Only Work

"The world ain't going to be saved by nobody's scheme. It's fellows with schemes that got us into this mess. Plans can get you into things, but you got to work your way out."
--American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

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There Has NEVER Been ANY Constitutional Authority!!!

"Every measure which establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives to it an administrative form creates thereby a class unproductive and idle, living at the expense of the class which is industrious and given to work."
--French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)

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All Governments Limit Liberty

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."
--President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

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The Automobile Nazi

"Barack Obama was not the candidate in last year's presidential race who reminded us the most of a used-car salesman -- that distinction went to his eventual running mate, Joe Biden. Since taking office, though, President Obama has sounded increasingly like the nation's car-salesman-in-chief. Announcing his plan to instate strict caps on auto emissions -- a move his own administration says could add around $2,000 to the cost of each new vehicle by 2016 -- Obama said, 'If you buy a car, your investment in a more fuel-efficient vehicle as a result of this standard will pay off in just three years.' Obama's hard sell -- 'This is a winning proposition for folks looking to buy a car' -- is premised on some sketchy math. For one thing, experts outside the administration say the added per-vehicle cost could go as high as $8,000. You can't save money getting more miles to the gallon if you can't afford the car in the first place. For another, those estimated savings are based on the administration's ability to predict gas prices seven to ten years into the future. ... Then there is the evidence that tighter fuel-economy standards yield auto fleets that are more dangerous in accidents. The easiest way to make a car more fuel efficient is to make it lighter. Researchers from institutions as diverse as the Brookings Institution, the National Research Council, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have shown that after the first federal fuel-economy standards went into effect in the 1970s, cars got lighter and traffic fatalities increased as a result. The National Research Council study found that federal fuel-economy standards contribute to about 2,000 deaths per year. The Rose Garden ceremony during which Obama announced his plan featured the participation of auto-industry leaders, who just a few years ago were adamantly opposed to stricter standards on the grounds that compliance would be too costly. A few nationalizations later, everyone is on board. ... This should serve as a lesson on the dangers of what the Troubled Asset Relief Program has become. The Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress. Now, thanks to the transformation of TARP into an all-purpose slush fund, they control a growing slice of the private sector, too."
--National Review

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So There's Still Some Sanity In South Carolina!

"We live in an era in which conservatives have not effectively outlined the proper and limited role of government, and as a direct consequence of our failures, more and more of our citizens are turning to an ever-encroaching government in times of crisis. Yet to allow the balance of power in this nation to continue to shift further and further toward government and thus further and further from liberty is to surrender the very thing that makes America so historically unique."
--South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford

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ENOUGH ALREADY!

"Just how much government debt does a president have to endorse before he's labeled 'irresponsible'"?
--columnist Robert Samuelson

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If Medicare Is Bankrupt, How's this Supposed To Work?

"Does anybody really believe that adding 50 million people to the public health-care rolls will not cost the government more money? About $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more? At least. So let's be serious when evaluating President Obama's goal of universal health care, and the idea that it's a cost-cutter. Can't happen. Won't happen. Costs are going to explode."
--economist Larry Kudlow

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Should The Same People Who Run The Postal Service Be Allowed to Run Our Healthcare?

"The Obama administration is bent on becoming a major player in -- if not taking over entirely -- America's health-care, automobile and banking industries. Before that happens, it might be a good idea to look at the government's track record in running economic enterprises. It is terrible."
--author John Steele Gordon

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Magical Thinking

"So far, the Obama administration has yet to lay out its magical thinking on how the homegrown auto makers are to become 'viable' when required to subordinate every auto attribute that consumers find desirable in favor of achieving a passenger-car average of 39 miles per gallon by 2016. Nonetheless the answer has quietly seeped out: Taxpayers will write $5,000 or $7,000 rebate checks to other taxpayers to bribe them to buy hybrids and plug-ins at a price that lets Detroit claim it's earning a 'profit' on its Obamamobiles."
--columnist Holman Jenkins Jr

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Where Does It End?

"At some point someone is going to file a suit in Federal court asking for clarity as to just where in the U.S. Constitution it is provided that the Executive Branch can buy a bankrupt car company." --political analyst Rich Galen

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Necessary Evil

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer." --Thomas Paine

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Once it was...

"This Government, the offspring of your own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support."
--George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

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Freedom and Happiness (Legitimate)

"The freedom and happiness of man...[are] the sole objects of all legitimate government."
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1810

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Faith vs. Secularism

"Secularism is a euphemism for a set of beliefs that are the antithesis of faith. Boiled down to its basic elements, secularism is man's subordination of morality to his own earthly judgments, scientific and otherwise. ...[T]he secularist catechism holds that truth is subjective, relative or contextual; because it demands that rationality can solve moral and ontological questions about man's nature, that discrimination is the greatest of all evils and that patriotism is the only social disease that isn't sexually-transmitted. ... Obama's thesis ... is that our moral code can exist in the absence of a religious foundation. ...[S]ecularism -- and its cousin, multiculturalism -- are the primary causes of the weakening of western society at a most dangerous time in history. The weakness results ... because secularism turns the bedrock of western society -- the moral code derived from Judeo-Christian faith -- into sand. By divorcing our societies from faith, we render every man's morality equal to every other's, and thus make them all valueless. When President Obama says we are a nation bound by ideals and values, he postulates an impossibility: where do those secular ideals and values come from if -- as liberal dogma requires -- every man makes up his own?"
--Human Events editor Jed Babbin

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Tearing the Fabric

"When Barack Obama speaks at an American university, he does not provide a different perspective. He preaches to the liberal choir. And I am afraid that most of today's Catholic universities are no exception. ... Contrary to providing diversity of opinion, by inviting Barack Obama, [Notre Dame University president] Father Jenkins really just played to his audience. True leadership would have been to invite a speaker who would inspire this young audience to take seriously the values of their Catholic tradition. ... Where can a parent send their son or daughter to get educated and not be indoctrinated with liberal boilerplate? Catholic universities were supposed to serve this purpose. But it's clear that they, too, have been swept into the liberal tsunami that has engulfed America. Ironically, Father Jenkins states in his letter that Notre Dame's invitation to Obama is 'not a political statement or an endorsement of policy.' He then expresses admiration for the president's views on 'expanding health care, alleviating poverty, and building peace through diplomacy.' Does Father Jenkins not even understand what a 'political statement' is? Unfortunately, Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama has only contributed to the moral ambiguity tearing at our nation's fabric."
--columnist Star Parker

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Freedom of Choice or Slavery

"The economic freedom which is the prerequisite of any other freedom cannot be the freedom from economic care, which the socialists promise us and which can be obtained only by relieving the individual at the same time of the necessity and of the power of choice; it must be the freedom of our economic activity which, with the right of choice, inevitably also carries the risk and the responsibility of that right."
--economist Friedrich August Hayek (1899-1992)

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NO CONTROL: $3,600,000,000,000.00

"Republicans and conservatives are trying to grapple with the Obama administration's $3,600,000,000,000 federal budget -- let's include the zeroes rather than use the trivializing abbreviation $3.6 trillion -- and the larger-than-previously-projected $1,841,000,000,000 budget deficit. Political arguments are usually won not by numbers but by moral principles. And conservatives, banished by voters from high office, are having a hard time agreeing on a moral case. ... For the policies of the Obama administration are not designed to shelter and nourish what Edmund Burke called the 'little platoons.' They are designed to subject them to what [Alexis de] Tocqueville called 'soft despotism,' which he identified as the natural tendency and potentially fatal weakness of American democracy. Our would-be soft despots are offering Americans money and the promise of security against economic distress. The vastly increased cost of government will nonetheless nearly leave half of households free from the burden of paying federal income tax and eligible for occasional rebates. ... The policy proposals of the Obama administration are portrayed ... as addressing the concerns of middle-income people uneasy about the workings of capitalism. But they are not aimed at giving these people more control and choices over the course of their lives -- rather the contrary."
--columnist Michael Barone

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"Consent of the Governed"

"We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed." --Ronald Reagan

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Corruption

"The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which has not yet been used for its supposed purpose (to purchase such assets from banks), has been the instrument of the administration's adventure in the automobile industry. TARP's $700 billion, like much of the supposed 'stimulus' money, is a slush fund the executive branch can use as it pleases. This is as lawless as it would be for Congress to say to the IRS: We need $3.5 trillion to run the government next year, so raise it however you wish -- from whomever, at whatever rates you think suitable. Don't bother us with details. ... The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of 'economic planning' and 'social justice' that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption."
--columnist George Will

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"The Budding Tyrant"

"[T]he budding tyrant identifies personal insults as insults to the country. ...Obama and his followers demonize anyone who challenges the Obama agenda as unpatriotic traitors to the country. ...Obama's entire persona is geared toward his personal elevation. His website, BarackObama.com, continues to run apace despite his elevation to the presidency -- only now, the focus of the website is 'Organizing for America.' The website leads off with this Leninesque quote from Obama: 'I'm asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington ... I'm asking you to believe in yours.' ... Despite certain early warning signs of incipient tyranny, the Obama administration is ... still bound by the dictates of the republican electoral system. We must guard those dictates especially carefully, however, in a time when the Cult of Obama casually suggests that disagreement with the Great Leader is tantamount to anti-Americanism."
--columnist Ben Shapiro

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Abuse of Power 3

"As a tool for understanding the thinking of Obama, [Saul] Alinsky's most famous book, Rules for Radicals, is simultaneously edifying and worrisome. Some passages make Machiavelli's Prince read like a Sesame Street picture book on manners. After Obama took office, the pundit class found itself debating the ideology and sensibility of the new president -- an indication of how scarcely the media had bothered to examine him beforehand. But after 100 days, few observers can say that Obama hasn't surprised them with at least one call. ... Obama is a pragmatist, but a pragmatist as understood by Alinsky: One who applies pragmatism to achieving and keeping power. ... Moderates thought they were electing a moderate; liberals thought they were electing a liberal. Both camps were wrong. Ideology does not have the final say in Obama's decision-making; an Alinskyite's core principle is to take any action that expands his power and to avoid any action that risks his power. As conservatives size up their new foe, they ought to remember: It's not about liberalism. It's about power. Obama will jettison anything that costs him power, and do anything that enhances it.... It's not about the policies or the politics, and it's certainly not about the principles. It's about power, and it has been for a long time."
--columnist Jim Geraghty

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Abuse of Power 2

"A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired."
--Alexander Hamilton

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Abuse of Power

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."
--James Madison, speech in the Virginia constitutional convention, December 2, 1829

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Time to Prune

"The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife."
--Thomas Jefferson

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Necessary Evil

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect."
--James Madison, to an unidentified correspondent, 1833

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Don't Panic!

"Men, to act with vigour and effect, must have time to mature measures, and judgment and experience, as to the best method of applying them. They must not be hurried on to their conclusions by the passions, or the fears of the multitude. They must deliberate, as well as resolve."
--Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, January 6, 1833

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How Stupid Do You Think We Are?

Wrong again:
"[I]f they lost their heart in the 1980s, and they lost their mind in the 1990s, what we've seen in the 2000s is Republicans losing their image, and they lost it on national security."
--Newsweek's Richard Wolffe

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How Stupid Do You Think We Are?

Wrong on so many levels: "Republicans actually have plenty of ideas. That's the problem. The party's ideas -- about economic issues, social issues and just about everything else -- are not popular ideas. They are extremely conservative ideas tarred by association with the extremely unpopular George W. Bush, who helped downsize the party to its extremely conservative base. ... A hard-right agenda of slashing taxes for the investor class, protecting marriage from gays, blocking universal health insurance and extolling the glories of waterboarding produces terrific ratings for Rush Limbaugh, but it's not a majority agenda."
--Time magazine's Michael Grunwald

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Not For The Timid

"Conservatism is the political belief that best mirrors human nature across time and space; but because its precepts are sometimes tragic and demand responsibility rather than ever-expanding rights, it requires adept communicators -- not triangulators and appeasers whose pleasure is only for the moment."
--columnist Victor Davis Hanson

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I thought desent was the purest form of Patriotism!

"If you attack President Barack Obama's policies, are you attacking America? According to today's left, the answer is yes: Barack Obama is America. And opposition to Barack Obama or any of his policies is therefore, by definition, anti-American."
--columnist Ben Shapiro

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What al Qieda could not do with 4 airliners and thousands of gallons of jet fuel, B. Hussein Obama has done with voter approval!

"Proponents of today's world-turned-upside-down economic policies say the policies might seem wrong but really are boldly modern in their rejection of markets in favor of pervasive government intervention in economic life. Hence New York, which until eight months ago was the financial capital of the world, is no longer even the financial capital of the United States. Washington is."
--columnist George Will

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Proper Planning Prevents Government Theft? Who knew?!

"Ford has about $26 billion in automotive debt -- about the same as GM's $27 billion. Ford's debt is secured by its assets. And secured lenders must be repaid -- unless they happen to be Chrysler lenders and get clipped by a company bankruptcy plan that's backed by President Obama. So Ford is like a homeowner who planned prudently and can pay his mortgage, while his spendthrift neighbors get their mortgage reduced by some new federal program."
--Wall Street Journal Detroit bureau chief Paul Ingrassia
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"The Rule of Law"

"The rule of law, not of men -- an ideal tracing back to the ancient Greeks and well-known to our Founding Fathers -- is the animating principle of the American experiment. While the rest of the world in 1787 was governed by the whims of kings and dukes, the U.S. Constitution was established to circumstance arbitrary government power. It would do so by establishing clear rules, equally applied to the powerful and the weak. Fleecing lenders to pay off politically powerful interests, or governmental threats to reputation and business from a failure to toe a political line? We might expect this behavior from a Hugo Chavez. But it would never happen here, right? Until Chrysler."
--George Mason University law professor Todd Sewage
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"Gangster Government"

"Give President Obama credit -- he at least made the proverbial offer Chrysler's secured creditors couldn't refuse. The way Obama strong-armed creditors who rightfully expected to be treated justly under the law was right out of Juan Peron's playbook. Like the Argentinian strong man, Obama muscled the owners and creditors out of a productive private company and gave it to union leaders, who will then fill his campaign coffers in gratitude for his generosity. The Examiner's Michael Barone -- who has forgotten more about American government and politics than most Washington political experts know -- was correct to dub Obama's Chrysler heist 'an episode of Gangster Government.' Forget what anybody in the White House or what is left of the Chrysler executive corps claims to the contrary because the UAW effectively owns the company now, holding 55 percent of its stock. True, the union doesn't get an explicit controlling majority of the board of directors, but who needs that when you've got the White House guaranteeing your work and the U.S. Treasury Department making sure you never have to worry about the bottom line. ... Contrasting mightily with the Pennsylvania Avenue Gang's thuggery is the quiet confidence of Ford Motor Company's president and CEO, Allan Mullaly. He had the foresight three years ago to strengthen his firm's cash and credit reserves in anticipation of the inevitable decline of auto sales. ... When GM and Chrysler headed hats-in-hand to Washington last fall, Mullaly said Ford didn't want a bailout and then watched quietly as his two cross-town rivals committed corporate suicide. Now Ford is positioned strongly to be the last great American car company. With a guy like that at the helm, it's enough to make people who love American free enterprise go out and buy a new Ford."
--The Washington Examiner

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"Just Powers from the Consent of The Governed"

"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly."
--American author and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

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The Truth About The Truth

"Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it."
--Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204)

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Unchecked Power

"The government of the absolute majority is but the government of the strongest interests; and when not effectively checked, is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised... [To read the Constitution is to realize that] no free system was ever farther removed from the principle that the absolute majority, without check or limitation, ought to govern."
--American statesman John C. Calhoun (1782-1850)

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Chaos, Fear & Panic (Oh my!)

"When in trouble, fear or doubt:
Run in circles, scream, and shout."
-Unknown

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..."
-Rudyard Kipling

Entropy

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
--Thomas Jefferson

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The Tenacity of Freedom

"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."
--Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

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Promotion of Wealth

"To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted."
--Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures, December 1791

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama,

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaugh's, Hannity's, O'Rellly's and Beck's who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

(Posted to Yahoo_Groups)

LISTEN TO ME!

"I want the government to get the hell out of our way and let us act like the free people our founding fathers wanted us to be, and not like subjects of an all-knowing, all-powerful federal government. The listening tour is nothing but Republican gimmickry. The reality is that had they been listening over the past four years of the Bush presidency they would have seen the disaster of 2006 coming and they would have seen the catastrophe of 2008 coming. Instead, they turned a deaf ear to the Republican conservatives not only on Capitol Hill, but to those out across America. They lost in 2006 and 2008 because they stopped listening to the 'nostalgia' for the conservative principles which guided my dad's administrations ...[and] made us the wealthiest and most-powerful nation in world history. The lesson they taught was that you don't win elections by saying 'me too,' and trying to substitute a Republican version of big-government, wild-spending quasi-socialist agenda for a Democrat big-government, wild-spending quasi-socialist agenda. ... If they start listening, what they'll hear is a demand that the Republican Party get back to the principles and beliefs embodied by Ronald Reagan."
--radio talk-show host Michael Reagan

The Death of American Healthcare

"Listen. That sound of silence? That's what's known as the united Republican response to President Barack Obama's drive to socialize health care. The president has a plan, and he's laid it on the table. The industry groups that once helped Republicans beat HillaryCare are today sitting at that table. Unions are mobilized. A liberal umbrella group, Health Care for American Now, is spending $40 million to get a 'public option,' a new federal entitlement that would kill off private insurance. Democrats passed a budget blueprint that will allow them to cram through that 'public option' with just 51 votes. Republicans? They're trying to figure out what they think. Well, not all of them. [Last] week I ended up in the office of Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, where the doctor was hosting North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr. The duo is, for the second time, crafting a comprehensive reform that would lower costs, cover the uninsured, and put Americans in control of their health care. And while the senators decline to talk GOP politics, their bill raises the multitrillion-dollar question: Will the party have the nerve or sense to coalesce behind some such conservative alternative to the Democratic product? They'd better, because the days of Republicans winning these battles solely by spooking Americans are over. Phil Gramm, Harry and Louise might have scored with that approach in the 1990s, but the intervening years have brought spiraling costs and public unrest. Americans want a fix. Democrats promise one. The GOP can't tank the public option simply by complaining it will kill private insurance. The party has to finally elucidate how it plans to allow the private market to work."
--columnist Kimberley Strassel

Via Patriot Post

National Debt, the New Raw Deal

"Then there is the question of national debt. We are now projected to run a record $1.7 trillion deficit -- and may add $9 trillion to our existing $11 trillion in aggregate debt over the next eight years. The president, though, has outlined vast new entitlement programs in health care, education, environmental programs, and infrastructure. The problem, of course, is that we have not earned enough money to pay for any of these additional expenditures. Again, the glamorous ends get the attention, never the mundane means of how to obtain them. Americans became wealthy and strong through unique self-reliance, common sense, and delayed gratification. And we -- or our children -- will soon become poor precisely because we hold on to the romance that producing food and fuel and saving money are icky tasks to be ignored or left to others. Until we change that attitude, we'll keep borrowing and spending on ourselves what we have not yet earned -- all the way to bankruptcy."
--Hoover Institution historian Victor Davis Hanson

Failed Policies of the Past

"Now, where do some of these attacks originate? They're coming from the very people whose past policies, all done in the name of compassion, brought us the current recession. Their policies drove up inflation and interest rates, and their policies stifled incentive, creativity and halted the movement of the poor up the economic ladder. Some of their criticism is perfectly sincere. But let's also understand that some of their criticism comes from those who have a vested interest in a permanent welfare constituency and in government programs that reinforce the dependency of our people. Well, I would suggest that no one should have a vested interest in poverty or dependency, that these tragedies must never be looked at as a source of votes for politicians or paychecks for bureaucrats. They are blights on our society that we must work to eliminate, not institutionalize."
--Ronald Reagan

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Transform? Remake?

"If you met a man who said he would like to 'transform' or 'remake' his wife, would you conclude that he: a) thought very highly of his wife and loved her? Or b) held his wife in rather low esteem and therefore found living her rather difficult? The answer is obvious: Those who wish to remake anything (or anyone) do not think highly of the person or thing they wish to remake. Little is as revealing of Barack Obama's and the left's view of America than their use of the words 'transform' and 'remake' when applied to what they most want to do to America. ... In light of those frequently made criticisms of America, I have often asked representatives of the left why they criticize America so much if they love it so much. 'Precisely because we love America, we criticize it. You criticize that which you love,' is the nearly universal response. But, of course, it isn't true. If you constantly criticize your spouse, for example, it is difficult to imagine that you really do love him or her. And perhaps more important, it is very unlikely that your spouse feels loved. That is why after being routinely described as racist, sexist, imperialist, etc., it is difficult to be able to tell that America is loved by the left. This is not written in order to indict the left, let alone the president, for not loving America. No one can measure another's feelings. Furthermore I do not question the sincerity of anyone who says he loves America. What I question are the actions and rhetoric of those who claim to love America yet want to transform and remake it."
--columnist Dennis Prager

Via Patriot Post

Why Let the Law Get in the Way?

"Given how congressional leaders have abdicated their responsibilities, perhaps it's not surprising that the secured creditors who challenged the Obama-imposed Chrysler merger deal were too polite to note that the president lacks statutory authority to intervene in the car industry. 'Even assuming that TARP provides the Treasury Department with authority to provide funding to the Debtors,' they said, it is neither fair nor legal to let unsecured creditors such as the United Auto Workers get more of their money back than creditors who by statute have a superior claim. But for a president who tramples on the Constitution in his rush to save companies from the consequences of their own bad decisions, the bankruptcy code is no obstacle."
--columnist Jacob Sullum

Via Patriot Post

Is this America's First Dictator?

"Barack Obama's vision of America is one in which a President of the United States can fire the head of General Motors, tell banks how to bank, control the medical system and take charge of all sorts of other activities for which neither he nor other politicians have any expertise or experience. The Constitution of the United States gives no president, nor the entire federal government, the authority to do such things. But spending trillions of dollars to bail out all sorts of companies buys the power to tell them how to operate. Appointing judges to the federal courts -- including the Supreme Court -- who believe in expanding the powers of the federal government to make arbitrary decisions, choosing who will be winners and losers in the economy and in the society, is perfectly consistent with a vision of the world where self-confident and self-righteous elites rule according to their own notions, instead of merely governing under the restraints of the Constitution."
--Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell

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The Constitution MUST Stand

"Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world."
--U.S. Senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

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Constitutional Laws

"[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution."
--Alexander Hamilton

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Stealing the Future

"The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson

Via Patriot Post

"Debt is allowing the Past to Steal your Future."
--Alex's Dad

No Voluntary Slavery...as least in theory.

"If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave." --John Adams

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Things Unseen

"It gives me a deep, comforting sense that 'things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.'"

-Helen Keller

American Leaders

“The men the American people admire the most extravagantly are the greatest liars. The men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”

-H.L. Mencken

Cynicism, part 1

"The powers of astute observation are often mistaken for cynicism by those who do not possess the powers of astute observation."

-George Bernard Shaw

Cynicism, part 2

Idealism precedes experience; cynicism follows.
-Alex's Dad

Cynicism, part 3

What's the difference between idealism and cynicism?

About 20 years...

-Alex's Dad

Judges

"[J]udges, therefore, should be always men of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness, and attention. Their minds should not be distracted with jarring interests; they should not be dependent upon any man, or body of men." --Johns Adams

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Morality & Virtue

"If individuals be not influenced by moral principles; it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice."
--James Madison in response to Washington's first Inaugural address, 18 May 1789

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Laws

"In the supposed state of nature, all men are equally bound by the laws of nature, or to speak more properly, the laws of the Creator."
--Samuel Adams, letter to the Legislature of Massachusetts, 17 January 1794

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Minority Subgrouping

“By definition, if we divide ourselves within the organization into subsets or groups, we divide ourselves against ourselves.”
-Alex’s Dad

Free Society

"We may with reverence say, that our Creator designed men for society, because otherwise they cannot be happy. They cannot be happy without freedom; nor free without security; that is, without the absence of fear; nor thus secure, without society. The conclusion is strictly syllogistic—that man cannot be free without society. Of course, they cannot be equally free without society, which freedom produces the greatest happiness."
--John Dickinson, Letters of Fabius, 1788

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The Unchecked Power of The Supreme Court

"This member of the government was at first considered as the most harmless and helpless of all it's origins, but it has proved that the power of declaring what the law is by sapping and mining slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what open force would dare not attempt."
-Thomas Jefferson
Letter to Edward Livingston
1825

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Perspective

"It give me a deep, comforting sense that 'things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal.'"
-Helen Keller
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Who Works for Who? Part II

"It is a misfortune incident to republican government, though in a less degree than to other governments, that those who administer it, may forget their obligations to their constituents, and prove unfaithful to their important trust." --James Madison

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Who works for who?

"We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape -- that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form? It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object."
--James Madison, Federalist No. 45

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Dear Mr. President:

"With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

-William Lloyd Garrison