No house divided

U.S. Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln asserted in his now-famous "House Divided" speech that the United States could not "endure, permanently, half slave and half free." Lincoln believed that the forces behind abolition and those pushing for the expansion of slavery were too powerful and too dynamic to be confined by state borders or latitudinal lines. While we take Lincoln's words for granted today, the prevailing wisdom for generations had been that the states could remain divided over the slave question.

Senator Marco Rubio made an analogous assertion on Senate floor just after that body had voted to raise the debt ceiling. Rubio, who had given several powerful speeches throughout the debate, had saved his most profound sentiments for last. He painted a picture of two Americas. One of a powerful, effectively limitless welfare state where the government acts as guarantor of prosperity and driver of the economy. The other of an America where government is a protector of rights and thereby allows the opportunity-seeking citizenry to create prosperity and drive the economy.

These visions have wrestled for control for roughly 80 years. The recent acceleration toward a "government of guarantees" is why the Tea Party exists. The Tea Party is a national reawakening to the fact that America can become "all one thing," or unfortunately "all the other." In our modern politics it is stylish to suggest that both visions can coexist indefinitely. Most notably, President Obama rose to power on the platitudinal idea of "red" and "blue" state unity. Rubio resists this notion.

These are two very different version of America and two very different types of solutions. And ultimately we may find that between these two points, there may not be a middle ground. And that in fact as a nation and as a people we must decide what we want the role of government to be in America. Like Lincoln, Rubio recognizes the incompatibility of the competing visions of government. (condensed from an article in the American Thinker by Joseph Ashby, 8-8-11)

Learn from Europe, America.

Words worthy of thoughtful consideration from Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic:

Europeans today prefer leisure to performance, security to risk-taking, paternalism to free markets, collectivism and group entitlements to individualism. They have always been more risk-averse than Americans, but the difference continues to grow. Economic freedom has a very low priority here. It seems that Europeans are not interested in capitalism and free markets and do not understand that their current behavior undermines the very institutions that made their past success possible. They are eager to defend their non-economic freedoms—the easiness, looseness, laxity and permissiveness of modern or post-modern European society—but when it comes to their economic freedoms, they are quite indifferent.

The critical situation in Europe today is visible to everybody. It is not possible to hide it. I had believed that this spectacle would be a help to the cause of political and economic freedom in Europe, but this is not proving to be the case. Of course, with the way your American government has been going, you might be able to catch up with us—in terms of our problems—very soon. But you are not as far along yet. So maybe seeing Europe’s crisis today will at least help you in America turn back toward freedom.

Ideological Purity

Well, John Boehner, master political manipulator, is at it again. He has pulled out his ultimate weapon, the same one he used to push TARP through the House back in 2008. He has told his recalcitrant House members that they should not allow their "ideological purity" to stand in the way of doing what is necessary for the country. This is equal to the infamous Bush line, that he suspended free market principles in order to save the free market. Maybe we can save Christianity by suspending the teachings of the Bible!

We have about 100 new House members who were sent there last November by the honest hard-working people of our nation to stand up for certain specific Constitutional principles. To ask them to set those principles aside is like telling them to compromise what they, and many of us, believe is in the best interests of the nation. This is not only stupid and unreasonable, it's an attack against the character of these House members. Boehner is essentially asking these men and women to stand down, to surrender their beliefs, all in the interest of political expediency. If they give in to his sinister manipulations, it's all over. Now is not the time to compromise; it's the time for all of those so-called Tea Party House members to stand firm.

Compromising on principles is not, and never will be, an option. The opposite of ideological purity is ideological corruption.

Respecting the office

We hear today that we must respect the office of the president. This is code language for: we must not criticize the sitting president too directly, too severely, too personally. When did this concept arise? As I recollect, it started when the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair was made public. All of a sudden we had to respect the office, even when its occupant was engaging in the most juvenile kind of behavior. To criticize Clinton for his "indiscretions" was off limits because we had to respect the office of the president. Well, I don't think any true, Constitution-loving American ever disrespected "the office," but from Washington's second election onward, many have shown utter contempt for the occupant of the office, and have been quite willing to express their contempt in the most colorful language imaginable. And never, until Clinton, was this considered to be tantamount to disrespecting the office.

Today John Huntsman, the most recent addition to the growing list of Republican wanna-bees, said that he respects the sitting president; he just disagrees with him on what is best for the country. This is political pablum. What is a man other than the sum total of his beliefs and opinions. To couch the current situation in terms of a polite disagreement between two intelligent, well-meaning people is to completely deny reality. As far as I'm concerned, the substance and tone of Huntsman's opening announcement is all I need to hear to know that I would never want this man to be our president.

Weiner out.

Weiner should go, not just because he lied, but because he's a fool. What kind of an idiot in a high profile position would post such photos on Facebook? This is the kind of stuff high school kids do. A man with such poor judgment is utterly unfit to serve in the US Congress. I know that some would argue that this is exactly what makes him fit, but I say, "Out with him!"

Flag hypocrisy

Commenting on Sarah Palin's bus tour, Martin Bashir says, "It all sounds like a wonderful commitment to American values and American history, but it's nothing of the kind. In fact, the whole thing could be in breach of a federal law because the United States Flag Code establishes important rules for the use and display of the stars and stripes, the flag of the United States. Under standards of respect and etiquette, it's made clear that the flag of the United States should never be used for any advertising purpose whatsoever. Yet that's precisely what Sarah Palin is doing. She's using the flag of the United States for her own financial purposes."

Mr. Bashir may have contempt for the way Sarah uses the flag, but I would bet a year's pay that he would defend her right to burn a flag.

The meaning of "natural-born citizen."

In a May 22, 2011 article on the meaning of the term "natural-born citizen," Joe Kovacs writes:

The Founders' chief concern, as demonstrated in a 1787 letter from John Jay to George Washington, was that the commander-in-chief not have dual loyalties. Jay, who later became president of the Continental Congress and the first Supreme Court chief justice, wrote: "Permit me to hint, whether it would be wise and seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Commander in Chief of the American army shall not be given to nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen."

The definition of natural-born citizen approved by the first U.S. Congress can be seen in the Naturalization Act of 1790, which regarded it as a child born of two American parents. The law, specifying that a natural-born citizen need not be born on U.S. soil, stated: "The children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States shall be considered as natural born citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States."

The first U.S. Congress included 20 delegates to the Constitutional convention. Among the 20 were eight members of the Committee of Eleven that drafted the Constitution's natural-born citizen clause. While the act was repealed five years later, it, nevertheless, represented the will of the Congress that the U.S. not be led by someone with dual loyalties.

Rep. John Bingham of Ohio, a principal framer of the Fourteenth Amendment, affirmed in a discussion in the House on March 9, 1866, that a natural-born citizen is "born within the jurisdiction of the United States of parents not owing allegiance to any foreign sovereignty." "The Law of Nations," a 1758 workby Swiss legal philosopher Emmerich de Vattel, was read by many of the American Founders and informed their understanding of law later established in the Constitution.

Vattel specified that a natural-born citizen is born of two citizens and made it clear that the father's citizenship was a loyalty issue. Vattel writes: "The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. … In order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country."

Significantly, when the U.S. Senate resolved in 2008 that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the Republican presidential nominee, was a natural born citizen, it specified that his parents were American citizens.

If this is true, then short of a constitutional amendment, Rubio and Jindal are ineligible for the presidency.

Some Wisdom from Lew Lehrman

In a piece in the April 26 Wall Street Journal in which he proposes tying the dollar to gold, Lew Lehrman makes a great point: "What persistent debtor could resist permanent credit financing? For a government, an individual or an enterprise, 'a deficit without tears' leads to the corrupt euphoria of limitless spending." That is the approach of our government. According to Lehrman, it is for this reason that if we don't tie the dollar to gold, our deficits will persist. The government can just keep "printing" money.

Ensign-ing Off

GOP Senator John is resigning for getting caught having an affair with his deputy chief-of-staff's wife. He's unrepentant. "I haven't violated any standard of conduct of the Senate." Maybe he's right: their standards are pretty low. A true profile in courage, he's resigning like a little bunny rabbit in the desperate hope the ethics committee won't publicize its findings. Good luck with that, John!

There are reports in the media that shortly after the affair became known, Ensign's parents paid $96,000 to the staffer and his wife. As if the initial transgression didn't stink badly enough.

Perhaps we cannot expect much out of the state of Nevada. How can a state based so heavily on gambling and prostitution produce moral people, especially in politics?

Obama Motors: Disgraceful Government Boondoggle

"The government plans to sell most of its remaining stake in General Motors in the coming months and lose $11 billion in the process, The Wall Street Journal reports." So says Newsmax, in a story attributed to Money News. So much for Obama's lies about getting our money back. The article says the government bailed out GM with $50 billion, and needs to sell its (our) shares at $53 a share in order to recoup its (our) money. What is Government Motors selling for now? Thirty bucks. I wonder if our brilliant bureaucrats can do addition and subtraction here. Who will defend this idiotic boondoggle, except the unions who were the ones really getting bailed out here? This company should've been allowed to go out of business, like any other failing company. More efficient firms would have bought up some of its assets, if any of them were willing to stake their own money (not yours and mine), and this manufacturing capacity would've appeared in a different incarnation, provided that were profitable. That's the way it works in a free-market (as distinct from Soviet) economy. It's called "creative destruction," and it's a fact of life. Leftists decry free-market capitalism, but they love this disgusting type of crony capitalism because they have their incompetent fingers all over it.