Napoleon might be long gone, but President Obama is doing his best to fill his boots. Sure, he’s taller. And instead of hiding his hand in his shirt, it’s either in our pockets or signing bills and spending money. But his aims are very similar – power and control. Just as the French army was Napoleon’s personal guard, Obama’s followers resemble more of a personality cult than a political party. If he wins, ordinary citizens lose and government grows ever larger.

In the years since Napoleon I lost at Waterloo, that battle became the metaphor for epic defeat. Today, conservatives avoid that kind of major confrontation with the popular Obama for fear of being crushed and sent into political exile. Rather than risk losing, phony conservatives are helping Obama by voting for his massive increases in government.

That’s entirely the wrong strategy. If Waterloo was a major defeat, it was also a major victory. That battle should have taught us that even a man who conquered much of Europe can be defeated. For every Napoleon, there is a Wellington who goes down in history as an epic winner.

Now the man who owns the century-old home is pursuing theft and vandalism charges against the 81-year-old billionaire, saying workers for Pickens came to the house recently without permission and removed the concrete slab with the well-known name.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough -- more than enough -- of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just.

We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we must labor on -- not towards a strategy of annihilation but towards a strategy of peace.

What I have to say to you now about energy is simple and vitally important. Point one: I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States. Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation.

The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade -- a saving of over 4-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day.