The writer accuses the Republicans of nearly killing a tax cut bill that would extend tax cuts for working Americans for two more months. What the writer neglects to mention is that the Republicans wanted to hammer out a plan to extend them for at least a YEAR.  But here is the rub; they wanted to pay for the tax cuts with spending cuts in other areas of government. Call me crazy but I thought living within your means was a good idea. I guess not after reading the editorial, must be that Government bureaucrats are more efficient than I thought – no waste to cut there!

The author goes on to blast Tea Party Republicans, calling them far-right radicals, loud and stubborn, they are the tail wagging the dog and this is one sick puppy according to the writer.

Well on that we can agree – our government is one sick puppy, on both sides of the aisle.  But in this case the tail has it right, the tail of this sick puppy (the tea party freshmen) are the only adults in room.  They are being blasted by the writer because they want fiscal discipline? They want to pay for extended spending in some areas by cutting expenses in other areas? They want a government that lives within its means? They want the people to keep more of their money and the Government to get less? They want to uphold their promise to the voters who put them there to change the status quo in DC?

Am I the only one who thinks the writer’s vitriol is somewhat misplaced, or to be a little more accurate, bizarre?

The editorial seems to claim that the status quo folks – business as usual, out of control spending and borrowing and printing of money folks – are the smart ones. It’s like the author hasn’t heard about the little problem Europe is having with their economy: IT’S ABOUT TO IMPLODE. Europe is the canary in the mine and that’s one sick canary.  We are right behind them, ready to jump off the cliff if we follow the tax-and-spend business-as-usual crowd.

It is not the new Tea Party Republicans who have it wrong, it’s the folks who have gotten us to this point: $15,182,756,264,288 in debt and rising, stolen money from our Social Security Trust Fund to feed the spending beast, trillions spent on 50 years of Great Society Entitlement programs to end poverty and poverty is worse than ever. Nothing to show for trillions spent.  Every dollar we send to Washington is one less dollar in the private market. Who do you think has a better chance of creating good sustainable jobs: Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank or a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs? If you answer Jobs and Gates than we need to cut the size of government and grow the private sector. Our federal government has grown farther and wider and has more of our money than our Founders could ever have imagined. This was not their plan for America and if we don’t make some radical changes in Washington we may never get the old America back again.

The Tea Party Freshmen have it right, that sick-headed puppy in Washington has gotten us into this mess and it’s going to have to be pulled out by its tail.

Today, we are lucky if our young people see the merit in graduating from high school. Asia and Europe lead the world in manufacturing and technical skills. Now we lead the world with the highest business taxes and regulations out our kazoo. The acceptable norm is to run our country on the Wimpy school of economics, “I’ll gladly pay you on Thursday for a hamburger today.”

Our revenues can hardly pay the interest rate on our debt, let alone pay down on the principal. Today’s debt is the product of years of denial and it has to stop.

Today, many families are up to their eyeballs in debt. They live from paycheck to paycheck praying nothing happens before the next payday. Saving money for retirement or a college education is a dream long gone. Yet many in Congress want to raise taxes, claiming that taxing the rich will get us out of debt. What they don’t seem to grasp is that those taxes will just be passed down to us. We will pay more for fuel, food and commodities. Who can afford more? I can’t!

Last November we thought we sent a loud and clear message to Washington. We demanded an end to the madness and put 87 new people into office. Many of these were held by spendthrift incumbents. We expected them to follow through with their campaign promises. They promised to cut the budget and get the debt under control. Returning that $105 billion secreted in the health care bill would be a good start.

Many of them voted for another stopgap bandage that would temporarily keep the government open. Radical surgery is needed. Jim Gerlach and Pat Meehan reneged on their word. I urge you to pay them a visit and demand them to keep their campaign pledges.

Take your kids along for a good civics lesson. Express your disappointment in their behavior and in our waning support. They are hoping we have forgotten and have grown apathetic but we have not. No more Band-aids or bubblegum.

Patricia Sellers

West Chester

Also printed in The Daily Local News – Sunday, April 24, 2011

In 1956, an extraordinary three-year agreement on cooperation was signed by the Department of Economics at the Chicago University and the Faculty of Economics at the Catholic University of Chile. It was renewed twice, for a total of nine years. As a result, by the mid-1960s, there existed in Chile a substantial number of free-market economists, known as the Chicago Boys, even though many went on to graduate studies at other American universities. (Personally, after receiving my undergraduate degree there in 1970 and being a “Chicago Boy”, I went to Harvard University for my M.A. and Ph.D., to be forever the subject of jokes by my libertarian friends as a “Harvard Man”.) By the end of the 1960s, this team had begun to exert influence from middle-level positions on the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei Montalva.

Then came the breakdown of democracy under Salvador Allende and his ouster by the armed forces. Being in graduate school in the United States, I did not witness those dramatic days in my country, but for the same reason I faced a very difficult choice at the end of 1974: to remain in Boston enjoying the academic life I loved so much, or to go back to help the Chicago Boys (my former dean was already the economics minister) fight for a new country. I chose the latter. This team of economists who had learned so much from the American experiment did a “friendly takeover” of the Pinochet government in order to engineer a free-market revolution and to restore democratic rule. Our goal was nothing less than to transform a socialist country into a free one. And, we believe, we succeeded.

From 1973 to 1989, a true revolution took place in Chile, involving a radical, comprehensive, and sustained move toward free markets. This Chilean revolution doubled Chile’s historic rate of economic growth (to an average of 7 percent a year from 1984 to 1998), drastically reduced the proportion of people living in poverty, enormously advanced human liberty, and unleashed the forces that brought liberal democracy and the rule of law. The demonstration effect of the revolution has been described in this way:

“In a sense, it all began in Chile. In the early 1970s, Chile was one of the first economies in the developing world to test such concepts as deregulation of industries, privatization of state companies, freeing of prices from government control, and opening of the home market to imports. . . . In 1981, Chile privatized its social-security system. . . . Many of those ideas . . . ultimately spread throughout Latin America and to the rest of the world. . . . They are behind the reformation of Eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union today. . . . In some measure, Chilean economics are the prescription for bringing ailing Asian economies back to health . . . which demonstrates, once again, the awesome power of ideas” (James Flanigan, Los Angeles Times, August 5, 1998).

The Economist has stated that “Chile has become the most studied country in Latin America. Visitors arrive from all over the world to see how they can emulate the Chilean transformation, and what they should be doing next” (November 13, 1993).

Nevertheless, those of us who decided to enter the arena to bring about positive change working inside the revolutionary Pinochet government knew that the project would be controversial, even if we succeeded. Or, I should say, especially if we succeeded. We knew that socialists would never forgive a successful liberal revolution like the one we were engineering and would use all their influence in the media to create a black legend. To an amazing extent, they have succeeded…up to now. And that is why I have accepted Navigator’s invitation to speak out on the Chilean revolution, on the occasion of its thirtieth anniversary, even though my cause in America is a completely different one (introducing social-security choice).

Check Your Premises

The Pinochet government originated in a civilian rebellion against an unconstitutional government. Of course Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970 by means of a democratic election (though with only 36.6 percent of the vote, and only after a congressional choice between the top two vote-getters), but his government lost its democratic character by repeatedly violating the Constitution. There are numerous evidences to that effect (including a letter of the Supreme Court to Allende), but the most important one is the momentous agreement of August 22, 1973, of the Chamber of Deputies (the Lower House of the Chilean Congress that had elected Allende).

This agreement was approved by 81 to 47 votes, with all the deputies of the Christian Democratic Party (the party of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva) voting in favor. In this agreement, the chamber presented a list of twenty legal and constitutional violations of President Allende’s government (including illegal detentions and torture), and it agreed to give information of this “grave breakdown of the legal and constitutional order of the Republic” to the Armed Forces, among other authorities, and to tell them that “by virtue of their function, of their oath to remain faithful to the Constitution and the law, . . . it is up to them to put immediate end to all the situations referred to above, which infringe the Constitution and the law.” This demand of the elected legislature to the armed forces was, in fact, a call to forcibly remove the president, who had initiated the use of violence with the purpose of imposing a communist dictatorship. The Armed Forces, led by the person who was then the commander-in-chief of the army and acting pursuant to the agreement of the House of Deputies, removed Allende and took power eighteen days later, on September 11, 1973, vowing to restore democratic rule once circumstances permitted. It was as though Hitler, another democratically elected leader, had been removed by the Reichstag before becoming a dictator. As The Economist said in an editorial only two days later: “The temporary death of democracy in Chile will be regrettable, but the blame lies clearly with Dr. Allende and those of his followers who persistently overrode the Constitution” (September 15, 1973).

Another key document in this regard is the letter that former president Eduardo Frei Montalva sent in November 1974 to Mariano Rumor, then president of the International Christian Democrat Union, explaining and justifying the military intervention to remove Allende. He wrote: “The fall of Allende has meant a setback to world communism. The combination of Cuba with Chile, with its 4.500 kms. of Pacific Ocean coast and its intellectual and political influence in Latin America, was a decisive step in the control of this hemisphere. That explains such a violent and exaggerated reaction [against the ouster]. This country was going to be an operations base for the whole continent.”

According to Brian Crozier, founder of London’s Institute for the Study of Conflict: “During his three year period, Allende transformed the country, in effect, into a satellite of Cuba, and hence an incipient addition to the Soviet Empire. . . . By then Chile could be truthfully described as a Marxist state in ideological and economic terms. . . . From a strategic viewpoint, it had been turned into a major base for Soviet and Cuban subversive operations, including terrorism, throughout Latin America. . . . The Soviet KGB was recruiting members for training courses in terrorism. . . . North Korean specialists were training young members of Allende’s Socialist Party” (The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, 1999, pp. 346-48).

Given how far communist forces had proceeded in Chile, and given Allende’s unconditional support of Castro’s Cuba and the Soviet Union (he even called this country the “big brother” of Chile in a meeting in Moscow with Brezhnev), it is not surprising that a state of civil war followed the military intervention of September 1973. Despite that, and perhaps because of a long Chilean tradition of respect for the law, this civil war produced a minimal number of deaths – every one of them regrettable, of course, to those who value the human life as supreme – when measured by any historic standard. According to the report of the commission set up by President Aylwin (an antagonistic successor to President Pinochet): In a seventeen-year period, 2,279 people died, including members of the armed forces, terrorists, and possibly innocent civilians. “Most of them,” Crozier states, “died during the first months of military rule, when Chile was in effect a combat zone.” By way of comparison, 600,000 people died in the Spanish civil war (2 percent of the population), 375,000 in the American civil war (1.1 percent of the population), and 250,000 in the Guatemalan civil war (2.5 percent of the population) – not to mention the 100 million deaths attributed to socialism by The Black Book of Communism. In a country of 12 million, where a third of the voters had initially supported Allende, the toll was so low that clearly there was no systematic policy of human-rights violations such as would have involved hundreds of thousands of deaths.

But I also believe, and let me state it unequivocally, that members of the armed forces, in their fight against leftist terrorism, went beyond the law and committed human-rights violations. (See the compilation of my press articles, “Standing up for human rights and promoting democracy during the Pinochet government,” in www.josepinera.com.) Those were not mistakes, as some people call them, but crimes. They should be condemned, and the guilty individuals should suffer the penalties imposed by the courts. And indeed some are, the most notorious example being the former head of the intelligence office, an army general, who is in a Chilean jail.

Once we had created the institutions for democracy and limited government – a free-market economy, an independent central bank, a constitutional court, private television, and so on – the transitory government of President Pinochet, according to the constitution proposed by him and approved by referendum in 1980, voluntarily surrendered its power to a democratically elected government on March 11, 1990.

Since then, Chile has had three democratic governments and all the free-market reforms have survived successfully the political transition. Moreover, Chile has been the top-ranking Latin American country in several indexes of economic and political freedom. One of the younger members of the Chicago Boys, the current mayor of Santiago, received 49 percent of the vote in the 1999 presidential election, and current polls indicate he may be the next president.

Those of us who stayed in Chile or returned to Chile to bring about the success of this revolution were willing to risk our honor and our lives on its behalf. One of my best friends, Senator Jaime Guzman, was gunned down by leftist terrorists. We were willing to run such risks because we loved liberty above all, and because we thought it obscene to stand by and watch from an American campus or from Wall Street while our country was turned into a second Cuba. Today, we celebrate the Chilean revolution because, like the American Revolution, it has given birth – not without pain – to a new country and a free society.

José Piñera is founder and president of the International Center for Pension Reform, a worldwide initiative to promote the privatization of state-run social security systems. He is also a Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Cato Institute, co-chairs its Project on Social Security Choice, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the institute’s Trade Policy Center.

This editorial comment has been produced and distributed by The Atlas Society. If you would like to reproduce or publish this piece, you may do so provided you include the biographical information found on this page.

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It’s amazing to me how many liberal pundits are attempting to draw parallels between Egypt and Wisconsin. Other than the fact that people are protesting in the streets, the two have nothing in common.

Egypt’s revolution at first glance appears to be a quest for freedom; Wisconsin is a protest more in line with what we saw in Greece and France. In those two countries, we saw powerful public sector unions trying to protect and preserve overly generous health, retirement and pension benefits — benefits the people paying their bills neither have nor can afford.

Wisconsin’s Governor is doing exactly what he was elected to do. Chris Christie was the first Governor to lead the way on this difficult but necessary path. When first elected, he announced his intention to seek reductions in public sector benefits the bankrupt State could ill afford. He quantified the overly generous retirement and healthcare benefits enjoyed by State workers. He gave facts and figures of benefits the average taxpayer could only dream about. He gave examples of State workers “double dipping on taxpayer funded pensions.”

Shortly after Governor Christie made his intentions known he was asked to speak to the firefighters union. As he walked into the room, he was greeted with loud booing by the angry union crowd. His response was classic Christie: he said for years Governors were lying to the firefighters, the past Governors agreed to terms they knew we could not afford, and they kept kicking the can down the road. The previous governors’ strategies were appeasement and re-election with union support. Their hope was that the day of reckoning would be on some future Governor’s watch. Then Christie hit them right between the eyes with this question: “These Governors were all lying to you. I’m the first Governor to stand here and tell you the truth…so why are you booing me?”

The dirty little secret that is beginning to become abundantly clear is that there has been a very unholy relationship between Governors (mostly Democrats, but sadly some Republicans) and the Public Service Unions. Generous salaries, lifetime health benefits, early retirement and guaranteed pensions were the gifts given to these powerful unions in return for votes. The Unions received benefits far in excess of what taxpayers in the private sector were getting. The Unions were happy, the Governors got re-elected and the taxpayer was handed the bill.

What you are seeing in the Wisconsin protest is more Greece and France than Egypt; what you are seeing in the actions of newly elected Republican Governors in States like Wisconsin, Indiana and New Jersey is something called bold leadership. They are doing exactly what the voters elected them to do in the face of Union opposition that is ugly, uncivil and unprofessional – complete with Democratic legislators in hiding, Hitler posters, and teacher job actions that bring shame on their profession. (I thought we were going to be more civil after Arizona?)

Let’s hope the President is watching, because these courageous governors are lighting the path to fiscal responsibility. The President would do well to follow their lead.

Now wouldn’t that be some hope and change we could believe in?

Anthony Oleck is a patriot from Kennett Square, PA, and a regular contributor to the PACC.

Every form of media has been abuzz with the news out of Egypt. Whether they are peaceful demonstrations in pursuit of “freedom,” or riots in search of a strong man depends upon to whom you turn for news.

What is not in doubt is that President Muhammad Hosni Sayyid Mubarak is not going to be the head man in charge for much longer. What happens next is anybody’s guess. But something for which no guess work is required is the notion that the Sinai will, once again, shortly take center stage.

Israel returned the Sinai—fully 91 percent of the territory won by Israel during the Six Day war—to Egypt in the late 1970s in exchange for a promise of peace from then Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. After Sadat’s assassination, President Mubarak kept Egypt’s end of the bargain and, as recently as this week, deployed Egyptian troops to the Sinai. While that may seem counter-intuitive to peace, the Egyptian troops were there to prevent Hamas from opening a second front on Israel from where they could rain rockets down upon even more Israeli citizens.

The demonstrations in the streets of Cairo are becoming more and more violent as protestors clash with each other and police. What has been characterized by most of the media, both here and abroad, as a youth movement in search of political and social freedom has been suspiciously devoid of female participants. It appears to be overwhelmingly male, mostly young men, who are unemployed and uneducated.

While Egypt has been decidedly pro-business in recent years, this has had the dual effect of creating both a well-to-do, middle class who live like Westerners, and an underclass of men who have no jobs and, hence, no prospects for marriage or much of a future. The Egyptian regime, while becoming ever more tolerant and secular, had long maintained an iron fist on large segments of society. It is this disaffected class that has taken to the streets. There are many problems in Egypt: socioeconomics, democratic reform and, not the least, religious issues, which are mostly insoluble under Islamic strictures.

It is into this fray that the Muslim Brother-hood seems to be stepping, albeit without much public fanfare. Born in the late 1920s in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood can be seen as the father of modern Al-Qaeda. It was in Egypt that Al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman Muhammad Rabaie al-Zawahiri, joined and was eventually jailed with, the Muslim Brotherhood after An-war Sadat was assassinated by Lieutenant Khalid Islambouli, the leader of a Muslim Brotherhood cell. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood were rounded up after President Sadat’s assassination and were charged with plotting a complete over-throw of the existing order. This was mainly due to the Brotherhood’s complete repudiation of Egypt’s secular authority. Can we be sure that the demonstrations we are witnessing now will not lead to the same end as the banned Muslim Brotherhood’s public pronouncements? No, sadly, we cannot.

As a young private in the 7th Infantry Division (light) I remember American soldiers being deployed to the Sinai as Peace-keepers in 1987. It was the first time any of us had seen the “chocolate chip” DCUs and I remember it vividly. While we cannot be sure what the future holds for Egypt we can wager that it will be bad for both Israel and the United States.

That the movement in the street has public backing of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the rogue nation of Iran cannot be seen as anything but bad news, which leads me back to the title of this article. No matter who comes out on top in Egypt we can expect that Egyptian troops will withdraw from the Sinai, creating a vacuum into which Hamas will no doubt rush. If a United Nations (UN) sponsored peace-keeping mission does not materialize almost immediately, and UN sponsored peace-keeping missions do not materialize immediately, Israel will be forced to rush troops to the border to prevent jihadist rockets from falling on her citizens. Can American support be far behind? United States warriors have already served an average of five deployments in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Opening another front, even a toothless UN style deployment, will simply be too much. In the end result, Egypt will rise or fall, but we must hope that democracy rules the day. An Islamic republic modeled after Turkey may be the best we can hope for, but anything else is just too dismal to contemplate.

Reprinted with permission from “Outside the Wire: Advocacy and Outreach for the Warrior Class”, a bi-monthly newsletter. For information and to comment contact Chris Hill, Executive Editor at chillfactor1068@gmail.com.

No other democratic society in the world permits personal freedoms to the degree of the United States of America.  American courts, especially the Supreme Court, have developed a set of legal doctrines that thoroughly protect all forms of the freedom of expression.  When it comes to evaluating the degree to which we take advantage of the opportunity to express our opinions, some members of society may be guilty of violating the bounds of the First Amendment by publicly offending others through obscenity or racism.  Americans have developed a distinct disposition toward the freedom of expression throughout history.

The First Amendment clearly voices respect towards America’s religious freedom.  It also prevents the government from “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Since the early history of our country, the protection of our basic freedoms has been of the utmost importance to Americans.  A poem by Langston Hughes, “Freedom,” emphasizes the struggle to enjoy the freedoms that he knows are rightfully his.  He reflects the American desire for freedom now when he says, “I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.  I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.”  American’s recognize the need for freedom in its entirety without compromise or fear.

The American immigrants’ quest for freedom, brought them to our land, arriving with nothing but dreams and building America with the hopes of finding greater freedom or freedom for the first time.  American’s of all backgrounds work and fight together for one cause: FREEDOM.

Our First Amendment gives us the right to protest and picket, or strike, perform public speeches and hold rallies.  For instance, in March of 2000, more than a thousand community activists rallied to draft a “human” budget that put the needs of the poor and handicapped as a top priority.  Totally against the principles on which our Republic was founded, but they were not prohibited from their protest.  Rallies are an effective means for people to use their freedoms effectively to bring about change from the government.  The current rising up of Americans through the “Tea Party” rallies is a non-violent method to tell our government enough is enough.  STOP spreading the wealth.  Protect our FREEDOM.

Our Founding Fathers crafted America’s founding documents to provide us, for all time, our broad right to free speech.  We should assert our rights to free speech, to use them responsibly and boldly, to oppose racism, to oppose sexism, to oppose homophobia and bigotry, and oppose government intrusion into our daily lives, and to do so within the spirit of the First Amendment, not by creating an exception to it.”

The strong central theme of freedom of expression is the cornerstone of American government, culture and life.  The American voice on freedom has been shaped throughout the course of our history by the initial democratic notions of our immigrant’s desire to maintain the freedoms that we enjoy today.  Freedoms we fought long and hard for.

The freedom of speech has constantly been challenged and will continue to be challenged in the future.  It is important that we learn from prior tests against our Constitution, by those trying to denigrate our constitutionally protected rights, so that in the future, authority will not violate our freedoms or oppress our liberty.

The original Constitution did not contain a bill of rights because the convention delegates felt that individual rights were in no danger and would be protected by the states.  However, the lack of a bill of rights was the strongest objection to the ratification of the Constitution.  They were introduced by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to the First United States Congress in 1789 as a series of articles, and came into effect in December 1791, when they had been ratified by three-fourths of the States.  The applications of the personal freedoms described in the Bill of Rights, particularly the freedom of speech, have been challenged repeatedly in American courts of law and elsewhere.

This freedom of speech was recognized as a vital element in a democratic republic society.  Censorship and the infringement of First Amendment rights could not and would not be tolerated.  American citizens took a firm stand against the government and its “authority” at important times when they could have yielded to oppressive violations of their rights.

We should maintain our heritage and continue to oppose any denigration of our Constitutional rights for all time.

But the West Chester residents were presented with the classic Washington Monument Syndrome: cut the most visible and appreciated service in order to provoke outcry and then increase taxes instead.

West Chester residents were not told, as we can see in the minutes from their August 2010 meeting, that Borough Council voted to use brick instead of concrete for the sidewalk around our recently-built Chestnut Street parking garage. In fact, Board President Holly Brown said that she “does not feel the $9,500 cost is too much” for for this frivolous expense.

Shockingly, prior to the vote to spend $9,500 on brick pavers instead of concrete for the sidewalks, it was noted that “Council added over $800,000 for two extra facades for the alley sides plus $300,000 for an extra elevator” on this very project! Also in the minutes is that “change orders in the (Chestnut Street garage) project have increased the cost over $170,000.”

We are also a borough that overpays for electricity so that our residents can subsidize alternative power. We are a borough that pays, according to the April 2010 Borough Council minutes, “$500,000 for a Municipal Building Energy Retrofit Project.” We are also either paying to build a parking garage solely for West Chester University’s use, or paying the legal fees to back out of it.

West Chester residents were given a choice between their trash and their taxes. The real choice was between brick pavers, two extra facades, an extra elevator, subsidizing alternative energy, low-energy lighting, and a University parking garage versus a 20% tax increase.

It looks like our Washington Monument will stay open after all. I wonder how brick pavers would look around the outside?

SEAN CARPENTER

West Chester Borough

Originally published December 23, 2010 in the Daily Local News.

Daily Local News

November 30, 2010

In “Freedom of Expression for All” in the Daily Local on Monday, Nov. 22, Mr. Hochella writes about the Chester County Commissioners decision to take control of Holiday displays on the court house grounds. Regarding the Free Thought Society he complains that “not everyone else has the right to express” their opinion. This is not so. Everyone does have the right of free speech but as with all rights, free speech comes with responsibilities.

Margaret Downey and her Free Thought Society’s so-called “Tree of Knowledge” was a take-off of a Christmas tree but instead of decorations of holiday cheer it was “decorated” with atheist book titles, some of which aimed disparagingly at the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Americans and four billion people worldwide. This may be a right but the way it was exercised was unnecessarily and purposely rude, hurtful and inappropriately timed.
The Chester County Commissioners had reached out the hand of tolerance and inclusion to the Free Thought Society and it was bitten off.

Might I remind the Free Thought Society the rights they choose to exercise in such a provocative manner, are stated in our nation’s founding document as being an endowment of the Creator. Also, Pennsylvania was conceived by William Penn as “A Holy Experiment” and 100 years later its constitution was crafted with a preamble stating thus:

“We, the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, grateful to Almighty God for the blessings of civil and religious liberty, and humbly invoking His guidance, do ordain and establish this Constitution.”

So, why is it such an affront to have a Christmas and Hanukkah display on government property? The first Ammendment states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”-  As far as I know Congress did not pass a law regarding  Holiday displays in West Chester and there were no U.S Congressmen or Senators involved in erecting them. Considering the documents cited above it seems that  prohibiting all things of a religious nature from the community public square was not intended. The 1st ammendment  does not state the “free exercise thereof” except on government property.

Ponder this — if there is no God, any rights we enjoy must be granted by the government. Rights granted by governments can and have been taken away by governments — this is the danger.
If the “freethinkers” way of thought prevails our rights would be in peril.

During the season of “Peace on Earth, Goodwill Toward Men,” a time of joy for so many Chester County families, it is unfortunate that a tiny group would create so much contention. I applaud Commissioners Terence Farrell and Carol Aichele for their common sense in recognizing the “Tree of Knowledge” for what it really is — a “tree of mockery” — and for their Solomon-like wisdom in resolving this issue.

Daily Local News

September 17, 2010

I learned about delusion as a young man during conversations with my grandfather who during the 1940s and 1950s as a United Public Workers Union official worked to organize government employees. He was convinced that the big corporations controlled our government and oppressed working people.

According to him the Soviet Union was on the side of working people. I asked him — “if communism was so great, why did they build the Berlin Wall?” His answer was that I was duped by the “powers that be” and that “the wall was built to keep the West Germans from rushing to the Communist side.”

This socialist corpora-phobic view still exists as evidenced by the letter to the DLN … “Mr. Pitts Has It Wrong.” Here, Karen Porter expressed her belief that those who disagree with the Obama agenda of fundamentally transforming America are “misled” racists and bigots “financed by huge corporate conglomerates” and “egged on by greedy corporate interests.”

This is delusion!

There is no doubt our free market system is based on self-interest and there is greed and corruption, but does human nature miraculously change once a socialist system is installed?

History teaches it does not. The Bolsheviks took power and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics killed millions. The National Socialist German Workers Party came to power, resulting in the death of millions. Mao Tse Tung in his effort to bring his vision of the “Socialist Man” to reality killed millions. It can be debated that Stalin, Hitler and Mao were not “pure” socialists, but what cannot be argued is that the hope of change through socialism was the pathway to absolute power.

I have no fear of corporations large or small. They have little control over me. I can speak out against any corporation and am free to buy or not buy their products or invest or not invest in their stock. When “we the people” feel corporations are getting out of control we rein them in through regulation.

I am not under any delusion that capitalism is perfect, but I am convinced we have far more to fear from big government than big corporations. If we continue to accept socialism in bits and pieces we may find one day that we have rendered so much power unto government that “we the people” cannot rein it in.

I happened to be reading some of the Daily Local blogs when I came across this disturbing piece from Karen Porter. In her Sept. 4 blog, “From Chester County’s Left Bank,” Ms. Porter writes:

“… This country should hang its head in shame … we are experiencing one of the most shameful times in American history. Over these past months, this country has engaged in its most shameful preoccupation — the hateful and racist destruction of this country’s first African-American President. What is happening today to Barack Obama, and his family, and to all African-American citizens and other ‘minorities’ is truly the most disgusting thing I have witnessed in my 63 years.”

It is beyond disturbing that Ms. Porter should label as racist those who now understand what the “change” promised by candidate Obama really means. Obama could not have been elected if it were not for the many white independents who became enthralled with his soaring speeches, his political savvy. News anchors got “tingles up their legs” when he spoke and by and large most voters ignored the fact he had no management experience, no leadership experience and in the Illinois Senate voted “present” on most of the hard legislation rather than take a stand.

These enthralled white voters had no regard for race when they voted Obama into office. It is outrageous that Ms. Porter should imply that these same folks have suddenly turned racist simply because they don’t like the policies of the president they helped to elect.

Articles are surfacing from around the world … Time magazine has a front page cover on the “Amazing Shrinking Presidency,” the Drudge Report has news articles about Democrats who are distancing themselves from Obama and his policies. The man has turned into the “fastest worst president ever.” He has ignored the people, he has pursued an agenda more liberal and progressive than any could have imagined. He brought Chicago backroom dirty politics to Washington … and he has put us deeper into debt in just two years than all the presidents who came before him.

The country has not turned against Barack Obama because he is black … that is a preposterous statement from Ms. Porter. They are the same people who elected him. But now their eyes have been opened, the leg tingle has become a sharp pain; they don’t want this country changed from what our Founding Fathers intended. That is why they are turning against him. But you, the far left, and the liberal media who never vetted him, have too much invested in this president. If he fails you all fail too, so now your only recourse is to label all those who oppose Obama’s change and his policies as racist.

In Washington last week, Dr. Martin Luther King’s gracious niece spoke before hundreds of thousands of conservatives, independents and some Democrats who oppose President Obama’s policies. It was the Glenn Beck rally and I very much doubt that the niece of the slain civil rights leader would speak before that group if she felt they were all racist.

Anthony J Oleck

Kennett Square