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| Brief · April 11, 2011 The Foundation"Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance." --Thomas Jefferson Opinion in Brief"One of the things that fascinate me about American politics is how the voices of the voters as registered in elections and polls are transformed into changes in public policy. It's a rough-and-ready process, with plenty of trial and error. But for all its imperfections, the political market seems to work. ... [One] development was House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's unveiling of his budget resolution. Ryan did what President Obama's fiscal commission did in December but what Obama himself signally failed to do in his budget in February: address the long-term unsustainability of entitlements, specifically Medicare and Medicaid. Every serious analyst knows that these programs are on a trajectory to balloon government to a share of gross domestic product unprecedented except in World War II. The fiscal commission proposed both increased taxes and program changes that would cut spending. Ryan proposed such program changes plus other spending and tax cuts. The House seems sure to pass Ryan's budget, and Republican presidential candidates are likely to embrace similar proposals. This would not have happened -- and didn't happen during the Bush years -- but for public reaction to the Obama Democrats' policies." --political analyst Michael Barone Political Futures"Obama has been running for president since his first day in the Senate. All through his presidency, he has been running for re-election. His filing the other day was a mere formality. The problem with the chronic campaigner is that, though he is a swell candidate, he is a lousy chief executive. He cannot sit still, as in an office. My guess is that Obama has spent less time in the White House than his predecessor. Now he will be on the campaign trail full time. So maybe Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., will run the country. In unveiling his budget for 2012, he has shown that he is serious about facing the tremendous budget crunch ahead. Some conservatives are dismayed that his budget still would add $8 trillion of debt. It would not balance the budget for 20 years. That just emphasizes how deep a hole we are in! Ryan's plan is the most serious effort to reform government since ... well, since the chronic campaigner came along." --columnist R. Emmett Tyrrell Help The Patriot Post Balance the BudgetGiven the budget battles in Washington, it's a good time to remind our readers that we have our own budget to fund. Unlike the government, however, we depend on the voluntary contributions of people like you to keep The Patriot Post coming each week. Help us reverse our nation's march toward insolvency and set the conservative agenda for years to come. Support our Patriots' Day campaign with a donation of any size today! Only eight days left!
 Re: The Left"In 2010, three of the five top campaign contributors to the Democrats were public sector unions. Service Employees International was No. 2 at $11.6 million in campaign contributions to Democrats, the National Education Association was No. 3 at $8 million, and the American Federation of Teachers was No. 5 at $7 million. ... Liberals don't love big government because they think it's efficient, compassionate, fair or even remotely useful. They support big government because they are guaranteed the support of nearly everyone who works for the government. Public sector employee contracts are written by the union and rubber-stamped by Democrats -- and the taxpayers only find out years later that public school teachers are allowed to get a full year's pay for 30 days' work over three years after they retire -- as is the case in Green Bay, Wis., where one out of every 12 teachers retired this year to take advantage of the 'emeritus' scam. This is what all the commotion is about in Wisconsin. Republican Gov. Scott Walker isn't even trying to eliminate collective bargaining for government workers' salaries. He only wants to eliminate collective bargaining over their conditions of employment, which has led to massive inefficiencies." --columnist Ann Coulter Insight"You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves." --Presbyterian clergyman William Boetcker (1873-1962) The Gipper"I spoke in the State of the Union of a second American revolution, and now is the time to launch that revolution and see that it takes hold. If we move decisively, these years will not be just a passing era of good feeling, not just a few good years, but a true golden age of freedom. The moment is ours, and we must seize it. There's work to do. We must prolong and protect our growing prosperity so that it doesn't become just a passing phase, a natural adjustment between periods of recession. We must move further to provide incentives and make America the investment capital of the world." --Ronald Reagan Government"In finally deciding to try the 9/11 mastermind at Guantanamo Bay before a military commission, the president is personally acting out Winston Churchill's adage about America always doing the right thing after exhausting all the alternatives. In one of his first acts, President Obama signed an executive order to shutter Gitmo within a year of taking office. In late 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder followed up by announcing he'd try KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] in New York City. Ever since, it's been one reversal after another in a legal version of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. ... Sen. Obama maintained that we 'compromised our most precious values' in setting up 'the detention cells of Guantanamo'; that Gitmo and the military commissions represent 'a legal framework that does not work'; and that Gitmo is a terrorist recruiting tool. It is to this ineffectual, terrorist-recruiting system that violates everything we hold dear that President Obama now looks for swift justice in the matter of KSM. One might think that this turnabout would cause Obama and Co. to reconsider their harsh denunciations of policies they have made their own. Judging by Holder's strangely combative press conference announcing the KSM decision, they'll never admit they were wrong, just stymied by a foolish Congress reflecting the backward views of Americans unenthusiastic about unnecessary, high-profile terror trials in their backyards." --National Review editor Rich Lowry
Liberty"There is no question that Terry Jones [the Florida pastor who burned a Koran] is an opportunist. Yet what would one call those Muslims who both incite and commit violence at the slightest provocation? It is worth remembering that when Newsweek falsely reported a Koran being flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo Bay in 2005, 15 people were killed in rioting. Former Seattle Weekly cartoonist Molly Norris has been forced into hiding -- in the United States -- after she became the target of a death threat following her 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day' satire for that newspaper. The most compelling argument against what Jones did can be reduced to the idea that you don't swat a hornet's nest. Yet it is precisely that kind of self-censorship which allows the hornets to continue stinging whenever they choose to do so. ... This is where the West's infatuation with political correctness has taken us. It is an ideological bankruptcy so profound, that we are reduced to a disturbing reality brought on by equal amounts of weak thinking, apologist inanity and reflexive appeasement: It takes a bigot to expose a death cult." --columnist Arnold Ahlert For the Record"Social Security doesn't belong to taxpayers, even those who have paid into the program their entire lives. It is not an entitlement: Congress can change the law at any time, cut benefits or abolish the program at will. If the law isn't changed, then when the trust fund runs out of IOUs, benefits will be cut across the board for everyone -- including people who have paid into the system their entire lives. Finally, the trust fund's IOUs can only be repaid if the federal government increases its borrowing or raises taxes. Taxpayers don't have a right to Social Security benefits. They just don't. The Supreme Court made this perfectly clear in its 1960 decision in Flemming v. Nestor, where it described Social Security as a 'noncontractual ... social welfare program.' In other words, yes, we pay into the program, but it's not an entitlement. We do not have a property right over the money we paid into the program. Now, how can we make people understand that entitlement programs are not an entitlement? How do we reach out to them?" --columnist Veronique de Rugy Faith & Family"[T]here are certain basic moral truths that all of us really know, even if we pretend to ourselves that we don't. ... [D]ifferent cultures disagree only about the details of morality, not about the basics. C. S. Lewis gave us a good example when he remarked that although some cultures say you can have four wives and some say you can have only one, up until very recently, every human culture has recognized the sacredness of marriage. ... Paul said in Romans 1 that we 'suppress' the truth because of our sins. But if the knowledge is really down there, then it can be dredged back up, no matter how deeply suppressed. ... Don't forget: People know more about right and wrong than they ever let on. And you can learn how to get past their denials in order to remind them of the moral truths that they can't not know." --author Chuck Colson Reader Comments"As career academician, now employed as a senior economist with a fortune 100 company, I must say that Mark Alexander's recent essay, The Debt Bomb Showdown, was the best economic analysis on the current fiscal crisis I had read anywhere. That is until his essay this week, The Most Perilous National Security Crisis Since 1860. Too bad that his most recent post is not required reading for ALL Americans, because it is spot on!" "I wonder where you and the other deficit-hating Patriots were when Bush took a $5 trillion National Debt and a $250 billion annual SURPLUS when he arrived in the White House in 2001 and managed in 8 years to turn them into a $10 trillion National Debt and a $1.3 trillion annual DEFICIT." --Jim Editor's Reply: Well, for starters, cleaning up after the 9/11 jihadi terrorists, who came into the country under Clinton's watch, murdered a few thousand civilians. Clinton fared well on the heels of the booming Reagan economy and the deep military cuts Clinton was able to make after Reagan pushed the Soviets into the abyss. After 9/11 and the resulting collapse of our economy and tax revenues, George Bush allocated trillions to make sure other jihadis do not light up a nuke under your butt. Then adding insult to injury, he had to deal with the collapse of confidence in the U.S. housing market, and security markets to follow, after Democrat pets Fannie and Freddie set up the housing bubble. See Economics 101: Crisis of Confidence. I am NO FAN of George Bush, either of them, but compared to the Useful Idiot now in charge, I sure do miss them! "Realistically, it is a miracle this nation has survived as long as it has considering its foundation was based Mason ideology, Christian heretical theology and misnamed 'Enlightenment' (and Protestant revolt against the authoritive [sic] Church established by Christ)." --Elaine Editor's Reply: You almost got it right, except for the part about "Mason ideology, Christian heretical theology, misnamed 'Enlightenment' (and Protestant revolt against the authoritative Church established by Christ)." Otherwise, I am with you 100 percent! The Last Word"Speaking of Obama, I am always torn when it comes to listening to one of his speeches. Although I know I'll get a few chuckles out of it, as when he explained that after three weeks of dithering, he had to dip America's toe into Libya without discussing it with Congress in order to avert 'a political massacre that would have stained the conscience of the world.' Where does he dream up this stuff? 'The conscience of the world?' I fell off my chair, laughing. If only he had gone into show business. He's a comic genius. I mean, imagine keeping a straight face while delivering that line. Still, he really should seek help with his delivery. I mean, maybe it's just me, but I find it really annoying when he pauses ... every few seconds ... when doling out ... his knee-slappers. By the time he gets to the punch line, it's easy to forget the set-up to his joke. To be fair, the Democrats in the audience don't seem to mind. Like parents at their kids' first violin recital, they're always convinced he's great. Every time he opens his yap, they think they're listening to a combination of the Gettysburg Address and the Sermon on the Mount. Of course, unlike the two fellows who gave those speeches, Obama doesn't write his own material. But that's how it is with liberals. When it comes to cutting their leaders some slack, you can't beat these slackers." --columnist Burt Prelutsky
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