The Patriot Post Brief 10-26-2009

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The Patriot Post Brief 10-26-2009
From The Federalist Patriot
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Opinion in Brief

"President Obama keeps roaring out deadlines like a lion -- only later to meow like a little kitty. Remember, for example, how he bellowed to cheering partisan crowds that he would close down the detainment facility at Guantanamo within a year? The clock ticks -- and Guantanamo isn't close to being shut down. It once was easy for candidate Obama to deplore George W. Bush's supposed gulag. Now it proves harder to decide between the bad choice of detaining non-uniformed terrorist combatants and the worse ones of letting them go, giving them civilian trials or deporting them to unwilling hosts. Going back further to September 2007, candidate Obama postured about Iraq that he wanted 'to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year -- now!' That 'now!' sure sounded macho. On Iraq, candidate Obama also railed that 'the American people have had enough of the shifting spin. We've had enough of extended deadlines for benchmarks that go unmet.' Talk about 'unmet' deadlines and 'spin'-- here we are in October 2009, and there are still 120,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The reason why Obama fudged on his promised deadline is that the surge in 2007 worked. American deaths plummeted. The theater is quiet. Iraqi democracy is still there after six years. Obama cannot quite admit these facts, but on the other hand he does not want to be responsible for undermining them. ... The list of what a melodramatic Obama threatens or promises to do and what he actually does is endless." --Hoover Institution historian Victor Davis Hanson

For the Record

"On Thursday, the administration tried to make [the MSM] complicit in an actual boycott of Fox. The Treasury Department made available Ken Feinberg, the executive pay czar, for interviews with the White House 'pool' news organizations -- except Fox. The other networks admirably refused, saying they would not interview Feinberg unless Fox was permitted to as well. The administration backed down. This was an important defeat because there's a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There's nothing illegal about such search-and-destroy tactics. Nor unconstitutional. But our politics are defined not just by limits of legality or constitutionality. We have norms, Madisonian norms. [James] Madison argued that the safety of a great republic, its defense against tyranny, requires the contest between factions or interests. His insight was to understand 'the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties.' They would help guarantee liberty by checking and balancing and restraining each other -- and an otherwise imperious government. Factions should compete, but they should also recognize the legitimacy of other factions and, indeed, their necessity for a vigorous self-regulating democracy. Seeking to deliberately undermine, delegitimize and destroy is not Madisonian. It is Nixonian." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

Reader Comments

"I have just finished reading the essay 'The Rights and Obligations of Liberty' and again thank Mark Alexander for putting words to some of my deepest concerns for our republic. Lately I read another essay that dealt with the many conservative think tanks that essentially sit around and preach to the choir when all those resources may be better spent reaching out to our future generations. This is not the case with The Patriot Post. There is such a great need to educate and inform both our nations educators and even more directly all students from grade school up in the Rights and Obligations of Liberty I do not know where to start. Clearly the children singing their mmm mmm mmm songs are the canaries in the mines of our public( or as some may say 'government') education system. I applaud the Essential Liberty Project for opening the vent shafts in our education system so that our children may breathe free the message about the Rights and Obligations of Liberty." --Richard

"What great timing with this article! Today our package of 50 copies of the Declaration of Independence/Constitution came to the house. Even my husband and sons were more excited about that than the delivery of 50 cigars yesterday. Thank you for the good work you do." --K.

"While I appreciate Mark Alexander's grasp of constitutional principles I feel compelled to point out something to you. You lamented that most people under 50 have never had a basic civics course. Do you know a single state run academic institution that offers such a course? My observation is that 100% teach statism, advanced federalism, whatever you want to call it, the theory that big brother is the answer to all our problems." --Gary

"'Welfare' means two different things, depending on whether it's applied to individuals or to states. Our current government seems to think its job is to promote 'specific' welfare and not 'general' welfare. And that's where the whole thing will fall apart because that's where demagogues will promise the people whatever goodies they want in exchange for keeping the officeholders in power." --Becky

The Last Word

"Back when I was a kid, the two major fears in America revolved around polio and Communism. Because the first disease was so prevalent and so often fatal prior to the miraculous cures wrought by Dr. Albert Sabin and Dr. Jonas Salk, neither of whom managed to garner a Nobel Prize for their heroic efforts, children were kept out of public swimming pools and were discouraged from having too much physical activity. It's a wonder that our entire generation didn't grow up to be hypochondriacs because if you were even slightly fatigued or had an aching back or a stiff neck, anguished parents started measuring you for an iron lung. The second disease, Communism, created its own form of hysteria. During the late 40s and early 50s, we had A-bomb drills in public schools. We grammar school kids were led to believe that in case the Russians hit L.A. with an atomic bomb, we would be safe so long as we dropped to the floor and huddled beneath our desks with our hands clasped tightly behind our necks. As everyone knows, there's nothing better than tiny hands to ward off the effects of atomic radiation. To this day, I wonder who came up with that particular brainstorm. On the off-chance that the Russkies elected not to vaporize us, a lot of people were convinced that the plan to prevent tooth decay by introducing fluoride into our reservoirs was a Commie plot. The fluoride, we were warned, would turn our brains to mush and make us easy prey for the Soviet Menace. It's taken about 60 years, but I am now convinced that the scaremongers were right. How else to explain American liberals except by accepting that the Commies contaminated our water supply?" --columnist Burt Prelutsky

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Veritas vos Liberabit -- Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot's editors and staff.

(Please pray for our 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.)