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THE FOUNDATION

"His integrity was most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known, no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision. He was indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good, and a great man." --Thomas Jefferson about George Washington

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY

In some circles, today is observed as "Presidents' Day," jointly recognizing Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but it is still officially recognized as the anniversary of "Washington's Birthday" -- and that is how we mark the date in our shop. (Washington's actual birthday is 22 February.)

As friend of The Patriot, Matthew Spaulding, a Heritage Foundation scholar, reminds: "Although it was celebrated as early as 1778, and by the early 19th Century was second only to the Fourth of July as a patriotic holiday, Congress did not officially recognize Washington's Birthday as a national holiday until 1870. The Monday Holiday Law in 1968 -- applied to executive branch departments and agencies by Richard Nixon's Executive Order 11582 in 1971 -- moved the holiday from February 22 to the third Monday in February. Section 6103 of Title 5, United States Code, currently designates that legal federal holiday as 'Washington's Birthday.' Contrary to popular opinion, no action by Congress or order by any President has changed 'Washington's Birthday' to 'Presidents' Day'."

In honor of and due respect for our first and (we believe) greatest president, arguably, our history's most outstanding Patriot, we include two quotes from George Washington which best embody his dedication to liberty and God. The first from his First Inaugural Address, 30 April 1789, and the second from his Farewell Address, 19 September 1796.

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American People."

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens."

These quotes aptly sum up The Patriot Post's mission and purpose.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

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

"Thank you for telling the truth about Lincoln even though it may displease many. Truth never has been based on popularity, but reality. Mark Alexander simply told it like it was. For your readers who are disappointed in the article may I suggest they read "The Real Lincoln" by Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo. It is a good read and well documented. Of course they must still decide if they wish to cling to myth or embrace the truth. Again thank you for all you do." --Lanexa, Virginia

"Thank you for having the courage to expose some of the truths about Lincoln -- rarely does one read such truth. I think the way people idolize him while overlooking the facts is the same way many view Obama. Well done." --Orion, Michigan

"Thank you for the Friday special today on Lincoln's Legacy at 200. I'm so glad to see someone print the truth. I never understood why Obama would want to use the Bible of someone that thought he was superior to blacks. I kept thinking there would be at least one reporter that knew the truth and would ask him but alas, the media for the most part is no longer interested in the truth. I'm thankful you are." --Indianapolis, Indiana

"God bless you, sir, for your eloquent defense of my ancestors' motives in defending their homeland against armed invaders. You are the only national forum willing to tell the truth about the total war Lincoln and his generals waged against innocent civilians. I'm sure you will be criticized by some of your readers who are unwilling to accept the truth about their not-so-great emancipator, but they are the very people who, ignoring history, will be stunned to realize that they are about to relive it. Keep up the good work." --Shoal Creek, Alabama

"Your extreme and utterly false portrayal of Abraham Lincoln has convinced me that you know nothing regarding our 16th president and very little of the Constitution. Obviously, you get your information from the thoroughly discredited Thomas DiLorenzo when you write of Lincoln. I suggest you consult the works of Professor Harry Jaffa, Allen Cuelzo and Thomas Krannawitter (to name just a few) before you spew out such atrociously false disinformation." --Los Angeles, California

Editor's Reply: Who has discredited DiLorenzo? Jaffa, who is a Lincolnphile in the same way that Chris Matthews gets a thrill up his leg when thinking of Barack Obama? As economist Walter E. Williams notes, "The War between the States ... produced the foundation for the kind of government we have today: consolidated and absolute, based on the unrestrained will of the majority, with force, threats, and intimidation being the order of the day. Today's federal government is considerably at odds with that envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. ...The War also laid to rest the great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that 'Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'" Is Williams discredited too?

THE GIPPER

"Bitter as it is to accept the results of the November election, we should have reason for some optimism. For many years now we have preached 'the gospel,' in opposition to the philosophy of so-called liberalism, which was, in truth, a call to collectivism. Now, it is possible we have been persuasive to a greater degree than we had ever realized. Few, if any, Democratic Party candidates in the last election ran as liberals. Listening to them I had the eerie feeling we were hearing reruns of Goldwater speeches. I even thought I heard a few of my own. Bureaucracy was assailed and fiscal responsibility hailed. ... But let's not be so naive as to think we are witnessing a mass conversion to the principles of conservatism. Once sworn into office, the victors reverted to type. In their view, apparently, the ends justified the means." --Ronald Reagan

POLITICAL FUTURES

"2008: We're rich enough that we can afford to be stupid. 2009: We're not so rich so let's be even more stupid. The Obama narrative as packaged by the American media (another all-but-bankrupt industry, not coincidentally) is very appealing. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if a benign paternalist sovereign could take care of all the beastly grown-up stuff like mortgages and health care, like he's gonna do for Henrietta Hughes, while simultaneously blowing gazillions on 'green' initiatives and other touchyfeely things? America has a choice: It can reacquaint itself with socioeconomic reality. Or it can buckle its mandatory seat belt for the same decline most of the rest of the West embraced a couple of generations back. In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London's Mall for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on Earth. Seventy years later... Let's not go there." --columnist Mark Steyn

OPINION IN BRIEF

"Most mainstream American voters are undoubtedly suffering from economist fatigue these days. This one calls for tax cuts; that one condemns them. One says we're wasting hundreds of billions of dollars; the other claims that sum falls pathetically short. A plague on all their houses! Surely common sense would dictate that when Congress is doling out fat dollops of taxpayers' money, due time should be delegated for sober consideration and debate. The administration's coercive rush toward instant action, accompanied by apocalyptic pronouncements of imminent catastrophe, has put its own credibility on the line." --columnist Camille Paglia

CULTURE

"Six years ago I wrote a book called 'Uncle Sam's Plantation.' I wrote the book to tell my own story of what I saw living inside the welfare state and my own transformation out of it. I said in that book that indeed there are two Americas. A poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism. ... A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from 'How do I take care of myself?' to 'What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?' Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems. The kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others. The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broken black families. Through God's grace, I found my way out. It was then that I understood what freedom meant and how great this country is. I had the privilege of working on welfare reform in 1996, passed by a Republican congress and signed into law by a Democrat president. A few years after enactment, welfare roles were down fifty percent. I thought we were on the road to moving socialism out of our poor black communities and replacing it with wealth producing American capitalism. But, incredibly, we are going in the opposite direction. Instead of poor America on socialism becoming more like rich American on capitalism, rich America on capitalism is becoming like poor America on socialism." --columnist Star Parker

GOVERNMENT

"President Obama said in his inaugural address that he planned to 'restore science to its rightful place' in government. That's a worthy goal. But statisticians at the Commerce Department didn't think it would mean having the director of next year's Census report directly to the White House rather than to the Commerce secretary, as is customary. 'There's only one reason to have that high level of White House involvement,' a career professional at the Census Bureau tells me. 'And it's called politics, not science.' The decision was made last week after California Rep. Barbara Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and Hispanic groups complained to the White House that Judd Gregg, the Republican senator from New Hampshire slated to head Commerce, couldn't be trusted to conduct a complete Census. ... Anything that threatens the integrity of the Census has profound implications. Not only is it the basis for congressional redistricting, it provides the raw data by which government spending is allocated on everything from roads to schools. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also uses the Census to prepare the economic data that so much of business relies upon. ...A Census director reporting to a hyperpartisan such as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel increases the chances of a presidential order that would override the consensus of statisticians." --columnist John Fund

FOR THE RECORD

"Obama's first presidential news conference was performed feebly by the once-ferocious White House press corps and shrewdly -- if deceptively -- by the president. ... Only Major Garrett of Fox News raised even a slightly embarrassing question: What was Vice President Joe Biden referring to when he said the administration had a 30 percent chance of failing at some initiative? And I must confess that if I had been the vice president, I would not have been happy with the president's answer, which was, in essence: I don't know what Biden was talking about, but that sounds like him. It can't be good that the president is making his vice president the public butt of his snickering after only three weeks in office. Not that it is Biden's fault. Along with a fair amount of blarney, Joe Biden also makes more honest and candid observations in an afternoon than many politicians make in a lifetime. One comes away from a conversation with Biden with at least one truthful nugget. The same cannot be said for President Obama." --columnist Tony Blankley

RE: THE LEFT

"In more good news for the Democratic Party, it turns out that Sen. Roland Burris (D-Il) may have not been exactly forthcoming in answering questions about his dealings with former Illinois Governor (but still a Democrat) Rod Blagojevich before he was appointed to fill the vacancy created by the election of Barack Obama. According to Politico.com, 'In an affidavit made public on Saturday, that would be this past Saturday, about a month after he was sworn in as a U.S. Senator Burris for the first time said that he had been solicited for campaign contributions by the brother of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who named him to the seat.' So, now, Burris is 'facing a possible perjury investigation in his home state; and his U.S. Senate colleagues may face new pressure to launch an Ethics Committee probe to determine whether he should be expelled from the body.' Perhaps a reporter following the President on his Obama Stimulatic Victory Tour will ask him about Sen. Burris, a fellow Democrat, from Illinois, who is now sitting in his Senate seat, neglecting to tell the whole truth and nothing but..." --political analyst Rich Galen

FAITH AND FAMILY

"It may seem reasonable to argue that women are not designed to bear litters. Or that society should not have to absorb the costs of indulging an unemployed woman's obsession for a 'huge' family. Or that it is wrong to purposely bring 14 fatherless children into the world. Those are all sensible opinions, and a sensible public policy would reflect them. But in the name of autonomy, privacy, and adult self-esteem, our public policies regarding families and reproduction have grown increasingly unmoored from good sense. From the campaign for homosexual marriage to the routine insemination of single women to the legality of abortion on demand, notions that would once have been thought outlandish have steadily been normalized. Would that further industrial-scale pregnancies like Nadya Suleman's could be headed off with a new law or stepped-up regulation. But can law and regulation fill the void left when longstanding taboos and morals are cast aside? When society decides that families and child-rearing can be improvised at will, who gets to say what's 'freakish'?" --columnist Jeff Jacoby

THE LAST WORD

"I'm with the liberals on this one. They're fuming at the self-proclaimed 'centrists' in the Senate who've taken it upon themselves to trim the stimulus bill at the edges. Led by Republican Arlen Specter, the centrists have boldly cut ... $100 billion or so from the stimulus package, in the name of fiscal discipline. But, as liberal critics such as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman rightly point out, they're cutting it to prove their 'centrist mojo,' not because they have real concern for public policy. If the bill had started out at $1 trillion, then $900 billion in porcine outlays would be deemed the 'responsible' amount to spend. For certain Beltway centrists, the highest principle is to prove that you are attached to no principle. Rather, your duty is to split the difference between the 'ideologues.' If one side says we need a 1,000-foot bridge to span a canyon, and the other side says we don't need a bridge at all, the centrists will fight for a bridge that goes 500 feet and no farther, then pat themselves on the back." --National Review editor 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.)