The Foundation

“The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity.” –George Washington

Inspiration

“I received an amazing email from Anna, who gave me permission to post her story and her name. … ‘When I was little I was molested for eight years by my stepfather. … I got pregnant the first time when I was 12. I was scared and told him. He hit me and then loaded me up on drugs, telling my mom that I had been injured while out playing with some other kids. He killed my baby. … When I was 13, I became pregnant again. This time I did not say anything to him. My mom noticed that my body was changing, even though I was only about two months along at the time, and asked me about it. … I finally got the courage and told her everything. She immediately packed up my brother, sister, and I and took us to our Aunt’s house. From there she called the police. … In the end, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for molesting not only me but my sister. … I was told by therapists, friends, teachers, family, and even strangers, that it would probably be best if I had an abortion; but I couldn’t. … It was harder than I have words to describe. But there are some things in life that are worth fighting for, and she was one of them. … I decided to name her Josey Ann, after a character in a book I had read. On Friday, July 28, 1995, roughly six weeks before my due date, I went into labor. … Words cannot express the joy I felt when we got to bring her home the day before I started the 7th grade. … My mom was amazing, she watched my daughter so that I could finish school. I did graduate and was my class historian. I met a wonderful man who loves both me and my daughter, and we now have four children. … It wasn’t until I was 26 that I truly found a relationship with Jesus Christ. A wonderful neighbor of ours showed me how much Jesus loves me. Because He loves us, He gave us free will. My stepfather abused that gift when he abused me. But like Romans 8:28 says, God used something horrible to bring me one of the greatest blessings in my life. … To anyone who is where I was, please hold on. You can make it, and your child will bring you more joy than you can imagine. It will be hard, but it is worth it.’” –LifeNews’ Jill Stanek

Essential Liberty

“I was in surgery when the first Columbine victims arrived in our emergency room. As I was working to improve one child’s life, my friends were downstairs trying to save others – one cracking a chest and another tending a girl whose breast had been partially blown off by a shotgun. Trust me; I get it. … Trashing our individual constitutional rights is not the answer to mass shootings. … A society so denied becomes one obsessed not with doing the right thing, but with figuring out how to break the law. The inevitable result of violent misconduct is howling for the state to immediately pass more laws that restrain individual freedom to act, the diffusion of power away from the individual and to the state, and the increased risk that the state will become tyrannical and precipitate violence. When we ask our elected representatives to restrict our rights and our freedom of conduct, we are asking them to diminish our chances of becoming good and happy citizens. There once was a king who had only two laws – ‘Do as you please, and harm no one.’ This is the simplest expression of liberty and of good governance. It is also the only regime under which citizens can fully learn the difference between right and wrong.” –Patriot Post Grassroots contributor Cameron S. Schaeffer

Opinion in Brief

“Let’s take one more step with the cry for stricter gun control laws. What would happen if our lawmakers were able to push through a bill ordering the confiscation of all firearms? Who would they immediately go after? You can bet your life it would be the law-abiding citizen. Why? Because they obeyed the law requiring registration of their firearms, government officials know where they reside and the good citizen will, in all likelihood, offer the path of least resistance. The criminals? Well, the criminals would get a free pass because they did not obey the law. So, it would be gun crime as usual on the streets of Chicago, Baltimore, New York, Washington, D.C., Houston and Los Angeles, while a mentally unstable person loads his guns and plans a mass shooting at a mall, church or school in your neighborhood. Welcome to the real world of Obama, Feinstein, Bloomberg and O'Malley gun control.” –Patriot Post Grassroots contributor James H. Lilley

Government

“I think most people are missing the liberal thought pattern which is the biggest threat to our Liberty. The liberal argument to ban … weapons is based on two and only two arguments. First argument is that ‘no one really needs a rifle like the AR-15.’ The second is that ‘for the safety and common good, it is necessary to remove the right to own a weapon with military type features or a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds.’ So let me make something perfectly clear: At no time are we required to justify our ‘need’ of anything to the federal government. As big of a threat to individual liberty that a ban on some particular weapons is and as bad a precedent that it sets for further gun grabbing by the federal government, it pales in comparison to the concept that the government can begin to base policy on the government deciding what the American citizen ‘needs.’ … Really, when you come to think about it, removing a citizen’s rights based on government defined needs is about as good a description of socialism as you can find and in reality, is the best explanation why citizens need the ability to defend themselves.” –Patriot Post Grassroots contributor Scott Treichler

Insight

“Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. … It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.” –President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933)

Political Futures

“[T]he emotional heart of the State of the Union comprised three issues: immigration reform, climate change and gun control. … How can it be springtime for liberalism when liberalism’s top priorities aren’t the public’s top priorities? The remainder of Obama’s agenda was fairly pathetic boilerplate. Hike the minimum wage! Redesign America’s schools! Manufacturing hubs! Make-work programs! This is supposed to be liberalism reborn? Lame ideas cribbed from a playbook with 60 years of dust on it? Slogans hatched by pols who needed a few more nouns to round out Obama’s sentences? Legislative initiatives that will cost Democrats seats in 2014 and beyond? Obama’s State of the Union had the lowest ratings in 13 years for a reason – and it’s not that America is excited for a new golden age of liberalism. The momentum Obama feels is the pull of gravity, as he starts his fall.” –columnist Jonah Goldberg

For the Record

“The president gives a performance [in his SOTU address], extremely animatedly, head swiveling from left-side prompter to right-side prompter, continually urging action now: ‘Let’s start right away. We can get this done. … We can fix this. … Now is the time to do it. Now is the time to get it done.’ And at the end of the speech, nothing gets done, and nothing gets fixed, and, after a few days’ shadowboxing between admirers and detractors willing to pretend it’s some sort of serious legislative agenda, every single word of it is forgotten until the next one. In that sense, like Beyoncé lip-synching the National Anthem at the Inauguration, the State of the Union embodies the decay of America’s political institutions into a simulacrum of responsible government rather than the real thing, and a simulacrum ever more divorced from the real issues facing the country.” –columnist Mark Steyn

The Gipper

“The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. … Business doesn’t pay taxes, and who better than business to make this message known? Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business.” –Ronald Reagan

Faith and Family

“A healthy marriage culture helps the gold standard prevail, wherever possible, that children are raised by the parents who brought them into this world. … The Supreme Court itself has repeatedly noted that marriage and the family are necessary foundations of a free and properly functioning democratic republic. This is why the state, although it did not create marriage, has consistently supported and encouraged its flourishing. In contrast, until very recently, no government in human history has ever officially recognized same-sex relationships as marriages, precisely because they do not further society’s important interest in the natural procreation of the next generation of citizens. … The erosion of marriage and the breakdown of the family in America have unleashed social problems that are all too real and must be remedied. But the remedy will not come by accepting same-sex ‘marriage’ as valid, necessary, or constitutionally required. Marriage does not need redefinition, but rededication to its core meaning, the union of one man and one woman, and to its core purpose, uniting children to their own mother and father.” –columnist Ken Connelly

Culture

“The difference between Barack Obama and [Dr.] Ben Carson couldn’t be more stark. Obama feeds class warfare and rails about growing up in America in a single parent home, without ever bothering to thank an America that bestowed him a life of privilege. Carson was goaded on to success by a mother whose motto is: ‘Do your best and God will do the rest’. In his poverty-challenged youth, with a mother who steadfastly refused victim status, Carson was reading books, not writing them. Even with all odds stacked against him, Ben Carson went on to turn poverty into celebrated success. Meanwhile, there’s a pall cast over [last week’s] State of the Union address. It’s the Hope & Change Americans see in Mrs. Sonya Carson’s little boy, Benjamin Carson.” –columnist Judi McLeod

Reader Comments

“Mark, thank you for easing my conscience in your column Obama’s Progressive State of Disunion with your admission that you had better things to do than watch the SOTU last Tuesday. I wasn’t going to; then I thought I should; then as I watched the Cabinet members file in my husband and I looked at each other and silently agreed that we would rather do something – ANYTHING – else. I couldn’t allow myself to get worked up (again) over all the blatant lies and deception while the ignorant and sycophantic applaud their Emperor.” –Christi in Georgia

“The SOTU address given by the impostor in chief was at best a punch line best delivered by a real comedian. The president has told most of these lies before and he still thinks we are going to believe him. The Democrats make me ill when they attempt to use the bodies of children to promote their anti-gun agenda. And I would remind them that the last time attempts were made to disarm the citizens of this country it didn’t go as they planned. I would refer them to the history at Concord, known as ‘The Shot Heard 'Round the World.’ Oh but I forgot they don’t teach History anymore do they?” –Kelly in Blue Springs, Missouri

“This disgraceful president uses semantics to convince himself he’s not a liar. When he says his proposals won’t add one dime to the deficit he isn’t lying because it’s not one dime, but far more than one. And when he took his oath he figures doing everything he can to undermine the Constitution is the best of his ability since he thinks the Constitution is bad for America.” –Reed in Flint, Michigan

“We don’t have a spending problem? HA! How can Obama, Pelosi, and the other NeoComs actually maintain a straight face while babbling such astoundingly stupid statements? Their insatiable appetite to tax and spend is driving our nation to destruction! Of course that’s how they buy their votes. They promise everybody everything, and unfortunately, far too many voters are either freeloaders or completely out of touch with reality. But nothing is free.” –Travis in Texas

“Let the sequester happen! Something has to wake the Democrats to the fact that the spending has to stop!” –Del Ray in Clearbrook, Minnesota

The Last Word

“Right now, politicians have the power to suddenly decide to tax us all at 100% and then spend the money replacing all of our roads with a high-speed rail system. What keeps them from doing that? Common sense? Come on, look at the morons we have in government – Congress is filled with idiots who couldn’t run a lemonade stand and who have grand visions to transform the nation. No, the only thing stopping them is that they’re divided into two parties who viscerally hate each other. If they ever got along, a big new government overreach like the Patriot Act or a giant boondoggle like Obamacare would be passed every couple weeks. … We American citizens have nothing protecting us – except the two-party system. Playing half the government against the other half is the only thing keeping its power in check. … If we ever see the parties start to get along, we have to come up with some completely made-up issue to keep them fighting, like climate change. … So right now we should hope for headlines about a bipartisan agreement that was broken up when the senators started to bite each other. Then we’ll know our country is safe.” –columnist Frank J. Fleming

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