The Patriot Post Brief 9-38

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The Patriot Post Brief 9-38
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION

"Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck." --Thomas Jefferson

Aesop's Fable: The Dog and the Bone
GOVERNMENT

"Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream. The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He thought it was another dog with a bone in his mouth -- and it seemed to him that the other dog's bone was bigger than his. He decided that he was going to take the other dog's bone away and opened his mouth to attack. The result was that his own bone fell into the water and was lost. At the time, I didn't like that story and wished they hadn't told it to me. But the passing years and decades have made me realize how important that story was, because it was not really about dogs but about people. Today we are living in a time when the President of the United States is telling us that he is going to help us take that other dog's bone away -- and the end result is likely to be very much like what it was in that children's fable. Whether we are supposed to take that bone away from the doctors, the hospitals, the pharmaceutical companies or the insurance companies, the net result is likely to be the same -- most of us will end up with worse medical care than we have available today. We will have opened our mouth and dropped a very big bone into the water." --economist Thomas Sowell

INSIGHT

"The dilemma ... is between the democratic process of the market in which every individual has his share and the exclusive rule of a dictatorial body. Whatever people do in the market economy is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner's own plan for the plans of his fellowmen. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute preeminence of his own plan." --Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973)

THE GIPPER

"The real friends of the conservative movement aren't those entrenched in the capital city for 50 years; the real friends of the conservative movement are an entity that gets heard from in a big way every four years and who, I promise you, are going to be heard from this year. I'm talking about those who, if the case is aggressively put before them, will vote for limited government, family values, and a tough, strong foreign policy every single time. I'm talking about those believers in common sense and sound values, your friends and mine, the American people. You see, those who underestimate the conservative movement are the same people who always underestimate the American people. ... The American people know what limited government, tax cuts, deregulation, and the move towards privatization have meant. It's meant the largest peacetime expansion in our history, and I can guarantee you they won't want to throw that away for a return to budgets beholden to the liberal special interests." --Ronald Reagan

CULTURE

"As the president's approval ratings fall and rise and fall again, some of his supporters in journalism and politics are returning to days of old when the label 'racist' could end any discussion and force the accused either into stunned silence, or groveling repentance. I suspect the tactic won't work this time because Obama supporters will have difficulty explaining how a mostly white country could elect a black man president last November and ten months later become a racist majority. Racism has always been a one-way street for the Left. ... According to liberal doctrine, black people can never be racist because they are members of a victim class created by white liberals as a kind of modern plantation to keep blacks voting for liberal Democrats. ... The president's race would be a factor only if Americans shied away from criticizing him because of it. That they are not is a triumph of Martin Luther King Jr.'s hope that people be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Some opinion polls show that Obama's character is being judged and found wanting by a rapidly growing number of Americans, at least a small percentage of whom are black. With Democrats controlling all three branches of government, including significantly wide margins in Congress, isn't there a better explanation than racism for why the president is having difficulty with some of his proposals? ... There is a better explanation for the growing opposition to President Obama. It has less to do with his ethnicity than it does his credibility. Character, after all, is colorless." --columnist Cal Thomas

RE: THE LEFT

"I traveled on the Tea Party Express tour bus as a singer/songwriter, entertainer and spokesperson; 16 states, 34 rallies in two weeks. I experienced vicious racial verbal attacks, not from the tea party protesters. The racial hate expressed against me all came from the left, people who support President Obama's radial socialist agenda. ... These racists are outraged by my opening lines I boldly proclaimed at each rally. 'Hello my fellow patriots! I am NOT an African-American! I am Lloyd Marcus, AMERCIAN!' ... The tea party audience's passionate response to my proclamation was a surprise to me. I did not know so many Americans disapproved of hyphenating pushed on us via political correctness. ... Liberals' response to my YouTube videos, columns and performances on the Tea Party Express have been extremely racist, vicious and hate-filled. In their incredible arrogance, they vilify me for loving my country and not viewing myself as a victim of white America. In the sick minds of liberals, as a black man in America, I must support President Obama regardless of his policies. I must resent white America. I must feel entitled to the earnings of other Americans. My belief that my success or failure is totally in the hands of myself and my God is anathema to them. As to the claim that the tea party protesters are racist, they are not. Quite the opposite. At every rally, with thousands in attendance, I was overwhelmingly showered with affection and thanks for standing up for America. ... These protesters are not racist. They are decent hard working ordinary Americans who love their country and disapprove of the radical changes planned by the Obama administration." --singer, songwriter and columnist Lloyd Marcus

FOR THE RECORD

"Hospitals across the country are going bankrupt because the federal government forces them to provide free services to illegals. This situation appears to have angered some segment of the population, in particular, American citizens who pay taxes to support the hospitals, but then are forced to spend hours writhing in pain in hospital waiting rooms. With Americans in a boiling cauldron of rage about the government's impotent response to the tsunami of illegal immigrants, last year, both political parties ran candidates for president who favor amnesty for illegal immigrants. And now Democrats have the audacity to tell us to our faces that national health care won't cover illegals. Not only that, but they tell us we must not be able to read if we think it does. ... Section [246 of the bill], which liberals keep brandishing like a DNA-stained dress, states: 'Nothing in this subtitle shall allow federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.' In other words, illegal aliens are excluded from precisely one section of the thousand-page, goodie-laden health care bill: Section 246, which distributes taxpayer-funded 'affordability credits' to people who can't afford to pay for their own health care. Even this minor restriction on taxpayer largesse to illegals will immediately be overturned by the courts. But the point is: Except for vouchers, the bill does not even pretend to exclude illegals from any part of national health care -- including the taxpayer-funded health insurance plan. Moreover, liberals won't have to wait for some court to find that the words 'nothing in this subtitle shall allow' means 'this bill allows,' because the bill contains no mechanism to ensure that the health care vouchers aren't going to illegal aliens. Nor does the bill prohibit the states from providing taxpayer-funded health care vouchers to illegals. Democrats keep voting down Republican amendments that would insert these restrictions -- just before dashing to a TV studio to denounce anyone who says the health care bill covers illegal aliens." --columnist Ann Coulter