Patriot Vol. 07 No. 33 Brief | 13 August 2007

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The Patriot Post

Patriot Vol. 07 No. 33 Brief | 13 August 2007
THE FOUNDATION: RELIGION AND MORALITY

“Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.”  — Samuel Adams
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FAMILY

“Today’s young people have the ability to experience excitement more than any generation in history. Outside of school, excitement is available almost 24/7. MTV is exciting (MTV has done far more damage to this generation than has the tobacco industry); video games are exciting... The list of exciting things many children experience is as long as there are hours in the day. But all this excitement is actually inhibiting our children’s ability to enjoy life and therefore be happy. All this excitement renders young people jaded, not happy... All this excitement in their lives bodes poorly for the future happiness of millions of American children. Real life, let alone daily life, will seem so boring to them that they will not be able to enjoy it. And more than a few of them will opt for lives of constant excitement, often in ways destructive to themselves and others. The solutions are as simple to offer as they may be difficult to enforce. Limit the amount of excitement in your children’s lives: the amount of video games, the amount of non-serious television, the amount of music whose only aim is to excite. If they are bored, they will have to remedy that boredom by playing with friends, finding a hobby, talking to a family member, walking the dog, doing chores, reading a book or magazine, learning a musical instrument or foreign language, memorizing state capitals, writing a story or just their thoughts, exercising or playing a sport, or just thinking. The younger the age from which children are deprived of superficial excitement, the longer they will remain innocent — i.e., not jaded — and capable of real happiness.”  — Dennis Prager
http://PatriotPost.US/opinion/entrylist.asp?source_id=35

INSIGHT

“To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals — that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.”  — Honore De Balzac

LIBERTY

“A substantial number of Americans, perhaps a majority, believe that government should dictate where people live, what their housing structures should look like, and how they should be constructed. They believe it is right for government to dictate what curriculum children should study in school. They believe it is right for government to dictate which land should be cultivated, and which land should not be touched by humans. They believe it is right for government to dictate the kind of automobiles that are available for people to purchase. Simply put, a substantial number of Americans believe it is right for government to dictate how people should live. They believe that government should ‘engineer’ society. How different is this modern attitude from the belief system that led Americans into war to defeat the Nazis’ efforts to engineer society. How different is this modern attitude from the belief system that led our founders to declare that the Creator, not government, endowed people with equal rights to ‘...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ How different is this modern attitude from the notion that legitimate government is empowered only by the consent of the governed. Society has been successfully engineered to believe that the goal is no longer freedom, but the control of government, which means the control of society, to fit the agenda of the controlling party. The idea of entering public service as an elected official in order to limit the power of government, and maximize the freedom of individual citizens, is an obsolete concept.”  — Henry Lamb

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FOR THE RECORD

“[W]hy were housing prices going up so fast, in the first place? A number of studies of communities across the United States and in countries overseas turned up the same conclusion: Government restrictions on building. While many other factors can be involved — rising incomes, population growth, construction costs — a scrutiny of the times and places where housing prices doubled, tripled, or quadrupled within a decade shows that restrictions on building have been the key. Attractive and heady phrases like ‘open space,’ ‘smart growth’ and the like have accompanied land use restrictions that made the cost of land rise in many places to the point where it greatly exceeded the cost of the homes built on the land. In places that resisted this political rhetoric, home prices remained reasonable, despite rising incomes and population growth. Construction costs were seldom a major factor, for there was relatively little construction in places with severe building restrictions and skyrocketing home prices. In short, government has been the principal factor preventing the ‘affordable housing’ that politicians talk about so much.”  — Thomas Sowell  http://PatriotPost.US/opinion/entrylist.asp?source_id=38

GOVERNMENT

“Maintenance is necessary but boring, and since government is made up of human beings who abhor boredom, few elected officials or high-level managers are all that interested in this mundane task. Instead, they want to do big, exciting, bold new things — things they can claim for their own... No longer does government exist for the purposes of maintenance and upkeep. Instead, it is seen as a means — perhaps the only significant means — of healing social flaws and reweaving the social fabric. In the process, as the social scientist Nathan Glazer once said, we have become more interested in having government do the sorts of things nobody knows how to do (cure poverty) and less interested in ensuring that government master the sorts of technical tasks it used to do pretty well.”  — John Podhoretz

OPINION IN BRIEF

“It’s time to amend the Wisconsin football song so we can cheer on the Badger State’s politicians as they move toward health-care socialism. The Wall Street Journal editorial-page editors are upset that Wisconsin’s state Senate passed ‘Healthy Wisconsin’, which will give health insurance to every person in the state. Of course, the Journal editors are right in saying that the plan is ‘openly hostile to market incentives that contain costs’ and that the ‘Cheesehead nation could expect to attract health-care free-riders while losing productive workers who leave for less-taxing climes.’... I say, let Wisconsin try it! Their suffering will be for the greater good... Wisconsin can show the other 49 states what ‘universal’ coverage is like. I feel bad for the people in Wisconsin. They already suffer from little job creation, and the Packers aren’t winning, but it’s better to experiment with one state than all of America.”  — John Stossel  http://PatriotPost.US/opinion/entrylist.asp?source_id=29

CULTURE

“Global warming has become a big-ticket item in the eyes of its supporters. At stake are research funds, jobs and the ability to control lives all over the globe. Most climatologists agree that over the last century, the Earth’s average temperature has risen about one degree Celsius. The controversy centers around the source of the temperature change — man-made or natural causes. Global warming alarmists hold the view that it’s man made emissions of CO2 that’s driving climate change, and they seek to suppress any dissent suggesting other causes... This kind of suppression of different ideas and dissent is simply the tip of a much larger iceberg that has many of its roots on today’s college campuses. Suppression of ideas is far more dangerous to our civilization than man made global warming — real or imagined. Given the horrible history of brutal attempts to silence people who have different ideas or dissent from the conventional wisdom, those of us in the academic and scientific communities ought to openly repudiate and condemn the efforts to silence global warming skeptics. This is particularly so in light of the mounting evidence that man made CO2 emissions have little or nothing to do with climate change.”  — Walter Williams  http://PatriotPost.US/opinion/entrylist.asp?source_id=39

THE GIPPER

“We should always remember that our strength still lies in our faith in the good sense of the American people. And that the climate in Washington is still opposed to those enduring values, those ‘permanent things’ that we’ve always believed in... Washington is a place of fads and one-week stories. It’s also a company town, and the company’s name is government, big government... In the discussion of federal spending, the time has come to put to rest the sob sister attempts to portray our desire to get government spending under control as a hard-hearted attack on the poor people of America.”  — Ronald Reagan  http://Reagan2020.US/

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RE: THE LEFT

“Today’s Democratic politicians flood the airwaves declaring that victory in Iraq and elsewhere in the ideological fight of our generation is impossible, they call for the immediate withdrawal of our troops which would eventuate a humanitarian and national security disaster, they sabotage our commander-in-chief at every turn, and they denounce American soldiers as war criminals. And this is for a war they voted for. The sad truth is that, since Vietnam, the only time the Left in this nation wins is when America loses. We are engaged in a generational war, an ideological struggle every bit as threatening as our challenges last century with fascism, Nazism and Communism. Can we rely on presidential candidates from the Left such as Barack Hussein Obama or Hillary Clinton? Not with the demonstrated and continued ignorance and irresponsible perspective of the Democrats. They are our enemies’ allies. Put on your flash goggles on America, the Democrats are coming.”  — Buzz Patterson

POLITICAL FUTURES

“[W]hen you think about it, it’s amazing how similar the 2008 race is to the 2004 race. We have a formidable establishment candidate who originally backed the war, then changed his mind (John Kerry then, Hillary Clinton now); a challenger who has opposed the war all along, and who is clearly out of his depth (Howard Dean, Barack Obama); and a third guy who stands around looking pretty (John Edwards, John Edwards). The biggest difference is that Mike Gravel doesn’t quite have the gravitas of a Carol Moseley Braun. This year, of course, everyone seems to think the Democrats are very likely, even guaranteed, to win. That’s because, unlike in 2004, George W. Bush is very, very unpopular. The biggest danger for the Dems, then, is that their nominee will figure out that Bush is not on the ballot and won’t know what to do.”  — James Taranto

SELECT READER COMMENTS

(Our servers automatically delete “Reply” messages to this e-mail. To submit or to view reader comments visit our Reader Comments page http://PatriotPost.US/comments.asp . Join the debate at the Patriot Blog
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“Your essay, ’Ron Paul — The libertarian Republican’  http://PatriotPost.US/alexander/edition.asp?id=546 , was even more well-stated than your usual brilliantly worded analysis! While some of Dr. Paul’s positions are laudable and worthy of support, his position on the war on terrorism is unacceptable by any standard.”  — COL, US Army (Ret), Dripping Springs, Texas

“When Rep. Ron Paul made his comments about Iraq during a debate, I realized that he can never be trusted to be president. This is a pity as he clearly would defend the Constitution in every other matter.”  — Albuquerque, New Mexico

“I was deeply disappointed in your non endorsement of Ron Paul for president. You describe the positive qualities of who he is and the principals he stands for and then because he voted against the Iraq war, you regard him as disqualified to be president with the implication that he would do nothing to defend the U.S. If memory serves me correctly, he supported the war on al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan. Ron Paul would regulate the border between the U.S. and Mexico, which George Bush doesn’t do. This Iraq war will bankrupt America even further than it already is, weakening us financially even more.”  — Dallas, Texas

“Having read the article about Congressman Paul, I have grown to have more respect for him. I would rather see someone who is and always was anti-war given the Republican Party’s nomination than someone who sways with the popular vote. Ron Paul takes a hard stand and stays there, when he says something, you can believe him. He could end up President for that reason alone. Thank you.”  — West Palm Beach, Florida

“Thank you for the informative article explaining why Ron Paul has appeared to be a wonderful champion of conservative principles over the years but recently has become more obviously out of step in regards to National Security.”  — Rapid City, South Dakota

THE LAST WORD

“In their latest demonstration of how much they love the troops, liberals have produced yet another anti-war hoax. The New Republic has been running ‘true war’ stories from a brave, anonymous liberal penning dispatches from Iraq. The famed ‘Baghdad Diarist’ described his comrades joyfully using Bradley fighting vehicles to crush stray dogs, mocking a female whose face had been blown off by an IED, and defacing Iraqi corpses by wearing skull parts on their own heads. Various conservatives began questioning the plausibility of the anonymous diarist’s account — noting, for example, that Bradley vehicles don’t ‘swerve,’ as the diarist claimed. The editor of The New Republic responded by attacking the skeptics’ motives, complaining that some conservatives make ‘a living denying any bad news that emanates from Iraq.’ But when that clever retort failed to quiet rumblings from the right wing, The New Republic finally revealed the ‘Baghdad Diarist’ to be... John Kerry! Actually it was Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp, Democratic candidate for president circa 2028... In revealing himself two weeks ago, Beauchamp lashed out at ‘people who have never served in Iraq.’ He said he was too busy fighting ‘an actual war’ to participate in ‘an ideological battle that I never wanted to join.’ He had tried to stay out of ideological battles by writing made-up articles in a national magazine claiming soldiers in Iraq had become callous beasts because of George Bush’s war, killing to ‘secure the riches of the empire.’ Alas, this proved an ineffective method of keeping his head low. Beauchamp’s next bid for privacy will be an attempt to host ‘The Price Is Right’.”  — Ann Coulter
http://PatriotPost.US/opinion/entrylist.asp?source_id=45

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.)

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From The Federalist Patriot

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