Tag Archives: LImited Government

Videos

Marco Rubio delivers the Republican weekly radio address

2 Comments

I waited to post this until I found the transcript.

Transcript:

“Hi, I’m Marco Rubio.

“With Election Day now behind us, it’s an honor to talk to you about the opportunity before us – an opportunity to put America back on track.

“For too long, Washington has taken our country in the wrong direction: bigger government, reckless spending, and run away debt. And though I’m a proud Republican, here’s the truth, both parties have been to blame.

“This election the American people said enough is enough. That message was loud and clear. We Republicans would be mistaken if we misread these results as simply an embrace of the Republican party. This Election is a second chance. A second chance for Republicans to be what we said we were going to be.

“America is the single greatest nation on earth, a place without equal in the history of all mankind. A place built on free enterprise, where the employee can become the employer. Where small businesses are started every day in a spare bedroom and where someone like me, the son of a bartender and a maid, can become a United States Senator.

“I know about the unique exceptionalism of our country. Not because I read about it in a book, I’ve seen it through my own eyes. You see, I was raised in a community of exiles, by people who lost their country, people who once had dreams like we do today, but had to come to a foreign shore to find them.

“For some their dreams were answered here in America, but many others found a new dream. To leave their children with the kinds of opportunities they themselves never had. And that is what we must do as a nation. To fulfill our sacred obligation to leave the next generation of Americans a better America than the one we inherited. And that is what this election was about.

“In the past two years, Republicans listened to the American people and what they said is that it was time for a course correction.

“The past two years provided a frightening glimpse at what could become of our great nation if we continue down the current path: wasteful spending, a growing debt and a government reaching ever further into our lives, even into our health care decisions.

“It is nothing short of a path to ruin, a path that threatens to diminish us as a nation and a people. One that makes America not exceptional, not unique, but more like the rest of the world.

“As Republicans, here is what our commitment should be to you. Our focus must not be simply winning elections. It must be to ensure the next generation inherits a strong, free and prosperous America.

“We will govern as public servants who understand that re-election is simply a byproduct of good public service and good ideas. And most importantly, we will stand up and offer an alternative to the policies coming out of Washington for the past two years.

“The challenges are too great, too generational in scope for us to be merely opponents of bad policies. Instead, we will put forward bold ideas and have the courage to fight for them. This means preventing a massive tax increase scheduled to hit every American taxpayer at the end of the year. It means repealing and replacing the disastrous health care bill. It means simplifying our tax code, and tackling a debt that is pushing us to the brink of our own Greece-like day of reckoning.

“For many of us coming to Washington for the first time and others returning to serve, it’s a long way from home. A long way from the people whose eyes we looked into at town halls, at diners or roundtables, and promised that this time it would be different. That if you elected Republicans to office again, we would not squander the chance you gave us, and we must not. Because nothing less than the identity of our country and what kind of future we will leave our children is at stake.

“That is our commitment and from you we ask this: hold us accountable to the ideas and principles we campaigned on.

“This is our second chance to get this right. To make the right decisions and the tough calls and to leave our children what they deserve – the freest and most exceptional society in all of human history.

“Thank you for listening, God bless you and your family, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.”

I got this from Gateway Pundit.

 

Commentary

The relationship between government spending and immigration

3 Comments
Political Map of Canada

Mark Steyn is one controversial Canadian. Here is a summary of his concerns about government spending, immigration, multiculturalism and Western civilization, from Canada’s national newspaper – the National Post.

Excerpt:

Rates of public spending growth here in Canada, meanwhile, are only sustainable if we permit mass immigration, given that Canadian birthrate declines are more drastic than even America’s (where they hold, for now at least at roughly replacement levels). These days, that immigration comes from Muslim countries, something that has caused severe social unrest in European countries that have relied on a similar model.

“In the space of about 20 years, the Muslim community went from really nothing to overtake the well-established Jewish community in Toronto. And the idea that that’s simply just one more interesting exotic item in the Canadian salad bar—we would be extremely lucky if that were the case.”

Amsterdam, among the most liberal cities in the world, he points out, is suffering an epidemic of gay bashing from unassimilated Muslims. In Sweden, perhaps Europe’s most tolerant country, half the Jewish population of Malmo has fled after a sharp rise in Islamic anti-Semitic attacks.

“I was in Malmo a couple of weeks ago,” he says. “It’s future is as a Muslim city.”

That he considers Muslim fundamentalists an unwelcome element in liberal society is the kind of thing that gets Mr. Steyn so readily branded as a bigot, particularly in Canada where a worship of his most hated term “multiculturalism” has, he says, utterly shrivelled the limits on public discussion. That may, however, only prove his point.

“It’s a sick fetish,” he says. “The idea that multiculturalism simply on its own terms is a virtue in itself is completely preposterous.”

What the fact that 75% of Canada’s population growth relies on immigration says “in effect, is that tomorrow’s a crapshoot; tomorrow is whoever happens to turn up.”

When Immigration Minister Jason Kenney suggests, as he did this week that Canadians can choose between higher immigration levels, or having more children, he leaves out one option: for Canadians to stop spending at a rate that demands population growth. In any case, Mr. Steyn says, the fact that most immigrants bring behind them older or unproductive family members is just a way to “kick the can 10 years down the line and ensure there’s an even bigger population making demands upon the state for which you’ll have to bring in even more people.” Eventually, the pyramid scheme runs out. We are, he says, engaged in nothing less than “civilizational suicide.”

An interesting story just came to a conclusion in Canada. A Canadian-born Muslim was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan while fighting Canadian soldiers. In Canada, Muslim men can marry four women who will all collect wefare. The article raises questions about whether the women entered the country legally. The same thing happens in the UK, according to the article. (In fact, there is an epidemic of rapes by Muslim gangs in various countries who justify their raping by same that the non-Muslim women are not dressed to proper Islamic standards.) Some work needs to be done to acclimate immigrants to Western standards of conduct.

A policy of preferring skilled immigrants might help prevent the problem of radical immigrants, but that’s not the policy favored by the left – they want unskilled immigrants because unskilled immigrants tend to vote for bigger government, more wealth redistribution, higher taxes and more control of business. These policies are put in place by the left in order to buy votes from those who like to collect government handouts. In fact, the left opposes immigration of skilled workers, since they are more likely to vote for lower taxes and limited government. I think we could be very open about legal immigration – but then we have to make immigrants responsible for paying their own way and following the laws of the land.

Podcasts

New version of Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s Love and Economics talk

2 Comments
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

If you’ve heard it before, it might be worth listening again – this version is clear and new, and there is Q&A. This is my favorite lecture on marriage because she makes marriage seem like the Lord of the Rings or some similar epic. There’s good and evil, and it’s very dangerous and adventurous and important.

The MP3 file is here.

Her goal in this lecture is to explain what families do to help to raise children who can participate in society and the free market. Her audience is fiscal conservatives and libertarians who think that marriage and family are not as important from fiscal issues. She is making a connection between marriage and civil society, and civil society to limited government, and limited government to liberty. Family should be very important to fiscal conservatives and libertarians.

My favorite part is about 26 minutes in, when she is discussing government-run day care, government-provided meals for children and being very aggressive about how she doesn’t want government taking over the roles of mothers and fathers. The push to make government take over the parental roles flows from the idea that women need to be more like men, and that means they need to be separated from their children so they can work like men do. Also, government programs attempt to communicate to women that men are unecessary as protectors and providers and moral leaders, since the government can protect, provide and educate.

What she does not mention is that socialists also love the idea of taking money from the hard-working, frugal parents and redistributing it to single mothers so that all the children will be equally screwed with loveless day care and lousy public-school educations, which are really more indoctrinations than preparation for a profession. They like the idea that everyone will be equal and the only way to do that is to yank children away from their parents.

Consider the words of this radical feminist:

“We really don’t know how to raise children. If we want to talk about equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised in families means there’s no equality. […]In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.”

(Mary Jo Bane:  Former Assistant Secretary of Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services of the Clinton administration)

This is what they think about the traditional family. The left thinks that the man’s job is to work, and the woman’s job is to work, and the government’s job is to steal their money so that everyone’s children are raised “communally”. This is what the left believes about marriage and family. That’s why they enact policies to break up marriages and push women out of the home to make them work like men. Leftists also don’t want parents teaching their children conservative views and values.

This lecture is highly-recommended. Christians really need to think about marriage and family the way she does. There are two things a woman needs to do to convince a good man to marry. 1) Treat marriage and family as a war against tyranny and socialism. 2) Understand and assist men with their needs and plans.