THE FOUNDATION: FAMILY

“The most important consequence of marriage is, that the husband and the wife become in law only one person… Upon this principle of union, almost all the other legal consequences of marriage depend.” —James Wilson

INSIGHT

“The prevailing spirit of the present age seems to be the spirit of skepticism and captiousness, of suspicion and distrust in private judgment; a dislike of all established forms, merely because they are established, and of old paths, because they are old.” —Samuel Johnson

FAMILY

“If the family is the conceptual basis of economics, the premier economic issue we face in our politics today is the push to secure legal recognition for so-called marriages between people of the same sex. Why? Because we can’t preserve and strengthen the family without a clear idea of what it is. At its heart, the debate over ‘same-sex marriage’ involves a profound disagreement about the nature of the family. Indeed, the very idea of the natural family is under assault. In a 2005 ruling later upheld by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in favor of the City of Oakland when it threatened two city employees with immediate removal for posting a bulletin board notice that referred to ‘respect for the Natural Family.’ Because it is camouflaged as a disagreement over sexual behavior, most people fail to appreciate the true implications of this effort to banish the idea that the family is a natural institution that involves fundamental rights that all legitimate government must respect. Of course, this failure in turn arises from the fact that we no longer see the necessary connection between the rights we have by nature and the obligations that define our nature. The latter are the seeds from which the former arise.” —Alan Keyes

POLITICAL FUTURES

“[I]n all likelihood religion will grow as a social force in American culture and politics over the coming decades. The reason: A secular nation needs secular citizens. And nonreligious Americans are outstandingly weak when it comes to the most efficacious way to achieve this: by having kids. If you picked 100 adults out of the population who attended their house of worship nearly every week or more often, they would have 223 children among them, on average, according to the 2006 General Social Survey. Among 100 people who attended less than once per year or never, you would find just 158 kids. This 41% fertility gap between religious and secular people is especially meaningful because people tend to worship more or less like their parents. According to data collected in 1999 by Gallup, 60% of adults who were taken to church at least once per month as children grew up to attend at least this often; only 15% stopped attending as adults. The demographic implications are even more profound for the political left, where a disproportionate number of secularists are located. Religious people who call themselves politically ‘conservative’ or ‘very conservative’ are having, on average, an astounding 78% more kids than secular liberals. Studies show that people are even more likely to vote like their parents than they are to worship like them. The secular left, therefore, has to rely on the tough slog of bringing people from the political and religious middle over to their views. The religious right simply has to keep having lots of babies.” —Arthur Brooks

RE: THE LEFT

“Democrats claim there are ‘two Americas.’ If they have their way, there will be two Latin Americas. Liberals know they’re losing the demographic war. Christians have lots of children and adopt lots of children; liberals abort children and encourage the gay lifestyle in anyone with a flair for color. They can’t keep up. Population expert Nick Eberstadt recently speculated in The Washington Post that a principal reason for America’s high fertility rate compared to Europe’s is its religiosity. Well, that leaves liberals out. The Democratic Party is in the fight of its life against a conservative demographic trend. Its only hope is to gerrymander America to make the poorest half of Mexico a state. Only a massive influx of criminals, wards of the state and rioters can save them. This is why Democrats are obsessed with giving two groups the right to vote: illegal aliens and felons… To liberals, building a wall across the Mexican border is a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Democrats are counting on illegal immigrants to be the future of their party, their border guards for the new socialist state. At least liberals have a clear mission and know what they’re fighting for. Their plan is to destroy America.” —Ann Coulter

CULTURE

“Multiculturalism’s goal is not to teach about other cultures, but to promote—by means of distortions and half-truths—the notion that non-Western cultures are as good as, if not better than, Western culture. Far from ‘broadening’ the curriculum, what multiculturalism seeks is to diminish the value of Western culture in the minds of students. But, given all the facts, the objective superiority of Western culture is apparent, so multiculturalists must artificially elevate other cultures and depreciate the West.” —Elan Journo

LIBERTY

“The interesting and complicated phenomenon of climate change is still being figured out, and as much as those determined to turn it into a crusade of good vs. evil may insist otherwise, the issue of global warming isn’t a closed book. Smearing those who buck the ‘scientific consensus’ as traitors, toadies, or enemies of humankind may be emotionally satisfying and even professionally lucrative. It is also indefensible, hyperbolic bullying. That the bullies are sure they are doing the right thing is not a point in their defense. For as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote long ago, ‘The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding’.” —Jeff Jacoby

OPINION IN BRIEF

“John Edwards leads an all-star cast of liberal politicians and intellectuals (Edwards is decidedly not the latter) who worship at the altar of Invidia, praying that she will exact penance from the undeserving half of our ‘two Americas.’ Like the ‘scientific socialism’ that concealed envy behind a slide rule, today’s liberals invoke social science as justification for their covetousness. In one famous study, a majority of people said they would rather make $50,000 if others earned $25,000 than earn $100,000 if others were making $200,000. Such studies are deeply flawed. For starters, as Arthur Brooks notes in the current edition of City Journal, they don’t address the question of whether people would be happier in a world of total equality. Rather, they ask whether people would be happier in a world of inequality so long as they could be richer than everybody else. More damning, however, is that these studies turn a vice into a virtue. With the exception of the self-esteem movement, which glorifies pride, it’s difficult to imagine another area where we so shamelessly tout a sin as the basis of public policy. All men lust in their hearts; shall we dole out concubines for those of us who can’t live like Hugh Hefner?” —Jonah Goldberg

GOVERNMENT

“In every state of the union, medical insurance is regulated. In some, it’s heavily, heavily regulated. Oregon legislators, for instance, just added a few new mandatory benefits to all health insurance policies: contraceptives, prosthetics and orthotics, and treatments for injuries caused by intoxication… Do you really wonder why health insurance costs so much? I don’t. The American health care system is addicted to regulation. Our legislators are the pushers. We need to go cold turkey.” —Paul Jacob

FOR THE RECORD

“Yet another report came out this week critical of the CIA failures that led to the disastrous attack on September 11, 2001. Of course, the CIA did fail, as did a number of U.S. government agencies… Then there is Bill Clinton. Remember in September of 2006 when Fox News host Chris Wallace confronted Clinton on the failure of his administration to get bin Laden? Clinton went ballistic, turned red, pointed his finger in Wallace’s face and shouted, ‘What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody since.’ It was a great performance, just like his Lewinsky denial. But the evidence is building that it was only that—a performance. Michael Isakoff of Newsweek magazine did a detailed analysis of the critical CIA report and found that the Clinton Administration never authorized the CIA to kill bin Laden. In addition, Clinton’s CIA had not put enough ‘assets’ on the ground to conduct serious covert operations against bin Laden. In short, it is likely that the red-faced, finger-pointing former president who shouted his outrage at Chris Wallace and Fox News was merely doing what he has always effectively done when his failures and distortions were discovered—he went on the attack… Whenever the Left doesn’t want you to know the truth, it attacks.” —Gary Bauer

THE GIPPER

“How ironic that even as America returns to its spiritual roots, our courts lag behind. They talk of our constitutional guarantee of religious liberty as if it meant freedom from religion, freedom from—actually a prohibition on—all values rooted in religion. Well, yes, the Constitution does say that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.’ But then it adds: ‘or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ The First Amendment protects the rights of Americans to freely exercise their religious beliefs in an atmosphere of toleration and accommodation…[C]ertain court decisions have, in my view, wrongly interpreted the First Amendment so as to restrict, rather than protect, individual rights of conscience. What greater legacy could we leave our children than a new birth of religious freedom in this one nation under God?” —Ronald Reagan

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“’School is in but the Bible is out’—A very enlightening piece. I didn’t realize how long this struggle had been going on against the very foundation of our Constitution. This piece makes it clearer than ever. How ageless is the depraved nature of man. Keep up the excellent work in The Patriot Post!” —Orangevale, California

“It is wonderful to recall the religious heritage of The United States. But the Anti Christian Liberty Union is at it again. It might be useful to expose the origins and agenda of the ACLU as often as possible. Their motives are always ulterior!” —Norton, Virginia

“This is an outstanding article. If more people would read and understand it we might get rid of the ACLU (American Communists…), and have the USA the way it should be.” —Wasilla, Alaska

“I found the article very encouraging. A small group of Christians in our village is trying to start a Christian School here. Today we were talking with our neighbor who is going to oppose the school on physical site development grounds—i.e. local council zoning laws. More importantly she is a rabid humanist and is opposed to a private ‘faith’ school being established in the community. So when I got home I was most encouraged to read the article. Thank you.” —Bungendore, NSW, Australia

“I have only been a subscriber to The Patriot Post since January of this year. It has since become my most treasured arsenal of weapons in my arguments to the misguided Liberals who infest the area here in West Texas. I have set up a recurring quarterly donation in the same amount I have been giving the local GOP party (keywords HAVE BEEN). I will now direct their donation to you as you do a much better job of defining my beliefs and ideology.” —Alpine, Texas