The Foundation

“All see, and most admire, the glare which hovers round the external trappings of elevated office. To me there is nothing in it, beyond the lustre which may be reflected from its connection with a power of promoting human felicity.” –George Washington

Insight

“Limited as are the powers which have been granted, still enough have been granted to constitute a despotism if concentrated in … the Executive branch. … The tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when exercised by a single individual … would terminate in virtual monarchy. … The tendencies of … governments in their decline is to monarchy. … The spirit of faction … in times of great excitement imposes itself upon the people as the genuine spirit of freedom, and, like the false christs whose coming was foretold by the Savior … impose upon the true and most faithful disciples of liberty. It is in periods like this that it behooves the people to be most watchful of those to whom they have entrusted power.” –William Henry Harrison, March 4, 1841 inaugural address

“Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the new wonderful good society which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean more money, more ease, more security, and more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Opinion in Brief

“For foreigners, the only thing nuttier than watching the way we elect our Presidents is watching the way we inaugurate them. For a nation that wears its egalitarianism not just as a badge of honor, but (as we saw this past November) almost as a requirement for office, the pomp and circumstance involved in a modern U.S. Presidential inauguration would have moved Louis XIV to modesty. … Too many balls, tickets are too expensive, only the rich and connected can get into the really good stuff … and so on.” –columnist Rich Galen

Faith and Family

“The Rev. Louie Giglio, designated to give the benediction at this year’s presidential inauguration, has withdrawn, under apparent pressure, after the surfacing of remarks he made, some 25 years ago, about the sinfulness of homosexuality. … One wonders if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday coincides with this second inauguration of America’s first black president, would not himself wind up today pushed off the stage because of his Christian convictions. A hint of how to think about this may be gleaned by visiting the new memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring King. Visiting the memorial, what immediately struck this black Christian was the complete absence of any hint that King was a Christian pastor, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and who led a movement animated and inspired by biblical conviction and imagery. … In King’s famous letter written in 1963, while locked in a jail in Birmingham, Ala., beginning with the salutation ‘My fellow clergyman,’ he asks the question, ‘How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?’ The answer given by King was this: ‘A just law is a manmade code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.’ Would a law such as the one forcing the evangelical Christian owners of Hobby Lobby to pay for contraception and abortion inducing pills of employees, and exposing them to fines of $1.3 million per day for noncompliance – qualify as ‘just’ under Dr. King’s definition? Would the Rev. Dr. King be ejected from the stage of this president’s inaugural if he called this law, produced by this administration, unjust?” –columnist Star Parker

Martin Luther King Jr.

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

Today the once-noble Democrat Party has turned the wisdom of MLK, one of their most revered iconic figureheads, on its head. Perhaps King’s most remembered words are these: “I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” However, Democrat Leftists now interpret this as, “I have a dream that my children will one day be judged by the color of their skin, not the content of their character.”

Read more on what Martin Luther King has come to symbolize for the Left.

Re: The Left

“Severe restrictions on building housing in San Francisco have driven rents and home prices so high that blacks and other people with low or moderate incomes have been driven out of the city. … Liberals try to show their concern for the poor by raising the level of minimum wage laws. Yet they show no interest in hard evidence that minimum wage laws create disastrous levels of unemployment among young blacks in this country, as such laws created high unemployment rates among young people in general in European countries. The black family survived centuries of slavery and generations of Jim Crow, but it has disintegrated in the wake of the liberals’ expansion of the welfare state. Most black children grew up in homes with two parents during all that time but most grow up with only one parent today. Liberals have pushed affirmative action, supposedly for the benefit of blacks and other minorities. … But who cares about facts, when you are on a liberal crusade that makes you feel morally superior?” –economist Thomas Sowell

Inspiration

“In the debate over abortion in the United States, two women’s names appear more frequently than any others: Jane Roe and Mary Doe, the plaintiffs in the companion 1973 Supreme Court cases that legalized abortion in the country. … [A] woman named Sandro Cano has quietly issued a media release on a Christian newswire service calling for the two Supreme Court cases to be overturned. This in itself might seem unremarkable, until you learn Cano’s other name: Mary Doe. Yes, that Mary Doe. … While the better known Roe v. Wade struck down all state restrictions on abortion pre-viability, Doe v. Bolton extended the right to abort through all nine months of pregnancy. But Cano has since claimed that the whole foundation of Doe v. Bolton was a lie: that she never actually wanted nor requested an abortion and that she was tricked into signing an affidavit about abortion in the process of filing for divorce from her husband and seeking to regain custody of her other children. … In 2003, Cano launched legal proceedings to try to overturn the case that bears her name. … But while her attempt to have the case reheard failed, this hasn’t stopped her from working to overturn the case in other ways. … Meanwhile, another women, Norma McCorvey, briefly captured headlines during last year’s election cycle when she released a pro-life ad featuring graphic pictures of aborted children and accusing President Obama of ‘killing babies’ by his support for abortion. Most won’t recognize McCorvey’s real name, but will instantly recognize her pseudonym: Jane Roe. Yes, that Jane Roe. Though McCorvey worked as an abortion activist for years after Roe v. Wade was handed down, she announced a conversion to the pro-life cause in the mid 1990s. … In 2003, Norma filed to re-open Roe v. Wade, a petition that was dismissed. Much like Sandra, however, Norma continues to speak out about her involvement in the case. ‘I’m 100 percent sold out to Jesus and 100 percent pro-life,’ Norma writes in a testimony published on her website. … To many it will come as a shock that neither of the two women whose names are practically synonymous with legal abortion in America actually had an abortion, and that both are now passionately pro-life and have dedicated their lives to trying to overturn the cases that bear their names.” –LifeSiteNews’ John Jalsevac

Culture

“For decades, ultrasound has had the power to convey the beauty and reality of human life before birth. Conveying that power, the London Daily Mail newspaper … reports on the story of a mother who rejected abortion and chose life for her baby after seeing him smile in an ultrasound. Katyia Rowe was told her baby would never be able to walk or talk, but a real-time ultrasound scan showed him blowing bubbles and waving his arms, so she decided to go through with the birth. He died just 9 hours later, but she is very glad she chose life instead of abortion. … ‘Katyia, 26, a training administrator, said: "We were devastated to be told our son’s brain abnormalities were so severe they were life limiting and we should consider a termination. Further scans were arranged to assess the extent of his disabilities but when I saw him smiling and playing inside me I knew I couldn’t end his life. … I had never considered myself particularly maternal but now I wanted nothing more than to care for my son and give him the best quality of life possible. … As he grew bigger I could see his little feet and hands prodding through my bump when he wriggled. He may not have been born but he was already our son and I took each movement as a sign we had done the right thing.”’“ –LifeNews’ Steven Ertelt

Essential Liberty

"President Obama put Vice President Joe Biden in charge of [a gun control] task force. Biden calls his gun control effort a ‘moral issue.’ Does Biden suffer from selective morality? For him, same-sex marriage and abortion don’t appear to be moral issues, as they are for his Catholic church, but gun control is. The loss of liberty always begins at the extremes, but it won’t stop there. Radicals won’t be satisfied with outlawing one type of gun. … The Second Amendment was written to protect citizens from tyrannical government and to preserve our liberties. It’s not primarily for the protection of hunters and target shooters, though they are included. Those politicians who wish to ignore the Constitution are the ones who need to be controlled, not law-abiding gun owners.” –columnist Cal Thomas

Sign the Pledge!

Join the critical push for American Patriots across this great nation to pledge: “We, the People, affirm that we will support and defend Liberty as ‘endowed by our Creator,’ enshrined in our Constitution and empowered by its Second Amendment, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Please take a moment and join the 29,000 of your countrymen who answered the call. Share it with your family, friends and colleagues via social media and email, as well. Let’s stay ahead of the curve.

Sign the 2A pledge!

The Gipper

“When dictators come to power, the first thing they do is take away the people’s weapons. … I do not believe that [our nation’s leaders] have any desire to impose a dictatorship upon us. But this does not mean that such will always be the case. A nation rent internally, as ours has been in recent years, is always ripe for a ‘man on a white horse.’ A deterrent to that man, or to any man seeking unlawful power, is the knowledge that those who oppose him are not helpless.” –Ronald Reagan

Reader Comments

“As Mark Alexander wrote in Sensible Gun Control Policy?, the Second Amendment is a check against tyranny, no more, no less. It has nothing to do with hunting or self-protection, so let us stop talking about ‘sensible gun control’ when any gun control is aimed at disarming the populace in order to gain total dictatorial control.” –Git R Dunn in Alabama

“I was offended that President Obama used children’s views in his political assessment of gun regulations. Guns and knives do not kill; the people behind them kill. Our focus should be on getting the mentally ill identified and treated rather than focusing on guns. Children have no concept of mentally unbalanced human beings but think everyone thinks like them. Adults should be making these decisions and trying to pull on the heart strings of Americans this way is wrong.” –Bettye in San Antonio, Texas

“To answer the leading question in Friday’s Digest, there is no rational discussion possible with the Left. It does the cause of freedom and Constitutionalism a disservice to even attempt to discuss this issue with any of them. Gun control has never been about ‘saving the children’ or any of the foolish and cowardly ‘reasons’ they advance. Except for perhaps some of the ‘useful idiots,’ and they are no more receptive to reasoning than the hard-core Left. For the Left this is all about give and take. We give; they take.” –John in Colorado

The Last Word

“Democrats continue their anti-gun crusade although even they aren’t dumb enough to believe that more gun control laws will do any more to diminish violence in America in the future than they have in the past. … Liberals are so loony on the subject that if you ask them what unarmed citizens are supposed to do when attacked, they’ll actually say – with a straight face, no less – that they should call the cops. So it seems that every time a man is mugged or a woman is raped, the real problem is that they neglected to place a call in the middle of the assault. … One of my readers suggested that if Democrats were really sincere, they would make Washington, D.C., a gun-free zone, just like schools, malls, movie theaters and Fort Hood. After all, if empty words are enough to keep our kids safe, why aren’t they good enough for members of Congress, Joe Biden and Barack Obama? If the government passes anti-gun laws, we all know it will do nothing to eliminate mass murders. That means the natural next step will be to expand their attack on the Second Amendment by outlawing ammo. I even know what their slogan will be: ‘Guns Don’t Kill People, Bullets Do.’” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team