Obama uses Hiroshima visit as opportunity to urge no nukes

HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) - With an unflinching look back at a painful history, President Barack Obama stood on the hallowed ground of Hiroshima on Friday and declared it a fitting place to summon people everywhere to embrace the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. As the first American president to visit the city where the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb, Obama came to acknowledge - but not apologize for - an act many Americans see as a justified end to a brutal war that Japan started with a sneak attack at Pearl Harbor.

Read more at WHNS-TV Read More......

Cruz calls Democrats campaign finance amendment 'most radical proposal' he's seen in Senate

Cruz: Dems Want To Give Congress The Power To Ban Books - Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor Tuesday night, arguing against the proposed Democratic constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to regulate campaign spending. ✧ Cruz said the the amendment’s broad grant of authority to regulate the use of money to influence elections could stretch to banning books, movies, and restricting the activity of organizations like the NAACP. ✧ “In the Democratic Senate of 2014, citizens’ free speech rights are tools for partisan warfare,” said Cruz.

Read more (or watch the video) at Washington Free Beacon Read More......

President Obama Crashes and Burns at West Point

Excerpt: President Obama was the commencement speaker at West Point’s graduation this past week, and while the administration hoped for a big win with the speech, they’ve received the exact opposite. His speech was vapid, dreary and even disdainful to the particular crowd he was speaking to. Even the President’s traditional allies at liberal media outlets could not muster up any support for his hollow rhetoric and terrible excuse making.

Read more at Eagle Rising Read More......

Obama Decries ‘Bogus’ Voter Fraud Complaints

President Obama labeled complaints about voter fraud “bogus” and accused Republicans of cynically trying to prevent Americans from accessing the polls in a fiery speech Friday at a civil rights forum hosted by Al Sharpton. ✧ Obama argued that attempts in some states to impose new voter identification restrictions were actually efforts by Republicans to make “it harder, not easier to vote.” And the president said that while voter fraud should be prevented, it rarely occurred.

Read more at Minutemen News Read More......

Townhall: The Left is Killing King’s Dream

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963 | AP Photo

By Michael Schaus - The spectacle of the pro-Obama rally yesterday, disguised insufficiently as a tribute to one of America’s civil rights heroes, was rife with an undercurrent of unintentional irony. After all, it was the Democrat Party that led the Confederacy in the Civil War, opposed the civil rights legislation throughout the 20th Century, and used the federal government to intimidate would-be civil rights activists. The event, however, did awaken a renewed interest in the words of Martin Luther King Jr. for many Americans. One line, above all else, from his 1963 Address at the Lincoln Memorial speaks today as a testament to Liberalism’s callous, and repeated, failings in the black community.

Read more at Townhall.com... Read More......

Congressman gives scathing review of Obama's performance

(Hat tip: Jerry J. Jackson)

Speaking on the House floor Monday [June 3rd], Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) delivered a brief-yet-scathing review of President Barack Obama and his administration. In just over a minute, Bridenstine rattled off the lengthy list of scandals and missteps that have occurred under President Obama. The GOP lawmaker said the fact that his administration is spinning out of control proves Obama is "not fit to lead" as commander in chief. Read More......

Obama Blasts Free Markets

(CNSNews.com) - In a speech delivered at Osawatomie High School in Osawatomie, Kansas, on Tuesday, President Barack Obama argued that while a limited government that preserves free markets "speaks to our rugged individualism" as Americans, such a system "doesn't work" and "has never worked" and that Americans must look to a more activist government that taxes more, spends more and regulates more if they want to preserve the middle class. Read more at CNSNews...

Government didn't build the middle class. Freedom from an overbearing government allowed for the emergence of a healthy middle class. --bc Read More......

Obama's Denver 'jobs speech' panned

Following President Obama's 'Jobs' speech in Denver today, Wayne Laugesen, editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette, wrote, "Obama’s presidency has done more to boost free-market advocacy than all conservative proselytizing combined. Americans understand more than ever that government cannot produce wealth, create jobs or make life free. Obama can’t put fuel in our cars or pay our mortgages. Americans understand that Obamacare and other onerous mandates on business have killed economic growth. They understand that our country is mired in debt and cannot simply write more IOUs in order to build things." Read more at CS Gazette... Read More......

FNC: Obama Urges Congress to Pass $450B Jobs Plan 'Right Away'

President Obama used prime-time address to lay out $450 billion jobs plan that would provide tax relief for workers and small businesses, saying Congress should pass it right away as it's 'nothing controversial.' Read more at Fox News...

Message to Congress: Read the bill! Read More......

Boehner Urges Obama to Reschedule Jobs Speech

Boehner asks Obama to move date of speech to Congress after Republicans accuse president of 'political ploy' in picking same night as GOP presidential debate [Sept.. 7] — White House calls it a coincidence. Read more at Fox News...

UPDATE: Obama Agrees to Delay Jobs Speech Read More......

WSJ: The Presidential Divider

WALL STREET JOURNAL/REVIEW & OUTLOOK, 4/14/2011 by Joseph Rago and Steve Moore - Obama's toxic speech and even worse plan for deficits and debt.

Did someone move the 2012 election to June 1? We ask because President Obama's extraordinary response to Paul Ryan's budget yesterday—with its blistering partisanship and multiple distortions—was the kind Presidents usually outsource to some junior lieutenant. Mr. Obama's fundamentally political document would have been unusual even for a Vice President in the fervor of a campaign.

The immediate political goal was to inoculate the White House from criticism that it is not serious about the fiscal crisis, after ignoring its own deficit commission last year and tossing off a $3.73 trillion budget in February that increased spending amid a record deficit of $1.65 trillion. Mr. Obama was chased to George Washington University yesterday because Mr. Ryan and the Republicans outflanked him on fiscal discipline and are now setting the national political agenda. Read more at WSJ...

Read More......

Ron Paul wins presidential straw poll at CPAC 2011

Representative Ron Paul (R-14th District, TX) at CPAC 2011 (Video 21:04)
Ron Paul's Full Speech at CPAC 2011: The Brushfires of Freedom Are Burning! (2/11/2011)

LATIMES.COM, Washington Bureau, 2/12/1011 by Michael A. Memoli - Ron Paul of Texas wins CPAC presidential straw poll: Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) got 30% of the vote to win the straw poll for the second year in a row at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Mitt Romney was second with 23%. Reporting from Washington — Ron Paul again triumphed in the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference, overwhelming the support for most other potential Republican candidates at the annual gathering of conservatives in the nation's capital. ∴ Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas who ran for president in 2008, edged former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney 30% to 23%. The result was barely changed from last year's, when Paul won 31% to 22%. Read More......

History: 'City Upon A Hill' by Ronald Reagan

We Will Be A City Upon A Hill
President Ronald Reagan (while Governor of California)
First Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)
January 25, 1974

There are three men here tonight I am very proud to introduce. It was a year ago this coming February when this country had its spirits lifted as they have never been lifted in many years. This happened when planes began landing on American soil and in the Philippines, bringing back men who had lived with honor for many miserable years in North Vietnam prisons. Three of those men are here tonight, John McCain, Bill Lawrence and Ed Martin. It is an honor to be here tonight. I am proud that you asked me and I feel more than a little humble in the presence of this distinguished company.

There are men here tonight who, through their wisdom, their foresight and their courage, have earned the right to be regarded as prophets of our philosophy. Indeed they are prophets of our times. In years past when others were silent or too blind to the facts, they spoke up forcefully and fearlessly for what they believed to be right. A decade has passed since Barry Goldwater walked a lonely path across this land reminding us that even a land as rich as ours can’t go on forever borrowing against the future, leaving a legacy of debt for another generation and causing a runaway inflation to erode the savings and reduce the standard of living. Voices have been raised trying to rekindle in our country all of the great ideas and principles which set this nation apart from all the others that preceded it, but louder and more strident voices utter easily sold cliches.

Cartoonists with acid-tipped pens portray some of the reminders of our heritage and our destiny as old-fashioned. They say that we are trying to retreat into a past that actually never existed. Looking to the past in an effort to keep our country from repeating the errors of history is termed by them as “taking the country back to McKinley.” Of course I never found that was so bad—under McKinley we freed Cuba. On the span of history, we are still thought of as a young upstart country celebrating soon only our second century as a nation, and yet we are the oldest continuing republic in the world.

I thought that tonight, rather than talking on the subjects you are discussing, or trying to find something new to say, it might be appropriate to reflect a bit on our heritage.

You can call it mysticism if you want to, but I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.

This was true of those who pioneered the great wilderness in the beginning of this country, as it is also true of those later immigrants who were willing to leave the land of their birth and come to a land where even the language was unknown to them. Call it chauvinistic, but our heritage does not set us apart. Some years ago a writer, who happened to be an avid student of history, told me a story about that day in the little hall in Philadelphia where honorable men, hard-pressed by a King who was flouting the very law they were willing to obey, debated whether they should take the fateful step of declaring their independence from that king. I was told by this man that the story could be found in the writings of Jefferson. I confess, I never researched or made an effort to verify it. Perhaps it is only legend. But story, or legend, he described the atmosphere, the strain, the debate, and that as men for the first time faced the consequences of such an irretrievable act, the walls resounded with the dread word of treason and its price—the gallows and the headman’s axe. As the day wore on the issue hung in the balance, and then, according to the story, a man rose in the small gallery. He was not a young man and was obviously calling on all the energy he could muster. Citing the grievances that had brought them to this moment he said, “Sign that parchment. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave and yet the words of that parchment can never die. For the mechanic in his workshop, they will be words of hope, to the slave in the mines—freedom.” And he added, “If my hands were freezing in death, I would sign that parchment with my last ounce of strength. Sign, sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, sign even if the hall is ringing with the sound of headman’s axe, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever.” And then it is said he fell back exhausted. But 56 delegates, swept by his eloquence, signed the Declaration of Independence, a document destined to be as immortal as any work of man can be. And according to the story, when they turned to thank him for his timely oratory, he could not be found nor were there any who knew who he was or how he had come in or gone out through the locked and guarded doors.

Well, as I say, whether story or legend, the signing of the document that day in Independence Hall was miracle enough. Fifty-six men, a little band so unique—we have never seen their like since—pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. Sixteen gave their lives, most gave their fortunes and all of them preserved their sacred honor. What manner of men were they? Certainly they were not an unwashed, revolutionary rebel, nor were then adventurers in a heroic mood. Twenty-four were lawyers and jurists, 11 were merchants and tradesmen, nine were farmers. They were men who would achieve security but valued freedom more.

And what price did they pay? John Hart was driven from the side of his desperately ill wife. After more than a year of living almost as an animal in the forest and in caves, he returned to find his wife had died and his children had vanished. He never saw them again, his property was destroyed and he died of a broken heart—but with no regret, only pride in the part he had played that day in Independence Hall. Carter Braxton of Virginia lost all his ships—they were sold to pay his debts. He died in rags. So it was with Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Rutledge, Morris, Livingston, and Middleton. Nelson, learning that Cornwallis was using his home for a headquarters, personally begged Washington to fire on him and destroy his home–he died bankrupt. It has never been reported that any of these men ever expressed bitterness or renounced their action as not worth the price. Fifty-six rank-and-file, ordinary citizens had founded a nation that grew from sea to shining sea, five million farms, quiet villages, cities that never sleep—all done without an area re-development plan, urban renewal or a rural legal assistance program.

Now we are a nation of 211 million people with a pedigree that includes blood lines from every corner of the world. We have shed that American-melting-pot blood in every corner of the world, usually in defense of someone’s freedom. Those who remained of that remarkable band we call our Founding Fathers tied up some of the loose ends about a dozen years after the Revolution. It had been the first revolution in all man’s history that did not just exchange one set of rulers for another. This had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of men’s dreams for 6,000 years were formalized with the Constitution, probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man’s relation to man. I know there have been other constitutions, new ones are being drawn today by newly emerging nations. Most of them, even the one of the Soviet Union, contains many of the same guarantees as our own Constitution, and still there is a difference. The difference is so subtle that we often overlook it, but is is so great that it tells the whole story. Those other constitutions say, “Government grants you these rights” and ours says, “You are born with these rights, they are yours by the grace of God, and no government on earth can take them from you.”

Lord Acton of England, who once said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” would say of that document, “They had solved with astonishing ease and unduplicated success two problems which had heretofore baffled the capacity of the most enlightened nations. They had contrived a system of federal government which prodigiously increased national power and yet respected local liberties and authorities, and they had founded it on a principle of equality without surrendering the securities of property or freedom.” Never in any society has the preeminence of the individual been so firmly established and given such a priority.

In less than twenty years we would go to war because the God-given rights of the American sailors, as defined in the Constitution, were being violated by a foreign power. We served notice then on the world that all of us together would act collectively to safeguard the rights of even the least among us. But still, in an older, cynical world, they were not convinced. The great powers of Europe still had the idea that one day this great continent would be open again to colonizing and they would come over and divide us up.

In the meantime, men who yearned to breathe free were making their way to our shores. Among them was a young refugee from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He had been a leader in an attempt to free Hungary from Austrian rule. The attempt had failed and he fled to escape execution. In America, this young Hungarian, Koscha by name, became an importer by trade and took out his first citizenship papers. One day, business took him to a Mediterranean port. There was a large Austrian warship under the command of an admiral in the harbor. He had a manservant with him. He had described to this manservant what the flag of his new country looked like. Word was passed to the Austrian warship that this revolutionary was there and in the night he was kidnapped and taken aboard that large ship. This man’s servant, desperate, walking up and down the harbor, suddenly spied a flag that resembled the description he had heard. It was a small American war sloop. He went aboard and told Captain Ingraham, of that war sloop, his story. Captain Ingraham went to the American Consul. When the American Consul learned that Koscha had only taken out his first citizenship papers, the consul washed his hands of the incident. Captain Ingraham said, “I am the senior officer in this port and I believe, under my oath of my office, that I owe this man the protection of our flag.”

He went aboard the Austrian warship and demanded to see their prisoner, our citizen. The Admiral was amused, but they brought the man on deck. He was in chains and had been badly beaten. Captain Ingraham said, “I can hear him better without those chains,” and the chains were removed. He walked over and said to Kocha, “I will ask you one question; consider your answer carefully. Do you ask the protection of the American flag?” Kocha nodded dumbly “Yes,” and the Captain said, “You shall have it.” He went back and told the frightened consul what he had done. Later in the day three more Austrian ships sailed into harbor. It looked as though the four were getting ready to leave. Captain Ingraham sent a junior officer over to the Austrian flag ship to tell the Admiral that any attempt to leave that harbor with our citizen aboard would be resisted with appropriate force. He said that he would expect a satisfactory answer by four o’clock that afternoon. As the hour neared they looked at each other through the glasses. As it struck four he had them roll the cannons into the ports and had then light the tapers with which they would set off the cannons—one little sloop. Suddenly the lookout tower called out and said, “They are lowering a boat,” and they rowed Koscha over to the little American ship.

Captain Ingraham then went below and wrote his letter of resignation to the United States Navy. In it he said, “I did what I thought my oath of office required, but if I have embarrassed my country in any way, I resign.” His resignation was refused in the United States Senate with these words: “This battle that was never fought may turn out to be the most important battle in our Nation’s history.” Incidentally, there is to this day, and I hope there always will be, a USS Ingraham in the United States Navy.

I did not tell that story out of any desire to be narrowly chauvinistic or to glorify aggressive militarism, but it is an example of government meeting its highest responsibility.

In recent years we have been treated to a rash of noble-sounding phrases. Some of them sound good, but they don’t hold up under close analysis. Take for instance the slogan so frequently uttered by the young senator from Massachusetts, “The greatest good for the greatest number.” Certainly under that slogan, no modern day Captain Ingraham would risk even the smallest craft and crew for a single citizen. Every dictator who ever lived has justified the enslavement of his people on the theory of what was good for the majority.

We are not a warlike people. Nor is our history filled with tales of aggressive adventures and imperialism, which might come as a shock to some of the placard painters in our modern demonstrations. The lesson of Vietnam, I think, should be that never again will young Americans be asked to fight and possibly die for a cause unless that cause is so meaningful that we, as a nation, pledge our full resources to achieve victory as quickly as possible.

I realize that such a pronouncement, of course, would possibly be laying one open to the charge of warmongering—but that would also be ridiculous. My generation has paid a higher price and has fought harder for freedom that any generation that had ever lived. We have known four wars in a single lifetime. All were horrible, all could have been avoided if at a particular moment in time we had made it plain that we subscribed to the words of John Stuart Mill when he said that “war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.”

The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war is worse. The man who has nothing which he cares about more than his 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.

The widespread disaffection with things military is only a part of the philosophical division in our land today. I must say to you who have recently, or presently are still receiving an education, I am awed by your powers of resistance. I have some knowledge of the attempts that have been made in many classrooms and lecture halls to persuade you that there is little to admire in America. For the second time in this century, capitalism and the free enterprise are under assault. Privately owned business is blamed for spoiling the environment, exploiting the worker and seducing, if not outright raping, the customer. Those who make the charge have the solution, of course—government regulation and control. We may never get around to explaining how citizens who are so gullible that they can be suckered into buying cereal or soap that they don’t need and would not be good for them, can at the same time be astute enough to choose representatives in government to which they would entrust the running of their lives.

Not too long ago, a poll was taken on 2,500 college campuses in this country. Thousands and thousands of responses were obtained. Overwhelmingly, 65, 70, and 75 percent of the students found business responsible, as I have said before, for the things that were wrong in this country. That same number said that government was the solution and should take over the management and the control of private business. Eighty percent of the respondents said they wanted government to keep its paws out of their private lives.

We are told every day that the assembly-line worker is becoming a dull-witted robot and that mass production results in standardization. Well, there isn’t a socialist country in the world that would not give its copy of Karl Marx for our standardization.

Standardization means production for the masses and the assembly line means more leisure for the worker—freedom from backbreaking and mind-dulling drudgery that man had known for centuries past. Karl Marx did not abolish child labor or free the women from working in the coal mines in England ­ the steam engine and modern machinery did that.

Unfortunately, the disciples of the new order have had a hand in determining too much policy in recent decades. Government has grown in size and power and cost through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society. It costs more for government today than a family pays for food, shelter and clothing combined. Not even the Office of Management and Budget knows how many boards, commissions, bureaus and agencies there are in the federal government, but the federal registry, listing their regulations, is just a few pages short of being as big as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

During the Great Society we saw the greatest growth of this government. There were eight cabinet departments and 12 independent agencies to administer the federal health program. There were 35 housing programs and 20 transportation projects. Public utilities had to cope with 27 different agencies on just routine business. There were 192 installations and nine departments with 1,000 projects having to do with the field of pollution.

One Congressman found the federal government was spending 4 billion dollars on research in its own laboratories but did not know where they were, how many people were working in them, or what they were doing. One of the research projects was “The Demography of Happiness,” and for 249,000 dollars we found that “people who make more money are happier than people who make less, young people are happier than old people, and people who are healthier are happier than people who are sick.” For 15 cents they could have bought an Almanac and read the old bromide, “It’s better to be rich, young and healthy, than poor, old and sick.”

The course that you have chosen is far more in tune with the hopes and aspirations of our people than are those who would sacrifice freedom for some fancied security.

Standing on the tiny deck of the Arabella in 1630 off the Massachusetts coast, John Winthrop said, “We will be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.” Well, we have not dealt falsely with our God, even if He is temporarily suspended from the classroom.

When I was born my life expectancy was 10 years less than I have already lived—that’s a cause of regret for some people in California, I know. Ninety percent of Americans at that time lived beneath what is considered the poverty line today, three-quarters lived in what is considered substandard housing. Today each of those figures is less than 10 percent. We have increased our life expectancy by wiping out, almost totally, diseases that still ravage mankind in other parts of the world. I doubt if the young people here tonight know the names of some of the diseases that were commonplace when we were growing up. We have more doctors per thousand people than any nation in the world. We have more hospitals that any nation in the world.

When I was your age, believe it or not, none of us knew that we even had a racial problem. When I graduated from college and became a radio sport announcer, broadcasting major league baseball, I didn’t have a Hank Aaron or a Willie Mays to talk about. The Spaulding Guide said baseball was a game for Caucasian gentlemen. Some of us then began editorializing and campaigning against this. Gradually we campaigned against all those other areas where the constitutional rights of a large segment of our citizenry were being denied. We have not finished the job. We still have a long way to go, but we have made more progress in a few years than we have made in more than a century.

One-third of all the students in the world who are pursuing higher education are doing so in the United States. The percentage of our young Negro community that is going to college is greater than the percentage of whites in any other country in the world.

One-half of all the economic activity in the entire history of man has taken place in this republic. We have distributed our wealth more widely among our people than any society known to man. Americans work less hours for a higher standard of living than any other people. Ninety-five percent of all our families have an adequate daily intake of nutrients—and a part of the five percent that don’t are trying to lose weight! Ninety-nine percent have gas or electric refrigeration, 92 percent have televisions, and an equal number have telephones. There are 120 million cars on our streets and highways—and all of them are on the street at once when you are trying to get home at night. But isn’t this just proof of our materialism—the very thing that we are charged with? Well, we also have more churches, more libraries, we support voluntarily more symphony orchestras, and opera companies, non-profit theaters, and publish more books than all the other nations of the world put together.

Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere, as has been pointed out in that best-selling record by a Canadian journalist. We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon, or who are now circling the earth above us in the Skylab. A sick society bereft of morality and courage did not produce the men who went through those year of torture and captivity in Vietnam. Where did we find such men? They are typical of this land as the Founding Fathers were typical. We found them in our streets, in the offices, the shops and the working places of our country and on the farms.

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”

We are indeed, and we are today, the last best hope of man on earth. Read More......

Calvin Coolidge Speech, 1926

In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge gave a speech of ‘unsurpassed clarity’ on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence when the ‘progressive attack on America’s principles’ was still in its initial phase. Excerpt:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can NOT lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Reference to speech: We Still Hold These Truths by Matthew Spalding, pg. 120.
Read the full speech at TeachingAmeicanHistory.org. Read More......

Don't Let Freedom Slip Away

(Hat tip: Stella Guenther) - The Testimony of Kitty Werthman: "[I] saw Hitler’s rise to power in pre-war Austria. He did not conquer by force. He was eagerly welcomed by the people who voted him into office because the Nazis promised free health care, retirement income, unemployment benefits, guaranteed wages, free nursery care, equal rights for women, gun control, and other enticements that now are part of the political landscape in all industrialized countries."

America is Truly the Greatest Country in the World
Don't Let Freedom Slip Away
By Kitty Werthmann

What I am about to tell you is something you’ve probably never heard or will ever read in history books.

I believe that I am an eyewitness to history. I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide – 98% of the vote. I’ve never read that in any American publications. Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force. In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates.

Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs. My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily.

The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other. Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna, Linz, and Graz were destroyed. The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted.

We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933. We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living. Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group -- Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria . We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back. Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler.

We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed.

After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service.

Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage.

Hitler Targets Education – Eliminates Religious Instruction for Children:

Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang “Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,” and had physical education.

Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail. The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free. We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had.

My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination. I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy.

Equal Rights Hits Home:

In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men.

Soon after this, the draft was implemented. It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps. During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys. They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines. When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat. Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service.

Hitler Restructured the Family Through Daycare:

When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had.

Health Care and Small Business Suffer Under Government Controls:

Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.
We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.

We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

“Mercy Killing” Redefined:

In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps . The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated. So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work. I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van. I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months. They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness.

As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia.

The Final Steps - Gun Laws:

Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up.

Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria. Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom.

After World War II, Russian troops occupied Austria. Women were raped, preteen to elderly. The press never wrote about this either. When the Soviets left in 1955, they took everything that they could, dismantling whole factories in the process. They sawed down whole orchards of fruit, and what they couldn’t destroy, they burned. We called it The Burned Earth. Most of the population barricaded themselves in their houses. Women hid in their cellars for 6 weeks as the troops mobilized. Those who couldn’t, paid the price. There is a monument in Vienna today, dedicated to those women who were massacred by the Russians. This is an eye witness account.

It’s true….those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity.

America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away.
After America, There is No Place to Run.

Kitty Werthmann, 77, of Pierre, is president of the South Dakota Eagle Forum. She lobbies the state Legislature on family issues. She has lived in the United States since 1950 and has been a U.S. citizen since 1962. Mrs. Werthmann's full 63-minute story is available on CD for $15 (or $12 with purchase of another item) at Realityzone.com Read More......

Important 1953 Speech: Engineers - Scientific and Social

AMERICAN THINKER, 12/27/2009 by Jim Gammon & Admiral Ben Moreell (Hat tip: Jean Nelson) - "On January 14, 1953, the chairman of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. spoke at the annual meeting of the Society of Automotive Engineers in Detroit. He was Admiral Ben Moreell, and in 1953, most people in the audience would have known him as a founder and leader of the Seabees -- the U.S. Navy component that built the docks, the airports, and just about everything else our military forces needed to fight and win World War II, often working under fire. The speech Moreell gave that day is quite simply stunning. It is among the most remarkable talks about human nature, and the nature of government, ever delivered by anyone, anywhere. It rises above politics, as all serious discussions on human life ought to (but lately do not).

Although written more than fifty years ago, it is relevant today -- maybe even more so. You be the judge. While he never mentions politics, this is a must-read for every Conservative and a challenge to the foundations of every Liberal." Read more at American Thinker...

Or read the speech here...

ADDRESS BY ADMIRAL BEN MOREELL
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD, JONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CORPORATION
to the
SOCIETY OF AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERS
1953 ANNUAL MEETING
JANUARY 14, 1953
DETROIT, MICHIGAN


ENGINEERS - SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL

Tonight I would like to talk with you about engineers and their significance to our economic and social structures.

My dictionary defines engineering as "the art and science by which the properties of matter and the sources of power in nature are made useful to man in structures, and manufactured products."

We engineers have learned that our unceasing efforts to perfect this art and science are essential for the improvement of our material standards of living. And I believe that we may, with due modesty, point with pride to our professional achievements.

However, my purpose tonight is not to give an accounting of the good works of scientific engineers. For I believe that we should now be more concerned with a "pseudo-engineering" that is developing to an alarming extent among us - a kind of engineering which is quite different from that "science by which the properties of matter are made useful to man." I refer to the profession of "social engineering", whose practitioners are known as "social engineers".

A MASTER PLAN

These social engineers - who appear to be more numerous and, at the moment, far more powerful, than we scientific engineers - are dedicated to the thesis that, by using the force of government, mankind in the mass can be changed and molded to conform to a master plan, in much the same way that engineering materials can be processed in accordance with preconceived designs.

We scientific engineers have the unchanging laws of chemistry, physics, and the other natural sciences to guide our efforts. By means of those laws, when we come to understand them, we can predict the behavior of the materials and forces of nature. But the social engineers either know nothing of nature's immutable laws, or choose to ignore them. Instead, they have their man-made and variable laws of compulsions, prohibitions, and other restrictions on the free actions of individuals. By means of these, they claim, they can compel the behavior of men in a manner that will redound to the good of mankind.

We scientific engineers recognize that the materials we use and the laws we follow come from the Creator - a Power of which man himself is but an infinitesimal manifestation - and that these materials may be used and these laws observed to the advantage of mankind. The "raw material" used by the social engineers is all of mankind itself - and the laws and rules which they follow some from no source other than their desire to remold humanity in their chosen images. Scientific engineers process their raw materials to create products for the service of mankind. Social engineers use their raw material - human beings - to create products designed to serve and please their own fancy - and frequently to satisfy their craving for personal power. And often they do this by appealing to the baser traits of man - laziness, greed, selfishness and irresponsibility.

PLANS AND EXPERIMENTS

We scientific engineers do extensive planning and experimenting. We construct models in order to obtain date with which to predict the behavior of the full-scale prototype.

Social engineers also are given to extensive planning and experimenting. They, too, construct models in order to secure a better idea of how they may control the full-scale project. For example, in 1933 practically an entire State, with all of its people - Tennessee - was selected for what was called "a pilot plant" and "a yardstick". I refer to the Tennessee Valley Authority, a project to which its "social engineer in charge" proudly referred as "a seamless web - the unity of land and water and men", all under his direct authority.

The Chief of the Woman's Auxiliary of the Social Engineers is famed for her experiments with model villages and other "social reforms". From these she moved into the Planning Division of the United Nations where - is collaboration with the master social engineers of other nations - she has been busily planning to apply her experiments on a world-wide basis.

Social engineers who have worked in the field of agriculture have, at various times, set aside tracts of land and all of their inhabitants for test projects. Then, satisfied that they had produced a happier, healthier, and more perfect human being, they have returned to Washington and attempted to place into operation a master plan to transform all of mankind by use of the force of government.

They have built model housing developments. The occupants are carefully selected, house-broken, and taught to conform to certain behavior patterns. If the operation of the models and the conduct of the people placed in them are pleasing to the planners, they demand from government the power to force many others to conform to the standards they have set - standards which they claim will reduce crime, improve morality, and develop a better society. But, actually, experience has shown that almost always the ultimate effects are the direct opposite of those which they claim.

These self-anointed friends of humanity are deeply concerned about your health, your diet, your attitude toward other people, your business, and your job. Ins short, they believe in government-forced control of man in relation to his wages, hours, working conditions, prices, savings, insurance, drinking habits, entertainment, and a host of other problems that every person must face in his daily living.

THE RIGHT TO PLAN

Now, I do not deny to any person the right to make any plan be chooses - whether it be a plan to fly to the moon or a plan to create a superior human being. But I do deny the planner the right to force me, or any other person, to conform to his plan.

We scientific engineers do not need laws to force people to adopt our plans or to buy our products. I believe that each of us is willing to leave the decision to the competitive market where all persons have complete freedom to buy or not to buy, to join or not to join, to invest or not to invest.

But these would-be managers-at-large of society are not willing to extend freedom of choice to others than themselves. They must have the power of government -- the police force - behind their plans or they are helpless. They know that in almost all cases a free people in a free market would reject their wares. That is why they want to abolish the market economy and force people to conform to their plans or to suffer the penalty of fines and imprisonment.

For example, I am an unwilling "stockholder" in the Tennessee Valley Authority. I continue to pay money into that project for the simple reason that the police force will use violence upon me should I refuse. I am willing to sell my share of TVA, and of all similar welfare projects, at a large discount. In fact, I would give my equity to these humanitarians if they would only stop forcing me to subsidize their schemes.

They claim they can "prove conclusively" that the Tennessee Valley Authority is a great financial success which regularly returns a profit to the people of America. If this is so, why do they come to Congress almost every year for additional appropriations? Why do they not offer stock in the open market where the people can have a choice?

The answer is simple: A free people would reject the stock. If this were not so, there would have been no reason to make their participation compulsory in the first instance.

These promoters with the public purse have been planning a Missouri Valley Authority and various other such authorities for many years. And they have been using your money to propagandize the gullible into believing that the projects are economically sound; that they will pay back far more than they cost. If this is so, why do they demand that the police force, government, recruit their stockholders?

GOOD INTENTIONS

Now, these social busy-bodies may have the best intentions in the world. Their personal lives may be above reproach. Their primary motive may be only too "do good for the people". I question neither their intentions nor their sincerity. But I do question their basic belief that good can be accomplished through the use of violence. To illustrate my point, let us consider the French Revolution. The people rebelled against a government that forced them to conform to its decrees on wages, prices, profits, employment, housing, and similar matters.

Now, it would be logical to suppose that the revolters against a government of favoritism would reject favoritism and entrust their social and economic relationships to a market and a society where freedom of choice was controlling.

It is true that some effort was made in this direction in the early stages of the French Revolution. But soon there came to power Robespierre - a man of unquestioned personal integrity and habits - a dedicated humanitarian. He became the foremost "social engineer" of his day. Here is his master plan for re-creating the people of France:

"In our country," he said, "we desire to establish morality, honesty, principles, duties, reason, contempt of vice, pride, greatness of soul, love of glory, good people, merit, genius, truth, happiness, greatness of man, generosity, strength - in short, we desire to substitute all the virtues of a republic for all the vices of a monarchy".

Who can disagree with those noble objectives? Certainly, I do not, any more than I disagree with those of most of our own social planners. But Robespierre had no faith in people. He rejected any thought that the people would develop those desirable virtue by the use of violence; to use the power of government to force all people to conform to his plan for making them better. He became known as the "humanitarian with the guillotine". Those who refused to conform to his concepts of morality and economic behavior were fined or imprisoned or executed.

When it came his own turn to bow to the guillotine, his defense was that of all humanitarians who rely on the force of government for the accomplishment of their good works. He said that his every act had been "for the good of the people"; that he was only trying to help them to peace, prosperity, and happiness.

ADOLF HITLER: SOCIAL ENGINEER

And so it is with all social engineers, including Hitler, Stalin, and our domestic brand. Hitler looked upon people as clay to be molded to his purposes. Some of this clay - human beings - did not meet his specifications. So he destroyed it in much the same manner that a scientific engineer discards defective material. His program of social reform allowed little freedom of choice. He used the force of government to regulate wages, prices, profits, working conditions, unions, rents, housing, education, medical services, social security, production, and a host of other vital matters. And he, too, repeatedly announced that all these things ere being done for "the good of all the people". That is the familiar chant of these "public benefactors". The dictator who "liquidates" a group of persons is practicing social engineering - as is the public official who takes money from one group of citizens and gives it to another group - in the form of public housing or some other socially "useful" project.

Both are doing what they say is "best for the people as a whole". They may differ in their approach, but if you think that our domestic brand is any less determined than the variety, just try deducting from your tax bill your share of the cost of socialized housing in America. First, you will be fined. If you refuse to pay the fine, you will be sentenced to prison. If you resist the officer who is sent to arrest you - well, just what does happen in our country to persons who resist arrest?

RELIGION AND SOCIAL ENGINEERS

Now you may ask: Did our great religious teachers practice social engineering? Was Jesus a social engineer? Recalling that I have defined social engineers as those who would re-make mankind in the mass by using the force of government, my answer is an emphatic no. For Jesus always appealed only to individuals. He asked that each one make a voluntary choice to follow God's way. He said to the individual, "The Kingdom of God is within you. "That is, it does not lie in the group, or in the mob, or in the vote of the majority, but in the individual himself. Nor did Jesus ever appeal, or even suggest an appeal, to the force of government for the accomplishment of good works. Instead, He appealed to each person to reform himself, that he might be born again. He recognized no such thing as "group morality". Rather, He taught that each individual must eventually answer personally for his own deeds of commission and omission, form which it follows that no one can divest himself of his responsibility by hiding it behind someone else or even behind our collective agent - government.

THE AUTHORITY IDEA

All social engineers are devotees of the pagan concept of authority. Their every action show clearly that they do not believe that freedom as a way of life will work.

They believe inherently that free mane cannot possibly be adequately housed, clothed, or fed. By their actions they show clearly that they consider themselves superior in intelligence to the rest of us. For our own good they desire to force the rest of us to live and act and think as they believe we should.

Since they assume for themselves a higher degree of intelligence and morality than the rest of us, I suggest that we examinee their credentials. Who has commissioned them to use us as raw material, to be molded as they see fit? Surely no such commission could be valid unless it were signed by the Almighty Himself. Apparently no social engineer ever stops to consider that this raw material he is remolding is composed of human beings - creatures of God, created in God's image. Or, if he does think about it, apparently he concludes that God's work should be improved upon. It is my belief that God intended men to be free to make their own decisions and to be responsible for the consequences of those decisions. Thus it seems to me that it is an act against God for men to pass laws which destroy individual liberty; which force some persons to conform to the ideas and plans of other persons; which deprive persons of the responsibility for their own acts and for their own welfare.

It seems to me that there is convincing evidence to support my beliefs on this subject. And the basic evidence is found in the fact that no person is physically or mentally or morally identical to any other person. For example, we know that the fingerprints of all persons are different. And these differences - these individualities, these inequalities - carry through all the physical, mental, and moral characteristics of mankind.

THE LAW OF NATURE

This inequality among persons is a law of nature - law which is just as unchangeable and just as necessary to understand as is any other natural law, as, for example, the law of gravity. This particular law is known as the "law of variation", and from the unrestricted operation of this law comes all human progress. The law of variation permits children to be different from their parents. It permits brothers to think differently and to act differently. It permits the existence of both miser and philanthropists, saints and sinners, rich and poor. It is the foundation for all conceivable human relationships. These natural variations underlie all commerce and trade and exchanges of any kind - including all the aspects of social and economic life within a society.

The law of variation permits inventors to invent, managers to manage, and scientific engineers to improve the material well-being of mankind. It permits each person to seek a job or profession which is most suited to his natural talents and his desires. It encourages a voluntary division of labor, with resulting maximum efficiency and greater prosperity for all. Without this variation - this unequalness - our social structure would be similar to that of an anthill or a beehive, where each member is born to do a certain predetermined job, which he does with blind allegiance to his society and with no consideration of personal interests or preferences.

EQUALITY AND POSSESSIONS

The slogan of the social engineer is "equality" and the tools he proposes to use to bring this about are the compulsions and prohibitions of government. But what does he mean by equality? Certainly I am not equal to anyone else. I frequently meet persons who are my superior in intelligence, in morality, in health, and in material possessions. By equality does he mean that we should all have equal intelligence? If so, his arguments should be directed to God. If not equality of intelligence, does he mean that one of the most important by-products of intelligence - material possessions - should be equalized? Or, if he merely intends that some degree of equality of possessions should be achieved, just what degree does he have in mind? If his concept of equality is what he chooses to call "adequate" housing for all, then does not the same principle apply to adequate clothing, food, medical care, entertainment, education, and work for all? And should we not have adequate religious training for all? Surely he does not intend to leave that vital subject to chance! In due time I am quite sure that he will get around to controlling that, too.

When the social engineer uses his compulsions to establish equality or "adequateness" in one area, he may deny vehemently that he intends to establish it elsewhere. In fact, he usually does issue such a denial. But it never works that way. Once it is conceded that people should be forced to conform to the ideas of others, there is no principle on which we can rely to deny the same authority in any area.

EQUALITY AND LAW

It seems to me that the only equality we can logically expect is equality before the law. In that event, no person would be subsidized at the expense of another. There could be no subsidies - for if every person were equal before the law, then the law could not take from some in order to give to others. If we were all equal before the law, there would automatically be a free market wherein no person could use the law to force upon ant other person his concepts of wages, prices, or anything else.

Equality before the law means that no person may steal from another person, defame him, defraud him, injure him, or coerce him in any way. Equality before the law cannot exist until the law recognizes the right of every person to the possessions he has honestly acquired in a free society. There is no equality as long as the law takes from one person against his will to give to another person who has not earned it.

RESPONSIBILITY AND SECURITY

In my opinion, the greatest evil of our times is that so many of us are trying to impose on others our ideas as to how they should live their lives. And when they fail to behave as we think they should, we are tempted to resort to coercion - acting through or agent - government. We apparently see no incongruity in the question, "How can you do good for the people if you just let them alone?"

We need not go beyond our own recent history to find examples of the demoralizing effect of depriving people of the personal responsibility of being free. In response to the urging of our social engineers, many Americans are trying to avoid this responsibility by voting for men who promise to install a system of "government-guaranteed security", a partial return to the old slave laws of some of our Southern States that guaranteed to all slaves "the right to food and raiment, to kind attention when sick, to maintenance in old age." And the arguments used in defense of this present-day trend toward the bondage of a welfare state are essentially the same as those used formerly to defend the bondage of outright slavery.

For example, many of the slaveholders claimed to know what was "best for the slaves". After all, hadn't they "rescued" the slaves from a life of savagery? Our social reformers who advocate "government-guaranteed security" also claim that they know what is best for the people and they say, "After all, haven't the American people shown conclusively that they are incapable of handling the responsibility for their own welfare?"

Many of the slaveholders believed sincerely that the "dumb, ignorant slaves" would starve to death unless their welfare were guaranteed by the masters. And the social engineers say, "Are you in favor of letting people starve?"

But let us consider the emancipated slaves. Many of them were old or crippled or sick. They had no homes, no jobs, and very little education, but - most precious of all - they were free. They were responsible for their own welfare. They had the privilege of finding their own security.

Now, compare the remarkable progress of those former slaves to the lack of progress of the American Indians who have been made wards of the government; who were given state-guaranteed "security" instead of freedom with responsibility. In 1862 most American negroes were slaves. Today they are about as self-supporting and responsible as other American citizens. And in the meantime the Indians, as group, have become less self-supporting and more dependent on government. It has even been claimed that many thousands of Indians will die of starvation unless the government feeds them. If this is true, why is it so?

MISUSE OF RESOURCES

I am aware that many social engineers justify their projects by pointing with horror to some instances of the misuse of human and natural resources in the market economy as it developed in the Western World. I freely admit and decry those abuses. My studies indicate that they were possible only because one group of citizens was able to obtain special favor from government at the expense of others - i.e., government failed in its basic duty to protect the rights of all citizens equally. However, I see no justification in such past errors for setting up other privileged groups and thus prolonging this process which has proved so corrosive to the public morals.

I am sure few will deny that, over the years, there has been a steady, substantial, and voluntary improvement in our social consciousness and behavior. I hold that our hope for continued progress in this area lies in the improvement by the individual of his own moral stature so that he will know what is right and want to do it, voluntarily, not be granting, by votes or otherwise, ever-increasing power and dominion to social engineers to regulate and control our lives, our morals, and our property. That we are justified in expecting even greater developments in morals in evidenced by the current tremendous outpourings of financial and other support for our churches, our charities, our educational institutions, our hospitals, and many other benefactions. The total of the new contributions each year, i.e., not including income on investments, is now estimated to be well in excess of four billion dollars! There is no dearth of beneficence here. Our great error is a lack of confidence in the voluntary acts of free people.

A philosopher friend recently summarized this subject in the following cogent words: "An incalculable amount of harm has been done by those who have gone fourth to reform society. As a matter of fact, there is no way of reforming society except by making individuals better. And no one can make individuals better except the individual himself. If you want to be a reformer, reform yourself. That will keep you busy for a while and lend encouragement to others. Then, when there are significant numbers of transformed individuals, society will be reformed, but not before."

Speech: Printer Friendly (pdf) Read More......

Congressman Mike Rogers' on Health Care reform

Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.

(Hat tip: Stella Guenther) Read More......

Remarks by the President to the UN General Assembly

United Nations Headquarters, New York, New York
September 23, 2009, 10:10 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to address you for the first time as the 44th President of the United States. (Applause.) I come before you humbled by the responsibility that the American people have placed upon me, mindful of the enormous challenges of our moment in history, and determined to act boldly and collectively on behalf of justice and prosperity at home and abroad.

I have been in office for just nine months -- though some days it seems a lot longer. I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world. These expectations are not about me. Rather, they are rooted, I believe, in a discontent with a status quo that has allowed us to be increasingly defined by our differences, and outpaced by our problems. But they are also rooted in hope -- the hope that real change is possible, and the hope that America will be a leader in bringing about such change. Read full transcript at White House.gov...

Victor Davis Hanson comments at Works and Days... Read More......

Obama's Speech to America's K-12 classrooms

Read the script for President Obama's school speech HERE. Here's my favorite line:

"Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America."

Read More......

Bush speaks to Middle East

President Bush speaks to the people of the Middle East
The White House, January 13, 2008

Read the gist of President Bush's January 13th speech from Abu Dhabi to the people of the Middle East in the White House Fact Sheet: Fostering Freedom and Justice in the Middle East . Read More......