THE FOUNDATION

“The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights.” —George Washington

INSIGHT

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” —Barry Goldwater

IChThUS IMPRIMIS

“In the ongoing effort to take God out of everything, the Department of Veterans Affairs has stepped forward to do their fair share. Prayers at school? Forget about it. Saying ‘Under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance? The courts keep trying to remove the words. Now, the federal government wants to remove God from your burial ceremony. Cradle to grave with no faith references? That is not the foundation that built our country. At issue is the flag-folding ceremony at military funerals. When the flag that has draped the departed’s casket is folded, there is a traditional recitation which accompanies each of the thirteen folds. The Veterans Affairs bureaucracy decided last month to ban the recitations after a complaint was filed following a service at Riverside National Cemetery in California… This seems like one more attempt to take our Judeo-Christian heritage out of a government that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. When the attempt created an uproar, the government folks decided to ‘clarify’ the matter. In other words, they got caught and now are backtracking. Just like with other attempts to remove God and Christian references from public life, we as citizens must always be on guard. Only through our actions and voices can we stop such activities. As soon as we’ll let one pass, many more will follow.” —Bobby Eberle

The Patriot needs your help!

Author Dr. Bill Bennett comments on The Patriot Post: “The Patriot is leading the charge in the battle to restore America’s values—a vital ally on the front…”

Fellow Patriots, our 2007 Annual Fund campaign is now underway. In today’s political climate, The Patriot’s voice is needed more than ever to help keep the great heritage of our Constitutional Republic front and center. Please join us in this noble cause.

Like many mission-based organizations, we typically raise most of our budget in the last two months of each year. We still must raise $335,687 before year-end. These funds ensure that our dedicated team of editors, writers and support staff can continue to provide The Patriot Post, free of charge, to hundreds of thousands of our military, collegiate and mission-field readers.

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I thank you for the honor and privilege of serving you as editor and publisher of The Patriot. On behalf of your Patriot staff and National Advisory Committee, thank you and God bless you and your family!

Lex et Libertas—Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis!

Mark Alexander Publisher

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“It is my distinct pleasure to contribute to The Patriot—I consider it the flagship of truly patriotic and practical American discourse. My thanks to you for having the vision and ability to put it together and keep it running.” —Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

“Dear fellow Patriots, thank you for your exposition on faith in uniform. From a Marine Battalion in Iraq that has been a beneficiary of your generous support through Operation Shield of Strength, thank you. Semper Fi and God Bless America!” —Baghdad, Iraq

“’Onward Christian Soldiers…’ indeed. I survived the great ‘religious intolerance scandal’ at the Air Force Academy, being a member of the class of 2006. General Weida was an admirable man of faith. His character as an officer was especially impressive. Regarding the ‘downgrading’ of faith at the USAFA, indications are that over 90 percent of the cadets disagree with the new policy and ignore it for all practical purposes.” —San Diego, California

“As a veteran of three wars (WWII, Korea & Vietnam), ’Onward Christian Soldiers…’ is absolutely on target—it is very moving and soul searching and I appreciate it far more than I can express. Bravo Zulu. And, I add, many thanks for all that you do.” —Forest Hill, Maryland

“As the wife of a veteran of the Korean War and sister to eight brothers who served our country in the various military branches I am grateful for this article more than words can say.” —Diamond Bar, California

“I am a retired naval aviator with more than 1,500 aircraft-carrier landings—some 250 of those at night or in very bad weather. I know the power of prayer!” —Phoenix, Arizona

“As a Jewish agnostic, I’d appreciate a nod to other faiths who serve. I am a retired Air Guard flight surgeon, three-war vet (Viet Nam, Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom), now in the California State Military Reserve. So please acknowledge that not all who take the oath are Christian.” —Studio City, California

Editor’s Reply: You will note that we broadly mentioned people of “faith” in this essay, not just Christians.

“Mr. Alexander, every edition of The Patriot exudes wisdom, faith and love of country. I’m constantly amazed (and grateful). But one question: When do you sleep?” —Norco, California

Editor’s Reply: I get plenty of sleep—my staff, on the other hand…

CULTURE

“There has always been a lot of politics in religion and a lot of religion in politics. I find it odd when commentators blabber about some nonexistent wall that in blither times kept religion and politics apart. There was never such a wall, nor could there be. The ultimate nature of religious concerns—heaven, hell, death, judgment—makes them easily eclipse managerial questions like budgetary ‘earmarks’ and deficits in health insurance coverage. A thoroughgoing secularist is, in politics, a bird of considerable rarity. Politicians—many of them wearing judicial robes—should have known better than to start tampering in the 1960s with the civic consensus of the day, which found religion not only a good but close to indispensable element of life.” —William Murchison

LIBERTY

“[Indiana Congressman Mike] Pence is proposing the Broadcaster Freedom Act, a bill that would permanently bury the Fairness Doctrine. Because House Democratic leaders are unlikely to allow it to come to the floor for a vote, Mr. Pence has launched a ‘discharge petition,’ a device to bypass House committees and move the bill directly to the floor. He needs 218 members—a House majority—to sign the petition. He has collected 185 signatures, but all from Republicans. Democrats are being told by their leadership that signing such a petition would undermine their control of the House. Mr. Pence, says that ‘freedom should not be a partisan issue’ and that he is optimistic that he can collect the signature of every Republican and then pluck off some 20 of the Democrats who voted for his one-year moratorium last summer (he’d need at least 18)… ‘Lovers of liberty must expose calls to restore the Fairness Doctrine for the fraudulent power-grab that they plainly are,’ writes Brian Anderson, editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. That’s because the attempts to control the airwaves won’t stop with so-called equal-time rules. Al Franken, the liberal former Air America host who is now running for the Senate in Minnesota, is already slipping into the role of potential legislative censor of his old industry. ‘You shouldn’t be able to lie on the air,’ he told Newsweek’s [Howard] Fineman earlier this year. ‘You can’t utter obscenities in a broadcast, so why should you be able to lie? You should be fined for lying’.” —John Fund

THE GIPPER

“Conservatives were brought up to hate deficits, and justifiably so. We’ve long thought there are two things in Washington that are unbalanced—the budget and the liberals.” —Ronald Reagan

OPINION IN BRIEF

“The partisan liberals who infest the political arena in California… want to use… natural disasters to fan the flames of anger at the President and anybody else who doesn’t share their ultra-left-wing views and agenda. What they want most, however, is to direct your attention away from the real culprits: their ardent supporters among the environmentalist extremists, whose agenda they fully support and sanction through laws they enact at every opportunity. A major reason why the fires spread so quickly was the universal presence of all those dead trees, tinderbox-dry underbrush, assorted weeds and all-but-dead grass that has been allowed to exist because the preventive controlled burning of this flammable material has been stopped dead in its tracks by the tree huggers and spotted owl-lovers who routinely put critters above humans. Without all that ready-to-ignite material, the fires would never have been able to gobble up thousands of acres and reduce thousands of homes to smoking rubble. It seems that to the wackos who dominate both the extremist environmentalist movement and the controlling left wing of the Democrat Party, human habitats are less important than owl nests. Notice that neither Mr. Gore nor his environmentalist friends, who are so worried about saving the trees… arrived on the fire lines with even a thimbleful of water to douse the flames. Instead they [stood] far off, tut-tutting about the horror of it all, blaming global warming, President Bush, and the Iraq war for a tragedy to which they so abundantly contributed.” —Michael Reagan

GOVERNMENT

“It’s about food. It’s about your home. It’s about your life. The government is worried about all of the above. All I’m saying is you should be worried they’re worried. Here’s why: They’re telling you that you can’t take care of yourself. You can’t be trusted with what you put in your mouth or what you sign on the mortgage dotted line. So they’ll tell you what to put in your mouth and they’ll save you from what you signed on that dotted line. Does anyone see a trend here? Personal responsibility has now become government responsibility.” —Neil Cavuto

RE: THE LEFT

“When it comes to self-reflection, Barack Obama is an overachiever. At age 46, he has already written two memoirs when most people in public life—sometime at the end of their career—will be lucky to write one. So far, what Obama seems set to get out of his presidential campaign is yet another memoir—this one an agonized, deeply personal account of how his campaign went nowhere despite all the media hoopla, crowds, and fundraising. It turns out that voters aren’t as interested in Barack Obama as Barack Obama is… The insular, self-obsessed campaign of her chief rival is one of the reasons Hillary Clinton has had as good a 90-day run as anyone in presidential politics in recent memory.” —Rich Lowry

POLITICAL FUTURES

“The Democratic Congress has done virtually nothing except to try (and fail) to pass measures to cripple the war effort and to hamstring efforts to surveil terrorists. Voters have noticed. The current Congress is the most unpopular in the history of polling. Voters rate Congress lower today than in October of 2006, days before they tossed out the Republicans. Voter esteem for the Democratic Congress is not likely to be enhanced by kamikaze missions such as an effort to impeach the President and Vice President… Normal people will be angered by the frivolity, immaturity, and blatant partisanship of the efforts. The moonbats will be angry because the efforts will fail. Unfortunately for Democrats, there are many moonbats in their party, and what it takes to keep them on the reservation drives moderates off…[G]iven a choice between victory and self-inflicted defeat, Americans prefer victory. But as signs of victory in Iraq mount, the moonbats have become more strident in their demands that Democratic leaders in Congress end the war before it can be won. Democrats compound their foreign-policy follies by trying to give college-tuition breaks and driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, and by proposing humongous tax increases. After a glimpse of Democrats in power, Republicans don’t look so bad.” —Jack Kelly

FOR THE RECORD

“Nobel Peace laureate Al Gore believes global warming is ‘an inconvenient truth.’ Here are some economic truths that America’s liberal leadership finds too inconvenient to support. Tax-rate reductions increase tax revenues. This truth has been proved at both state and federal levels, including by President Bush’s 2003 tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends. Those reductions have raised federal-tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006. These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal-budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years. Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased… Finally, another inconvenient truth is that there have been 49 consecutive months of job growth as a result of the economic expansion induced by President Bush’s 2003 tax rate reductions.” —Pete du Pont

THE LAST WORD

“Poverty is not static for people willing to work. A University of Michigan study shows that only 5 percent of those in the bottom fifth of the income distribution in 1975 remained there in 1991. What happened to them? They moved up to the top three-fifths of the income distribution—middle class or higher. Moreover, three out of 10 of the lowest income earners in 1975 moved all the way into the top fifth of income earners by 1991. Those who were poor in 1975 had an inflation-adjusted average income gain of $27,745 by 1991. Those workers who were in the top fifth of income earners in 1975 were better off in 1991 by an average of only $4,354. The bottom line is, the richer are getting richer and the poor are getting richer. Poverty in the United States, in an absolute sense, has virtually disappeared. Today, there’s nothing remotely resembling poverty of yesteryear. However, if poverty is defined in the relative sense, the lowest fifth of income-earners, ‘poverty’ will always be with us. No matter how poverty is defined, if I were an unborn spirit, condemned to a life of poverty, but God allowed me to choose which nation I wanted to be poor in, I’d choose the United States. Our poor must be the envy of the world’s poor.” —Walter Williams

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 granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)