The Foundation
"When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground." --Thomas Jefferson
Opinion in Brief
Juan Williams"National Public Radio fired its longtime news analyst Juan Williams [last] week for saying something that many Americans feel. Williams, who also works as a Fox News Channel contributor (as I do), told FNC host Bill O'Reilly that when he gets on an airplane and sees someone in Muslim garb, he gets 'nervous.' Williams prefaced his remarks by reminding viewers that he had written several books about the civil rights movement. 'I'm not a bigot,' he said, noting that his uneasiness has a basis in fact. He recalled the would-be Times Square bomber's words last week when he was sentenced to life in prison for trying to detonate a bomb. 'The war with Muslims is just beginning,' Williams paraphrased. But Faisal Shahzad's actual statement was far more chilling. Shahzad warned those in the courtroom: 'Brace yourself, because the war with Muslims has just begun. Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow.' And Shahzad's tirade is only the latest in a long string of invectives by those who claim to speak for Islam. Such vile threats cannot help but provoke fear.... Unfortunately, NPR chose to punish Williams for admitting his fear. That doesn't solve anything. ... It is unfortunate that we live in a world in which one group's religious faith can make the group an object of fear. But it is not Juan Williams or others like him who are the chief culprits in this state of affairs. It is those who fly airplanes into buildings in the name of Allah who should be blamed by everyone, including their co-religionists who share no guilt for these crimes." --columnist Linda Chavez
For the Record
"NPR deemed [Juan] Williams' remarks 'inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices.' The oh-so-thoughtful people at NPR obviously believe there are certain things that can't be thought or expressed, even if those things clearly aren't bigoted and are uttered by someone who clearly isn't a bigot. In its unwillingness to tolerate Juan Williams, NPR has shown how little regard it has for even the slightest dissent from approved orthodoxies, especially if broadcast on the hated Fox News network. Just because you speak in dulcet tones, it doesn't make you any less close-minded. I often find NPR informative and enjoy my occasional appearance, but with this decision, it has chipped away at the country's shrinking common ground for discourse. Let the record show that it wasn't Fox News that severed its relationship with Williams because he said unacceptably liberal things, and it wasn't Fox News viewers who agitated to have him dumped over his appearances on NPR. It's the self-consciously tolerant people who behaved illiberally, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last." --National Review editor Rich Lowry
Political Futures
"[T]he tea party is not a 'threat' to the Republican Party, the tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn't remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself. In a practical sense, the tea party saved the Republican Party in this cycle by not going third-party. It could have. The broadly based, locally autonomous movement seems to have made a rolling decision, group by group, to take part in Republican primaries and back Republican hopefuls. ... Because of this, because they did not go third-party, Nov. 2 is not going to be a disaster for the Republicans, but a triumph. The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration's spending, overreach and immigration proposals, among other items, and has become only too willing to say so. ... Finally, the tea party stiffened the GOP's spine by forcing it to recognize what it had not actually noticed, that we are a nation in crisis. The tea party famously has no party chiefs and no conventions but it does have a theme -- stop the spending, stop the sloth, incompetence and unneeded regulation -- and has lent it to the GOP." --columnist Peggy Noonan
Tea Party Primer
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Government
"Fundamentally, there is a permanent war of attrition between liberty and the federal regulatory bureaucrats. A war of attrition is a resource war. In both WWI and WWII, the side with the most soldiers and industry (the allies) won. Although I don't believe it has ever been tried, a new Congress could try to use its power of the purse to begin to 'atrit' the regulators. That is to suggest Congress should order permanent, immediate and massive staff reductions among the regulators. Defund and de-authorize (say 50 percent) of the regulatory staff positions. It actually takes a long time and a lot of hard work to conceive, write and legally enact a new regulation. If there were only half as many bureaucrats at EPA, for example, they simply wouldn't have the time to pass as many oppressive regulations as they do. That would both slow down new regulations and make it harder for the regulators to enforce regulations already on the book. Then, if the tea party Congress and the public had the stomach for it, they could start rolling back existing regulations. ... [W]hile regulations have been passed one at a time over many decades, they can only be undone by collective repeal and resource deprivation." --columnist Tony Blankley
The Gipper
"We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed." --Ronald Reagan
Re: The Left
"[Barack Obama is] now offering a scientific, indeed neurological, explanation for his current political troubles. The electorate apparently is deranged by its anxieties and fears to the point where it can't think straight. Part of the reason 'facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time,' he explained to a Massachusetts audience, 'is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared.' Opening a whole new branch of cognitive science -- liberal psychology -- Obama has discovered a new principle: The fearful brain is hard-wired to act befuddled, i.e., vote Republican. But of course. Here Obama has spent two years bestowing upon the peasantry the 'New Foundation' of a more regulated, socially engineered and therefore more humane society, and they repay him with recalcitrance and outright opposition. Here he gave them Obamacare, the stimulus, financial regulation and a shot at cap-and-trade -- and the electorate remains not just unmoved but ungrateful. Faced with this truly puzzling conundrum, Dr. Obama diagnoses a heretofore undiscovered psychological derangement: anxiety-induced Obama Underappreciation Syndrome, wherein an entire population is so addled by its economic anxieties as to be neurologically incapable of appreciating the 'facts and science' undergirding Obamacare and the other blessings their president has bestowed upon them from on high." --columnist Charles Krauthammer
Reader Comments
"I disagree with Alexander's advocacy for pragmatism in the general election. If lots of people vote for the lesser of two evils it will mean the end of the Tea Party, the end of the Republican party as a viable alternative and big trouble for the U.S. We must vote purist and let the cards fall where they fall. The U.S. will probably not disappear in the next two years. If people don't vote for the lesser of two evils and things go badly for the Republican party, maybe they will get the idea that they need to field conservatives for 2012." --Clif
Editor's Reply: First, pragmatism and purism are not mutually exclusive. Second, if voters seat more Leftist Democrats rather than moderate Republicans, that will not be good for the country. That is precisely what has gotten us where we are now. Once we have established majorities, then we can start weeding out the RINOs. Fact is, in most of the congressional districts in question, the choice is not between the "lesser of two evils," but a moderate Republican and a Leftist Democrat. If you see those as two evils, then you fail to understand the power of redemption. Once upon a time, Ronald Reagan was a Democrat. Our objective should be to make sure the most conservative candidates are on the big tickets, as many are this election. And as I have noted, this is election is just one battle to restore constitutional integrity. It is not the end of the war. I will take vigilance and many election cycles to revers the slide toward Socialism.
"My thoughts run counter to Charles Krauthammer's assertion that a liberal Republican 'batting .667 is better than a Democrat batting .000.' Not now. Not in this new era. Not when power to corrupt has been taken by the hard left." --kilt1iron
Editor's Reply: So it's the late innings of Game 5 of the World Series and your team is down three games to one. You don't have a guy who's batting 1.000, so you pass over the one batting .667 to pick the guy batting .000?
"In regards to Friday's Digest, don't we have to trust Democrats first in order for them to fix the problems in the health care bill? All we have been told is lie's and as for me, I am really tired off the way they are operating! Want honesty in our elected seat's and no smoke and mirrors!" --Carolyne
"As for 'fixing' the health care bill: Two problems: 1. You can't 'fix' socialism, and 2. You can't 'fix' stupid!" --Tim
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The Last Word
"Unable to win as liberals this year, some Democratic candidates seek to win as conservatives, no matter how ludicrous the posture appears. Some of the same Democrats who campaigned against 'nativists' and 'Christianists' in 2008 have become them in 2010. Kentucky Senate Candidate Jack Conway, for example, is now a very pious religious fundamentalist. Who knew this proponent of abortion on demand and gays in the military read the Book of Leviticus so faithfully? Who knew this respecter of all religions had such disdain for Eastern gods? A few years ago, a candidate like Conway might have campaigned alongside Buddhists, with Richard Gere in tow. Al Gore might have even joined him to fish for dubious donations at their temples. But this year, the Left's false idols have been banished from sight, and the Democrats now claim to live in deadly fear of 'foreign' money sloshing through American politics." --columnist George Neumayr
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