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| Brief · October 17, 2011 The Foundation"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." --Thomas Jefferson Opinion in Brief"Take, for example, the complaints of the young Americans currently 'occupying' Wall Street. Many protesters have told sympathetic reporters that 'it's our Arab Spring.' Put aside the differences between brutal totalitarian dictatorships and a republic of biennial elections, and simply consider it in economic terms: At the 'Occupy' demonstrations, not-so-young college students are demanding that their tuition debt be forgiven. In Egypt, half the population lives in poverty; the country imports more wheat than any other nation on the planet, and the funds to do that will dry up in a couple months' time. They're worrying about starvation, not how to fund half a decade of Whatever Studies at Complacency U. One sympathizes. When college tuition is $50,000 a year, you can't 'work your way through college' -- because, after all, an 18-year-old who can earn 50-grand a year wouldn't need to go to college, would he? Nevertheless, his situation is not the same as some guy halfway up the Nile living on $2 a day: One is a crisis of the economy, the other is a crisis of decadence. And, generally, the former are far easier to solve. My colleague Rich Lowry correctly notes that many of the beleaguered families testifying on the 'We are the 99%' websites have real problems. However, the 'Occupy' movement has no real solutions, except more government, more spending, more regulation, more bureaucracy, more unsustainable lethargic pseudo-university with no return on investment, more more more of what got us into this hole. ... One of their demands is for a trillion dollars in 'environmental restoration.' Hey, why not? It's only a trillion. Beneath the allegedly young idealism are very cobwebbed assumptions about societal permanence. The agitators for 'American Autumn' think that such demands are reasonable for no other reason than that they happen to have been born in America, and expectations that no other society in human history has ever expected are just part of their birthright. But a society can live on the accumulated capital of a glorious inheritance only for so long." --columnist Mark Steyn For the Record"When fiscally conservative tea party activists held protests over the past two years, they filed for all the required permits and paid for their own power. Occupy Boston, by contrast, neither sought nor obtained any proper permits at any level, according to the Boston Globe. Instead, city and park officials have been cowed into providing them gratis electricity and camp space lest there be 'conflict.' Many of these occupiers are primarily occupied as paid rent-a-mobsters for unions, left-wing think tanks and the radical Working Families Party. While one collective hand soaks the taxpayers, the other hand is busy soliciting free stuff. Occupy Los Angeles activists took to Skype on their laptops to solicit donations of iPhones and iPads. Occupy Wall Street members on Twitter organized an ongoing '#needsoftheoccupiers' drive for everything from batteries and tarps to 'gently used' coats and sweaters, wool socks, sleeping bags and energy bars. Occupy Austin organizers publicized their wish list, including a free barbecue grill, portable toilets, extension cords, a Bobcat forestry cutter for clearing brush and network cameras for a livestream. These are not principled advocates of fiscal responsibility. They are professional freeloaders." --columnist Michelle Malkin What do you think? Faith & Family"While the potentates of the press were paying homage to pot-smoking protesters demanding 'economic justice,' supporters of religious freedom were being massacred in Egypt. On Sunday, Oct. 9, more than 1,000 Coptic Christians held a vigil at the state television building in Cairo to pray for protection against radical Islamists burning their churches, homes, schools and businesses. According to Amnesty International, violent Islamist attacks against Egypt's Christian community -- which predates Islam by more than six centuries -- have increased exponentially since Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February. The peaceful gathering was attacked by armed Muslim militants and Egyptian army units. In the ensuing melee, at least 20 Copts were killed, and more than 75 were wounded. Eyewitnesses recorded victims being beaten, stabbed, shot, crushed by military vehicles and dragged through the streets of Cairo. Dr. Walid Phares of Fox News, one of the first to report the incident, rightly says, 'International news agencies, including AP, were late in reporting the real casualties.' So, too, was the White House in noting that the atrocity even happened. Apparently, Christians being brutalized in Egypt doesn't fit the O-Team's 'Arab spring' campaign theme song." --columnist Oliver North Re: The Left"In Obama's telling, it's the refusal of the rich to 'pay their fair share' that jeopardizes Medicare. If millionaires don't pony up, schools will crumble. Oil-drilling tax breaks are costing teachers their jobs. Corporate loopholes will gut medical research. It's crude. It's Manichaean. And the left loves it. As a matter of math and logic, however, it's ridiculous. Obama's most coveted tax hike -- an extra 3 to 4.6 percent for millionaires and billionaires (weirdly defined as individuals making over $200,000) -- would have reduced last year's deficit from $1.29 trillion to $1.21 trillion. Nearly a rounding error. The oil-drilling breaks cover less than half a day's federal spending. You could collect Obama's favorite tax loophole -- depreciation for corporate jets -- for 100 years and it wouldn't cover one month of Medicare, whose insolvency is a function of increased longevity, expensive new technology and wasteful defensive medicine caused by an insane malpractice system. After three years, Obama's self-proclaimed transformative social policies have yielded a desperately weak economy. ... This is about scapegoating, a failed administration trying to save itself by blaming our troubles -- and its failures -- on class enemies, turning general discontent into rage against a malign few." --columnist Charles Krauthammer Political Futures"Not only does Obama's re-election look to be in serious jeopardy, but his presidency has been an almost unmitigated disaster for progressive liberalism, nearly every tenet of which has been revealed to be untenable either practically, politically or both. Stimulus Sr. discredited Keynesian demand-side economics -- the notion that the way to produce employment and growth is through massive government spending. The real tragedy is that even after blowing hundreds of billions of dollars, Obama and many other Democrats failed to learn the lesson. ObamaCare proved a political fiasco, showing that there are limits to Americans' willingness to tolerate the expansion of the welfare state. ... The left got what it wanted in 2008: a liberal president with a sweeping agenda and big Democratic majorities capable of enacting it. The result has been a great and failed experiment in progressive politics and governance. In due course, one hopes, the left will absorb some lessons -- but for now, they seem to be suffering a nervous breakdown." --Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto Essential Liberty"The presidency is about more than balancing the budget and sparking the entrepreneurs of America to create wealth. It's about not just navigating international relations but ensuring that the flow of freedom is channeled in the right direction. We'll need not only the Reagan Recovery in the economy, but the Reagan Resoluteness in regards to international relations. President Ronald Reagan traveled to Berlin in 1987 to give a speech at the Brandenburg Gate. Tensions were high between the United States and the Soviet Union, but instead of placating the communists, Reagan upped the ante. Reagan provided clear language regarding whom he felt had 'won the war' and what must come next. There is 'one great and inescapable conclusion,' Reagan said. 'Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.'" --columnist Jackie Gingrich Cushman The Gipper"I, for one, resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as 'the masses.' This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America. But beyond that, 'the full power of centralized government' -- this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose." --Ronald Reagan
Culture"One might think that seeing as America elected its first black president, it would usher in the end of racism; but it's all a racist plot that's easily uncovered simply by asking: 'Who really elected Obama to the presidency?' It surely wasn't black people. Of the 69 million votes that Obama received in the 2008 election, I doubt whether even 7 or 8 million came from blacks. That means white people put Obama in office, and that means he is beholden to white people, not black people. You say, 'Williams, that's preposterous! What's your evidence?' Just look at the unemployment statistics. White unemployment is 8 percent, and black unemployment is double that, at 17 percent, and in some cities, black unemployment is near 30 percent. ... Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus to 'Stop whining!' 'Take off your bedroom slippers; put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining; stop grumbling; stop crying.' This kind of talk is unprecedented. Just ask yourself: 'When have I ever heard a Democratic or a Republican leader talk this way to his party's strongest supporters?' ... This kind of political treatment of blacks should not be surprising, because black people are a one-party people in a two-party system. That means Democratic politicians have learned to take the black vote for granted, and Republicans make little effort to get it. That's not smart for blacks to set themselves up that way." --economist Walter E. Williams Post your opinion Reader Comments"Mark Alexander's essay Obama's Red October Uprising could not be more correct nor could he possibly be more articulate in his expression of the truth through simple facts and plain, straight forward logic. The protestors and liberals in general are ruled by their emotion, not objective rational thought and logic. Such a mess. The solution is obvious to anyone with half a brain. The protestors are operating under less than half a brain, and the emotional part of it at that. That is why you get the childish behavior and temper tantrums." --Rod "I am not in the upper 1 percent but I can say I am a business owner. Most of the people protesting Wall Street appear to have never formed a business and thus, were never solely dependent on their own efforts, passion and labor to generate income. I have absolute ownership of my financial position. As a business owner, such has been met with prosperous times and times when I popped more antacids than was healthy. I contribute to people or organizations that I choose. I do not want the government involved in my life and business more than they already are." --Jim "As we observe the acceleration of these events, surely orchestrated with Nov 2012 as a deadline, we must all do a gut-check. At what point do I make a stand? Have I myself grown complacent in my comforts? What am I willing to risk in Samuel Adams's 'animating contest of freedom'? The days are coming, when we must all make these decisions." --Oathkeeper Scott  The Last Word"The hordes of so-called 'protesters' now polluting the streets of several U.S. cities, including New York, are sending confused messages about their grievances. The unemployed among them complain that the jobs available to them are beneath them. I guess that cancels out the old concept of starting in the mailroom and advancing step-by-step to the boardroom. It used to be the norm that one started at the bottom and worked their way up. This bunch seems to be living under the delusion that simply by virtue of having been born they are entitled to immediate arrival at the boardroom level with appropriate compensation. ... I am still amazed that these kids can find time to congregate in city streets, which are in many cases far from their hometowns. Somebody has to be paying their way; in most cases their beleaguered parents are stuck with the bill for their latest adventure, which has nothing to do with education and a lot to do with left-wing politics and public lovemaking, if that's what it's called. And the media willingly -- indeed, eagerly -- give the protesters lots of free publicity. Media outlets should start ignoring them and we'll see how fast they disband and slink back home. They thrive on the publicity the media provide. Finally, the long-suffering parents ought to close their pockets and deny their wayward brats the money that allows them to travel to the big city to make pests of themselves. Go home. Now. But before you do, clean up the messes you have made." --columnist Michael Reagan Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis! Patriot News Review
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