The Foundation

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” –Thomas Paine

Opinion in Brief

“[W]e join America in honoring the anniversary of September 11, 2001, when terrorists killed nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens. In the days after 9/11, Americans stood together as one, setting aside partisan fervor and recognized a common enemy in Islamist terrorist groups, particularly al-Qaeda. National security was rightfully restored as our nation’s highest priority. Ten years later, Osama bin Laden is dead, delivering to victims’ families and the rest of America a bit of justice for the heinous acts we all witnessed. But one terrorist’s death does not justify returning to the national security mindset that existed prior to that day. As Thomas Paine said, ‘Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.’ That notion is ever true. Thanks to important policies put into place after 9/11, America has been able to thwart at least 41 publicly known terrorist attacks. Such vigilance saved lives and will continue to do so moving forth. … The global war on terror that began as a result of 9/11 continues, and brave men and women risk their lives daily to protect America and prevent future acts of terrorism. As soldiers return from Afghanistan and Iraq after third or fourth tours of duty, we’re reminded that a clear and present danger remains. … On this, the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, it’s important to honor the victims and the heroes of that day by not only remaining on guard, but promising we will never quit this important fight until the threat no longer exists. We ask Americans to join us in a display of unity once again. Today, we hope that every neighborhood across the nation is flooded with American flags celebrating the lives of those we lost in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania and the heroism we witnessed, while also reminding each other that the fight to prevent another attack is not over.” –Heritage Foundation’s Ericka Andersen

Reader Comments

“Mark Alexander asked, Are we safer today? I would say yes – for now. However, it will take constant vigilance and preemption to stay that way. I fear for the country that Obama and the democrats in Washington have allowed our security to become lax instead of increasing our security. To say that the southern border is secure is a great overstatement or if you prefer a lie. Where is the allegiance to the oath they took when assuming office? I think that was just a formality to too many.” –Floyd

“We are absolutely NOT safer today than we have ever been. Mark Alexander is spot on with his current assessment. How can we be safe when we have an administration more concerned with homosexual advancement in the military, cutting needed military budgets, weakening the US economy, dividing any unity we did have, and fulfilling his own selfish vacation/golfing needs? Many of these people anguishing over 9/11 are those who have forgotten most, as they scream for tolerance to the very group who declared war on us ten years ago. There are many of these people who voted, on purpose, for the very man who is in office now, the man who supports these terrorist agendas by his statements and actions. America, you have forgotten already, as a nation, look at the direction we have gone. We had the power to ‘change’ course, and we didn’t. We chose to put a traitor in office. We deserve what we have.” –Marcy

“Despite Barack Obama’s repeated calls in his latest propaganda statement to ‘pass this bill,’ there is no bill. He submitted nothing. I think Congress should schedule a vote on a blank piece of paper with only ‘Obama’s American Jobs Act of 2011’ on it and give the president exactly what he asked for. There’s little danger that folks would be unable to read the entire bill before the vote on it!” –Peter

Government

“If President Obama’s economic policies have had a signature flaw, it is the conceit that by pulling this or that policy lever, by spending more on this program or cutting that tax for a year, Washington can manipulate the $15 trillion U.S. economy to grow. With his speech last [week] to Congress, the President is giving that strategy one more government try. This is not to say that Mr. Obama hasn’t made any intellectual progress across his 32 months in office. He now admits the damage that overregulation can do, though he can’t do much to stop it without repealing his own legislative achievements. He now acts as if he believes that taxes matter to investment and hiring, at least for the next year. And he now sees the wisdom of fiscal discipline, albeit starting only in 2013. Yet the underlying theory and practice of the familiar ideas that the President proposed last night are those of the government conjurer. More targeted, temporary tax cuts; more spending now with promises of restraint later; the fifth (or is it sixth?) plan to reduce housing foreclosures; and more public works spending, though this time we’re told the projects really will be shovel-ready. We’d like to support a plan to spur the economy, which is certainly struggling. Had Mr. Obama proposed a permanent cut in tax rates, or a major tax reform, or a moratorium on all new regulations for three years, he’d have our support. But you have to really, really believe in hope and change to think that another $300-$400 billion in new deficit spending and temporary tax cuts will do any better than the $4 trillion in debt that the Obama years have already piled up.” –The Wall Street Journal

Insight

“The [U.S.] Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals … it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government … it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizen’s protection against the government.” –philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Essential Liberty

“Those who have grown used to having others provide their food, shelter and other basics as ‘rights’ are by no means grateful. On the contrary, they are more angry, lawless and violent than in years past, whether they are lower-class whites rioting in Britain or black ‘flash mobs’ in America. Their histories are very different, but what they have in common is being supplied with a steady drumbeat of resentments against those who are better off. … Henry Ford benefited millions of other people by creating mass production methods that cut the cost of automobiles to a fraction of what they had been before – bringing cars for the first time within the budgets of people who were not rich. But the Ford Foundation has become a plaything of social experimenters who pay no price for creating programs that have been counterproductive or even socially disastrous. Nor was this the only foundation created by business philanthropy with a similar history and similar social results. Let business pioneers do what they do best. And let the rest of us exercise more judgment as to how much charity is beneficial and how much more simply perpetuates dependency, grievances and the polarization of society.” –economist Thomas Sowell

The Gipper

“I once said about legislatures and Congresses that it isn’t necessary to make them see the light; make them feel the heat.” –Ronald Reagan

Re: The Left

“A dispassionate look at the NBC Republican debate moderators’ questions reveals that they were not themselves dispassionate, which they have a professional duty to be. NBC’s Brian Williams and Politico’s John Harris put on a clinic in liberal bias and journalistic unprofessionalism as they fired loaded, sanctimonious questions at the debate participants. Debate moderators have no business injecting themselves into the debate or editorializing on the fly as these two did, to their disgrace. They have a duty not to take sides, which these two did, either with particular Republicans against the others or in favor of their political dreamboat, Barack Obama. It wasn’t just one or two inappropriately framed questions; it was a continuous barrage, punctuated with patronizing commentary revealing the inquisitors’ unconcealed contempt for all things conservative. One can only imagine the opposition research – er, conscientious preparation – their staff must have done for them.” –columnist David Limbaugh

For the Record

“[L]ike millions of seniors then and now, [my] Grandma was convinced that her Social Security benefits were an entitlement she had bought with her own payroll taxes years earlier. She blessed FDR for creating the Social Security trust fund in which she had faithfully invested for most of her working life, and couldn’t understand why her grandson had any objection to it. In reality there is no money in Social Security’s trust fund and never has been. It is merely an accounting fiction, like the individual Social Security accounts to which workers’ payroll taxes are credited. But Grandma could hardly be blamed for believing otherwise. Right from the start, Social Security was promoted to Americans as a straightforward pension fund. … It wasn’t true. In a [1937] decision … upholding the Social Security Act, the Supreme Court confirmed what anyone who read the law would already have discovered: Payroll taxes weren’t held by the government solely for the benefit for retirees. On the contrary: Social Security taxes ‘are to be paid into the Treasury like internal revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way.’ Likewise, for all the talk of Social Security as an ‘entitlement,’ retirees have no ironclad right to that monthly check. ‘Congress can change the rules’ whenever it wants to, the Social Security Administration’s website acknowledges. ‘Benefits which are granted at one time can be withdrawn.’ That too was explicit in the law FDR signed in 1935. … [T]he trust fund’s assets are an illusion. Social Security doesn’t own $2.6 trillion in gold bars or real estate or shares of Google. All it has are Treasury IOUs. Those IOUs represent $2.6 trillion that the government has already spent and promises to spend again. But to spend it again – to redeem those IOUs – Congress will have to raise taxes, cut spending, or go deeper into debt. Which is exactly what Congress would have to do if the Social Security trust fund didn’t exist. … FDR’s signature program is on a collision course with itself. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, may have believed it would last forever. My generation doesn’t have that luxury.” –columnist Jeff Jacoby

Culture

“After the mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz. … President Obama gave one of those unite-the-divide speeches that give journalists leg thrills. We need to ‘sharpen our instincts for empathy,’ he said. He lamented political finger-pointing: ‘It’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.’ … On Labor Day, Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. was in Detroit addressing a rally starring the president. Hoffa told Obama there was a ‘war on workers,’ and the unions were Obama’s ‘army.’ He said: ‘We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.’ … On Aug. 22, at a Congressional Black Caucus event in Miami, Congressman Andre Carson, D-Ind., said, ‘Some of these folks in Congress right now would love to see us as second-class citizens… Some of them in Congress right now of this Tea Party would love to see you and me … hanging on a tree.’ Carson clearly didn’t think about talking ‘in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.’ But ABC, CBS and NBC all skipped that one, too, as did the Post. … So what’s worse, the hypocrisy of Obama and Co.? Or the aid and comfort provided by the ‘news’ media when they ignore that hypocrisy?” –columnist L. Brent Bozell

The Last Word

“Ten years after Osama bin Laden’s henchmen murdered thousands of innocents on American soil, too many children have been spoon-fed the thin gruel of progressive political correctness over the stiff antidote of truth. ‘Know your enemy, name your enemy’ is a 9/11 message that has gone unheeded. Our immigration and homeland security policies refuse to profile jihadi adherents at foreign consular offices and at our borders. Our military leaders refuse to expunge them from uniformed ranks until it’s too late (see: Fort Hood massacre). The j-word is discouraged in Obama intelligence circles, and the term ‘Islamic extremism’ was removed from the U.S. national security strategy document last year. Similarly, too many teachers refuse to show and tell who the perpetrators of 9/11 were and who their heirs are today. … To make matters worse, we have an appeaser-in-chief who wrote shortly after the jihadist attacks a decade ago that the ‘essence of this tragedy’ derives ‘from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others.’ … 9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. … The post-9/11 problem isn’t whether we’ll forget. The problem is: Will we ever learn?” –columnist Michelle Malkin

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team