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THE FOUNDATION: CHARACTER

“In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character...”  — Noah Webster

CAMPAIGN WATCH

“What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can’t trace the line from ‘this moment’s difficulties’ to ‘my triumphant end.’ But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don’t lose. She can’t figure out how to win, and she can’t accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn’t know how he did it!) She is concussed. But she is a scrapper, a fighter, and she’s doing what she knows how to do: scrap and fight. Only harder.”  — Peggy Noonan

POLITICAL FUTURES

“Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near. Last week, an important Clinton adviser...[said] that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance. Five percent. Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism... We’ll have campaign aides blurting ‘blue dress’ and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt. For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound... And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance. When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.”  — David Brooks

RE: THE LEFT

“Hillary is being ‘swiftboated’! She claimed that she came under sniper fire when she visited in Bosnia in 1996, but was contradicted by videotape showing her sauntering off the plane and stopping on the tarmac to listen to a little girl read her a poem. Similarly, John Kerry’s claim to heroism in Vietnam was contradicted by 264 Swift Boat Veterans who served with him. His claim to having been on a secret mission to Cambodia for President Nixon on Christmas 1968 was contradicted not only by all of his commanders — who said he would have been court-martialed if he had gone anywhere near Cambodia — but also the simple fact that Nixon wasn’t president on Christmas 1968. In Hillary’s defense, she probably deserves a Purple Heart about as much as Kerry did for his service in Vietnam. Also, unlike Kerry, Hillary acknowledged her error, telling the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: ‘I was sleep-deprived, and I misspoke.’ (What if she’s sleep-deprived when she gets that call on the red phone at 3 a.m., imagines a Russian nuclear attack and responds with mutual assured destruction? Oops. ‘It proves I’m human.’)”  — Ann Coulter

OPINION IN BRIEF

“It being a free country and all, no one has to have a ‘conversation’ he doesn’t want to have, a fact that explains our longstanding non-conversation on race: the one we’re going to continue not having, never mind the pundits and Barack Obama. A conversation has at least two participants. That’s one more than most American liberals desire. A liberal, black or white, doesn’t by and large want an exchange of viewpoints on racial questions of consequence. What he wants is a microphone and an audience — preferably white, but he’ll take what he can get. This audience he proposes to instruct as to the collective iniquity of white America in its dealings with non-white America. That isn’t all he wants. He wants utter silence from the audience. No back talk. You couldn’t characterize a one-sided lecture as ‘conversation,’ and yet it’s pretty much what we get every time the matter of race intrudes itself into public affairs.”  — William Murchison
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INSIGHT

“There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”  — Booker T. Washington

THE GIPPER

“The spendthrifts who mangled America with the nightmare of double-digit inflation, record interest rates, unfair tax increases, too much regulation, credit controls, farm embargoes, gas lines, no-growth at home, weakness abroad, and phony excuses about ‘malaise’ are the last people who should be giving sermonettes about fairness and compassion... Believe me, you cannot create a desert, hand a person a cup of water, and call that compassion. You cannot pour billions of dollars into make-work jobs while destroying the economy that supports them and call that opportunity. And you cannot build up years of dependence on government and dare call that hope.”  — Ronald Reagan

FOR THE RECORD

“Sixteen months ago, Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, published ‘Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism.’ The surprise is that liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives. If many conservatives are liberals who have been mugged by reality, Brooks, a registered independent, is, as a reviewer of his book said, a social scientist who has been mugged by data. They include these findings: — Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227). — Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood. — Residents of the states that voted for John Kerry in 2004 gave smaller percentages of their incomes to charity than did residents of states that voted for George Bush. — Bush carried 24 of the 25 states where charitable giving was above average. — In the 10 reddest states, in which Bush got more than 60 percent majorities, the average percentage of personal income donated to charity was 3.5. Residents of the bluest states, which gave Bush less than 40 percent, donated just 1.9 percent. — People who reject the idea that ‘government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality’ give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition.”  — George Will

CULTURE

“Two weeks ago, the story came from a town with a college that has been a leading force in the advancement of Christian civilization for 900 years: Oxford, England... It seems that authorities at the Oxford Central Mosque have requested permission to use loadspeakers to blast the call to prayer five times a day from atop their minaret across the town that has heard for the past 900 summers, falls, winters and springs only the bells of the local churches. Unsurprisingly, the Church of England’s bishop for Oxford, the Right Rev. John Pritchard, has announced his support, calling on his congregation to ‘enjoy community diversity.’ He would be a likely successor to the current archbishop of Canterbury, who called for Shariah law for England recently. Perhaps surprisingly, two Englishmen stepped forward to oppose the proposal: professor Allan Chapman, an Oxford University historian, and Charlie Cleverly, the rector of St. Aldates Church in the heart of Oxford. ‘I don’t have any problem with Islam, but don’t force it on the people. I’m a liberal; I want to be inclusive, but I don’t want to be walked over,’ stated the professor. The Anglican rector of St. Aldates was a bit more blunt: ‘It is common knowledge, though few will say it, that radical Islam has a program to take Europe, take England and take Oxford. In this strategy, some say the prayer call is like a bridgehead, spreading to other mosques in the city.’ As if to support this politically incorrect assertion, Inayat Bunglawala, the assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain rejected the complaint dismissively, asserting that the ‘call to prayer will be part of Britain and Europe in the future.’... England, in her tolerance, has admitted into her midst — and given succor — those who loathe her. But more loathsome yet are the natural born Englishmen — most in high places — who have forgotten the simple truth of [a] World War II song: ‘There’ll always be an England, And England shall be free, If England means as much to you, As England means to me’.”  — Tony Blankley
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LIBERTY

“Freedom is not a natural state — otherwise more people would be free. Tyranny, oppression, dictatorship and the denial of human rights are the norm for much of the planet. Mankind’s lower nature dictates that far too many seek to reduce others to servitude in order to elevate themselves. President Bush has repeatedly said that freedom is a God-given right that resides in the heart of every human. Maybe, but sometimes one must fight to extract it from the hardened hearts of others who want it exclusively for themselves. Looking at the faces of those who have fallen and driving by Arlington National Cemetery, I am reminded of the cost of freedom. Those who died allow me to travel freely. Those who sacrificed everything invested in freedom for my family and yours so that we can all live our lives where we choose to live them and worship where, and however, we please. These are freedoms most of the world can only dream about.”  — Cal Thomas

SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“As a career military officer, I have no doubt that anti-war media rhetoric and ‘pollaganda’ have needlessly contributed to the deaths of soldiers and to the lessening of our nation’s defense. However, I am concerned about Mark Alexander’s claim in Democrats, more ‘aid and comfort’ to the enemy that General Giap attributed his victory in part Leftists influence on American public opinion. The web is full rumors run without checking, often becoming resurrected after a trip around the world. It would seem that Urban Legends refutes the Giap assertion.”  — Houston, Texas

Publisher’s Reply: Most of the urban legends circulating refer to false claims about Giap’s “memoirs” and claims that he directly implicated that John Kerry’s cadre played a role in brining down the U.S. I did not make either claim. The facts are not derived from Internet e-mails propagating urban legends. We know that Giap knew full well the value the Kerry/Fonda cadres had in undermining U.S. war fighting resolve, and we also know that Giap, a faithful Communist, would not single out such efforts from fellow Socialists in this country, during a CBS interview. Additionally, in a 1996 CNN interview Giap stated, “And [after Tet] the Americans had to back down and come to the negotiating table, because the war was not only moving into the cities, to dozens of cities and towns in South Vietnam, but also to the living rooms of Americans back home for some time. And that’s why we could claim the achievement of the objective.” I do not have to tell you who was bringing defeatist propaganda “into the living rooms of Americans back home,” and which side of the war they were on.

More to the point, in a 1995 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bui Tin, a communist contemporary of Giap and Ho Chi Minh, who was serving as an NVA colonel assigned to the general staff at the time Saigon fell, had this to say about the Leftmedia and Soviet puppets like “Hanoi” Jane Fonda: “[They were] essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses.” Bui stated further, “Those people represented the conscience of America. The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor...[T]hrough dissent and protest [America] lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.” Make no mistake, Giap and Bui know “aid and comfort” from those, ostensibly, on our side.

THE LAST WORD

“Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has been accused in recent days of padding her foreign policy rèsumè while First Lady, admitted today that she may have exaggerated about an encounter she said she had with al-Qaeda terror mastermind Osama bin Laden in 1998. In an appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on Sunday, Sen. Clinton told host Tim Russert, ‘I wrestled bin Laden in his cave in 1998 and had him pinned to the ground before the bastard got away.’ But a review of Sen. Clinton’s official White House schedule from that period revealed that the then-First Lady was nowhere in the vicinity of Mr. bin Laden on that day, but was instead greeting a group of honor roll students at Disney World in Orlando. ‘I may have misspoke about what went on that particular day,’ Sen. Clinton said today. ‘But it was a very busy time for me, what with having that knife-fight with Kim Jong-Il and all.’ Reporters peppered Sen. Clinton’s new press spokesman with questions about another purported exploit of hers, in which the senator claimed that she and a ragtag team of blue-collar drillers deflected an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth.”  — Andy Borowitz

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.)