The Patriot Post
Brief -- Monday, October 10, 2011
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The Foundation
"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
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Government
"One of my favorite economics essays from which I've drawn bottomless inspiration is
Leonard Read's 'I, Pencil.' ... Read traces the family tree of the pencil from the
Oregon loggers who harvest its cedar wood, to the California millworkers who cut the
wood into thin slats, to Mississippi refinery workers, to the Dutch East Indies
farmers who produce an oil used to make erasers. ... Read illuminates: 'There is a
fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or
forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of
such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work.' ...
Appreciating this voluntary configuration of human energies, Read argued, is key to
possessing 'an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people.
Freedom is impossible without this faith.' Indeed. Without that faith, we are
susceptible to the force of class-warfare mobs and the arrogance of
command-and-control bureaucrats in Washington who believe the role of private
American entrepreneurs, producers and wealth generators is to 'grow the economy' and
who 'think at some point you have made enough money.' The progressives who want to
bring down 'Wall Street' will snipe that [Apple co-founder Steve] Jobs was one of
'theirs,' not 'ours.' He belonged to no one. He was transcendently committed to
excellence and beauty and innovation. And yes, he made gobs of money pursuing it all
while benefiting hundreds of millions of people around the world whom he never met,
but who shed a deep river of tears upon learning of his death [last] week. From 'I,
Pencil' to iPhone, such is the profound, everlasting miracle of iCapitalism -- a
triumph of individualism over collectivism, freedom over force and markets over
master planning. To borrow an old Apple slogan: It just works." --columnist Michelle
Malkin
(
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/michelle-malkin/2011/10/07/the-miracle-of-icapitalism/)
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For the Record
"From [his Thursday news] conference we are reminded that Obama believes that: Only
'big and bold' intervention by the government can get an economy moving.... Anyone
who disagrees with or opposes him is engaging in partisan politics rather than
acting in good faith, on principle and in the best interests of the country. ... It
doesn't matter that he famously breached his promise that unemployment would not
exceed 8 percent if Congress passed his stimulus bill or that studies show that only
7 percent of the stimulus money went toward infrastructure despite his commitments
to the contrary. ... His good intentions also exempt him from accountability on the
Solyndra scandal, because his ideology inclines him toward a blind faith in the
existence of cataclysmic man-made global warming, which in turn requires him to
mandate government subsidization of 'green technologies.' ... He has complete
confidence in Eric Holder, so he doesn't need to worry about the facts on 'Fast and
Furious,' either.... Thursday, he told us yet again that our economic mess was
created by George W. Bush, the Japanese tsunami, the two wars, the Republicans'
gamesmanship over the debt ceiling, and Europe's financial instability. ... Our
chief executive either is a mastermind at Machiavellian manipulation or has deep
psychological and emotional problems. I've never seen an adult in an important
leadership position -- especially not the president of the United States -- show
such frightening immaturity and self-absorption." --columnist David Limbaugh
(
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/david-limbaugh/2011/10/07/obamas-behavior-is-getting-worse/)
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Essential Liberty
"Freedom frightens some people. They say if no one is in charge there would be
chaos. That is intuitive, but think about a skating rink. Before rinks were
invented, if you proposed an amusement in which people strap blades to their feet
and skate around on ice at whatever speeds they wish, you'd have been called crazy.
There's got to be speed limits, stoplights, turn signals. But we know that people
navigate rinks safely on their own. They create their own order, with only minimal
rules. Society would work the same way -- and does to a large extent even today.
'Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of
government,' Thomas Paine, the soul of the American Revolution, wrote. 'It has its
origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. ... Common
interest (has) a greater influence than the laws of government.'" --columnist John
Stossel
(
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/john-stossel/2011/10/05/government-makes-us-poor/ )
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Opinion in Brief
"Dan Rather opened a CBS Evening News broadcast in 1991 declaring, 'one in eight
American children is going hungry tonight.' Newsweek, the Associated Press and the
Boston Globe repeated this statistic, and many others joined the media chorus, with
or without that unsubstantiated statistic. When the Centers for Disease Control and
the Department of Agriculture examined people from a variety of income levels,
however, they found no evidence of malnutrition among those in the lowest income
brackets. Nor was there any significant difference in the intake of vitamins,
minerals and other nutrients from one income level to another. That should have been
the end of that hysteria. But the same 'hunger in America' theme reappeared years
later, when Senator John Edwards was running for Vice President. And others have
resurrected that same claim, right up to the present day. ... We have now reached
the point where the great majority of the people living below the official poverty
level have such things as air-conditioning, microwave ovens, either videocassette
recorders or DVD players, and own either a car or a truck. Why are such people
called 'poor'? Because they meet the arbitrary criteria established by Washington
bureaucrats. ... Those who believe in an expansive, nanny state government need a
large number of people in 'poverty' to justify their programs. They also need a
large number of people dependent on government to provide the votes needed to keep
the big nanny state going." --economist Thomas Sowell
(
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/thomas-sowell/2011/10/05/the-hunger-hoax/ )
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The Gipper
"The economic welfare of all our people must ultimately stem not from government
programs, but from the wealth created by a vigorous private sector." --Ronald Reagan
(
http://reagan2020.us/ )
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Re: The Left
"I agree with the Obama administration's decision to kill the American-born al-Qaeda
recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki. What I can't fathom is why the administration agrees with
me. ... The Constitution empowers the president to put down insurrection, and what
was Awlaki if not an insurrectionist? ... But here's where I am confused. According
to Attorney General Eric Holder, the administration is committed to treating
captured terrorists as criminals, entitled to all of the rights and privileges of a
civilian criminal trial. It seems the Defense Department disagrees, given that some
lesser-known prisoners are allegedly kept on ships -- call them floating Gitmos --
without trials. Meanwhile, President Obama keeps ordering that the more famous
terrorists be killed on sight. That's fine with me. But as far as I can tell, he's
never disagreed with Holder's view about the need for civilian trials for terrorists
we don't kill, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ... If captured alive, terrorists pose
political problems for Obama. Where do we put them? How do we interrogate them? And,
most pressingly, how do we try them? I don't think those are tough questions. But
Obama does. So he prefers to kill these people outright, avoiding the questions
altogether." --columnist Jonah Goldberg
(
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/jonah-goldberg/2011/10/05/obamas-terrorist-dilemma/ )
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Political Futures
"In this election cycle, the battle isn't between the old media and the new media
anymore. It is between the Tea Party and the GOP establishment. ... But the
establishment GOP sees the Tea Party as a threat, for two reasons. First, they think
that the Tea Party is more interested in principle than victory. ... Second, the
establishment GOP is not aligned with the philosophy of the Tea Party. They like the
philosophy of a Democrat-lite: more efficient, effective government, but not
necessarily a smaller one. ... When conservatism is politically inconvenient, it
sometimes wins (see Reagan) and it sometimes loses (see Goldwater). But when
conservatism embraces the politics of convenience, it always loses." --columnist Ben
Shapiro
(
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/ben-shapiro/2011/10/05/the-tea-party-vs-the-establishment/)
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Faith & Family
"Why is it so hard to become a better person? I have -- unfortunately -- come up
with 13 reasons. 1. Most people don't particularly want to be good. ... 2. Confusion
exists about what goodness is. ... 3. Goodness is not about intentions. ... 4. We
don't learn how to be good. ... 5. We think too highly of ourselves. ... 6. We think
we will be taken advantage of. ... 7. There are few personal models. ... 8. We don't
believe that there are rewards for being good. ... 9. We have to battle our nature.
... 10. 'I'm a victim.' ... 11. Few people were raised to be good people. ... 12. In
our formative years, the least impressive are rewarded. ... 13. We have
psychological blocks. ... The sad irony is that while goodness is the thing that
everyone wants most from everyone else, few people want it most for themselves."
--radio talk-show host Dennis Prager
(
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/dennis-prager/2011/10/04/thirteen-obstacles-to-becoming-a-better-person/)
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Culture
"All the numbers that are supposed to document the rise of the modern university may
only disguise its decline. And obscure the deterioration of liberal education under
the care of those who are supposed to be its stewards. Increasingly, college
students are expected to know more and more about less and less -- everything about
their specialty, not that much about the arts and sciences that compose the core of
education, and of civilization. In his preface to 'Culture and Anarchy,' Matthew
Arnold said the purpose of education was to pass on 'the best which has been thought
and said.' That choice -- between culture and anarchy -- is still before us. Look
about at an educational system in which pop culture steadily replaces the real
thing, and various new capital-S Studies (Black, Gender, Women's, Ethnic, Gay,
Trans-Gender, pick your favorite) supplant traditional disciplines. When the best of
what has been thought and said is demoted to just another elective, you have to
wonder if anarchy isn't getting the upper hand." --columnist Paul Greenberg
(
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/paul-greenberg/2011/10/05/letter-to-a-businessman/ )
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