THE FOUNDATION: PATRIOTISM

“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” —George Washington

LIBERTY

“How many times have we heard the Dems insist that they support the troops? It’s one of their mantras. If something isn’t ‘for the children’, it’s to ‘support the troops.’ But it’s false, just as their insistence last fall that they wouldn’t cut and run was. All of that pales in comparison to one single fact: Reid and the rest of the Democrats do not condemn defeat. They do not say they would have done better to win, because the words ‘win’ and ‘victory’ never pass their lips. They never propose an idea that might lead to quicker, more decisive victory in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the Horn of Africa, or Lebanon, or anywhere else. No. The Democratic pathology is the same now as it was forty years ago… What, then, is the import of what Sen. Reid said? First, Reid and his ilk do not support the troops. When Reid says the war is lost, the troops hear. They understand that they are still risking their lives every day for a war the Democrats are content to lose. There can be no more destructive assault on their morale.” —Jed Babbin

THE GIPPER ON WAR

“All of us denounce war—all of us consider it man’s greatest stupidity. And yet wars happen and they involve the most passionate lovers of peace because there are still barbarians in the world who set the price for peace at death or enslavement and the price is too high.” —Ronald Reagan

INSIGHT

“All evils in our now extensive catalogue flow from a falsified picture of the world which, for our immediate concern, results in an inability to interpret current happenings.” —Richard Weaver

FOR THE RECORD

“Conservatives believe that there is evil in this world, that it will intrude into our lives and that we should be ready and willing to fight against it. We also know that evil lurks in every human heart and that we will not always meet the moral standard we claim to believe in. On some points we will fail (mea culpa, mea maxima culpa), on some we shall succeed, and on some we will never be tested. But we will not abandon our belief in that standard, and will resist all attempts to pretend it doesn’t exist. Courage is real and it is good; cowardice is real and it is bad. And that remains true, and I will believe it, even if I prove to be cowardly and not courageous when the time comes.” —Nathanael Blake

FAMILY

“No matter what, the law will teach. It will either teach that marriage exists as a natural institution with public purposes and meanings, centered around bridging the gender divide, and bringing together one man and one woman to share their lives as husband and wife and to become father and mother to their children, or it will teach that marriage is a mere creation of the state, recognizing and condoning the private sexual choices of adults, and intended merely to fulfill adult desires. There is no other option; one or the other will become normative… We can only hope that judges and policy makers will heed… [these] warnings before it is too late.” —Robert George & Ryan Anderson

CULTURE

“There is an inverse connection between the carnage at Virginia Tech and the carnage that is abortion. With Virginia Tech, we saw pictures of the bloody wounded. Survivors told us the rest. With abortion, especially the partial-birth kind, the most we get are drawings… The reason is that big media wishes to promote policies associated with the Virginia Tech carnage—chiefly more gun control laws—but does not promote the policies associated with abortion, so the public is kept largely in the dark.” —Cal Thomas

OPINION IN BRIEF

“I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told ‘em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased ‘em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where’s the nearest place around here where you’re most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you’re not in the real world.” —Mark Steyn

RE: THE LEFT

“Collective guilt is one of the legacies of the 1960s that is still with us. We are still seeing a guilt trip for slavery being laid on people who never owned a slave in their lives, and who would be repelled by the very idea of owning a slave. Back in the 1960s, it was considered Deep Stuff among the intelligentsia to say that American society—all of us collectively—were somehow responsible for the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King. During the 1960s, the idea spread like wildfire that whatever you were lacking was someone else’s fault—society’s fault. If you were poor, whether at home or in some third-world country, you were one of the ‘dispossessed’ —even if you had never possessed anything to dispossess you of… If other people are somehow responsible for whatever is lacking in your life, lashing out at random against individuals who have done nothing to you personally can sound plausible to many people. Whether or not the latest mass killings at Virginia Tech were a result of medically verifiable insanity, there have always been insane people but there have not always been mass killings with the frequency we have seen since 1960… Instead of banning guns, maybe we should rethink 1960s dogmas.” —Thomas Sowell

GOVERNMENT

“Our government, under our Constitution, was established upon the principles of Federalism—that the federal government would have limited enumerated powers and the rest would be left to the states. It not only prevented tyranny, it just made good sense. States become laboratories for democracy and experiment with different kinds of laws. One state might try one welfare reform approach, for example. Another state might try another approach. One would work and the other would not… Federalism also allows for the diversity that exists among the country’s people. Citizens of our various states have different views as to how traditional state responsibilities should be handled. This way, states compete with each other to attract people and businesses—and that is a good thing. Everyone in Washington embraces Federalism until it comes to someone’s pet project designed to appeal to the voters. Then, oftentimes, even the most ardent Federalist throws in with the ‘Washington solution’ crowd…[I]f conservatives use Federalism as a tool with which to reward our friends and strike our enemies, instead of treating it as a valued principle, we are doing a disservice to our country—as well as to the cause of conservatism.” —Former Sen. Fred Thompson

POLITICAL FUTURES

“Everyone who cared the least bit about this [South Carolina Democrat] debate knew that, although there were eight candidates on stage… it was really a debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Clinton did little to distinguish herself, but it was clear that she is far better at this than Barack Obama who drifted into campaign-speak on far too many occasions including one fairly astonishing answer on global warming when he said he was trying to teach his two daughters about… light bulbs. Mrs. Clinton had some moments, as well…[One] egregious answer by Mrs. Clinton was in response to a question about Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is based in Arkansas, where Clinton, you may remember, lived for some time before she bought that New York Yankees cap. She said Wal-Mart was a ‘mixed blessing.’ In its earliest days, she said, it gave people in place like rural Arkansas the chance to stretch their dollars. However, now that the Wal-Mart business model of allowing everyone to stretch their dollars has made it the largest retailer in the history of the planet it has become bad. I suppose it depends on what your definition of ‘stretch’ is… The clear winner between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was… Bill Richardson.” —Rich Galen

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“Thank you for the piece, ‘Duncan Hunter—The Class of Reagan.’ I was proud to be one of his constituents until our county was gerrymandered out of his district a couple of years ago. I am not sure that Duncan has the national reputation to win a nomination, and he may in some cases be too honest for his own good, but he is indeed the kind of man we need in top leadership positions.” —Brawley, California

“I have just read the biography that you printed on behalf of Duncan Hunter and I am so glad you said he is a Reagan Republican. He is an honest, hard-working Congressman and the country would do well to elect a president of his caliber. I only regret that he is not well known outside of San Diego, but your article will surely help. Thank you.” —El Cajon, California

“I can’t tell you how please I am to have recently learned about The Patriot Post. I read about your publication in an e-mail from Duncan Hunter, and any friend of Duncan’s is a friend of mine! It only took me one paragraph into the current edition on your homepage to realize that we want to join your Patriot readers on the frontlines. Thank you, and we will be adding a link to The Patriot from our site, Prayer Force One.” —Newalla, Oklahoma

“Great job on the new web page! Kudos to your staff. I have been a reader of The Patriot for over two years and this new web design puts everything in easy reach for me. I have made it my Home Page, and it is my ‘one-stop shop’ for news and conservative commentary.” —Arlington, Virginia

“I am writing to say thank you for The Patriot Post and all you do. You provide a breath of fresh air to a starved reader here in the Middle East. I am astounded at how the MSM report the news out of Iraq. I look forward to every edition of The Patriot. We rely on The Patriot to provide the real news. My sincere thanks for doing your job.” —LTC, USA, Iraq

THE LAST WORD

“Huge numbers of Americans don’t know jack about their government or politics. According to a Pew Research Center survey released last week, 31 percent of Americans don’t know who the vice president is, fewer than half are aware that Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the House, a mere 29 percent can identify ‘Scooter’ Libby as the convicted former chief of staff of the vice president, and only 15 percent can name Harry Reid when asked who is the Senate majority leader. And yet, last week, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that two-thirds of Americans believe that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’ firing of eight U.S. attorneys was ‘politically motivated.’ So, we are supposed to believe that two-thirds of Americans have studied the details of the U.S. attorney firings and come to an informed conclusion that they were politically motivated—even when Senate Democrats agree that there is no actual evidence that Gonzales did anything improper. Are these the same people who couldn’t pick Pelosi out of a lineup? Or the 85 percent who couldn’t name the Senate majority leader? Are we to imagine that the 31 percent of the electorate who still—after seven years of headlines and demonization—can’t identify the vice president of the United States nonetheless have a studied opinion on the firing of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias?” —Jonah Goldberg

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.)