THE FOUNDATION

“I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than all the means….” –John Adams

INSIGHTS

Editor’s Note: Thursday is, officially, Memorial Day. Additional commemorations will remember and honor our fallen veterans. To that end, we offer the insights below.

“It is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country.” –Horace

“Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.” –Martin Luther

“Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known only to God.” –Inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

“But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.” –Edmund Burke

“They summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and virtue.” –Gen. James A. Garfield

“Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.” –Gen. Douglas MacArthur

“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” –George S. Patton, Jr.

“To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?” –Wystan H. Auden, Epitaph for an unknown soldier

UPRIGHT

“All Memorial Days are days in which Americans ought to give thanks for freedom and the fact that somebody sacrificed for their freedom. … Our wars have won for us every hour we live in freedom.” –President George W. Bush

“We cannot take for granted the hard-won blessings of this country – created by the wisdom and character of people like George Washington, as well as the blood and deaths of the patriots who supported them – and then also demand that their words and deeds mirror our notions today, in a time with much easier choices.” –Thomas Sowell

“Memorial Day is a day we remember and honor those who fought and often died for their country. It is fitting that we do so. It is not, however, a day that we are called on to forgive those who have brought on us the horrors of war. As a nation we are not called on to do that; as individuals, as the years pass by and memories fade some of us will. But some can never.” –Lyn Nofziger

“…[U]ntil V-T Day arrives, the White House warns that more of us may have to die. Well, more than 3,000 of us have already died – in lower Manhattan, in Washington and in rural Pennsylvania – and I believe that the circumstances of this new war justifies extending the honors of Memorial Day to these dead.” –Daniel Henninger

“Most of us feel as though we’ve lived through eight months of memorial days. From the empty graves of Ground Zero to the broken ring of the Pentagon, we can’t help but remember our country and the men and women who died loving it. But America’s determination lives on – in the spirit of our military.” –Ken Connor

“Now, more than ever, we must remain vigilant and committed in our fight to protect the freedoms and dreams on which this nation was founded.” –Bill Simon

“If the 20th century did not teach us this lesson, then the 21st century seems determined to: progress is not inevitable, and all material, political, and technological change must be measured by moral standards that are not themselves a product of change.” –Charles Kesler

“Memorial Day is for the living; the dead are beyond all the fanfare, beyond all grief and pride and horror now. They cast a silence greater than all the speeches and band music and flyovers and 21-gun salutes. …The mix of joy and sorrow, the quick and the dead, the grief and pride, then and now – it is all as it should be in a free country aware for a moment of the price of freedom.” –Paul Greenberg

EDITORIAL EXEGESIS

“It seems a quaint concept now, but once upon a time the U.S. Congress was willing and able to conduct a responsible investigation. Sometimes it has even committed public service, for example, in the Keating Five probe in the early 1990s and going as far back as exploring what signals were missed leading up to Pearl Harbor. So it’s passing strange that so many Members now want to pawn off their constitutional oversight duty to an ‘independent commission’ to probe the intelligence and security failures leading up to September 11. … When Members are able to pass that buck to someone else, they often also abandon any self-restraint. Congress is likely to be more responsible if it plays the check-and-balancing role that the Founders designed for it.” –Wall Street Journal

DEZINFORMATSIA

This week’s “Leftmedia Parrots” Award: “There are a lot more questions to come about intelligence failures, about opportunities missed, about who, including to a certain extent President Bush, knew about what terror threats were happening before 9/11 and what was and was not done.” –Dan Rather, who apparently didn’t get the memo that this Leftmedia frontal assault on the administration was DOA.

From the “Europeanness Envy” File: “There is a lot of anger here. …The people on the streets today and a lot of Europeans, ordinary Europeans, are fearful of Mr. Bush’s leadership in the war.” –ABC’s Terry Moran

From the “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose” Files: “…[A] Rambo-like cowboy intent on going after Saddam Hussein with or without Europe’s support.” –NBC’s Campbell Brown on President Bush’s diplomatic consultations on the Continent.

Sometimes they get it right: “Indeed, in looking back on the weeks and months that preceded September 11, I must say, I – like so many of my journalistic colleagues – was embarrassed. We often neglected important news, especially from overseas, in favor of the softer yet perhaps more popular news.” –CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who further noted the TV media in particular had gotten “fat and happy.”

This week’s “Commissars of Correctness” Award: “Is this a conservative’s view of American history?” –Matt Lauer to Lynne Cheney on her new children’s book on American history – or is that “herstory”?

SOCIOCRATS

This week’s “Propagandum Magnum” Award: “Talk about scaring seniors – this may be a little over the top. But it is sooo fun to bash Republicans.” –Memo reply from a staffer in Demo Rep. Marcy Kaptur’s office regarding a draft opinion piece designed to “scare seniors” away from any plan to privatize even a small part of Social Security by comparing it to “corporate gambling.” (The reply was mistakenly sent to some Republican staffers.) House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt responded to the finding: “If that is scaring people, then we’re going to have to go back to the dictionary and figure out the word ‘scare,’ because if it’s scaring them, it’s scaring them because of what is in the president’s proposal.” **And, you know, Clintonistas have a difficult time with definitions!

Another “Gotcha”: “Meaningful statutory restrictions.” –Sen. Teddy Kennedy in 1978 on changes he championed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requiring significant evidence linking a suspected terrorist to an impending terror attack before a search warrant may be issued.

This week’s “Consummate Socio-Celeb” Award: “I had no idea what the response would be, not just here [in Washington], but worldwide.” –Vermont “Indie” Sen. James Jeffords, one year after his defection out of the Republican Party.

VILLAGE IDIOTS

This week’s “Hyper-Hypocrisy” Award: “We now have a president who thinks in terms of good and evil and that comes from watching too many Hollywood movies.” –Sean Penn, who, last we checked, stars in violent “Hollywood movies.”

From the “Global Village” Files: “If we go on this way, the Japanese race will become extinct.” –Japanese Health Minister Chikara Sakaguchi, referring to Japan’s declining birthrate, possibly disappointed to have been left off of the UN “endangered species” list announced last week. (At present, “only” 127 million Japanese remain.)

This week’s “Gender Disorientation” Award: “It gives them a safety net to step out of the cocoon that a lot of them are in.” –Transgender advocate Charlene Moore, on the recent Philadelphia City Council vote to extend anti-discrimination “protections” to transgendered persons (cross-dressers and those undergoing sex change operations).

From the “Village Academic Curriculum” File: “I live with straight guys now, and I definitely see the sexual tensions, which have made me very uncomfortable.” –A homosexual Swarthmore College student who described himself as “homoflexible.” Swarthmore College joins the University of Massachusetts and Wesleyan University allowing students of the opposite sex to room together in school dorms because gays on campus complained that earlier rules requiring them to be of the same sex were “heterosexist.”

SHORT CUTS

“Well! I’ve just been asked the question that leads to an answer, which is then characterized as inflammatory in the media. And the question is, should I refuse to answer – and therefore not be accused of being inflammatory or alarmist or something? Or should I just give the same honest answer I’ve given for six, eight, 10, 12 months?” –Donald Rumsfeld

“Underperformin’ Norman is so September 10th, in thrall to all the old shibboleths – gun control good; profiling bad. You can’t blame the public for concluding that a war effort which targets 86-year-old nuns with tweezers is all effort and no war.” –Mark Steyn

“Anything they’re hearing, they’re putting it out now in the form of an alert. If they get a fax saying that terrorists are going to disguise themselves as Dolly Parton and show up at various grocery stores to sell pancake batter – they’ll issue an alert.” –Rush Limbaugh

“If you’re a plain American you’re perfectly free to observe that the loathsome European disease, terminus temporizinus, is incurable, but if you’re a president you have to keep in mind that though the situation is hopeless, it’s not serious.” –Wesley Pruden

“What’s the difference between a guy who hunts deer with a bow and arrow and one who hunts with a gun? The one gets more bang for his buck.” –Johnny Hart in the comic strip “B.C.”

“With great power comes great responsibility.” –Spider-Man

Jay Leno…. President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a historical treaty today which will cut both countries’ nuclear stockpiles by two-thirds. Bush said by doing this it will allow us to now concentrate on getting rid of the other 50 % of our nukes. …. The Grateful Dead are going back on tour. The name of this tour is called “The Members of the Band Who Are Grateful They’re Not Dead”! …. Recent polls show that Yasser Arafat’s popularity is slipping in the Middle East. He’s becoming more and more unpopular. You know where he’s doing really bad? With the Jewish vote. He’d better start going door to door to get their votes. …. Scientists in Israel have created a featherless chicken. The new chicken was so successful that there are now plans to make a hairless Robin Williams. …. On a flight from Chicago to Hong Kong, seven firecrackers were found in the restroom aboard the plane. Officials believe this was done by a group of moderate terrorists. …. This is historic – secession was put on the ballot here in L.A. In the next election, people will vote over dividing the city into two separate cities – they will be called Sodom and Gomorrah. …. Isn’t California strange? Even the cities get divorced out here! …. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill is on a trip with U2 singer Bono; they’re on a tour of Africa. Bill Clinton has also announced a trip of his own – he and Jennifer Lopez are going to Amsterdam. …. A group of Cubans were arrested and sent back to Cuba after their boat went off course and they ended up in Mexico. After all, if there’s one thing Mexico has a problem with, it’s illegal aliens trying to sneak into your country!

David Letterman…. Top Signs You’ve Been at Sea Too Long: In cabs, you tell driver where you want to go using latitude and longitude; You smell like kelp; You spot a school of fish and actually recognize some of them; Not only do you have sea legs, you have sea hair; The first mate he got drunk, and broke in the captain’s bunk, the constable had to come and take him away; Your name is Larry, you sign letters “U.S.S. Larry”; The other day I yelled at a seagull to shut the hell up; Stunned to learn there’s a baseball team in Tampa Bay … actually most Americans have that reaction; You answer the phone, “Ahoy?”

Argus Hamilton…. President Bush raised eyebrows with his European itinerary. He … [went] from Berlin to Moscow to St. Petersburg to Paris to Normandy then to Rome. His Secret Service agents are wearing satin jackets reading, Original Axis of Evil Tour 1939. …. The White House refused … to let airline pilots carry guns for fear they might kill innocent people. This makes no sense. If we think they’re going to kill innocent people, we shouldn’t give them a pilot’s license in the first place. …. Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley assailed FBI headquarters for blocking their investigation of Arab flight school students last summer. The FBI head of counterterrorism saw both the Phoenix and Minneapolis warnings and saw no evidence of a threat. And you wondered if members of the O.J. Simpson jury ever found work. …. Tropical Storm Alma is picking up speed in the Pacific off the west coast of Mexico. Forecasters warned the storm could turn into a hurricane strong enough to knock down buildings. The INS just issued Alma a student visa for flight training. …. The New York Times says cable news ratings have sunk to pre-September 11th levels. The public is sick of pundits. If you saw James Carville and Bill O'Reilly and they were both drowning, would you continue reading the newspaper or eat lunch?