THE FOUNDATION: CHARACTER

“The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men.” —Samuel Adams

CULTURE

“Of the hundreds of [political] videos out there, [Hillary] Clinton’s… are probably the most familiar, thanks to generous news coverage. In Clinton’s [latest] flick, the well-dressed senator sits in a diner booth flipping through the tabletop jukebox, just as Tony Soprano did in the series finale. In walks Bill Clinton, wearing a loose guayabera and exuding the ‘tude of a truant adolescent. For Americans familiar with the final installment of ‘The Sopranos,’ the video is oh-so clever. Clinton orders carrots instead of the onion rings that Tony ordered. Bill says: ‘No onion rings?’ ‘I’m lookin’ out for you,’ says the Mrs. ‘So what’s the winning song?… My money is on Smash Mouth,’ says the former prez. No cheating: Who or what is Smash Mouth? Even if you know, this pop reference is clearly aimed at younger folks who are the primary audience and producers of YouTube. Translation: The Clintons are cool. Beyond the entertainment value of seeing a former president playing Fonz to the Godmother, the video’s success is predicated on a community of coolness. But is it important that the leader of the free world be hip to Smash Mouth and other touchstones of popular culture?…[H]as it really come to this? Presidential candidates making spoofy-goofy home movies to win votes?” —Kathleen Parker

POLITICAL FUTURES

“Hillary Clinton doesn’t have to prove she’s a man. She has to prove she’s a woman. She doesn’t have to prove to people that she’s tough enough or aggressive enough to be commander in chief. She doesn’t have to show she could and would wage a war. She has to prove she has normal human warmth, a normal amount of give, of good nature, that she is not, at bottom, grimly combative and rather dark. This is the woman credited with starting and naming the War Room. Her staff has nicknamed her ‘The Warrior.’ Get in her way and she’d squish you like a bug. This has been her reputation for 20 years. And it is her big problem. People want a president to be strong but not hard… Back [in 1992], when the Clintons were newly famous, their consultants were alarmed to find the American people did not believe Hillary was a mother. They thought she was a person with breasts in a suit. She had a briefcase and a latte and was late for the meeting, but no way did she have a child… The Sopranos video the Clintons made and released this week was smart and well done… It addressed yet again the likability problem, but from a new angle… The film jokingly acknowledges what the Clintons well know: that a certain portion of the voting population sees them as… well, as gangsterish. As dark, and dishonest to a degree more extreme than is usual even in political figures. By putting these perceptions so colorfully on the table, they make fun of them. And they invite their foes to go too far, at just the right moment, a year before the 2008 presidential race really begins.” —Peggy Noonan

INSIGHT

“Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.” —Leonardo Da Vinci

FAMILY

“Nobody ever said being a parent is easy. But do politicians have to make it harder? Here I’ve been all these years, teaching my three children that you can’t get something for nothing. If you want something, you have to work for it. Now along comes the Senate to debate an immigration bill that would undermine that very principle. It’s a simple question of mathematics. The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector—probably the most widely quoted expert in the country on immigration—has crunched the numbers and figured out the average illegal immigrant family receives about $30,000 annually in government benefits. But that same family pays only $9,000 in taxes. You don’t need a calculator to see that leaves a shortfall of $21,000. As Rector puts it, that’s like having the taxpayers buy every illegal immigrant family a brand-new Mustang convertible every year! And by taxpayers, of course, I mean you and me. And your neighbors. And your friends. I’m talking about everybody who clings to the notion of fair play and hard work—who thinks the American Dream is something you strive to earn, not something you passively accept, as if it were a government handout.” —Rebecca Hagelin

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Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis!

Mark Alexander

Publisher, PatriotPost.US

LIBERTY

“There was a time when American military leaders worried about whether wobbly allies would rally to us when it came time to stand up to the Soviets. Now it’s our allies who worry about us. After a month in the Western Pacific—most of it spent in Korea and the Philippines…—it appears that some of our closest allies are increasingly anxious about American resolve. While in Manila, an old comrade in arms—we both served in Vietnam—put it succinctly: ‘To your best friends in this part of the world, it looks as though you are tearing yourselves to pieces, repeating what we watched you do over Vietnam. It hurt all of us for 30 years.’ Echoes of this concern were heard repeatedly in off-the-record conversations with active and retired military officers and senior government officials… Here in the Philippines, where U.S. Special Operations troops have been quietly helping the government wage a successful campaign against the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist organizations, there should be no doubt about U.S. resolve. However, as so often happens with sophisticated allies, leaders here are looking beyond the immediate situation—and hedging their bets… [The] concerns of steadfast allies in the global war on terror need to be heeded at home. Since Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. aid, both civil and military, has helped the Filipinos prevent Islamic radicals from turning the southern islands of their archipelago into another Afghanistan. Yet, despite the successes here, many in Asia are worried about waning U.S. resolve.” —Oliver North

THE GIPPER

“[E]very lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then?” —Ronald Reagan

OPINION IN BRIEF

“It’s either an unprecedented low in partisan discourse or political surrealism worthy of Andre Breton: on Tuesday, former president Jimmy Carter, speaking on foreign soil, denounced the policies of his successor as ‘criminal’ because they fail to subsidize a genocidal Islamic terrorist organization that has killed Americans. Then, he blamed internecine Palestinian warfare on Americans and Israelis. …Carter said the Bush administration had sinned against heaven and earth in its decision to withhold direct aid to Hamas once that group came to power in the Palestinian Authority. ‘That action was criminal,’ he said. The Palestinian people had elected Hamas fair-and-square in elections his Center described as ‘orderly and fair.’ (Carter said the same of Hugo Chavez’s election.) He deemed Hamas ‘shrewd in selecting candidates.’ The world’s most famous Sunday School teacher further praised the genocidal terrorist organization, at a human rights conference, by citing its penchant for bloodshed. Hamas, Carter doddered, was more orderly than the rival Fatah organization, which Hamas demonstrated in military clashes that showed its ‘superior skills and discipline.’ (The Jerusalem Post reported his argument thus: ‘Carter said Hamas, besides winning a fair and democratic mandate that should have entitled it to lead the Palestinian government, had proven itself to be far more organized in its political and military showdowns with the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.’) One can only imagine how impressed he would have been by the ‘efficiency’ of the SS.” —Ben Johnson

GOVERNMENT

“Liberals love to talk about this or that human right, such as a right to health care, food or housing. That’s a perverse usage of the term ‘right.’ A right, such as a right to free speech, imposes no obligation on another, except that of non-interference. The so-called right to health care, food or housing, whether a person can afford it or not, is something entirely different. It does impose an obligation on another. If one person has a right to something he didn’t produce, simultaneously and of necessity it means that some other person does not have right to something he did produce. That’s because, since there’s no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, in order for government to give one American a dollar, it must, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. I’d like to hear the moral argument for taking what belongs to one person to give to another person.” —Walter Williams

RE: THE LEFT

“There is a curious void in the modern American left. That void is the empty spot where God should be. The American left—and the Democratic Party, as its political representative—has worked tirelessly over the course of decades to cast God from the public square, all the time disclaiming their mission by invoking ‘tolerance’ for all beliefs. But now the cat is out of the bag. In the aftermath of John Kerry’s electoral defeat in 2004, Democrats explained that they wished to re-enter the arena of moral values. During the two Democratic presidential debates, God was mentioned just once, by scurrilous panderer John Edwards; ethics was mentioned once, by Barack Obama, who was disclaiming his association with a lobbyist; morality was mentioned only in the context of America’s international ‘immorality’; values were invoked only by Joe Biden (ironically enough, in touting Roe v. Wade). When Democrats talk about moral values, they mean the Planned Parenthood brochure. Where’s God in the liberal moral equation? Nowhere to be found…” —Benjamin Shapiro

FOR THE RECORD

“There’s another, perhaps more important, lesson to be drawn from the Hamas ascendancy. The Bush administration pushed for democracy in the Palestinian territories and got what it wished for—in spades. The assumption behind the push for democracy in Gaza and in Iraq is that Arabs can be trusted to handle political freedom. Even the Democrats demanding an immediate pullout from Iraq hope that with democracy, the Iraqis will be able to sort out their problems themselves via some euphemistic ‘political solution.’ That is unless the antiwar Democrats are really advocating turning all of Mesopotamia into one giant Gaza Strip—the far more likely result of U.S. withdrawal. For many disciples of the ‘international peace process,’ it’s a matter of faith that the Palestinians just have to want peace, because how else can you have a peace process? For many supporters of the Bush Doctrine, Iraqis have to want democracy, because if they don’t, what’s the point of having a freedom agenda? But what if these are just beloved Western fictions? We see a well-lighted path to the good life: democracy, tolerance, rule of law, markets. But what if the Arab world just isn’t interested in our path? As a believer in the freedom agenda, that’s what scares me most.” —Jonah Goldberg

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“Excellent article on Patriotism. One thing I would add is that Patriotism has the same root as Patriarch (Father) and has as one definition ‘of the same lineage.’ This is not a lineage of familial descent, however. In this context it is a lineage of philosophical or ideological descent. We can therefore infer that Patriotism means adherence to the philosophy or ideology or principles of the Fathers. We can therefore confidently say that those whose vision for America differs from that held by the Founding Fathers are not deserving of the name Patriot. Dissent today is held up as the truest form of Patriotism. I will allow that dissent is healthy, when it is kept within the framework of Patriotism, defined above. Otherwise it is simply rebellion. A Socialist who speaks out against our government, or who works to supplant the Classical Liberal/Classical Republican values which made America great with another form of government is no Patriot, but is a subversive.” —Pleasant Grove, Utah

“I found the article on patriotism very interesting and I enjoyed what I read. As a Christian, it reminds me of what Jesus said about His followers, ‘By their fruits you will know them.’ As with patriotism, we can tell a true patriot by the way they talk (’The war is lost’: Harry Reid) act, and even the places they go to (Syria: Nancy Pelosi). Like the article stated, simply waving a flag does not make one a patriot—we can also say in the same manner carrying a Bible does not make one a Christian, either. True colors are revealed by our actions.” —Petronila, Texas

“How refreshing it is to have a quality publication line The Patriot Post online. Your issue on Fathers Day with the sobering statistics was excellent—not that they are not all excellent. I shared that issue with my work crew and it was received very well. I will support you financially. You must not ever go away.” —Wasilla, Alaska

THE LAST WORD

“I look forward to an America where once again, soldiers in uniform can walk proudly through airports and hometowns where complete strangers walk up to them and shake their hand, thanking them for their sacrifices. I look forward to an America when leaders in Washington, D. C., do not declare the war lost while troops are still in the field and politicians running for president claim the global war on terror does not exist, that it is only a ‘bumper sticker slogan.’ I look forward to an America when Hollywood is quick to point out what is right with our nation, not only what is wrong… God bless America.” —Jonathan Flora

Veritas vos Liberabit—Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families—especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who have died in defense of American liberty, while prosecuting the war with Jihadistan.)