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THE FOUNDATION

“Speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents, and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject.”  - George Washington

CAMPAIGN WATCH

“[Sarah Palin] killed. She had [Joe Biden] at ‘Nice to meet you. Hey, can I call you Joe?’ She was the star. He was the second male lead, the good-natured best friend of the leading man. She was not petrified but peppy. The whole debate was about Sarah Palin. She is not a person of thought but of action. Interviews are about thinking, about reflecting, marshaling data and integrating it into an answer. Debates are more active, more propelled - they are thrust and parry. They are for campaigners. She is a campaigner. Her syntax did not hold, but her magnetism did. At one point she literally winked at the nation. As far as Mrs. Palin was concerned, Gwen Ifill was not there, and Joe Biden was not there. Sarah and the camera were there. This was classic ‘talk over the heads of the media straight to the people,’ and it is a long time since I’ve seen it done so well...”  - Peggy Noonan

OPINION IN BRIEF

“Joe Biden won most of the questions based on debating points. He drove home a series of specific attacks on John McCain’s record that often went unanswered by [Sarah] Palin. But Biden generally adopts the charmless manner of the Senate floor debate. And his habit of exaggeration is wearing. It is not enough for an election to be important; it must be the most important election of our lifetime. Failures are always abject, absolute, historic, astounding or unprecedented. Vice President Cheney is not merely wrong but the most dangerous vice president in history (including Aaron Burr?). After a while, one begins to wonder whether all of Biden’s arguments, facts and figures might be stretched and exaggerated. At one point, he admitted, ‘I’m paraphrasing.’ I suspect that is often true... People who deal with words for a living will probably find Biden’s performance more professional. But the most consistent goal of the candidates tonight was clearly to be seen as the Main Street populist. And here Biden simply cannot compete. For all his talk of Scranton and Home Depot, he is a senator playing at being an average person. Palin - on the evidence of ‘Yah,’ ‘Doggonnit!’ and ‘Darn right!’  - is an average person. That may not be the best qualification for high office. But I suspect that many Americans find it attractive.”  - Michael Gerson

FAMILY

“The principle of equal natural rights for all human beings is foundational for Americans, and it is indeed proving, now as before, a very hard nut to crack. The rate of abortions in this country peaked 18 years ago, at about 1.6 million annually. Since then, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that the rate has declined about 25 percent. The number of abortion clinics in the U.S. has declined from some 2,000 to about 750 today. One state, South Dakota, saw its only clinic shut its doors in July this year. In short, the rhetoric about the ‘freedom to choose’ has become less convincing with time. In terms of popular opinion, in the U.S. at least, those who would use that slogan to compel women to abort children with health conditions are farther away from their goal now than they were ten or 15 years ago. The surprising and overwhelming public embrace of Sarah Palin testifies to the growing understanding of the implications for the unborn of the true rhetoric of equal rights.”  - Dennis Teti

CULTURE

“The [Wall Street] crisis came partly because so many households decided that it would be jolly fun to budget the way government does, hitching outlays to appetites. Beneath Americans’ perfunctory disapproval of government deficits lurks an inconvenient truth: They enjoy deficits, by which they are charged less than a dollar for a dollar’s worth of government. Conservatives participate in this, even though deficits fuel government’s growth by obscuring its cost. The people can emulate the government because credit has been democratized. Democratization of everything is supposedly an unquestionable good, but a blizzard of credit cards (1.5 billion of them, nine per cardholder), subsidized loans and cheap money has separated the pleasure of purchasing from the pain of paying. Furthermore, the entitlement mentality fostered by the welfare state includes a felt entitlement to a standard of living untethered from savings. Populism flatters the people, contrasting their virtue with the alleged vices of some minority...[T]oday, the villain is ‘Wall Street greed,’ which is contrasted with the supposed sobriety of ‘Main Street.’ When people on Main Street misbehave by, say, buying houses for more than they can afford to pay, they blame the wily knaves who made them do it.”  - George Will
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INSIGHT

“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”  - Marcus Tullius Cicero

LIBERTY

“Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned, ‘The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.’ The freedom of individuals from compulsion or coercion never was, and is not now, the normal state of human affairs. The normal state for the ordinary person is tyranny, arbitrary control and abuse mainly by their own government. While imperfect in its execution, the founders of our nation sought to make an exception to this ugly part of mankind’s history. Unfortunately, at the urging of the American people, we are unwittingly in the process of returning to mankind’s normal state of affairs. Americans demand that Congress spend trillions of dollars on farm subsidies, business bailouts, education subsidies, Social Security, Medicare and prescription drugs and other elements of a welfare state. The problem is that Congress produces nothing. Whatever Congress wishes to give, it has to first take other people’s money. Thus, at the root of the welfare state is the immorality of intimidation, threats and coercion backed up with the threat of violence by the agents of the U.S. Congress. In order for Congress to do what some Americans deem as good, it must first do evil. It must do that which if done privately would mean a jail sentence; namely, take the property of one American to give to another... There is no question that if one were to ask whether we Americans are moving towards more liberty or more government control over our lives, the answer would unambiguously be the latter - more government control over our lives.”  - Walter Williams

THE GIPPER

“Freedom is something that cannot be passed on in the blood stream, or genetically. And it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it, or it’s gone and gone for a long, long time. Already, many of us, particularly those in business and industry, there are too many who have switched rather than fight. And it’s time that particularly, some of our corporations learned, that when you get in bed with government, you’re going to get more than a good night’s sleep.”  - Ronald Reagan

GOVERNMENT

“The financial services sector is over-leveraged and too large. Winding this down will, indeed, impose painful costs. Congress is seeking to explicitly transfer these costs to taxpayers, who will underwrite a new government plan devised to correct the old government plans. Taxpayers are being called upon to make a significant sacrifice, with little evidence to suggest that the troubled markets will be settled. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that the latest intervention will delay the required adjustments in the financial services sector. The $700 billion intervention is just the largest, latest in a series of failed bailouts with no guarantee that the desired outcome will even be achieved. As a Public Choice professor, I used to begin class each semester with Armey’s Axiom number one: ‘The market is rational and the government is dumb.’ Those quick to call for more regulation forget the power of markets, and refuse to acknowledge government culpability in the current mess. Time and again, governments the world over have attempted to outsmart the market and the current legislation is no exception. And time after time, markets respond, toppling the best-laid government plans as they move to correctly price the underlying assets in exchange.”  - former House Republican Leader Dick Armey

FOR THE RECORD

“The Senate version of the financial bailout bill - an emergency measure designed (we thought) to keep the world economy from tumbling into a deep recession - has been ornamented with special favors. Glancing through this bill, you find that Puerto Rican and Virgin Islands rum makers get a tax break, as do certain commercial fisherman and others who were affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. Makers of wooden arrows for children’s toys are remembered, along with rural schools. There’s a duty suspension on wool products, and television production companies get a break on expensing rules. Mental illnesses (including substance abuse) are to receive parity with other disorders in private insurance coverage, and geothermal heat pump systems will get favorable tax treatment. An estimated 24 million middle-class households would be relieved from paying the Alternative Minimum Tax (originally aimed at millionaires). It goes on and on. Some conservative Republicans dug their heels in on the House bailout bill - which was, gulp, relatively clean compared with this. Now a 100-page bill has become a 450-page monstrosity tarted up with special favors for this one and that one. Did they just walk through Senate offices scooping up old bills and throwing them into the word processor? Some of these provisions may be perfectly good ideas. But isn’t the Senate supposed to be the world’s greatest deliberative body? Isn’t it supposed to hold hearings and debate these things instead of bundling them all up in a ‘must pass’ emergency bill?”  - Mona Charen
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RE: THE LEFT

“Liberalism, as an experiment against common sense, undermines every institution it touches, including financial ones. In the age of political correctness, the conservatism of the banking industry was bound to give way to mindless multiculturalism and Great Society babble. Tried-and-true lending principles were deemed illiberal and imprudent loans became a form of ‘progress.’ Whatever the area that falls under it - whether it is banking or education - liberalism’s regulatory regime consists of forcing people to adopt ideological goals which defy rationality: banks are told not to insist on such outmoded tests as good credit; schools are told not to insist on good test scores for admission. High standards across the culture have eroded under liberalism. Why not in banking too? Indeed, given the choice between economic decline and political correctness, liberals always choose the former. To preserve the kangaroo rat, they will cut jobs. To advance faddish global warming theory, they will undercut whole industries. Instead of bemoaning economic decline, they normally interpret it as a measure of enlightenment: that some worthy ideological goal, far more important than money, is slowing business down.”  - George Neumayr

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“Mark Alexander’s ’Comrade Barack Hussein Obama was excellent commentary. I totally agree with his use of the term ‘useful idiots’ to describe Obama supporters. I believe the term ‘useful idiots’ was first used by Vladimir Lenin as a label for Americans who were sympathetic to Marxist goals. Also glad to see that Mark identified el Mansour as one who influenced Obama. The MSM has purposely neglected to mention him.”  - Fort Worth, Texas

“If only I could get my misguided liberal friends to read and consider this. I pray that they are not so far down the path to socialism that they cannot see any better way to function. They seem to have lost their confidence in their own ability to be responsible for their own lives.”  - Olympia, Washington

“The Declaration of Independence is two pages; the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, is about a dozen pages. The sellout bill is 451 pages. Proves that if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance you baffle them with bovine manure. Then again, it doesn’t take much to baffle the mental midgets in Washington. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison call your office.”  - Cheyenne, Wyoming

THE LAST WORD

“When Regular Joe Six-Pack Bluecollar Biden tried to match [Sarah Palin] on the Main Street cred, it rang slightly wacky. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘All you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie’s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me, where I spend a lot of time.’ Why? Is he moonlighting as a checkout clerk on the evening shift? Or is he stalking that nice lady in Lighting Fixtures? As for Katie’s Restaurant, ah, I’m sure it was grand but apparently it closed in 1990. In the Diner of the Mind, the refills are endless, and Sen. Joe is sitting shootin’ the breeze over a cuppa joe with a couple other regular joes on adjoining stools while Betty-Jo, the sassy waitress who’s tough as nails but with a heart of gold, says Ol’ Joe, the short-order cook who’s doing his Sloppy Joes just the way the senator likes ‘em, really appreciates the way that, despite 78 years in Washington, Joe Biden is still just the same regular Joe Six-Pack he was when he and Norman Rockwell first came in for a sarsaparilla all those years ago. But, alas, while he was jetting off for one-to-one talks with the Deputy Tourism Minister of Waziristan, the old neighborhood changed. In a conventional presidential environment, Bidenesque fake authenticity would be enough. Up against Sarah Palin’s authentic authenticity, I’m not so sure.”  - Mark Steyn

Veritas vos Liberabit - Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families - especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)