Heritage Quote

"Your love of liberty - your respect for the laws - your habits of industry - and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness."

-- George Washington, 1789 - letter to the Residents of Boston

Heritage Quote

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1808 - letter to Shelton Gilliam

Heritage Quote

"If there is a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?"

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"I have not yet begun to fight!"

-- John Paul Jones (response to enemy demand to surrender, 23 September 1779)

Heritage Quote

"But if we are to be told by a foreign Power ... what we shall do, and what we shall not do, we have Independence yet to seek, and have contended hitherto for very little."

-- George Washington (letter to Alexander Hamilton, 8 May 1796)

Beauchamp gets a second chance

Michael Yon, embedded in Iraq, ends up working alongside Scott Beauchamp's battalion commander who, in passing it forward, gave him a second chance.

Beauchamp is young; under pressure he made a dumb mistake. In fact, he has not always been an ideal soldier. But to his credit, the young soldier decided to stay, and he is serving tonight in a dangerous part of Baghdad. He might well be seriously injured or killed here, and he knows it. He could have quit, but he did not. He faced his peers. I can only imagine the cold shoulders, and worse, he must have gotten. He could have left the unit, but LTC Glaze told me that Beauchamp wanted to stay and make it right. Whatever price he has to pay, he is paying it.

The Army could have just discharged him, or rotated him back to the US. Instead, he was given the choice to leave or to stay.

And Scott Beauchamp decided to stay with his comrades-in-arms. And his CO is supporting him and, in fact, trying to protect him from some of the media predators.

Forgiveness. A concept the Army understands and appreciates.

Heritage Quote

"It will not be doubted, that with reference either to individual, or National Welfare, Agriculture is of primary importance. In proportion as Nations advance in population, and other circumstances of maturity, this truth becomes more apparent; and renders the cultivation of the Soil more and more, an object of public patronage."

-- George Washington (Eighth Annual Message to Congress, 1796)

Waking up the cat

[Shamelessly stolen from Grouchy Old Cripple.]

Heritage Quote

"If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it, whenever our legislators shall please so to alter the law and shall chearfully consent to exchange my liberty of abusing others for the privilege of not being abused myself."

-- Benjamin Franklin (An Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, viz. The Court of the Press, 12 September 1789)

Reality check

Michael Yon, currently embedded in Iraq, has much to say about America's cognitive dissonance regarding Iraq.

No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.

Today I am in Iraq, back in a war of such strategic consequence that it will affect generations yet unborn—whether or not they want it to. Hiding under the covers will not work, because whether it is good news or bad, whether it is true or untrue, once information is widely circulated, it has such formidable inertia that public opinion seems impervious to the corrective balm of simple and clear facts.

Today I am in Iraq, back in a war of such strategic consequence that it will affect generations yet unborn—whether or not they want it to. Hiding under the covers will not work, because whether it is good news or bad, whether it is true or untrue, once information is widely circulated, it has such formidable inertia that public opinion seems impervious to the corrective balm of simple and clear facts.

Read the entire post. It contains a lot more reality and balanced reporting than what we're seeing on TV and reading in our papers.

Recommended. Highly.

Heritage Quote

"Slavery, or an absolute and unlimited power in the master over the life and fortune of the slave, is unauthorized by the common law.... The reasons which we sometimes see assigned for the origin and the continuance of slavery appear, when examined to the bottom, to be built upon a false foundation. In the enjoyment of their persons and of their property, the common law protects all."

-- James Wilson (The Natural Rights of Individuals, 1804)

Heritage Quote

"But they have two other Rights; those of sitting when they please, and as long as they please, in which methinks they have the advantage of your Parliament; for they cannot be dissolved by the Breath of a Minister, or sent packing as you were the other day, when it was your earnest desire to have remained longer together."

-- Benjamin Franklin (letter to William Strahan, 19 August 1784)

Heritage Quote

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1823 - letter to Judge William Johnson

Heritage Quote

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition."

-- Thomas Jefferson (Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, 15 February 1791)

Heritage Quote

"Besides, to lay and collect internal taxes in this extensive country must require a great number of congressional ordinances, immediately operation upon the body of the people; these must continually interfere with the state laws and thereby produce disorder and general dissatisfaction till the one system of laws or the other, operating upon the same subjects, shall be abolished."

-- Federal Farmer, 1787 - Antifederalist Letter

Near-sighted Nancy

IInvestor's Business Daily explains how Pelosi's shepherding of the resolution censuring Turkey has already cost Americans $3.5 billion in fuel prices.

After Turkey's government warned on Oct. 7 that the declaration on Armenian genocide might damage U.S.-Turkey ties, the price of oil jumped from $79.03 a barrel to $87.61 Tuesday, a gain of 11%, or nearly $9 a barrel, in a little over a week.

The Democrats' move, blamed by oil traders for the upsurge in crude, has increased our monthly national oil bill by roughly $3.53 billion at current import rates. That's about $42 billion a year. Call it the Stupidity Tax.

Hit hardest will be the poor. A fuel tax is regressive, meaning it falls heaviest on those at the bottom. We're surprised we've not seen this levy dissected in detail by the mainstream media. But they've gone strangely quiet.

Who knows if oil will continue to rise following the Democrats' attempt to hijack foreign policy? It could trigger a recession — one the Democrats and the left-leaning media would blame on Bush.

So as you pull up to the gas pump and watch the digits rise ever higher, please avoid cursing OPEC's potentates or China or Hugo Chavez or whatever. This time, you've paid the Pelosi Premium.

Your tax dollars at work . . .

Things are looking bad . . .

. . . for Al Qaeda.

Operation Iraqi Freedom has graduated from a battle against a combination of indigenous insurgents and foreign terrorists (al Qaeda) to one against al Qaeda. Al Qaeda has made Iraq its watershed moment, and they are losing badly. This transition of Iraq into al Qaeda’s quagmire is remarkable and momentous in world history, and is going largely unreported by the main stream media who is searching for the next flash-bang to report.

Read it all.

Heritage Quote

And 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 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.

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1781 - Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18

America's economic future

Bizzyblog shows what many newspapers have not: that our deficit has plunged 62% over the last four years.

And he talks of the future, as well.

Now for some cold water: I hope I’m wrong, but I believe that the long run of increased tax receipts is over, and that receipts in future years will go up by no more than 4%-5% annually — if we’re lucky. That’s because none of the economy-prodding suggestions made at the end of this post last year have been put into place. The current Congressional majority has no interest in making the Bush 2001-2003 tax cuts permanent. If that were miraculously to happen, the economy would likely go into orbit at the sudden rush of bi-partisan sanity. But that makes too much sense.

If, as appears likely, the Bush cuts are instead allowed to expire at the end of 2010, that will in reality represent a huge tax increase after seven years of a mostly-static tax structure. Worse still, a Democratic presidential victory in 2008 could not only mean a probable earlier end to the Bush cuts, but steep additional taxes on top of that. All three major Dem candidates have already promised exactly that.

Because of these things, it would not surprise me in the least that investors and corporate managers considering expansion are becoming more cautious, hindering current economic growth.

What’s really needed, as I’ve suggested several times in the past few months, is another tax cut. It would nice to hear at least one GOP presidential candidate talking about that, and not merely holding the line on the Bush cuts.

Check it out.

Heritage Quote

"Wise politicians will be cautious about fettering the government with restrictions that cannot be observed, because they know that every break of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity, impairs that sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of rulers towards the constitution of a country. "

-- Alexander Hamilton (Federalist No. 25, 21 December 1787)

Letter from the front

Michael Yon reprints a letter from LTC Crider who is deployed with the 1-4 CAV in Baghdad. LTC Crider is writing to friends and family of the troopers in his unit about the achievements of his soldiers over there and the impact they are having on Iraqis.

War is a very personal endeavor. We find ourselves here involved in close friendships with one another as well as with the many Iraqis we interact with every day on the streets. We are also very close to our interpreters who share every danger with us. We are all intertwined and nothing happens to one group without it affecting the other.

Recently, I found myself in the 28th Combat Support Hospital emergency room where one of our most loyal interpreters was being treated after being injured in an attack. While his prognosis was excellent, he was very shaken. As he lay on a gurney with his head wrapped and an oxygen mask on his face, he saw me approach and immediately grabbed my arm and began to ask me about each soldier in the truck. He referred to them all as his “brothers” and he meant it. Not knowing his own condition he told me he loved Americans and America. He made me promise that I would take his heart to America if he died. He was going to be fine (he left the hospital the next day) but I could not convince him, so I promised.

Go read the whole thing. It is well worth it, because it is information that is scarce in mainstream reporting about Iraq.

Heritage Quote

"The times that tried men's souls are over-and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished."

-- Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, No. 13, 1783)

Irrifutably good news from Iraq

Just read the Washington Post:

NEWS COVERAGE and debate about Iraq during the past couple of weeks have centered on the alleged abuses of private security firms like Blackwater USA. Getting such firms into a legal regime is vital, as we've said. But meanwhile, some seemingly important facts about the main subject of discussion last month -- whether there has been a decrease in violence in Iraq -- have gotten relatively little attention. A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that "civilian deaths have risen" during this year's surge of American forces.

A month later, there isn't much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 -- down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.

Kudos to the Post for reporting this. It's not getting much media attention.

General Petraeus was right.

We are winning.

We can't rest on our laurels yet, though. There is much work to be done. The Iraqis need to resolve some serious political issues before things settle down there.

Godspeed.

Academic Coercion

George Will has an alarming column up at The Washington Post about universities coercing students into supporting political/socialogical agendas in order to pass. Here's how he starts:

In 1943, the Supreme Court, affirming the right of Jehovah's Witnesses children to refuse to pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag in schools, declared: "No official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." Today that principle is routinely traduced, coast to coast, by officials who are petty in several senses.

They are teachers at public universities, in schools of social work. A study prepared by the National Association of Scholars, a group that combats political correctness on campuses, reviews social work education programs at 10 major public universities and comes to this conclusion: Such programs mandate an ideological orthodoxy to which students must subscribe concerning "social justice" and "oppression."

I read about a very similar situation in several history books. They recounted how the Third Reich came into being through forcefully educating the German people in the "correct" sociopolitical doctrine -- the Nazi doctrine.

Go read the whole thing.

Heritage Quote

"It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction."

-- John Adams (Thoughts on Government, 1776)

Heritage Quote

"In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely."

-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Caeser Rodney, 10 February 1810)

Heritage Quote

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders."

-- Samuel Adams (letter to James Warren, 4 November 1775)

Heritage Quote

"The great leading objects of the federal government, in which revenue is concerned, are to maintain domestic peace, and provide for the common defense. In these are comprehended the regulation of commerce that is, the whole system of foreign intercourse; the support of armies and navies, and of the civil administration."

-- Alexander Hamilton (remarks to the New York Ratifying Convention, June 1788)

Heritage Quote

"The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests."

-- Alexander Hamilton, 1788 - Federalist No. 71

Heritage Quote

"A Man may, if he know not how to save, keep his Nose to the Grindstone, and die not wirth a Groat at last."

-- Benjamin Franklin (Poor Richard's Almanack, 1742)

Heritage Quote

"We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our won Country's Honor, all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions. "

-- George Washington (General Orders, 2 July 1776)

Heritage Quote

"No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

-- James Madison (Federalist No. 48, 1 February 1788)

Heritage Quote

"[W]hen all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 - letter to Charles Hammond

Heritage Quote

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread."

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1821 - Autobiography

Heritage Quote

"Let the pulpit resound with the doctrine and sentiments of religious liberty. Let us hear of the dignity of man's nature, and the noble rank he holds among the works of God... Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes and parliaments."

-- John Adams (Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765)

Heritage Quote

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

-- Nathan Hale (before being hanged by the British, 22 September 1776)

Light blogging

I've been quite preoccupied with real life -- both at home and at work -- so my blogging is going to be even less than it has been. This will continue to persist for a few weeks. I will try to get the heritage quote posted at the very least.

I thank you for your interest and your patience.

Quote-able

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. "

-- John Stuart Mill, English economist & philosopher (1806 - 1873)

Heritage Quote

"The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation."

-- Alexander Hamilton (speech to the New York Ratifying Convention,
17 June 1788)