The Patriot Post Brief 10-3-2011

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The Patriot Post Brief 10-3-2011
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated." --James Madison

Opinion in Brief

"There's been a lot of speculation about what President Obama meant when he told an Orlando television interviewer that the United States is 'a great, great country that had gotten a little soft' over the last two decades. Some critics have compared Obama's remarks to Jimmy Carter's 1979 'malaise' speech in which Carter, down in the polls, the economy failing, his prospects for re-election growing dimmer by the day, made a television appearance in which he told Americans they were having a crisis of confidence. Others have argued that Obama's statement revealed a mix of 'condescension, incompetence, and narcissism,' in the words of columnist Charles Krauthammer. There's another way to read what the president said. Look at Obama's speeches in the last couple of months, and he has repeatedly scolded audiences for not working hard enough and for not sacrificing enough to achieve the goals he has set for his administration. He's done it with both supporters and with adversaries. With friends, his message has been: Nobody told you this would be easy, and you've got to work harder to enact my agenda. With adversaries, his message is: You've had it too easy, and you've got to make sacrifices to enact my agenda. Obama's 'gotten a little soft' remark fits into that theme: A soft America is one that is insufficiently willing to work and sacrifice to enact the Obama agenda. ... Lately, with the economy worsening and his approval ratings falling, he's been having a hard time bending Washington, and the country, to his will. Is it any surprise that he's now telling Americans they've gotten soft?" --columnist Byron York1

Insight

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941)

Essential Liberty

"The founders believed that special skills were necessary for free, self-governing individuals. Our second president, John Adams, said, 'Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.' Thomas Jefferson proposed a system of public schools to instill the necessary knowledge and attitudes, saying memorably 'If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.' When Ronald Reagan reflected on his eight years as president in his farewell address, he mentioned that one of the things he was proudest of was the renewed spirit of patriotism in the country. 'This national feeling is good,' he said, 'but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.' ... And in what may have been the understatement of the decade, he said '... As for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.' ... When liberals tell the story of America ... they tend to focus excessively on our flaws and sins. ... [But in so many things] the U.S. is exemplary. If the public schools could convey just that much, it would be progress." --columnist Mona Charen2

The Gipper

"Government exists to ensure that liberty does not become license to prey on each other." --Ronald Reagan3

The Oath Accountability Civil Action

Join the tens of thousands of Patriots who have already signed on to the Oath Accountability Civil Action for Constitutional Integrity4.

To enforce our Constitution's limits on the central government, we believe a formal legal action is necessary. This action, if successful, would require that all members of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, first and foremost, abide by their oaths "to support and defend" our Constitution, under penalty of law, and comport with its enumerated limitations on the federal government. The current scope of federal activities provides abundant evidence that many members of those three co-equal branches have long since abandoned their oaths, and, at present, there is no recourse for prosecution to enforce compliance.

To that end, we urge you to join this action with Patriots across the nation in this effort to establish legal standing as citizens, particularly those in our Armed Services who defend their oaths with blood and life. If we are unsuccessful in our effort to seek remedy for the lack of any proscription against, and penalty for breach of oath, it will be because the judiciary refuses any such accountability regarding the wanton violation of our Constitution. Such rejection would in effect condemn Americans once again to the abuse previously characterized in American history as "Taxation Without Representation."

Our goal is 500,000 signatures. Please join us, and encourage other like-minded Patriots to do so. A large support base will be necessary if the federal judiciary refuses to hear this action and we are forced to take it to the national legislature for codification into federal law.

Government

"Don't assume what happened to the solar-panel company Solyndra is unique. Its high-profile bankruptcy is basically the green-jobs fallacy writ large. Consider how these subsidized companies are funded. Are anxious investors ready to shower dollars on wind and solar power because there's great potential to make more money in this promising field? That's how companies get off the ground -- and stay there: They attract entrepreneurs who see the chance to make money and are glad to invest. Companies such as Solyndra, by contrast, apparently can't get by without money confiscated from you and me. (For that matter, they can't even get by with it.) That should tell you something about how viable their product is. ... Remember, too, that government spending has to come from somewhere. Money that likely would have been put to a more productive use has been funneled to a politically favored industry. As energy expert Nicolas Loris notes, 'When the government gives money to build a windmill, those resources cannot simultaneously be used to build other products.' Simply put, the government is picking winners and losers. Or trying to, at least -- the government record on such efforts is, well, a losing one." --Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner5

Re: The Left

"[Journalist Ron] Suskind has been criticized for getting quotes and facts wrong. But the White House hasn't disputed his interview with Mr. Obama, who had some remarkable things to say [in Suskind's book 'Confidence Men.'] ... Mr. Suskind asked him why his team had difficulty creating a policy to deal with unemployment. Mr. Obama said some of it was due to circumstances, some to the complexity of the problem. Then he added: 'We didn't have a clean story that we wanted to tell against which we would measure various actions.' Huh? It wasn't 'clean,' he explained, because 'what was required to save the economy might not always match up with what would make for a good story.' ... This is mostly a problem for the Democratic Party at the national level, and has been since the 1980s. ... Because they couldn't take Reagan's views and philosophy seriously, they couldn't believe anyone else could, either. So they explained him through a story. The story was that Reagan's success was due not to decisions and their outcomes but to a narrative. The narrative was 'Morning in America': Everything's good, everyone's happy. Democrats vowed to create their own narratives, their own stories. Here's the problem: There is no story. At the end of the day, there is only reality." --columnist Peggy Noonan6