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THE FOUNDATION

“Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.”  - Benjamin Rush

CULTURE

“Outrage comes easy at the sight of 15-year-old Disney Channel billion-dollar phenomenon Miley Cyrus - known to screaming 8-year-old girls as Hannah Montana - appearing barebacked with a come-hither smile in a photo shoot for Vanity Fair. Did no one understand how the slinky satin-sheet photo would be greeted by the eyes of teenage boys - or men twice her age? Parents are covering the eyes of their Disney-drenched little girls while their role model has a train wreck... But teenage boys are going wilder this week over a more dangerous cultural low: ‘Grand Theft Auto IV.’ The new video game from Rockstar Games is flying off the shelves, and all the early reviews are glowing. GamePro magazine calls it ‘the pinnacle of interactive entertainment and game design.’ Why is it so good? ‘It never makes concessions in the name of being politically correct, living up to its M-rating with gusto - there’s tons of swearing, violence and sexual innuendo.’ Yes, young lads, you can visit strip clubs and get lap dances, pick up prostitutes, go on assassination missions and conduct gangland-style executions. The New York Times applauded the game’s ‘winsome procession of grifters, hustlers, drug peddlers and other gloriously unrepentant lowlifes.’... There’s something odd about our culture when we try to prevent children under 17 from seeing violent or sexually overt material in a two-hour R-rated movie, but we’re cavalier about selling the same experience - actually, a more offensive experience since it’s entirely non-judgmental - in an M-rated video game that will be played every night for months.”  - Brent Bozell

FAMILY

“Who could argue with the idea that, when it comes to sex education, our teenagers should be taught to say ‘no’? Considering what’s at stake (their health, their future, their dignity as human beings, their morality) - and because we love them and want what’s best for them - nothing short of a clear-cut abstinence message will do. At least, that’s how it appears out here in the Real World... Our teens deserve better than just a condom and a message to ‘be safe.’ Our children are not animals, incapable of controlling themselves. They are not hopelessly immoral creatures who are going to ‘do it anyway.’ Yet ‘comprehensive’ sex ed teaches them that they’re just that. Parents, this is a slander against our youth. It’s a lie - one that we must fight. Teaching abstinence may be hard work - and heaven knows it’s not going to win you any popularity contests. But for the sake of our teens, there’s simply no substitute. In the end, you’re the only real ‘protection’ they’ve got. So don’t let them down.”  - Rebecca Hagelin

LIBERTY

“This year, American taxpayers will spend more than $9,200 on the average public-school student. That’s a real increase of 69 percent over the per pupil expenditure in 1980. The total bill for a student who remains through high school will be almost $100,000. This spending would be worthwhile if it gave us the results we need to compete globally. But it hasn’t been doing so. American students still score poorly compared to students from other countries, especially in math and science. The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows 18 percent of fourth-graders and 29 percent of eighth-graders scored ‘below basic’ in mathematics last year. And far too many students drop out. At least 1 in 4 quits high school. Among minority children, the picture is even bleaker. In 2002, only 56 percent of black and 52 percent of Hispanic students graduated, compared to 78 percent of white students. The Census Bureau has found that a full-time employee with a college degree will earn more than $2 million over a lifetime. One with only a high-school diploma will earn half as much, while a dropout, obviously, will earn even less. More ominously, an independent study found dropouts die an average of nine years sooner than graduates. Our educational system is a national problem - but one that calls for local solutions. One approach is to provide school choice.”  - Ed Feulner

INSIGHT

“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”  - Ayn Rand

FOR THE RECORD

“In a quest to lower my impact on the environment, I calculated our [family’s] carbon footprint if we cut our use of electricity and natural gas in half, switched our two cars for a single Toyota Prius and reduced our annual mileage by half, tripled our train travel, and never took an airplane. Furthermore, what if we became vegetarians, ate only local organic food in season, bought only second-hand clothes, furniture and appliances, never went to movies, bars or restaurants, and recycled or composted all our waste? Even then our combined carbon footprint would be 7.3 tons per year, but that would get us just below the world average of 4 tons per capita annually... The creators of Carbon Footprint claim that everyone in the world must eventually emit no more than 2 tons of carbon dioxide per year. When did Americans last emit so little carbon dioxide? Around 1870.”  - Ronald Bailey
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THE GIPPER

“Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor’s fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can’t socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he’ll eat you last.”  - Ronald Reagan

GOVERNMENT

“The McCain [health care] plan would provide an annual tax credit of $2,500 per individual or $5,000 per family. The idea is to encourage families to buy their own health care plans - preferably plans that save consumers money when they follow healthy lifestyles and make smart economic choices. Unlike Clinton and Obama, McCain would not require that insurers cover people with chronic illnesses. Instead, McCain proposes state ‘guaranteed access plans’ for those patients. Politically, Plan McCain may be suicide. Clinton and Obama have kept to the current employer-based system - which gives workers the happy illusion of not paying for their health care, when in fact it comes out of their paychecks. Like President Bush, however, McCain has concluded that the best way to curb health care costs is to return the incentive to save to patients. Because when you know a doctor’s visit will only cost $25 and that you won’t have to pay for a test you may not need, you have no incentive to economize. That’s the problem with the status quo: The cheaper we make it look, the more it ends up costing. The way Americans look at health care has been distorted by a system that cuts costs where they are least onerous. Gone is the day when patients paid for annual medical exams and insurers picked up the tab if a family member became seriously ill. Now you don’t have to be sick to be subsidized, and workers have come to expect someone else to pick up the tab for routine care, minus a modest co-pay. Credit McCain for proposing to make the process transparent, so that people have a more personal stake in the care they receive.”  - Debra Saunders

RE: THE LEFT

“Curiously, Rev. Wright complained that ‘everybody wants to paint me as if I’m anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago’  -  especially those damn East Coast, money-grubbing Jews, he carelessly added. This from a man whose entire oeuvre is based on reveling in what happened in this country 250 years ago. Rev. Wright clarified his statement, ‘GOD DAMN AMERICA!’ by explaining: ‘God doesn’t bless everything. God condemns something - and d-e-m-n, demn, is where we get the word damn. God damns some practices.’ Well, that changes the meaning entirely. One begins to suspect that the Clintons, flush with those mega-millions they got from selling their previous tenancy at the White House, have put the reverend on staff. I believe this used to be called ‘walking around money.’ Obama said the Rev. Wright he heard defending himself [last] Monday was not the Rev. Wright he met 20 years ago. This is the political equivalent of the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ speech. He might just as well have said, ‘I love Rev. Wright. I’m just not in love with him anymore. Hey, can I have my CDs back?’ If it takes Obama 20 years to notice that his pastor is a traitorous, racist nut-job, it will probably take him his full term of office to realize that the U.S. has been invaded and subdued by al-Qaida. Let’s just hope President Obama pays closer attention during national security briefings than he did during 20 years of the Rev. Wright’s church services. The only good news for the Obama campaign this week is that Obama admitted that his relationship with Rev. Wright is ‘a legitimate political issue,’ which at least makes him smarter than John McCain, who just last week denounced the North Carolina Republicans for an ad mentioning Obama’s raving lunatic pastor.”  - Ann Coulter

POLITICAL FUTURES

“Is the bottom falling out for Barack Obama?... The latest Fox News poll, conducted after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club, showed Obama’s favorable/unfavorables at 63 to 27 percent among Democrats, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 73 to 22 percent. Suddenly she’s not the only one with high negatives. And 36 percent of Democrats say they would be disinclined to vote for Obama because of his longtime relationship with his former pastor. There’s more bad news in The Pew Research Center poll of Democrats. Obama’s national lead among Democrats is down from 49 to 39 percent to a statistically insignificant 47 to 45 percent... Obama’s standing as a general election candidate also seems to have taken a hit. Gallup showed him tied with John McCain 45 to 45 percent before the Wright appearance and trailing 47 to 43 percent afterward; at the same time, it shows Hillary Clinton tied with McCain 46 to 46 percent... A few pundits still are saying that Obama’s choice of pastor is a distraction, an irrelevancy. But some voters, perhaps in the belief that a president’s judgment and values have important consequences, don’t agree.”  - Michael Barone
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SELECT READER COMMENTS

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“‘The truth about black culture’ was another great article. I do not know how you can more clearly state the current racist issues of today and the black community than what two very great moral and intellectual people like Booker T. Washington and Bill Cosby did. At one time there was racism among whites but that word mostly applies to the radical Black leaders who profit from keeping the black community angry and stirred up. Both men pointed out that Blacks need to look inward today for their problems and not for the white people to continue to feel guilty for their social failures.”  - Lucas, Texas

“Dr. Bill Cosby is the epitome of fine citizenship! He tries to correct some of the wrongs in our country, but he certainly has to row that boat upstream by himself. Not much help from the liberals who profess such undying concern for ‘people of color.’ I see/work with several people who understand Dr. Cosby’s message, but I see more who fall under the spell of the ‘race-baiters.’ I pray for our country.”  - Hanover, Virginia

“Bill Cosby is a voice crying out in the wilderness with the odds stacked against him considering Obama, Wright, Jackson, Sharpton AND the MSM are on the other side.”  - Lakeside, Arizona

THE LAST WORD

“The evidence is that if every eligible voter voted, national elections would probably remain unchanged. ‘Simply put,’ political scientists Benjamin Highton and Raymond Wolfinger wrote in a 2001 article, ‘The Political Implications of Higher Turnout,’ U.S. ‘voters’ preferences differ minimally from those of all citizens; outcomes would not change if everyone voted.’ So, maybe, just maybe, we have our priorities wrong. Perhaps cheapening the vote by requiring little more than an active pulse (Chicago famously waives this rule) has turned it into something many people don’t value. Maybe the emphasis on getting more people to vote has dumbed down our democracy by pushing participation onto people uninterested in such things. Maybe our society would be healthier if politicians aimed higher than the lowest common denominator. Maybe the people who don’t know the first thing about how our system works aren’t the folks who should be driving our politics, just as people who don’t know how to drive shouldn’t have a driver’s license. Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people on the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens? A voting test would point the arrow of civic engagement up instead of down, sending the signal that becoming an informed citizen is a valued accomplishment. And if that’s not a good enough reason, maybe this is: If you threaten to take the vote away from the certifiably uninformed, voter turnout will almost certainly get a boost.”  - Jonah Goldberg

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.)