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THE FOUNDATION

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." --Samuel Adams

INSIGHT: MLK

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' ... I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. ... And if America is to be a great nation this must become true." --Martin Luther King Jr.

Historian Shelby Steele observed, "There is an awful lot of conservative sentiment in black America, but at the moment, the party line is ruthlessly enforced." Indeed, some of King's chief lieutenants, like Jesse Jackson, tolerate no dissension from their liberal ranks now. They have abandoned King's dream, and aligned themselves with political and social agendas obsessed with color at the expense of character.

Black conservatives of national stature, such as Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powel, Ward Connerly, Michael Steele, Jesse Lee Peterson, Alan Keyes, Don Scoggins, Alvin Williams, Ken Blackwell, Thomas Sowell, Star Parker and Walter Williams are routinely castigated by the Black Supremacists, as "Uncle Toms" and "puppets." Yet these are the men and women who really understand King's central message about character.

Today, president-elect Barack Hussein Obama will be waxing eloquently about King's legacy. But it is worth noting that prior to his murder in 1968, Martin King went to Obama's hometown of Chicago to meet with Mayor Richard Daley, father of the current Windy City Don. Chicago was a hotbed of racial hatred under Daley, and not much has changed.

King observed of that enmity, "This is the most tragic picture of man's inhumanity to man. I've been to Mississippi and Alabama and I can tell you that the hatred and hostility in Chicago are really deeper than in Alabama and Mississippi."

Chicago was not only a denizen of racial hatred but the violent black supremacist movement was born there. King said, "Those who are associated with 'Black Power' and black supremacy are wrong."

It is in that very racial hatred and hostility in which Obama has been steeped, particularly by mentors such as Jeremiah Wright.

At King's funeral, one Bible passage, Matthew 5:9, summed up his life's mission: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God."

Obama was not stewarded by peacemakers.

Finally, irrespective of one's conclusion about Martin Luther King's proper place in history (given the historical account of his personal integrity and character), the two texts cited below (from The Patriot's Historic Documents section) are well worth reading -- for each of them proclaim truth.

"I have a dream"
http://link.patriotpost.us/?136-283-283-192221-1607

"Letter from a Birmingham jail"
http://link.patriotpost.us/?136-283-283-192221-1617

CHARACTER: Lee and Jackson

"Let each man resolve to be victorious, and that the right of self-government, liberty, and peace shall find him a defender." --Robert E. Lee

"My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave." --Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson

Today we take a moment to remember the birth anniversaries of Robert E. Lee (19 January) and Stonewall Jackson (21 January), two of the greatest military commanders in American history. They also were great men of faith who gave their all (Jackson his life) for the cause of freedom and states' rights, which we at The Patriot hold so dear. Some may question our decision to honor men of the Confederate States of America, but we encourage those readers to consider our correction of the record. The honor we give these men has its roots in the founding of this great nation.

Alexander notes in his essay, "The Lincoln Legacy -- Revisited," that "States' rights are most aptly understood through the words and actions of Gen. Lee, who detested slavery and opposed secession. In 1860, however, Gen. Lee declined Lincoln's request that he take command of the Army of the Potomac, saying that his first allegiance was to his home state of Virginia: "I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the army, and save in defense of my native state... I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword." He would, soon thereafter, take command of the Army of Northern Virginia, rallying his officers with these words: "Let each man resolve to be victorious, and that the right of self-government, liberty, and peace shall find him a defender."

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

(To submit reader comments visit our Letters to the Editor page.)

"Over the weekend, my 14-year-old daughter recounted a portion of her Social Studies class from last week. She said that it was pointed out that it was 'ironic' that their study of race interactions here in the U.S., our celebration of Martin Luther King day and the 'historic' (more like 'historically overblown') national celebration of the upcoming Obama Inauguration were all happening now at the same time. We then spent the next few minutes explaining what is ironic about everything that is happening right now and over the last few weeks. One of Dr. Martin Luther King's greatest speeches was his 'I have a dream' speech. We recounted that, to our understanding, the message Dr. King shared in that speech was that he truly looked forward and hoped for the day when a person would be judged not by the color of his skin but by the content and quality of his character. Yet, look at this hysterical, overblown 'celebration' of this 'historic event.' We hardly know anything about Obama's character, except through deduction of other external facts -- the people that live in his neighborhood, the people that are closest to him, the people he has learned from, the people he most likely grew up observing and being mentored by, who are highly questionable in terms of the quality of their character. The 'circus' that has been his 'transition process' has been fraught daily by scandal, rumors, questions, court proceedings, jail, arguments, accusations and all things dirty, secret and political. So, why is this man celebrated? Why are people calling this a historic event in the history of our country? Because of the color of his skin. That is what is ironic. Dr. King would probably be shaking his head right now and saying, 'They just don't get it.'" --Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan

"In this insane, quantum-mechanical, global warming, Obama-nation, we have lost all contact with who we are and who we came from. We are not the lost generation, we are the stupid generation. Printing more money simply means that each dollar I currently own is going to be worth less because printing money doesn't create wealth! And for one generation to borrow huge amounts of money without giving a thought to the generations that will have to repay it is criminal. This country was founded on the war cry of 'no taxation without representation!' Who is representing those future generations in this vote that will enslave them with debt?" --Lockhart, Texas

THE GIPPER

"To a few of us here today this is a solemn and most momentous occasion, and yet in the history of our nation it is a commonplace occurrence. The orderly transfer of authority as called for in the Constitution routinely takes place, as it has for almost two centuries, and few of us stop to think how unique we really are. In the eyes of many in the world, this every-four-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle. ... The business of our nation goes forward. These United States are confronted with an economic affliction of great proportions. ... It distorts our economic decisions, penalizes thrift, and crushes the struggling young and the fixed-income elderly alike. It threatens to shatter the lives of millions of our people. ... But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals. You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we're not bound by that same limitation? ... In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." --Ronald Reagan, first Inaugural Address (20 January 1981)

GOVERNMENT

"Regulation is counterproductive and a poor substitute for investor vigilance. The more rigorous the regulatory effort appears, the more risky it is. Regulation by market discipline is better, but in our state-dominated culture few people realize this. Arthur Levitt says, 'The complexity of today's products, markets and investment strategies calls for a laser-like focus [by the SEC] on risk assessment.' But the opposite is true. Savvy investors would do their own risk assessment if they didn't believe the government was doing it for them. And wouldn't they do a better job, considering it was their own money at risk? Regulators risk nothing. Of course many of us investors are unqualified to assess risk for ourselves. But we could pay specialists for the service, generating a competitive market for risk assessment -- in contrast to the monopolistic SEC and other agencies. That form of investor protection would be superior in every way to a system that gives a bureaucracy arbitrary power. After all, private risk assessors would have to justify their fees, which clients would pay voluntarily. Current government regulation interferes with honest voluntary exchanges by imposing arbitrary terms and requiring tons of paperwork disclosing information no one wants anyway. Fraud will always exist. Enforcement of anti-fraud laws is a useful deterrent, but in the end there's no substitute for investor vigilance. Government regulations provide a false sense of security -- and that's worth less than no sense of security at all." --ABC "20/20" co-anchor John Stossel

FAITH AND FAMILY

"As long as the [New York] Times has such a burning interest in the root causes of murder, how about considering the one factor more likely to create a murderer than any other? That is the topic we're not allowed to discuss: single motherhood. As I describe in my new book, 'Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America,' controlling for socioeconomic status, race and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single parent. ... By 1996, 70 percent of inmates in state juvenile detention centers serving long-term sentences were raised by single mothers. Seventy percent of teenage births, dropouts, suicides, runaways, juvenile delinquents and child murderers involve children raised by single mothers. Girls raised without fathers are more sexually promiscuous and more likely to end up divorced. A 1990 study by the left-wing Progressive Policy Institute showed that, after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime disappeared. Various studies come up with slightly different numbers, but all the figures are grim. A study cited in the far left-wing Village Voice found that children brought up in single-mother homes 'are five times more likely to commit suicide, nine times more likely to drop out of high school, 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances, 14 times more likely to commit rape (for the boys), 20 times more likely to end up in prison, and 32 times more likely to run away from home.' With new children being born, running away, dropping out of high school and committing murder every year, it's not a static problem to analyze. But however the numbers are run, single motherhood is a societal nuclear bomb. Many of these studies, for example, are from the '90s, when the percentage of teenagers raised by single parents was lower than it is today. In 1990, 28 percent of children under 18 were being raised in one-parent homes -- mother or father, divorced or never-married. By 2005, more than one-third of all babies born in the U.S. were illegitimate. That's a lot of social problems in the pipeline." --columnist Ann Coulter

OPINION IN BRIEF

"Go back a hundred years -- before there was a United Nations and before 'world opinion' was taken into account. An Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands at that time would have risked not only a British counter-attack to retake the islands but also British attacks on Argentina itself. Anywhere in the world, attacks such as those on Israel today would not only have risked retaliation but invasion and annihilation of the government that launched those attacks. Today, so-called 'world opinion' not only limits the price to be paid for aggression or terrorism, it has even led to the self-indulgence of third parties talking pretty talk about limiting the response of those who are attacked to what is 'proportionate.' By this reasoning, we should not have declared war on Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor. We should have gone over to Japan, bombed one of their harbors -- and let it go at that. Does anyone imagine that this would have led to Japan's becoming as peaceful today as it has become after Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Or is the real agenda to engage in moral preening from a safe distance and at somebody else's expense? Those who think 'negotiations' are a magic answer seem not to understand that when A wants to annihilate B, this is not an 'issue' that can be resolved amicably around a conference table." --Hoover Institution economist Thomas Sowell

RE: THE LEFT

"Every time you exhale, you exhale air that has 4 percent carbon dioxide. To say that that's a pollutant just boggles my mind. What used to be science has turned into a cult.... All the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past warmings. In fact, it's not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with carbon dioxide.... Science is one of the great triumphs of humankind, and I hate to see it dragged through the mud in an episode like this." --William Happer, former chief scientist at the Energy Department and the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton

FOR THE RECORD

"Democrats are rushing this week to impose massive tax hikes of at least 61 cents on every cigarette pack sold in America, in addition to new increases on other tobacco products. The money will fund a long-plotted federal expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Yes, this is Dr. Big Nanny's prescription for recession: punitive tax increases on the poor to feed a universal health care Trojan horse. Obama and his liberal Democratic colleagues sure have a funny way of demonstrating 'progressive' values, don't they? Health surveys show that smokers are more likely to be blue-collar workers, minorities and have less than a high-school education. The National Taxpayers Union noted that tobacco taxes take a 50 times larger share of income from those earning less than $20,000 than those earning more than $200,000. Put another way: Families making less than $30,000 per year pay more than half of all taxes paid on cigarettes, while families making more than $60,000 pay only 14 percent. That's the dictionary definition of 'regressive,' not 'progressive.'" --columnist Michelle Malkin

THE LAST WORD

"Watching President-elect Obama laboriously attempt to assemble the most inclusive prayer team ever (a woman, a gay bishop and a Baptist preacher -- isn't there a joke like that?), one has to feel anew our enduring need of divine assistance in holding together this war-weary and culture-war-torn great nation. Episcopalian Bishop V. Gene Robinson, who [prayed] at President-elect Obama's request on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, has been reading through inaugural prayers in history. He is 'horrified' at how 'specifically and aggressively Christian they were,' according to The New York Times. Yes, it is true that even back in 1953, Father Patrick O'Boyle prayed, 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost' (alongside a prayer by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver). At FDR's 1945 inaugural, Monsignor John Ryan prayed, 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ... Through Jesus Christ our Lord.' Oh, the horror of it all! Bishop Robinson may have inadvertently relieved some folks' minds by making it clear that his prayer 'will not be a Christian prayer and I won't be quoting Scripture or anything like that.' Robinson is ruminating on alternatives such as praying to 'the God of our many understandings,' a language he said he learned during his stint in alcohol rehab. Perhaps in the future, taking Christian pity on the poor Michael Newdows of the world, presidential prayers can be re-addressed: To Whom It May Concern." --columnist Maggie Gallagher

*****

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.)