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November 17, 2008

Brief

THE FOUNDATION

“I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.” –Thomas Jefferson

GOVERNMENT

“Democrats are suggesting, however, an even more ambitious reason to nationalize [the auto industry]. Once the government owns Detroit, it can remake it. The euphemism here is ‘retool’ Detroit to make cars for the coming green economy. Liberals have always wanted the auto companies to produce the kind of cars they insist everyone should drive: small, light, green and cute. Now they will have the power to do it. In World War II, government had the auto companies turning out tanks. Now they would be made to turn out hybrids. The difference is that, in the middle of a world war, tanks have a buyer. Will hybrids? One of the reasons Detroit is in such difficulty is that consumers have been resisting the smaller, less powerful, less safe cars forced on the industry by fuel-efficiency mandates. Now Detroit would be forced to make even more of them. If you think we have economic troubles today, consider the effects of nationalizing an industry of this size, but now run by bureaucrats issuing production quotas to fit five-year plans to meet politically mandated fuel-efficiency standards – to lift us to the sunny uplands of the coming green utopia.” –columnist Charles Krauthammer

POLITICAL FUTURES

“History will favor Republicans in 2010. Since World War II, the out-party has gained an average of 23 seats in the U.S. House and two in the U.S. Senate in a new president’s first midterm election. Other than FDR and George W. Bush, no president has gained seats in his first midterm election in both chambers. Since 1966, the incumbent party has lost an average of 63 state senate and 262 state house seats, and six governorships, in a president’s first midterm election. That 2010 is likely to see Republicans begin rebounding just before redistricting is one silver lining in an otherwise dismal year for the GOP.” –Karl Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush

FOR THE RECORD

“Consider that in 1980, when Ronald Reagan won his first presidential election, the public was self-identified as 46 percent moderate, 28 percent conservative and 17 percent liberal. But by the 1984 Reagan re-election, the public had shifted to 42 percent moderate, 33 percent conservative and 16 percent liberal – a statistically significant shift to the right. In those four years, Reagan had persuaded 5 percent of the electorate to move largely from moderate to conservative. And that 5 percent has stayed conservative for 24 years, right through the 2008 election. It is that 5 percent that has made America a center-right country rather than a centrist country – allowing a fairly conservative Republican Party to win congressional and presidential elections most of the time. That is why it is so vital for both the Republican Party and a newly aroused conservative movement to work feverishly to make the case to the broadest possible public for our right-of-center views during the next four years.” –columnist Tony Blankley

RE: THE LEFT

“As one liberal academic administrator said in justifying his Draconian action in suppressing a Christian viewpoint, ‘We cannot tolerate the intolerable.’ This self-blinding, superior mindset explains how liberals can accuse conservatives of racism for their legitimate political differences with Barack Obama while demeaning, with racist epithets, Condoleezza Rice or Clarence Thomas. It’s how they can mock conservatives for being close-minded while unilaterally declaring the end to the debate on global warming because of a mythical consensus they have decreed. It’s how they can demand every vote count and exclude military ballots. It’s how they can glamorize Jimmy Carter for gallivanting to foreign countries to supervise ‘fair elections’ and pooh-pooh ACORN’s serial voter fraud in their own country. It’s how they can threaten the tax-exempt status of evangelical churches for preaching on values, even when the churches don’t endorse candidates, but fully support a liberal church’s direct electioneering for specific candidates. … It’s how they can oppose the death penalty for the guilty but protect the death penalty for the innocent unborn. … If you believe the left is tolerant, open-minded and democratic, you’re in for a rude awakening.” –columnist David Limbaugh

LIBERTY

“Conservative Americans in particular need to understand that in this new era, the rules have changed. And to understand this change, conservatives need to begin by reading ‘Rules For Radicals,’ a book published in 1971 by noted ‘community organizer’ (and a man who is said to have influenced Mr. Obama) Saul Alinsky. Column space is limited here, so you’ll have to get a copy of the book for yourself. But consider this notion from Alinksy’s rule #5: ‘Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.’ And consider this language from rule #11, wherein Alinsky suggests that the main job of a ‘community organizer’ is to bait his opponent into reacting in a certain way: ‘The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.’ Welcome to the new era.” –columnist Austin Hill

FAITH AND FAMILY

“Barack and Michelle Obama are poised to commit a classic act of limousine-liberal hypocrisy – in this case, turning their backs on tens of thousands of inner-city kids in Washington, D.C. Public schools, it seems, are good enough for poor and middle-class families, but not for rich families like the Obamas. In July, when he addressed the NAACP’s annual convention, Sen. Barack Obama expressed his devotion to American public schools, vowing he would not ‘walk away from them’ by supporting school-choice programs like Sen. John McCain did. … There were 59,616 students enrolled in the D.C. public schools in 2006, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. If McCain’s plan to increase by 2,000 the number of vouchers available in the District were enacted, taxpayers would still be spending $15,798 per student per year to send more than 55,000 kids through a school system where about nine out of 10 students do not learn to read or do math at grade-level proficiency by the time they ‘graduate’ from elementary school. What is Obama’s plan to deal with this? Spend $18 billion more in federal tax dollars on public education (as he promised in his campaign) – and send his own kids to extremely expensive private schools. Currently, Obama’s two daughters (ages 7 and 10) attend the University of Chicago Lab School, where tuition is $18,492 for grades 1-4 and $20,286 for grades 5-8. When Michelle Obama visited Washington this week, she toured only two prospective schools for her daughters: Sidwell Friends, where lower-school tuition is $28,442; and Georgetown Day, where tuition is $27,445 for grades 1-5.” –columnist Terence Jeffrey

CULTURE

“The fact that the nation elected a black president hopefully might turn our attention away from the false notion that discrimination explains the problems of a large segment of the black community to the real problems that have absolutely nothing to do with discrimination. The illegitimacy rate among blacks stands at about 70 percent. Less than 40 percent of black children are raised in two-parent households. Those are major problems but they have nothing to do with racial discrimination. During the early 1900s, illegitimacy was a tiny fraction of today’s rate and black families were just as stable as white families. Fraudulent education is another problem, where the average black high school senior can read, write and compute no better than a white seventh-grader. It can hardly be blamed on discrimination. Black schools receive the same funding as white schools and most of the teachers and staffs are black and the schools are often in cities where the mayor and the city council are mostly black. Crime is a major problem. Blacks commit about 50 percent of all homicides and 95 percent of their victims are blacks. Tragically, many black politicians and a civil rights industry have a vested interest in portraying the poor socioeconomic outcomes for many blacks as problems rooted in racial discrimination. One of the reasons they are able to get away with such deception is because there are so many guilt-ridden white people.” –columnist Walter Williams

THE GIPPER

“There are a great many God-fearing, dedicated, noble men and women in public life, present company included. And yes, we need your help to keep us ever-mindful of the ideas and the principles that brought us into the public arena in the first place. The basis of those ideals and principles is a commitment to freedom and personal liberty that, itself is grounded in the much deeper realization that freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought and humbly accepted. The American experiment in democracy rests on this insight. Its discovery was the great triumph of our Founding Fathers, voiced by William Penn when he said: ‘If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants’.” –Ronald Reagan

LEGACY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

“Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood. … A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.” –John Adams

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THE LAST WORD

“I think I tend to give liberals the benefit of the doubt. I happen to believe they are so besotted by their emotions that they can’t help painting themselves into indefensible corners. To blame a liberal for lying and blatant hypocrisy would be as heartless as blaming an alcoholic for drinking. In fact, I suspect that, like alcoholics, liberals suffer from a chemical imbalance. Otherwise, how would you explain the enormous gulf between what they say and what they do? For instance, how often have we read newspaper editorials arguing for Affirmative Action in schools and in the work place? In most cases, those pieces are not being written or edited by members of a racial minority group. So, if they were sincere, shouldn’t these journalists clear out their desks and surrender their jobs to somewhat less qualified, but far more deserving, blacks and Hispanics? Or consider, if you will, how consistently liberals object to tax cuts. They prattle on incessantly about how much the wealthy benefit, ignoring the logic that if there’s a 10% reduction across the board, it figures that the person who pays more will save more. But, when liberals blather about the inequities of tax cuts, you realize they actually believe that if a millionaire saves fifty thousand on his tax bill, the guy who only earns, say, thirty grand-a-year should get the same return! … So, while I acknowledge that liberals can be as loyal and steadfast as cocker spaniels, I have found it is nearly impossible to paper-train them.” –Burt Prelutsky

*****

Veritas vos Liberabit – Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff.

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