Memorial Day 2010

As a citizen of the freest, greatest country in history, I express my gratitude for those who throughout our history, have paid the last full measure so that we, collectively, could enjoy the fruits of liberty.

Thank you also to the many men and women--among them, some of my friends--who even now defend the freedoms I hold so dear. May we, collectively, never take our liberty, or those who defend it, for granted.

Congressman Sam Johnson, Air Force vet, on what you can do (broken link) to support the troops this Memorial Day.

Via Ace, a great video of our last WWI vet. Watch & learn.

Army vet & Yale alumnus Flagg K. Youngblood (my kind of name) has a great article up at the Young America's Foundation website (also broken link) about military service. From that piece, a few interesting stats:

At last count, the Department of Veterans Affairs found 41,891,368 Americans have served in uniform during times of war since 1775.

651,030 Americans have died in battle to protect liberty at home and abroad, and an additional 539,079 Americans have died in the line of military duty.

3,447 of the United States’ bravest have been awarded the Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest tribute to military valor, since Congress authorized the decoration in 1861, per the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

At The Corner, Pete Hegseth quotes John Stuart Mill:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.

Remember Jason Dunham, American, Marine, Medal of Honor recipient.

There is something worse than war; there are things more important than life.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

ConSource: Good News For People Who Love America & The Constitution

Got an email this morning from a good friend of mine who helped found ConSource, the post-partisan effort to collect and digitize primary source documents related to the creation of the American Constitution. It seems a heretofore unknown/identified early draft of the Constitution has been found by Lorianne Updike-Toler, also a friend of the blog.

(It would be more accurate to say that she's a friend of the blog's author as I have no idea what she thinks of the blog as such.)

Anyway, here's the story:

Researcher Lorianne Updike Toler was intrigued by the centuries-old document at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

On the back of a treasured draft of the U.S. Constitution was a truncated version of the same document, starting with the familiar words: "We The People. . . ."

They had been scribbled upside down by one of the Constitution's framers, James Wilson, in the summer of 1787. The cursive continued, then abruptly stopped, as if pages were missing.

A mystery, Toler thought, until she examined other Wilson papers from the Historical Society's vault in Philadelphia and found what appeared to be the rest of the draft, titled "The Continuation of the Scheme."

[...]

"This was the kind of moment historians dream about," said Toler, 30, a lawyer and founding president of the Constitutional Sources Project (www.ConSource.org), a nonprofit organization, based in Washington, that promotes an understanding of and access to U.S. Constitution documents.

"This was national scripture, a piece of our Constitution's history," she said of her find in November. "It was difficult to keep my hands from trembling."

As other researchers "realized what was happening, there was a sort of hushed awe that settled over the reading room," Toler said. "One of them said the hair on her arms stood on end."

Two drafts of the Constitution in Wilson's hand had been separated from his papers long ago. One of them included the beginning of still another draft and was apparently seen as part of a single working version, instead of a separate draft.

Toler said "The Continuation of the Scheme," including its provisions about the executive and judiciary branches, completes that draft, making it a third.

As always, if you're interested in learning more about or supporting the efforts of ConSource, please click the link.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me atlybberty@gmail.com.

Words of Wisdom from the World's Luckiest Investor

This is my inaugural post, one which will hopefully be the first of many.

Warren Buffet, Investor Extraordinaire, is constantly used as a tool of the left. All they have to do is point at the Oracle of Omaha and say "he's on our side," and candidates are instantly lent market cred. However, Mr. Buffet's liberal political views are mostly guided by social issues, and he tends to support Democrat presidential candidates in spite of--not because of--their economic policies.

If you've never read his annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter, you should. Its conversational tone makes it readable for even the most inept student of business and finance. with so much doom and gloom from the Alarmist in Chief, Buffet's perspective is refreshing.

Amid this bad news, however, never forget that our country has faced far worse travails in the past. In the 20th Century alone, we dealt with two great wars (one of which we initially appeared to be losing); a dozen or so panics and recessions; virulent inflation that led to a 21 1 ⁄ 2% prime rate in 1980; and the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment ranged between 15% and 25% for many years. America has had no shortage of challenges.

Without fail, however, we’ve overcome them. In the face of those obstacles – and many others – the real standard of living for Americans improved nearly seven-fold during the 1900s, while the Dow Jones Industrials rose from 66 to 11,497. Compare the record of this period with the dozens of centuries during which humans secured only tiny gains, if any, in how they lived. Though the path has not been smooth, our economic system has worked extraordinarily well over time. It has unleashed human potential as no other system has, and it will continue to do so. America’s best days lie ahead.

'Nuff said. Read the rest here.


If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at mattlybbert@gmail.com.