THE FOUNDATION

“In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate—look to his character.” —Noah Webster

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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Publisher’s Note: Fellow Patriots, We need your help today, and this is NOT a donor solicitation. Most of you know someone who plans to vote for Barack Hussein Obama instead of John Sidney McCain. If you don’t know any Obama supporters personally, you certainly have family, friends or associates who know them. We encourage you to forward “Presidential Character” to everyone you know so it will reach a wide audience both of Obama supporters, estimated to be 45 percent of the electorate, and of undecided voters, estimated to be 13 percent of the electorate.

Friday afternoon, we sent “Presidential Character” via e-mail with the return address “Democrats@PatriotPost.US.” Our intent is to reach the last few Democrats who still have any sense. (You can be sure there are no Democrats at PatriotPost.US!) It is critical for our nation that we reach as many voters as possible.

“Mark—thank you for the pep talk. Living in a bastion of Democrats sometimes makes it difficult to remember that we live in a very large country with many, many conservatives residing therein. You are 100 percent correct in saying, to add another classic line: ‘It ain’t over till the fat lady sings!’ Keep up the good work!” —Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

“Thank you for what you do for all Americans and Patriots throughout our great country. I am so thankful that your subjects, editorials, and comments speak what is in my heart. I donate to your cause because I believe your organization is the last great chance to spread the truth and wake people up. I am constantly giving your Internet address to many friends and they are passing it on. Keep up the fight! God bless you all.” —Volant, Pennsylvania

RE: THE LEFT

“Every single presidential campaign boils down to an argument about how the candidates ‘see America.’ Suddenly that question is out of bounds because Obama is black? According to the liberal history books, in 1988 the GOP cast Michael Dukakis as too elitist, cosmopolitan and not American enough. In 1992, it ran a similar attack against Bill Clinton—remember the hullabaloo about draft dodging and that trip to Russia? In 2000, ditto with Al Gore, though the emphasis was less on foreignness and more on extraterrestrialness. And in 2004, there was John Kerry’s ‘global test’ for U.S. national security. Lack of originality notwithstanding, why is it suddenly racist to treat Obama just like the four white guys who preceded him? Talk about racial double standards. Obama holds mega-campaign rallies in Berlin, touts his global appeal and says a top foreign policy goal is to get other countries to like us. But it’s racist to call him cosmopolitan? He has nontrivial ties to an unrepentant (and white) former leader of the Weather Underground, a radical leftist organization that sought to kill American soldiers, policemen and politicians. But it’s ‘racist’ to bring that up? (If anything, by not attacking Obama’s ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and other politically unsavory nonwhite associates, McCain is self-censoring for fear of seeming racist.) If Obama were a white Democratic nominee named Barry O’Malley, the GOP would be going after him twice as hard. But liberal Democrats would still caterwaul about fomenting hatred and racism, because that’s what they always do.” —Jonah Goldberg

POLITICAL FUTURES

“Apparently there is something about Sarah Palin that causes some people to think of her as either the best of candidates or the worst of candidates. She draws enthusiastic crowds and provokes visceral hostility in the media. The issue that is raised most often is her relative lack of experience and the fact that she would be ‘a heartbeat away from the presidency’ if Senator John McCain were elected. But Barack Obama has even less experience—none in an executive capacity—and his would itself be the heartbeat of the presidency if he were elected. Sarah Palin’s record is on the record, while whole years of Barack Obama’s life are engulfed in fog, and he has had to explain away one after another of the astounding and vile people he has not merely ‘associated’ with but has had political alliances with, and to whom he has directed the taxpayers’ money and other money. Sarah Palin has had executive experience—and the White House is the executive branch of government. We don’t have to judge her by her rhetoric because she has a record. We don’t know what Barack Obama will actually do because he has actually done very little for which he was personally accountable... Sarah Palin is the one real outsider among the four candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency on the Republican and Democratic tickets. Her whole career has been spent outside the Washington Beltway. More than that, her whole life has been outside the realm familiar to the intelligentsia of the media. She didn’t go to the big-name colleges and imbibe the heady atmosphere that leaves so many feeling that they are special folks. She doesn’t talk the way they talk or think the way they think. ... Whatever the shortcomings of John McCain and Sarah Palin, they are people whose values are the values of this nation, whose loyalty and dedication to this country’s fundamental institutions are beyond question because they have not spent decades working with people who hate America.” —Thomas Sowell

INSIGHT

“The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power.” —Milton Friedman

IChThUS IMPRIMIS

“What sets conservatives—and by extension the GOP—apart is that we have always encouraged vigorous debate and the civil discourse necessary for the continuation of this American experiment. It is the foundation of our republic and the catalyst to our best ideas. But we succeed in our intellectual pursuits only because they stand firmly on the solid rock of our morality, our spirituality and our admission of and submission to the God that grants our souls the right to breathe. The sinking sand of liberal dogma will never be a suitable substitute.” —Doug Patton

CULTURE

“Under an Obama administration, it is not far-fetched to see the day when liberal federal judges decide that religious organizations must lose their tax exemptions should they refuse to employ homosexuals or others they regard as engaging in deviant behavior. Court challenges against those who believe homosexual behavior is sinful seem to be occurring with greater frequency... The aim of the gay rights lobby is to destroy all remnants of biblical values and societal norms. Gay rights advocates will take their agenda to federal courts as soon as sufficient numbers of liberal judges are there to give them what they want. Watch them vote in overwhelming numbers for Barack Obama. He is their future. This election is, among other things, about the future of the majority and whether we want this country to be shaped by the courts, or by ‘we the people’.” —Cal Thomas

LIBERTY

“The left subscribes to the French Revolution, whose guiding principles were ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.’ The right subscribes to the American formula, ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.’ The French/European notion of equality is not mentioned. The right rejects the French Revolution and does not hold Western Europe as a model. The left does. That alone makes right and left irreconcilable. The left envisions an egalitarian society. The right does not. The left values equality above other values because it yearns for an America in which all people have similar amounts of material possessions... The right values equality in opportunity and strongly believes that all people are created equal, but the right values liberty, a man-woman based family and other values above equality.” —Dennis Prager

OPINION IN BRIEF

“Consider the magnitude of these problems or the sheer, dumb size of the institutions. Another phrase of financial usage familiar everywhere now is ‘too big to fail.’ But if something is too big to fail, isn’t it... too big? Look in any direction and what you see are institutions that are Too Big. Too big to fully understand, and thus too big to manage efficiently. Faced with Godzilla-sized problems, logic flees: If they’re too big to fail, the solution is... make them bigger! The big, fat government we know about, with its $2.942 trillion annual outlays. The problem of unmanageable public bigness is also seen in state legislatures in a condition of permanent nonperformance, as in New York, California or Michigan. We become numb to these outsized and failing public institutions, which grind in circles while the pols purport concern about massive, forward-crawling monoliths like Medicare, Social Security or public pension debt. By contrast, the starkness and hourly reporting of the financial crisis has made the dilemma of size impossible to duck.” —Daniel Henninger

GOVERNMENT

“The government is seeking to buy up shares in healthy, well-run small businesses all across America so it can get those businesses to behave as the government wants them to behave... But isn’t that how we go into this mess—with the government trying to get banks to make more loans? Just as one lie leads to another, imprudent government intervention in the free market leads to further imprudent government intervention in the free market. Each step of the way, we are told we have no choice but to do what the government wants us to do. The original transgression that led us to the current crisis was committed by elected officials in Washington who wanted to buy additional incumbency insurance for themselves by saying to voters: We will help you buy a house. They worked to accomplish this through legislation (such as the Community Reinvestment Act) that pressured banks to make riskier loans and through tax-exempt government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which started buying up riskier loans (so the original lenders did not have to carry the risk) and wrapping them into mortgage-backed securities (which mixed bad loans with good loans)... So we have gone from government pressuring banks to make riskier mortgages, to government-sponsored enterprises buying riskier loans from banks to facilitate even more risky lending, to government buying stakes in the banks themselves... What will be the next unprecedented measure government officials never thought would be necessary?” —Terence Jeffrey

THE GIPPER

“The major issue of this campaign is the direct political, personal and moral responsibility of Democratic Party leadership... for this unprecedented calamity which has befallen us. They tell us they have done the most that humanly could be done. They say that the United States has had its day in the sun; that our nation has passed its zenith. They expect you to tell your children that the American people no longer have the will to cope with their problems; that the future will be one of sacrifice and few opportunities. My fellow citizens, I utterly reject that view. The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backwards ourselves. Those who believe we can have no business leading the nation. I will not stand by and watch this great country destroy itself under mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our national will and purpose. We have come together here because the American people deserve better from those to whom they entrust our nation’s highest offices, and we stand united in our resolve to do something about it.” —Ronald Reagan

FOR THE RECORD

“If the most productive members of society—those who create the majority of jobs—are taxed we will have fewer jobs. It’s the old rule that if you tax something you get less of it. While Obama is killing jobs by taxing the productive, he proposes to ‘renegotiate’ NAFTA and other trade deals thus putting the one bright corner of our economy, the export sector, in his crosshairs. Obama has a million schemes to redistribute the wealth of the top five percent, (who by the way, already pay more than 50 percent of the taxes in our steeply progressive system). He wants to provide college for ‘anyone who wants to go and agrees to perform community service,’ and community development block grants, and childcare, and universal pre-school, and housing, and retirement and on and on. He seems determined that more people will ride in the wagon than pull it.” —Mona Charen