It Can Happen to America

The Foundation

"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind." --Thomas Paine

Inspiration

Editor's Note: Neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson gave a wonderful speech at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. Here are a few excerpts:

"[W]e've reached the point where people are afraid to actually talk about what they want to say because somebody might be offended. ... We've got to get over this sensitivity. ... [Political correctness] is dangerous. Because, you see, this country -- one of the founding principles was freedom of thought and freedom of expression. And it muffles people. It puts a muzzle on them. And at the same time, it keeps people from discussing important issues while the fabric of this society is being changed. And we cannot fall for that trick. ... [I]n 1831 Alexis de Toqueville came to study America. The Europeans were fascinated. How could a fledgling nation, barely 50 years old, already be competing with them on virtually every level? This was impossible. De Toqueville was going to sort it out and he looked at our government and he was duly impressed by the three branches of government.... He said, 'Wow, this is really something,' but then he said, 'but let me look at their educational system' and he was blown away. See, anybody who had finished the second grade was completely literate. He could find a mountain man on the outskirts of society who could read the newspaper and have a political discussion, could tell him how the government worked. ... [T]he people who founded this Nation said that our system of government was designed for a well-informed and educated populace, and when they become less informed, they become vulnerable. Think about that. ... Why is it so important that we educate our people? Because we don't want to go down the same pathway as so many pinnacle nations that have preceded us. I think particularly about ancient Rome. Very powerful. Nobody could even challenge them militarily, but what happened to them? They destroyed themselves from within. Moral decay, fiscal irresponsibility. They destroyed themselves. If you don't think that can happen to America, you get out your books and you start reading, but you know, we can fix it. ... All we need to do is remember what our real responsibilities are so that we can solve the problems." --Dr. Benjamin Carson

Read and watch all of Dr. Carson's speech.

The Gipper

"Any system that penalizes success and accomplishment is wrong. Any system that discourages work, discourages productivity, discourages economic progress, is wrong. If, on the other hand, you reduce tax rates and allow people to spend or save more of what they earn, they'll be more industrious; they'll have more incentive to work hard, and money they earn will add fuel to the great economic machine that energizes our national progress. The result: more prosperity for all -- and more revenue for government. A few economists call this principle supply-side economics. I just call it common sense." --Ronald Reagan

Opinion in Brief

"Republicans ... will never beat liberals at the game of whose heart bleeds the most. ... The reason that game is so perilous for conservatives is not that liberals necessarily care more than conservatives but that they are always willing and eager to prove their concern by cutting a check, even when all we have in the checking account is IOUs and cash on loan from China. Moreover, they are perfectly happy and eager to say that anyone who opposes more check-kiting is greedy or selfish, even if what Democrats are doing is making the problem they seek to solve worse. All too often, liberals act as if government has a monopoly on compassion. ... Children often think their parents are being mean when they tell their kids to do their homework. That doesn't make the parents mean, it makes them responsible. Eventually, the lessons of life persuade children their parents were right all along. Voters aren't children, but too many of them have the childish notion that the best policies are those that pander to their immediate desires. The challenge for the GOP is to persuade them to put away childish things." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

Government

"[T]he Obama administration has offered another compromise on the issue of birth control coverage within the Affordable Care Act. While exempting churches and some religiously affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from supplying the coverage, the new proposal calls for their employees to receive stand-alone private insurance policies providing birth control coverage at no cost. Insurance companies will foot the bill, but only the naive can possibly think the cost won't find its way back to the institution in the form of higher health premiums. ... The core issue as I see it ... is whether the government has the right to define a church as a building in which people congregate on Sundays and whether a private company headed by a religious person qualifies for conscience exemptions. For government to decide such things violates the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment ... and appears to put the state in the position of supreme authority and arbiter of what constitutes 'legitimate' religious faith and practice. ... The administration's efforts to effectively gerrymander lines between what it considers legitimate religious practice and the secular is what the Founders hoped to avoid when they linked the establishment clause with the free exercise clause." --columnist Cal Thomas

Re: The Left

"Barack Obama feels empowered: Liberals are always vulgar in defeat and hubristic in victory, but Barack Obama has become so toweringly arrogant that it wouldn't be a surprise if he were getting himself fitted for a crown. ... The conservative grassroots is demoralized: Conservatives haven't lost faith in their principles, but they've started to wonder if the country has passed a tipping point. ... The Democrats want to take our guns away: The Democrats are following Rahm Emanuel's cynical advice to the hilt and are determined to 'Never let a crisis go to waste.' ... Barack Obama, the Democrats, and even the Republicans in Congress need to be reminded that the Tea Party is still here and those of us in the grassroots are not sitting down, shutting up, or giving in. That goes double for Americans who care about their Second Amendment rights. The Democrats believe they can demonize gun owners and try to take your guns away without having to worry about any consequences at the ballot box. We need to show them that they're wrong." --columnist John Hawkins

Insight

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance." --Roman philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-46 BC)

Political Futures

"Watching 'news' from the United States in a foreign country is often a surreal experience. My natural default mode when I'm overseas is to defend my country, but the Hagel hearings made this task challenging, to say the least. The Israelis watching the 'highlight reel' frequently asked questions such as, 'Why would Obama pick a person who hates Jews to be your secretary of defense?' What's the pro-American answer to that? ... His bewildering, deer-in-the-headlights muddle about the Obama administration's 'containment policy' toward Iran's nuclear weapons program was undoubtedly acclaimed by the ayatollahs in Tehran. But here in Israel, it affirmed the worst fears of people who see Iranian nuclear weapons as an existential threat to the survival of the Jewish state. ... In a lengthy and heated back-and-forth, McCain repeatedly challenged Hagel on whether he still agreed that the Iraq surge was a mistake. Hagel refused to answer. Unfortunately, nobody asked a far more important question: What was it about Vietnam that Hagel considers to be a 'blunder'? ... Millions died and fled the country we pledged to defend. But the war wasn't lost on the battlefields of Vietnam. It was lost in the corridors of power in Washington. Does Hagel consider the 'blunder' of Vietnam to be our getting into the fight? Or was it our precipitous withdrawal and removal of all support? Those are the kinds of questions that should have been asked -- and that Israelis are now asking privately as they await the outcome of these hearings." --columnist Oliver North

For the Record

"The 'O' word that defines the media at times like these isn't 'objective.' It's 'opportunistic.' To be sure, the 'news' manufacturers aren't hoping for a school shooting. But that doesn't mean they aren't ready to exploit it. ... There are zero stories tilting toward a 'solution' of curbing violence in TV and movies. That's because the TV networks show violent scenes nightly and are owned by companies with movie studios that profit from violent scenes. Try finding the word 'violence' next to 'movies' or 'television' in a post-Newtown story on the TV networks where it isn't a casual afterthought. The First Amendment is treated as sacred; the Second Amendment as profane. ... The bias here is just loaded with urgency, because every politicized 'news' advocate knows that the policy debate on guns operates on emotion, and not on facts. The facts might be the same in the first 10 days as they are three months later, but liberal journalists feel like they're going to lose the debate to the NRA's army of members in fly-over country as soon as the emotion subsides. ... After Newtown, the networks again demonstrated that there's no story on which they can't dramatically stack the deck. Liberal news stories lead to liberal legislation. They know it; and relish it." --Media Research Center President L. Brent Bozell

Reader Comments

"After reading Mark Alexander's column, Sequester Politics, Round Two, I have to say that Karl Rove has done more to destroy the Republican party than most any other single person on earth, and now the party establishment is listening to his advice? Really? It's like what I tell the RNC fundraisers who call our house: 'Those are the very people that put Obama in the White House and now you want me to PAY you for that? Take me off your list.'" --Pete in Mississippi

"The limp-wrested, spineless Republicans had better stand their ground for once. Obama will take every advantage he can for as long as no one stands up to him. He, like all bullies, will fold if the Republicans stand firm to get some meaningful reductions in the entitlement spending." --Frank in Houston, Texas

"I am done with the Republican party. I worked like heck in the last election and donated a lot of money, but Republicans will get no more from me until I see something more than acquiescence to Obama! Republican leaders are more afraid of loosing their jobs than loosing our country!" --Frank in Broomfield, Colorado

"You wrote in Friday's Digest, 'Some are suggesting that Dianne Feinstein's Defensive Weapons Ban will go nowhere,' I am convinced that there was never any intention that her proposals would go anywhere. I think that they were thrown out to push the boundary so far away from acceptable that other options, no matter how insidious, will appear to be reasonable in contrast and so any 'compromise' position will still give the anti-Second Amendment folks a substantial victory at the cost of a huge loss of freedom for law abiding citizens." --Bill in Moorhead, Minnesota

"The photo of 'Skeeter' Obama with a shotgun claiming he was shooting skeet is an attempt by him and the NeoComs to redefine what type of gun is acceptable to own. Not 'military looking' firearms. This is classic propaganda. So, the question one of his sheep will ask is, 'Why do you need that gun?' or 'Why do you need ALL those guns?' The answer, 'Because I want to,' will not be acceptable." --pws in New York

"So Tony Bennett says that a lack of gun control caused the rise of the Nazi Regime. An odd statement from a man who actually joined the U.S. Army during WWII and fought. But even more laughable is his comment that the Nazi's 'had to be told off.' Quite an understatement, if combat losses of 5.3 million German soldiers constitutes a good 'telling off.'" --Ron in Gramling, South Carolina

The Last Word

"Barack Obama would like you to believe that it's white guys with assault weapons and NRA memberships that commit most of the murders in this country. But the truth ... is that although whites comprise 67% of the population, Hispanics 16% and blacks, just 13%, blacks are responsible for roughly half the murders in America. The murder rate among blacks is eight times as high as among whites. Sadly, it is one area in which they truly overachieve. ... [T]he number of accidental gun deaths in America averages around 1,500-a-year. The number of accidental deaths caused by physicians and hospitals is over 120,000. I leave it to you to decide which poses the greater danger, guns or healthcare providers. ... The way things are now, the other side simply waits for the next massacre. Then they troop out the survivors ... and, thus, they inevitably win the battle on emotional, if not Constitutional, grounds. But if the NRA would simply wise up, we would soon begin seeing the gun-toting mothers and fathers on TV, the folks you never even hear about in the national media. They're the folks who didn't just wait around for the cops to draw chalk outlines of their dead bodies on the kitchen floor, but, instead, put their guns to the use for which they were bought and paid for. Once they've won the hearts and minds of the American public, the NRA won't have to worry so much about whether the right person gets elected; the public will see to it." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

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