The Patriot Post Chronicle 4-17-2013

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 4-17-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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Liberty Always Has Enemies

April 17, 2013

The Foundation

"To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34

Editorial Exegesis

"Regardless of whether the terrorist culprits behind the Boston Marathon bombing are foreign or domestic, the carnage has already given Americans an important reminder: Freedom is always a target. ... On a number of levels, the details are chilling. At least three were killed near the finish line of the world-famous Boston Marathon, including an 8-year-old boy watching his father compete. Over 170 were injured, including the boy's mother and sister, with numerous victims' limbs severed. On top of the obvious intentional grisliness are the facts that pressure cookers were apparently used, with gunpowder or the like as explosive, and ball bearings as shrapnel -- the latter well known to Israeli suicide bomber victims. ... The most insightful observation may have come from someone as close to 9/11 as anyone, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The morning after the Boston attack, he told CBS, 'It's surprising there haven't been more of these since Sept. 11th.' Giuliani reminded a lulled public what many have forgotten: 'We expected many attacks like this.' ... But whoever is responsible for the terror at the marathon, even if it turns out to be another domestic mass murderer with political motives, like the Unabomber, Americans must remember that ordered liberty will always have its enemies, inside and outside. Those enemies wish to foment a bloody chaos as they weaken our national will to continue to secure the blessings of liberty for our posterity. ... Giuliani is right. What is amazing is that 'there haven't been more of these since September 11th.' Sadly, Boston may be the beginning of our way of life being attacked -- here at home -- more often." --Investor's Business Daily1

Upright

"On Monday, Boston and America joined cities like Jerusalem and nations like Ireland, which have long known that safety is relative, that the danger that comes from asserting the values we hold dear is omnipresent, that life itself is a gift that can be taken not only by cancer and heart disease, but by the disease of terrorism. We are no more vulnerable today than yesterday, but we will feel more vulnerable, because we had no known hint of what was to befall us. ... Here is the irony: We are vulnerable, because we are free and strong. These qualities attract the ire of those who would have us shackled and weak, who are consumed by hatred for individual possibilities, rather than love for what a free person can dream about and strive for and accomplish." --psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow

"The smoke had yet to clear from the terrorist attack in Boston when some politicians were calling for more money to be spent on domestic surveillance and anti-terrorism programs. The United States spent well over $1 trillion on 'homeland security' in the decade after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. We have passed, and renewed, the so-called Patriot Act, revised our laws regarding electronic surveillance, created the TSA (and an alphabet soup of other federal agencies) and are now prepared to fill our own skies with armed drones -- all in the name of keeping our country 'safe.' But as the attack on the Boston Marathon demonstrated, all of this may prove to be of little avail in an open and pluralistic society being attacked in what amounts to a religious war. ... Trading freedom for safety has never worked, and putting both in the hands of politicians has proven to be an extremely expensive proposition." --ConservativeHQ 

"Law enforcement, big-city mayors and security experts all echoed that famous post-terrorism refrain: 'If you see something, say something.' But who really means it? In post-9/11 America, the truth is that our politically correct guardians only want you to see, say or do something if it can't be construed by grievance-mongers as racist, sexist, Islamophobic, homophobic, nativist or any other '-ist' or '-ic.' Face it: We live in a self-defeating culture that pays lip service to heroic action in times of crisis, yet brutally punishes the very kind of snap judgments and instant security profiling that make such heroism possible in the first place. ... I would rather be damned if I do than dead if I don't." --columnist Michelle Malkin

Insight

"As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom." --former Reagan press secretary and political consultant Lyn Nofziger (1924-2006)

"When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government." --President Grover Cleveland (1837-1908 )

Demo-gogues

Ignoring the problem? "[W]e salute all those who assisted in responding so quickly and professionally to this tragedy. We still do not know who did this or why. And people shouldn't jump to conclusions before we have all the facts. But make no mistake -- we will get to the bottom of this." --Barack Obama, who initially neglected to call the "tragedy" an "act of terror"

Gun grabbers: "I think we've got a good chance of seeing [gun control] pass if members of Congress are listening to the American people. The notion that Congress would defy the overwhelming instinct of the American people after what we saw happen in Newtown, I think, is unimaginable." --Barack Obama

Slip of the tongue? "On the anti-gun legislation before the Senate, we are making good progress on the effort to schedule a series of votes on amendments to the anti-gun violence legislation before the Senate." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

The BIG Lie: "I think there are multiple reasons for ensuring that we invest in our security ... and don't pursue an irrational, across-the-board policy of cutting the highest priorities and the lowest priorities essentially the same percentage. ... I think this [bombing] is another proof of that." --Demo House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer blaming the Boston bombings on sequester cuts (Apparently Hoyer figured that if Obama can use the caskets of murdered Newtown children as a political platform to promote his agenda, Hoyer could use the death and dismemberment of citizens in Boston for the same purpose.)

So what's wrong with that? "It used to be we were dealing almost exclusively with hunters. There's a whole new sort of group of individuals now who ... never hunt at all but they own guns for one of two reasons: self protection or they just like the feel of that AR-15 at the range. They like the way it feels. You know, it's like driving a Ferrari." --Joe Biden

"Do you need a 30 round clip [sic] and an AR-15 to hunt? ... I don't understand, and I never have, why this nation is better, how we protect our people better, with these weapons being so readily available." --Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)

Deficits are great: "If you look at the deficit, we brought it down in three years from 10.1 percent of GDP to, last year, 7.1 percent of GDP. This year it will be about five and a half. That's the largest deficit reduction, fastest, since the demobilization after World War II. It is too fast. It is having an inhibiting effect on the economic growth and employment. ... [T]he deficit is not our immediate problem; our immediate problem is an economy which is going to stay at 7.6, 7.8 percent unemployment indefinitely." --Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)