The Foundation

“The freedom and happiness of man … [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.” –Thomas Jefferson

Government

“Most socialists are not about economic prosperity. Oh, they’ll use Keynesian theory that deficit spending stimulates economic growth to justify their demand for more government expenditures. But in the end, Obama’s ‘stimulus’ package wasn’t even fair to John Maynard Keynes. Don’t get me wrong; the obscene forced federal expenditures wouldn’t have succeeded in stimulating the economy even if Obama had used them for that purpose. But he didn’t, and it is pretty hard to deny in hindsight that he never intended to. Before he commandeered the $868 billion, he assured us it would go to shovel-ready jobs and get people back to work again. It was only after the fact that he cynically laughed in our faces about the unavailability of such jobs. (He’s doing the same thing all over again with his latest jobs bill.) Despite his promise that he would strictly account for this money and watchdog against its waste, he threw gobs of it away to locations with phantom ZIP codes, to ACORN-like political allies, to unions and to corrupt environmental wastelands, such as Solyndra. There was no private-sector economic multiplier effect for any of Obama’s stimulus expenditures. The only multiplier effect in this and his other spending bills was in the public sector. Obama furtively tucked into these bills many perpetually sustaining federal programs that would remain with us, continue to grow and further choke the private sector. Thus, if you measure Obama’s promise of hope and change against his true intention, he might well be succeeding. As one who believes that America’s free market is unfair, he has gone a long way toward shaking up that structure – and he’s not even close to being finished.” –columnist David Limbaugh

Re: The Left

“Another part of this [‘jobs’] bill provides for yet another year of unemployment insurance. That gets us close to three years of federal benefits one can collect before being required to look for a job. Again, progressives somehow imagine that most people will spend every week of those three years determinedly beating the bushes for employment. Spare me. The overwhelming majority of people will spend virtually the entire three years living off the fat of the taxpayer-underwritten land, and only start looking for a job when the government gravy train gets perilously close to the last stop. In addition, does anyone but a progressive believe that three years of not working will have no effect on someone’s job skills? Ergo, progressives, whose economic policies have turned people into long-term wards of the state, want those same people to be able to sue someone else if they ‘feel’ they were discriminated against during a job interview. And according to the president, this is the kind of thinking that will produce another 2.6 million jobs. Good luck with that, my re-distributionist comrades.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

The Gipper

“The American dream is not that every man must be level with every other man. The American dream is that every man must be free to become whatever God intends he should become.” –Ronald Reagan

For the Record

“Not only conservatives, but even some liberals, have been calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme for decades. Moreover, neither the media nor the politicians who are carrying on over the use of the words ‘Ponzi scheme’ show the slightest interest in any hard facts that would tell us whether Social Security is or is not a Ponzi scheme. It is a ‘gotcha’ moment, and that is apparently what some people live for. … Social Security worked fine when the small generation from the 1930s received pensions from the money being paid in by the larger and more prosperous ‘baby boom’ generation that followed. It worked fine when the average life expectancy of the first generation was not long enough for most of them to collect Social Security checks for more than a few years – if at all. Declining birth rates and greatly increasing lifespans have created havoc with Social Security’s finances, which are based on having the first generation’s pensions paid with money collected from the second generation – and the second generation’s pensions paid by the next generation, etc. Any private financial scheme set up in a similar way would be illegal. That is why Charles Ponzi went to prison.” –economist Thomas Sowell

Essential Liberty

“While ignoring laws that he is obligated to enforce, Mr. Obama has added other duties that would leave America’s Founders scratching their heads. … [An example] is Mr. Obama’s heavy-handed seizure of the nation’s health care system and Obamacare’s unconstitutional mandate for everyone to purchase health insurance. Nowhere, not even in the much-abused commerce clause, does the Constitution give the government the right to force citizens to engage in commerce. If Obamacare is upheld, government bureaucrats can pretty much order us to do anything they want. … The Constitution’s enumerated powers and limitations ensure maximum liberty in a free republic. When the chief enforcer shows such profound contempt for the Constitution, he needs to be reminded that no one is above the law. Not even The One.” –columnist Robert Knight

Insight

“Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of ‘emergency.’ It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And ‘emergency’ became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains.” –President Herbert Hoover (1874-1964)

Political Futures

“There’s one sure way for Republicans and conservatives to lose the 2012 presidential election – split over who their presidential nominee will be, and fail to go all-out to support the winner. … If Obama is not to be re-elected in 2012, Republicans need to get their act together, decide on a nominee, and back him or her to the hilt. … It’s important to recall that Ronald Reagan outraged some Republicans when as California’s governor he raised taxes and signed an abortion bill and became the first California governor to sign a no-fault divorce law. Despite all this, he still went on to become the greatest U.S. president of our lifetime. If he were alive today and we were to nominate him in 2012, I wonder which wing of the GOP his opponents would come from. Regardless of the outcome of such a confrontation, Republicans will have to either hang together or hang alone. … Put it this way: Who do you hope will be the president when 2013 dawns: Barack Obama or a Republican?” –columnist Michael Reagan

Culture

“Essentially, state governments distribute welfare payments via a credit card (EBT). Most major food outlets take EBT as a form of cash. … Just who is Mr. EBT, though? He’s a self-titled rapper who just came out with a new YouTube sensation titled ‘My EBT.’ Yes, he wears the traditional rapper get-up of a straight-brimmed hat and baggy pants. But look beyond the clothing and see something deeper – the sort of leech who is bankrupting our society. In a three minute, 51-second song, Mr. EBT champions his eponymous card – or rather, his sister’s EBT card. (Yes, that’s fraud.) Because, as we all know, government dependency is a family value. … Welcome to Obama’s America, where shame is no longer allowed. … This culture of entitlement doesn’t start at the bottom; it starts at the top. It doesn’t have to do with race, or with class. It has to do with a basic human tendency to accept what we are given and assume that we deserve it. There is a reason that the heads of Solyndra still do not see what they did wrong in blowing nearly half-a-billion dollars. After all, they were entitled to it. For the same reason, those who receive EBT cards and ‘swipe! swipe!’ away do not see a problem. … It’s time to end the EBT mentality and restore the mentality of individualism and liberty. Otherwise, we’ll all end up on the EBT in the near term, and the country will end up bankrupt in the long term.” –columnist Ben Shapiro

Opinion in Brief

“Last week, to kick off its campaign seeking UN recognition as a state, the Palestinian Authority staged a highly publicized march to the UN offices in Ramallah, where a letter was delivered for Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. Officials named Latifa Abu Hmeid to lead the procession and hand over the letter. ‘She was chosen,’ reported the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, ‘because she is a symbol of Palestinian suffering as a result of the occupation.’ What the paper did not mention is that Abu Hmeid is the mother of four murderers, whose sons are serving a total of 18 life sentences for their involvement in multiple terrorist attacks. According to Palestinian Media Watch, this is not the first time Abu Hmeid has been honored. Last year, the Palestinian Authority awarded her ‘the Plaque of Resoluteness and Giving,’ and a government minister publicly extolled her virtues: ‘It is she who gave birth to the fighters, and she deserves that we bow to her in salute and in honor.’ It is this grotesque and bloody culture that Palestinian leaders want the UN to affirm as worthy of statehood. The wonder is not they make the request, but that anyone thinks it should be granted.” –columnist Jeff Jacoby

Faith & Family

“The intellectual class and the left still believe that secularism is an unalloyed blessing. They are wrong. Secularism is good for government. But it is terrible for society (though still preferable to bad religion) and for the individual. One key reason is what secularism does to moral standards. If moral standards are not rooted in God, they do not objectively exist. Good and evil are no more real than ‘yummy’ and ‘yucky.’ They are simply a matter of personal preference. One of the foremost liberal philosophers, Richard Rorty, an atheist, acknowledged that for the secular liberal, ‘There is no answer to the question, "Why not be cruel?”’ With the death of Judeo-Christian-God-based standards, people have simply substituted feelings for those standards. Millions of American young people have been raised by parents and schools with ‘How do you feel about it?’ as the only guide to what they ought to do. The heart has replaced God and the Bible as a moral guide. … A vast number of American young people do not even ask whether an action is right or wrong. The question would strike them as foreign. Why? Because the question suggests that there is a right and wrong outside of themselves. And just as there is no God higher than them, there is no morality higher than them, either.“ –radio talk-show host Dennis Prager

Reader Comments

"In answer to the question posed in Mark Alexander’s essay, Taking Down Socialist Tax Fairness Rhetoric, the biggest single threat to American Liberty is the U.S. government. I don’t really know how long it has taken, but the citizens of this country have been indoctrinated into the belief that we need the government to take care of us and correct all the ills we face – all the while the government is the one causing most of the ills.” –Dianne

“The greatest threat to American Liberty is apathy. There are a dangerous amount of people who do not care about or care to learn about the bigger picture and how decisions we make know affect the future of our country. Most Americans, unfortunately, believe what they see on television and are not diligent in researching facts and learning history on their own. What we do and think and how we vote DOES matter!” –Amanda

“On Friday you asked what can be done about the thugs in Washington. One thing we can do that costs little is for each of us contact our elected officials multiple times asking for action on each of the crimes by this administration. Keep the heat on until action is taken. My congressman hears from me quite often but one voice crying in the wilderness is not given much attention. A multitude of screaming voices can not be ignored.” –Gary

The Last Word

“As its own contribution to the end of the world as we know it, the Obama administration has just released a document called ‘Living Within Our Means And Investing In The Future: The President’s Plan For Economic Growth And Deficit Reduction.’ If you’re curious about the first part of the title – ‘Living Within Our Means’ – Veronique de Rugy pointed out at National Review that under this plan debt held by the public will grow from just over $10 trillion to $17.7 trillion by 2021. In other words, the president’s definition of ‘Living Within Our Means’ is to burn through the equivalent of the entire German, French and British economies in new debt between now and the end of the decade. You can try this yourself next time your bank manager politely suggests you should try ‘living within your means’: tell him you’ve got an ingenious plan to get your spending under control by near doubling your present debt in the course of a mere decade. He’s sure to be impressed.” –columnist Mark Steyn

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