THE FOUNDATION

“Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence, than the body can live and move without a soul.” –John Adams

INSIGHT

“Let justice and the economic laws be applied to the strong, but for the weak there must be mercy and charity; not the gratuity which pauperizes, but the assistance which restores. That, too, is justice.” –Calvin Coolidge

GOOD NEWS

“He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.” (Proverbs 13:20)

“The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good.” (Ecclesiastes 9:17-18)

“My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only he will release my feet from the snare.” (Psalm 25:5)

“Redeem Israel, O God, from all their troubles!” (Psalm 25:22)

“God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-39)

ICTUS IMPRIMIS

“In the days since the attack, Americans have been brought back to their faith. I mean this in the literal sense. It has been a time of prayer for us. In this prayer, let us remember that our very existence is a prayer of acknowledgement to the Creator’s wise authority. For He has formed and fashioned us with a dignity that we will defend, with the rights that we will preserve and with the hope for human destiny that we will not surrender. Remembering this is a noble cause even – perhaps especially – when we are not at war. Indeed, securing the opportunity to remember it in peace is the reason we now go to war, and will be the fruit of our victory.” –Alan Keyes

FAMILY

“Parents who spend $30,000 or more a year to provide their offspring a prestigious education at an Ivy League school are almost certain to be buying their sons and daughters a first-class indoctrination into radical left-wing ideology – from which they may never recover. It is not exactly news to find that many of the professors at schools such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton don’t think like most mainstream Americans, and make no effort to disguise their contempt for Western culture, religious faith, patriotism and capitalism. They fuzzily believe that Communism or something like it should probably be given another chance.” –Linda Bowles

CULTURE

“Over the past three decades, our Founding Fathers have fallen on rough times. Disparaged by liberals and slandered by post-modernists and cultural Marxists, their portraits have been removed from public buildings and their presence stricken from textbooks. It is possible today for American students to pass through elementary school and high school, and obtain a university degree, without gaining any appreciation for the men who founded their country. The horrendous events of Sept. 11 taught Americans that denunciations of their heritage have consequences that go beyond the babbling of crackpot academics and minority ‘leaders.’ Patriotism and our flag made a comeback. And so did truthful biography.” –Paul Craig Roberts

LIBERTY

“The rule of law is needed for both a civil society and economic development. Competent judges and juries could probably function quite well if the only law, beyond the structure of the government, was (to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Declaration of Rights): Everyone has the right to life, liberty and property and no person has the right to deprive another of his or her right to life, liberty or property by physical force or fraud. (Fraud involves knowingly making false representations.) If the above sentence were the law of the land, the government would have all the authority it needed to fully prosecute the terrorists, and any Enron official who misbehaved.” –Richard Rahn

THE GIPPER

“The First Continental Congress made its first act a prayer, the beginning of a great tradition. We have then a lesson from the founders of our land. That lesson is clear: That in the winning of freedom and in the living of life, the first step is prayer.” –Ronald Reagan

OPINION IN BRIEF

“The remedy for market imperfections is best found in a stable legal order that enforces accountability. Commit fraud, go to jail. Break a contract, pay compensation. Such rules are part of the moral and juridical environment within which competitive capitalism must be nestled. The Enron debacle has been costly and embarrassing. But out of such failures come future gains.” –Doug Bandow

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“The murderers of reporter Daniel Pearl want to limit freedom of the press and divert us from the war against terrorism. They cannot be allowed to do either of these things. …Reporters, like the rest of us, are facing an entirely ruthless enemy. Mr. Pearl’s murderers … are using his cell phone to threaten the families of the investigators pursuing them. To them, this is a no-quarter battle. In this way, it must also be for us. There will be more Americans kidnapped for political ransom. But what shall we do about these incidents when they happen? That we will neither concede to terrorist demands nor buy our people back is a given. Diplomacy is not enough, and America’s options for direct action are limited. Our intelligence apparatus is not good enough to find hostages in time for rescue operations to be mounted. …There are other options. Recently, the CIA took direct action in Afghanistan, its operatives firing a missile at a group of al Qaeda members, killing many. If the CIA is once again in the business of covert direct action, creating an American version of the Israeli Mossad should be considered. The secretive Mossad, over more than a decade, doggedly hunted down and killed the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. This is an ugly solution to an ugly problem. But it is one the president should be considering right now.” –Washington Times

GOVERNMENT

“In 1776, ours was but a strange republican experiment in a world of monarchies, a colonial rebellion along a narrow strip of coast remote from the centers of the civilized world. In the calculations of sophisticated European statesmen, this infant nation was just another pawn. But this pawn, as it turned out, had a mind and will and a great leader of its own.” –Paul Greenberg

RE: THE LEFT

“As early as 1992, signs were announcing: ‘Hillary, Mrs. President.’ During the following eight years, the long-term question was whether ‘Mrs. President’ would actually someday take the oath of office entitling her under the Constitution actually to hold that title. Many of those who studied her career, as I did, concluded that that was precisely where her ambition was planning to take her as early as the 1992 presidential campaign. The only questions were how she would use her husband’s presidency to realize that goal, and how he would help her get there. The answer, surprisingly enough, was to come from the State of New York…. No serious observer can believe that Hillary’s self-image or fundamental beliefs have undergone the slightest revision. Hillary Rodham Clinton remains, in her own mind, one of the anointed, and her quest remains how best to impose her ideas, especially concerning socialized health care, on the public. She is quite willing to act outrageously, stonewall and obfuscate, then proclaim that it is time to ‘move on.’ As her presidential campaign unfolds, the public will be wise to examine her conduct and motives in light of her past, consistent history. She will never really change.” –Barbara Olson (from “The Final Days”)

POLITICAL FUTURES

“In 1993, Dick Riordan not only said he would support President Clinton’s record $241 million tax increase, but actually sent a letter to Senate leaders urging them to support the President’s ‘economic programs’. Dick likes to say his fiscal thinking is in-line with the Republican Party, but not a single Republican in Congress, not even liberal Jim Jeffords, supported Clinton’s massive tax increase.” –California GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon

FOR THE RECORD

“Here are a couple of facts I bet you didn’t know: Last year, the video-game industry generated $9.4 billion in sales, delivering more revenue than movies at the box office ($8.4 billion). And here’s why you probably had no idea how massive this entertainment medium has become: According to the National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF), 92 percent of those under 18 play electronic games, while only 26 percent of those 18 and older do so…. One gory video game, ‘Grand Theft Auto III,’ has sold two million copies, making it the best-selling video title of 2001–even though it wasn’t released until October. What do children re-enact while playing this game? The National Organization for Women’s Web site explains: ‘The player begins working for the Mafia, which involves killing people, including police officers and innocent bystanders, stealing cars, and doing drugs. (He) can pick up a prostitute on the street and, as indicated by the bouncing car, have sex with her…. Once the hooker exits the car, if the player wants his money back, he can dash after her, beat her to death, and recover the cash…. The beating is bloody and done with a baseball bat that you can feel in your hands through the … controller.’ You’d think that as popular as this game has become, and as violent as it is, it would trigger outrage from the media. Think again. ‘A tad gruesome, it’s true,’ writes William Schiffmann of the Associated Press. ‘But if you look past the violence … you’ll find an excellent game with some hilarious possibilities’.” –Brent Bozell

SELECT READER COMMENTS

“Gore’s comments: ‘I don’t pretend to any received wisdom but I learned a lot from my experience in the Clinton-Gore administration: lessons I think are worth remembering and incorporating into the normal practice of our diplomacy.’ Could one of those lessons be ‘How to sell out your country’? Seems the Washington Times caught Clinton helping Enron by subsidizing $1 billion in loans for their overseas projects. I don’t think we need that to become ‘normal practice’.”

“The Dead Goat Saloon’s Men’s Room: Your reporting on Osama bin Ladin’s picture in a strategic place in the men’s room brought back memories. Jane Fonda’s picture occupied the same position in the pilot’s latrine at Udorn Air Base, Thailand during the Viet Nam war. It was a shot that no one missed.”

“It was interesting to learn recently from The Federalist that the ACLU claims on its Web site to be a conservative organization that defends the Constitution. When is the last time they defended the Second Amendment? If they are going to call themselves defenders of the Constitution, they’re going to have to defend the ENTIRE Constitution, not just the bits and pieces they happen to like.”

“President Bush’s action on campaign finance reform: Like Pontius Pilate two thousand years ago, President Bush is now faced with a momentous decision. He can, as Pilate did, acquiesce to a small, passionate and vocal mob (i.e., the Congress) and participate in a grave injustice … by signing into law the campaign finance ‘reform.’ Or he can show the nation that on this issue, too, he will not be driven by polls, media prattle or political self-interest, but by principle and commitment to his promise to the American people that he will ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,’ and rightfully veto this singularly horrible legislation. The American people are crying out for someone who will stand on principle instead of politics, who will do what he has promised to do. Please, Mr. President, don’t ‘wash your hands’ of our constitutional rights! Veto it … explain why in a televised speech … and the 2004 election is yours by a landslide!”

“Today I took a moment to ponder what my work week would be like without the intellectual nourishment of The Federalist. Then I dug out my credit card. As of today, I’m no longer a Fed Freeloader. Fellow Patriots, pony up!”
Editor’s Reply: Sometimes actions really do speak louder than words!

THE LAST WORD

“Basically, wherever there are goobers or Republican mischief-makers, there will be ‘Democrat’ as an adjective. The idea is that democratic is a good thing to be, and Democrats shouldn’t apply this term to their awful selves. Well, republican is a good thing to be, too – this nation is a republic – but too few people recognize that these days. We used to speak frequently of ‘republican virtues’ – that’s been somewhat lost. My fellow right-wingers, if it hurts you to say, or write, ‘Democratic,’ just remember that that’s ‘Democratic’ with a very, very big D – a D right through the ceiling. Because many of the Democrats we encounter are anything but democratic (and some Republicans, it is true, are rather less than strictly republican).” –Jay Nordlinger