The Foundation

“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” –Thomas Paine

Inspiration

“Great Britain and the world have lost a great leader. … Lady [Margaret] Thatcher now takes her place in history alongside Sir Winston Churchill, the Duke of Wellington and all the other great British heroes who defeated enemies of their island nation. An intrepid warrior for freedom and human dignity, Prime Minister Thatcher stood with her 'noble friend,’ President Ronald Reagan, to confront the Soviet empire when it was at its peak. Her courage and steadfastness earned the respect of her fiercest foes. It was, after all, the Russians who dubbed her the Iron Lady. At home, Lady Thatcher’s free-market reforms were revolutionary – and salutary. Using deregulation and privatization, she restored Great Britain, once dismissed as the ‘sick man of Europe,’ to its position as a world power. Indeed, her policies led the way and inspired other nations – including those in newly free Eastern Europe – to adopt similar reforms to boost their economies. Characteristically clear-eyed, she called Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein ‘psychopaths’ in a Washington speech to members of The Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club on Dec. 9, 2002 – 15 months after the September 11 attacks. … I not only had the privilege of visiting Lady Thatcher and being introduced to some of her closest allies in Britain, but of returning the courtesy by introducing her to some of Heritage’s best friends in America. To the end, as embodied in the Iron Lady, age only strengthened the storied ‘special relationship’ between our nations. … We will do our best to live up to Margaret Thatcher’s example of principled leadership and iron will.” –Heritage Foundation’s former president Ed Feulner

The Gipper

“[Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher] demonstrated two great qualities. The first was that she had thought seriously about how to revive the British economy and entered office with a clear set of policies to do so. She brought down inflation by controlling the money supply, and she began removing the controls, subsidies, and regulations that kept business lazy. Her second great quality was the true grit of a true Brit (or perhaps I should say, of a true-blue Brit). We both realized that our policies wouldn’t solve such deep-rooted problems overnight. The first effects, in the world recession of 1981-82, were painful. I remember meeting her in Washington at a time when people in both our countries were calling for a change of course. She never wavered. And she was proved right by events. … Margaret Thatcher – this great lady has not only served her country well, she has served the free world well. She is truly a great statesman. So much so that I’ll correct what I just said: She is a great stateswoman holding her own among all the statesmen of the world.” –Ronald Reagan

Re: The Left

“Thirty years ago, on March 23, 1983, Ronald Reagan made a television address calling on the United States to build an anti-missile defense. His rationale was compelling: Isn’t it better to save American lives than to kill millions of the enemy? Our enemy then was the fearsome Soviet missile force. Reagan’s steadfast determination to build a U.S. anti-missile defense was why he won the Cold War … without firing a shot. … The propaganda against U.S. anti-missile defense started immediately after Reagan’s 1983 speech with Ted Kennedy ridiculing it as Star Wars, and continues to this day. The building of an anti-missile system always posed the number-one non-negotiable issue between the United States and our enemies and, incomprehensively, between conservatives and the Left. We now face other enemies. But the Left is still dug in behind its opposition to saving American lives by an anti-missile system. Barack Obama became President spouting the typical left wing anti-defense policy and dreaming of the fantasy of a nuclear-free world. He seems to think diplomatic talks, combined with his personal charm, can replace peace through strength, but it can’t.” –columnist Phyllis Schlafly

Government

“Rejecting concerns that new background checks might be a prelude to gun seizures, Obama suggested that worries about gun seizures were empty, and were only designed to feed ‘into fears about government. You hear some of these folks: "I need a gun to protect myself from the government. We can’t do background checks because the government’s going to come take my guns away.” The government’s us. These officials are elected by you. … I am constrained as they are constrained by the system that our founders put in place.’ This is deeply frightening language. … If rights are dependent on votes … then we have no rights at all. The point of rights is to guarantee them against government. That is why the founders stated that rights descend not from government – not from ‘us,’ as Obama would have it – but from God or nature. … If government were us, we would be a pure democracy. And even if we were a pure democracy, that would not give us the right to violate the rights of others. The logic Obama uses with regard to gun control is the root of fascism and oppression. Liberalism is reliant on the concept of rights that supersede popular whim. And the greatest right … is the right to bear arms. If Americans weren’t afraid of government violation of rights before Obama spoke about guns [last] week, they should be now.“ –columnist Ben Shapiro

Essential Liberty

"The Obama administration treated the creation of ‘democracy’ in the Middle East as a good thing. Ironically, those who created the United States of America viewed democracy with fear – and created a Constitutional republic instead. … In its most basic sense, democracy means majority rule. But there can be majority rule in a free country or in a country with an authoritarian or even a dictatorial government. In this age of sloppy uses of words, many people include freedom in their conception of democracy. But whether democracy leads to freedom is an open question, not a foregone conclusion. … The idea that ‘all people want freedom’ is one of those feel-good phrases that some people indulge in. But you do not get a free country just because everybody wants freedom – for themselves. You can have a free country only when people are willing to let other people have freedom.” –economist Thomas Sowell

Opinion in Brief

“[Last] week a judge in California allowed the city of Stockton to proceed with bankruptcy proceedings. The cause of this bankruptcy is related to the extreme healthcare and pension benefits that have been extended to current and past employees of the city. Currently, Bernie Madoff sits in jail for creating a Ponzi scheme where current investors were paid high returns using proceeds obtained from future investors who will trust him with their money with the same promise of high returns. What is the difference between Mr. Madoff and the city of Stockton? … Those that sought these benefits and those that awarded them when there was no financial base to support them are just a guilty of perpetrating a Ponzi scheme and should be held accountable in the same manner as Mr. Madoff. … Stockton is one of the first in what will be a long line of similar actions taken when the promised benefits and pensions that were defined in some negotiation were not backed up with sufficient funds to meet those obligations.” –Patriot Post Grassroots contributor John Rhoads

For the Record

“In 1960, when vastly more Americans were involved in physical labor of some kind, 0.65 percent of workforce participants between the ages of 18 and 64 were receiving Social Security disability insurance payments. Fifty years later, in a much healthier America, that number has grown nearly nine-fold to 5.6 percent. In 1960, 134 Americans were working for every officially recognized disabled worker. Five decades later that ratio fell to roughly 16 to 1. … One factor has to do with what correspondent Chana Joffe-Walt calls the ‘Vast Disability Industrial Complex.’ These are the sometimes shady, sometimes well-intentioned lawyers who fight to fatten the rolls of disability recipients. These lawyers get a cut of every winning claimant’s ‘back pay.’ The more clients, the bigger the take. … Then there are the doctors. Joffe-Walt profiles one rural Alabama doctor who signs off on disabilities for pretty much anyone lacking a good education on the assumption their employment prospects are grim. That points to the even bigger parts of the story. As the nature of the economy changes, disability programs are sometimes taking the place of welfare for those who feel locked out of the workforce – and state governments are loving it. States pay for welfare, the feds pay for disabilities.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

Insight

“Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” –Irish statesman, author and philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Political Futures

“Part of the reason Obama has been able to succeed, including in his reelection effort, is that the overly cautious types on our side insist on pulling their punches in criticizing him. … Republicans can’t successfully navigate their budget battles with Obama if they’re constantly giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming (and asserting), against the evidence, that he is dealing in good faith. If our side had been as relentless in pointing out Obama’s substantive radicalism as Obama and the left have been in falsely demonizing Republicans, I dare say we could have defeated him in 2012. Obama is not just a garden-variety liberal who wants to nudge America’s political pendulum left of center. He has told us from the beginning and has now proved that he intends to fundamentally transform America. Nor is he motivated by ideological liberalism alone. He holds grudges, from race to capitalism to who knows what else. … It is not those pointing out Obama’s radicalism who are his primary enablers, but those who are naively downplaying it.” –columnist David Limbaugh

Faith and Family

“I first look to the Bible for moral guidance and for wisdom. I say this even though I am not a Christian (I am a Jew, and a non-Orthodox one at that). And I say this even though I attended an Ivy League graduate school (Columbia), where I learned nothing about the Bible there except that it was irrelevant, outdated and frequently immoral. I say this because there is nothing – not any religious or secular body of work – that comes close to the Bible in forming the moral bases of Western civilization and therefore of nearly all moral progress in the world. … If not from the Bible, from where should people get their values and morals? The university? The New York Times editorial page? … The universities and their media supporters have taught a generation of Americans the idiocy that men and women are basically the same. And they are the institutions that teach that America’s founders were essentially moral reprobates – sexist and racist rich white men.” –radio talk-show host Dennis Prager

Reader Comments

“As per usual, Alexander’s remarks on the ‘gay agenda’ in his essay, ‘Java Jolt for "Gay Marriage”,’ its manifestations in various venues, are spot on, and rise well above the media and pundit chatter about this complicated issue. He said it best in his closing paragraphs: ‘The “gay marriage” agenda is not about redefining marriage, it is about undefining marriage. There are already all manner of legal unions recognized by states and employers and some churches. For people of faith – any faith on the planet – to uphold homosexuality is an affront to our Creator and nature. For Christians, there is no Scriptural equivocation on the intent for marriage being “man and woman.” As Jesus told the Pharisees in Matthew 19:4, “Haven’t you read that in the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female’? (Genesis 1:27) That’s why a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. The two will become one. So a man must not separate what God has joined together.” For people of faith, this issue is not about judgement of others, but about discernment of God’s word and His expression through creation. Even for atheists, homosexuality is a violation of the most basic understanding of “natural selection” and the order of nature. The “gay agenda” is not the greatest assault on marriage, family and society. That title belongs to adultery and divorce, which destroy families and undermine the foundational tenets of Liberty. But the fact that that the homosexual agenda takes second place in the competition to undermine our culture is no reason to normalize it, as the Left is endeavoring to do.‘“ –Henry in Tennessee

The Last Word

"A New York Supreme Court judge … has overruled Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ban of large drinks, calling it 'arbitrary and capricious,’ which is legal-speak for dopey and asinine. For his part, Bloomberg announced he will appeal the ruling, which is Bloomberg-speak for ‘How dare he! Doesn’t he know who I am?!’ In case anyone is curious, the most obvious reason that the only dwarf to run a major city is so up in arms over sugar, salt, soda sizes and Styrofoam, is because it serves to distract voters from the recent study that showed that 80% of New York City’s high school graduates can’t read. … The problem is that Bloomberg is not the exception to the rule. On the contrary, he is a perfect example of a liberal politician. For instance, when academics on the Left speak so glowingly about diversity, they are merely referring to pigmentation, never to a diversity of ideas, values and opinions. So it is that when Bloomberg goes to war over obesity, the only fat that concerns him is that which accumulates in bellies and on hips, never the stuff that liberals collect between their ears.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

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