Brief

The Foundation

"[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous." --George Washington

Faith & Family

"Evangelical Christianity lost one of its most eloquent and influential voices [Saturday] with the death of Charles W. 'Chuck' Colson. The Prison Fellowship and Colson Center for Christian Worldview founder died at 3:12 p.m. on Saturday from complications resulting from a brain hemorrhage. Colson was 80. A Watergate figure who emerged from the country's worst political scandal, a vocal Christian leader and a champion for prison ministry, Colson spent the last years of his life in the dual role of leading Prison Fellowship, the world's largest outreach to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families, and the Colson Center, a teaching and training center focused on Christian worldview thought and application. Colson was speaking at a Colson Center conference when he was overcome by dizziness. ... At times, Chuck showed encouraging indicators of a possible recovery, but his health took a decided turn, and he went to be with the Lord. ... Colson maintained that the greatest joy in life for him was to see those 'living monuments' to God's grace: Prisoners transformed by the love of Jesus Christ. And thanks to the work of Colson and Prison Fellowship volunteers across the country, there are thousands of those living monuments among us today." --ChuckColson.org

Editor's Note: We at The Patriot Post are grateful to Chuck Colson for his support over the years. He offered a significant vote of confidence as one of our earliest endorsers. We will keep his family in our prayers and would add, well done, good and faithful servant.

Government

"I don't know how many times I've seen liberal commentators look back with nostalgia to the days when a young man fresh out of high school or military service could get a well-paying job on an assembly line at a unionized auto factory that could carry him through to a comfortable retirement. As it happens, I grew up in Detroit and for a time lived next door to factory workers. And I know something that has eluded the liberal nostalgiacs. Which is that people hated those jobs. ... The liberal nostalgiacs would like to see an economy that gives low-skill high school graduates similar opportunities. That's what Barack Obama seems to be envisioning when he talks about hundreds of thousands of 'green jobs.' But those 'green jobs' have not come into existence despite massive government subsidies and crony capitalism. ... Today's young people can't expect to join large organizations and in effect ride escalators for the rest of their careers. The new companies emerging as winners in high tech -- think Apple or Google -- just don't employ that many people, at least in the United States. Similarly, today's manufacturing firms produce about as large a share of the gross national product as they used to with a much smaller percentage of the labor force. ... What we can be sure of is that creating your own career will produce a stronger sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Young people who do so won't hate their work the way those autoworkers hated those assembly line jobs." --columnist Michael Barone

For the Record

"Between 1787 and 1930, our nation suffered both mild and severe economic downturns. There was no intervention to stimulate the economy, but the economy always recovered. During the 1930s, there were massive interventions, starting with President Herbert Hoover and later with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Their actions turned what would have been a sharp three- or four-year economic downturn into a 10-year affair. In 1930, when Hoover began to 'fix' the economy, unemployment was 6 percent. FDR did even more to 'fix' the economy. As a result, unemployment remained in double digits throughout the decade and reached 20 percent in 1939. President Roosevelt blamed the high unemployment on his predecessor. ... Americans have been miseducated into thinking that Roosevelt's New Deal saved our economy. That miseducation extends to most academics, including economists, at our universities, who are arrogant enough to believe that it's possible for a few people in Washington to have the information and knowledge necessary to manage the economic lives of 313 million people." --economist Walter E. Williams

Culture

"Some Americans are old enough to remember when going on the dole was something one did only when every other option became untenable. And even then, a certain degree of lingering shame accompanied that choice, along with an equal amount of determination to change course and return to being productive as quickly as possible. How quaint such ideas must seem to current generations of Americans, many of whom have been steeped in the idea that someone owes them something -- for nothing, no less. ... It is remarkable how many Americans have become thoroughly convinced that there are more than enough workers -- who will go on working no matter how onerous it becomes, no less -- to underwrite all of the slackers, and ever-growing number of fence-sitters moving to their side of the ledger. It is far less remarkable that we have a president who would exploit such selfishness and ignorance by taking an American virtue ... and turn it into a vice, which is what Mr. Obama is doing when [he] labels the alternative to his socialist/Marxist vision as an 'on your own' society. This is nothing less than a full-frontal assault on our national character. Or what used to be our national character until progressives convinced substantial numbers of Americans that success is something that should elicit feelings of envy, rather than admiration and a sense of aspiration." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

Insight

"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, 'a new form of servitude.'" --economist Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)

Re: The Left

"'I saw many signs in this campaign,' said Richard Nixon the day after he was elected president in 1968. 'But the one that touched me the most was one that I saw in Deshler, Ohio, at the end of a long day of whistle-stopping.... A teenager held up a sign, "Bring Us Together." And that will be the great objective of this administration at the outset: to bring the American people together.' ... The desire to see an incoming president as a unifier, a healer of the national breach, is an old American tradition, especially in times of acrimony and political conflict. But Nixon, needless to say, didn't heal the breach. ... Time and again, Obama promised what Nixon promised: to bring Americans together. That pledge ... went to the essence of his candidacy. And on the night of his election, before a vast crowd in Chicago's Grant Park, he underscored it: 'Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.' Yet far from resisting that temptation, Obama has rarely bypassed any chance to indulge it. The would-be uniter whips up envy and resentment, demonizing those who disagree with him, and aggravating the nation's racial, class, and party tensions." --columnist Jeff Jacoby

Political Futures

"In an ironic reversal of the emphases of Madison's Federalist Paper #10, in which that great thinker carefully outlined the dangers of factionalism and pressed for the need for stability of the Republic of the United States, Obama and his supporters are seeking to achieve electoral hegemony by playing to minorities and supporting factionalism. Anger, rather than hope, is to be the glue which keeps the disparate minorities together. In turn, the rage of minorities against fellow Americans is to be the president's means to re-election. The result, should Obama be re-elected, will be a new class order characterized by the tyranny of minority rule. ... In contrast to the current administration's and race warfare-mongers' agenda of anger expressed in class and ethnic warfare, conservatives of every stripe must offer not only blunt analyses of what this administration is up to, but also a plan of real hope -- not hype." --columnist Fay Voshell

Opinion in Brief

"In the summer of 2001, a little boy in Mississippi lost an arm in a shark attack. The media went absolutely crazy. For weeks and months they highlighted every shark attack on the evening news. They ran aerial footage of sharks in the water near beaches. They coined the term 'Summer of the Shark.' ... Bombarded by such coverage, most Americans responded to polls by saying they were concerned about the uptick in shark attacks. In fact, there were actually about 10% fewer shark attacks in 2001 than in 2000. Our perceptions were severely biased by the coverage. Similarly, every bit of severe weather now makes the news, so the American public can be forgiven for thinking that maybe such weather is increasing. ... Sure we had some 100-year high temperatures in the US in March. But in the same month the rest of the world was at or below its average temperature for the last couple of decades. The reality is that the US makes up about 2% of the global surface area so that on average, an area the size of the US somewhere in the world should be having such a 100-year high month six times a year. For these reasons, and others, it is really, really hard to detect shifts in the mean of a data set like climate outcomes from just a few samples." --Forbes contributor Warren Meyer

The Gipper

"The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all." --Ronald Reagan

Reader Comments

"Thanks so much for Mark Alexander's outstanding essay on Patriots' Day. We are already at war for our nation and our citizens -- may God support and protect us! I hope we never have to endure what our forefathers endured to protect our freedoms, but if need be, our generation will do what's necessary for ourselves and our posterity! We must forever live Virginia's motto, 'Sic Semper Tyrannis!'" --Grandson of Liberty

"I just finished sending another donation to support The Patriot Post team and wanted to send a personal thanks to all of you as well. I happened upon your publication shortly after finishing college and have been a loyal consumer ever since. I've always held on to conservative beliefs but back then I did not necessarily understand how precious America really is. As I've grown over the years and digested your analysis, I've come to realize that it's not only important for me to understand but for the generations behind me -- a battle that quite frankly is not going well due to the insidious nature of our own educational system. That is why I give. Without The Patriot Post, I fear truth would be lost. It is important for us to remember that many of the original patriots either died for the cause or lost all personal comforts in the process. Simply donating seems so trivial! But it's still something that I can do until the day comes that more is required. And I do it joyfully knowing courageous people like you are using these funds to shine the light of truth into the ever darkening sky of tyranny." --Young Patriot

Readers responded to the issue of tax reform in Friday's Digest:

"Everyone should pay taxes regardless of their income. A flat tax is the only way to go." --BJ

"I attended a seminar on the Fair Tax and think it is the best solution provided they don't keep raising the basic amount of tax." --Judy

"I favor a flat tax of some sort and elimination of the IRS. Every income earner should have some skin in the game and the fact that almost half of them pay no federal taxes is very dangerous." --Earl

"The income tax should be repealed and a national sales tax put in its place." --Corsica

As for Harry Reid's suggestion that seniors like junk mail, readers gave him a resounding "yeah, right!" Some also had colorful suggestions for what he could do with that junk mail.

The Last Word

"If the economy continues to recover, President Obama will claim he caused that. It wouldn't be the first time a 'leader' ran in front of a crowd and claimed to have led the way. But politicians don't deserve credit for what free people do. ... One of the most important questions in politics should be: 'Would the private sector have done better things with that money?' A healthy economy does not just create jobs of any kind, it creates productive jobs. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt created plenty of jobs building pyramids, but who knows how much better the lives of ancient Egyptians (especially the slaves) might have been had they been free to engage in other work? They would all have had better housing, more food or snazzier headdresses. Even as smart a person as economist John Maynard Keynes seemed to forget about that when he wrote in his 'General Theory' back in 1936, 'Pyramid-building, earthquakes, even wars may serve to increase wealth.' By that logic, government could create full employment tomorrow by outlawing machines. Think of all the work there'd be to do then!" --columnist John Stossel

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