"You can call it cherry pie, but it's a war."

Cully Stimson, who served in the Pentagon under former President George W. Bush, on the Obama administration's refusal to use the phrase "war on terror." Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, for instance, substituted "man-caused disasters" for "terrorism" in testimony before Congress. "I would expect that she would not use that silly expression to a family member who suffered the loss of a loved one to an IED explosion," Stimson said. "Terrorists are terrorists."

He's no Teddy Roosevelt

 Barack Obama last month enlisted Theodore Roosevelt in his campaign for increased governmental control of health care, arguing that TR "first called for reform nearly a century ago." Google "Theodore Roosevelt, universal healthcare," and you'll find The Washington Post, The

Huffington Post, DailyKos, and many other stalwarts of the left suggesting or

claiming that Obama is carrying the Republican Roosevelt's banner.

That's nonsense. The propagandists take as their one piece of evidence a plank in the Progressive Party platform of 1912: "The protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use."

 If Obama wanted to report accurately Roosevelt's beliefs, he would start with a speech about one of TR's favorite topics, "Deadening socialism."

The 26th president saw governmental control of the economy as the political manifestation of covetousness. He argued that "the only permanently beneficial way in which to help any one is to help him help himself; if either private charity, or governmental action, or any form of social expression destroys the individual's power of self-help, the gravest possible wrong is really done to the individual."

TR also contended that socialism could be fought most successfully by applying biblical ideas about helping the poor. The greatest hope lay through "voluntary action by individuals in the form of associations," particularly when the goal was "that most important of all forms of betterment, moral betterment—the moral betterment which usually brings material betterment in its train." Those who truly wanted to help had to stand "against mere sentimentality, against the philanthropy and charity which are not merely insufficient but harmful." ……

 Governmental aid to those in need, TR emphasized, should be limited and "extended very cautiously, and so far as possible only where it will not crush out healthy individual initiative." He saw entrepreneurship as the most effective means of dealing with problems and argued that "socialists and others really do not correct the evils at all, or else only do so at the expense of producing others in aggravated form."

Roosevelt saw governmental redistribution of wealth as a  surrender to covetousness. He argued that anyone elected on such a platform "is not, and never can be, aught but an enemy of the very people he professes to befriend. . . . To break the Tenth Commandment is no more moral now than it has been for the past thirty centuries."

In short, TR opposed both private and governmental corruption. He straightforwardly noted that "the Eighth Commandment reads: 'Thou shalt not steal.' It does not read: 'Thou shalt not steal from the rich man.' It does not read: 'Thou shalt not steal from the poor man.' It reads simply and plainly: 'Thou shalt not steal.'" President Obama should take that advice to heart instead of trying to twist history for his political advantage.

                                                                      MARVIN OLASKY, WORLD MAGAZINE