only to stand and applaud.

I hope you will not mind me sharing this with friends and family (some of whom will applaud, as I do; others of whom need enlightenment).

I’ll tell you one thing, the repair manual won’t be found in The Audacity of Hope

Some successful repair efforts, in my opinion:
-Reagan’s tax cuts and success in indexing the income tax to inflation

-the success (alhtough tenuous) of getting strict constructionists placed on the Supreme Court.

If I could recommend this one million times over, I would. Alas, I cannot, so I will settle for recommending this once and emailing it to everyone I know.

I especially agree when you say:

The founders based their morals in the belief of a Supreme Being, and likely had no inkling the day would come that masses of citizens have abandoned this concept. Can you doubt the strength of their faith in God when Deity is referenced four times in the Declaration of Independence and once even in the Constitution?

I despise the way liberals bleat that their constitutional rights are being violated every time someone within earshot says the word “God” — they proceed to have that person castigated as a fascist and a constitution-shredder. Meanwhile, the left continues to indoctrinate American children in public schools as followers of the church of liberalism, which preaches sex, drugs and money laundering as the basic principles of life.

I especially like your treatment of the Progressive Era. Unfortunately, I am not sure that we ever will recover from it. There are many even on this side of the divide who believe the ostensible justice of progressive taxation overshadows its pernicious toll on our liberty.

Please keep in mind that this recommendation does not mean I’m on your DA-6.

.

Great piece!

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As the McCain Campaign continues their infighting – the big problem is with the candidate himself.
Senator McCain is a Liberal Republican that is a disasterous Presidential Candidate.
How did our Party ever nominate this guy?
This campaign is going to destroy the Republican Party for decades.
Never again should the Republicans NOT nominate a Conservative.
Conservatives like me are extremely angry and frustrated with Senator McCain, his inept staff, the RNC, and other Republican “moderate” candidates.
Many of us have also given thousands of dollars to various Republican Candidates, the RNC, the NRCC, and many other Republican PACs and entities. All we have to show for all of the money that we have donated is a bunch of “week kneed moderate babies” that make up the McCain Campaign and the RNC.
This disaster is not the President’s fault nor can the blame be placed on the economy – the blame lies directly with the incompetent McCain campaign and the Senator himself.

Now the Senator must make a decision – is he going to go out like a wimp and do what he probably considers the “classy” thing to do: continue with his ridiculous “populist” message, lose in an electoral college landslide, and give a super majority to a bunch of Socialists and Marxists in Congress?
Or is the Senator going to act like a respected Military man should act: when you are going down, you have to take down as many of your enemies with you as possible! Do something to weaken Obama and the Democrats to the utmost before they take office! Maybe continuous Reverend Wright ads? (he should have done this from DAY 1!)
Senator McCain, stop this nonsense and go after Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd, Rengel, Raines, Johnson, and every other Democrat that will continue to ruin this country!

This is a wonderful post, I thought it was just another small government conservative rant…but I was pleasantly surprised by your admission that our nation was founded on Biblical principles.

I am in awe of your writings.

Our entire system is based on the enlightenment belief that every person was born with inherent rights given them by a creator. Those rights cannot be taken away or enhanced by man made institutions – this is the idea of negative liberty with government as a necessary evil.
Our constitutional system is based on preventing tyranny, the framers were familiar with the ancient republics of Greece and Rome and how they fell as government became larger. They recognized that inevitably people would surrender their power to government in return for easier lives. That is the debate we are having today.

Remember it is easy to hold to principles of separation of powers and limited government when times are good and difficult to do the same when times are bad. Unfortunately people are weak, many seek the easy road to government control and that is what Obama and all Democrats offer – a helping hand. This was apparent in his acceptance speech when he talked about the ownership society, sneering that it meant that “people were on their own” as if adults need the “helping hand” of government to make decisions for them.

If elected Obama will give us nationalized health care, burdensome taxation, a no nothing foreign policy that allows American enemies to strike with impunity and an ahistoric approach to government that ignores the classical liberal basis of our system and the checks and balances that prevent tyranny.

One of the first steps in the development of modern liberty was freedom of religious thought. Founding fathers such at Jefferson and Adams were learned and intelligent men, and they were well aware of that struggle. In Europe, in their not too distant past, men were killed and tortured for religious dissent, the 30 years war was waged to attempt a counter reformation, and despotic monarchs were supported by the power of the church.

By the time of Erasmus and Calvin, there was a lively debate on religious issues that would have been unthinkable a century beforehand. When Calvin burned to death a famous unitarian theologian, he had to defend himself, and he debated other protestant leaders of that time. Ultimately, the church lost the power to execute and torture citizens.

There is an important distinction, which men like Jefferson made, between the role that religion plays in the hearts of individuals, in guiding their individual moral judgement, versus the granting of political power to those who claim that they speak with the authority by god. It’s a wisdom we have gained in the West, which is obviously still missing in the Islamic world. And it is the reason that many conservatives support the separation of church and state.

1SG, as a former FGO, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to read your posts. I think others have said this previously, but I would like to echo it now, I’m grateful we have leaders as yourself in the greatest armed forces this world has ever seen.

It is amazing to me when I see current soldiers, esp the officers who have taken the oath, “to protect the Constitution against ALL enemies foreign AND DOMESTIC”, display support for BO. This person has made clear time and again (2001 audio for most recent example, his audiobood is another) that he does not respect the Constitution. Truly sad …

…..is all I can offer here.

Truer words have not been written or spoken in quite a long time.

Sergeant, if you are ever in South Florida near Ft. Lauderdale, I would be honored to buy you dinner and drink a toast to the greatest country on God’s Earth.

Cheers !

I have nothing but the utmost respect for all our men and women in uniform. They are the best trained, best equipped, and most feared fighting force in the history of mankind. How fortunate we are to have them protecting us. May God bless them and keep them safe.

And on a more personal note, thank you 1SG for your sacrifice and your service to our country. May God bless you and all the fine folks in TN.

including some of those “Communists” to remind you of the “code language” which you’re hearing from Barry…

Important Quotes about government to remember in this election year.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
Thomas Jefferson

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity.
Thomas Jefferson

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
Thomas Jefferson

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
James Madison

Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
Abraham Lincoln

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
Benjamin Franklin

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: ‘>From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.
Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813)

It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men… Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.
Ludwig von Mise

No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil.
Calvin Coolidge

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
Sir Winston Churchill

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.
William Boetcker

The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State.
Bertrand de Jouvenel

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection, it is plunder.
Benjamin Disraeli

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.
Will Durant

The mounting burden of taxation not only undermines individual incentives to increased work and earnings, but in a score of ways discourages capital accumulation and distorts, unbalances, and shrinks production. Total real wealth and income is made smaller than it would otherwise be. On net balance there is more poverty rather than less.
Henry Hazlitt

When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take from some and give to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare.
Kershner’s First Law

To lay with one hand the power of government on the property of the citizen, and with the other to bestow it on favored individuals… is none the less robbery because it is… called taxation.
United States Supreme Court

The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now.
United States Supreme Court

The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about ‘social justice’ all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.
Thomas Sowell

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics. Thomas Sowell

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan

The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country. A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. If children were forced to learn about the Constitution, about how government works, about how this nation came into being, about taxes and about how government forever threatens the cause of liberty perhaps we wouldn’t see so many foolish ideas coming out of the mouths of silly men.
Lyn Nofziger

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
Karl Marx

Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (Called by some the “Founder” of the modern Democrat party)

Society’s needs come before the individual’s needs. Adolf Hitler

The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation. Karl Marx

Democracy is a form of government that cannot long survive, for as soon as the people learn that they have a voice in the fiscal policies of the government, they will move to vote for themselves all the money in the treasury, and bankrupt the nation. Karl Marx

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; … gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country… 10. Free education for all children in public schools…
   Karl Marx- Rules of the Communist Manifesto

We can’t expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism.
Nikita Khrushchev

compiled by “Mark” HERE

He has even more Jefferson quotes if you want to go visit