Thank You, Sen. Webb!

Never thought you'd see those words on this blog, huh? Well, neither did I.

But yesterday, Senator Jim Webb, who rarely does anything of which I approve, stood up to President Barack Obama and the national-security nincompoops in his Administration who have decided to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his band of thugs as criminals in New York. "Those who have committed acts of international terrorism are enemy combatants," said Sen. Webb, a former Marine, former Secretary of the Navy, and (like me) former Republican. "They do not belong in our country[;] they do not belong in our courts, and they do not belong in our prisons."

After the disgusting display of last fall, it's refreshing to see a prominent Virginia politician standing up to a president of his own party on a matter of grave importance to America's well-being. From time to time, I ask you to call Sen. Webb and ask him to vote a certain way on some legislation. Now I'm asking you to do something a little different. If you are a Virginian outraged by the decision to treat terrorists like regular criminals, please call Sen. Webb's office at (202) 224-4024 and thank him for standing up to President Obama.

Bush: "I went against my free-market instincts."

Former President George Bush XLIII delivered a speech yesterday in which he warned against the kind of government meddling that he perpetrated last fall.

This 55-second clip reveals a wealth of mushy thinking, and shows that the former President still doesn't grasp how deeply he harmed this country:

"I believe the role of government is ... to create the conditions that allow entrepreneurs and innovators to thrive."

No, it isn't, and it's arrogant and misguided for politicians to presume that government can "create the conditions" that foster prosperity. Freedom fosters prosperity, and freedom is natural; it needs no government to create it. Limited government is needed to protect the rights of those entrepreneurs and innovators and others so that they can create wealth. When government robs Peter to pay Paul, in other words, when it robs small-business owners and middle-class families to bail out big corporations, it undermines the very freedom on which prosperity depends.

"I went against my free-market instincts and approved a temporary [??] government intervention to unfreeze the credit markets so that we could avoid a major global depression."

Economic freedom is not a matter of "instinct". It is a matter of principle and common sense, backed by the lessons of history. If the former president had a stronger foundation in the philosophy of freedom, he could have understood at the time how the bail-out Band-Aid was really a poison pill.

"As the world recovers, we're gonna face a temptation to replace the risk-and-reward model of fr-- the private sector with the blunt instruments of government spending and control."

We've been failing in the face of that temptation for the last century, and we're paying a high price for it. Former President Bush XLIII was simply continuing the 20th-century trend of arrogant politicians presuming that they can somehow sponsor prosperity.

"History shows that the greater threat to prosperity is not too little government involvement but too much."

And history will record President Bush XLIII as having greatly increased that threat.

It would be nice simply to say, well, gee, it's too bad that he still doesn't get it. But he's far from being alone. Too many of the politicians still in power, and too many of the voters who keep them there, have the same mushy understanding of the role and capabilities of government. Our country desperately needs a renaissance of the philosophy of freedom, a reawakened, well-considered understanding that freedom nurtures prosperity, and that government will always be a threat to both.

Thursday on WTJS

My SamSphere friend Ken Marrero is slotted to sub for Mike Slater on WTJS in Jackson, Tennessee, on Thursday, and he's scheduled me to chat about Slaying Leviathan at 6:30 am. I hope you'll tune in!

Happy Birthday, U.S. Marine Corps!

Thanks for standing on the wall!

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Obama/Pelosi-"Care" Passes

The health-care power grab has passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 220-215.

Please call your Senators and ask them to vote against Obama-"care". If you live in Virginia, your Senators are:

Jim Webb
(202) 224-4024

and

Mark Warner
(202) 224-2023

If you do not live in Virginia and do not know how to contact your Senators, please click here.

Obama/Pelosi-"Care" Vote Likely Today

In the wake of President George Bush XLIII's bail-out, more than 100 banks failed. In the wake of President Barack Obama's "stimulus" package, unemployment has climbed above 10 percent. And in response to fumbling overreaches like these, Americans on Tuesday capped off a year of tea parties, town halls, and rallies by voting against big government.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is having none of it. She is trying to push a vote on the bill to cede massive power over the health care system to our big, bloated, bumbling federal government today.

My fellow Americans, if you don't want your family's health care in big government's clumsy hands, those hands that have so strangled prosperity, please contact your Representatives and urge them to vote against Obama/Pelosi-"care".

Conservatism Wins!

Today's has been my favorite election since 1984, because conservatism had won even before the day had dawned.

When the GOP's anointed liberal dropped out of the special election in New York's 23rd "safe Republican" congressional district on Saturday, after badly trailing Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, it was a clear victory for conservatism over the Party of Bush.

Here in Virginia, conservatism is winning its most important victory as Ken Cuccinelli defeats Steve Shannon in the race for Attorney General. The re-election of Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling is also good news.

Conservatism also played a role in the weirdest gubernatorial campaign in my memory. Creigh Deeds had won the Democratic nomination by positioning himself as the moderate-conservative alternative to two liberals. Then, bizarrely, in the general election campaign, he painted Bob McDonnell as a conservative, building much of his campaign on an effort to manufacture the former Attorney General's 20-year-old graduate thesis into some kind of Handmaid's Tale, while showing himself to be no opponent of government intrusiveness, refusing to reject the Obama-"care" public "option" and touting an endorsement from The Washington Post, a withering rag whose editors are so blinded by big-government ideology that they haven't grasped the fact that "new taxes" are not words that normal people like to read, especially in a grim economy. Is it any wonder that Governor-elect McDonnell is trouncing him?

The Republican top-ticket sweep in Virginia is, of course, very bad news for the Democrats. Indeed, as the Deeds campaign began to tank, Democrats became so desperate that they sent both President Barack Obama and DNC Chairman Tim Kaine to Virginia to campaign for him.

But combined with the much-merited slap across the face that New York conservatives delivered to the Republican Party, it's clear that the election of 2009 is much more than another swing of the pendulum.

This is not a Republican renaissance. This is a conservative renaissance. Americans are fed up with intrusive government and its arrogant, dangerous view of itself as their benefactor. And they are fed up with Republicans and Democrats alike who subscribe to the misguided notion that government is somehow the sponsor of prosperity. This disgust has been building for some time. It showed up in the reaction to the disastrously decided case of Kelo v. New London. It was clear in the "thumpin'" of 2006. And it exploded in the popular outrage at President George Bush XLIII's bank bail-out, his auto bail-out, President Obama's "stimulus" plan, and his health-"care" power grab--fueling unprecedented citizen backlash at tea parties, town-hall meetings, and the enormous 9/12 rally.

Big government, its pandering power-mongers, and their Mrs.-Danvers enablers in both parties are the big losers in the election of 2009.