Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Joe Wolverton, II
“Obsta principiis – Latin for ‘resist at the beginning.’ This was the alarm sounded by our Founding Fathers regarding the ‘silent and gradual’ encroachment of despotism into the land of liberty. But our Founders didn’t coin that phrase; in fact, they didn’t even finish it. They learned this principle, as they did so many others, from the Latin authors that they read, regarded, and recorded in their commonplace books. In the case of obsta principiis, that Latin author is Ovid. In his Remedia Amoris, Ovid writes, ‘Principiis obsta, sero medicina paratur, cum mala per longas convaluere moras,’ which in English means, ‘Resist at the beginning, else by long delay the disease grows so strong that medicine is useless.'” (11/13/23)