"A clear and compelling case for America's founding principles as an enduring source of real, practical guidance for today, explaining how we got so far off track and laying out how to get our nation back on course.” - William J. Bennett
“This book recovers the timeless truths on which our self-governing nation was founded and which made America the model of human freedom. These first principles are the indispensable guides policy makers need now.” - Paul Ryan
“With his trademark clarity and considerable eloquence, Spalding explains and extols our country's principles and tells us why the way forward depends on reclaiming them. We Still Hold These Truths is must reading for every American.” - Mitt Romney
[Go to Amazon to order this book at a discounted price.]
There was an episode of Seinfeldcalled Festivus for the Rest of Us which was a holiday where you were permitted to tell your family and friends all of the ways they had disappointed you.
You sort of got a reverse feeling of that when President Obama jetted around the globe on his World Apology Tour.
I suppose that Americans were expected to have felt a sense of redemption as the president bowed his head in shame before dignitaries and royalty alike.
America was at fault for so many of the world's ills, and the president was humbly determined to make things right.
After 9/11 there were cries from the Festivus--Blame America First--crowd to determine what sins the United States committed that would have caused the occurrence of such a tragic event. In other words, 9/11 was America's fault.
Barack Obama was cut from the same mold as the apologists who are quick to point the finger of blame at their own country.
Don't say we didn't warn you prior to the election that this was the change Obama promised.
But it's not enough to sacrifice the honor of your country. Out of the gate Obama was cozily lifting glasses to dictators and despots.
Seemingly, Castro and Chavez were his new best buds.
So, it is not surprising Washington's outrage over the Biden-Netanyahu flap. (While Vice President Biden was visiting Israel, the Interior Ministry announced plans for a housing project in Jerusalem.)
Well, the Obama administration took that as a political affront which sparked a 45-minute dressing down by Secretary Clinton in a heated phone call to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
One must ask the obvious question, but when did the Obama White House display the same outrage towards, let's say, Iran regarding their nuclear ambitions and avowed threats to wipe Israel off the face of the map?
Of course, the world needs no further prodding to castigate Israel, but once Obama throws a glare all others are given the green light to pile on.
Curious that a housing project in Jerusalem would cause more worldwide furor than a nuclear weapons project in Iran.
For the record, let's be reminded that Israel accepted a partitioned state (and invited peace) back in 1947.
President Obama might be well-advised to consider that Israel, in contrast, has never threatened to end the existence of her neighbors.
Also, it might strengthen the president's hand if he would stop blaming America first and stand tall with our friends.
I remember learning in high school civics how a bill becomes law. The teacher presented a very sterile outline from proposal to enactment on the legislative workings of Congress. The process was seemingly legal and deliberate.
They say that if you saw how a frankfurter was made, you'd never eat another hot dog. I can only assume that our civics teacher purposely censored the meat grinding details of law making because those ingredients are a tad unsavory and difficult to swallow.
Consider that a corporate executive would go to jail if he or she played by the same rules as your congressman. In the real world it's called bribery, extortion and kickbacks while inside the Beltway it's standard operating procedure otherwise known as backroom deals, compromise and concessions.
The Health Care bill resembles a policy racket as elected officials send staffers (or runners) to extort the best deal they can in exchange for their vote.
Party leaders are like bookies who extend time, credit or favors to their wavering members.
The president is said to be disgusted with the "ugly process" of making deals, but it's unlikely that the hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks will be deleted.
Even the president has given a nod to the Louisiana Purchase ($300 million to secure the vote of Senator Mary Landrieu.)
Americans live in a warfare/welfare state that is the insidious design of neo-socialists and neo-conservatives.
I say insidious by Webster's definition in that our condition developed so gradually as to be well established before becoming apparent.
This was not the vision of Washington and Jefferson.
Along the way, we heeded not the warnings of patriots and statesmen.
Historians like to conjecture how the Founders would perceive the current state of our union.
They would be appalled.
Pat Buchanan wonders how conservatives got roped into the Wilsonian view of a Pax Americana reminiscent of the old Roman Empire.
Some would say that basing U.S. troops in 148 countries is an insurance policy for American security.
A true conservative would ask whether our army exists to defend America, or protect the world.
Pat Buchanan writes: How could conservatives whose defining virtue is prudence and who pride themselves on following the lamp of experience have been taken into camp by the hustlers and hucksters of empire?
Curious how liberals love to demonize Republicans as the party of intolerance when, in fact, the left is intolerant of anyone who doesn't agree with them.
Bi-partisanship means that you not oppose the incremental creep of their socialist agenda.
Socialist? Yes, I said it. However you label it--liberal, progressive or socialist--the grand design is taken right out of the Manifesto.
Of course, a central point of the agenda is atheism which translates to an unforgiving intolerance of religion.
David Limbaugh writes: In their penchant for projection, leftists accuse conservatives and Republicans of intolerance, when in fact, their own intolerance dominates the issues of freedom of speech and religion.
[Editor: The following text is known simply as "The Speech". It was a standard oratory delivered by Ronald Reagan when he was stumping for Barry Goldwater in 1964. It is a classic treatise on the principles of conservatism.]
I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this.
It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."
This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power -- is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that an intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream--the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.
The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.
Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.
Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends?
Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients.
If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.
They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
Roadmap to Victory
Reagan 101
Government isn't the solution to our problems; government is the problem.
Jefferson on the National Debt
I sincerely believe that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling future generations on a large scale.
The earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge the second with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. No generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.
Neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time.
The natural right to be free of the debts of a previous generation is a salutary curb on indebtment, which, since the modern theory of the perpetuation of debt, has crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating.
We, as Americans, shall consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves.
If the nation runs into such debts that our rulers must tax what we eat and drink, our comforts and amusements–even our necessities–then we are as a people with rivets chained around our necks.
To preserve the independence of the people, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
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to order this book at a discounted price.]
called Festivus for the Rest of Us which was a holiday where you were permitted to tell your family and friends all of the ways they had disappointed you. 
wonders how conservatives got roped into the Wilsonian view of a Pax Americana reminiscent of the old Roman Empire.
