The Littlest Fireman

The 26-year-old mother stared down at her son who was dying of terminal leukemia. Although her heart was filled with sadness, she also had a strong feeling of determination. Like any parent she wanted her son to grow up and fulfill all his dreams. Now that was no longer possible. The leukemia would see to that.

But she still wanted her son’s dreams to come true. She took her son’s hand and asked, “Billy, did you ever think about what you wanted to be once you grew up? Did you ever dream and wish what you would do with your life?”

“Mommy, I always wanted to be a fireman when I grew up.” Mom smiled back and said, “Let’s see if we can make your wish come true.”

Later that day she went to her local fire department in Phoenix, Arizona, where she met Fireman Bob, who had a heart as big as Phoenix. She explained her son’s final wish and asked if it might be possible to give her six year old son a ride around the block on a fire engine. Fireman Bob said, “Look, we can do better than that. If you’ll have your son ready at seven o’clock Wednesday morning, we’ll make him an honorary fireman for the whole day. He can come down to the fire station, eat with us, go out on all the fire calls, the whole nine yards! “And if you’ll give us his sizes, we’ll get a real fire uniform for him, with a real fire hat — not a toy one — with the emblem of the Phoenix Fire Department on it, a yellow slicker like we wear and rubber boots. They’re all manufactured right here in Phoenix, so we can get them fast.”

Three days later Fireman Bob picked up Billy, dressed him in his fire uniform and escorted him from his hospital bed to the waiting hook and ladder truck. Billy got to sit on the back of the truck and help steer it back to the fire station. He was in heaven. There were three fire calls in Phoenix that day and Billy got to go out on all three calls. He rode in the different fire engines, the paramedic’s van, and even the fire chief’s car. He was also videotaped for the local news program. Having his dream come true, with all the love and attention that was lavished upon him, so deeply touched Billy that he lived three months longer than any doctor thought possible.

One night all of his vital signs began to drop dramatically and the head nurse, who believed in the hospice concept that no one should die alone, began to call the family members to the hospital. Then she remembered the day Billy had spent as a fireman, so she called the Fire Chief and asked if it would be possible to send a fireman in uniform to the hospital to be with Billy as he made his transition. The chief replied, “We can do better than that. We’ll be there in five minutes. Will you please do me a favor? When you hear the sirens screaming and see the lights flashing, will you announce over the PA system that there is not a fire? It’s just the fire department coming to see one of its finest members one more time. And will you open the window to his room?

About five minutes later a hook and ladder truck arrived at the hospital, extended its ladder up to Billy’s third floor open window and 16 firefighters climbed up the ladder into Billy’s room. With his mother’s permission, they hugged him and held him and told him how much they loved him. With his dying breath, Billy looked up at the fire chief and said, “Chief, am I really a fireman now?” “ Billy, you are,” the chief said. With those words, Billy smiled and closed his eyes one last time.

Christmas Moratorium

Like you (hopefully), I was really steamed about the hypocrisy and bias of the liberal media while reading Mona Charen's column (see post below).

However, while getting ready to post it, I had a follow-on thought. We can only spend so much time reading about how polluted our culture is, the liberal bias of the media, the venomous politics in Washington, etc., etc. without it starting to take a toll on us.

We're now entering Advent, preparing ourselves for Christmas -- the birth of Jesus. So, I want to spend the next couple of weeks focusing on positive and uplifting things. Accordingly, I am going to take a moratorium on politics through Christmas. I will be looking for and posting positive stories, especially stories with a Christian theme and message.

I hope you will enjoy these stories and excuse my passing over political stories for a couple of weeks. I commend you all to the care of the Mother of God, the protection of St. Michael, and the intercession of St. Joseph.

Fairness? Balance? the Truth? -- "It's Not My Job"

Check out this great column by the always terrific Mona Charen (who, by the way, has one of my all-time favorite books titles -- "Useful Idiots").

An excerpt:
"[T]he Marines had repaired an old Ferris wheel. The motor was dead, but when two Marines pushed and pulled by hand they could get the thing turning to give rides to the children of the Iraqi employees. They did so for hours on end. A photographer from a large American media company watched impassively. "Why don't you take a picture of this?" demanded one Marine. The photographer snorted, "That's not my job." "

Kerry Elected!

I know Halloween was a month ago, but here's a scary story.

John Kerry Elected ... Jury Foreman

The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 23, 2005; 9:15 AM

BOSTON -- Sen. John Kerry's public profile and prosecutorial past didn't spare him from performing that most mundane of civic responsibilities -- jury duty.

Kerry was not only chosen this week to sit on a jury in Suffolk Superior Court, but also was elected foreman.

© 2005 The Associated Press

"Eight Minutes is an Excellent Response Time"
(unless you were killed in 5)

Here is a tragic story from the Chicago SunTimes of a woman who was killed by her boyfriend while her children were in the next room.

Her 12-year old daughter called 911 twice and, yes, the police got there in a hurry. Unfortunately, not quite soon enough to save the woman's life.

Ready to Start Homeschooling?

From The Wanderer:

In a ruling that is bound to send shock waves across the United States, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled on November 2 that parents have “no fundamental right . . . to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it.

“We also hold,” the federal court judges ruled in Fields v. Palmdale School District, “that parents have no due process or privacy rights to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students.”

One legal expert contacted by The Wanderer immediately after the ruling came down said, “This is another Kelo case, because it demonstrates the overreach of government power over families the way Kelo affirmed government power over family homes.

“Just as the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo that a private shopping mall magnate can seize grandma’s house, so now the Ninth Circuit is saying that a public school bureaucrat can overrule community values regarding intimate matters.”

Carrie Gordon Earll, senior policy analyst for Focus on the Family Action, called the decision, in the case, “perhaps the most abhorrent example of judicial tyranny in American history.”

“Anyone who wonders why pro-family organizations like ours have been so concerned about activist courts only has to look at this case,” Earll said. “The Ninth Circuit did more than rule against parents who were upset that their elementary-school-aged children were being asked explicit questions about sex in class. They told all parents they have no right to protest what public schools tell their children.

“What the court did here is declare parenthood unconstitutional,” Earll said. “It’s long been the liberal view that it takes a village to raise a child — but never before have the ‘villagers’ been elevated, as a matter of law, above mothers and fathers.”

The court’s ruling clearly represents a “usurpation” of parental rights, as the Catholic Church understands them, and as articulated by the Church since Pope Pius XI, and reaffirmed by Vatican II and numerous times by Pope John Paul II, especially in Familiaris Consortio and in The Truth & Meaning of Human Sexuality, particularly n. 43.

But the Ninth Circuit Court’s opinion is consistent with a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions of recent years, which have steadily eroded parents’ rights, as the late constitutional attorney William Bentley Ball explained in his book, Mere Creatures of the State? Education, Religion, and the Courts.

Ball argued, persuasively, that the trend of recent Supreme Court decisions was to restrict parental rights by arguing, essentially, that the need of the state for “well-educated” citizens trumps parents’ rights to raise their children according to the tenets of their religion.

Are We Sheep? Lemmings? Wildebeast? or Americans?
(you only get one choice)

Here is a thought-provoking article by Mark Helperin that I saw on the Claremont Institute web site:

Herd Animals

By Mark Helprin
Posted October 19, 2005

Why does the Left so often abstain from defending not only American interests but, after September 11th, the United States itself? During the Cold War, one could always suspect that democratic socialists lusted in their hearts for Leninism, and might have given themselves over had the balance of power shifted eastward. This was at least a plausible explanation for their opposition to virtually any measure of Western defense, and their perpetual horror of anti-Communism. But no force, it would seem, should be capable of transforming even a lifetime of socialist ardor into sympathy for absolutist mullahs, 10th-century tribal warriors, decapitators, and circumcisors of women.

It would make no sense. And yet as the immense plumes of smoke and dust still were rising in strength from the ruins of the World Trade Center, and not a single shot had been fired or a single soldier sacrificed in what was to become the War on Terrorism, the worldwide Left mobilized instantaneously to assert that such a war—the particulars and extent of which it could not know—would be unjust.

It is true that since then many opponents and proponents of the war, despite being not even decimally aware of pertinent facts or relations, have managed to enlarge their unexamined notions into either complex and disconnected conspiracy theories involving oil, or manic crusader-atavistic visions of remaking the Arab and Muslim worlds, and that the dust from these ignorant armies as they debate with the finesse of English football hooligans rises into a plume of its own. But, like a mammoth perfectly preserved in ice and uncomplicated by subsequent infections, the Left’s purely reflexive impulses immediately following September 11 are worthy of attention.

Most remarkable is the initial and continuing indifference both to those who perished and to the country itself as it came under attack. On a political level, the Left could summon no indignation after assaults upon America’s capital, defense headquarters, civil aviation, embassies, warships, and chief city, any one of which would be a classic and unambiguous casus belli, while in strange contrast it seemed to regard the mere presence of Americans in Saudi Arabia, the trade in oil, and the Arab world’s exposure to American popular culture as unpardonable aggressions.

Irrationality on a political level from these quarters has never been a shock. On a personal level, however, the predominant response of the intellectual Left was a mystery. It was as if the thousands of crushed and incinerated men, women, and children—those who threw themselves into a quarter-mile abyss rather than have the flesh seared off their bones as they stood in the wind at glassless walls, the small children who died in terror after watching hysterical fanatics slit the throats of screaming stewardesses, and so on, for there are almost three thousand stories—simply did not exist. How does one explain such an egregious absence of sympathy (much less assertions that “they” deserved it, or that it was a work of art) among endlessly self-proclaiming empathetics whose stock in trade is to milk compassion even from the Rock of Gibraltar? This is a real rather than a rhetorical question, because it is significant of a great division.

The nature of one’s reaction to aggression against one’s country will often be determined by whether one sees the polity primarily as individuals who must struggle with the imperfection of being bound into a collective, or as a collective that must overcome the circumstantial imperfection that it comprises individuals. For wildebeest thundering across a plain in Africa, it takes a village. The herd defends itself by sacrificing a minuscule proportion of its number and moving on. If the herd were to turn upon the jackals preying upon it, the jackals would be pulverized almost instantly. Nonetheless, if the price for the escape of ten thousand is the sacrifice of only a few, that is how it is done when the collective is paramount.

But animals like bears, tigers, and lions, that wander individually or in small groups, know that their survival depends upon how they fight, and their willingness to fight is so well understood that they are seldom attacked, whereas to a predator a herd in flight is a living contradiction of the maxim that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Mankind is not a genetic set piece, divided into lone wolves and lemmings, but rather the division is a reflection of habituation to the collective—indeed, worship of it—as opposed to a habitual resistance to it. Capitulation and appeasement may sometimes be merely subcategories of a controlling impulse that produces both. When the Left bends to America’s enemies it may not be a result of cowardice or betrayal, but of loyalty to the omelette so single-minded that it precludes consideration of the eggs.

At times, of course, the collective should take precedence. It is a matter of finding the appropriate balance for impulses that contend eternally because man was created as an individual and yet there is more than one of him. And, depending upon the wind, one must occasionally tack to port even if one’s preference is to tack to starboard. But by its hostility to virtually every part of the War on Terrorism, and its continuing assertion that in this war almost every step America has taken is an unnecessary and wasteful overreaction, the Left implicitly makes the argument that the dead of September 11 represent only one one-hundred-thousandth of the American population, and that although intelligent people understand the implications of this, the impatient jingoes who “control” the country do not.

After all, a herd of 100,000 wildebeest would neither miss just one of its number, nor even pause to reflect. But where the Left in all its wisdom gravely miscalculates is that the dead of September 11th were not wildebeest, and neither are we. That is why America, for all its failings and sins, has not gone down, and will not go down, on bended knee.

Mark Helprin, whose books include A Soldier of the Great War and Winter’s Tale, is a senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. He is a graduate of the Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies, has served in the Israeli infantry and Air Force, and was an advisor on defense and foreign relations to Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole.

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Copyright © 2005, The Claremont Institute.

"I Was For War in Iraq Before I Was Against It"

Ever wonder where John Kerry learned to be a prevaricating, two-faced, flip-flopper? He probably learned it during his years as a Senator, but he may have also spent some time with Bill Clinton.

This past weekend "Bubba" had the gall to tell an audience that, despite the fact that he actually launched attacks on Iraq, he was against our taking out Sadaam. What a blowhard.

Here is an excerpt; the whole article can be read at Opinion Journal:
"Back when he was running for President, in 1992, Mr. Clinton promised an Administration that would "not coddle tyrants, from Baghdad to Beijing." As President, he launched military strikes against Iraq in 1993, following Saddam's attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait; in 1996, and in 1998, following Saddam's ouster of U.N. weapons inspectors."

The Dems Have an Iraq Strategy!
(photo from David Lunde via Michelle Malkin)

As Suppressed by the MSM

Here is an interesting perspective from the war on terror -- the woman terrorist who was captured in Jordan last week has been revealing just how effective our military has been in eliminating terrorists. Human Events is covering this, but this kind of information is being ignored or suppressed by the MSM.

Useful Idiots

Our gutless, cut-and-run "leaders" in Congress are (hopefully) unwittingly abetting our terrorists enemies. It doesn't take a PhD in history to learn that in Vietnam the Communists were only successful to the extent they were able to erode support for the war back in the U.S. They were helped enormously in this task by Walter Cronkite and the rest of the media.

The terrorists in Iraq know this. They can't come close to matching up with our soldiers on the battlefield, but they are hopeful that this generation's useful idiots (the MSM and Congress) can erode support to the point where we'll pull out of Iraq and they'll win by forfeit. Congressional calls for a withdrawl timetable can only help the terrorists. They'll know all they have to do is hold on till that date and they win.

For more, check out this editorial from today's WSJ in Opinion Journal.com. An excerpt:
"There are many lessons of the Vietnam War, but two of the biggest are these: Don't fight wars you don't intend to win, and while American troops can't be defeated, American politicians can be. Like General Giap, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his fellow terrorists understand the second lesson very well, and so his strategy has always been not to capture Baghdad but to inflict casualties in a way that breaks the will of American elites. He'll only be encouraged by this week's show of Beltway duck and cover."

"Beauty, truth and goodness really do exist; what we choose in life matters; suffering has meaning; sacrifice for the right things makes a difference; heaven is real; and God, our reason for joy and hope, loves us eternally."

Narnia tales remind us of eternal Christian truths

10/26/2005 5:43:00 PM
By Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Denver Catholic Register

As every parent and teacher knows, some of the best learning never takes place in a classroom. We learn most deeply from the example of others and from personal experience. But we’re also shaped by the stories that touch our hearts and fire our imaginations.

No one understood this better than the great British Catholic scholar, J.R.R. Tolkien. In writing the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, Tolkien single-handedly created the modern fantasy universe. Millions of young people have grown up reading about the elves, hobbits, orcs and wraiths of Middle Earth. But for all its impossible creatures, the trilogy is also profoundly “true” in its portrait of good and evil, sin and virtue, and the importance of human heroism in defeating wickedness.

As a committed Catholic, Tolkien wove the Christian story into the fabric of Middle Earth. It’s no accident that Frodo and Sam finally destroy the power of Sauron, the Dark Lord, on a date that just happens to be March 25 - the great feast of the Annunciation on the Church calendar; the day God took on human flesh. Tolkien did that deliberately. In fact, the “Lord of the Rings” is filled with scores of similar Christian clues and metaphors.

Tolkien’s Anglican friend and fellow scholar, C.S. Lewis, did the same. One of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20th century, Lewis is remembered for classics like “Mere Christianity,” “The Abolition of Man,” “Surprised by Joy,” “The Screwtape Letters,” “The Problem of Pain” and “The Great Divorce.” But maybe his best work was his storytelling for young people.

In writing his seven-book “Chronicles of Narnia,” Lewis created a fantastic saga of dwarves, witches, trolls and centaurs, much like Tolkien. And again like Tolkien, Lewis’ Great Lion - Aslan - is unmistakably a figure of Jesus Christ. As for Aslan’s father, the Emperor Across the Sea: Well, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to infer Who that might be.

Over the years, I’ve known dozens of people who’ve gone back to the Narnia tales again and again to enjoy them as adults. Even today, half a century after Lewis published the last of the Chronicles, they remain bestsellers. The reason is simple. The Chronicles remind us that beauty, truth and goodness really do exist; that what we choose in life matters; that suffering has meaning; that sacrifice for the right things makes a difference; that heaven is real; and that God, our reason for joy and hope, loves us eternally.

It’s no accident then that many filmmakers have tried to bring these stories to the screen. Until now, all have failed. Part of the problem has been technical: before computers, the means for creating believable fantasy worlds didn’t exist. But the other, less obvious, problem has been content. What makes the Chronicles so powerful - their Christian worldview - is also what makes some people in an aggressively secular age very uneasy. What we read, watch and listen to can change us. And the Chronicles have changed the hearts of a great many people - in the right direction.

In making his “Lord of the Rings” movies, director Peter Jackson largely succeeded in adapting Tolkien for a general audience without destroying the Christian moral heart of the saga. On Dec. 9, we’ll see if the same good fortune smiles on the Chronicles. On Dec. 9, Walt Disney Pictures and Walden Media will release “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the first of the Narnia tales. I haven’t seen it and therefore can’t endorse it, but if the film version stays true to the novel, the movie trailers and the filmmakers’ own stated intentions, it will be very well worth seeing.

Whatever the value of the film, though, now is a great time to read the Chronicles if you haven't, and reread them if you did as a child. We're shaped by the stories that touch our hearts and fire our imaginations. And Lewis, like Tolkien, wrote to shape us with the story of God's love.

Can't Get Enough Sowell

Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite authors and columnists; he is a natural resource and treasure. One of the best things that could happen to this country would be for each high school student in America to be required to read him, particularly 'Basic Economics'. Not only would they learn more about economics than most college Economics majors; more importantly, they would learn common sense and clear thinking.

Here is a great recent Sowell column:

'Us' or 'Them'?
By Thomas Sowell

Oct 25, 2005

A reader recently sent me an e-mail about a woman he had met and fallen for. Apparently the attraction was mutual -- until one fateful day the subject of the environment came up.

She was absolutely opposed to any drilling for oil in Alaska, on grounds of what harm she said it would do to the environment.

He argued that, since oil was going to be drilled for somewhere in the world anyway, was it not better to drill where there were environmental laws to provide at least some kinds of safeguards, rather than in countries where there were none?

That was the end of a beautiful relationship.

Environmentalist true believers don’t think in terms of trade-offs and cost-benefit analysis. There are things that are sacred to them. Trying to get them to compromise on those things would be like trying to convince a Moslem to eat pork, if it was only twice a week.

Compromise and tolerance are not the hallmarks of true believers. What they believe in goes to the heart of what they are. As far as true believers are concerned, you are either one of Us or one of Them.

The man apparently thought that it was just a question of which policy would produce which results. But many issues that look on the surface like they are just about which alternative would best serve the general public are really about being one of Us or one of Them -- and this woman was not about to become one of Them.

Many crusades of the political left have been misunderstood by people who do not understand that these crusades are about establishing the identity and the superiority of the crusaders.

T.S. Eliot understood this more than half a century ago when he wrote: “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm -- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

In this case, the man thought he was asking the woman to accept a certain policy as the lesser of two evils, when in fact he was asking her to give up her sense of being one of the morally anointed.

This is not unique to our times or to environmentalists. Back during the 1930s, in the years leading up to World War II, one of the fashionable self-indulgences of the left in Britain was to argue that the British should disarm “as an example to others” in order to serve the interests of peace.

When economist Roy Harrod asked one of his friends whether she thought that disarming Britain would cause Hitler to disarm, her reply was: “Oh, Roy, have you lost all your idealism?”

In other words, it was not really about which policy would produce what results. It was about personal identification with lofty goals and kindred souls.

The ostensible goal of peace was window-dressing. Ultimately it was not a question whether arming or disarming Britain was more likely to deter Hitler. It was a question of which policy would best establish the moral superiority of the anointed and solidify their identification with one another.

”Peace” movements are not judged by the empirical test of how often they actually produce peace or how often their disarmament tempts an aggressor into war. It is not an empirical question. It is an article of faith and a badge of identity.

Yasser Arafat was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace -- not for actually producing peace but for being part of what was called “the peace process,” based on fashionable notions that were common bonds among members of what are called “peace movements.”

Meanwhile, nobody suggested awarding a Nobel Prize for peace to Ronald Reagan, just because he brought the nuclear dangers of a decades-long cold war to an end. He did it the opposite way from how members of “peace movements” thought it should be done.

Reagan beefed up the military and entered into an “arms race” that he knew would bankrupt the Soviet Union if they didn’t back off, even though arms races are anathema to members of “peace movements.” The fact that events proved him right was no excuse as far as members of “peace movements” were concerned. As far as they were concerned, he was not one of Us. He was one of Them.

More From Claremont

As I mentioned below, I'm just sitting down with my first issue of the Claremont Review of Books. I had to jump up and post the quotes from Ronald Reagan's Fist Inaugural because they were so timely to what I've been fuming about all day.

This whole editorial, entitled Bush's Philosophy, is excellent (see quote below). The guys at Power Line laud this periodical with every (quarterly) issue. So far, so good.

You can check out the periodical online here, and subscribe here (it's only $15).

Compassionate conservatism is the President's self-proclaimed philosophy. ... But a compassionate government cannot be a limited one. Its swelling sympathy will overwhelm the levees of individualism and consent ("I feel your pain," whether you want me to or not); and its pity implies that for some unfortunate people, justice is not enough. This inherent indiscipline is why compassion used to be regarded as needing reason's regulation, and why in any event it was thought better suited to private, not public, life. Compassionate conservatism, therefore, means big government conservatism. And big government conservatism is no conservatism at all.

Remembering the Gipper

I got my first issue of the Claremont Review of Books this week and noted this very timely quote from Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address in the editorial:

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

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We are a nation that has a government--not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

More RINO News

House GOP Leaders Scuttle Budget-Cut Vote
Nov. 10, 7:07PM (ET)
By ANDREW TAYLOR

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republican leaders scuttled a vote Thursday on a $51 billion budget-cut package in the face of a revolt by moderate lawmakers over cuts to Medicaid, food stamp and student loan programs.

**********

The decision by GOP leaders came despite a big concession to moderates Wednesday, when the leaders dropped provisions to open the Arctic National Refuge to oil and gas exploration, as well as a plan letting states lift a moratorium on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

The entire piece is here.

Constitution Party National Platform

Here is the preamble to the platform of the Constitution Party. Check this out, it sounds like, well, it sounds a lot like our Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
(what a concept!)

Preamble

The Constitution Party gratefully acknowledges the blessing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe and of these United States. We hereby appeal to Him for mercy, aid, comfort, guidance and the protection of His Providence as we work to restore and preserve these United States.

This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been and are afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.

The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries.

The Constitution of the United States provides that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." The Constitution Party supports the original intent of this language. Therefore, the Constitution Party calls on all those who love liberty and value their inherent rights to join with us in the pursuit of these goals and in the restoration of these founding principles.

The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law, administered by representatives who are constitutionally elected by the citizens. In such a Republic all Life, Liberty and Property are protected because law rules.

We affirm the principles of inherent individual rights upon which these United States of America were founded:

• That each individual is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are the rights to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness;
• That the freedom to own, use, exchange, control, protect, and freely dispose of property is a natural, necessary and inseparable extension of the individual's unalienable rights;
• That the legitimate function of government is to secure these rights through the preservation of domestic tranquility, the maintenance of a strong national defense, and the promotion of equal justice for all;
• That history makes clear that left unchecked, it is the nature of government to usurp the liberty of its citizens and eventually become a major violator of the people's rights; and
• That, therefore, it is essential to bind government with the chains of the Constitution and carefully divide and jealously limit government powers to those assigned by the consent of the governed.

A Real Conservative Party

I am sick and tired of supporting a party that talks conservative but acts liberal. I got a note from my son Matt and he told me about the Constitution Party. From what I've read so far, they sound terrific (more to come on this).

Some of you will say, as I used to say myself, that it's better to (hold your nose) and vote Republican, because not to do so is to effectively throw away your vote. I no longer buy that theory. For way, way too long, the Republicans have relied on this thinking. That's why they tack conservative during the campaign, and shift back to their "moderate" (i.e., liberal) ways two weeks after the election.

I'm tired of being a sucker; tired of being taken for granted; tired of voting for candidates who talk the talk but don't walk the walk. From now on, I'm voting for candidates who will actually stand up for conservative principles.

I realize that these candidates have virtually no chance of being elected (at least not yet). But, that's ok. At least I'll be supporting true conservatives and I'll feel better for that if nothing else. And if Republicans lose support -- and elections -- because people like me refuse to support them anymore, that's just too bad because I am NOT going support these frauds anymore.

Check out the Constitution Party here.