Quotes To Ponder

I recently signed up to receive e-mail from the Patriot Post, a treasure trove of wisdom from the Founding Fathers of our nation.  Here are some particularly good ones, given some current events:

"Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood. ... A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives."
-- John Adams --

"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition."
-- Thomas Jefferson --

"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men."
-- John Adams --

These men knew what it took to create and maintain a free nation.  They lived it, and their actions and philosophies re-wrote global history.  More recently, Ronald Reagan famously said, "Government can't solve the problem, government is the problem."  He got that idea from the Founders, who realized that the government should function in a very limited capacity, instead allowing the maximum amount of responsibility and freedom to rest upon the individual.  And, of course, they understood the value of integrity, especially in our nation's leaders.  Once the lies begin, there's no telling where (or if) they will stop.  Any leader who makes a habit of lying no longer deserves to be a leader.  These concepts were understood, accepted, and even embraced by the Founders.  Don't you think we should take a cue or two from them?

Here are some quotes from a few other smart people:

"If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs."
-- Theodore Roosevelt --

"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too."
-- W. Somerset Maugham --

"He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has."
-- Epictetus --

These wise words show us the result of replacing the core American value of freedom with anything else.  Greed, money, dependence, whatever...anything that collectively replaces freedom takes us in the wrong direction.  Once again, the individual must be held in higher esteem than the state.

Finally, here are a couple more contemporary writers, speaking about the Obamessiah himself, who will lead the next charge into the erosion of freedom:

"Conservative Americans in particular need to understand that in this new era, the rules have changed. And to understand this change, conservatives need to begin by reading 'Rules For Radicals,' a book published in 1971 by noted 'community organizer' (and a man who is said to have influenced Mr. Obama) Saul Alinsky. Column space is limited here, so you'll have to get a copy of the book for yourself. But consider this notion from Alinksy's rule #5: 'Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It's hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.' And consider this language from rule #11, wherein Alinsky suggests that the main job of a 'community organizer' is to bait his opponent into reacting in a certain way: 'The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.' Welcome to the new era."
-- Austin Hill --

"Barack and Michelle Obama are poised to commit a classic act of limousine-liberal hypocrisy -- in this case, turning their backs on tens of thousands of inner-city kids in Washington, D.C. Public schools, it seems, are good enough for poor and middle-class families, but not for rich families like the Obamas. In July, when he addressed the NAACP's annual convention, Sen. Barack Obama expressed his devotion to American public schools, vowing he would not 'walk away from them' by supporting school-choice programs like Sen. John McCain did. ... There were 59,616 students enrolled in the D.C. public schools in 2006, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. If McCain's plan to increase by 2,000 the number of vouchers available in the District were enacted, taxpayers would still be spending $15,798 per student per year to send more than 55,000 kids through a school system where about nine out of 10 students do not learn to read or do math at grade-level proficiency by the time they 'graduate' from elementary school. What is Obama's plan to deal with this? Spend $18 billion more in federal tax dollars on public education (as he promised in his campaign) -- and send his own kids to extremely expensive private schools. Currently, Obama's two daughters (ages 7 and 10) attend the University of Chicago Lab School, where tuition is $18,492 for grades 1-4 and $20,286 for grades 5-8. When Michelle Obama visited Washington this week, she toured only two prospective schools for her daughters: Sidwell Friends, where lower-school tuition is $28,442; and Georgetown Day, where tuition is $27,445 for grades 1-5."
-- Terence Jeffrey --

Unfortunately, we as a nation are going to have to suffer through at least a few years of Obama's era of change, complete with Alinsky's rulebook being applied to literally every policy at every level of the country.  The school choice issue is a perfect example of how liberals live by a different set of rules than what they dictate to the rest of us.

Manipulation and hypocrisy: welome to the Obama era, indeed.

Are you ready for another change yet?

There's my two cents.