Brief

Monday, October 5, 2009

THE FOUNDATION

"In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will now and then peek out and show itself...." --Benjamin Franklin

The Chosen One failed to deliver the Olympics to Chicago

POLITICAL FUTURES

"On Friday the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to award the 2016 Summer Games to Rio de Janeiro. As you now know, not only was Chicago not chosen to host the 2016 games, but it was the first city knocked out in voting for the four cities still in the running. In addition to the U.S. and Rio the other two were Tokyo (which came in 3rd) and Madrid (2nd). ... [T]he Olympic story completely buried the news that unemployment ticked up to 9.8 percent and is likely on its way to the magic 10 percent mark. ... [T]his was not an embarrassment for Chicago -- only one city was going to get the 2016 Olympics. It was not an embarrassment for the United States -- Brazil is still a pretty good ally. ... It is a personal embarrassment for Barack Obama because he truly believed, or was told, or both, that if he showed up personally to make the final pitch, the IOC would not be able to deny Chicago the Games. Because he is B-A-R-A-C-K O-B-A-M-A the President of All the World! ... The Myth of Obama met the Reality of Obama. Obama lost." --political analyst Rich Galen

LIBERTY

"In his address to Congress, President Obama made clear that he and his allies know how to spend your health-care money better than you do. It's a matter, you see, of 'shared responsibility': You share your dollars with the feds, and the feds are responsible for making your decisions. ... On 'shared responsibility,' the president brooks no dissent. 'Unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek -- especially requiring insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions -- just can't be achieved,' he said. 'That's why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance.' This requirement is known as the 'individual mandate.' The president's proposal is historic -- though not in a good way. Never before has Congress forced Americans to buy a private good or service. In fact, for those with a traditional understanding of the Constitution as a charter of liberty (as opposed to the 'living' version), the list of Congress's powers in Article I, Section 8, grants it no authority to require any such thing. ... Requiring everyone to buy government-specified health insurance, whether they need it or not, is an unacceptable violation of personal liberty. It is a way of taxing healthy people without calling it a tax. Since that is an irresistible temptation to politicians, the list of required benefits would be certain to keep expanding. The choice between freedom and responsibility, as the president and his congressional allies portray it, is a false choice. We can and should have both." --The Heritage Foundation's Robert Moffitt

THE GIPPER

"The Founding Fathers established a system which meant a radical break from that which preceded it. A written constitution would provide a permanent form of government, limited in scope, but effective in providing both liberty and order. Government was not to be a matter of self-appointed rulers, governing by whim or harsh ideology. It was not to be government by the strongest or for the few. Our principles were revolutionary. We began as a small, weak republic. But we survived. Our example inspired others, imperfectly at times, but it inspired them nevertheless. This constitutional republic, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, prospered and grew strong. To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world -- nothing more and nothing less." --Ronald Reagan

INSIGHT

"Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. ... Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.'" --Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

GOVERNMENT

"As Harvard economist Greg Mankiw writes, 'In light of the shifting baseline, it is impossible to hold the administration accountable for whether its policies are achieving their intended effects. The administration, however, has not been particularly forthright in admitting to this lack of accountability. Indeed, the act of releasing quarterly reports on how many jobs have been 'created or saved' gives the illusion of accountability without the reality'. This lack of accountability -- this claim of success no matter what happens -- should surprise no one. Many of us warned about it months ago. Remember, Obama didn't promise to create 3.5 million jobs. He promised to create or save that many. There is no way to test that. If you still have your job, does that mean Obama saved it? If an entrepreneur created a new job, in spite of Obama's destructive anti-business regulatory apparatus, does Obama still deserve the credit?" --columnist John Stossel

FOR THE RECORD

"[T]hough barely reported, Obama made this statement in his U.N. speech: 'We have fully embraced the Millennium Development Goals.' I'm not sure where he got the authority to make that unilateral declaration, but he nonetheless made it. I guess now that he's president, he can sometimes just issue fiats instead of having to deal with the cumbersome legislative process.... So why do you suppose the evil Bush administration opposed the innocuous-sounding 'Millennium Development Goals'? Well, how about its multi-pronged assault on America's national sovereignty? It commits participating nations to be bound by the International Criminal Court treaty; support regional disarmament measures for small arms and light weapons; and press for the full implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which Wikipedia describes as 'an international legally binding treaty' that includes among its goals a 'fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources,' the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, described as 'an international bill of rights for women,' and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which purports to be a 'legally binding international instrument' that gives children the right to express their own opinions 'freely in all matters affecting the child' and requires those opinions be given 'due weight.' The Millennium Declaration also affirms the U.N. as 'the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development.' Indeed, under President Obama, 'We Are the World.'" --columnist David Limbaugh

CULTURE

"Just to recap, [Roman] Polanski drugged a child put in his care for the purposes of a photo shoot. He tried to bully her into sex. She said no. He raped her anyway. He pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual intercourse but fled the country before sentencing, allegedly for fear the judge wouldn't keep his end of the plea bargain. He spent the subsequent three decades living the life of a revered celebrity in Europe. He never returned to America because there was a warrant for his arrest. In a bit of ironic justice, he was apprehended en route to Zurich to receive a lifetime achievement award. That ceremony will apparently go on without him. ... It all boils down to the fact that Polanski is famous and talented and an Olympian artist, living above the world of mortals. Indeed, if he didn't rape that girl -- and he did -- Polanski would still be considered a pig in most normal communities. This is the man who, after all, started dating Nastassja Kinski when she was only 15 and he was in his 40s. His taste for teenage girls is an established fact. His defenders don't care. They are above and beyond bourgeois notions of morality, even legality. And that's the main reason I am grateful for this controversy. It is a dye marker, 'lighting up' a whole archipelago of morally wretched people. With their time, their money and their craft, these very people routinely lecture America about what is right and wrong. It's good to know that at the most fundamental level, they have no idea what they're talking about." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

FAITH AND FAMILY

"In the midst of grappling with a scattering of thorny issues, President Barack Obama took time to lend a fatherly hand this week. Your little Jake, it seems, doesn't spend enough time under the gaze of the state. As it turns out, Jake is at a tragic disadvantage when competing against Yuri from Kazakhstan. If you believe this tale, the administration has an answer for you: Kill summer vacation, and add a few hours to the school day. 'Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here,' Secretary of Education Arne Duncan claimed. 'I want to just level the playing field.' He, generously, wants to level the playing field for your children. Hey, admittedly, I'm not a product of the dazzling Hungarian school system, yet I can't help but wonder: With the pitiful performance of so many of our school systems -- Duncan left Chicago's schools with a more than 40 percent dropout rate -- doesn't it seem counterintuitive to extend this interaction? Where, after all, is the evidence that longer days translate into smarter kids? We will hear all about Sweden, Belgium and Denmark's longer days and high test scores, but as The Associated Press points out, kids in the U.S. spend more 'hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests -- Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013).' In the U.S., we also piddle away more funding per student on education than nearly any other nation in the world. Employing Duncan's decidedly non-Singaporean calculus, this would necessitate a cut in education spending to achieve higher results and 'even the playing field.'" --columnist David Harsanyi

RE: THE LEFT

"Imagine how much worse our public schools would look -- assuming that were possible -- if we allowed other countries to exclude one-half of their worst performers! That's exactly what liberals are doing when they tout America's rotten infant mortality rate compared to other countries. They look for any category that makes our medical care look worse than the rest of the world -- and then neglect to tell us that the rest of the world counts our premature and low birth-weight babies as 'miscarriages.' As long as American liberals are going to keep announcing that they're embarrassed for their country, how about being embarrassed by our public schools or by our ridiculous trial lawyer culture that other countries find laughable?" --columnist Ann Coulter

ESSENTIAL LIBERTY PROJECT

The Patriot's Essential Liberty pocket reference guides are a great primer on liberty as "endowed by our Creator" and codified by our Founders in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, including a comprehensive introduction on the history of American Liberty by Mark Alexander.

Please consider providing these Essential Liberty Constitution booklets to your student's entire class, grade or school. The booklets are available in bulk from PatriotShop.US.

Or, if you would rather sponsor -- online or by mail -- the distribution of Essential Liberty booklets to student groups, organizations, clubs, military units, etc., you can do so at our Essential Liberty Project sponsorship page.

READER COMMENTS

"In Alexander's essay, 'Not yours to give', he wrote, 'Today, there are but a handful of Senate and House incumbents who dare support and defend the Constitution as Crockett did. But there are candidates emerging around the nation who, with our support, will deliver orations as brazen and eloquent, and stand firm behind those words.' Please, Sir, tell us who they are and we'll vote for them!" --Westby, Wisconsin
Editor's Reply: See the Republican Study Committee's members list and the American Conservative Union's Congressional Ratings.

"The provenance of the Ellis account of Crockett's statements is questionable. Did Crockett say what Ellis attributed to him in 'Not yours to give'?" --Los Angeles, California
Editor's Reply: Ellis undoubtedly researched his account of Crockett's years in Congress, and his character in general, but as Alexander noted, "While the exact text of [Crockett's] speech was not transcribed (not the practice in those years), the spirit of his words in regard to those proceedings was captured in an 1867 Harper's Magazine article entitled 'Not yours to give' by Edward Ellis. There is, in fact, a congressional record of Crocket opposing a welfare bill similar to that referenced by Ellis. It is not known how much of Ellis's account is fact mixed with the annals of Crockett legend, but it is known that the account is consistent with Crockett's character, and his support for our Constitution."

"Alexander wrote a fine article about David Crockett and his friend Sam Houston. Houston did serve as Governor of Texas, but prior to that he held two terms as PRESIDENT of the Republic of Texas. Texas is the only state authorized to fly it's flag at the same height (to the left of course) as the National Flag, because it is the only state to have been recognized as an independent nation by the United States government (for a period of 10 years). Keep up the good work!"

"David Crockett said, he could 'eat a Mexican just put plenty of butter on his head.' Well, let me tell you, as much as I like Crockett, I disagree with him on eating a Mexican. I am a Mexican and I am full of real hot pepper. I eat hot pepper with my refried beans, my tortillas and my tacos. I eat very hot salsa in my pancakes and on eggs, and I eat four or five time a day. If he tried to eat me up, he would light up on fire." --Houston, Texas
Editor's Note: We did not make this up.

THE LAST WORD

"It's hard out there for a first lady of the United States. Take it from travel-weary Michelle Obama. On Tuesday night, she boarded a luxury 757 for Copenhagen. Think of the stairs she had to climb. Oh, the agony of the feet! Upon arrival, Mrs. O, her 'chit-chat buddy,' Chicago-based talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey, and Chicago powerbroker/interest-conflicted real estate mogul/senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett immediately embarked on a grueling, grip-and-grin campaign to secure the Olympics for their hometown. Our smile muscles ache in sympathy. You will be comforted to know that the gracious FLOTUS feels your pain for her pain. 'As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the president to come for these few days,' the first lady told a group of fellow Chicago 2016 boosters, 'so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home.' Translation: Thank me, thank you, for all we do. Never has self-congratulatory gratitude been raised to such an art form, but there was no time for loyal subjects to dwell." --columnist Michelle Malkin