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Brief · October 10, 2011 The Foundation"To cherish and stimulate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients, by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted." --Alexander Hamilton Government"One of my favorite economics essays from which I've drawn bottomless inspiration is Leonard Read's 'I, Pencil.' ... Read traces the family tree of the pencil from the Oregon loggers who harvest its cedar wood, to the California millworkers who cut the wood into thin slats, to Mississippi refinery workers, to the Dutch East Indies farmers who produce an oil used to make erasers. ... Read illuminates: 'There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work.' ... Appreciating this voluntary configuration of human energies, Read argued, is key to possessing 'an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.' Indeed. Without that faith, we are susceptible to the force of class-warfare mobs and the arrogance of command-and-control bureaucrats in Washington who believe the role of private American entrepreneurs, producers and wealth generators is to 'grow the economy' and who 'think at some point you have made enough money.' The progressives who want to bring down 'Wall Street' will snipe that [Apple co-founder Steve] Jobs was one of 'theirs,' not 'ours.' He belonged to no one. He was transcendently committed to excellence and beauty and innovation. And yes, he made gobs of money pursuing it all while benefiting hundreds of millions of people around the world whom he never met, but who shed a deep river of tears upon learning of his death [last] week. From 'I, Pencil' to iPhone, such is the profound, everlasting miracle of iCapitalism -- a triumph of individualism over collectivism, freedom over force and markets over master planning. To borrow an old Apple slogan: It just works." --columnist Michelle Malkin Why don't the Wall Street protesters want liberty? For the Record"From [his Thursday news] conference we are reminded that Obama believes that: Only 'big and bold' intervention by the government can get an economy moving.... Anyone who disagrees with or opposes him is engaging in partisan politics rather than acting in good faith, on principle and in the best interests of the country. ... It doesn't matter that he famously breached his promise that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent if Congress passed his stimulus bill or that studies show that only 7 percent of the stimulus money went toward infrastructure despite his commitments to the contrary. ... His good intentions also exempt him from accountability on the Solyndra scandal, because his ideology inclines him toward a blind faith in the existence of cataclysmic man-made global warming, which in turn requires him to mandate government subsidization of 'green technologies.' ... He has complete confidence in Eric Holder, so he doesn't need to worry about the facts on 'Fast and Furious,' either.... Thursday, he told us yet again that our economic mess was created by George W. Bush, the Japanese tsunami, the two wars, the Republicans' gamesmanship over the debt ceiling, and Europe's financial instability. ... Our chief executive either is a mastermind at Machiavellian manipulation or has deep psychological and emotional problems. I've never seen an adult in an important leadership position -- especially not the president of the United States -- show such frightening immaturity and self-absorption." --columnist David Limbaugh Essential Liberty"Freedom frightens some people. They say if no one is in charge there would be chaos. That is intuitive, but think about a skating rink. Before rinks were invented, if you proposed an amusement in which people strap blades to their feet and skate around on ice at whatever speeds they wish, you'd have been called crazy. There's got to be speed limits, stoplights, turn signals. But we know that people navigate rinks safely on their own. They create their own order, with only minimal rules. Society would work the same way -- and does to a large extent even today. 'Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government,' Thomas Paine, the soul of the American Revolution, wrote. 'It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. ... Common interest (has) a greater influence than the laws of government.'" --columnist John Stossel Opinion in Brief"Dan Rather opened a CBS Evening News broadcast in 1991 declaring, 'one in eight American children is going hungry tonight.' Newsweek, the Associated Press and the Boston Globe repeated this statistic, and many others joined the media chorus, with or without that unsubstantiated statistic. When the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Agriculture examined people from a variety of income levels, however, they found no evidence of malnutrition among those in the lowest income brackets. Nor was there any significant difference in the intake of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients from one income level to another. That should have been the end of that hysteria. But the same 'hunger in America' theme reappeared years later, when Senator John Edwards was running for Vice President. And others have resurrected that same claim, right up to the present day. ... We have now reached the point where the great majority of the people living below the official poverty level have such things as air-conditioning, microwave ovens, either videocassette recorders or DVD players, and own either a car or a truck. Why are such people called 'poor'? Because they meet the arbitrary criteria established by Washington bureaucrats. ... Those who believe in an expansive, nanny state government need a large number of people in 'poverty' to justify their programs. They also need a large number of people dependent on government to provide the votes needed to keep the big nanny state going." --economist Thomas Sowell The Gipper"The economic welfare of all our people must ultimately stem not from government programs, but from the wealth created by a vigorous private sector." --Ronald Reagan
Re: The Left"I agree with the Obama administration's decision to kill the American-born al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki. What I can't fathom is why the administration agrees with me. ... The Constitution empowers the president to put down insurrection, and what was Awlaki if not an insurrectionist? ... But here's where I am confused. According to Attorney General Eric Holder, the administration is committed to treating captured terrorists as criminals, entitled to all of the rights and privileges of a civilian criminal trial. It seems the Defense Department disagrees, given that some lesser-known prisoners are allegedly kept on ships -- call them floating Gitmos -- without trials. Meanwhile, President Obama keeps ordering that the more famous terrorists be killed on sight. That's fine with me. But as far as I can tell, he's never disagreed with Holder's view about the need for civilian trials for terrorists we don't kill, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. ... If captured alive, terrorists pose political problems for Obama. Where do we put them? How do we interrogate them? And, most pressingly, how do we try them? I don't think those are tough questions. But Obama does. So he prefers to kill these people outright, avoiding the questions altogether." --columnist Jonah Goldberg Political Futures"In this election cycle, the battle isn't between the old media and the new media anymore. It is between the Tea Party and the GOP establishment. ... But the establishment GOP sees the Tea Party as a threat, for two reasons. First, they think that the Tea Party is more interested in principle than victory. ... Second, the establishment GOP is not aligned with the philosophy of the Tea Party. They like the philosophy of a Democrat-lite: more efficient, effective government, but not necessarily a smaller one. ... When conservatism is politically inconvenient, it sometimes wins (see Reagan) and it sometimes loses (see Goldwater). But when conservatism embraces the politics of convenience, it always loses." --columnist Ben Shapiro
Faith & Family"Why is it so hard to become a better person? I have -- unfortunately -- come up with 13 reasons. 1. Most people don't particularly want to be good. ... 2. Confusion exists about what goodness is. ... 3. Goodness is not about intentions. ... 4. We don't learn how to be good. ... 5. We think too highly of ourselves. ... 6. We think we will be taken advantage of. ... 7. There are few personal models. ... 8. We don't believe that there are rewards for being good. ... 9. We have to battle our nature. ... 10. 'I'm a victim.' ... 11. Few people were raised to be good people. ... 12. In our formative years, the least impressive are rewarded. ... 13. We have psychological blocks. ... The sad irony is that while goodness is the thing that everyone wants most from everyone else, few people want it most for themselves." --radio talk-show host Dennis Prager Culture"All the numbers that are supposed to document the rise of the modern university may only disguise its decline. And obscure the deterioration of liberal education under the care of those who are supposed to be its stewards. Increasingly, college students are expected to know more and more about less and less -- everything about their specialty, not that much about the arts and sciences that compose the core of education, and of civilization. In his preface to 'Culture and Anarchy,' Matthew Arnold said the purpose of education was to pass on 'the best which has been thought and said.' That choice -- between culture and anarchy -- is still before us. Look about at an educational system in which pop culture steadily replaces the real thing, and various new capital-S Studies (Black, Gender, Women's, Ethnic, Gay, Trans-Gender, pick your favorite) supplant traditional disciplines. When the best of what has been thought and said is demoted to just another elective, you have to wonder if anarchy isn't getting the upper hand." --columnist Paul Greenberg Reader Comments"In response to Mark Alexander's essay, The Supreme Court and the Future of Liberty, if the Supremes uphold the individual mandate in ObamaCare, then the federal government's power over 'We The People' will be limitless. If the Supremes do not adhere to the United States Constitution and allow the individual mandate, then there will be just one course of action left for those who desire to live free and with their liberties intact rather than live under a tyrannical government. I pray for the sake of my children, for the sake of all Patriotic Americans and those who desire freedom throughout the world, that the worst case scenario can be avoided." --Sherman "As you said in Friday's Digest, I think Fast and Furious was planned from the top down to get more gun control laws passed. I think Mr. Obama and his henchmen all knew exactly what they were doing and are not lying to cover up. We need to clean out the White House from the top down -- all need to go. I am tired of being lied to as though I am stupid." --Bev "Fast and Furious was a blatant attempt by the left to promote their anti-gun agenda. Not only did it blow up in their face, but needless deaths have resulted, one that of US border agent Brian Terry. Eric Holder must be held accountable and at minimum charged with lying to Congress. Enough Chicago politics, I'm sick of it!" --Alan We also asked who our readers support for the GOP nomination. Each candidate had supporters, but it seems that Ron Paul and Herman Cain got the most vocal backing. Thanks to all those who answered.
The Last Word"Sally Kohn, a self-identified 'community organizer,' praised the Wall Street loiterers on CNN's website, comparing the protest to the Boston Tea Party, which she claimed, 'helped spark the American Revolution,' adding, 'and yes, that protest ultimately turned very violent.' First of all, the Boston Tea Party was nothing like tattooed, body-pierced, sunken-chested 19-year-olds getting in fights with the police for fun. Paul Revere's nighttime raid was intended exclusively to protest a new British tea tax. (The Wall Street protesters would be more likely to fight for a new tax than against one.) ... The Canadian environmental group behind Occupy Wall Street, Adbusters, has compared the Wall Street 'revolutionaries' to America's founding fathers. (Incidentally, those who opposed the American Revolution fled after the war to ... Canada.) The -- again -- Canadians exulted, 'You sense they're drafting a new Declaration of Independence.' ... The tea partiers didn't arrogantly claim to be drafting a new Declaration of Independence. They're perfectly happy with the original. Tea partiers didn't block traffic, sleep on sidewalks, wear ski masks, fight with the police or urinate in public. They read the Constitution, made serious policy arguments, and petitioned the government against Obama's unconstitutional big government policies, especially the stimulus bill and Obamacare. Then they picked up their own trash and quietly went home. Apparently, a lot of them had to be at work in the morning." --columnist Ann Coulter Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team
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