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The Patriot Post Brief 09-09
From The Federalist Patriot
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____________________________ THE FOUNDATION"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." --Thomas Jefferson
INSIGHT"One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary." --Ayn Rand
LIBERTY"In January, Stephen Moore caused a stir by arguing, in the Wall Street Journal, that the current crisis is turning Atlas Shrugged 'from fiction to fact.' And those who are warning that increased government restrictions will cause the nation's most productive workers to withdraw their talents have taken to calling this the 'John Galt Effect,' a reference to the hero -- and the main plotline -- of Atlas Shrugged. It is no coincidence that the strongest resistance to a government takeover of the economy is coming from people influenced by Ayn Rand. She has long functioned as a stiffener of resolve and as the fountainhead of pro-free-market ideas. ...Ayn Rand's contribution to the philosophical defense of capitalism can be summed up in one central idea: individualism. Ayn Rand demonstrated that the ultimate source of all wealth -- everything from steel mills to microchips -- is the individual reasoning mind. Thus, a society that wants to prosper has to ask what is required by its thinkers and producers, the 'prime movers' who originate and implement new ideas. And the first thing that is required for these thinkers to function is that they be free from coercive interference by bureaucrats, by blowhard legislators, or by federal 'czars.' ... Ayn Rand's ideas are the mostly unnamed fuel giving fire and confidence to people like CNBC financial analyst Rick Santelli. ... If we're going to have an ideological Boston Tea Party, a declaration of independence from the whole theory behind state management of our lives and wealth, then Ayn Rand is the ideal philosophical hostess." --editor of The Intellectual Activist and TIADaily.com Robert Tracinski
CULTURE"Public expenditure can't buy virtue. It may even crowd it out. To preserve the American middle class, Obama and the Democrats want to transfer the burden of responsibility from the individual to the government. They want to raise taxes and finance expanded federal government intervention in education, health care, pensions, and the workforce. ... The stimulus bill captures the ethos of this new liberalism perfectly. The dramatic expansion of government's share of the economy is geared toward specifically liberal ends. ... It's also a huge miscalculation. Increased dependence on the state is not a solution to our lack of personal accountability. It will only encourage more of it. ... The American ethos is one of self-reliance. This is not the same as autonomous hedonism and greed. A self-reliant individual is responsible for himself and his family. He is accountable for his actions. He has to be. The welfare state, by contrast, promotes dependence. As government expands its sphere of involvement in everyday life, the number of supplicants for government assistance increases. Rather than encouraging the individual to take responsibility for his actions, the new liberals have embarked on policies that will encourage the individual to turn to government instead." --Weekly Standard editor Matthew Continetti
GOVERNMENT"Who believes government needs more of our money, when it already wastes so much of it? Do we want to replace this great country with all the opportunities it affords to people who play by the rules, work hard and make right decisions, with a country that doesn't care what rules you live by because government will take care of you? And what does this say about people who have played by the rules? They have paid the bank, but now see people who did not getting a handout from government for their mortgages, as if paying and not paying are morally equivalent. Each generation must renew the principles delivered by the preceding one. I fear this generation may be dropping the baton, seduced by the flattering words of politicians who promise not to let us fail, or suffer, or even feel bad. That is a fool's bargain because it is through failure (or the threat of it) and suffering that we grow stronger as individuals and become more self-reliant. ... We face a future of ever-bigger and intrusive government and the punishing of achievement unless this generation realizes it has dropped the baton it was handed and returns to pick it up." --columnist Cal Thomas
THE GIPPER"Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite." --Ronald Reagan
FAITH AND FAMILY"The bottom line is that the civil rights struggle is over and it is won. At one time black Americans didn't share the constitutional guarantees shared by whites; today we do. That does not mean that there are not major problems that confront a large segment of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems nor can they be solved through a 'conversation on race.' Black illegitimacy stands at 70 percent; nearly 50 percent of black students drop out of high school; and only 30 percent of black youngsters reside in two-parent families. In 2005, while 13 percent of the population, blacks committed over 52 percent of the nation's homicides and were 46 percent of the homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims had a black person as their murderer. Such pathology, I think much of it precipitated by family breakdown, is entirely new among blacks. In 1940, black illegitimacy was 19 percent; in 1950, only 18 percent of black households were female-headed compared with today's 70 percent. Both during slavery and as late as 1920, a teenage girl raising a child without a man present was rare among blacks. If black people continue to accept the corrupt blame game agenda of liberal whites, black politicians and assorted hustlers, as opposed to accepting personal responsibility, the future for many black Americans will remain bleak." --George Mason University economics professor Walter E. Williams
