“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” –Thomas Jefferson
Tag: liberty
“[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes – rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.” — Alexander Hamilton (letter to James Bayard, April 1802)
Jon asked the question. (It makes me feel old to realize he’s talking about high school classes in his remarks.)
I was getting ready for work. Kel and I had just changed places in the shower; she was watching the Today show when they went live after the first plane it. While I was shaving, I watched the second plane fly in to the second tower.
“A second plane just hit!” I yelled in to the bathroom.
“What?!?!?” was the reply from my wife.
“The first plane was no accident,” I told her. The early speculation after the first plane struck was that it was an accident of some sort. I, and millions of others, knew right then it was no accident.
We both finished getting ourselves ready, watching the news the entire time. I was on the road to the office when the first tower fell. Tears were in my eyes, and the thought that kept running through my head was Those poor people…
I was at work for around an hour before they sent us home. At the time, my wife was working in the tallest building in downtown Dallas. Building management shut it down; my wife never even made it up to her office to be sent home. We spent the rest of the day in the living room, glued to the news.
Yesterday, Jeff said:
On another subject, tomorrow is the fourth anniversary of 9/11. What’s there to say about that? It seems like a lot of Americans would like to forget the events of that day. I don’t really blame them. Denial is a legitimate reaction to trauma. But I think we’d be better served by remembering than forgetting. I think we’d be better off taking the day tomorrow to think about what happened on that Tuesday morning four years ago, to remember the shock and the horror and the grief. Because I think that remembering it will honor the dead and fill us with a terrible resolve that nothing like it shall ever happen again.
Likewise, the Toad implores us to never forget.
Our pastor touched briefly on this in worship this morning. Our church is involved in several different areas of providing relief services to persons displaced by Katrina. We’ve adopted 22 families that have been relocated to the Dallas area, among other initiatives. One thing Tim told us was to keep a marathon mindset with regard to this help we were providing. Just as too many people in this nation lost sight of what 9/11 meant for our country, too many people will forget about the hundreds of thousands affected by Katrina in the coming months. We can forget neither.
Keep the long view in mind. Pace yourself; the war against the Islamofascists who attacked us on 9/11 will be a marathon, not a sprint. Do not forget.
Brendan Miniter has a piece on OpinionJournal today on the opportunity New Orleans has with rebuilding its educational system, one of the worst in the nation. I can personally testify to how bad things are in some of the schools there; I spent a few days at a single elementary school, troubleshooting some classroom Macintosh-printer set-ups. The school’s HVAC system was offline, and had been for weeks. The teachers were mulling along as best they can, keeping the windows cracked so the rooms wouldn’t get stuffy, and running fans. You can imagine, however, trying to teach a bunch of third-graders with three or four box fans going at once.
Lack of funds was the reason for a less-timely repair of the system. I was there as an independent contactor, called out by the principal, because there was no one on the district’s IT staff with any Macintosh knowledge.
One aspect of rebuilding the New Orleans public school system that Miniter brings up is something I have long been in favor of: break the back of the teachers’ union. The myriad “education” unions in this country have only served to hinder the success of our children in public schools, and that is evident in New Orleans, and most of Louisiana. No, the teachers’ union is not the only problem with the school system, but if it is not providing a solution, it’s proving a hindrance.
As Miniter says, there is a unique opportunity in New Orleans now, and that is to build an educational system from the ground up. The Crescent City has a chance to be a beacon for the rest of the nation. We pray they seize it.
A beacon of conservatism and common sense has been dimmed, with the death of Chief Justice Rehnquist tonight. Further words fail me at this time.
The Tennessee attorney general wants the country singer who made the song “Redneck Woman” a hit to stop “glamorizing” the use of smokeless tobacco at her concerts.
Retrophisch Nutshell Version™:
+ singer is Gretchen Wilson, song in question is “Skoal Ring,” the title of which refers to the imprint made in the back pocket of blue jeans from a can of Skoal
+ Tennessee AG is worried about a tobacco settlement signed by the state and tobacco manufacturers, including the maker of Skoal
+ Ms. Wilson is not paid by The U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, maker of Skoal
+ people pay to get in to her concerts, and Ms. Wilson is not on the Skoal payroll, so exactly how is her video moment being construed as an “advertisement”?
Conclusion: more Big Brothering and posturing by a politician who should just keep his mouth shut.
(For the record, I have a few cousins who engage in the chewing of smokeless tobacco, but like cigarette smoking, I have always found it a disgusting habit and in no way endorse it.)
At the time of its writing, many of the Founding Fathers opposed the Bill Of Rights being included in the Constitution because the enumeration of certain rights–which are restrictions on the federal government–might tempt the government to trample on those not spelled out.
The compromise drafted to satisfy the opposition became the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The Tenth states The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
This meant that whatever was not in the Constitution or amended into it, was in the power of the states to decide. And while this amending was done as required some seventeen times after the Bill Of Rights was ratified, today, changes have simply been declared by the courts, often resulting in the trampling the founders so feared.
Liberal courts aided by their legislative and media counterparts are perverting the Bill of Rights one by one. With the exception of quartering federal troops in private homes, almost all of the first ten amendments have been twisted and deformed, sometimes with the help of “moderate” Republicans.
Like the March of Dimes’ victory against polio in the U.S., civil rights organizations can claim victory as well. At one time, black Americans did not enjoy the same constitutional guarantees as other Americans. Now we do. Because the civil rights struggle is over and won doesn’t mean that all problems have vanished within the black community. A 70 percent illegitimacy rate, 65 percent of black children raised in female-headed households, high crime rates and fraudulent education are devastating problems, but they’re not civil rights problems. Furthermore, their solutions do not lie in civil rights strategies.
Civil rights organizations’ expenditure of resources and continued focus on racial discrimination is just as intelligent as it would be for the March of Dimes to continue to expend resources fighting polio in the U.S. Like the March of Dimes, civil rights organizations should revise their agenda and take on the big, non-civil rights problems that make socioeconomic progress impossible for a large segment of the black community.
For the record, Dr. Williams is a black American, lest anyone accuse him of racial bias. (Which, no doubt, he’ll be accused of anyway.)
So sayeth the editors in this past Friday’s Federalist Patriot (link is a PDF):
The usual Demo-gogue suspects — Kennedy, Kerry and company — are increasing the tenor of their demands that the Bush administration commit to a timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. A few misguided Republicans have even signed on to this legislative folly. Insisting that we cap our military support for the new Iraqi government is a dangerous political ploy intended to help Demos rally their peacenik constituency in the run-up to next year’s midterm elections. Dangerous, because challenging the administration to agree to a timetable only emboldens Jihadis, who would very much like to move the frontlines of the Long War from their turf to ours.
The Demos know President George Bush will not agree to such a timetable. As the president has said repeatedly, “Our exit strategy is to exit when our mission is complete.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld protests that any such deadline for withdrawal would “throw a lifeline to terrorists.” Indeed, but it is always easier to sell anti-war rhetoric like “give peace a chance” than it is to advocate peace through superior firepower, and to use force in defense of critical U.S. national interests.
Social Security is not a handout. Workers and employers contribute jointly through payroll taxes. Social Security had become part of the American economic fabric. And the Bush administration should stop treating Social Security as if it were just another government program.
What exactly is Social Security, Ms. Thomas, if not a handout? That’s exactly what it is. There are no “accounts”. There is no “lockbox”. The monies for Social Security go in to and come out of the general fund. The government robs Peter to pay Paul. It’s a handout.
Employers contribute nothing to Social Security. Just ask the millions of self-employed businesspeople in this country, who have to pay the full load. The “half” of Social Security employers “pay” is simply monies never seen by the employee. That’s one reason why more people aren’t up in arms over Social Security reform. They don’t understand how much of their money is going to this increasingly wasteful handout, because they never see that money in the first place. And even if that money was going to the employee, it would be going to some person, either the business owner or shareholders. Businesses never pay taxes. People do.
Finally, Social Security is “just another government program.” Like many such programs, it had its time, when it was needed, but that time is past. There are so many options out there for investors to save money through, that will offer greater returns than Social Security ever will. (Not to mention that with the increasing reduction in benefits people have seen over the decades, it’s not very secure, is it?)
Some pols need to have the guts to grandfather Social Security and kill it. It’s the only reasonable and sane thing to do so our great-grandchildren aren’t having to deal with it.