Dr. Benjamin Carson

Doctor Benjamin Carson

I wonder how many people there are that might have appreciated as much as I did the talk given by Pediatric Neurosurgeon Doctor Benjamin Carson at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, 2/7/13.  Much of the information he was presenting was what I wrote in some of my Facebook posts.

Doctor Carson was pointing out the importance of what it means for people to be self reliant and the deteriorating affect it has on a republic for the populace to becoming more and more dependent on the government to take care of them - Dr. Benjamin  Carson.  He cited how what is happening in this country today is like what happened to Rome before it failed as a republic and dictatorial rule began.  I pointed out in previous articles that populist tactics by power hungry people seeking public office brought about the demise of every republic that ever came into existence – usually in not much more than about 200 years.  Has the Republic of the United States lived beyond its life expectancy?  Benjamin Franklin, when our Constitution was finalized in 1787, said, “We’ve given you a republic.  Now it’s up to you to keep it.”  Historian Alexis de Tocqueville said, “Republics endure till people discover they were being bribed with their own money.”

Note what the Roman Statesman Marcus Cicero said in 55 BC.  Those words could well be applied to what is happening in the United States today:

"The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome becomes bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

 About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate that promises the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by dictatorship.  The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.”

It could be that we’re living in a country with an incurable terminal illness infested with gimmeites.  Independent people can’t be subjugated.  People living in a state of dependency can. 

47% of the populace pay no income taxes and believe they face no consequences for every reckless entitlement this administration wants to bestow on them.  I’m not talking about Social Security, Medicare and a reasonable amount of time to be providing unemployment insurance before it disincentivizes people from looking for work.  These are essential services and the recipients did pay into them to some degree.  But should the Government have had to pay over two million dollars to provide people with cell phones or provide Sandra Fluke with daily supplies of contraceptives?  Where do entitlements end and personal responsibility begin?  Congress wanted to require people who were collecting unemployment insurance to be showing that they’re looking for work.  President Obama squelched that.  There was a time when that was a requirement.

Anyone who thinks that there aren’t some people choosing to collect unemployment insurance rather than finding work should read an interesting article that appeared in the 8/10/10 issue of the Wall Street Journal - Firms struggle to hire.   The paper, appearing never to have been opened, was left on a little round coffee table for two that I sat at in a shop in Frankfurt Airport where I stopped while waiting for my flight back to Newark.  The article I opened up to couldn’t have come into my possession at a more convenient time.  I was just doing a study of how many people there were that anxiously wanted to get back to work and how many were content to just collect UI.  I personally knew of two such people.  One is a friend who is now working.  He didn’t look for work until his insurance ran out.  Another is a friend of a friend - a school teacher who lost her job when her school shut down.  Asked by my friend what she was going to do now, she responded, “Not to worry; I have 99 weeks before I’ll worry about that.”    

Obama's second term chilling plans

Obama’s second term chilling plans:

This is an excerpt from one of the sub-titled articles that follow the post I published entitled Obama remakes America in his image.  It’s entitled

Obama’s gaffe reveals chilling plans for second term: 

At home, his progressive leftist agenda will be redoubled. Mr. Obama will seek to grant amnesty to nearly 20 million illegal immigrants, thereby creating an enduring Democratic majority. He will try again to pass cap-and-trade legislation, hoping to tether industry and manufacturing to government control. If Congress fails to act, then he will empower the Environmental Protection Agency to impose cap-and-trade by administrative fiat. He will soak the rich — including corporations and businesses — through massive tax hikes. Investment capital will flee; economic growth will sputter; and unemployment will soar. His record spending binge will continue, pushing America to national bankruptcy. The dollar will collapse. The international community will insist on fiscal austerity, shredding our social safety net. Riots and civil chaos — like in Greece — may take place.

Leon Trotsky, one of the founders of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, championed the “theory of permanent revolution” — namely, a ruling class devoted to the ceaseless advance of socialism. Mr. Obama is the Trotsky of our age. A second term will give him the means to complete what he started: the destruction of traditional America.

For a good amount of time before the election I was adding my prayers to the novenas Catholic bishops were leading their congregations through that we would get an administration that would be pro-life and would strongly defend religious liberty.  That, of course, would mean that if the winner was to be Mr. Obama my prayers could only be answered if God was to bring about his conversion similar to the way he converted Saint Paul.  The chance of that happening, of course, I have to consider as being very remote.   While praying I could never discount whether a great chastisement wasn’t being planned by God for the way more and more people were turning away from him and the way society was becoming more and more depraved similar to the decadence of Rome before its demise as a republic in 27 BC.    President Reagan’s admonition, “When we are no longer a nation under God we’ll be a nation gone under" seems to be forever on my mind.

Libyan Embassy Attack

Libyan Embassy Attack

Whenever the Democrat politicos or their supporters are asked about the travesty that occurred in Libya on 9/11/12 and how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dropped the ball, they want to talk about everything but the issue of Ambassador Chris Stevens and the navy seals that were killed with him when Al Qaeda forces attacked the embassy.  They immediately go to talking about the Secretary’s exemplary record in the way she ran the State Department during the time she held the office.  How much do they know about what she did?  Everything in the news over that time seemed to give the impression that President Obama was doing very little delegating regarding affairs of state and had a very hands-on approach dealing with those matters.    

In regard to seeing that our Foreign Service personnel have proper security, the Secretary of State has all the authority he/she needs without looking any further up.  It was the Department of State whom Ambassador Stevens was appealing to for beefed-up protection a number of times before the embassy was attacked.  Instead, two contingents of navy seals and former green berets were withdrawn from Libya within six months of the attack on the embassy. 

It has been reported on Fox News that one month before the attack a cable was sent to the State Department that there were ten separate militia groups hostile to Western interests and an Al Qaeda training ground active in Benghazi.  On August 16th Ambassador Stevens sent a cable saying that the embassy could not sustain an organized attack. 

If someone had an exemplary driving record spanning decades but caused a fatal accident due to gross negligence he/she would still face trial for manslaughter.  Their driving record would have nothing to do with whether prosecution would take place. 

The very fact that the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the “Twin Towers” was approaching should have been reason alone for proper preparation and vigilance wherever we had Foreign Service Personnel stationed

Now, getting to the attack itself:  According to what was reported (and, of course, we don’t rely on the Propaganda Ministry of the Democrat Party, the mainstream media, for this) the navy seals were killed very late into the seven hour assault on the embassy.  We had forces two hours flying time away in Italy that could have come to the aid of the seals.  The ball at that time was then in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta.  Asked why these forces were not called upon, Panetta said, “We can’t send forces into harm’s way without knowing the dangers they face.”  I thought that was preposterous.  Imagine calling the police department to say your place of business was under attack by armed robbers and the Chief made the decision not to send anyone because he didn’t know how serious an attack it was that his officers would be facing.  In the case of the attack on the embassy there were drones overhead that were sending videos directly into the President’s briefing room in Washington DC.    

        

It was more important for the Obama administration to create the false illusion during the election campaign that they successfully rendered Al Qaeda no longer a threat in the region than it was for it to see that the embassy had the necessary security forces for its protection.  Considering that the Jews have had to endure being driven out of the Holy Land since the time of the Exodus, it’s the highest form of naivete to think that Al Qaeda or any other group hostile to Israel and their friends will ever no longer be a threat.  Western forces supportive of Israel will have to be forever vigilant and prepared for attacks by hostile forces.

A by-word:  Fox News showed a clip of the softball interview of President Obama and Hillary Clinton by Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes Sunday night 1/27.  If this is the kind of mush liberals absorb themselves with it’s no wonder they don’t know anything.  

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