What's become of the spirit of '81?

Mention the French Riviera and most people will conjure up images of le casino in Monte Carlo, le port in Saint Tropez, la Croisette in Cannes, or la Promenade des Anglais in Nice. Less obvious are visions of Grasse, a small town tucked away in the hinterland, a 30-minute drive north of Nice, and proudly described by the locals as the capital of the French perfume-making industry. From a historical perspective, the town’s claim to fame lies elsewhere, more particularly in François Joseph Paul de Grasse’s decisive participation in the American Revolutionary War against the British along with Comte de Rochambeau, Admiral d’Estaing and Lafayette.

De Grasse, who was born and raised in nearby Bar-sur-Loup, is indeed best remembered in South-Eastern France for defeating the British Fleet in the Battle of Chesapeake in September 1781. De Grasse’s victory in the Bay on board le Ville de Paris that year conclusively cut off supplies from the forces led by General Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, contributed to Cornwallis’s surrender to General Washington’s Continental Army, and ultimately paved the way for British initiatives to negotiate an end to the war and, afterwards, for the adoption by the newly-created United States of America of a Constitution strictly limiting government and uniquely experimenting with individual freedom and responsibility.

As a sign of gratitude for his services during the American Revolutionary War, François Joseph Paul de Grasse was later made a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, the organization founded in 1783 to promote the ideals and fellowship of all those who had gallantly fought for freedom during the war. The original copy of de Grasse’s Cincinnati membership certificate can be seen in the small museum dedicated to the memory of the French admiral in Grasse.

Ominously, the museum was poorly attended when I went there last October. Small wonder. A recent poll conducted in France by IFOP and published in Paris Match on November 5th, 2009 shows that 82% of French people still enthusiastically support Barack Obama’s big-government agenda one year after his election as President of the United States.

Sadly, at least on this side of the Atlantic, the spirit of ’81 as embodied by Comte de Grasse more than two hundred years ago appears to have fatally faded away.

Strategic Operations and the Jihadi Enemy

By John Guandolo As we look at recent events, it becomes clear that the evidence points to the fact that these were not just acts of jihad linked by Islamic doctrine. They were also operations which drew on most or all of the key elements that we see in overseas operations, and which have we previously seen prior to or during operations here in the States. Here is what we might call their five-part planning matrix, along with a look at how it maps out for two homeland incidents this year as well as the strike in India last year.

Al Qaeda / Jihadi Op Planning:

1) A good target is a target until mission completion (World Trade Center 1993 = WTC 2001)

2) A good penetration location once is a good penetration location again (White House: Alamoudi)

3) The key operational guy always leaves before the Op (Ramzi Yousef: WTC 1)

4) Target preference is communicated via some medium (AQ discussing targeting US economic center)

5) Religious/Legal Approval for Op must be given (Blind Sheikh in US)

Hasan: FT HOOD

1) Military personnel are always a target (Sgt Akbar, et al)

2) Hasan was on DHS Taskforce (http://www.gwumc.edu/hspi/old/PTTF_ProceedingsReport_05.19.09.PDF) see page 29 - odd.

3) The prior Muslim Chaplain at Ft Bragg left and put Hasan in charge as the lay Muslim Chaplain. Why did the Chaplain leave and when?

4) Target Preference Texas = http://armiesofliberation.com/archives/2009/10/10/yemens-al-qaeda-sets-targets-as-gulf-oil/

5) Email approval from Awlaki (see attached UNCLAS DHS reports)

Lashkar-e-Toiba: MUMBAI

1) NA

2) Recce Team of David Headley and Tahawwur Hassan Rana (Lashkar-e-Toiba) arrested in US by FBI last month

3) Both lived and traveled extensively to locations attacked in Mumbai and left prior to attacks.

4) Individuals in Pakistan and UK provided leadership for operation - and Headley met with several LET guys in India and went to Pakistan afterwards. Team apparently (evidence still being collected) went and reconned all locations. Headley was at Nariman House (Jewish) where he posed as a Jew.

5) Approval from Pakistan for operational team.

Boyd et al: North Carolina

1) Targets were numerous overseas, no specific targets in US

2) Unknown

3) Op didn't happen so unknown - also, this was a traveling jihadi roadshow...different from a singular attack

4) Bad guys traveled extensively and likely chose wide variety of targets (statements indicate they were to fight in Algeria, and conduct attacks elsewhere as well)

5) Unsure if approval was given in US or Pakistan. Group had direct ties to Gulbuddin Heckmatyar which means Pakistani ISI was giving guidance as well.

The author was a top counter-terrorism expert for the FBI before leaving the Bureau in 2008. He now works in the Washington area as a consultant and trainer, and is a fellow of the Centennial Institute in Denver.

Offering and obtaining loans is not charity

In our easy-money world of low-interest loans, many draw the conclusion that we should be able to borrow money just because we want it. Whether it is conventional loans for the purchase of homes or automobiles, or credit cards for buying practically everything else, terms are easy and cheap–or so it appears. This reflects the larger commercial picture as the Federal Reserve System has been keeping its interest rates low for member banks. This is designed to avoid the monetary disaster which is the likely consequence of the government’s fiscal irresponsibility. Annual budgets of more than a trillion dollars were bad enough; now the Obama Administration and the Democrat Congress have given us trillion dollar deficits!

The national debt now is more than $12 trillion (12,000,000,000,000), which is unfathomable in human terms. But what is clear is that it will never be paid off. In the meantime, the Fed is keeping interest rates low to avoid looming national bankruptcy.

But this is not sustainable. In a commercial recession that shows no significant signs of abating, our currency faces repudiation in world markets and, in due course, our own national market. No policy can keep the dollar sound when in fact it has lost its purchasing power.

If it’s any comfort to anyone, our national policy makers are as inclined to believe in fantasies about loans as all those Americans who moved into homes that they could not afford or avoided credit card fees for unpaid charges. Of course, that is no comfort at all.

Money, like any good in the marketplace, has its price. In a primitive barter system, we would be trading objects which for the most part are incommensurable. Money allows us to value the objects we want or need. But money itself does not, to state the obvious, grow on trees.

If one wants a house or a car, one has to pay for it. (At least, that’s what we all thought until the sub-prime market in real estate was cranked up by a combination of federal laws, ACORN law suits, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack credit terms.) If one wants money that one hasn’t got, one must likewise be willing to pay for it. This is plain justice for several reasons.

First, it belongs to someone else. However much one may long for someone else’s money, it is mere covetousness to imagine that one has a right to it. Just as one has no right to expect automobile dealers or owners to give one a car, or homeowners or mortgage companies to give one a house, no one is entitled to money from a bank or other lending institution.

Second, money is typically not lying around uselessly. It is invested in properties, securities or businesses that will yield a profit or dividend. The popular mythology of bankers sitting on hoards of money which they are selfishly denying to needy people needs to be discredited. No one in his right mind recklessly gives away money.

Third, money must be lent at a cost because there is no sense in taking it from a profitable venue and putting it into an unprofitable one. Money is not "free." There is a net loss for people who get back only the principal without the interest.

Fourth, loans must be repaid with interest to insure that the money lenders have a continual supply of money to lend to future borrowers. If debts are not repaid or the return falls short of where the money could have been invested more profitably, the capacity of the lenders is in question. Indeed, the capacity of borrowers to get money is seriously impaired.

In fact, the current artificially low interest rates have already pinched the market for loans. Lenders who do not wish to go out of business have found ways to protect themselves against a run on their funds by asking for more collateral or better credit.

Similarly, credit card companies try to protect their reliable customers by imposing more fees on the less reliable. Credit card users who pay off their monthly bills faithfully have been rewarded with no interest charges. Again, money must be flowing back to keep these firms in business. Where is the justice in the careful spenders subsidizing the careless ones?

The sooner we free ourselves from our addiction to easy money, the sooner our commerce will be healthy again. But that means facing facts about loans.

Have a mindful Thanksgiving

(Denver Post, Nov. 22) Were you as shocked as I was to read in the paper last Sunday that Frontier Airlines’ new boss prays for his employees and sees them as made in the image of God? The very idea. Who would want to work for a man like that? It certainly cast a pall over my Thanksgiving season. One of those offended by Bryan Bedford’s faith-based capitalism was Buie Seawell, a DU ethics professor and Presbyterian minister. Since principles such as respecting co-workers are “universal values,” scolded Seawell, “God would be pleased if we did that without doing it in his name.” But the right reverend is wrong. The equal dignity of every individual is NOT a universal value. Ask the billions who live under Islamic, Hindu, or Marxist oppression. It matters whether we’re regarded as endowed by the Creator or evolved from slime. So acknowledgment of the Author of our liberties has been understood by great men from Washington and Lincoln to FDR and Reagan as being essential to the preservation of those liberties.

America’s tradition of Thanksgiving, first proclaimed by President Washington, is integral to this. When leaders in business and media, education and science, the military and the arts, as well as political leaders, reverence higher authority at this or any time of year, they ennoble themselves and all of us. Of clergy who rebuke them for it, the less said the better.

On this day in 1963, Nov. 22, two of the most influential men of the century died. One, of course, was John F. Kennedy, slain in Dallas. Remember his pledge that the United States would “pay any price, bear any burden, to ensure the survival and the success of liberty”? If our sense of purpose is less certain now, perhaps it’s from forgetting a truth asserted by another voice that was silenced the same day, C. S. Lewis.

“I was not born free,” insisted Lewis, the Oxford don and Christian apologist. “I was born to obey and adore.” Much as Washington, Wall Street, Hollywood, and Rev. Seawell might bridle at this idea, countless God-fearing Americans including Frontier’s Bedford would cheerfully assent. None of us is self-made or self-sufficient. Yet many of us forget it’s so. Only those who remember are fit for freedom. Thanksgiving Day is about the remembering.

Indeed at our house, as mentioned earlier, we try to make this a gratitude season, Thanksgiving month. Some of the markers are communal, others are personal. Some are celebratory and others somber. Day by day, regardless, it’s possible to say with Lincoln’s Second Inaugural – quoting the Psalms, after four years of war and only days before his own death – “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

During this present November, for example, only the ingrate could fail to lift up thanks on the 3rd for our voting rights, on the 9th for our Berlin Wall victory, and on the 11th for our brave veterans. Even in mourning the jihadist massacre at Fort Hood on the 5th, we had occasion to be thankful for our country’s compassion to victims, its justice to evildoers, its resilience in adversity. My family rejoiced in birthdays for a grandson on the 13th and a daughter on the 18th. What have been your family’s gratitude moments this month?

It was also on Nov. 22 back in 1858, notes historian Tom Noel, that our pioneer forebears organized Denver as a city. Achieving statehood 18 years later, they took the motto Nil Sine Numine, “Nothing without the Spirit.” It’s inscribed on the chairs, the stairs, and even the doorknobs in our State Capitol, reminding all who enter there to reverence higher authority. May we as Coloradans be not forgetful but mindful on Thanksgiving Day 2009.

GOP shapes 'Contract for Colorado'

State Republican leaders are said to be near agreement on a center-right campaign agenda for turning Colorado around in 2010. According to a Mike Rosen column yesterday and a Denver Post story today, the "Contract for Colorado" would include: • A commitment to limit taxes and state spending.

• Rescinding the Ritter executive order unionizing state employees.

• Requiring employers to participate in the federal e-verify program for new hires.

• Establishment of a state "rainy day" fund.

• Responsible development of renewable energy and Colorado's abundant oil and natural gas resources as well as nuclear energy.

• Appointing conservative judges to balance the court and reign in judicial activism.

• Expanding school choice through additional charter schools and education vouchers.

• Reversing property tax and auto registration taxes.

. Banning taxpayer funding for abortion agencies like Planned Parenthood, in pursuance of general statement of principle defending the sanctity of human life.

How strongly will Scott McInnis speak out for these goals in the campaign and fight for them if elected? What will his erstwhile rivals, Josh Penry and Tom Tancredo, do to McInnis to the contract? Will a broad alliance of GOP candidates for state House and Senate line up with the contract as well?

Important questions, all of them, and impossible to answer at this early date. But this is a step in the right direction. Stay tuned.