America: Are we a nation where government can order people to buy health coverage? Liberals can try all they want to place us on a "road to serfdom". conservatives are winning where it matters most .. We are winning the war of ideas. And liberals are taking notice.
It's an exciting time for conservatives. Also a dangerous one.
On the one hand, we have opportunities aplenty now, thanks in large part to liberal overreach. An overzealous majority in Congress, revved up by their 2009 Christmas Eve health care victory in the House of Representatives, opened 2010 with a far.left agenda far removed from the will of the American people.
They can't say we didn't warn them. Conservatives said repeatedly that voters weren't going to stand for more spending, more regulation, more control from "on high." As I wrote in a column last January, "Our leaders would do well to listen to the wisdom of the people, before they learn it first hand in November."
They didn't listen. So they learned.
So why is 2011 a dangerous time for conservatives? Two reasons.
First, there is much to do .. and very little margin for error. Obamacare is now the law of the land, and we have a new START Treaty. New START will hamper U.S. efforts to field a missile defense. Obamacare will make health care less affordable. So we're starting from a hole.
Second, it's easy to lose sight of what's truly at stake. It's more than a fight over one particular piece of legislation. It's not just about health care, harmful treaties, tax hikes or defense cuts .. as important as these are. It's about America 's First Principles. It's about the fundamental relationship between citizens and their government.
For example, are we a nation where government can order people to buy health coverage? Set aside for a moment any discussion about whether such coverage is wise. The question is, does the Constitution allow government to force you to buy it? Critical debates such as this have motivated thousands of Americans to get involved in the public debate.
Consider what we as a nation have seen unfold over the last 12 months. Across the country, people who had never before been engaged in politics have sprung to action. They've written letters, made phone calls, and attended town hall meetings. Whatever the forum, they've called for fiscal sanity, individual responsibility and limited government .. all constitutional principles. And it's working.
Liberals can try all they want to place us on a "road to serfdom," to use F.A. Hayek's famous phrase. The fact is, conservatives are winning where it matters most .. and not just at the ballot box. We are winning the war of ideas. And liberals are taking notice.
In recent months, the Obama administration has begun to take ideas directly from the conservative playbook:
On national security, they've canceled civilian trials for terrorists, kept Guantanamo Bay open, and extended key provisions of the Patriot Act.
On federal spending, they've proposed a federal pay freeze as a first step toward fiscal sanity.
On immigration, they've abandoned their pursuit of comprehensive immigration reform.
On economic recovery, they've admitted that the Obama tax hikes are wrong for America.
Much, however, remains to be done.
My hope is that the new Congress will follow through on this momentum and fulfill the conservative mandate delivered in November. Standing firmly on principles, conservatives can push to repeal Obamacare, rein in government spending and regulations, and stop all tax hikes.
They can, in short, listen to the wisdom of the people.
Ed Feulner
Ed Feulner is president of The Heritage Foundation (http://www.heritage.org). The Heritage Foundation is committed to building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.
Rosa Parks is defying the unwritten code of racial subservience. She is also defying Alabama law. The driver summons the police. They arrest Mrs. Parks and take her to jail. Viewed from one perspective, Ronald Reagan and Rosa Parks couldn't have been more different. He was the most powerful person in the world, commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States. She was one of the least powerful, an unknown black seamstress working in the back room of a department store in the deep South.
"Anyone who reads the words of the Founders," Brooks writes, "cannot miss their keen emphasis on the morality of the systems they intended to create. Our ideas about free enterprise and liberty were born from a sense of what is right and what helps us to thrive as people, not from a monomaniacal obsession with what makes us rich." Historian Matthew Spalding echoes this theme in his book We Still Hold These Truths: "As the Founders saw it, the right to property was not simply an economic concept, and was much more than owning a bit of land. It was a first principle of liberty. The essence of liberty is the freedom to develop one's talents, pursue opportunity, and generally take responsibility for one's own life and well-being."
"Was the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords a terrorist attack? I mean, you have to look at the evidence and look at the motivation, and then you make a judgment." The fact is, more than three dozen terrorist plots against the U.S. have been foiled since 9/11. There's Richard Reid, the would-be "shoe bomber." There are the six U.S. citizens of Yemeni descent arrested in 2002 for conspiring with terrorists (the "Lackawanna Six"). There are the seven men apprehended in Miami and Atlanta in 2006 for plotting to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower. Just last year, Faisal Shahzad was arrested for trying to detonate explosives in an SUV parked in Times Square, and Mohamed Osman Mohamud was arrested for trying to blow up a car bomb at a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore. The list goes on.
Copyright 2013 is held by the nominated authors on this article page.
The Download book does not contain a section on Seder Olam
Definition: King's Calendar Chronological Research
What is the King's Calendar? The Premise: Between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE (but continuing down to at least 104 BCE), Sectarian redactors transcribed the legitimate 'solar year' chronological records of Israel and Judah, into an artificial form, with listed years as each comprised of 12 months of 4 weeks of 7 days, or 336 days per year, thus creating a 13th artificial year where 12 solar years existed.
When the Synchronous Chronological Data provided in the Books of Kings and Chronicles for the Divided Kingdom Period are measured in years of 336 days, the synchronisms actually align. [Refer to Appendix Five to see how it synchronises the Divided Kingdom Period]
About the KingsCalendar Publisher
R.P.BenDedek is the owner and Editor of KingsCalendar.com which was originally set up to publicize his research results into the Chronology of Ancient Israel. Those results were published under the title: 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran'.
Whilst there have been many attempts to solve the chronological riddle of the Bible's synchronisms of reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah and their synchronism with other Ancient Near Eastern Nations, no other research is based on a simple mathematical formula which could, if it is incorrect, be disproved easily. To date, no one has been able to dismiss the mathematical results of this research.
Free to air Academic articles set forth Apologetics for and results of his discovery of an "artificial chronological scheme" running through the Bible, Josephus, the Damascus Documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Seder Olam Rabbah.
During the current economic downturn, this book has been dramatically reduced in price but will eventually rise as the economy improves.
Check the Chapter Precis Page to see details of each chapter and to gain access to the Four Free to Air Chapters
R.P. BenDedek writes social commentaries and photographic 'Stories from China' both at KingsCalendar, and as a contributing columnist at Magic City Morning Star News in Maine USA.
He has been teaching English to Chinese Students in China since 2003 and currently (2013) is teaching in Suzhou City Jiangsu Province.
