THE FOUNDATION

“[H]e who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition.” –Thomas Jefferson

INSIGHT

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” –John Stuart Mill

IChThUS IMPRIMIS

“Faith begins to make one abandon the old way of judging. Averages and movements and the rest grow uncertain. The very nature of social force seems changed to us. And this is hard when a man has loved common views.” –Hilaire Belloc

FAMILY

“Neither the cultural problem (of [same-sex] marriage) nor its solution can be found in Washington…. Sufficiently large numbers of Americans either do not believe, or do not practice, what the Scriptures teach and cannot be made to do so through a constitutional amendment or any other law. Neither side will persuade the other of the correctness of its position, so it becomes a political power game. Perhaps if those pushing for a constitutional amendment better modeled what they preach for others, they might find more favor among secular powers. According to a survey by the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life: ‘The divorce ratio among members of evangelical churches is virtually the same as among non-church members; In the United States, 1 million children [have seen] their parents divorce; The majority of children in America have less than 10 minutes of significant and meaningful conversation with their parents each week. If you remove the mother, you can measure this statistic in seconds.’ Conservative Christians could use an ‘extreme makeover’ to repair their own homes before they demand that others conform to a standard they themselves have trouble meeting.” –Cal Thomas

CULTURE

“Motherhood has fallen to the immoral depths of selecting which child will live and which will die. Not because of the mother’s health. Not because the fetus has a health problem. Not because of the sex of the unborn. Not even because the woman doesn’t want to be pregnant. This life-or-death choice for the unborn isn’t called abortion. It’s abortion when the baby is unwanted. This elegant murder has its own name that sounds sanitary and medical: ‘selective reduction.’… A woman, who wants to be pregnant, is pregnant. But she’s pregnant with twins or triplets and, in some cases, more. Being a modern woman, she wants to choose how many children she has in each pregnancy. Multiple births occur naturally. … With in vitro fertilization, when physicians implant fertilized and seemingly viable embryos in a woman, they usually put more in than the number of children desired. They assume some will not survive, and they’re usually right. But not always. If more implants begin to grow, the woman is told it would be better and safer for her if she decided how many she wants and the rest are ‘selectively reduced.’ Nice words. Clean and abstract. It means that the tiny, unwanted babies growing inside the ‘mother’ are killed. Mom then carries the rest to term, assuming all goes well. If you wondered about the number of twins being born, now you know. A high percentage of them are here with some help from modern science. Certainly, not all were ‘selectively reduced’ from their brothers and sisters, but the truth is, we’ll never know.” –Barbara Simpson

LIBERTY

“[T]he way Bill Clinton, John Kerry and the Boston Democrats approach taxing and spending the hard-earned money of Americans is not really about money, it is about liberty. It is about who decides: Do you decide what to do with your money or does the government decide? Do you take care of yourself or does the government take care of you? Are you an autonomous individual – free and independent – or are you currently or potentially dependent on the state?” –Terence Jeffrey

THE GIPPER

“[W]hat I call the ‘post-Vietnam syndrome,’ [is] the resistance of many in Congress to the use of military force abroad for any reason, because of our nation’s experience in Vietnam. No rational person ever wants to unleash military force, but I believe there are situations when it is necessary for the United States to do so – especially when the defense of freedom and democracy is involved or the lives and liberty of our citizens are at stake. I understood what Vietnam had meant for the country, but I believed the United States couldn’t remain spooked forever by this experience to the point where it refused to stand up and defend its legitimate national security interests.” –Ronald Reagan

OPINION IN BRIEF

“Everyone knows that most born-again white Christians will not be voting for Kerry. They are not part of the Democratic [sic] strategy. But black Pentecostals are a different matter. Without them, the party may not get the massive black turnout it must have in swing states like Illinois, Michigan and Florida. Under the best of conditions, Kerry is not a figure who can inspire African America to rush out and vote. He certainly can’t induce black Pentecostals to rebel against or ignore the moral urgings of their church. It’s not that these black religious conservatives will vote for Bush. Many just won’t vote. The Democrats are committed to a social agenda that includes [homosexual] political rights – rights…[black Pentecostal denominations] regard as an abomination.” –Zev Chafets

GOVERNMENT

“We now begin to see just why the Democrats don’t want to talk about this topic [of Supreme Court nominees] on the campaign trail and the convention podium. Thoughtful liberals aren’t afraid of what a conservative Court will do; no, they need a liberal court to advance their agenda. The Left relies on the Court to push an agenda that no representative body ever would: abortion on demand, homosexual marriage, and banning public displays of faith. If they thought these were winning issues, they would push them as legislation, not through Court edict…. [T]he biggest cash-cow issues for the Left are abortion and homosexuality, the two issues on which they turn to the bench (rather than the people or their representatives) for almost all of their wins. So the result of this dynamic is a party – and a movement – that desperately needs the courts, but is afraid to talk about them. That’s what we’re seeing in Boston.” –Timothy P. Carney

RE: THE LEFT

“An Edwards speech is a little like cotton candy if you are a kid at the circus or at a ballgame – it looks good, but then you are shocked at how it melts away into nothing when you take a bite, and by the end you are left unsatisfied. Like Edwards the politician, this speech lacked depth. He’s a campaign parrot who learned a few good lines during his primary run and repeated them last night in a cut-and-paste job of his greatest hits. And this is the guy from whom John Kerry is borrowing his message! Yes, every politician will regurgitate his share of platitudes and vacuities. But at times Edwards seemed merely to be piling up nice words for their own sake: faith, family, responsibility, opportunity, decisive, strong, values, safe, stronger, respected. You go, John – don’t leave any focus-grouped word behind.” –Rich Lowry

POLITICAL FUTURES

“The Democrats opened their 44th National Convention with Has-Beens Night… The party stuck in a time warp offered us a bit of nostalgia – golden oldies of political buffoonery. The musical Clin-tones – Bill and Hillary – headlined the evening. In the former first couple, we have Louis XIV and Madame Defarge in one delightful package. Former President Jimmy Carter [and] former Vice President Al Gore…rounded out the entertainment. No wonder The Cartoon Network got higher ratings in the same time-slot…. As president, Kerry threatens to reprise the foreign-policy triumphs of the Clinton years… [Clinton] also took the opportunity to engage in some classic Democratic [sic] class-warfare. Republicans…believe in government by and for the rich (like the millionaire felons Clinton pardoned in his last days in office). They can’t relate to the little guy – unlike Mr. Teresa ($750 million) Heinz or that man of the masses, Edward Moore (never worked a day in his life) Kennedy. The Democrats really care about the little guy – which is why they want to keep him from ever growing bigger or stronger. They talk about making the wealthy pay their ‘fair share’ of taxes but always end up increasing the burden on the middle class. In their eyes, if you make over $80,000 per year, you’re rich. Over $100,000 qualifies as super-rich. But that’s the cost of progress – here defined as creating new bureaucracies, taking more power out of the hands of ordinary Americans and giving us the health-care system of Canada.” –Don Feder

FOR THE RECORD

“For all the competing poll numbers, there is one irrefutable fact which should sober up Democrats leaving Boston. Since Republicans and Democrats began facing off in 1856, there have been 26 presidential elections. With the exception of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, no Democrat has won more than 50.1% of the vote in American history. Democrats can and do win national elections, but there is scant evidence they have a natural majority in a two-person race.” –John Fund

SELECT READER COMMENTS

“I must tell you how much I enjoyed your Demo-lition Division edition. I forwarded it to friends, who reported they enjoyed it too. I was surprised to find that party wrapping itself in the flag. The anti-war, anti-America, anti-family values party wrapped in the flag? I imagine many people found that just as surprising as I did, and just as fraudulent. Thanks for the good work. –Sacramento, California

"So Mr. Kerry thinks all Americans should have the same health care as members of Congress. I say we provide members of Congress with the same health care (including paperwork and red tape) as the rest of us and soon we WILL all have the same health care as members of Congress.” –Cheyenne, Wyoming
Editor’s Reply: We believe that plan might just do it…

“Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones said, ‘We are tired of seeing our hard-earned tax dollars go to haves and have-mores, while the must-haves, could-haves, should-haves, maybes and have-nots have not at all.’ Hard-earned tax dollars? Who earns tax dollars? I earn a salary, and the government taxes it and gives it to the should-have-worked’s!” –Niantic, Connecticut
Editor’s Reply: We’re not sure that working has much to do with Tubbs-Jones’ point of view.

“For a group that claims to promote liberty, you seem to overlook the efforts of Republicans to enlarge the government as much as the Democrats. I am a Libertarian, and I think that both sides need to be called to account for the expansion of federal authority and a foreign policy that puts our nation at risk.” –Boston, Massachusetts
Editor’s Reply: The Republican Party platform is still that of fiscal conservative principles. It is a shame that many RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) can’t seem to remember that and we at The Federalist Patriot hope to be quick in pointing that out.

“I am sorry, but I cannot call Planned Parenthood’s latest scheme of T-shirts reading ‘I had an abortion’ merely a ‘Morally Challenged’ method of getting their message out. When an individual reaches the point of proudly displaying that they have personally sacrificed their child on the altar of convenience they display with equal passion their heart of complete moral depravity.” –Tucson, Arizona
Editor’s Reply: We will make the change for such references in future editions.

“I noticed in your recent submission, under the heading ‘Regarding the redistribution of your income…’ you omitted Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex). Alas, if only both houses of Congress were populated with his likes and the like minded! –Prior Lake, Minnesota
Editor’s Reply: We apologize for the omission and do acknowledge that Ron Paul is an outstanding member of Congress. See "The Last Word” below!

“I find it interesting that John-John and the Democrats had their convention in the Fleet Center, an arena named after an enema.” –Smithville, Missouri

“I’m a conservative and I think you at The Federalist Patriot are out of your minds for trying to prosecute a candidate to keep him from running for office. Where is your respect for our electoral process? No one has yet proven conclusively that George Bush didn’t skip out on the National Guard, so there should also be no reason to move one Kerry. If a candidate from either side can’t win fair and square, then that person doesn’t deserve to hold public office, and certainly not occupy the White House. Let’s keep this above the belt.” –Phoenix, Arizona

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the great job you do getting out the truth in a comprehensive, historically mindful, and eloquent way. But you are not perfect! Eg., "Howard Dean (AAARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!)” Dr. Dean did not say that. He said, “Eeeeeeeyyyyaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!” It makes ALL the difference!“ –Seattle, Washington

THE LAST WORD

"Everybody complains about pork, but members of Congress keep spending because voters do not throw them out of office for doing so. The rotten system in Congress will change only when the American people change their beliefs about the proper role of government in our society. Too many members of Congress believe they can solve all economic problems, cure all social ills, and bring about worldwide peace and prosperity simply by creating new federal programs. We must reject unlimited government and reassert the constitutional rule of law if we hope to halt the spending orgy.” –Rep. Ron Paul