Don't ever let anyone tell you that history doesn't repeat. For 70 years, liberals have been spinning the yarn that FDR's New Deal, despite all the evidence that it exacerbated and prolonged the Great Depression, quickened our economic recovery. Indeed, I remember scratching my head when one of my college history professors in the 1970s tried to convince us of that theory and its corollary - an even better howler - that FDR was actually a conservative, because if he hadn't implemented his socialist programs, the republic would have died right there.

Liberals insist they believe as strongly in the American dream as the rest of us, but routinely demonize those who succeed in attaining it. They loudly profess their allegiance to capitalism, but resent the inequitable money results it produces.

Instead of using this space to pretend the newly released CIA 'torture' report confirms that the United States is the most evil nation in the history of the universe, I'm going to address Jonathan Gruber's confirmation that he believes we're all stupid.

It's one thing to maintain that upper-income earners should pay higher tax rates because they are better able to shoulder the burden for essential government services. But it's constitutional blasphemy to claim that the tax code should be used as a weapon against the wealthy and that the state should be the tyrannical arbiter of how income is distributed.

The hastily crafted [stimulus] bill, with its corrupt funding of ACORN and other favors, is a disgracefully irresponsible effort to expand the public sector, diminish the private sector, empower the autocrats, and further divest us of our individual liberties - all at the expense of present and future generations.

A president who believed that America's greatness is recoverable and expandable - a chief executive determined to lead us back to national restoration - would reject the crippling notions of national impotency that Obama has embraced.

Obama and his Democrats need to be placed on the defensive. They are the primary drivers of this spending; they are the obstructers of entitlement reform and the national debt continues to burn while they fiddle.