THE FOUNDATION

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.” –Thomas Jefferson

INSIGHT

“Freedom from fear and injustice and oppression will be ours only in the measure that men who value such freedom are ready to sustain its possession – to defend it against every thrust from within and without.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower

GOOD NEWS

“Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more.” (Isaiah 65:17-19)

“The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountains, says the Lord.” (Isaiah 65:25)

“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” (John 6:27)

“I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:35-40)

“Stop grumbling among yourselves.” (John 6:43)

ICTUS IMPRIMIS

“The Middle East has no monopoly on reality avoidance. In refusing to recognize America’s religious roots, the mullahs of the federal judiciary are every bit as clueless. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lower-court ruling declaring unconstitutional a proposed Ten Commandments monument to be erected on the grounds of the Indiana statehouse. The court apparently believes our system of government was created out of thin air and bears no relationship to the faith of our fathers…. In reality, the Ten Commandments is central to our understanding of inalienable rights and government based on law. Absent Sinai, there would have been no Mayflower Compact, Declaration of Independence or Constitution – in short, no America.” –Don Feder

FAMILY

“If we would see a truly human future for ourselves and for our children, we must value individuals for who they are, not for what they can do. The praiseworthy goal of treating human disease and relieving human suffering must not be allowed to become a tool for eliminating the persons who are suffering. To do so would be to use the good gift of genetic knowledge for evil ends…. Only vigilance on the part of all of us can prevent a bleak eugenic future.” –Dr. C. Ben Mitchell

CULTURE

“What immigration is bringing us is not new citizens, but foreign cultural enclaves. The United States is becoming a Yugoslavia – an artificial grouping of different ethnicities who will one day be at one another’s throats. The fatuous politicians in Washington and the ‘open borders’ ideologues are importing a bloody future for Americans.” –Paul Craig Roberts

LIBERTY

“Can you name one government reform that actually improved anything? How many times has Social Security been reformed? How about public education? Health care? Let’s not forget the IRS! In Washington, ‘reform’ always means more spending, more taxes, more regulations, more bureaucrats, and less freedom.” –Rep. Ron Paul

THE GIPPER

“The American people, the most generous on earth, who created the highest standard of living, are not going to accept the notion that we can only make a better world for others by moving backward ourselves. Those who believe we can, have no business leading the nation.” –Ronald Reagan

OPINION IN BRIEF

“Unfortunately money is not the root of all evil; evil is the root of all evil. Many of the goody-goody politicians who claim they would be paragons of virtue if it were not for campaign contributions are in error. Freed from the presence of soft money or even hard money most of these politicians would be just as bad. Once again, some politicians are lying to you. Not surprisingly, they are the same ones claiming to be virtuous.” –R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“A liberal campaign against the Christian Right would face an additional problem. The de facto leader of the Christian Right in America is President Bush. His approval ratings are now in the mid-to-high-80s, which is probably better than motherhood or apple pie could get. A GOP with even modest political talents could easily convert a Democratic campaign against Christian conservatism into 1) an expression of religious bigotry and 2) an attack on a wildly popular president. …[One strand of opinion] suggests that the Democrats want to use the Taliban strategy to draw the president into a fight at home – that they’d then have him right where they want him. Really?” –National Review

GOVERNMENT

“Billions of dollars disappeared without a trace in just a few years. Honest auditors were scarcer than talking dogs. Worst of all, nobody questioned why so many insiders were giving their buddies outside lucrative contracts establishing cozy partnerships that were shot through with conflicts of interest. No, Enron had nothing to do with it. The culprit is none other than Uncle Sugar, proprietor of the world’s largest annual spending spree, the $1.4 trillion federal budget, and operator of what may well be the world’s biggest and costliest example of fuzzy math in action.” –Mark Tapscott

RE: THE LEFT

“The left always focuses its attention on dividing wealth – rather than producing it – and they do so because of their love affair with government power. Bureaucrats can work to apportion riches in a manner they deem fair, but government never produces the riches in the first place – only private enterprise can do that. In other words, the left sustains the sense of eternal grudge that fuels its lunatic projects by persuading people to focus on the attainments of others, rather than celebrating achievements of their own. Liberals love to highlight the ‘growing gap between rich and poor’ – without noting the far more salient fact that poor people in American have progressed so dramatically that they now enjoy a standard of living that would have qualified as middle class in previous years. There will always be someone with a bigger business, a better car, a nicer house, a prettier wife – and it can drive you crazy if you concentrate on the blessings of that other guy.” –Michael Medved

POLITICAL FUTURES

“September 11 has taught Americans that we need to return to being the confident moral force we once were, and fast – to act resolutely and to follow principle. We must expect, but ultimately ignore, the carping; be polite, but forgo the apologies; and let our critics, not us, worry only about the tension and hurt that follows.” –Victor Davis Hanson

FOR THE RECORD

“Of the 20th century’s three global conflicts – the First, Second and Cold Wars – who was on the right side each time? Germany: one out of three. Italy: two out of three. For a perfect triple, there’s only Britain, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Even now, with their military capabilities shrivelled to almost nothing, the only guys actually on the ground in any combat role with the Americans are the British, Aussie and Kiwi SAS boys and Canada’s JTF2. I think there’s something to be said for being on the right side of history.” –Mark Steyn

SELECT READER COMMENTS

“The Federalist wrote ‘Memo to Joe: Some of us have not forgotten that you got caught cheating in law school!’ Don’t for get he also got caught plagiarizing content in his Senate speeches.”

“I am in need of a little clarification. I thought Je$$e’s PUSH stood for ‘Pay Up Stupid Honky.’ But he has started shaking down Asians so what does ‘PUSH’ stand for now?”

“Regarding the American Red Cross, take ‘American’ and ‘Cross’ out, and what you have ‘left’ is a clear picture of the politics of those insisting on the excising.”

“As a retired military officer and current airline Captain, I am very disappointed and even angry that Mineta/Ridge say there is no need for pilots to carry firearms for cockpit security. I am certain that every passenger and WTC fatality on 9/11, if they had it to do over, would want their pilots to have firearms.”
Editor’s Reply: Mineta and Ridge have long histories in opposition to Second Amendment rights. No surprise they would oppose this move.

“The Federalist suggested that if Congress thought it could get away with it, they would repeal gravity. Now the editors of The Federalist should know this is not true. Congress has no interest in repealing anything, but they might consider passing a law requiring Americans to give antigravity equal time.”

“The constant wringing of hands about the impending death of the Social Security system amuses me. In spite of dire predictions in the 1980s and 1990s that the whole thing would go bust, it didn’t. Relax, folks.”
Editor’s Reply: But those “dire predictions in the 1980s and 1990s” were not for those decades but for the next one to come. By 2025, there will be only two worker bees for each retiree. FICA of 30% perhaps? Who will pay for that – Enron?

“As a trust/compliance officer in a major U.S. bank, I really think that still calling Social Security a trust fund is quite a misnomer. If myself or any other fiduciary were to handle our accounts like the U.S. government has handled Social Security, we would be sitting in jail charged with breach of fiduciary responsibility. In correct terminology, a trust is defined as a ‘fiduciary relationship in which one party transfers equitable title of assets to another, to hold for the benefit of itself or a third party.’ So, we all get to chip in our hard-earned dollars to the fund, then our fiduciaries (i.e., elected officials) get to protect, grow, and distribute the proceeds to the beneficiaries, our elder citizens. The problem starts when our pork slinging politicians decided to use this fund as a fix all pot full of money. Had this ‘trust been’ operated as intended, their would be more accrued income than could be used by three generations, but thanks to Washington, we cannot even count on Social Security to cover our current number of elders as promised.”

“Don’t you think the ‘Monica Lewinsky’ DNA comment is a little beneath this publication?”
Editor’s Reply: Oh – sometimes even The Federalist Editor for Standards and Practices throws a little caution to the wind!

“About The Federalist’s provisions of daily nutritional value. Thanks for providing me with timely information that is trustworthy, conservative minded and morally strait.”

THE LAST WORD

“The idea behind ice fishing is that the northern winter, which typically lasts 43 months, eventually starts to make a guy feel cooped up inside the house. So he goes out to the Great Outdoors, drills a hole in a frozen body of water, drops in a line, and then coops himself up inside a tiny structure called a ‘fish house’ with a heater and some fishing buddies and some cigars and some adult beverages and maybe a TV satellite dish. It’s basically the same thing as drilling a hole in the floor of your recreation room, the difference being that in your recreation room you’d have a better chance of catching a fish. … Every January, the Grand Cities hold a day-long ice-fishing tournament called ‘The Frosty Bobber.’ The first year it was held, the total number of fish caught was zero. The second year, one person actually did catch something. It was a salamander.” –Dave Barry