The Patriot Post® · Words of Wisdom

Although I generally rely solely on my own brain when writing my articles, I’d be pretty darn silly if I didn’t occasionally share the thoughts of others.

To kick things off, my actor friend James Wood, who, having retired, thus cutting himself loose from the shackles of group think, Hollywood-style, is finally free to express his own conservatism. Taking advantage of his new-found freedom, he recently observed: “The world is fighting Islamic terrorism, starvation and disease, but Democrats are fighting for men to pee in the ladies’ room.”

Someone sent me a picture of a police dispatcher taking a call and responding: “No, I’m sorry, we can’t send help. Everyone quit to make more money at McDonald’s.”

When one of my readers suggested abolishing Social Security and all similar programs because they are socialistic, I wrote back to say that although I agreed with him in theory, his solution would merely make a bad situation worse. “What you’re suggesting is unfair. We paid the money in and now we don’t get any of it back? Great for the feds, not so good for us.”

In response, he replied: “Just abolish all programs, grants, departments, bureaus, agencies, etc., not authorized by the Constitution. That is better than 90% of the national budget. The funds saved could be used to pay back with suitable interest all of our citizens (notice I said citizens) who had their money stolen over the years.”

When I stopped laughing, I wrote: “Washington saving money? Washington doing away with programs and departments? Well, maybe if we elect Calvin Coolidge in November.”

Another party sent along the newspaper clipping that’s been floating around for a while on the Internet, warning that thanks to a warming trend, seals are growing scarce, ice is melting, the sea is rising and most coastal cities will soon be uninhabitable. The kicker is that it’s from an AP story that ran in the Washington Post 94 years ago.

I replied that however sincere the concern may have been in 1922, today “global warming/climate change” is just one more attempt to take money and resources from the civilized world and hand it over to Third Nation nations, which is pretty much the way the welfare system works in the U.S., taking money from the productive members of society and handing it over to the slothful and most contemptible.

William Davis passed along commentary that he attributed to Colin Powell: “A lot of people have brought up the probability that they won’t vote for Donald Trump if he’s the eventual nominee. I just want to put something in perspective.

"Justice Scalia’s seat is now vacant. Ginsberg is 82 years old, Kennedy is 79, Breyer is 77 and Thomas is 67. Data shows that the average age of a Supreme Court retirement or death occurs at 75. Counting Scalia’s vacancy, these are four more seats that will likely come up over the next four to eight years. The next President will have the power to potentially create a 7-2 Supreme Court skewed to suit their own ideology,

"If Hillary Clinton wins and gets to make those appointments you likely will never see another conservative victory at the Supreme Court level for the rest of your life.”

My response was to ask if Colin Powell had actually said something this sensible. I found it hard to believe, considering he twice campaigned for Barack Obama. But whoever said it should be speaking for every Republican voter, no matter whether they favor Trump, Cruz or Kasich.

I would go so far as to suggest that if an open convention ultimately determines that none of these three finalists has the slightest chance of reaching 1,237 delegates and turns to a Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, Ben Carson, Rick Santorum or — dare I say it, Rand Paul — to carry the fight to Hillary (“What difference does it make who killed four Americans?”) Clinton, we not sulk and whine and blame the RNC. Instead, we should follow the lead of our Founding Fathers and pledge with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence — (but with the understanding that God helps those who help themselves) — our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor, to support whomever the alternative to Mrs. Clinton turns out to be.

One of my readers in Missouri, Richard Ryan, points out “The reason the Iranians and the Russians get by with abusing our Navy is because the President has a wishbone where his backbone should be.”

A different reader shared what she believed to be a number of conspiracies, including one I hadn’t heard before that suggested that Osama bin Laden hadn’t been killed at his compound, but had been captured and transported to a secret bunker for enforced interrogation.

To which, I replied, “Anything is possible, but it strikes me as highly unlikely you would know things that nobody in the media has so far uncovered. Besides, the reason I don’t tend to swallow conspiracies isn’t because I am less cynical than you, but because I am even more cynical. I don’t happen to believe that even two people are capable of keeping a secret, let alone a whole large bunch of them.”

Mike Huckabee pointed out that the decision to replace Andrew Jackson with black abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill is a win-win for true conservatives. “I wonder,” he wrote of the Obama administration’s decision, “if they realize they’re replacing one of the racist founders of the Democrat Party with a black, female, gun-wielding Republican.”

Jackson was, indeed, a slave owner, whereas Tubman not only carried a pistol, but an ivory-handled sword. She famously said: “I had reasoned this out in mind that there was one of two things I had a right to — liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other, for no man can take me alive. I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted, and when the time came for me to go, the Lord would let them take me.”

A Second Amendment advocate, a Republican and religious. One of the great tragedies of modern life is that in 2016 America, such a person is so much likelier to wind up on a piece of currency than on the presidential ballot. The other tragedy is that if she were on the ballot, the overwhelming majority of her fellow blacks would cast their votes for Andrew Jackson.

Finally, after seeing DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz popping up all over the tube in recent weeks, I’m reminded that I once described her as looking like every blind date a Jewish guy ever went on that had been set up his grandmother.