'Live and let life' used to be a noble approach to life. Now you're considered compassionate if you demand that government impose your preferences on others.

The welfare state has done to Black Americans what slavery (and Jim Crow and racism) could not have done. . .break up the black family. Today, just slightly over 30 percent of black kids live in two-parent families. Historically, from the 1870s on. . . 75-90 percent of black kids lived in two-parent families.

A thousand restaurants close every month. They re-open, and that's good for America. Nobody's rescuing them. They employ people, too. If we let them go bankrupt, the factories don't go away, the creative people don't go away. They get employed more productively by others.

Any money the government spends must be taxed, borrowed or conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and that will reduce sound private investment. Obama has no real wealth to inject into the economy. He can only move around existing money while inflation robs us of purchasing power. Meanwhile, private investors who might have produced a better engine, battery, computer, cancer treatment or other wealth-creating and life-enhancing innovations hold back for fear that big government will undermine productive efforts.

Prosperity comes from leaving people free in a legal system that respects their persons and property so they can pursue their dreams while taking responsibility for their actions.

The one thing I've learned is that stuttering in public is never as bad as I fear it will be.

Government is so big today that more than half the population gets a major part of its income from the state.