Thoughts from Ben Stein...

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called 'Monday Night At Morton's.' (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I 'slug' it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is 'eonlineFINAL,' and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a 'star' we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit , Iraq . He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordinance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded.. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject



There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse.. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me.. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York . I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.

By Ben Stein

You are not alone, We Surround Them

If you missed it here is Glenn Beck's "We Surround Them" messege.
Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

You can pry it from my cold dead hands

The restrictions on guns getting tighter, taxes on ammunition are sky-rocketing and so many in government are trying to strip us of our right to bear arms. Do we realize how important this right is? It was important enough to be #2! Why is it number two? Because without being able to bear arms we will not be able to defend the other rights we have. Jefferson made it clear when he said:

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

and

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. -Thomas Jefferson

Similarly, in a released Senate report on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms,

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, chairman, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, states: They argue that the Second Amendment's words "right of the people" mean "a right of the state" — apparently overlooking the impact of those same words when used in the First and Fourth Amendments. The "right of the people" to assemble or to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures is not contested as an individual guarantee. Still they ignore consistency and claim that the right to "bear arms" relates only to military uses. This not only violates a consistent constitutional reading of "right of the people" but also ignores that the second amendment protects a right to "keep" arms. "When our ancestors forged a land "conceived in liberty", they did so with musket and rifle. When they reacted to attempts to dissolve their free institutions, and established their identity as a free nation, they did so as a nation of armed freemen. When they sought to record forever a guarantee of their rights, they devoted one full amendment out of ten to nothing but the protection of their right to keep and bear arms against governmental interference. Under my chairmanship the Subcommittee on the Constitution will concern itself with a proper recognition of, and respect for, this right most valued by free men."

As the argument rages on about definitions and the true intent of the second amendment; the reality remains that without a way to defend ourselves we will be robed not in the dead of night but in the light of day right in front of our faces and we will only be able to stand and watch as our rights and freedoms are stripped from us.

Today as we write a check...

As for the bill that President Obama signed today, I can honestly say I hope it works. Because, that is a whole lot of money to just give away. The sad reality is that it is not likely to work. This quote seemed appropriate to mention:

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. -Sir Winston Churchill

The good news today... The Former Border Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were realeased today. It was good to see them reunited with their families.

Another day, another promise broken

Nancy Pelosi is going to make me have to take blood pressure medicine at the age of 25!

Reading the Drudge Report this morning is see this:
Rep. John Culberson, TX claims the "stimulus" bill must be urgently voted on today -- because Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leaving at 6:00 PM for an 8 day trip to Europe!

You know what Nancy Pelosi, STAY THERE!!!

This will not give those men and women we are trusting to vote on this bill a chance to read the 1,071 page beast of legal gibberish! Let alone "we the people " the ones that will be paying the taxes.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) predicted on Thursday that none of his Senate colleagues would "have the chance" to read the entire final version of the $790-billion stimulus bill before the bill comes up for a final vote in Congress.
(via CNSNews.com)
They go on to quote several Senators that didn't think that they could read through it either.

Glenn Beck's crew figured that they would have to read this document at a pace of 600+ words a min, just to get through the thing.

Oh, and they have now broken their promise to have the public able to see the bill for 48 hours, not that they ever planned to keep it.

So what does this mean?

Well we can only hope that a few of the democrats might gain some sort of a conscience and vote against this so that they can have time to go over it and see what is in this bill, really I think its the least they could do. but Will it happen? Probably not.

This all comes down to the fact that they do not want us to see what is in this revised bill, they do not want us to question them, they would like for all of us to drink the kool-aid and fall in line with the sheep to be lead to the slaughter under the guise that they are taking care of us, when have we ever trusted them.

I will leave with these quotes from Thomas Jefferson and will try to find a way to relax to keep my head from exploding.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
-Thomas Jefferson

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
-Thomas Jefferson

We were warned of this...

Something to think about...

With all that is going on I thought this might get you thinking:

When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
-Benjamin Franklin

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
-Thomas Jefferson

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
-Thomas Jefferson

The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country. A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. If children were forced to learn about the Constitution, about how government works, about how this nation came into being, about taxes and about how government forever threatens the cause of liberty perhaps we wouldn't see so many foolish ideas coming out of the mouths of silly men.
-Lyn Nofziger

If we would only listen those who have come before us and have warned of such things...
Even though it seems that no matter how much we shout we feel as we are whispering into a hurricane and will not be heard, we must not give up. We are not alone Please read the post below that I am trying to spread from Glenn Beck to join together as a storm of conservative voices that will hold Washington responsible and hopefully make some changes.

The Nine Principles (From Glenn Beck)

Do you watch the direction that America is being taken in and feel powerless to stop it?

Do you believe that your voice isn’t loud enough to be heard above the noise anymore?

Do you read the headlines everyday and feel an empty pit in your stomach…as if you’re completely alone?

If so, then you’ve fallen for the Wizard of Oz lie. While the voices you hear in the distance may sound intimidating, as if they surround us from all sides—the reality is very different. Once you pull the curtain away you realize that there are only a few people pressing the buttons, and their voices are weak. The truth is that they don’t surround us at all.

We surround them.

So, how do we show America what’s really behind the curtain? Below are nine simple principles. If you believe in at least seven of them, then we have something in common. I urge you to read the instructions at the end for how to help make your voice heard. The Nine Principles

1. America is good.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.

You Are Not Alone If you agree with at least seven of those principles, then you are not alone. Please send a digital version of your picture to: wesurroundthem@foxnews.com and then stay tuned to the radio and television shows over the coming weeks to see how we intend to pull back the curtain.
Share this page with your friends and family...

From Glenn Beck at glennbeck.com