Draggin’

I attempted to swerve away from the raccoon sitting in the middle of Macon Road in the Cordova area of Memphis, just several hundred yards down the street from my high school alma mater. But the little guy — I’m assuming it was a male — maneuvered in my direction just as I attempted to avoid him.

I’ve dodged would-be road kill countless times before. On this occasion, however, I wasn’t so lucky. The same thing occurred about 10 years ago, except that it was a squirrel on Altruria Road (near U.S. 70) in Bartlett. In any case, seeing the defenseless animal in my rearview mirror go into convulsive shock from getting run over was pretty much the perfect end to an otherwise f’d up week.

Yes, I know that Sunday is, in fact, the first day of the week. Just go with it.

I’ve been almost continuously fatigued lately. Perhaps you can relate. I awake with a headache often (possibly job related). My back also hurts more and more (absolutely job related) while my overall impetus is hindered by a peculiar inability to focus and power my way through. And this blog has fallen off a bit over the past month or two as a direct consequence.

I need to get my shiznit together. Fo’ shizzle indeed. So, for those interested, I’m taking a brief sabbatical. And with that, two conclusions: 1) there is no Sunday’s Quote today, and 2) I’m retiring the Editorial Sketch of the Week feature, as it seems that I’m possibly breaking the law for not paying these professionals for their work, though I have never failed to credit the author.

I intend to return in the near future stronger than ever. See y’all soon.

Sunday’s Quote: An exemplar of redemption

c/o Randy Thomas

Having served as Special Counsel to President Nixon, Charles W. Colson pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice as one of the “Watergate Seven.” His emergence from the Maxwell Correctional Facility in 1975 after a seven-month incarceration was the first step into a new life that ultimately garnered 15 honorary doctorates, the Templeton Prize and the Presidential Citizens Medal in lieu of impacting millions around the world for Christ. You can bet that Mr. Colson is now Home.

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“If Mr. Colson can repent of his sins, there just has to be hope for everybody.”
~ from a 1973 Boston Globe editorial, “Amen, Brother," quoted in Colson’s book, Born Again (p. 183)

Sunday’s Quote: Regrettably unsung

c/o Chin Musik

Earlier today, all Major League baseball players wore #42 in commemoration of Jackie Robinson “breaking the color barrier.” Yet each piece I came across failed to mention Branch Rickey — the man who made Robinson’s barrier-shattering event possible.

A rather insignificant ball player who lasted 10 seasons with the St. Louis Browns (now Baltimore Orioles) and the New York Highlanders (now Yankees) despite a flimsy .239 career batting average, Wesley Branch Rickey made his name as an executive. Though best known for signing Robinson through no coercion but his own conscience, Rickey is also responsible for drafting the first Hispanic player (Roberto Clemente) and standardizing the minor league farm system which, for decades, was notoriously unfavorable to its players.

The majority of fans today may not know about Branch Rickey. Judging from the way his memory has been handled, others might say that his contributions to the game are mere footnotes. Jackie Robinson himself would have disagreed.

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“I realized how much our relationship had deepened after I left baseball. It was that later relationship that made me feel almost as if I had lost my own father. Branch Rickey, especially after I was no longer in the sports spotlight, treated me like a son.”
~ from I Never Had it Made: An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson by Jackie Robinson and Alfred Duckett

Sunday’s Quote: The Resurrection

Chesterton explains it as only he can. . .

“ON THE THIRD DAY the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.”
~ from The Everlasting Man

In addition. . .

Ravi Zacharias is among the finest defenders of the Faith. When challenged by a Muslim, he articulately explained the difference between Christianity and the rest.

Editorial Sketch of the Week: A different double standard

© Dana Summers, Orlando Sentinel

Sunday’s Quote: Country and the Soul brother



c/o Lionel Richie

R&B crooner Lionel Richie has sold somewhere north of 35 million units, both as a solo artist and as a member of The Commodores. Last month he released Tuskegee. Named as homage to his Alabama hometown, the album features remakes of his past hits in tandem with some of the biggest names in Country music. He recently explained why.

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“I don’t write records for [Los Angeles] and New York. I write for between them. That’s where it is. Especially when you listen to those country songs. All of a sudden the guy on the radio says, ‘The number-one record this week is I Love My Truck.’ I’m sitting there telling myself, I’m thinking too deep. ‘Me and my red pickup…’ God, man. Just want to drink some beer. I love it. That’s real.”

~ Lionel Richie, from Esquire’s April 2012 edition, p. 115

Sunday’s Quote: Jefferson wouldn’t have been present

Painting by Gilbert Stuart, 1805

A group of atheists gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC earlier today to proclaim their disbelief in the Almighty. Though some among these Left-wingers claim otherwise, I’m certain our third President wasn’t one of them.

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“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.”
~ from Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII: Manners by Thomas Jefferson

Sunday’s Quote: On the welfare state

c/o Frostburg State University

While Alexis de Tocqueville is best known for his two-volume work, Democracy in America, it is perhaps a more obscure effort that he composed around the time of Democracy’s initial release that speaks volumes about one of the key social issues plaguing the nation for which the French philosopher once wrote so glowingly.

Feel free to read this one lengthy sentence over and over again. Every word is as perfect as it is relevant to this day.

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“But I am deeply convinced that any permanent, regular, administrative system whose aim will be to provide for the needs of the poor, will breed more miseries than it can cure, will deprave the population that it wants to help and comfort, will in time reduce the rich to being no more than the tenant-farmers of the poor, will dry up the sources of savings, will stop the accumulation of capital, will retard the development of trade, will benumb human industry and activity, and will culminate by bringing about a violent revolution in the State, when the number of those who receive alms will have become as large as those who give it, and the indigent, no longer being able to take from the impoverished rich the means of providing for his needs, will find it easier to plunder them of all their property at one stroke than to ask for their help.”
~ Alexis de Tocqueville, “Memoir on Pauperism: Does Public Charity Produce an Idle and Dependent Class of Society?” (1835)

Sunday’s Quote: Chesterton on education

c/o The Guy with the Glasses

Having authored dozens of books, hundreds of short stories and several thousand essays in his lifetime, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was “a man of colossal genius” whose intriguing, if not groundbreaking, take on a plethora of topics established this London-born sage of Christian apologetics among modern history’s most extraordinary intellectuals.

Below is a selection of his opinions about education, which evidently ring just as true today as they did a century ago.

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“IT is rare to come across anyone enthusiastic for our system of elementary instruction. It is not common to find anyone who is even free from grave misgivings about it. Nobody seems very keen about education — least of all the educators. I have a huge personal respect for the teachers in the Church and State schools, in regard to their untiring cheerfulness, industry, and courage. But I never met one of them who seemed at all certain that the system was doing any good.”
~ from Chesterton’s piece in The Illustrated London News; August 24, 1912

“IT is the great paradox of the modern world that at the very time when the world decided that people should not be coerced about their form of religion, it also decided that they should be coerced about their form of education.”
~ from Chesterton’s offering in The Illustrated London News; August 8, 1925

“NO MAN who worships education has got the best out of education; no man who sacrifices everything to education is even educated. I need not mention here the many recent examples of this monomania, rapidly turning into mad persecution, such as the ludicrous persecution of the families who live on barges. What is wrong is a neglect of principle; and the principle is that without a gentle contempt for education, no gentleman's education is complete.”
~ from Chesterton’s essay, The Superstition of School

“WE believe that a purely intellectual conspiracy will soon threaten the very existence of civilization, that the scientific and artistic worlds are silently bound in a crusade against the Family and the State. We have formed a special corps of policemen, policemen who are also philosophers. It is our business to watch the beginnings of this conspiracy.”
~ from Chesterton’s novel, The Man Who Was Thursday

Sunday’s Quote: Conviction and fortitude

c/o Thy Black Man

There’s a lot to like about Allen West. Anything but a typical politician, this 22-year Army veteran has spoken frankly about Islam and the War on Terrorism more than once. His most recent statement is no exception.

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“I want to extend my sincere condolences to the families of the Army Colonel and Major who were killed by Afghanistan security forces over this ‘burning Koran’ episode. If we had resolute leadership, including in the White House, we would have explained that these Islamic terrorist enemy combatants being detained at the Parwan facility had used the Koran to write jihadist messages to pass to others. In doing so, they violated their own cultural practice and defiled the Koran. Furthermore, they turned the Koran into contraband. Therefore, Islamic cultural practice and Parwan detention facility procedures support burning the ‘contraband’. Instead here we go again, offering apology after apology and promising to ‘hold those responsible accountable’. Responsible for what?

“When tolerance becomes a one-way street it leads to cultural suicide. This time it immediately led to the deaths of two American Warriors. America is awaiting the apology from President Hamid Karzai.”

~ Rep. Allen B. West (R-FL, 22nd congressional district); February 27, 2012

Sunday’s Quote: Christian America

It seems that many among the Left are driven, in part, by a yearning to dictate the prevailing opinion of the Founders (1, 2, 3), especially in regard to the consequent establishment of our country, by diminishing the philosophically Christian foundation that was otherwise undeniable for over two centuries. Their interpretation of the Treaty of Tripoli is just one example.

The construal of facts, for the sake of supporting their own conclusions, is put into effect to have the opposition believe that they are wrong, backwards, and nowhere near the mainstream. Nothing could be further from the Truth.

Our first President added the following:

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“If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and if I could now conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”
~ from George Washington’s Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia; May 10, 1789

Postscript: Painting by John Trumbull (1756-1843), currently displayed at City Hall in New York City. His work is easily among the best of the era.

Sunday’s Quote: Judging from where we came

c/o Metro UK

Note: I’m a Europhile and an unapologetic WASP, both of which are akin to my heritage and identity. So the following is of great personal interest to me.

A graduate of the prestigious Eton College (a world renowned English public school) and the similarly esteemed Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, Dr. Kwasi Kwarteng is a Member of Parliament (MP) representing the Spelthorne constituency for the Conservative Party in the British House of Commons. He is also the child of parents who were subjects of the British Empire, first in their native Ghana and later as immigrants to England. Accordingly Kwarteng’s new book, Ghosts of Empire, offers a distinct perspective about the oft-aspersed British Empire that one may not expect.

As an alternative to the predictable, almost requisite condemnation of the largest empire the world has ever known, Kwarteng instead assesses the kingdom somewhat more magnanimously by weighing both the Empire’s progressive influence with its impulsive callousness. The truth, as one review explained, is that the Empire “was the product, not of a grand idea, but of often chaotic individual improvisation,” the result of unconventional governors and attachés who nevertheless operated the royal enterprise with an unparalleled level of success that was more than one-sided.

Kwarteng’s perspective, once the historical norm, is now disparaged by those who view the Empire as a collection of oppressive White Europeans that merely exploited people from other parts of the world who were, in essence, their exact opposite. Not so unexpectedly, this has also become a gradually prevalent interpretation of our own United States.

To be sure, the very concept of our domestic exceptionalism first referenced in Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America some 175 years ago is being supplanted by post-nationalist intellectuals among the left who, at their core, are abhorred — whether they admit it or not — by the very principles that developed America into a social and economic model coveted by billions. As it turns out, we elected a philosophical spawn of these left-wing ideologues to lead our nation just a few years ago, the consequences of which have been questionable at best.

A piece in The Wall Street Journal tied it all together a couple of days ago.

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“In his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama said: ‘Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned doesn’t know what they’re talking about.’ It was hardly a Churchillian rejoinder, but then it was a very demotic speech, and he is wrong. By almost any criteria, the American influence in the world has indeed waned since the Eisenhower administration, but it still has a good head start on the British Empire, which was antidemocratic, protectionist, slow to innovate and largely ruled over by the sportsmen of its only two great universities. America, by contrast, is — when it is true to itself — a proselytizing democracy, free-market and innovational, which has more than a dozen of the world’s top 20 universities.

“Where the British Empire does indeed hold a message for modern America is in the area of self-belief. Many of the British Empire’s worst legacies stemmed from a collapse in confidence among the British elite in the values and principles that had made Britain the largest empire in the history of mankind. Anyone who thinks that just such a spasm of self-doubt among America’s elite isn’t a problem in modern America doesn’t know what he is talking about.”
~ from “Now That The Sun Has Set” by Andrew Roberts, from his review of Kwarteng’s Ghosts of Empire in The Wall Street Journal; February 10, 2012

Sunday’s Quote: Class warfare

c/o Gateway Pundit

The term referenced above has been used, and will continue to be exhausted, from now to Election Day. There’s really no escaping it, so we may as well have a more distinct view of its meaning.

Presently class warfare consists of elected officials persuading the underprivileged to believe that their financial subjugation is solely the result of an affluent minority — let’s call them the “1%” — who doesn’t pay their “fair share.” While pandering and demonizing may offer the perception of sympathy for the less fortunate, it’s the riling of mass dissention that permits those same bureaucrats to deflect from their unprecedented fiscal recklessness, evidently for the sake of suffocating (if not eliminating) the economic model that has afforded so much, in exchange for initiating policies that both embolden goverment and penalize personal accomplishment.

This is not to imply that the tax code is an example of government at its best. Far from it. But the numbers don’t lie.

According to the American Enterprise Institute, the wealthiest 1% of the population earned 19% of the total income and paid 37% of all income tax in 2007, the year before Obama was elected (and long before chatter about “fair share” became commonplace). Moreover the top 10% accounted for 68% of federal tax revenue, while the bottom 50% — those of us below the median earnings level — earned a paltry 13% of the income and paid just 3% of the taxes.

Kiplinger’s updated numbers, which are nearly identical to the data above, can be found here.

The humble purveyor of this blog is not a one-percenter; not by any stretch. But I would like to be among them one day. And because no nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity, people would be wise to resist anything that could stymie their ability reach the pinnacle in this, the greatest of all nations.

No thank you, Mr. President. A fundamental transformation of our nation is not required. Taxes are not the real problem. Federal expenditures, and the pseudo-philosophy that drives such disbursements, are. Here is syndicated columnist George F. Will to expand upon the point.

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“Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.

“The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth – to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of – the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.  . . .

“People are less dissatisfied by what they lack than by what others have. And when government engages in redistribution in order to maximize the happiness of citizens who became more envious as they become more comfortable, government becomes increasingly frenzied and futile.”
~ from “Government: The redistributionist behemoth” by George F. Will, The Washington Post; January 6, 2012

Sunday’s Quote: Teddy’s rebuttal to the Occupiers

c/o American Gallery

Although a recent story from LiveScience.com senior writer Stephanie Pappas claims otherwise, it seems the United States is now fundamentally divided into dual factions: those who know what America is, and those who want our Republic, despite their amicable rhetoric, to become something vastly different.

It’s the latter who concerns a substantial portion of the populace most, especially since we began reaping the benefit of choosing one of their own to lead our nation. Referencing Obama’s State of the Union address, syndicated columnist George Will wrote, “Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian politics with military exertions, thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations — the Constitution and the patience it demands.”

He concluded, “Like other progressive presidents fond of military metaphors, [Obama] rejects the patience of politics required by the Constitution he has sworn to uphold.”

Judging from Will’s assertions, one might assume that an Occupier was elected to reside in The White House. It’s not such a stretch considering the hordes of would-be revolutionaries who have taken to the streets in protest all over the world via the belief that ordinary citizens are held down almost entirely by the ultra-wealthy few. If such a driving sentiment isn’t central to the core of Alinsky-inspired class warfare, nothing is.

Nevertheless, the quote included below is not to sing the praises of a flawless system. Far from it. Rather, the words of our 26th President (one of the finest) are tantamount to the hazards of embracing alternatives that are proven to be epic failures already, as the avant-garde Left so often does. Indeed Teddy seemed to understand these Occupier types long before any of them were born, in part because their mantra is not new. Here is Theodore Roosevelt to expand upon the point.

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“. . .as a rule, the business of our people is conducted with honesty and probity, and this applies alike to farms and factories, to railroads and banks, to all our legitimate commercial enterprises.

“In any large body of men, however, there are certain to be some who are dishonest, and if the conditions are such that these men prosper or commit their misdeeds with impunity, their example is a very evil thing for the community. Where these men are business men of great sagacity and of temperament both unscrupulous and reckless, and where the conditions are such that they act without supervision or control and at first without effective check from public opinion, they delude many innocent people into making investments or embarking in kinds of business that are really unsound. When the misdeeds of these successfully dishonest men are discovered, suffering comes not only upon them, but upon the innocent men whom they have misled.

“It is a painful awakening, whenever it occurs; and, naturally, when it does occur those who suffer are apt to forget that the longer it was deferred the more painful it would be. In the effort to punish the guilty it is both wise and proper to endeavor so far as possible to minimize the distress of those who have been misled by the guilty. Yet it is not possible to refrain because of such distress from striving to put an end to the misdeeds that are the ultimate causes of the suffering, and, as a means to this end, where possible to punish those responsible for them. There may be honest differences of opinion as to many governmental policies; but surely there can be no such differences as to the need of unflinching perseverance in the war against successful dishonesty.”
~ from Theodore Roosevelt’s annual Message to Congress; December 3, 1907

Sunday’s Quote: The impact of fiscal negligence

c/o U.S. History

Our colossal $15 trillion debt, currently 101.1% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, is tops in the world by far. But CNBC revealed last September that the percentage of American debt-to-income ranks an almost respectable 20th worldwide among other mass-borrowing countries. Australia (138.9% of GDP), Spain (179.4%), Portugal (223.6%), Hong Kong/PRC (250.4%) and Denmark (310.4%) are just five nations that struggle all the more. Yet none surpass the dubious distinction held by Ireland, whose total obligations weigh at a bewildering 1,382% of its GDP.

How such financial calamities occur in sophisticated nations is beyond comprehension, although a failure among elected officials to abide by the standards that established their homeland appears to be the proverbial key that swings the door wide open for unsustainable liabilities that later become domestic nightmares.

Everyday citizens are just as capable of spending in gross excess. Although materialism and greed are unfortunate byproducts of free enterprise, such unscrupulousness is not exclusive to those who benefit so greatly from our economic structure. Moreover, alternative models commonly endorsed among the Left (centrism, collectivism, communism, socialism, etc.) are no better. In fact such ideologies are proven far more stifling to cultures that yearn for opportunity and self-determination.

Hence the social order is left with a question: will we temper ourselves, and thus demand our elected officials to do the same; or will we surrender what remains of our ever-diminishing autonomy and hope that, by some miracle, an unabated government will cease to function according to blank check policies and right the ship by all benevolent means?

Monetary issues concerning both government and the electorate are timeless. Verily we now have a President – a confessed redistributionist in the mold of the above-mentioned philosophies – who evidently views our established system as a mark for ultimate dismantling, the exploitation of which is only used as a platform to endorse something entirely different. To that end, one of the Founders offered the following:

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“The establishment of the new plan of government, in its present form, is a question that involves such immense consequences, to the present times and to posterity, that it calls for the deepest attention of the best and wisest friends of their country and mankind. If it be found right, after mature deliberation, adopt it; if wrong, amend it at all events: for to say that a bad government must be established for fear of anarchy, is really saying that we should kill ourselves for fear of dying!”
~ Richard Henry Lee, in a letter to the Governor of Virginia, Edmund Randolph; October 16, 1787

R.H. Lee (1732-1794) was a signer of the Articles of Confederation and the author of the Lee Resolution, by which the Second Continental Congress declared the Colonies to be independent of the British Empire. He likewise served a one-year term as the President of the Continental Congress and later acted as President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate. Yet he is perhaps better known in modern times as the great-uncle of General Robert Edward Lee.

Sunday’s Quote: So is he, or isn’t he?

c/o The Moorfield Storey Blog

The dispute over Obama’s alleged socialist tendencies has been raging almost nonstop since before he won the presidency, the subsequent burnout of which could possibly result in the electorate neglecting to recognize the peril of embracing an ideology that is the antithesis of the philosophical tenets that maintained our remarkable homeland for over two centuries.

Listen, as it were, to a distinguished European voice from the past, and then compare his definition of socialism to the redistributionist policies our 44th President has implemented for the past three years.

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“[The socialists declare] that the State owes subsistence, well-being, and education to all its citizens; that it should be generous, charitable, involved in everything, devoted to everybody; . . . that it should intervene directly to relieve all suffering, satisfy and anticipate all wants, furnish capital to all enterprises, enlightenment to all minds, balm for all wounds, asylums for all the unfortunate, and even aid to the point of shedding French blood, for all oppressed people on the face of the earth.

“Who would not like to see all these benefits flow forth upon the world from the law, as from an inexhaustible source? . . . But is it possible? . . . Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary?

“Finally . . . we shall see the entire people transformed into petitioners. Landed property, agriculture, industry, commerce, shipping, industrial companies, all will bestir themselves to claim favors from the State. The public treasury will be literally pillaged. Everyone will have good reasons to prove that legal fraternity should be interpreted in this sense: ‘Let me have the benefits, and let others pay the costs.’ Everyone’s effort will be directed toward snatching a scrap of fraternal privilege from the legislature. The suffering classes, although having the greatest claim, will not always have the greatest success.”
~ Political economist and member of the French assembly Claude Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), a classical liberal considered a forerunner of the Austrian/Libertarian school of economics, from his essay “Justice and fraternity,” published in the academic periodical Journal des Économistes; June 15, 1848

Sunday’s Quote: A “change” for the better?

c/o FrontPageMag

While an array of social and political circumstances guarantee various echelons of upheaval on any given day, this current era may well mark the first time in which one could rightly contend that persistent feelings of something which looms on the horizon is, indeed, more than a mere gut feeling – an issue made worse by those in positions of authority whose apparent indifference suggests that the welfare of the Republic has been compromised by a more sorted agenda that is vastly inconsistent with our establishing principles.

Dismiss this as conspiracy if you like, but Obama and his minions have made their intentions clear. Only those who refuse to see it will remain blind. But do not fret. Our past Commanders-in-Chief have offered rebuttals already.

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“The people cannot look to legislation generally for success. Industry, thrift, character, are not conferred by act or resolve. Government cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no substitute for the rewards of service. It can, of course, care for the defective and recognize distinguished merit. The normal must care for themselves. Self-government means self-support.”
~ Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States (R-MA, a legit small government Conservative), from his address to the Massachusetts State Senate; January 7, 1914

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“Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination. All freedom-loving nations, not the United States alone, are facing a stern challenge from the Communist tyranny. In the circumstances, alarm is justified. The man who isn't alarmed simply doesn't understand the situation — or he is crazy. But alarm is one thing, and hysteria is another. Hysteria impels people to destroy the very thing they are struggling to preserve.

“Invasion and conquest by Communist armies would be a horror beyond our capacity to imagine. But invasion and conquest by Communist ideas of right and wrong would be just as bad. For us to embrace the methods and morals of communism in order to defeat Communist aggression would be a moral disaster worse than any physical catastrophe. If that should come to pass, then the Constitution and the Declaration would be utterly dead and what we are doing today would be the gloomiest burial in the history of the world.”
~ Harry Truman, 33rd President of the United States (D-MO, a Southern Baptist and card-carrying member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who advocated Civil Rights), from his address at the National Archives dedicating a shrine for the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights; December 15, 1952

Sunday’s Quote: Thoughts for the New Year

c/o Red Dog Report

A friendly acquaintance named René recently posted the following on Facebook:

I’m a RACIST for criticizing Obama. I’m a TERRORIST because I’m not afraid to stand up for what's right. I'm a TEA-BAGGER for supporting the Constitution. I’m a TROUBLEMAKER for asking unanswered questions. I’m a TRAITOR for blowing the whistle on my corrupt government. I’m a CONSPIRACY THEORIST for presenting documented facts.  . . .  I’m ANTI-AMERICAN for supporting Constitutionalists. Yep, GUILTY! Are U Guilty Too?

Food for thought indeed. And make no mistake, this is the year we need to turn it all around. Consider those who came before us.

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“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
~ The original motto intended for the reverse side of The Great Seal of the United States. Although largely attributed to polymath and all-around icon Benjamin Franklin, the committee (formed on July 4, 1776) was also made up by fellow Founders John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. The Great Seal itself would not be finalized until 1782.

“Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual. Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.”
~ John Hancock, President of the Second Continental Congress and holder of perhaps the world’s most famous signature; from History of the United States of America, Vol. II by Henry Adams [1921], p. 229

“Suppose a nation in some distant Region should take the Bible for their only law Book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God. What a Eutopia [sic], what a Paradise would this region be.”
~ John Adams, a Founding Father, the second President and first Vice President of the United States; from Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, Vol. III [1782-1804], p. 9

Sunday’s Quote: O’ the value of obscure sources

Note: Don’t bother reading if you’re of any Left-leaning orientation, as the following will almost certainly result in a convulsion.

I recently stumbled across a treasure trove of books I didn’t know were in my possession. By chance I turned to the epilogue of the first one I picked up, saw a 60-year-old picture of Ronald Reagan, and read a tribute that reflects the central thesis of what made our country special while validating how far the entertainment industry has fallen from the beaten path.

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“The American image is still one that celebrates freedom, space, and opportunity. It turns sour, as it has in contemporary films, when those virtues are denied or perverted. Today’s Hollywood is quick to exploit the sourness, the disillusion, and the cynicism, but for all that Americans still like to think of themselves in terms of John Wayne. Wayne took a rapping from youngsters in the seventies, but as those youngsters have grown older they tend to share the regret that the Duke is gone. The mood of America as it entered the eighties was markedly conservative.

“The election of Ronald Reagan to the highest office in the land is an affirmation of the American return to conservatism. Reagan himself was of the generation of the Hollywood macho giants. He came from that age of American innocence in which a man could make it on his way – without government help or hindrance, by God! Reagan was well in line with the good old American image. He came from a working family, worked his way through college, excelled at football, got a job as a sports announcer in small-time radio, and worked his way up.  . . .

“What could be more American? The story of Ronald Reagan is itself like a Hollywood movie of the Golden Age. The fact that the American public elected him is strong evidence of an almost desperate yearning for the images of the American past. The fact that such a yearning exists gives hope that all is not lost. The Spirit of ’76 may be battered, but it is not moribund.”
– from Hollywood and the American Image [1981] by Tony Thomas

Sunday’s Quote: The Founders speak to us still

Many among the Left – American Atheists and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, for example – have mastered the art of taking the Founders out of context. Off-base references to Madison’s Remonstrance is a perfect example. Yet they tend to leave out the portion below.

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“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self government [sic]; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
– James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and fourth President of the United States, from A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments; June 20, 1785

Picture credit: James Madison University