Washington's powerful "care-taking" arms will just suck incentive to work hard and chart our own course right out of us, and that not only contributes to an unstable economy and dizzying national debt, but it does make us less free.

Palin's admonition against the enticement of government generosity reflected, I thought, the principles upon which this country was founded, so I did some quick research into the words of some of our county's founding fathers.

Here are some examples of what I found:

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. They are more: they are the best basis of public liberty, and the strongest bulwark of public safety. It follows, that the greater the proportion of this class to the whole society, the more free, the more independent, and the more happy must be the society itself.
                                                                                                    -James Madison, March 3, 1792

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled [sic] much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
                                                                                                    -Ben Franklin, November 1776

To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.
                                                                                                    -Thomas Jefferson, April 6, 1816

As I read the above Jefferson quote, it occurred to me that while his words are echoed in the words of Sarah Palin, they are contradicted in these words:

It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too… My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.
                                                                                                    -Barack Obama, October 12, 2008

Barack Obama campaigned on the promise of change, and he's delivering on that promise. Unfortunately, the change that he's delivering is changing our country into something that our founding fathers wouldn't recognize.