The Patriot Post Brief 1-30-2012

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The Patriot Post Brief 1-30-2012
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." --George Washington

Political Futures

"The Republican candidates' circular firing squad now seems to be using machine guns. Whoever the eventual 'last man standing' turns out to be, he may not be standing very tall or very steadily on his feet -- and he may be a pushover for Barack Obama in the general election, thanks to fellow Republicans. Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or an independent, this is a very serious and historically crucial time for the United States of America. ... 'The politics of personal destruction' -- as Bill Clinton called it, and as he himself practiced it -- is not the way to solve the nation's problems. It has already poisoned the well of political discourse this season and claimed Herman Cain as its first victim, on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations by women with checkered pasts of their own. Whether Herman Cain was good, bad or indifferent as a candidate, and whether his chances of winning the Republican nomination were substantial or non-existent is not the issue. Nor is this the issue as regards Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney or any other candidate. Poisoning the well of political discourse may be one of the reasons why we see such unsatisfactory sets of candidates for political office in both parties, not only this year but in previous election years as well. ... The time is long overdue to get serious." --economist Thomas Sowell1

For the Record

"What it appears we are seeing is a new iteration of the age-old split between the grassroots and a perceived GOP establishment. It is like the split between the Goldwater forces and the Rockefeller wing of the party in the 1960s. It is an update of the split between the Buchanan brigades and the establishment in 1992. It is the old True Conservative versus Ambivalent Accomodationist split. Actually it's more a wound than a split, and the only one who healed it in our time was Ronald Reagan. He did it in three ways. He did it by being definitive: We believe in this and this, not that. He healed it by winning: Two landslides told everyone in the party who'd resisted him what time it was. And he healed it by governing well: By 1989, everyone who'd fought him within the party had to look at the results of what he'd done -- the comeback of the U.S. economy, the fall of the Berlin Wall -- and admit that it worked. The healing lasted roughly a quarter-century, until the second Bush administration, when everything began to come apart again. The GOP was now a party split on spending, immigration, a dozen other issues. It was rocked even more than it knew by the crash of 2008, and further sundered. The question now is whether the old split, the old wound, is tearing open in a deeper and more definitive way, in the first real presidential contest since the great healing went fully by the boards." --columnist Peggy Noonan2

Opinion in Brief

"Newt [Gingrich] has committed himself to a lunar colony by the end of his second term, and, while pandering to an audience on Florida's 'Space Coast,' added that, as soon as there were 13,000 American settlers on the moon, they could apply for statehood. ... There are times for dreaming big dreams, and there are times to wake up. This country will not be going to the moon, any more than the British or French do. Because, in decline, the horizons shrivel. The only thing that's going to be on the moon is the debt ceiling. Before we can make any more giant leaps for mankind, we have to make one small, dull, prosaic, earthbound step here at home -- and stop. Stop the massive expansion of micro-regulatory government, and then reverse it. Obama has vowed to press on. If Romney and Gingrich can't get serious about it, he'll get his way." --columnist Mark Steyn3

Essential Liberty

"The president began [his State of the Union address] with a moving tribute to the armed forces and their accomplishments. But as he has done many times now, he celebrated martial virtues not to rally support for the military, but to cover himself in glory -- he killed Osama bin Laden! -- and to convince the American people that they should fall in line and march in lockstep. ... What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn't America any longer. He's making the case not for American exceptionalism, but Spartan exceptionalism. ... Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. ... The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I've seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President. ... This nation isn't great because we work as a team with the president as our captain. America is great because America is free. It is great not because we put our self-interest aside, but because we have the right to pursue happiness." --columnist Jonah Goldberg4

The Gipper

"How can we not believe in the greatness of America? How can we not do what is right and needed to preserve this last best hope of man on Earth? After all our struggles to restore America, to revive confidence in our country, hope for our future, after all our hard-won victories earned through the patience and courage of every citizen, we cannot, must not, and will not turn back." --Ronald Reagan5

Re: The Left

"As the country's first African-American president, Barack Obama had the chance to lead poor African-Americans out of poverty by encouraging them to embrace the principles that would allow them to become self-reliant instead of stoking envy of the successful. He had that responsibility. He has failed to live up to it. That is a tragedy, not only for him, but for those he left behind. Envy has never created a single job, put a family back together, encouraged a man to provide for his children or endowed young women with the kind of self-regard that would encourage them not to create children they too often neglect. The state of many poor African-Americans remains how it has been for years -- too many fatherless children, too many uneducated, hopeless women and too many men in prison. President Obama might have done something about that beyond more government programs and handouts. ... Addicting more and more people to government and the view that others owe them a living is the worst form of covetousness. In case the president missed it in Jeremiah Wright's church, there's a commandment against coveting your neighbor's property." --columnist Cal Thomas6

Insight

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself." --Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)