Coming this Summer!

Michael Medved today plugged Ann Coulter to replace Justice O'Connor, suggesting it would make her confirmation hearings much more entertaining.

Yep, I'd watch that.

Bush' big chance

Justice O'Connor has tendered her resignation from the Supreme Court. Let the fight begin. George W. Bush has already earned his place in history, but the appointment of Supreme Court justices may be the defining success or failure of his life. I trust his faith and instincts, but much will depend on his ability at this point to hold Republicans together to defeat those who will not acknowledge democracy.
The reason this is a critical point is that the Democrats are determined not to honor the will of the people, but to cling to power despite losing elections.

The creed of the United States.

Darrin M. McMahon explains what "the pursuit of happiness" meant to the founding generation of this country: , and it had nothing to do with

[That] happiness was the final end of human existence, the great goal of a life well lived.. . .

[Jefferson] knew, with the philosophers Aristotle and Cicero, that happiness was the final end of human existence, the great goal of a life well lived. To pursue happiness was not only a law of human nature but the highest human calling, attained through discipline, self-sacrifice and reasoned moderation.

In other words, the pursuit of happiness is not some sort of Bacchanalia or debauchery. It is a struggle to make ourselves better and achieve the lasting joy of self-discipline and achievement, the happiness that has no hangover.

Will we take the fight forward?

Daniel Henninger got me thinking today about the meaning on the war on terrorism.

Peace doesn't seem to be the normal state of affairs for human beings. Tyranny is always there, like the sea outside the dikes of the Netherlands, ready to exploit every weakness to take power. President Bush was right that the best way to preserve our own liberty is to fight to extend liberal democracy, private property and economic freedom throughout the world. America has been fortunate in that it has not had to fight a war on its homeland since the Civil War. 9/11 was the result of years of failing to rise to challenges like the first attack on our Marines in Lebanon, and subsequent acts of war that were treated as criminal offenses. It made many of us realize the horror of allowing this war to be fought here instead of where the terrorists nest.

President Bush sees this for what it is, another fight in the ongoing struggle to protect freedom and human rights. Opponents of this war don't see the big picture. They continually harp about not finding Saddam's WMD or that there was no link between Saddam to the 9/11 attacks. They dwell on technicalities and legalistic points to avoid the truth that everybody knows: Saddam is an evil man who created an evil regime. He was a threat to world peace as long as he was free. We did the world, the Arab world in particular, a huge favor by dethroning him.

We are in the process of innoculating Iraq against future tyranny by establishing in the minds of its people the understanding that they have individual rights, and that government is to be their servant, not their master. Those who focus only on the casualties and the resistance show their own selfishness and shallowness, largely because they crave a return to the power they once had in this country. Their resentment of democracy and the voters who supported President Bush is palpable.

The question before us all today is whether we are willing to fight for the rights of man and democracy. Will we take the fight forward which our ancestors began in 1776 or let it lapse? This is the test history imposes on our generation. I hope we don't fail it.

Bringing Kelo home

Hugh Hewitt is plugging this form of grassroots opposition to stupid SCOTUS decisions.

You have to be taught

This study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, shows that a substantial minority of people around the world admire America and that that attitude seems to be strongest among the poorest and least educated. I guess that proves how exceptional our founding fathers were. They were all well-educated and comparatively wealthy, yet they created a system that gives the lowliest citizen hope to rise through hard work and initiative.

The effect of negativity.

The media mill grinds slowly and leaves a lot of grit in the meal. It seems to work like water in caves. A single drop from the ceiling doesn't leave much of an impression, but repeated over time, a trickle can carve out a cavern.

That's the way negativity erodes all virtues: faith, hope, resolve and commitment.

The dark vision of the left is unamerican. And yes, I do impugn their patriotism. The enemies of this country have always used the very freedoms it grants them to attack it. As far as I'm concerned, they are quislings.

Why do we need this speech?

I guess Bush's speech was needed, given the polls and the fears among our troops that their heroism might go for naught. But I keep asking myself why people don't get it. I'd bet a large percentage of Americans still believe that we went to war in Iraq for its oil. (If that were the reason, why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia?) There are and were real strategic advantages in choosing Iraq as the target, but all the Dems want to talk about is the missing WMD, and the false assertion that we're losing the war.

Read my lips. The war was won within a month. What we're seeing now is the occupation. Just as in Germany after VE day, there are dead-enders and fanatics on the other side who think they can still salvage a win by use of sabotage, bombs and ambushes. But they didn't prevail. There are still Nazis in Germany, but that doesn't suggest that we lost the war, any more than the fact that there are still liberal Senators in Washington means that they won the last elections.

Why should we have to keep explaining all this? People either don't pay attention or they've made up their minds based on liberal propaganda that makes as little sense as it conveys truth. Maybe the speech will wake up a few people, but if he really wanted to get attention he should have done more than just repeat what we all should understand by now. He should have said something shockingly frank, like "Too many Americans are fat and happy slobs who don't appreciate what they have and aren't willing to defend it." Bush has had a epiphany, like Lincoln did, that freedom must grow and spread around the world in order to defeat slavery. You don't win over evil by giving it safe haven inside its own borders. That means that we have to expand the realm of liberty and democracy, not just fight to the existing borders. That's what LBJ and the current crop of quagmire liberals don't get. They would dither and allow the terrorists respite to recover their strength and devise new attacks on us, just as LBJ's refusal to attack North Vietnam kept its war materiel pouring in from the Russians and Chinese. I wish that Bush had made clear that the Syrian, Saudi and Iranian borders of Iraq will not be safe haven for terrorists either. Maybe we already have special ops forces in those countries developing information about targets. I certainly hope so. But the real solution is going to be confronting these people where they're hiding, not by trying to kill them after they get to Iraq.

Get off the stage!

Peggy Noonan's column on Opinion Journal today about the arrogance of politicians is well worth reading and it's particularly timely, given the number of displays recently: Voinivich choking on the floor of the Senate because he worries that John Bolton would destroy the world the senator envisions for his grandchildren; Durbin comparing the excesses at Gitmo to the Holocaust or Pol Pot's killing fields; the left wing of the Supremes' decision the local governments are free to condemn private property for the benefit of businesses; or the orchestrated hair-on-fire reaction to Karl Rove's perfectly ordinary political criticism of liberals.

You'd hope that these cockalorums would be thrown out of office by the people who are the true sovereigns of this country, but the people seem to have an attention deficit disorder and are gullible to boot. Unless we wake up and quit taking the word of the MSM for what's happening, we'll deserve what we get.

Rove's Rave

Michael Barone on Rove's little dig at liberals and 9/11:

This is a fundamental split. University and media elites, as Thomas Sowell writes in his forthcoming "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," promote a version of history in which all evils are perpetrated by the United States and the West and in which Third World tyrants are assumed to be the voice of virtuous victims.

SCOTUS -- our true rulers

I wonder how many people have been converted to a religion or church by reading the ten commandments on a granite monument in a city park or in public building. There's an old legal maxim that should apply here, "De minimus non curat Lex." (The law does not concern itself with trifles.) What do I care whether the city fathers want to honor or even recommend Judaism, Christianity, Islam or any other religion, except Scientography(copyright).

They don't have the power to make me join any of them,so what's the big fuss? The Supreme Court should have given the people demanding the removal the Commandments a stiff dope-slap and isssued an opinion consisting of the phrase above. Don't they have anything better to do that waste time quibbling over the idea that a Christmas tree or the Ten Commandments bothers some thin-skinned or irrational twits? Don't tell me it's the principle of the thing. It's silly.