Essential Liberty
"For nearly 28 years [John] Kerry has been a senator.... West Virginia sent Robert Byrd to the US Senate for 51 years, and Daniel Inouye has represented Hawaii in Congress since it became a state in 1959. Charleston, S.C., has had the same mayor since 1975. No matter how unpopular Congress is said to be, more than 90 percent of House members seeking re-election generally keep their seats; in that respect Nov. 6 was absolutely typical. ... Far better for officials to come and go, serving a spell in government, then heading back to real life. 'Representatives ought to return home and mix with the people,' Rhode Island's Roger Sherman argued during the Constitutional Convention in 1787. 'By remaining at the seat of government, they would acquire the habits of the place, which might differ from those of their constituents.' George Washington could have been president for life, but he voluntarily stepped down after two terms. Hecould be trusted with power precisely because he could let it go. Politicians today can't bear the thought of giving up the power with which we cloak them. And we, to our discredit, are rarely prepared to take it away." --columnist Jeff Jacoby
Political Futures
"Governors are executives. Senators are legislators. Governors have to keep their states running. Senators have to negotiate semi-colons in legislation. As I have said many times, no Governor in the history of Governors has ever gone to the person running the Department of Motor Vehicles in their state and said: 'I understand we've been handing license plates out the long way to customers at the DMV office. I think we should hand them out with the wide side facing out. Don't you?' That is, effectively, what Senators and Congressmen do all day, every day. ... Governors have the responsibility of watching over the health, safety and welfare of every citizen in his or her state. They're used to the whole 'buck stops here' thing. The early line on who will run in the Republican and Democrat primaries for President in 2016 will be heavily weighted toward Senators and Congressmen. Why? Because they work in Washington, DC as do the national political reporters who make up the early lists. But, if you want to beat the odds, pick a Governor." --columnist Rich Galen
Re: The Left
"Conservatism can thrive without progressivism. Progressivism cannot survive without conservatism. In short, a progressive worldview built on redistributionism, must have something to re-distribute. Without the efforts of the makers, the takers and their enablers are dead in the water. The most remarkable aspect of this last election is that Democrats ran on a platform that amounted to biting the hand that feeds them, and still prevailed. ... [N]ow, more than ever, it pays to be prudent in choosing where one spends one's money. If the progressives can organize boycotts against those who offend their sensibilities, such as the one organized against Chick-fil-A this past summer, conservatives can certainly do the same. ... For those Americans who know what I'm talking about, my strategy amounts to a combo platter of Mahatma Gandhi and John Galt. Passive and active resistance to the dim-bulbs and the deadbeats on one end of the spectrum, and those who would impose tyranny on the other. For those Americans who don't have any idea what I'm talking about, trust me: you're part of the problem, not the solution." --columnist Arnold Ahlert
Culture
"It follows that just government should be limited to preserving a man's natural rights while leaving him alone to do with his unique abilities as he sees fit. The Progressives, on the other hand, had a very different political philosophy. They thought man, by nature, was an empty vessel and that it was society, not nature, that made the man. Accordingly, society was responsible for providing mans' needs, and if some men were needy it must be because society was not doing its job. In the Progressive view, justice required that everyone had not equal opportunity but equal outcomes. At root, then, what separates liberals from conservatives is their respective understanding of justice: The battle is between social justice and what might be called American political justice. Liberals defend their policy preferences by asserting their understanding of justice. Conservatives, on the other hand, do not respond with their own understanding of justice, thereby leaving liberals to define what, at the end of the day, is the most important determinant of policy." --columnist Linda Chavez
Faith and Family
"In 1965, Daniel P. Moynihan wrote a book called: 'The Negro Family Case for National Action.' At the time, 25 percent of black kids were born out of wedlock. Today, that number is 70 percent. Now 26 percent of white kids are born to unwed mothers. This is an indictment of the welfare state and a direct link to crime, drop-out rates and poverty. ... As I write in 'Dear Father, Dear Son,' my 'illegitimate' Republican father never knew his biological father. Raised by an irresponsible mother during the Great Depression in the Jim Crow south, my father was on his own from the age of 13. He worked two jobs as a janitor, and saved enough to open up a small restaurant in his late 40s, which he ran until his 80s. My dad's wisdom was simple. Don't play the victim: 'Hard work wins. Nobody owes you a living. You get out of life what you put into it. And no matter how you hard work or how good you are, bad things will happen. How you react will tell if me and your mom raised a man.'" --radio talk-show host Larry Elder
The Last Word
"One can hardly blame Obama for causing divisions. After all, he was desperately seeking re-election. ... You can, however, blame the media.... You can also blame parents who have reared the greediest, most self-indulgent, self-satisfied, bunch of hedonistic morons in this nation's history. I mean, it's not as if these youngsters who think that everything from a college education to cell phones and a lifetime supply of birth control pills are entitlements, were hatched from eggs, although they clearly have close ties to those, such as chickens and snakes, who are. The reason that the future looks so bleak is because, as I wrote prior to the election, America could probably survive four more years of Obama, but it can't survive a population that would re-elect him. It means that the takers now out-number the makers. ... In the aftermath of the election, I have tried to adopt a philosophical attitude. I tried to remind myself that this, too, will pass. But that's like saying this, too, will pass when referring to a kidney stone the size of Obama." --columnistBurt Prelutsky
