"If they win a victory, they follow it up at once, and if they suffer a defeat, they scarcely fall back at all."

The Debate at Sparta

The History of the Peloponnesian War

Thucydides, 432 B.C.

The Corinthians were seeking help from their allies, the Spartans. The year was 432 B.C. Threatened by the Athenians, the Corinthians presented their case to the Spartan assembly warning of the relentless determination of their Athenian foes: "...if they suffer a defeat, they scarcely fall back at all."

In November of 2010, the Republicans won a a landslide victory in the U.S. Congress and in State Houses around the country handing an historic defeat to Democrats. Virtually every state, except for California rejected the destructive policies of the Pelosi-Reid Congress and endorsed a more socially and fiscally conservative agenda. In other words, the majority of Americans expressed through their vote a desire for a return to a Constitutionally based government. Months later the mood has not shifted. Polls continue to indicate a national lurch right or, perhaps, more accurately a return to the Foundational principles of our Republic.

Yet since the election, the Democrats, for the most part have not fallen back and respected the wishes of the American people, rather they have dug in. The President has defied two court orders to allow off-shore drilling and continues to prohibit the drilling of oil off the coast of the Gulf states, eliminating thousands of jobs for hardworking Americans and further increasing our dependence on foreign oil sources precisely when we should be ramping up production in the Gulf and, yes I'll say it, ANWR in the interest of national security and sound economic policy. Though gas prices have increased markedly in recent months, the President has yet to comply with the courts while unemployment and inflation threaten many American families and most especially those oil rig workers he forced into unemployment.

Our porous borders--particularly in Arizona--continue to place our citizens at risk and the President's response is not to enforce the law by beefing up border security but to sue the state of Arizona for passing a law requiring enforcement of an already existing federal illegal immigration law. Meanwhile murders continue in southern Arizona and a well worn copy of a book on jihad is found in the Arizona desert. Secure borders are a matter of national security, not merely a politically correct debate on immigration policy. If Mexican drug lords know our borders are open, does not Al Quaeda know the same?

ObamaCare is the most egregious act of defiance yet. Judge Roger Vinson, a federal judge in Pensacola, Florida in a 78 page ruling effectively declared ObamaCare unconstitutional. The Administration continued to implement the law for a month before the judge threatened an injunction unless they appealed his ruling in seven days. They have done so but continue to fund the law to the tune of billions of dollars. Each passing day, despite the voice of the American people, a repeal by the new Congress and two rulings by federal judges striking down the Constitutionality of the law, we move one step closer to losing our health care freedom.

Dug in. No retreat. They will not fall back. No budget in place for this fiscal year as Congress spends with no accountability. Debt accumulating like poker chips. Public unions demanding ever more from the tax payer coffers.

And we won the election. Some things, despite the passing of 2,400 years, never change.

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Courage

"Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous. "

Pericles' Funeral Oration to the Athenians

Oh for courageous leaders. For a president who would stand up and say enough is enough, we will not spend beyond our means any longer: Read my Budget!

For a Congress that would enforce the difficult fiscal decisions. Cut through the fat, reduce funding of voluntary programs, spend responsibly. Reduce the unwieldy size of government.

For a judiciary that would enforce the Constitution rather than re-write it.

For leaders who are also adults. Who eat their broccoli before the creme brulee. Who are man and woman enough to stand up to short-term disapproval in order to make the right decisions for the nation, for the long term.

And for a citizenry like the Athenians Pericles describes: this is a peculiarity of ours: we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.

It is a time-proven tenet that ultimately people get what they deserve. Is it possible through our complacency we have indeed obtained the leaders we deserve? Let's hope that is not the case, that it is not too late to reverse the tide and through our interest in and engagement of the issues elect the kind of leaders America truly deserves. That our children and their children deserve.

It seems to me the least we can do. To have the courage to leave this country a little better than we found it.

Obama's Mettle

This semester I have the privilege of teaching a collegiate seminar of the Great Books. We just completed Thucydides' account of the "The Debate at Sparta and Declaration of War" from his History of the Peloponnesian War.

There is a reason the study of this work has long been considered the foundation of classical education. Our culture seems to have lost a thirst for the Great Books, unless of course we can digest them on screen in Hollywood extravaganzas like Troy which are often loosely, to say the least, based on the actual text.

During the Debate at Sparta, the Corinthians were presenting their grievances against Athens to their allies, the Spartans. ...the likeliest way of securing peace is this: only to use one's power in the cause of justice, but to make it perfectly plain that one is resolved not to tolerate aggression.

Sound advice we would do well to consider as our servicemen are gunned down at airports by Islamic extremists, our soldiers are gunned down on our own army base in Texas by an Islamic extremist and our citizens are held captive and murdered on their own vessel by Somali Pirates. Our response has been muted through each of these hostile, aggressive acts. Our response, frankly, has been absolutely shameful.

The Corinthians understood what Sparta didn't: that Athens was a determined and patient foe. ...they gradually encroach upon their neighbors. Now they are proceeding slowly because they think your insensitiveness to the situation enables them to go on their way unnoticed; you will find that they will develop their full strength once they realize that you do see what is happening and are still doing nothing to prevent it (emphasis mine).

Joe Biden told us during the election that our "young president" would be tested and we would wonder at his response. From the New York Post, October 21, 2008:

"Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.

And he's going to need help . . . to stand with him. Because it's not going to be apparent initially; it's not going to be apparent that we're right."

For once I agree with ole Joe. It is CLEARLY not apparent that "we're right." The Corinthians, however did understand the role of government in protecting her citizens: to use power in the cause of justice and to make it perfectly plain to our enemies that we will not tolerate aggression.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/politics/item_SwNf3ALrmaf4Zdb4K0KDoN#ixzz1FdyQ7YV4

Obama's "Instrument of Unimagined Power"

I am unconsolably dismayed by the latest Rasmussen polling showing the President's approval rating improving in recent weeks. The talking heads attribute the positive trend to Obama's most recent promotion of more centrist ideals, and I suspect they are right. Whether the change in public sentiment sticks or not remains to be seen.

Bill Clinton certainly lurched successfully right after the mid-term elections during his first term. He heard the people and he adjusted his agenda. But Obama's shift feels more like FDR's approach after his re-election: a shift in rhetoric rather than behavior. A commitment to Keynesian ideology. A masterful manipulation of words and sentiment to change the subject. A shameless use of failed policies to justify the implementation of more-of- the-same.

Amity Shlaes' essential history of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man is once again an invaluable source:

• During FDR's second inaugural address he claimed economic victory where there was none: "Our progress out of the Depression is obvious." Yet unemployment was above 15% and subsequent data would show that joblessness had risen since the election. FDR's claims were baseless (298). We have heard nothing less from President Obama. The economy is on the mend. We are beyond the worst of it. Yet unemployment continues to rise. Housing languishes and government debts grows exponentially.
• FDR continued to attack the wealthy and the economics of a free market: "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics." (298) Again, we hear the same disdainful vitriol targeted at the private sector and the "rich" by the Obama Administration. The tax payers, the job creators, the philanthropists. Evil. Evil. Evil.
• FDR was the master of double-speak. After claiming the country was moving out of the Depression, Roosevelt said this: "I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." This gave him, he believed, the moral authority to establish a "new order of things." (298) We see the same from every corner of the Obama Administration. The president, after passing an unprecedented number of regulations in the first two years of his presidency is now suddenly going to attack unnecessary regulations.
• Last week he wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial: "For instance, the FDA has long considered saccharin, the artificial sweetener, safe for people to consume. Yet for years, the EPA made companies treat saccharin like other dangerous chemicals. Well, if it goes in your coffee, it is not hazardous waste. (emphasis mine) The EPA wisely eliminated this rule last month."

That ought to do it. Let's lighten up on saccharin. Never mind that the EPA is now regulating CO2. If we exhale it, it is not hazardous waste. But I digress.

• FDR believed in the moral superiority of government over individual liberty: "We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world." (299)

"An instrument of unimagined power." Can you say Obamacare?

History Repeats Itself, Yes, But This is Remarkable

Obama: "He just moves on to another issue. Never skips a beat," a friend of mine remarked of the President. "Obama has given more speeches and made more appearances than I can recall of any president. One speech, one issue after another. Remarkable really," he concluded.

FDR: In The Forgotten Man (published in 2007), Amity Shlaes quotes Ray Moley, a one-time advisor to Roosevelt: "When one set of these objectives...faded, he provided another." And Shlaes remarks, "The fact that he shifted did not have to matter" (248).

Obama: Obama talks of unity, then famously divides. Recall the recent comment he made to a crowd prior to the mid-term elections: "We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.” A divisive comment like that is one thing coming from a candidate, it is quite another coming from the president of ALL of the people--Republican and Democrat.

FDR: "Now by defining his forgotten men as the specific groups he would help, the president was in effect forgetting the rest--creating a new forgotten man. The country was splitting into those who were Roosevelt favorites and everyone else. The division started at the top" (Shlaes 246).

Obama: After spending trillions of dollars in the first two years of his Administration, unemployment in the US has risen. Yet we are being told by the experts the economy is in recovery-- a jobless recovery.

FDR: The New Deal, also a Keynesian recovery plan that formed countless government agencies and spent billions of dollars, "was causing the country to forgo prosperity, if not recovery" (Shlaes 263). In 1934, Will Green, head of the AFL made the following point to the press, "While business has recovered half its Depression loss, only 30 percent of the Depression unemployed have been put to work." People might be speaking about recovery, but business activity was still far below 1929 levels--and it was a jobless recovery (262).

Obama/FDR Cabinets: Roosevelt was criticized that his "Brain Trusters," his advisors were largely former professors with no real world experience. The Washington Times recently published the chart below. With all the criticism of FDR's Brain Trusters take a look at Obama's Cabinet.

Nick Schulz, editor of the American Enterprise Institute's The American magazine, catches this eye-popping graph from a J.P. Morgan research report:

at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/less-10-percent-obama-cabinet-has-private-sector-experience#ixzz19EVjmrKc)

Stay Tuned. The similarities between these two Administrations are remarkable. Really.

From the Heritage Foundation

Remembering the Providential Gift of America

Morning Bell, The Heritage Foundation

12/24/2010

Christmas, 1776.

Summer had begun with strong declarations of noble ideals, but by winter the cause of liberty seemed to be at low ebb. Having suffered defeat after defeat, many had all but given up hope. It looked like freedom would succumb yet again, as it had throughout history, to the forces of authoritarianism and tyranny.

Then, on Christmas Day, 1776, a small band of colonial forces under the command of Gen. George Washington, having retreated all the way from New York, again crossed the Delaware River and brought battle at Trenton, New Jersey. Washington not only won the battle but regained the initiative and turned the war in the patriots’ favor. One week later, Washington defeated the British at Princeton and forced the enemy to withdraw, preventing its advance on Philadelphia, seat of the Continental Congress.

When it announced itself to the world in 1776, the United States of America was little more than an alliance of 13 small colonies on a barren continent, thousands of miles from their ancestral homeland, surrounded by hostile powers.

Now, well over two centuries after winning independence from the British Empire, America is the freest, wealthiest, most powerful nation on Earth. Along the way it established sovereign nationhood, settled a continent and more and brought unprecedented prosperity to its citizens. It survived a devastating Civil War that threatened its very life, abolished slavery and raised up the emancipated to be citizens equal to their one-time masters. It triumphed in two world wars fought on foreign soil and a decades-long struggle against worldwide communism that, 20 years ago, led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union.

What accounts for this monumental success? The founding of the United States was indeed revolutionary. But not in the sense of replacing one set of rulers with another, or overthrowing the institutions of society. John Adams queried:

What do we mean by the American Revolution? The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. . . . This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.

Our revolution was about the ideas upon which a new nation was to be established. Permanent truths “applicable to all men and all times,” as Abraham Lincoln later said, proclaimed that principle rather than will would be the ultimate ground of government.

What is truly revolutionary about America is that, for the first time in history, these universal ideas became the foundation of a system of government and its political culture. Because ofthese principles, rather than despite them, the American Revolution culminated not in tyranny but a constitutional government that has long endured.

To this day, 233 years after Washington and his men crossed the Delaware, these principles–proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and promulgated by the Constitution–still define us as a nation and inspire us as a people. These principles are responsible for a prosperous, just nation unlike any other. They are the highest achievements of our tradition, a beacon to those who strive for freedom but also a warning to tyrants and despots everywhere. Because of these principles, not despite them, America achieved greatness.

The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson later recorded, was “neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, [but] was intended to be an expression of the American mind.”

As Americans, our aim must be a clear expression and forthright defense of the nation’s principles in the public square so that they become, once again, an expression of the American mind. Despite constant scorn by academic elites, political leaders and the popular media, most Americans still believe in the uniqueness of this country and respect the Founders’ noble ideas. They may fail a test of particulars – quick: when did Washington cross the Delaware? – but they overwhelmingly want to know about this nation and its meaning.

We must give voice to all those who have not given up on their country’s experiment in self-government, have not concluded the cause of liberty and limited constitutional government is lost and have not accepted America’s decline as inevitable.

The goal must be to restore the liberating principles of the American Founding as the defining public philosophy of our nation. As it was for most of American history, so it can be again.

The joy of this wonderful season is about new beginnings and the eternal promise of redemption. We Americans have the immeasurable benefit, the providential gift, of having inherited a great country.

We must never forget its confidence, optimism and promise, its endless capacity for renewal, are contained in our dedication to the enduring principles of liberty with which all men are endowed by their Creator.

May you and yours have a merry and blessed Christmas.

Lies and More Lies in the Never Ending Quest for Revenue

(Liberty Bell from my personal collection of photos.)

A country's tax policy lies at the center of the debate over liberty. The Founders understood that. They believed that the individual must be protected from government because they understood further that when government has license to confiscate property it will eventually become addicted to doing so.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 35 wrote: "if the jurisdiction of the national government, in the article of revenue, should be restricted to particular objects, it would naturally occasion an undue proportion of the public burdens to fall upon those objects. Two evils would spring from this source: the oppression of particular branches of industry; and an unequal distribution of the taxes" (emphasis mine)

He was right.

A recently published study revealed the United States ranks first among nations for the most progressive tax structure. In an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal Alan Reynolds writes: "A 2008 study of 24 leading economies by the the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) concludes that, "Taxation is most progressively distributed in the United States." For all the accusations by the left that the rich must pay their fair share, The Journal of Economic Perspectives reports "the upper 1% of the income distribution earned 19.6% of total income before tax [in 2004], and paid 41% of the individual federal income tax. No other major country is so dependent on so few taxpayers" (Reynolds).

The accusations and distortions by the left are nothing new. Hamilton characterized these kinds of attacks as follows: "...argument presents itself under a very specious and seducing form; and is well calculated to lay hold of the prejudices of those to whom it is addressed. But when we come to dissect it with attention, it will appear to be made up of nothing but fair-sounding words. (emphasis mine)

Despite the fact that the Democrats recently claimed victory over the extension of the Bush tax rates, claiming that raising taxes would harm the economy, they will soon be back to their old bully pulpit attacking "the rich" for their greed and calling for higher tax rates for the "wealthy."

It is they who are greedy. And, sadly, ignorant.

Hamilton understood the importance of sound economic and tax policy and understood further the risk to the citizenry when those in leadership didn't. "There is no part of the administration of government that requires extensive information and a thorough knowledge of the principles of political economy, so much as the business of taxation. The man who understands those principles best will be least likely to resort to oppressive expedients, or to sacrifice any particular class of citizens to the procurement of revenue" (Federalist 35).

It is time for economic literates to explain to the public the facts of sound fiscal policy. Ronald Reagan style. And give voice to the Founders' intentions when they penned the Constitution: That purpose of government is to protect its citizens, not confiscate an ever increasing portion of their income and property in its never ending quest for revenue.