THE FOUNDATION: GOVERNMENT

“Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.” —John Adams

LIBERTY

“[T]he so-called ‘explosion’ of the uninsured has been driven entirely by wealthy households opting out of health insurance. In the decade after 1995—i.e., since the last round of coercive health reform—the proportion of the uninsured earning less than $25,000 has fallen by 20 percent, and the proportion earning more than 75 grand has increased by 155 percent. The story of the past decade is that the poor are getting sucked into the maw of ‘coverage,’ and the rich are fleeing it. And, given that the cost of health ‘insurance’ bears increasingly little relationship to either the cost of treatment or the actuarial reality of you ever getting any particular illness, it’s entirely rational to say: ‘You know what? I’ll worry about that when it happens. In the meantime, I want to start a business and send my kid to school.’ Freedom is the desire of my human heart even if my arteries get all clogged and hardened.” —Mark Steyn

GOVERNMENT

“Governments are not empowered to grant rights; governments can only limit, or extinguish rights. Governments can, however, bestow gifts upon its citizens. But in order to do so, governments must first take resources from those who have earned them, and redistribute those resources to others. Hillary-care, Obama-care, Edwards-care, and every other form of socialized medicine, is inherently fraught with fraud, abuse, and corruption… If the federal government is to be involved in health care, it should be looking toward encouraging, and providing incentives for private medical care that is determined between the patient and provider. The problem is complex, and cannot be solved by any government program. Health care is certainly one of the primary areas where the principles of freedom should be observed and advanced. Any candidate, or politician, who thinks government can solve the problem better than a free market, should be rejected.” —Henry Lamb

OPINION IN BRIEF

“Despite increasing evidence that man-made CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change, politicians and others who wish to control our lives must maintain that it is. According to the Detroit Free Press, Rep. John Dingell wants a 50-cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline. We’ve heard such calls before, but there’s a new twist. Dingell also wants to eliminate the mortgage tax deduction on what he calls ‘McMansions,’ homes that are 3,000 square feet and larger. That’s because larger homes use more energy. One might wonder about Dingell’s magnanimity in increasing taxes for only homes 3,000 feet or larger. The average U.S. home is around 2,300 square feet, compared with Europe’s average of 1,000 square feet. So why doesn’t Dingell call for disallowing mortgage deductions on houses more than 1,000 square feet? The reason is there would be too much political resistance, since more Americans own homes under 3,000 square feet than over 3,000. The full agenda is to start out with 3,000 square feet and later lower it in increments. Our buying into global warming hysteria will allow politicians to do just about anything, upon which they can muster a majority vote, in the name of fighting climate change as a means to raise taxes.” —Walter Williams

THE GIPPER

“This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. … Plutarch warned, ‘The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.’ The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.” —Ronald Reagan

INSIGHT

“The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” —William James

FAMILY

“Most liberal media outlets reacted in similar fashion to [the recent] major Maryland Court of Appeals ruling, which upholds the state’s law defining marriage as one man-one woman. They presented it through the lavender lens of homosexual activism. CBS News’ Web site ran this headline: ’Maryland Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban.’ Calling the law a ‘gay marriage ban’ is as misleading as describing it as a ‘ban on polygamous marriage,’ or a ‘ban on incestuous marriage’ or perhaps a ‘ban on interspecies marriage.’ For the record, the Court in Conaway vs. Deane notes that neither the 1973 law nor the legislative debate at the time address ‘sexual orientation’ nor any ‘gay’ issue. All the law does is reiterate the fundamental nature of marriage for legal purposes. To liberal journalists, however, a law merely acknowledging the timeless definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is unacceptable. Such a law must be depicted only as a negative, as a ban rather than an affirmation.” —Robert Knight

CULTURE

“When I was a kid, the prevailing wisdom was to teach kids to fight back. If a bigger kid bullied you, your dad showed you techniques on how to handle him. Even if you lost the fight, the bully generally would earn a respect for you and back down. But in these nutty times, that might not work. The bully could be packing heat. Or, if a bully is humiliated by the kid he was bullying, the bully’s parent might have his lawyer sue.” —Tom Purcell

RE: THE LEFT

“Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)… was also a vocal critic of the MoveOn.org trash, which was The New York Times advertisement about General David Petraeus. You know the one I mean. That issue landed her on Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC program. Tucker was not hosting at the time. The guest host was the beat reporter on Chris Matthews’ MSNBC program, David Shuster. Shuster asked Rep. Blackburn if she could name the most recent soldier from her district to have been killed in Iraq. Rep. Blackburn could not. Shuster then named a soldier, whom he said was from her district and had been killed in Iraq. He then attacked Rep. Blackburn by, essentially, accusing her of being more interested in making political points by attacking MoveOn.org than in a soldier from her district who had given his life. First of all, this is journalist crapola. Anyone can find a fact—important or not—which the subject of an interview is not likely to know and then beat him or her over the head with it. ‘Do you think al-Anbar province is important to the stabilization of Iraq? You do? Name the current provincial leader. Can’t do it? HYPOCRITE!’ ‘You voted against raising the minimum wage. What’s the average hourly wage in your district? Don’t know? IGNORAMOUS!’ See what I mean?…Shuster is guilty of practicing faux journalism at its worst… This is on the level of a grossly unprofessional and ugly Three-Stooges-Whoop-Whoop-Nyuk-Nyuk fraternity prank. It has nothing to do with attempting to enlighten or inform viewers. It has everything to do with embarrassing someone to score a cheap political point or worse yet, score even cheaper news-room points… I wonder if, in the production meeting ahead of the show as the staff was giggling over how they were going to ‘get Blackburn’ anyone considered this: What if the young man’s folks happened to have been watching the Tucker Carlson program and had been treated to the low, callous spectacle of hearing their son’s name used, not to honor him, but to embarrass a Member of Congress? Not so funny now, is it.” —Rich Galen

FOR THE RECORD

“Congress passes many bills without reading them. Some are prepared so close to the vote that not even their sponsors really know what’s in them. That’s nothing. Now Congress can push through legislation no one reads even faster, lickety-split. It’s called ‘hotlining,’ and it was designed to get nitpicky business-y kinds of things done quickly. But recently the business has turned serious. Here’s what happens: The Senate Majority and Minority Leaders agree to pass a bill without a vote. They call all members of Congress on special hotlines installed in each office, giving a specified amount of time to object—sometimes as little as 15 minutes. If no objection is registered, the bill passes. In a four-day period this summer, of the 153 hotline calls made, 75 were legislative measures, 61 were nominations, and 17 were post-office-naming bills. A few of these bills authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in new spending. In a floor speech last year, Sen. Jeff Sessions from Alabama noted that these bills can be as long as 500 pages. Many staffs simply ignore the calls, he said, and ‘the Senator is deemed to have consented to the passage of some bill’ without ever been told diddly or squat. We’re not supposed to know how sausage is made. Welcome to hotlining. Don’t say ‘hot dog.’ Say ‘Yikes’.” —Paul Jacob

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“Thanks for your commentary on theological liberalism. I am a retired Episcopal priest, a cowboy poet and storyteller, and a former Green Beret. I am so thankful to be canonically resident in the Diocese of West Texas, an oasis of sensibility amidst a sea of extreme liberalism. Let’s keep praying for the church, America and our brave troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.” —San Angelo, Texas

“A poignant history lesson—’one must be worse than an infidel and more than wicked’ not to be moved by such review of our past. A necessary look at the past to see what is coming in the future—and a profound reflection in conclusion. Neither Rome nor England are going to save—for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12).” —Colorado Springs, Colorado

“You took a really cheap shot at U.S. Episcopal inclusion—which is no big surprise. Gays in America have many fewer civil rights than heterosexuals; for example, homophobic immigration policies prohibited me from sponsoring my Spanish partner of six years for a green card: no, he doesn’t have AIDS or HIV, no he doesn’t have ANY criminal record, yes, he is in perfect health, yes, he is a college graduate, yes, I am financially secure and would be a perfect sponsor. But immigration very rudely said ‘APPLICATION REFUSED—WE DO NOT RECOGNIZE DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS.’ The Episcopal Church USA is trying hard to right these wrongs against gay couples by being an example. The Patriot chooses to deny rights to gays because, well just because. If you really cared about Civil Rights, they would stop feeding the Homophobic Frenzy that crosses through the Evangelical Christian movement and right-wing Republicans. I now live in Spain because of Homophobic Immigration policy.” —Spain

Editor’s Reply: Homophobic Frenzy? Read Gender Identity, The Homosexual Agenda and The Christian Response and get back to us.

“Those ‘poor black African Bishops and Archbishops’ opposing Episcopal heresy can rest assured that Revs. Jackson and Sharpton will rush to their aid, no doubt singing ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ as they make their travel arrangements.” —Lebanon, Pennsylvania

POLITICAL FUTURES

“[T]he Democratic presidential candidates appear only before supportive groups. They don’t speak to antitax groups and talk about their own assumptions regarding tax policy. They don’t go to traditional values groups… The Republicans are the same. An invitation to debate on Univision, the Spanish-language network? They have scheduling conflicts. What about the Log Cabin Republicans? No time right now. How unserious. If you, candidate A, have clear and serious reasons for desiring the wave of millions a year illegally over the border to stop, you should be able to talk to Hispanic groups and audiences about it. You go straight to them and appeal to their patriotism, fairness and common sense… Will some of them boo? Yes, of course. So what? Too bad. That’s the price you pay for being truthful at a tough time. And in America it’s always a tough time… I know they’re all always eager to laud Ronald Reagan. But Reagan began his fall 1980 campaign in the South Bronx, and argued his case with people on the street. After he was elected, he pleaded for peace in letters to Leonid Brezhnev. Too bad he wasn’t tough enough. Oh wait.” —Peggy Noonan