EXCERPTS: Before what he calls "the jaw-dropping” events of the last 19 months — TARP, the stimulus, Government Motors, the mistreatment of Chrysler’s creditors, Obamacare, etc. — the idea of running for office never crossed Ron Johnson’s mind. He was, however, dry tinder — he calls Ayn Rand’s "Atlas Shrugged” his "foundational book” — and now is ablaze, in an understated, upper-Midwestern way. This 55-year-old manufacturer of plastic products from Oshkosh is what the tea party looks like. . . .Here's the comment on the piece that I posted on NewsOK.com:
The theme of his campaign, the genesis of which was an invitation to address a tea party rally, is: "First of all, freedom.” Then? "Then you’ve got to put meat on the bones.” He gets much of his meat from The Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages. And from a Wisconsin congressman, Paul Ryan, whose "road map” for entitlement reform Johnson praises. Health care? "Mitch Daniels has the solution.” Indiana’s Republican governor has offered state employees the choice of consumer-controlled Health Savings Accounts, and 70 percent of Indiana state workers now choose them.
"The most basic right,” Johnson says, "is the right to keep your property.” Remembering the golden age when, thanks to Ronald Reagan, the top income tax rate was 28 percent, Johnson says: "For a brief moment we were 72 percent free.” Johnson’s daughter, now a nurse in neonatal intensive care, was born with a serious heart defect. The operations "when her heart was only the size of a small plum” made him passionate about protecting the incentives that bring forth excellent physicians. . . .
THANK YOU GEORGE WILL!!!
The message of Atlas Shrugged is: Altruism doesn't work. Human beings ARE individuals and have the right to live their own lives for their own sakes AS INDIVIDUALS.
And human beings are capable of living their own lives and getting what they want without hurting others. They are not incompetent monsters by definition who need to be controlled and cared for by the government. Reality IS intelligible and human beings ARE capable of understanding it by means of their own minds - by using Reason.
This means human beings are capable of moral reasoning and can decide for themselves how to live their lives - to survive and even thrive - without the help of any outside agent, supernatural or otherwise.
It is rational self-interest - properly understood - that is the truly benevolent way for human beings to live with each other. NOT altruism.
THAT is the message of Atlas Shrugged and the ultimate meaning of Freedom.
Rob Abiera
AUSTIN – A leading social conservative on the State Board of Education will push for further doubt to be cast on separation of church and state when the board goes back to work on proposed curriculum standards for social studies next week. . . .Who's next? James Madison?
The GOP-dominated board shot down an earlier attempt by Democrats to have high school students study the reasons the Founding Fathers barred the government from promoting any religion.
McLeroy now wants to include a requirement that eighth-grade history students study the issue from a different perspective.
Under his proposal, students would "contrast the Founders' intent relative to the wording of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause, with the popular term 'Separation of church and state.' "
The language reflects the opposition of social and religious conservatives to the legal doctrine of separation of church and state, which has been upheld multiple times by the U.S. Supreme Court, including one far-reaching decision that outlawed school-sponsored prayer.
McLeroy and other board members contend that separation of church and state was established in the law only by activist judges and not by the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
"I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. . . . Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the general government. . . . Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the president of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents."
Atheists More Conscientious than Baptists in Oklahoma
EXCERPT: When the U.S. Constitution was circulated among the thirteen original colonies for ratification, Baptists in Virginia refused to vote to ratify it until an amendment was added to secure liberty of conscience for every citizen. In a letter to George Washington, written on behalf of Virginia Baptists, evangelist John Leland explained why Baptists refused to ratify the Constitution until the First Amendment was added. He wrote:When the Constitution first made its appearance in Virginia, we, as a society, had unusual strugglings of mind, fearing that the liberty of conscience, dearer to us than property or life, was not sufficiently secured. Perhaps our jealousies were heightened by the usage we received in Virginia under regal government, when mobs, fines, bonds and prisons were our frequent repast. (The Writings of John Leland, ed. L.F. Greene. New York: Arno Press & the New York Times, 1969, p. 53).For early Baptists conscience was something sacred and inviolable.
Tom Cole helps launch task force to limit federal powerThis could be huge: while far from perfect, it at least is a start, and certainly demonstrates that there are actually some legislators in Washington who may actually have the guts to stand up to the power-mongers.
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