This Information Needs to Get Out!

From the Commanding Officer at MWSS-171 to his Marines.

Marines and Sailors,

As we approach the end of the year I think it is important to share a few thoughts about what you've accomplished directly, in some cases, and indirectly in many others. I am speaking about what the Bush Administration and each of you has contributed by wearing the uniform, because the fact that you wear the uniform contributes 100% to the capability of the nation to send a few onto the field to execute national policy.

As you read about these achievements you are a part of I would call your attention to two things:

1. This is good news that hasn't been fit to print or report on TV.

2. It is much easier to point out the errors a man makes when he makes the tough decisions, rarely is the positive as aggressively pursued.

Since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1...
... the first battalion of the new Iraqi Army has graduated and is on active duty.
.. over 60,000 Iraqis now provide security to their fellow citizens.
... nearly all of Iraq's 400 courts are functioning.
... the Iraqi judiciary is fully independent.
... on Monday, October 6 power generation hit 4,518 megawatts-exceeding the prewar average.
... all 22 universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges are open, as are nearly all primary and secondary schools.
... by October 1, Coalition forces had rehab-ed over 1,500 schools - 500 more than scheduled.
... teachers earn from 12 to 25 times their former salaries.
... all 240 hospitals and more than 1200 clinics are open ... doctors salaries are at least eight times what they were under Saddam.
... pharmaceutical distribution has gone from essentially nothing to 700 tons in May to a current total of 12,000 tons.
... the Coalition has helped administer over 22 million vaccinations to Iraq's children.
... a Coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers of Iraq's 27,000 kilometers of weed-choked canals which now irrigate tens of thousands of farms. This project has created jobs for more than 100,000 Iraqi men and women.
... we have restored over three-quarters of prewar telephone services and over two-thirds of the potable water production.
... there are 4,900 full-service telephone connections. We expect 50,000 by year-end.
.. the wheels of commerce are turning. From bicycles to satellite dishes to cars and trucks, businesses are coming to life in all major cities and towns.
... 95 percent of all prewar bank customers have service and first-time customers are opening accounts daily.
... Iraqi banks are making loans to finance businesses.
... the central bank is fully independent.
... Iraq has one of the worlds most growth-oriented investment and banking laws.
... Iraq has a single, unified currency for the first time in 15 years.
... satellite TV dishes are legal.
... foreign journalists aren't on 10-day visas paying mandatory and extortionate fees to the Ministry of Information for "minders" and other government spies.
... there is no Ministry of Information.
... there are more than 170 newspapers.
... you can buy satellite dishes on what seems like every street corner.
.. foreign journalists (and everyone else) are free to come and go.
... a nation that had not one single element - legislative, judicial or executive - of a representative government, now does.
... in Baghdad alone residents have selected 88 advisory councils.
Baghdad's first democratic transfer of power in 35 years happened when the city council elected its new chairman.
... today in Iraq chambers of commerce, business, school and professional organizations are electing their leaders all over the country.
... 25 ministers, selected by the most representative governing body in Iraq's history, run the day-to-day business of government.
... the Iraqi government regularly participates in international events.

Since July the Iraqi government has been represented in over two dozen international meetings, including those of the UN General Assembly, the Arab League, the World Bank and IMF and, today, the Islamic Conference Summit.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs today announced that it is reopening over 30 Iraqi embassies around the world.

... Shia religious festivals that were all but banned, aren't.
... for the first time in 35 years, in Karbala thousands of Shiites celebrate the pilgrimage of the 12th Imam.
... the Coalition has completed over 13,000 reconstruction projects, large and small, as part of a strategic plan for the reconstruction of Iraq.
... Uday and Queasy are dead - and no longer feeding innocent Iraqis to the zoo lions, raping the young daughters of local leaders to force cooperation, torturing Iraq's soccer players for losing games, or murdering critics.
... children aren't imprisoned or murdered when their parents disagree with the government.
... political opponents aren't imprisoned, tortured, executed, maimed, or are forced to watch their families die for disagreeing with Saddam.
... millions of longsuffering Iraqis no longer live in perpetual terror.
... Saudis will hold municipal elections.
... Qatar is reforming education to give more choices to parents.
... Jordan is accelerating market economic reforms.
... the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for the first time to an Iranian -- a Muslim woman who speaks out with courage for human rights, for democracy and for peace.
... Saddam is gone.
... Iraq is free.
... President Bush has not faltered or failed.
... Yet, little or none of this information has been published by the Press corps that prides itself on bringing you all the news that's important.

Iraq under US lead control has come further in six months than Germany did in seven years or Japan did in nine years following WWII. Military deaths from fanatic Nazi's, and Japanese numbered in the thousands and continued for over three years after WWII victory was declared.

It took the US over four months to clear away the twin tower debris, let alone attempt to build something else in its place.

Now, take into account that Congress fought President Bush on every aspect of his handling of this country's war and the post-war reconstruction; and that they continue to claim on a daily basis on national TV that this conflict has been a failure.

Taking everything into consideration, even the unfortunate loss of our brothers and sisters in this conflict, do you think anyone else in the world could have accomplished as much as the United States and the Bush administration in so short a period of time?

These are things worth writing about. Get the word out. Write to someone you think may be able to influence our Congress or the press to tell the story.

Above all, be proud that you are a part of this historical precedent.

God Bless you all. Have a great Holiday.

Semper Fidelis,
CO

Supporting Scouting

DAMNING THE SCOUTS
New York Post, NY - Nov 17, 2004
BY COLLIN LEVEY.

Note: This is a good commentary regarding the "dangers" that Scouting presents to the youth of our nation and our nation in general. There is a great quote from Normal Rockwell near the end. I guess we can all be "impressed" with the ACLU's efforts to pick on the children of this country and the adults who are trying to help them grow into law-abiding, patriotic citizens. Just click on the Title above to read the commentary. Patriot Mark

November 18, 2004 -- THE new big threat to our civil liberties is a group of 10-year-olds with walking sticks. At . . .

The Loss That Keeps On Giving!

Posted on AnnCoulter.com
November 17, 2004

Note: This was sent to me by a friend of mine. Thanks, Dave.

As we wait for CBS to concede the election, Democrats are claiming Kerry lost because Americans are stupid – and if there's one thing voters respond to, it's crude insults.

This is not only the first step of a brilliant strategy to win the red states back, but also inconsistent with the Democrats' theory that Bush was an illegitimate president for the last four years because Democratic voters in Florida were too dumb to follow an arrow to the circle by Al Gore's name. How stupid were the alleged Gore-supporters who couldn't figure out how to cast a vote in the 2000 election?

Using classical Marxist thinking, liberals can't fathom how issues like abortion and gay marriage could trump ordinary people's economic interests -– which liberals axiomatically assume are furthered by the Democrats' offers of government assistance. Democrats are saying to voters: How can you be so stupid to subordinate your own selfish economic interests to "moral values," the betterment of the country and the general welfare of people you don't even know?

It can only be false consciousness. If liberals think the Bush vote was composed of illiterate homophobes who fear women in the workplace, perhaps the Democrats should start demanding literacy tests to vote.

Garry Wills – who fills in "occupation" on his federal tax return with "self-hating Catholic" – denounced America in the New York Times as an unenlightened nation full of people who believe "more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution."

By contrast, apparently, "enlightened" people believe in the Aborted Birth more fervently than they believe in national defense. And just in the interest of fairness here, Garry: At least there's some documentation on the Virgin Birth story. For people who believe so fervently in evolution, these Bush mandate-deniers sure are resistant to it on a personal level.

On the same day, on the same nuanced Times editorial page, both Wills and Maureen Dowd wrote that Kerry was defeated by a "jihad" of Christians. The jihadists, according to Wills, were driven by "fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity." Dowd said they were "a devoted flock of evangelicals, or 'values voters,' as they call themselves ... opposing abortion, suffocating stem-cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage." Finally – a jihad liberals oppose!

Speaking of gay marriage, as long as liberals are so big on discussing "mandates" and whether Bush has one (they say he does not), I think the one thing we can all agree on is that there is definitely a "mandate" against gay marriage. In fact, a clear majority of us are uncomfortable with the word "mandate" because it sounds like Wayne asking Stephen out for dinner and a movie.

Reacting to Bush's re-election in that calm, reasoned way we have come to expect of liberals, they are running to psychotherapists, threatening to move to Canada and warning of a fascist police state – including their fear of a Hollywood "blacklist." (Now you understand how the myth of McCarthyism began, red states!)

One depressed Kerry voter committed suicide at Ground Zero. Meanwhile, the entire Democratic Party is also contemplating political suicide by making Howard Dean its next chairman.

Some Democrats are so despondent they've contemplated (hushed whisper) prayer. They're just not sure if they're supposed to pray to Bill Clinton or to their "Higher Power."

The day after the election, documentary filmmaker and Upper West Side denizen Mitch Wood told the New York Times: "Watching my kids this morning, going down the street, flicking things in the air, jumping around, I wondered, are they going to have that sense of freedom that I had growing up?"

As if on cue, a commercial jetliner piloted by Islamofascist hijackers did NOT crash in front of Wood at this point, killing his entire family instantly, in silent testimony to the national security we currently enjoy under President Bush. Wood gave no indication of noticing this.

A teacher on the Upper West Side, Ireena Gurvich, said, "I'm thinking of leaving the country." Gurvich said she wanted to go to Canada because, "it's a kinder and gentler United States." And yet you still ask why our children cannot read or write.

Another denizen of the Upper West Side, Patty Fondrie, said: "If it gets bad, we'll go to France," where she will probably be murdered by Muslims.

Michael Conway, an administrator at United Talent Agency in Beverly Hills, Calif., was quoted in the Times worrying, "What's going to happen, some kind of blacklist?" – suggesting an entirely new, if somewhat scatological connotation, to the term "A-list."

I think we have a long way to go from Michael Moore being an honored guest at the Democratic National Convention to a "blacklist" –- except for actors who believe abortion and gay marriage are "wrong." But here's hoping.

Why I Can't Stop Being Happy About the Election Result

By Peggy Noonan
November 11, 2004

Well, I just can't stop being happy. I don't mean elated--it's hard to get elated by big history, as opposed to by the birth of a baby, say, or a child's being elected president of the debating club--but I continue to feel relief (the exit poll hives have gone down) and satisfaction (my countrymen, such good sense they have). So let's just let the mood continue and have fun.

This week I went to a symposium thrown together at the last minute by the Club for Growth, the Washington-based political action committee that gives crucial financial help to candidates who espouse economic policies that will help the American job machine, and opposing those who do not. Almost every Senate and House candidate they backed this year won. Also it was the club that worked with Hollywood's David Zucker to get out the anti-Kerry commercial that was perhaps the best of the season, the one with the guy standing at the altar when the bride realizes he just can't make up his mind and starts to chase the bridesmaid, and then the old organist. It captured John Kerry's indecision and its implications. More important, it was funny.

Members of the club gathered in a New York hotel room, and president Stephen Moore said we ought to take a moment for a full and uninhibited gloat. So we applauded, stomped and cheered. It's good to see Republicans show their joy. Republicans are people who can always see the next problem down the road, and are always working on it; moreover they're often like the Irish and the Jews, who don't believe in good fortune, and if it happens don't mention it or it will stop. But for this night, skepticism, worry and even maturity were put aside, and everyone was just happy.

I was on a small panel that talked about the meaning of last Tuesday, why it happened, what was behind it. The nice thing about such panels is that nobody knows the meta-answer, so you can't be wrong, only rather interesting or mildly stupid, which is allowed among friends. I knew some of the speakers were heavyweights who would look at the returns and their implications with gravity and sophistication, so I decided the only thing I could do that they couldn't was be shallow. Thus I shared views that were based on a merely intuitive sense of what might have been going through the minds of some of the almost 60 million people who voted for George W. Bush.

I actually think all elections come down to issues, to great questions that are answered vote by vote in the ballot box. But I put that wisdom aside for the fun of free association.

This is what I said: The president won re-election by a relatively healthy margin because the American people judged him to be the better man. He seemed to have the better character of the two candidates. He'd tell you what he was going to do, and why, and then he'd do it. He'd been doing that for four years. He did it in the campaign, too. He was dependable, and he was predictable. It's nice to have a predictable president. It's not nice in the nuclear age to have a surprising one.

Mr. Bush was not known as a sneak or a liar. We have had presidents who were known as sneaks and liars, some quite recently, but that wasn't Mr. Bush, and I believe it was a relief to normal people. That relief was never articulated by anybody I remember hearing, but I believe it had a real if unquantifiable effect on the voters' choice.I think the people tended toward Mr. Bush because they saw him as a good American man, a man they know--an imperfect one with an imperfect past who turned his life around with grit and grace. That's a very American story. It's one we all know, and respect. There are Democrats--Chris Heinz was reportedly one, at the end--who amuse themselves referring to President Bush as a former cokehead. I don't know about that, but I know America went through the 1970s, and America is still in recovery. When nice people hear things like "former drunk" they tend to put the internal emphasis on the word former.

The American people arguably did not pick the more interesting man in the race. Mr. Kerry strikes me as a complicated and intelligent person, and the one time I spent any time with him he seemed to be bright, and to have an interesting range of thoughts on many issues. Mr. Bush, on the other hand, does not strike me as the most interesting man in the world. That's one of the things I love about him. I sort of have a theory that Americans don't necessarily desire terribly interesting men as presidents. "Interesting" tends to bring with it a whole bunch of other attributes--"complicated," "hard to figure," "unknowable," "startling," even sometimes "tortured and tragic." A lot of us are Republicans, and we just hate tortured and tragic. Or rather we like it in our plays and novels and TV characters and even in our friends. But not in the guy with his finger on the button.

I think Mr. Bush, the better man in terms of character, was also the more normal man. And we like normal. He loves sports and business and politics, and speaks their language. Normal. His wife is important to him, and his kids seem a bit of a mystery to him, and perhaps even to some degree intimidating. Normal. He thinks if bad guys attack New York City and the Pentagon, we go after them and kill them--normal. He thinks marriage is between a man and a woman--normal. He thinks if Baptist preachers in a suburb of Louisville have an after-school plan that has an excellent record of turning kids from juvenile delinquency to thinking about college, those Baptist preachers should be helped and encouraged every way we can, and it has nothing to do with "church and state." Normal. He thinks if there's an old plaque bearing the Ten Commandments on the wall of the courthouse you should leave it alone--it can't hurt, and it might help. Normal.

Finally, you look at President Bush, and you can tell he's not going to change much anymore. He's 58 and he's going to stay who he is. He is not emotionally or intellectually labile or subject to great swings--he's not going to shock us and announce tomorrow that, on reconsideration, Osama had a point, or he actually doesn't like Jesus. He's not going to say tax increases are good. He's not going to say we need more regulation of small businesses. He liked to brag sometimes in the campaign "You know who I am--I say what I mean and I mean what I say." Actually, it wasn't bragging, for it was true.

Some liberals, misunderstanding Mr. Bush's support, think that in the red states they think Bush is a god. They do not. They do not think he is perfect; they do not think he is Pericles; they do not think he has the subtlest political mind since Harry Hopkins (if Hopkins was subtle--I forget). They just like him, and respect him. Some love him, but they all make teasing jokes about him. This is a man whose very White House called its political strategy shop "strategery." The American people are in their own way fiercely sophisticated. They know the history of second terms: woe and error. They expect Mr. Bush to make mistakes. But they don't expect him to make amazing out-of-character mistakes. They expect him to make George Bush-type mistakes. They can live with that.

The journalist and economist who followed me on the panel said some serious big things. One said he could quite imagine Mr. Bush defying the second administration curse, in part because of his boldness: He means it about Social Security reform, for instance, and he's going to do it. The economist was convinced Mr. Bush will move big time against the estate tax, which we call the death tax, and on capital gains. No one, however, predicted lower spending. There was a sense that once again Mr. Bush will trade spending for progress in other areas, and let that progress lower the size of the deficit down the road.

There was a nice moment in the Q&A, which I'll share. I was asked by Stephen Moore about comparisons of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, how they are alike and how they differ. I told him I normally don't answer that question from journalists because they always turn it into a sort of "but she conceded Bush lacks Reagan's rhetorical gifts" kind of thing. I don't know why liberal journalists enjoy comparing Mr. Bush with Reagan. They never wanted to compare JFK's leadership style with the giant who preceded him 15 years before, FDR, and they never compared Bill Clinton's rhetoric to JFK's. But Stephen was asking not as a mischievous journalist, so I said I'd answer.

I just recounted something that has stayed in my mind. About a year ago I was visiting West Point, and I was talking to a big officer, a general or colonel. But he had the medals and ribbons and the stature, and he asked me what I thought of President Bush. I tried to explain what most impressed me about Mr. Bush, and I kept falling back on words like "courage" and "guts." I wasn't capturing the special quality Mr. Bush has of making a tough decision and then staying with it if he thinks it's right and paying the price even when the price is high and--

I stopped speaking for a moment. There was silence. And then the general said, "You mean he's got two of 'em." And I laughed and said yes, that's exactly what I mean. And the same could be said of Reagan.

It was a happy night at the Club for Growth.

Post-Election Promises Fulfilled

Note: While the following message is tongue-in-cheek, a serious effort to pay for a one-way ticket for Robert Redford and his spouse or significant other was conducted by Glenn Beck. $7,200 was raised by listeners sending in $1-$5 each. For more information on this, check out this site: http://www.glennbeck.com/news/11042004.shtml.

"We at Carnival Cruise Lines didn't forget that lot of entertainers had promised to leave the country if George W. Bush were to be reelected President.

"With that in mind, we have a Special Offer for those who still want to keep their promise!

"Attention: Would Alec Baldwin, Rosie O'Donnell and her wife, Ed Asner, Janeane Garafalo, Whoppi Goldberg, Al Franken, Michael Moore, Cher, Phil Donahue, Rob Reiner (apparently still a "meathead"), Barbara Streisand, Jane Fonda, Pierre Salinger, as well as the entire staffs of the LA and NY Times and anyone else who made that promise, please dispose of all US assets and report to Florida for the sailing of the Funship Cruise, "Elation," which has been commissioned to take you to your new vacation homes in Afghanistan.

"You may opt to be dropped off in Somalia or Iraq.

"The Florida Supreme Court will sponsor a Farewell Parade in your honor through Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties prior to your cruise.

"Please pack for an extended stay. . . at least four more years.

"Note: Since you advocate strict gun control, you may not bring any.

"Staffing your voyage is Bill Clinton as captain, Al Gore as cruise director, and Grey Davis. Purser Terry Heinz Kerry hopefully will be kept somewhere below decks away from the media. Monica Lewinsky will be the 'cigar and cigarette girl.'

"Entertainment will be by the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen.

"John Kerry will be our life guard in consideration of his past experience in pulling people out of the water (unless he decides at the last minute not to go). John is advocating the elimination of the game 'shuffleboard' in favor of his new game he calls 'waffleboard.' Be sure to pack your flip flops as you will need them while playing.

"Ted Kennedy will double as bartender and Director of Emergency Procedures.

"Rev. Al Sharpton will provide inspirational services, and Ex-Congressman Gary Condit as intern coordinator. If you have any questions about making arrangements for your homes, friends and loved ones, please direct your comments to Senator Hillary Clinton. Her village can raise your children while you're gone. She can also watch over all your money and your furnishings until you return.

"'Bon Voyage!'

"Is this a great country or what?"

Priceless (Election Story)

Note: This would make a really funny Republican/Visa Commercial

Don't steal yard signs. . . . This is from a story out of Washington State:

Dear Larry,

Last Thursday I put out one of my Bush/Cheney signs in my front yard. Between midnight and 3:00 a.m. someone stole it. On Friday night I put out sign No. 2. Since I didn't have to get up early, I thought my dog and I would "stake out" our sign.

This time I put the sign a little closer to the gate leading to my backyard. With my dog on an extra long leash, I planted myself on a lawn chair and read "Unfit for Command" by flashlight until about 1:00 a.m.

Here comes the fun part . . . I noticed that the car coming down the street was slowing down and pulling over to the curb right next to my yard. Sure enough, he gets out of his car and heads right for my sign. Just as he was about to uproot and desecrate it, I opened my gate and let my dog make the initial introduction! As he ran to hide behind the rear end of his car, I promptly moved to the driver-side door, which was still open.

It was a fairly nice car with power everything and still running. While my dog continued to "introduce" herself, I rolled up the window and hit the power door lock button. With that, I slammed the door, grabbed my Bush sign and headed into the back yard.

And now for the "rest of the story."

About 40 minutes later, I heard a knock at the door. I opened the door to one of our city's finest. . . the Vancouver Police Department. The officer asked me what was going on and when I told him, he could not stop laughing!

I followed him out to the perp's car and stood there while he asked the guy a few more questions. Upon learning that the guy lived a couple of streets down, I -- knowing what was about to happen -- asked him, "Why do you have Oregon plates on your car if you live just down the street (here in Vancouver, Wash.)?"

Larry, Oregon has no sales tax, so often Washington residents will buy and register cars in Oregon to avoid paying sales tax. . . it's a crime and the fine is pretty stiff.

Here comes the best part. . . The look on this guy's face told me he knew he was about to get busted. When the officer asked for his license and registration, the "Democrat" mumbled that (his license) was suspended.

Just for kicks and giggles I asked the officer if he smelled any alcohol coming from the guy! The officer looked at me, smiled and promptly gave him a field breathalyzer test.

Guess what? You got it, he blew a .10, legally drunk in the state of Washington.

DUI, illegal registration and the brand of "MORON," all 'cause he hates Bush!

Sincerely,
John

Cost of Bush signs: $5.95 each
Cost of Flashlight batteries: $3.95/Pack
Seeing a Left-wing Numskull carted off to the hoosegow: PRICELESS!

Another Good Read

See:

An ominous Specter: Part II by Thomas Sowell (archive): The illness of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the brazen announcement by Senator Arlen Specter of his own policy litmus test for judicial nominees raise very serious questions about which way this country will go at this crossroads in our legal history. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20041110.shtml

Why We're a Divided Nation

By Walter E. Williams (archive)
November 10, 2004

Recent elections pointed to deepening divisions among American people, but has anyone given serious thought to just why? I have part of the answer, which starts off with a simple example. Different Americans have different and intensive preferences for cars, food, clothing and entertainment. For example, some Americans love opera and hate rock and roll. Others have opposite preferences, loving rock and roll and hating opera. When's the last time you heard of rock-and-roll lovers in conflict with opera lovers? It seldom, if ever, happens. Why? Those who love operas get what they want, and those who love rock and roll get what they want, and both can live in peace with one another.

Suppose that instead of freedom in the music market, decisions on what kind of music people could listen to were made in the political arena. It would be either opera or rock and roll. Rock and rollers would be lined up against opera lovers. Why? It's simple. If the opera lovers win, rock and rollers would lose, and the reverse would happen if rock and rollers won. Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political arena.

The prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum game. One person or group's gain is of necessity another person or group's loss. As such, political allocation of resources is conflict enhancing while market allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater is the potential for conflict.

There are other implications of political decision-making. Throughout most of our history, we've lived in relative harmony. That's remarkable because just about every religion, racial and ethnic group in the world is represented in our country. These are the very racial/ethnic/religious groups that have for centuries been trying to slaughter one another in their home countries, among them: Turks and Armenians, Protestant and Catholic, Muslim and Jew, Croats and Serbs. While we haven't been a perfect nation, there have been no cases of the mass genocide and religious wars that have plagued the globe elsewhere. The closest we've come was the American Indian/European conflict, which pales by comparison.

The reason we've been able to live in relative harmony is that for most of our history government was small. There wasn't much pie to distribute politically.
When it's the political arena that determines who gets what goodies, the most effective coalitions are those with a proven record of being the most divisive -- those based on race, ethnicity, religion and region. As a matter of fact, our most costly conflict involved a coalition based upon region -- namely the War of 1861.

Many of the issues that divide us, aside from the Iraq war, are those best described as a zero-sum game, where one group's gain is of necessity another's loss. Examples are: racial preferences, Social Security, tax policy, trade restrictions, welfare and a host of other government policies that benefit one American at the expense of another American. You might be tempted to think that the brutal domestic conflict seen in other countries at other times can't happen here. That's nonsense. Americans are not super-humans; we possess the same frailties of other people in other places. If there were a severe economic calamity, I can imagine a political hustler exploiting those frailties here, just as Adolf Hitler did in Germany, blaming it on the Jews, the blacks, the East Coast, Catholics or free trade.

The best thing the president and Congress can do to heal our country is to reduce the impact of government on our lives. Doing so will not only produce a less divided country and greater economic efficiency but bear greater faith and allegiance to the vision of America held by our founders -- a country of limited government. [e.s.]

©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Liberty's Century By Hans Zeiger

November 10, 2004

Election Day was an affirmation of many good things about America, among them, what President Bush has called "liberty's century." It is my guess, at this middle point in his presidency, that this glorious phrase will be Bush's most remembered. It will be most remembered because it will be most accurate as a description of America's legacy in this century. For I believe, with the president, that America is on the verge of new success with old ideals.

"To everything we know there is a season," said Bush at September's Republican National Convention, "a time for sadness, a time for struggle, a time for rebuilding. And now we have reached a time for hope. This young century will be liberty's century."
If the nineteenth century was the century of slavery, and the twentieth the century of ideological totalitarianism, the twenty-first shall be the century of freedom. Though people who know reality cannot expect it to belong to liberty exclusively - and if we envision a utopia we won't have freedom at all - we can hope and dream that it will be a century devoid of the monstrosities that have defined the past century.

Bush explained his agenda for Liberty's Century thus: "By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world. By encouraging liberty at home, we will build a more hopeful America. Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom. This is the everlasting dream of America."

We may take some comfort, in the aftermath of the election, that we have political leaders who place some value on liberty. Yet we are not at ease to assume that all of our battles for liberty are won. Nor may we count on our leaders to win them all on our behalf. We may not now withdraw ourselves from the struggle to secure the future.

It is a struggle that will require the most ardent efforts of a generation. For the thing we must seek first is not liberty; we already have that. We must first seek to reclaim our responsibility.
No president or Congress can grant responsibility to the American people, and thus they cannot bless us with liberty. Our duty comes from God. To Him we are accountable. From Him come our blessings in exchange for the fulfillment of our duties.

In our capacity as individuals, made in the image of God and inheritors of a mighty body of principle and culture, we must win back responsibility for this generation. Before we are to consider it Liberty's Century, we must demand of ourselves that it be Responsibility's Century.
The heaviest burden of responsibility rests upon young Americans. Michael Moore, overjoyed at Bush's reelection that his career as a Bush Hater may last another four years, has declared that America's 18 to 29 year-olds - 51.6 percent of which voted last Tuesday - are the best sign of hope for the Left because 55 percent of young voters cast ballots for Kerry.

But as Reuters reported, "This was not the breakout year for young voters that some had anticipated." Indeed, after months - and millions of dollars - of agitation by Left wing activist groups, MTV, P. Diddy's "Vote or Die" campaign, rappers, punk rockers, pro-wrestlers, and a plethora of Hollywood celebrities, 18 to 29 year-olds comprised only 10 percent of the total electorate, about the same percentage as in 2000. Engineers of the MTV Generation failed to rally young people to the polls with any kind of proportional turnout increase over the previous election.

Michael Moore, who is now labeling Bush Country "Jesus Land," predicts a youth uprising now that Bush has won reelection. "What you are about to see in the coming months is going to shock you. These kids aren't going away. They have a resilience that cannot be snuffed out by older people's whining and moaning about the state of America. THEIR America has yet to be formed as they see it."

For once, I agree with Michael Moore. There is a shocking resilience and optimism in our generation that has not yet been expressed. But when this generation finally emerges politically, culturally, and spiritually, it will be and must be the kind of generation who are dedicated to responsibility, who love liberty as only patriots do.

And I contend that we shouldn't look for America's future in the exit polls. It is true that this generation isn't as political as our parents were in the 1960s and 1970s. The truly significant trends of what has been called the Millennial Generation are a rising commitment to traditional faith, the growing rejection of relativism, the renewed commitment to the family, and a bold expression of conservatism amongst college and university students.

We witness a strong minority movement taking shape. It is a conservative youth rebellion - an oxymoron and the key to our future.

Liberty's Century is the prospect for America. George W. Bush can, and he ought to, inspire us to make it a reality. But it is only in our capacities as individuals, in families and schools and communities, that we can truly take back America through a renewal of moral responsibility. It is in the hearts and minds of this generation that Liberty's Century will be fulfilled.

-------------

Hans Zeiger is a Seattle Sentinel columnist, president of the Scout Honor Coalition, and a student at Hillsdale College. www.hanszeiger.com