Thoughts for the Day

From Wolfshield:
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"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as De Tocqueville describes it, 'a new form of servitude.'" --economist Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)

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 "'I saw many signs in this campaign,' said Richard Nixon the day after he was elected president in 1968. 'But the one that touched me the most was one that I saw in Deshler, Ohio, at the end of a long day of whistle-stopping.... A teenager held up a sign, "Bring Us Together." And that will be the great objective of this administration at the outset: to bring the American people together.' ... The desire to see an incoming president as a unifier, a healer of the national breach, is an old American tradition, especially in times of acrimony and political conflict. But Nixon, needless to say, didn't heal the breach. ... Time and again, Obama promised what Nixon promised: to bring Americans together. That pledge ... went to the essence of his candidacy. And on the night of his election, before a vast crowd in Chicago's Grant Park, he underscored it: 'Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.' Yet far from resisting that temptation, Obama has rarely bypassed any chance to indulge it. The would-be uniter whips up envy and resentment, demonizing those who disagree with him, and aggravating the nation's racial, class, and party tensions." --columnist Jeff Jacoby

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 "Between 1787 and 1930, our nation suffered both mild and severe economic downturns. There was no intervention to stimulate the economy, but the economy always recovered. During the 1930s, there were massive interventions, starting with President Herbert Hoover and later with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Their actions turned what would have been a sharp three- or four-year economic downturn into a 10-year affair. In 1930, when Hoover began to 'fix' the economy, unemployment was 6 percent. FDR did even more to 'fix' the economy. As a result, unemployment remained in double digits throughout the decade and reached 20 percent in 1939. President Roosevelt blamed the high unemployment on his predecessor. ... Americans have been miseducated into thinking that Roosevelt's New Deal saved our economy. That miseducation extends to most academics, including economists, at our universities, who are arrogant enough to believe that it's possible for a few people in Washington to have the information and knowledge necessary to manage the economic lives of 313 million people." --economist Walter E. Williams

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 "Some Americans are old enough to remember when going on the dole was something one did only when every other option became untenable. And even then, a certain degree of lingering shame accompanied that choice, along with an equal amount of determination to change course and return to being productive as quickly as possible. How quaint such ideas must seem to current generations of Americans, many of whom have been steeped in the idea that someone owes them something -- for nothing, no less. . . . It is remarkable how many Americans have become thoroughly convinced that there are more than enough workers -- who will go on working no matter how onerous it becomes, no less -- to underwrite all of the slackers, and ever-growing number of fence-sitters moving to their side of the ledger. It is far less remarkable that we have a president who would exploit such selfishness and ignorance by taking an American virtue . . . and turn it into a vice, which is what Mr. Obama is doing when [he] labels the alternative to his socialist/Marxist vision as an 'on your own' society. This is nothing less than a full-frontal assault on our national character. Or what used to be our national character until progressives convinced substantial numbers of Americans that success is something that should elicit feelings of envy, rather than admiration and a sense of aspiration." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

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“As U.S. GDP growth remains just one notch above stagnant, the number of Americans on food stamps has skyrocketed by 70 percent since 2008. This increase, while certainly an indicator of the Obama administration's abysmal failure, is also part of a much larger picture: the growth of the Welfare State since the 1960s. In fact, the number of people receiving food stamps grew from 17.2 million in 2000 to an astounding 44.7 million in 2011, and the cost grew from $20 billion to $78 billion over that time. Even more disturbing is the fact that the food stamp program is only one of 12 food assistance programs and a mind-boggling 79 federal welfare programs.” –Mark Alexander

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 "The gun has been called the great equalizer, meaning that a small person with a gun is equal to a large person, but it is a great equalizer in another way, too. It insures that the people are the equal of their government whenever that government forgets that it is servant and not master of the governed. When the British forgot that they got a revolution. And, as a result, we Americans got a Constitution; a Constitution that, as those who wrote it were determined, would keep men free. If we give up part of that Constitution we give up part of our freedom and increase the chance that we will lose it all." --Ronald Reagan

Thoughts for the Day

Some more good stuff from Wolfshield:
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"Recall that our Founders affirmed in the Declaration of Independence 'that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' In other words, our Creator bestowed the rights enumerated in our Declaration and, by extension, as codified in its subordinate guidance, our Constitution. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are natural rights; they are not gifts from government." --Mark Alexander

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"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever." --Thomas Jefferson

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"The Obama administration is preparing to send General Motors into bankruptcy as early as the end of next week under a plan that would give the automaker tens of billions of dollars more in public financing as the company seeks to shrink." --/The Washington Post/

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_Sonia Sotomayor as nominee for the Supreme Court:_

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." --Judge Sonia Sotomayor in 2001

"Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging." --Sonia Sotomayor in 2001

"[A] court of appeals is where policy is made." --Sonia Sotomayor in 2005

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"Earlier this year, President Obama's Supreme Court nominee joined an opinion with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Second Amendment rights do not apply to the states. A 2004 opinion she joined also cited as precedent that "the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right." --Fox News, May 28, 2009

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"The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch. ... It has long been my opinion ... that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped." --Thomas Jefferson

Constitutional Rights Use Permit

So I was watching Glen Beck on Fox News (which happens to be one of the best, most worthwhile things on television today) and he was talking about how in Illinois if you own a firearm (or in order to buy one) you must have a registered State firearm ID card. In other words: in order to exercise your 2nd amendment rights as guaranteed and enumerated by the Constitution of the United States of America, you must obtain a permit. Scary? I think so.
Glen Beck was also talking about how somewhere in the works (I apologize for not having more certain details and citations) there is a law that would require you to have a $1 million insurance policy that would be used in case you or an one else accidentally or purposefully harms someone with your gun. One of the biggest problems with this ridiculous piece of legislation is that NO ONE carries this type of policy for purchase.
Not only will you need a permit (in Illinois) but an insurance policy in order to use your constitutional rights. We the people should be appalled and sobered at what is happening in this country.