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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (58509)	11/6/2012 1:41:28 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

What the 2012 Election Means It will decide whether our government is limited or all-encompassing. By Mackubin Thomas Owens November 6, 2012 3:00 A.M. Ultimately, the 2012 presidential election is not about Barack Obama or Mitt Romney; it’s not about Republicans or Democrats. It is fundamentally about the nature of American government. Is the United States a republic of limited powers or is it something else? The American Founders created a government based on the idea that the only purpose of government is to protect the equal natural rights of individual citizens. These rights inhere in individuals, not groups, and are antecedent to the creation of government. They are the rights invoked by the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — not happiness itself, but the pursuit of happiness. Before the American founding, all regimes were based on the principle of interest — the interest of the stronger. That principle was articulated by the Greek historian Thucydides: “Questions of justice arise only between equals. As for the rest, the strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must.” The United States was founded on different principles — justice and equality. No longer would government be based on the idea that some men were born “with saddles on their backs” to be ridden by others born “booted and spurred.” In other words, no one has the right to rule over another without the latter’s consent. This is the true meaning of equality. Of the two candidates in 2012, Mitt Romney more fully embraces the principles of the American Founders. In contrast, Barack Obama has shown himself to be the legitimate heir of Woodrow Wilson and the progressives, who called the Founders’ principles into question. In the 1912 presidential campaign, Woodrow Wilson explicitly sought to replace the Founders’ emphasis on individual rights and the separation of powers as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution with an evolving, “living Constitution” of unlimited powers. This living Constitution was necessary because the principles embodied by both the Declaration of Independence and the old Constitution had become outmoded. Wilson’s “new political science” saw society as a living organism; human nature was not fixed but evolving. An evolving human nature removed the rationale for such anachronisms as the separation of powers as a means of protecting other anachronisms such as individual rights. The constitution for such an evolving human nature would be Darwinian in character, evolving in response to changing circumstances. In order to deal with new political and economic conditions, Wilson called for a government of unlimited powers unfettered by the old constraints required by an unchanging human nature. The 1776 Declaration of Independence would give way to a “new declaration of independence” that would enable 20th-century Americans to contend with special interests, political machines, and big business. But in fact Wilson’s new declaration of independence was a declaration of dependency. It established the basis for a phenomenon foreseen eight decades earlier by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. He warned that democracy is susceptible to a certain form of tyranny: the rule of a “benevolent” government, catering to the public’s needs and whims in exchange for their freedom, which creates a servile people dependent on the largesse of government, happily acquiescing in the loss of liberty as long as the government fulfills their material desires. He called this tendency “soft despotism.” As Tocqueville predicted, the result of Wilson’s progressive rejection of the Declaration and Constitution has been a soft despotism of scientific experts and administrative bureaucrats, gradually undermining self-government and replacing it with dependency. Nothing epitomizes soft despotism more than “Julia,” the cartoon figure made famous earlier this year to demonstrate what a woman owes to the benevolent policies of the Obama administration. Soft despotism leads to acceptance of the idea that the central job of the government is not to protect individual rights but to adjudicate the distribution of resources among competing claimants. Such soft despotism reinforces the view that the United States is not a community of individuals, but merely a collection of groups whose demands must be met. But since government produces nothing on its own, certain favored groups prosper at the expense of others. The heirs of Woodrow Wilson may invoke the language of rights, but what they really mean by the term is privileges or claims to resources that are granted by government. They certainly don’t mean by rights what the Founders meant when they used the term. The United States stands at a crossroads in 2012. Will we choose the path to freedom and prosperity represented by a limited government the purpose of which is to protect the natural rights of its citizens? Or will we succumb to Tocqueville’s “soft despotism” and the servility it entails? On November 6, we will, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, “make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.” Mackubin Thomas Owens is a professor at the Naval War College and editor of Orbis, the journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. nationalreview.com

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (58509)	2/23/2013 6:40:42 PM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 71588

Don't just laugh at Dan Rather -- learn from him David Freddoso February 21, 2013 \| 8:00 pm In 2004, CBS News anchor Dan Rather was given a series of memos purporting to show how George W. Bush had avoided service in Vietnam during the early 1970s. Rather wanted so badly for the document to be real that he put it on the air without much thought. He even sexed up his sourcing a bit, claiming (falsely) that the documents had been authenticated by experts. It took nearly two weeks for the fake documents to be exposed and for this highly damaging story about George W. Bush to be disproven. For most of that period, CBS News and Rather stridently defended their fake story, bringing further discredit upon the entire organization. "Rathergate" was unique in its spectacular nature, but it was no isolated incident. It confirmed in conservatives' minds the unmistakable pattern that even when conservatives are right on the merits (which is often), they will not get a fair shake from a mainstream political media whose practitioners are overwhelmingly left wing and vote 80 to 90 percent Democratic in every presidential election. There are some in denial about this reality, but the body of evidence is large enough that I was able to fill an entire book with examples (by no means comprehensive) just from the recent election campaign. Conservative distrust of the traditional media has created a relatively small but thriving market for alternatives, such as talk radio and Fox News. And more recently, conservatives have attempted to establish a foothold in the daily online media, both within traditional conservative institutions like National Review and Human Events, and from points beyond them. I hope that this project succeeds. But it won't if conservative journalists are content to laugh at Dan Rather's demise without learning from his mistakes. There are lessons in the recent Breitbart "scoop" about Chuck Hagel and his possible source of funding -- a group called "Friends of Hamas." Ben Shapiro, a prolific young writer who impressed everyone with his recent appearance on Piers Morgan's evening television show, wrote of this unsavory Hagel connection on Feb. 7, after hearing the group's name from an unnamed Senate staffer (to whom he referred in the plural). The problem is, the group doesn't exist. The first reason this item should not have been published is that you just don't print things you don't know to be true. Rumors from anonymous sources often provide a starting point for tracking stories down, but they are not stories. Especially if they are damaging, they do not deserve to be dignified with a mention in print. And the more explosive the rumor, the more evidence is required to justify its publication. But because we are talking about a conservative outlet, there is a second reason. An unwillingness to embrace basic standards is just the sort of thing that can torpedo conservative efforts in the print and online media. One cannot hold the mainstream media accountable by imitating its worst shortcomings. Shapiro's Piers Morgan appearance demonstrated his smarts and talent as a spokesman for conservative ideas. All the more reason, then, to stop this embarrassing exercise of defending a bad mistake. We all make mistakes -- and we survive them by admitting it and moving on. Shapiro has defended his story by noting he reported, accurately, that he was told something. This is technically true, but not a real defense for airing prejudicial information without knowing anything about its accuracy. Shapiro has also noted his original post was "clearly caveated" to demonstrate that he wasn't sure his source's information was correct. Perhaps this indicates that he didn't mean to deceive anyone, but that's a pretty low bar. What the caveat really proves is that the item should not have been published. If you have to warn your readers that you're not really sure whether your explosive revelation is true or not, it's a good sign you shouldn't be printing it. And if the excuse for publishing a false rumor begins with the fact that the mainstream media "downplayed or ignored" Chuck Hagel's documented hostility toward the Israeli government or "the Jewish lobby" -- well, we're basically approaching "fake but accurate" territory here. Conservative journalists should leave the rumor-mongering to Harry Reid and his imaginary friends. If anything, those on the Right must hold themselves to higher standards, because it's a given that they will receive no quarter for big mistakes like this one, nor even for smaller ones. The crew at Breitbart has never accepted such behavior from liberal mainstream journalists in the past, nor should they in the future. David Freddoso is The Washington Examiner's editorial page editor and author of the new book "Spin Masters: How the media ignored the real news and helped reelect Barack Obama" (Regnery, 2013). washingtonexaminer.com