The Patriot Post Brief
The Foundation
"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?" --Benjamin Franklin
Editor's Note
Last week, the staff of The Patriot Post took an "August recess" to regroup before the hectic election season. However, many readers did not receive our recess notice because The Patriot was erroneously placed on a junk mail list used by several major Internet Service Providers (ISPs). It was a technical issue, not a political one, and we believe it to be resolved. We're back in full swing, with many thanks to the large chorus of readers who let us know that you missed us.
Culture
"A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz). When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there -- and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized or misappropriated. ... Religious institutions in this country are autonomous. Who is to say that the [near-Ground Zero] mosque won't one day hire an Anwar al-Aulaqi -- spiritual mentor to the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, and one-time imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 terrorists? An Aulaqi preaching in Virginia is a security problem. An Aulaqi preaching at Ground Zero is a sacrilege. Location matters. Especially this location. Ground Zero is the site of the greatest mass murder in American history -- perpetrated by Muslims of a particular Islamist orthodoxy in whose cause they died and in whose name they killed. ... America is a free country where you can build whatever you want -- but not anywhere. That's why we have zoning laws. No liquor store near a school, no strip malls where they offend local sensibilities, and, if your house doesn't meet community architectural codes, you cannot build at all. These restrictions are for reasons of aesthetics. Others are for more profound reasons of common decency and respect for the sacred. No commercial tower over Gettysburg, no convent at Auschwitz -- and no mosque at Ground Zero. Build it anywhere but there." --columnist Charles Krauthammer
Faith & Family
"The word 'ban' is negative. Like 'taboo,' the term offends modern sensibilities trained to be ever more accepting of any envelope-pushing behavior. That's why the media describe California's Proposition 8 constitutional marriage law as a 'ban,' not the codification of something positive and timeless. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) has been misreported for years as the 'federal ban on gay marriage.' ... The media have turned the meaning of marriage on its head. Calling the law a 'ban' says its only purpose is to discriminate against homosexuals. By this reasoning, any law or policy that defines something is a 'ban.' But a license to practice law or medicine is not a 'ban' on those without law or medical degrees. It is recognition of the holder's qualifications. A state's requirements for a driver's license are not a 'ban' on the underaged or the untrained. Marriage as the union of a man and a woman predates all other human institutions. It was not created to annoy homosexuals. Marriage laws exclude all but one man and one unrelated woman. ... Just because homosexual activists have led the assault is not an excuse to pretend that marriage has only the purpose of excluding them. ... The next time you see someone cite the 'ban on gay marriage,' it's the work of radical cultural activists -- or someone dancing to their tune." --author Robert Knight
For the Record
"After 50 years of being inundated with stories of white racism, and being taught in college that in this white-dominated society, only a white can be a racist, the American public has been properly brainwashed into accepting the otherwise incredible: A black man murdered eight white people at his place of work because they were white, and the media story is about the murderer's alleged experiences of racism. ... Just as leading liberals would not ascribe Islamist motives -- until there was no possibility of denying them -- to recent Muslim attacks on Americans, the liberal media, i.e., almost all news media in America, does not brand these Connecticut murders for what they are: racist. That is why [the murderer, Omar] Thornton told the 9-1-1 operator, 'I wish I could have gotten more of the people (i.e., whites).' We are repeatedly told by liberal whites and blacks that America needs an honest dialogue on race. Needless to say, they don't mean it because the moment a white or black says anything critical of black behavior, he is labeled racist or Uncle Tom. So most non-liberal whites and blacks just keep quiet. One result is this morally upside-down reporting of the murders in Connecticut." --radio talk-show host Dennis Prager
Government
"I'm getting tired of Alan Greenspan. First, the former Federal Reserve chairman blamed an allegedly unregulated free market for the housing and financial debacle. Now he favors repealing the Bush-era tax cuts. This has a certain sad irony. Recall that Greenspan once was an associate of Ayn Rand, the philosophical novelist who provided a moral defense of the free market, or as she put it, the separation of state and economy. Greenspan even contributed three essays to Rand's book 'Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal' -- one for the gold standard, one against antitrust laws, and one against government consumer protection. ... But now Greenspan, going beyond what even President Obama favors, calls on Congress to let the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts expire -- not just for upper-income people but for everyone. 'I'm in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money....' He says he supported the 2001 cuts because of pending budget surpluses, but now that huge deficits loom, new revenues are needed. Why? ... The deficit has grown not because we are undertaxed but because government overspends. ... [T]he stupidest thing said about tax cuts is the often-repeated claim that 'they ought to be paid for.' How absurd! Tax cuts merely let people keep money they rightfully own. It's government programs, not tax cuts, that must be paid for. The tax-hungry politicians' demand that cuts be 'paid for' implies the federal budget isn't $3 trillion, but $15 trillion -- the whole GDP -- with anything mercifully left in our pockets being some form of government spending. How monstrous! If cutting taxes leaves less money for government programs, the answer is simple: Ax the programs!" --columnist John Stossel
Liberty
"[T]he gap between the consciousness of 'we socialists' and 'we the people' can be seen in the assertion by some liberals recently that the president's collapse in the polls is part of this current reaction to events is but a passing thing. If they think that, they understand nothing of the forces they have unleashed by their tragically imprudent effort to fundamentally transform our country. In 1856, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, in analyzing the causes of his country's revolution, observed, 'Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inevitable become intolerable when once the idea of escape from them is suggested.' A year ago, it seemed possible that a majority of Americans -- rattled by economic collapse and under the sway of a popular, charismatic president -- might buy in to plans to fundamentally transform America away from liberty, prosperity and greatness and toward security and a massive, protective state. ... But as the first details of the transformation were revealed to the nation -- in Obamacare, the stimulus, bailouts, nationalizations and running roughshod over the Constitution -- it became clear that the price for security turned out to be our birthright of liberty. Americans were not that rattled. Now that we who cling to our liberty know we are a majority -- and potentially a very large majority -- we are aroused to the defense of our ancient rights -- and we will not slacken in our efforts until that repulsive plan for transformation has been expurgated from the body politic...." --columnist Tony Blankley
The Gipper
"America is presented with the clearest political choice of half a century. The distinction between our two parties and the different philosophy of our political opponents are at the heart of this campaign and America's future. ... The choices this year are not just between two different personalities or between two political parties. They're between two different visions of the future, two fundamentally different ways of governing -- their government of pessimism, fear, and limits, or ours of hope, confidence, and growth. Their government sees people only as members of groups; ours serves all the people of America as individuals. Theirs lives in the past, seeking to apply the old and failed policies to an era that has passed them by. Ours learns from the past and strives to change by boldly charting a new course for the future. Theirs lives by promises, the bigger, the better. We offer proven, workable answers." --Ronald Reagan
Political Futures
"The October Surprise. We all know it's coming. In what shape, idea, form -- who's to say? Evil always surprises. Its goals are constant, the ultimate objective never changes, but inevitably it manifests itself as the savior of the day, the savior of man. The 2008 Democrat October Surprise that ushered in the first hardcore radical post-American president in American history was the 'economic collapse.' Oh yes, that was a beaut. The time before that, the moochers and the looters tried to fake Bush documents -- except that the conservative blogosphere caught them red-handed, so they missed their mark. But the party of haters, infiltrators, anti-capitalists, the party that is anti-freedom and anti-individual rights, is going to have to pull off something really catastrophic to stay in power this November. And they will, because it is abundantly clear now that they despise the premise of America and they mean to replace it with statism, the source of untold, incomprehensible human misery for centuries. ... They build nothing, produce nothing, create nothing, invent nothing. They steal. They demand. They demoralize. They are destroyers. What will October's Surprise be?" --columnist Pamela Geller
Reader Comments
"Dear Mark, I think your implementation of the August recess for your staff is great. Enjoy your time off and keep up the good work." --Joyce
"I just saw the note about 'closing up shop' and giving the staff some time for R & R. What a blessing! Enjoy the time with your families, and come back prepared to provide us with the truth (sadly, there are too few outlets willing to publish it, especially if it lacks in popularity with 'the anointed one'!) God bless!" --Paul
"Received this year's copy of 'Essential Liberty' which means I will give it to some deserving recipient. So appreciate your work, the team and The Patriot Post." --Doug
The Last Word
"It was canonical to this administration and its functionaries that they were handed a broken nation, that it was theirs to repair, that it was theirs to tax and reshape to their preferences. Yet there was, in 1980, after another landmark election, a leader who had stepped forth in a time of 'malaise' at home and weakness abroad: Ronald Reagan. His program was different from Mr. Obama's. His faith in the country was boundless. What he sought was to restore the nation's faith in itself, in its political and economic vitality. Big as Reagan's mandate was, in two elections, the man was never bigger than his country. There was never narcissism or a bloated sense of personal destiny in him. He gloried in the country, and drew sustenance from its heroic deeds and its capacity for recovery. No political class rode with him to power anxious to lay its hands on the nation's treasure, eager to supplant the forces of the market with its own economic preferences. ... The detachment of Mr. Obama need not be dwelled upon at great length, so obvious it is now even to the pundits who had a 'tingling sensation' when they beheld him during his astonishing run for office. ... The country has had its fill with a scapegoating that knows no end from a president who had vowed to break with recriminations and partisanship. The magic of 2008 can't be recreated, and good riddance to it. Slowly, the nation has recovered its poise. There is a widespread sense of unstated embarrassment that a political majority, if only for a moment, fell for the promise of an untested redeemer -- a belief alien to the temperament of this so practical and sober a nation." --columnist Fouad Ajami
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