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The Foundation
“Be in general virtuous, and you will be happy.” –Benjamin Franklin
Inspiration
George H.W. Bush and Patrick
“Former President George H.W. Bush shaved his head [last] Tuesday, supporting a two-year-old with leukemia whose father is part of the 89-year-old’s Secret Service detail. Members of the Bush Protective Division began removing their hair last week in solidarity with Patrick, who was diagnosed with leukemia last spring, Bush’s spokesperson Jim McGrath told CBSNews.com. Bush said ‘it was very easy for him to do,’ McGrath said. Patrick’s prognosis is ‘good,’ but his treatment and illness carry a special place in Bush’s heart as his daughter Robin died of the same blood disease in 1953 when she was three. His Secret Service members have organized a website and 50-mile motorcycle ride through Maine — where Bush resides — to help pay for Patrick’s medical bills.” –CBS News
Opinion in Brief
“What does a president in a perpetual campaign do when national disapproval rates start rising higher than 50 percent? He returns to Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., the site of a Lincoln-Douglas debate and, even more impressively — as a nearly breathless White House informed us — the place he delivered his first major economic address as a U.S. senator. … That’s not to say that Obama offered a single new constructive idea. Raise the minimum wage? Force banks to lend money more easily? Subsidize clean energy? Universal preschool? ‘I’m going to challenge CEOs from some of America’s best companies to hire more Americans,’ says our humble leader — because, evidently, CEOs want to stick it to workers for the heck of it. Bold. Whatever you make of these ideas in general, they are unserious policy prescriptions for a stagnant economy. If the president were earnest about moving forward, he would have offered something, anything — regulatory slowdown or a reprieve for small businesses or a pipeline even. Instead, the GOP was presented with a grab bag of progressive hobbyhorses that he knows have no chance of going anywhere. And isn’t that the point? Keep your heel on the throat of the obstructionists and win the politics of the day. The House and White House are ready to battle over the debt ceiling and budget, and that’s what this is about.” –columnist David Harsanyi
For the Record
“During [Obama's] first two years in office, his party controlled both houses of Congress and rammed through its agenda. Largely as a result, Democrats lost the House in 2010, but they have retained the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid has been playing the Igor to Obama’s Dr. Frankenstein ever since (though reporters have yet to catch Reid actually saying ‘Yetthhhh master’ on tape). At Obama’s bidding, the Senate failed to pass a budget for four years and refused to take up any meaningful legislation passed by the House. That’s not the narrative you usually hear, because for most of Obama’s presidency, the Washington press corps was enthralled with him. It wasn’t until the dawn of his second term that most reporters stopped asking questions like, ‘Can you create a boulder too heavy for you to lift?’ It’s also odd that Obama has pivoted back to the economy when, depending on whose estimates you use, he’s made similar ‘pivots’ on average once every 2-4 months since he’s been elected. As one wag told the Weekly Standard, ‘You do that on the basketball court, you get called for traveling.’ But the more apt image is of a basketball player with one shoe nailed to the floor, constantly pivoting in a circle.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg
Reader Comments
“After reading Mark Alexander’s essay, If Obama Had a City, I have one thing to add: The pillaging of America did not start with Obama and will not end when he leaves office. It will stop when voters stop voting for the people who are pillaging.” –Barry in Merritt Island, Florida
“Mark Alexander hit the nail on the head. Detroit plus 60 years of Democratic leadership — what could go wrong? Margret Thatcher was right, ‘eventually you run out of other people’s money.’” –Retired in Georgia
“Detroit is a prime example of the end result of unfunded socialistic policies coupled with immoral, amoral, unethical politicians who can’t, or won’t, see past tomorrow’s payday.” –Richard in Alexandria, Virginia
Re: The Left
“‘…we discussed the fact that Ho Chi Minh was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.’ –President Obama talking to reporters alongside Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang. I can’t speak for you, of course, but there was no need for me to hear the words above pass the lips of the US President for me to be convinced he is a communist. … I won’t dispute that Uncle Ho may have studied our Founding Fathers and founding documents. Lots of dictators have done so. Heck, if I was a fledgling dictator, I’d be darned sure to study those men and those documents because they are dangerous to tyrants and dictators. … Our President, Obama is a dyed in the wool socialist. … His spread the wealth policies and statist philosophy of governing and disrespect for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and his shallow knowledge of US history mark him for what he truly is. Ho Chi Minh was a bone fide tyrant. A communist tyrant! … But, dear reader, what is even MORE troubling is this: With all this knowledge of Obama sympathies toward communism, roughly half the American electorate put him in office — and kept him there for a second term. Now THAT is TRULY frightening!” –columnist J. D. Longstreet
Essential Liberty
“Few people understand the legal origins from which our rule of law is derived, beginning with the Magna Carta, which established the principle that no one, including the king or a lawmaker, is above the law. Nor are people cognizant of the subsequent history and philosophy influencing the framers of the U.S. and many state constitutions. Sadly, this lack of understanding is what allows so many people to disregard a system of justice intended to be impartial and to afford each citizen equal protection under the law. It is this disregard which propels mobs to demand social justice and influences politicians to entertain the passion of the people. The founders and framers were afraid of mob rule. They understood that emotion impairs judgment. … The study of our state and U.S. constitutions does not receive nearly enough attention in our nation’s schools. While reading, writing, and arithmetic are critical to an educated citizenry, understanding how our rule of law is designed to limit government and maximize freedom is critical to the liberties for which our forebears fought so hard.” –columnist Nancy Salvato
Government
“According to a USA Today/Bipartisan Policy Center poll, ‘Americans by more than 2-1 say the best way to make positive changes in society is through volunteer organizations and charities, not by being active in government.’ Even better news: People under 30 are especially put off by politics and are ‘significantly less likely than their parents to say participating in politics is an important value in their lives.’ Why is this good news? There are at least two reasons. One is that the less faith people have in government, the more they are likely to have in themselves. The second is that a public loss of faith in politics and politicians increases the possibility of government becoming smaller. That could mean less spending, a smaller deficit and ultimately, one hopes, lower taxes. … If Republicans want to regain trust, they should be focusing less on the failures of Democrats and more on the successes of Republican governors, Republican legislatures, charitable organizations … and volunteers. They are achieving goals Washington can’t. Instead, Washington continues to misspend too much money with little to show for it, except ever-increasing debt.” –columnist Cal Thomas
Political Futures
“Just like in 2010, and 2012, Obama is determined to agitate and mobilize voters for the 2014 election and beyond and to weaken the Republicans with racial innuendo and accusations. He has tainted Democrats by presiding over the weakest recovery on record…. The same is true of ObamaCare, which will be so damaging to Democrats that the administration unilaterally decided to postpone the employer mandate until 2015, usurping congressional authority in the process. This is to say nothing of Democrat-led foreign policy…. It’s going to be a long, divisive slog to the 2014 elections, and racial division continually promoted by the Obama administration is guaranteed to be an integral part of the mix. The fact that Americans view race relations as far worse than they’ve been in years should surely be an embarrassment for the first elected president of African descent. Odds are, however, he views it as an electoral boon for his party.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert
The Gipper
“You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream — the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, ‘The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.’” –Ronald Reagan
Faith and Family
“[A]n Alaskan military chaplain was taken to task for fulfilling the job description that most spiritual leaders (until recently) were hired to do: talk about faith. In a harmless post for his online website, ‘Chaplain’s Corner,’ Lt. Col. Kenneth Reyes (USAF) of the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska wrote an inspirational piece called, ‘No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II.’ The phrase, which President Eisenhower made famous in 1954, dates way back to the Japanese attack at Corregidor. … Mikey Weinstein … organized a letter to Reyes’s commanding officer, Col. Brian Duffy, demanding the chaplain be censored. Weinstein and Military Religious Freedom Foundation rep Blake Page blasted Reyes for his ‘redundant use of the bigoted, religious supremacist phrase, “no atheists in foxholes,”‘ and accused the chaplain of ‘defil[ing] the dignity of service members.’ … Reyes never suggested that ‘there are no atheists in foxholes,’ he was merely tracing, in a very neutral way, the history of the well-known phrase…. Nonetheless, his superior, Col. Duffy, snapped to attention and within five hours of Mikey’s complaint ordered the article scrubbed from the chaplain’s website. … ‘Faith-based hate is hate all the same,’ Page wrote. ‘Lt. Col. Reyes must be appropriately reprimanded.’ For what — doing his job? Engaging in constitutionally-protected speech? Like it or not, a chaplain’s duties, by definition, are to offer prayer, spiritual guidance, and religious instruction.” –Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins
Culture
“Fifty years ago, Betty Friedan, a restless Marxist, published ‘The Feminine Mystique.’ Its premise was that women were miserable in the ‘comfortable concentration camp’ of domestic life but were too brainwashed to know it. … The ‘double standard’ in matters of sex, they taught, favored men. The solution was promiscuity for everyone (enabled by unrestricted abortion). … Fifty years on, we have this dispatch from the University of Pennsylvania: ‘Sex on Campus: She Can Play That Game Too,’ a New York Times account of the way women at one Ivy League school are supposedly ‘hooking up’ in preference to having relationships. It’s not that the sexual revolution actually favored men, the Times reassures its readers, it’s just that women are too focused on careers to make time for men. They pursue sex with ‘hookup buddies’ without a flicker of regret. This is the new brainwashing. Women have been sold (and sold and sold) on the notion that happiness and fulfillment are to be found in careers. Marriage and children are items to be calendared after the MBA, J.D., or Ph.D. Sex is recreation. Getting attached to the human being behind the sex organ can limit your internship options.” –columnist Mona Charen
The Last Word
“So, the [Anthony] Weiner candidacy for [New York] mayor is going about as well as expected. Now people are calling for him to drop out, but that’s a bad idea. This goes by the fantasy that the New York City voters are capable of electing someone who isn’t horrible. I mean, really the best you can hope from them is to elect someone who at least has some redeeming trait to go along with the horribleness … but politicians aren’t really known for having redeeming traits — especially those in New York. No, the beauty of Mayor Carlos Danger is that everyone now knows he’s horrible — there is no one at all left with the illusion that Anthony Weiner is a decent human being. How we get in trouble with politicians is that some people are dumb enough to trust them — look at all the people who don’t understand that Obama is completely useless — but if we can finally get some politicians in office that everyone understand is horrible, then we will all do the appropriate and American thing and undermine those politicians at every step of the way. The last thing we need is yet another politician holding power that a large segment of the population is under the false assumption he isn’t a scumbag. That’s how we’ve gotten all our problems so far.” –humorist Frank J. Fleming
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team
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