The Foundation

“A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.” –James Madison

Inspiration

Due to the outstanding work of both the FBI and Massachusetts law enforcement, the two young Chechen immigrants who bombed the Boston Marathon one week ago were identified and apprehended. The older of the two brothers was killed Thursday in a firefight with police, and the second was captured Friday night. He remains in stable condition at a hospital. Though he is unable to speak because of his injuries, he appears to be cooperating with investigators.

The Department of Justice is determining what charges to file and how to classify the attack. Congressional Republicans are demanding that the suspect be treated as an “enemy combatant” rather than a criminal, though that’s unlikely to be the outcome.

As law enforcement seek to clarify whether these two acted alone or as part of a larger effort or cell, we still refrain from speculating other than to say their belief system and tactics have all the DNA markers of Islamic fanaticism.

Opinion in Brief

“Friday morning, the entire city of Boston was put in lockdown. Residents were warned to ‘shelter in place,’ meaning staying locked in their home, answering only to uniformed law enforcement personnel. Hundreds of police swarmed through the city, tracking a violent terror suspect … with a clear intent to kill. The situation is a reminder of why millions of Americans cherish their right to own guns to protect themselves and their families. Gun control advocates mistakenly assume Americans cherish their 2nd Amendment rights because of either a cultural anachronism or an affinity for hunting. The left looks at gun control as a debate over which guns Americans ‘need.’ They often argue, for example, that Americans don’t ‘need’ a 30-round magazine to hunt deer. That’s true, but the debate isn’t about ‘needs,’ it is about rights. The 2nd Amendment isn’t built on a foundation of hunting, but, rather, the ability to protect one’s life and property. The manhunt in Boston … shows the very real threats that occasionally enter our lives. In a situation like Boston, seconds count, while the police are minutes away. … Gun control advocates … would be wise to reflect on the unfolding events to understand why many of us ‘cling’ to our guns. The world can be a very dangerous place.” –Breitbart’s Mike Flynn

Re: The Left

“In 2009, after [Nidal] Hasan’s atrocities, Obama and General Casey wandered around Fort Hood like clueless yet self-righteous parents at a ‘don’t keep score’ little league game, pretending not to have any idea what the score was – and congratulating themselves on their holy ignorance. … And yet, the same cause-and-effect wizard who immediately surmised that the ‘Cambridge cops acted stupidly’ in the Gates case refused to voice the obvious about the attack. Even today, we are still told the massacre was a case of ‘workplace violence’ and that the Fort Hood killing spree is not officially listed as a terror attack on American soil. (As an aside, Hasan knew that all the soldiers at Hood were ammo-free, thanks to political correctness, but it’s not like gun rights are an issue now or anything.) Apparently, Obama is still in that ‘don’t keep score’ mode, emphasizing right after the capture of Dzhokhar ‘Not Smith’ Tsarnaev, that we must not ‘jump to conclusions’ and ‘take care not to rush to judgment’ in the Marathon bombing case. Isn’t it astounding how liberals never want to rush to judgment – unless, that is, a rush to judgment is perfectly appropriate?” –columnist C. Edmund Wright

Government

“Each new crisis, it seems, leads to a growth of government’s power. The Boston attack was not caused by guns. Somehow, I expect a movement will arise to ban pressure cookers. We are slow to learn that such ‘terrorist’ attacks are not ‘caused’ by weapons of any sort. They are caused by ideology, personal madness, or, sometimes, both. If we ban guns and pressure cookers, the next round of killers will use knives, poison, or baseball bats. A hundred websites will tell us how to use them, as a hundred sites tell us now how to make bombs at home. … If two homemade bombs can disrupt a country and practically paralyze a large metropolitan area for days, who do we think is watching this drama? What lessons are being drawn? The difference between 9/11 and the Boston Marathon is not so great in that respect…. In short, while this country may return to ‘normal,’ I do not think that the lesson of this bombing will be lost on those who shrewdly calculate the vulnerability of modern societies. In the end, we either increase government control of everything, which not a few desire anyhow, or we leave ourselves open to increased random disruption. All of this has much to do with our unwillingness to ask ourselves about the difference between ideologies and common sense.” –National Review’s James V. Schall, S.J.

Patriots’ Day Campaign Final Update

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On behalf of the entire Patriot Post team, thank you for your continued support!

Insight

“See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.” –French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

The Gipper

“A government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those Founding Fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy.” –Ronald Reagan

Political Futures

“[A]fter his party’s resounding defeat on gun control legislation, the president may have pulled the final piece away from a facade that has been crumbling for quite some time. In his Rose Garden speech Wednesday, unity, above all else, was the most obvious casualty. ‘Families that know unspeakable grief summoned the courage to petition their elected leaders – not just to honor the memory of their children, but to protect the lives of all our children,’ said Obama. ‘And a few minutes ago, a minority in the United States Senate decided it wasn’t worth it. They blocked common-sense gun reforms even while these families looked on from the Senate gallery.’ What the president fails to mention is that ‘these families,’ relatives of the Newtown victims, were in the gallery because he flew them down from Connecticut aboard Air Force One, precisely for the purpose of using them as props to persuade senators to vote for the bill. … Yet if there is one thing the 2010 election proved, the rout of moderate Democrats who supported Obamacare meant little to a president far more interested in his own agenda. That may have been the best excuse of all for these Democrats to vote no on this legislation.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

For the Record

“In America, all atrocities are not equal: Minutes after the Senate declined to support so-called gun control in the wake of the Newtown massacre, the president rushed ill-advisedly on air to give a whiny, petulant performance predicated on the proposition that one man’s mass infanticide should call into question the constitutional right to bear arms. Simultaneously, the media remain terrified that another man’s mass infanticide might lead you gullible rubes to question the constitutional right to abortion, so the ongoing Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia has barely made the papers – even though it involves large numbers of fully delivered babies who were decapitated and had their feet chopped off and kept in pickling jars. … It’s very weird to live in a society where mass death is important insofar as it serves the political needs of the dominant ideology. A white male loner killing white kindergartners in Connecticut is news; a black doctor butchering black babies in Pennsylvania is not.” –columnist Mark Steyn

Culture

“One of the strongest practical arguments in favor of the Roe regime is that abortion has been around since time immemorial and outlawing it only drove it underground, leading women to endanger themselves by seeking out the services of back-alley quacks. The Philadelphia grand jurors recounted a powerful example from their own city’s history. It was called the Mother’s Day Massacre. A young Philadelphia doctor ‘offered to perform abortions on 15 poor women who were bused to his clinic from Chicago on Mother’s Day 1972, in their second trimester of pregnancy.’ The women didn’t know that the doctor ‘planned to use an experimental device called a "super coil” developed by a California man named Harvey Karman.’ A colleague of Karman’s Philadelphia collaborator described the contraption as ‘basically plastic razors that were formed into a ball…. They were coated into a gel, so that they would remain closed. These would be inserted into the woman’s uterus. And after several hours of body temperature, … the gel would melt and these … things would spring open, supposedly cutting up the fetus.’ Nine of the 15 Chicago women suffered serious complications. One of them needed a hysterectomy. The following year, the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade. It would be 37 more years before the Philadelphia doctor who carried out the Mother’s Day Massacre would go out of business. His name is Kermit Gosnell. Back-alley abortions were indisputably a problem before 1973. That’s no defense of the Roe regime, which failed to solve it.“ –Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto

Reader Comments

"Mr. Alexander, thank you for your essay on Patriots’ Day 2013 – Liberty in the Balance. You are an excellent writer. Would that I could speak as eloquently as you write. Thank you for putting this all together.” –Julianne in West Chester, Pennsylvania

“While I enjoyed Mark Alexander’s essay, I have to take exception to his narrow definition of ‘heroism.’ Any time someone puts themselves at risk, when not required to do so, in order to help another, I consider it heroic. I believe that we saw copious examples of this behavior following the blasts in Boston.” –Tom in Massachusetts

“If Obama considers the crime of Nidal Malik Hasan, who murdered 14 and wounded 29 others at Ft. Hood while yelling ‘Allahu Akbar,’ ‘workplace violence,’ will he insist the Boston bomber be charged with ‘disturbing the peace’ or ‘raceplace violence’?” –Lowell in Johns Island, South Carolina

“Congress has their immigration bill out of order. It should be: 1) improved border security, complete with protective legislative ‘triggers’ to ensure that goal is met. 2) changes to immigration rules to grant a more favorable status to skilled workers, 3) DEPORT & RE-ENTER LEGALLY = ‘pathway to citizenship’ for illegals currently domiciled in the U.S. – 11-20 million people, depending on who’s doing the counting.” –Jeff in Twin Oaks, Missouri

“With all due respect to Sen. Sessions, these low-wage workers are already here and the number of government workers needed to expel 11 million immigrants would be almost as bad an expansion of the federal government as ObamaCare. Locking the gate is first. Then I don’t see what alternative there is to amnesty after that – so long as it’s the last one. To expel them would cost a fortune.” –Abu in Toronto

The Last Word

“Question: What do Earth Day and Vladimir Lenin’s birthday have in common? Answer: they both reoccur every year on April 22. Coincidence? How about this? The first Earth Day took place April 22, 1970. The centennial of Lenin’s birth took place April 22, 1970. Needless to say, the Lenin centenary was a huge deal to the communist movement, which goes bonkers over dates and memorials to its icons. Here are more striking similarities: Vladimir Lenin and the communist and environmental movements all remonstrated against capitalism, profits, corporations, industry, free markets, the West. Here’s another: When the communist movement imploded in the late 1980s, many of its disciples just happened to join … yep, you guessed it: the environmental movement. … Our more knowledgeable friends on the left will cry foul at my crass connection between Lenin Day and Earth Day. They might note that Lenin was not an environmentalist. True, Lenin was a collectivist. He was also an angry atheist who detested human beings, mowing them down, filling land-fills with them. He did, however, share the penchant for central planning championed by environmentalists. And like environmentalists, more people were a problem for Lenin and his minions. Both environmentalists and Leninists view people as a drain on resources. For environmentalists, too many people consume too much of the earth’s (alleged) limited resources. For Leninists, too many people consume too much of the state’s limited resources. Both see mass collectivism and redistributionism – not to mention government control and seizure of property – as solutions to perceived global problems. … Earth Day and Lenin’s Day. Related?” –columnist Paul Kengor

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