Samson's Jawbone

Every one knows good leadership sometimes requires saying no. One of the first words most children learn to pronounce is "no," because their parents protect them from their innocence and naivety telling them "no." President Harry Truman understood the implications of an extended War with China and said "no" to Mac Arthur's plan to cross the Yalu river. When MacArthur disobeyed, the President relieved him. George H. W. Bush understood how difficult a war to topple Saddam Hussein's regime in Baghdad would be, and said "no" to those who called for expanding The Persian Gulf War beyond its objective of liberating Kuwait. President Ronald Regan said no when President Gorbachev demanded he give up the Strategic Defense Initiative, and walked away from Reykjavik, Iceland with no agreement. That decision marked the beginning of a series of events that lead to fall of the Berlin Wall and of the Soviet Union. Ever since they took control of Congre...

Over the summer I have been reading through The Federalist Papers. They are a series of 80 papers written by several of our founding fathers after the Constitutional Convention to persuade the colonists to adopt the Constitution. They provide the philosophical reasoning behind our system of government. So far I have only gotten to number 12. I am not going very fast. This particular paper is about how the Constitutions encourages "commercial prosperity. " It makes it clear that the constitution sought to build a nation that would expand wealth by reducing taxes. After declaring that expanding commercial growth increases wealth and prosperity and raises increases the standard of living of the entire population. "The degree of a country to pay taxes must always be proportioned in a great degree to the quantity of money in circulation, and to the celerity with which it circulates. Commerce, contributing to both these objects, must of necessity render the payment of taxe...