THE FOUNDATION

“The aggregate happiness of society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government.” –George Washington

INSIGHT

“Wisdom comes alone, through suffering.” –Aeschylus

“Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy.” –Shakespeare

“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.” –Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Discipline yourself and others won’t have to.” –John Wooden

“He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.” –Philip Massinger

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” –Abraham Lincoln

“Liberty is the soul’s right to breathe, and, when it cannot take a long breath, laws are girdled too tight.” –Henry Ward Beecher

“Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.” –William Allen White

“It is by risking life that freedom is obtained.” –Frantz Fanon

“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.” –Andrew Jackson

“Never mistake motion for action.” –Ernest Hemingway

“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.” –Henry David Thoreau

“The chief danger which threatens the influence and honor of the press is the tendency of its liberty to degenerate into license.” –James A. Garfield

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” –Abbott Joseph Liebling

“The handwriting on the wall may be a forgery.” –Ralph Hodgson

“A liberal is a man who will give away everything he doesn’t own.” –Frank Dane

“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.” –Aesop

“When there is lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.” –Herbert Hoover

“In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.” –Thomas Carlyle

“The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.” –Will Rogers

UPRIGHT

“Sometimes organized conflict – in a manner quite unlike other natural tragedy – shatters pretense, overturns old ideologies, and in a blink of an eye makes what was once unthinkable very soon rather pedestrian.” –Victor Davis Hanson

“Amid the rubble and confusion of war, the stench of the dead and wails of the living, war offers a terrible clarity. Delusions crumble, propaganda can be seen for what it is, and diplomatic gestures are only that – a cover for what war will decide.” –Paul Greenberg

“…[T]he root cause of terrorism is totalitarianism.” –Benjamin Netanyahu

“A terrorist is not equipped to negotiate. Only defeat will persuade him. Moral clarity keeps the goal in focus.” –Suzanne Fields

“You can spare me the rebuttal that I am being reflexively pro-Israel – as if being reflexively inclined to favor democracies and allies over crowds who burn American flags, who blow up innocent children, and who have enthusiastically supported the Nazis, the Soviets, and Saddam Hussein in their respective struggles against the United States is something to be ashamed of.” –Jonah Goldberg

“The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster – especially if some nations are not democracies.” –Jonah Goldberg

“We have two choices: Either we change the way we live, or we must change the way they live. We choose the latter.” –Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

“And protests about human dignity are hard to swallow from a people whose leadership devalues life to the point of sending its youth to their sacrificial deaths.” –David Limbaugh

“…God has made the world as it is and no human will can repeal its moral order.” –Joseph Sobran

“Because we are made in the image of God, we can exercise creativity in addressing environmental problems. Because we are stewards of creation, we have an obligation to do so.” –Charles Colson

“Is the New Morality itself the drug invented by anti-Christians to bring about the assisted suicide of the Christian West they always detested? Today’s children are going to find out.” –Pat Buchanan

“We cannot be safe unless we protect our constitutional rights and our borders.” –Paul Craig Roberts

“What chance of survival does a culture have when its own elites actively seek its destruction?” –William S. Lind

“We never ask of any Big Brother program, ‘How much is it going to cost? When’s it going to be said to have been successful? How are we going to define whether or not it’s successful, and when are we going to end it?’” –Rush Limbaugh

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“A sound policy in the [Middle East] region must begin with a fundamental fact: Israel, despite what ‘moderate’ Arab states say, is not the problem in the Middle East. Instead, the region’s violence and instability emanates chiefly from three major countries, which represent three distinct ideologies with which the United States is, broadly speaking, at war: the Baathist fascism of Iraq; the Shiite radicalism of Iran; and the Sunni radicalism of Saudi Arabia. All these regimes (along with Syria, Iraq’s junior partner in Baathism) must be confronted, although in different ways. Only Iraq is amenable to an immediate military solution. …But to move on Iraq, the administration needs a clean break from its current path. The Israeli-Palestinian dispute will not be soluble until Palestinian society as a whole eschews terrorism. Only then can the legitimate grievances of the Palestinians be usefully addressed. That may be a long process, possibly involving more Israeli incursions and the construction of a security perimeter until a new Palestinian politics arrives. There is no clever plan or negotiating gambit that the Bush administration can come up with to short-circuit this process – the real peace process. …If the administration takes this stance, the last three weeks will begin to seem only an unfortunate interlude in the broader war, and in fact may make it easier for the administration to make the case to the world that it tried its best to redeem the unredeemable Arafat. Then the U.S. can begin to concentrate again on a benefit to the region that it actually has the power to deliver – the fall of the Baathist regime in Iraq.” –National Review

DEZINFORMATSIA

This week’s “Leftmedia Non Compos Mentis” Award: “Terrorism experts also note that a society’s propensity to get rattled by suicide bomber attacks also contributes to the effectiveness of such attacks.” –ABC News Web site

This week’s “Leftmedia Snuffery” Award: “[Bernard] Goldberg was, let’s face it, not a bright shining star in the firmament of CBS News. He usually looked disheveled and bleary-eyed on the air. Goldberg was not only a flop as a network correspondent, he’s a lousy writer besides.” –Washington Post’s Leftmedia “critic” Tom Shales, responding to Goldberg’s book, “Bias.” **This of Goldberg, who was kept on staff at CBS News for 27 years and presented six Emmy awards for his “flop.”

“How does [George Bush] go up before the American public on Earth Day…and say, ‘No, I am a man who is misjudged. I am a man who is for the environment,’ when what he wants to do is dig it up for natural resources?” –CNN’s Carol Lin

SOCIOCRATS

This week’s “Leftlogic Eco-Theology” Award goes to Albert Gore for his Earth Day diatribe – a few examples of which follow: “Instead of ensuring that our water is clean to drink, they tried to increase the amount of arsenic in our water.” **Correction, Al. No one has tried to increase the amount of arsenic in water.

“Current law has remained in place, whereas the legislation you backed would have bankrupted countless communities through hopelessly excessive new regulations. … The Bush-Cheney energy policies leave us at the mercy of a region that’s racked with violence and instability, now more than ever. Obviously, we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, so that America cannot be held hostage to global chaos and tin-horn tyrants like Saddam Hussein.” **Obviously, we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil by drilling in ANWR, supporting new offshore drilling and developing a variety of long-term energy solutions – all part of the Bush energy policy but held hostage by Leftist obstructionists in the Senate.

“Under the presidency of George W. Bush, the environmental and energy policies of our government are completely dominated by a group of current and former oil and chemical company executives who are trying to dismantle America’s ability to force them to reduce the extremely dangerous levels of pollution in the earth’s atmosphere. The first step was to withdraw from the agreement reached in Kyoto to begin limiting worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases.” **That would be those gaseous emissions of carbon dioxide you are exhaling with each blast….

“Then the administration cancelled an agreement requiring automobile companies to make the leap to more fuel-efficient vehicles.” **And that would be leaving to free market choices of car buyers to drive fuel economy up.

“Other acts of sabotage are taking place behind the scenes, [and] the largest polluters know their only hope for escaping restrictions lies in promoting confusion about global warming.” **Only confusion promoters about globaloney are the eco-nuts like Big Al.

Some “Demo-Goguery”: “A decade ago, our economy was shrinking, as we struggled to emerge from a recession. We were running record annual budget deficits, with no end in sight. From 1980 to 1992, our national debt had quadrupled. Some people feared we’d never get out of that fiscal hole. But we did. And we did it the old-fashioned way. In 1993, we made a decision: No more living beyond our means. No more borrow-and-spend and piling up mountains of debts to leave to our children and grandchildren. From that point on, we decided, everything we did had to fit into a new framework of fiscal discipline.” –Demo Senate Leader Tom Daschle **What? Perhaps he actually means “tax bondage” rather than “fiscal discipline.”

VILLAGE IDIOTS

This week’s “Village Success Story”: “…[The personal computer] ecosystem depends in substantial part upon the continued health of and improvements to Windows.” –Microsoft head Bill Gates testifying modestly about company software. **Hey, in that “ecosystem,” we think we know where the compost comes from!

Remember the golden age of the environmental movement with the “Keep America Clean” campaign and its symbolic tragic-hero “Iron Eyes Cody”? He was the single-tear-in-the-eye Indian who experienced a sort of stoic breakdown in the commercials every time whitie trashed up the place. Though he died in 1999, Iron Eyes’ immortal image was resurrected for AOL’s Earth Day cyberfest, with a helpful link to his CNN obituary noting his Cherokee heritage. However, this Eco-Indian was the son of two Italian immigrants, making him about as authentically Indian as Roberto Benigni. It brings a tear to the eye.

This week’s “Dumbing Down” Award: “In the animal rights movement, we don’t decorate our dogs; it lowers their self-esteem.” –Linda Blair, of “The Exorcist” movies

From the “Village Academic Curriculum” Files: At this year’s graduation Michigan State University will offer for the first time an optional Black Celebratory – a graduation ceremony exclusively for black students. One student, Michael Cykowski (race unknown), raised the appropriate question in a letter to the school paper: “What would happen if some students tried to organize an all-white graduation? All hell would break loose. They would be labeled bigots.” The implication black students’ achievement in graduating is different – as if they had to try harder than their fellow students of other ethnicities – should be just as offensive to the black community as a burning cross or black-face comedy.

SHORT CUTS

“Updated proverbs: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a metal detector and a strip search.” –Bob Thaves in the comic strip “Frank & Ernest”

“From Mary McGrory in The Washington Post to Mark Shields on CNN, a falafel curtain has descended across our continent, transmogrifying the Arab aggressor into the victim.” –William Safire

“Most public-opinion polls are like Ouija boards. They’re great fun as long as you don’t pay them much mind.” –Wesley Pruden

“Colin Powell – back in the straddle again.” –Martin Schram

“The good book says blessed be the peacemakers, not the process makers.” –Tony Snow

“Once [Yasser] Arafat was ‘indispensable’ to peace, now he is a naked emperor whom the crowd confesses was without clothes all the time. His own documents prove he is a terrorist and has broken almost every agreement that the well meaning and naïve once put so much faith in.” –Victor Davis Hanson

“Fidel Castro will go to work as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley before Yasser Arafat signs a peace treaty.” –David Brooks

“…[M]aybe if we applied the traditional courtesies of West Virginia politics and agreed to rename Afghanistan Robert C. Byrdistan, he could see his way to being supportive of the war effort for a couple more months.” –Mark Steyn

“Copping The Pork: Willie Sutton robbed banks because/ That’s where the money was,/ But if he had heard/ Of Robert C. Byrd/ He’d have done what the Senator does.” –F.R Duplantier

“This rigid, hostile, puritanical control of little boys is now national policy. Very, very bad, cops and robbers. It could be worse, though. Little boys might play Cowboys and Injuns. (They certainly couldn’t call it that. Perhaps ‘Genderless Animal Care Technicians and Preternaturally Noble At-One-With-Nature Role Models’ would do.)” –Fred Reed

“…Fifty management languages including jargon, weaselese and mumble.” –Scott Adams in the comic strip “Dilbert”

“How to tell it’s time to update your resume: [The CEO says] By the way, if anyone asks, I wasn’t here and have no idea how my company operates … OK?” –Wiley Miller in the comic strip “Non Sequitur”

Jay Leno…. As you know Robert Blake has been arrested. Today he entered his initial plea of not guilty – even O.J. said, “Shut up!” …. The police said today that they have a very, very solid case against Blake. They have a weapon, a suspect, a motive, 900 pieces of evidence, over 35,000 documents, and on top of it two witnesses that say Robert Blake asked them to murder his wife. I don’t know, you’re going to have to have a lot more than that to convince a jury here in L.A.! …. Robert Blake will be tried by a jury of his peers – 12 other out of work actors. …. Today is Earth Day! Ben and Jerry’s gave out free ice cream today. Wow, Earth Day and ice cream, and you thought Al Gore was happy before! …. News from the Middle East is Colin Powell is back home. So I guess that’s a success – he’s still alive! …. There’s a new Osama bin Laden tape out. I haven’t seen it yet. Let me guess – he’s standing next to a big rock threatening us. Am I close? …. Did you get your taxes done? I had to file for an extension – my accountant is away with Kenneth Lay doing five to 10. …. The Internal Revenue Service has mistakenly sent out over $30 million to black people because of a slavery credit option. My question is how old are these black people? If they’re still around, give them the credit, let them keep the credit! …. The pope has called all the cardinals to Rome – or, as the cardinals are calling it, spring break! …. I’m glad these priests have to get on a plane to go over there. Let these guys go through security and get frisked and fondled, let them see how it feels.

David Letterman…. Top Unusual Things That Happen While Guarding Coasts, read by members of the U.S. Coast Guard: Sometimes you catch the lighthouse keeper making shadow puppets; As it turns out, salt water plus oil spill equals delicious vinaigrette; Once in a while, during a search-and-rescue, you find a cool-looking seashell; When you’re lost in the fog, friendly sea monsters help you find your way; David Hasselhoff keeps showing up to see if we need a hand; Kids are always crank-calling you in Morse Code; There’s nothing sweeter than stopping some snotty jerk driving his yacht drunk; Once I found a piece of driftwood that sort of looked like Freddie Prinze Jr.; Last week I made myself new underpants out of seaweed; Pirates!

Argus Hamilton…. Osama bin Laden looked much younger in two new videos released on Al-Jazeera last week. It’s clear he’s no longer dangerous. One look at him and it’s obvious he has taken his best people off anthrax research and put them to work making botox. …. Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a terror warning Thursday for possible al-Qaeda attacks on East Coast banks. This was the seventeenth terrorism alert issued by his office. Eternal vigilance is the price of twenty-four hour cable news. …. Palestinians seized hostages in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity…. The gunmen brushed off threats of reprisals. Seizing hostages in the Mideast is a lot like killing your wife in Los Angeles, it’s nothing your lawyer can’t handle. …. Israel rejected a U.N. call for peacekeepers on the West Bank…. That’s because prospects for peace unexpectedly improved that day. The arrest of Robert Blake offers the best chance yet to get Geraldo Rivera to leave Jerusalem peacefully. … If we start a celebrity murder trial in Los Angeles without a slow speed car chase, the terrorists will have won. … The impact is being felt worldwide. Just last night, the al-Jazeera TV network had to tell Osama bin Laden they’d try to fit him in during Sports. …. Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted … he could not pressure Arab leaders to get the PLO to halt suicide bombings. They said they will stand behind Yasser Arafat. They certainly won’t live very long by standing in front of him. …. Colin Powell toiled mightily for a week in a vain attempt to get a cease-fire in the Mideast. Nobody expected him to return with a peace agreement. He didn’t want to come home empty-handed but the Cairo Airport gift shop only sells shoe bombs. …. U.S. Judge Robert Jones ruled against the Justice Department’s attempt to stop Oregon’s assisted-suicide law. It was ruled a medical decision. Americans don’t want our medical decisions made for us by judges, we want them made by accountants. …. Al Gore wrote an editorial in the New York Times … complaining that global warming has caused women in Boston to wear bikinis in April. This is just one more difference between Al Gore and Bill Clinton. Al Gore thinks it’s a problem.