THE FOUNDATION: NATIONAL DEFENSE

“To render the justice of the war on our part the more conspicuous, the reluctance to commence it was followed by the earliest and strongest manifestations of a disposition to arrest its progress.” —James Madison

POLITICAL FUTURES

“Early last year, when the war was at its peak, [Barack Obama] proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. [Last week], with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might ‘refine’ his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq… ‘What’s missing in our debate,’ Mr. Obama said [last week], ‘is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq.’ Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war’s outcome—that Iraq ‘distracts us from every threat we face’ and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That’s an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq’s future is a vital U.S. security interest. If he is elected president, Mr. Obama sooner or later will have to tailor his Iraq strategy to that reality.” —The Washington Post **Yes, that is THE Washington Post.

THE GIPPER

“We know that peace is the condition under which mankind was meant to flourish. Yet peace does not exist of its own will. It depends on us, on our courage to build it and guard it and pass it on to future generations. George Washington’s words may seem hard and cold today, but history has proven him right again and again. ‘To be prepared for war,’ he said, ‘is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.’ Well, to those who think strength provokes conflict, Will Rogers had his own answer. He said of the world heavyweight champion of his day: ‘I’ve never seen anyone insult Jack Dempsey’.” —Ronald Reagan

RE: THE LEFT

“Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself. There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements? Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted ‘present’ nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself. It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history—’generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment’ —when, among other wonders, ‘the rise of the oceans began to slow.’ As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, ‘Moses made the waters recede, but he had help.’ Obama apparently works alone.” —Charles Krauthammer

FOR THE RECORD

“The current Democratic mantra on energy is: ‘We can’t drill our way out of this problem.’ Apparently their plan is to talk our way out of this problem. Democrats are also alleging that the oil companies are sitting on millions of acres of oil but are refusing to drill—presumably because oil company executives hate the American people and perversely don’t want to make money. Manifestly, those acres are being explored for oil or have already come up dry. If the Democrats really wanted oil companies to find more oil, they’d allow oil companies to drill offshore and to drill in ANWR, which we happen to know is bursting with oil. But they don’t. They don’t want drilling. They don’t want more oil. They want humans to ride bicycles and then to die. We deserve it: We were mean to the polar bears. It’s good to know that in the middle of a crisis, the Democrats are still liars. As long as we’re fantasizing about ‘alternative’ energy sources, what we really need is a car that runs on Democrats’ lies.” —Ann Coulter

FAMILY

“Those who advocate redefining marriage are saying that every religious and secular tradition is immoral. They have no problem doing this because they believe they are wiser and finer people than all the greatest Jewish, Christian and humanist thinkers who ever lived. But as objectionable as hubris is, false comparisons are worse. And there is no comparison between different races and the different genders. There are no inherent racial differences; there are significant differences between the sexes. To the extent that racial groups are different, they are only because their cultures differ. But a black man’s nature is not different from that of a white man, an Asian man, an Hispanic man… Comparing the prohibition of same-sex marriage to prohibiting interracial marriage is ultimately a way of declaring the moral superiority of proponents of same-sex marriage to proponents of keeping marriage defined as man-woman. And it is a way of avoiding hard issues such as whether we really want all children to grow up thinking it doesn’t matter if they marry a boy or a girl and whether we really want to abolish forever the ideal of husband-wife based family. Those who wish to redefine marriage for the first time in Jewish, Christian or secular humanist history may offer any honest arguments they wish. Comparing the prohibition of same-sex marriage to prohibiting interracial marriage is not one of them.” —Dennis Prager

CULTURE

“By now, many conservatives have heard of the Canadian Human Rights Commissions thanks to the decision by three CHRCs to investigate hate crimes complaints against Maclean’s magazine for printing—among other things—excerpts from conservative writer Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone. While two of the complaints against Maclean’s have been dismissed, the CHRCs continue their jihad against their fellow citizens who dare to offend certain protected minorities. One of their ongoing cases is the investigation of a newspaper for publishing a cartoon of a Muslim woman dressed in a burqa even though the woman does, in fact, wear a burqa… Many Americans can only shake their heads at the nutty excesses of multiculturalism in Canada. Government investigations for insulting people? That kind of thing could never happen here… right? Wrong, probably. Multiculturalism may not be as advanced in America as it is in Canada, but it’s on the same path. The U.S. already has a number of federal multicultural policies, most notably the annual Diversity Visa Lottery. However, as the sorry lesson of Canada demonstrates, the key to pushing multiculturalist laws from the level of the mildly ridiculous into the rarified realm of the monumentally stupid is to advance them first on the local level, where action attracts little public scrutiny. The infrastructure for this sort of action is already in place in many American cities…” —Jack Langer

LIBERTY

“House Speaker Pelosi is hinting at reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, and many of her liberal colleagues in Congress are doing the same in both chambers. Alleging the press isn’t balanced, they say government should be making sure all viewpoints, meaning the lefts, are fairly represented. I agree the press isn’t balanced, but Mrs. Pelosi has it backward; liberalism dominates the press, including the three major networks and most major newspapers. Though originally the Fairness Doctrine did not require opposing time be equal, it came to be the standard. The concern at the time was the prevention of a single viewpoint from dominating the news and biasing the people. By the 1980s, there were many radio and TV stations available. And many believed the Fairness Doctrine was unconstitutional in any event. So in 1987, Ronald Reagan’s Federal Communications Commission repealed the Fairness Doctrine, opening every press outlet to freely decide what content to carry. The Democrat-controlled Congress at the time passed legislation to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, but President Reagan vetoed the bill. This led to the birth of talk radio. The doctrine’s reinstatement would kill conservative talk radio. Radio stations that carry Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck would have to create liberal shows of equal length. And when those shows fail to make money and the stations take a loss, their only option in canceling those shows would be to cancel the conservative shows as well. Free speech would lose. Americans would lose.” —Ken Blackwell

GOVERNMENT

“One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees. A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington wanted to take over London. Both wars are more properly described as wars of independence… Federal usurpation goes beyond anything the Constitution’s framers would have imagined. James Madison, explaining the constitution, in Federalist Paper 45, said, ‘The powers delegated… to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce… The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.’ Thomas Jefferson emphasized that the states are not ‘subordinate’ to the national government, but rather the two are ‘coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.’… One of the more disgusting sights for me to is to watch a president, congressman or federal judge take an oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, when in reality they either hold constitutional principles in contempt or they are ignorant of those principles.” —Walter Williams

INSIGHT

“If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.” —Theodore Roosevelt

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“Great job in ’Why the Left can’t get it Right’ explaining the differences between liberals and conservatives. I used to tell students in my college classes I knew their political ideological leanings after just a few days of class discussion. How? Exactly as you described—thinkers versus feelers.” —Kingwood, Texas

“Mark Alexander’s piece on ‘Why the Left can’t get it Right’ is a masterpiece that I forwarded to everyone on my email list—especially my liberal friends. He articulated so well what, I’m sure, has been on the minds of so many struggling conservatives. Thank you!” —Valencia, California

“Good column on why the left can’t get it right. Now we need to explain one why the ‘right’, can’t get it right. The Republicans are the presumptive ‘right’ party, yet they are don’t seem to have any more of a clue on the issues you discussed in your article than the ‘left’.” —Virginia Beach, Virginia

“If the news of Army Sergeant Ezequiel Mora receiving the medal was on the front page of our major fish wrappers (along with the other medals you don’t hear about) you would see a change in the populations view of this war and support would grow.” —Vancouver, Washington

THE LAST WORD

Editor’s Note: The following is satire.

“Saying he is ‘sympathetic to late night comedians’ struggle to find jokes to make about me,’ Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) today issued a list of official campaign-approved Barack Obama jokes. The five jokes, which Sen. Obama said he is making available to all comedians free of charge, are as follows: Barack Obama and a kangaroo pull up to a gas station. The gas station attendant takes one look at the kangaroo and says, ‘You know, we don’t get many kangaroos here.’ Barack Obama replies, ‘At these prices, I’m not surprised. That’s why we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.’ A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, ‘I was expecting the farmer’s daughter.’ Barack Obama replies, ‘She’s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American Dream.’ A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, ‘Why the long face?’ Barack Obama replies, ‘His jockey just lost his health insurance, which should be the right of all Americans.’ Q: What’s black and white and red all over? Barack Obama: ‘The New Yorker magazine, which should be embarrassed after publishing such a tasteless and offensive cover, which I reject and denounce.’ A Christian, a Jew and Barack Obama are in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Barack Obama says, ‘This joke isn’t going to work because there’s no Muslim in this boat’.” —Andy Borowitz

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.)