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THE FOUNDATION

“If industry and labour are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.”  — James Madison

INSIGHT

“I favor a policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the government. Every dollar that we save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical form.”  — Calvin Coolidge

THE GIPPER

“How can limited government and fiscal restraint be equated with lack of compassion for the poor? How can a tax break that puts a little more money in the weekly paychecks of working people be seen as an attack on the needy? Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes — one rich, one poor — both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?”  — Ronald Reagan

OPINION IN BRIEF

“We may not know precisely, we Americans, what we want the next president to do about energy prices. What we shouldn’t want him — or her — to do is as plain as a gasoline pump primed to deliver at 3-bucks-plus per gallon. Some might consider getting down on hands and knees for this one: Please, oh, please, don’t try regulating us into the kind of ‘solution’ that solves nothing. A more effective, as well as becoming, alternative, especially if begging and asking nicely don’t work, would be a people’s march on the White House in opposition to making things worse by seeming to make them better. Regulation of gasoline prices doesn’t work, and, by and large, our politicians know it doesn’t work. There’s no escaping those remorseless facts. Why worry at this point about regulation of energy? The numbers on the gasoline pump tell us. Anything over $3 a gallon is bad news, unless we adjust our expectations or start riding bicycles. Then, memories of past government interventions — the price controls of the ‘70s and the lines that ensued at the gasoline pump, the ‘windfall profits’ tax on oil profits — make chillier the sensations moving up and down the spine. Regulation isn’t equivalent to ‘solution’ of anything. It’s merely what politicians — those of a certain mettle, anyway — always propose when significantly large numbers of voters are pinched and distraught. Like now.”  — William Murchison
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LIBERTY

“The fact that an obese person becomes ill, or a cyclist has an accident, and becomes a burden on taxpayers who must bear the expense of taking care of him, is not a problem of liberty. It’s a problem of socialism where one person is forced to take care of another. There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another... Forcing one person to bear the burden of health care costs for another is not only a moral question but a major threat to personal liberty. Think about all the behaviors and lifestyles that can lead to illness and increase the burden on taxpayers. A daily salt intake exceeding 6 grams can lead to hypertension. A high-fat diet and high alcohol intake can also lead to diabetes. A sedentary lifestyle can lead to several costly diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and heart failure. There are many other behaviors that lead to a greater health care burden, but my question is how much control over your life you are willing to give government in the name of reducing these costs? Would you want government to regulate how much salt you use? What about government deciding how much fat and alcohol you consume? There are immense beneficial health effects of a daily 30-minute aerobic exercise. Would you support government-mandated exercise? You might argue that it’s none of government’s business how much fat, salt or alcohol a person consumes, even if it has adverse health care cost implications. I’d ask: Wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to helmet laws and proposed obesity laws?”  — Walter Williams

IChThUS IMPRIMIS

“Nearly every major story involving an ethical or moral lapse is soon followed by an explanation of why such failures are inevitable. These ‘explanations’ do not involve Original Sin or flawed institutions created by fallen people. Instead, they usually invoke materialistic causes rooted in natural selection: People do what they do because such behavior enabled their ancestors to pass on their genes. This denial of free will is known as determinism. Determinists insist that their explanations neither justify wrongdoing nor weaken people’s resolve to do the right thing... What our kids — and we — are being taught about who we are and why we are here shapes our worldview... The belief that we are the product of random and impersonal forces makes it absurd to see ourselves as moral agents. So it is not hard to see why so many people take a ‘why bother’ attitude toward moral issues. Of course, Christians are not determinists. We know that things like compassion and valor and honesty are more than electrical impulses in the brain. Thus, not only can we explain why people do evil, but also we can explain why it is reasonable to expect them to do good as well.”  — Chuck Colson

CULTURE

“Throughout the developed world, the population is growing gray and slow of gait. Today, 20% are over 60 years of age. This is expected to rise to 32% by 2050. UNPD tells us that then there will be two elderly for every child. Schools will be turned into nursing homes. Playgrounds will become graveyards. Among the questions we’re not supposed to ask are these: How can pensions for a growing number of retirees be financed by a shrinking workforce? Who covers their increasingly pricy medical bills? How long before euthanasia — voluntary and involuntary — becomes universal? Pity the average child born in Italy today — without brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins. The self-indulgence (bordering on self-obsession) of this generation has bought loneliness and economic decline — perhaps the twilight of civilization — for those who will follow us... What’s led us here: women and men sacrificing families for careers (delayed marriage, no marriage, cohabitation), easy divorce, abortion (each year, worldwide, a woman’s ‘right to choose’ wipes out the equivalent of the population of Italy), and materialistic lifestyles... It’s the left’s worldview against civilization — an old story. While they squawk about manmade global warming, and demand sacrifice for the planet, they rail at those who are trying to warn the sentient beings who inhabit the planet that their future is increasingly bleak...”  — Don Feder

RE: THE LEFT

“There’s one last problem with Clinton’s positioning as the experienced candidate in the race. She is not all that experienced. Last week, the Clinton campaign belched out an argument that felt hackneyed when used by Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale. A Clinton TV ad asks voters which candidate they’d want in the White House at 3 a.m. when a crisis erupts. The tested-and-ready Clinton is supposed to be the obvious answer. But obvious to whom? How has she been tested? Such is the Clinton campaign’s overweening sense of entitlement that when a reporter asked what crises Hillary has actually handled, the Clintonites had no answer at the ready. Again, miracles happen, and Hillary may win. But come the fall, no matter who the Democratic nominee is, Democrats won’t be pleased that Hillary raised the who-should-take-the-call question with John McCain in the race.”  — Jonah Goldberg
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POLITICAL FUTURES

“It’s alive! We thought it might be over but some of us never dared fully believe it. Last week was like one of those moments in a horror movie when the worst terror recedes, the screen goes blank and then reopens on green fields or a lover’s tender embrace. Drained but still naive audiences breathe a collective sigh of relief. The plot twists have all been resolved; the threat is gone; the quiet spreads. And then... Put your own movie analogy in here... The Oscars host Jon Stewart compares them to a Terminator: the kind that is splattered into a million tiny droplets of vaporized metal... only to pool together spontaneously and charge back at you unfazed. The Clintons have always had a touch of the zombies about them: unkillable, they move relentlessly forward, propelled by a bloodlust for Republicans or uppity Democrats who dare to question their supremacy. You can’t escape; you can’t hide; and you can’t win. And these days, in the kinetic pace of the YouTube campaign, they are like the new 28 Days Later zombies. They come at you really quickly, like bats out of hell. Or Ohio, anyway. Now all this may seem a little melodramatic. Perhaps it is. Objectively, an accomplished senator won a couple of races — one by a mere 3% — against another senator in a presidential campaign. One senator is still mathematically unbeatable. But that will never capture the emotional toll that the Clintons continue to take on some of us.”  — Andrew Sullivan

CAMPAIGN WATCH

“If you were listening carefully Tuesday night at around 9:16 EST, you heard a collective sigh of relief as the GOP establishment greeted Mike Huckabee’s concession speech with a, ‘good, that’s over.’ But it is precisely the now-we-can-move-on reaction that is a threat to Senator McCain’s presidential aspirations — far greater than Senator Obama’s rhetorical skills or Senator Clinton’s nine political lives. The problem the GOP faces right now is that they never have understood the political significance of Mike Huckabee’s extraordinary candidacy and electoral buoyancy... Mike Huckabee offered a voice for a significant portion of the electorate that feels disenfranchised. Unfortunately for the GOP, the synonym for this group is ‘their base.’ Take a look at the polling data. During the time between the two Super Tuesdays, the governor was still consistently pulling a remarkable 30 percent of GOP support in Rasmussen’s national polling; McCain was barely breaking 50. The results in Texas mirrored this trend: even in the face of nearly a month of the media repeating that a win for his campaign was ‘mathematically impossible,’ Huckabee drew 38 percent of Texas Republicans to cast their protest votes, and McCain pulled only 51 percent. I do not make this observation to detract from Senator McCain’s victory in any way. His political resurrection during this campaign is one for the history books and any fair observer has to give him credit for the tenacity, determination, and leadership it took to engineer his resurgence. Nevertheless, his slim margins should be worrisome to the McCain camp.”  — Charmaine Yoest

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“I don’t know whether Obama had anything to do with the unsavory dealings of Tony Resko, but the very fact that the mainstream media so relentlessly black out anything negative about Obama lends credence to the speculations in the alternative media. I myself am especially amused by the suggestion that Obama’s opposition to Operation Iraqi Freedom may have had more to do with buddy Resko’s acting as money launderer for a bagman of Hussein (that’s Saddam, not Barack) than any lofty principles he spouts.”  — Albuquerque, New Mexico
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“Hillary is a monster. She is driven by lust for power and greed and will stop at nothing to be president.”  — Kent, Washington

“When you say that Hillary knows she must dispense with Obama with prejudice, I get cold chills down my spine and start to worry about Obama’s health. There are too many instances where someone associated with the Clintons died for me to be confident that something won’t ‘happen’ to Obama. And it’ll be far worse if he gets the nomination and picks Hillary for his VP.”  — Chatham, Nebraska

“Barack Hussein Obama is a plagiarist. His catch phrase, ‘Yes we can!’, is straight from Bob the Builder on National Public Television.”  — San Antonio, Texas

THE LAST WORD

A parody of an Obama speech (for the full article, click here): “Thank you very much. It’s great to be here... Change is never easy. Change is hard. Some change is harder than others. And easy change is never as easy as hard change, if only because hard change is hard. Changing the easy to the hard is harder than changing the hard to the easy. But if, ladies and gentlemen, you are looking for easy change done the hard way, then that hard change will not be easy, if only because change is hard, and harder change is much harder when it is hard than when it is easy. This is especially the case if you use the same way of changing results that ultimately result in change done the hard way. And that is why I am proposing hard change with a different approach that could ensure a different change than we’ve had in the past with the same approach only with different results with easy change than the hard change that we’ve had when change was, in fact, easy. Thank you very much.”  — Larry Elder

Veritas vos Liberabit — Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families — especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)