-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! * Veritas Vos Liberabit * THE FEDERALIST(r) BRIEF The Conservative e-Journal of Record Date: 06 January 2001 Federalist #01-06.brf To retrieve today's Brief as HTML printer-friendly text, link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/current2001.asp To support or sponsor The Federalist, link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/support.asp ______--------********O********--------______ THIS WEEK'S FEATURED SITE Ronald Reagan celebrates his 90th birthday today. In his honor, The Federalist launched Reagan2000, the Internet's most comprehensive resource on President Reagan's life and achievements, and a touchstone for all conservatives going forward. We encourage all patriots of freedom and liberty to visit Reagan2000.com and read his selected speeches and tributes from others. God bless you President Reagan! Visit -- http://www.Reagan2000.com CONTENTS: The Founders Insight Good News ICTUS Imprimis Faith & Family Culture Liberty Opinion in Brief Editorial Exegesis The Gipper Government Political Futures For the Record Policy Pages Reader Comments The Last Word ______--------********O********--------______ THE FOUNDERS "The eternal difference between right and wrong does not fluctuate. It is immutable. And if the moral order does not change, then it imposes on us obligations toward God and man. Duty, then, requires the willingness to accept responsibility and to sacrifice one's desires to a higher law." --Patrick Henry ______--------********O********--------______ INSIGHT "Today we are particularly conscious of the Courage of Ronald Reagan. .. Right from the beginning, Ronald Reagan set out to challenge everything that the liberal political elite of America accepted and sought to propagate. They believed that America was doomed to decline: He believed it was destined for further greatness. They imagined that sooner or later there would be convergence between the free Western system and the socialist Eastern system, and that some kind of social democratic outcome was inevitable. He, by contrast, considered that socialism was a patent failure, which should be cast onto the trash heap of history. They thought that the problem with America was the American people, though they didn't quite put it like that. He thought that the problem with America was the American government, and he did put it just like that. ... Ronald Reagan has changed America and the world, but the changes he made were to restore historic conservative values, not to impose artificially constructed ones." -- The Right Honorable Baroness Margaret Thatcher ______--------********O********--------______ GOOD NEWS "A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps." (Proverbs 14:15) ++ "Let your eyes look straight ahead, fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet and take only ways that are firm." (Proverbs 4:25-26) ++ "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose that prevails." (Proverbs 19:21) ++ "Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers." (Psalm 1:1) ______--------********O********--------______ ICTUS IMPRIMIS "Theirs is an endless road, a hopeless maze, who seek for goods before they seek for God." --St. Bernard of Clairvaux ______--------********O********--------______ FAITH & FAMILY "There is a fundamental difference between separation of church and state and denying the spiritual heritage of this country. Inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. are Jefferson's words, 'The God Who gave us life gave us liberty -- can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?' " --Ronald Reagan "Russell Kirk with sufficient documentation reveals the dream N.E.A. has...to imitate the collectivist schools of Eastern Europe; to take over functions now traditionally believed to belong to the family...The schools 'will become part of a comprehensive human services system which fulfills many of the functions traditionally assumed by the family.'" --Ronald Reagan ______--------********O********--------______ CULTURE "Our society does not teach patriotism to the young. The media do not teach it or suggest it or encourage it. When they refer to it at all, it's to show patriotism as vulgar or naïve or aggressive." --Peggy Noonan ______--------********O********--------______ LIBERTY "Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment." --Ronald Reagan ______--------********O********--------______ WORTH REPEATING RONALD REAGAN He will turn 90 on Tuesday, but in all likelihood he will barely be aware of it. The cruelty of Alzheimer's has robbed Ronald Reagan of the capacity for clear memory. But that doesn't apply to the rest of us. He seems, in some respects, a historical oddity now, his political and cultural presence obscured by the Clinton psychodrama and the Bush dynasty. But his successors do not begin to compare - either in achievement or legacy. Reagan is still, in my view, the architect of our modern world. Reagan stood for two simple but indisputably big things: the expansion of freedom at home and the extinction of tyranny abroad. He achieved both. When he came to office, top tax rates in the United States were 70%. Against the odds, Reagan slashed the top rate to 28% and ignited the economic boom that is still with us. But unlike George W. Bush, and certainly unlike the hopelessly confused Michael Portillo, Reagan understood what tax cuts were about. Back in 1976, he made the case in one of his innumerable radio addresses: "Our system freed the individual genius of man. We allocate resources not by government decision but by the millions of decisions customers make when they go into the market place. If something seems too high-priced, we buy something else. So resources are steered toward those things people want most at the price they are willing to pay." Classic Reagan. Simple. Intelligible. True. Some people believe he was a moron, incapable of intellectual engagement. A brief perusal through his dozens of addresses will put the lie to that. He grappled directly and bravely with the main issues of his day. He was a believer in the media as a way to communicate ideas that could change lives. In this sense, he was one of the most intellectual presidents in history. If he was right about taxation and the role of government, he was also right about the other great question of his day: the Soviet Union. I will never forget the moment I heard his "evil empire" speech. It was broadcast on Radio 4, with skeptical British commentary about this inflammatory new president who knew nothing about the complexities of late communism. But for all the criticism, what came through to my teenage brain was an actual truth. Yes, the Soviet Union was evil. Who now doubts that? He alone saw that communism was destined to be put on the "ash-heap of history", as he told the House of Commons. And he helped put it there. Think of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. In the 1980s, they were nuclear freeze supporters. And yet both now thoughtlessly enjoy the soft and easy fruits of a greater man's courage. The critics harp on the enormous deficits of the Reagan era, but the truth is that federal revenues boomed on Reagan's watch. What created the deficits was an unprecedented increase in defense spending - the bargaining chip that eventually forced the Soviets to surrender. You could easily argue that this was a price worth paying for an early end to an expensive conflict. Even the straggling defenders of perestroika now concede that Reagan's intransigence speeded the collapse of the Soviet empire. The deficits were therefore a fiscal bargain. And on most of the current pressing issues, Reaganism still has plenty of credibility. The main cloud on the fiscal horizon - the long-term insolvency of the government-run pension system - stems from a program Reagan opposed. The end of the federal welfare entitlement was also presaged by Reagan. In the early 1970s, when he was governor of California, he alone opposed the question of whether to federalize that entitlement. It took 30 years and Bill Clinton to recognize finally the validity of Reagan's point. Reagan's unlikeliest dream - nuclear missile defense - is also still with us. Lampooned as "star wars", it will soon regain the pre-eminence it deserves in America's military defense, as Donald Rumsfeld aggressively moves it forward. The contrast with Clinton couldn't be clearer. Clinton was a group-hugger, obsessed with the press, fixated on spin, devoted to polls. Reagan was aloof, distant even from his own family, focused on a few important themes and delegating everything else. He was devoted to his second wife with a romantic zeal, wore a coat and tie at all times in the Oval Office, a room he considered sacred; he was also pricelessly funny. As he was wheeled into the operating room after a bullet almost took his life, he looked at the solemn, green-suited doctors and said: "Please tell me you're Republicans." A natural populist, Reagan spent hours handwriting letters to obscure pen pals he had befriended in the past, never dreaming he was too important to ignore such tasks of courtesy. He was a democrat to his fingertips who didn't need a "common touch" because he was so effortlessly a common man himself. It takes time to recognize greatness and it sometimes appears in the oddest of forms. When he dies, this country will go into shock. For Americans know in their hearts that this unlikely man understood the deepest meaning of their country in a way nobody else has done for a generation. (Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times) ______--------********O********--------______ EDITORIAL EXEGESIS "To put the matter concisely, 'a Clinton Presidency' turned out to be an oxymoron, a notion inherently at odds with itself. Instead of a Presidency, we've had two terms of Clinton agonistes. All the retrospectives out now on the Clinton Presidency feel obliged to regret that his innate political skills never produced an expected level of political accomplishment. This is seen as some tragic flaw. We have come to the view by now that Mr. Clinton's failures didn't have much of anything to do with politics. Bill Clinton's flaw is that he sees everything in the whole wide world as his personal property. Mr. Clinton seems to have believed that he could use everything as he wished, not because he is an officer of the state of Arkansas or of the United States, but because he is Bill Clinton. ... What even Democrats and liberals regard as the mysterious 'failure' or unfilled promise of his Presidency is in fact a function of his inability to put public purpose firmly ahead of personal need. Ultimately this impossible tangle, requiring endless lies and stratagems to keep from undermining his public office, led to the second term's impeachment proceedings. Any other serious President one can think of had some obvious sense of public purpose beyond himself. With Bill Clinton, all was reversed: For eight years he was larger than life, and kept the American Presidency smaller. ... It has been great theater, but ruinous to the nation's political civility. A man who in return for all this forbearance learns nothing may remain a charming rogue to his friends. But it is another thing for an American President to assume with bottomless insouciance that a whole nation must condone his profligacy, both personal and political. The Clinton 'legacy' is a cheapening of our national life, and the question is how long it will take to repair the damage." --Wall Street Journal ______--------********O********--------______ THE GIPPER "To those who cite the First Amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions everyday; I say: The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny." --Ronald Reagan ______--------********O********--------______ GOVERNMENT "Government can't solve the problem. Government is the problem." --Ronald Reagan "Our nation is blessed with a pluralistic school system reflecting the great diversity of our people. We developed at the local school district level probably the best public school system in the world. Or it was until the Federal government added Federal interference to Federal financial aid and eroded educational quality in the process." --Ronald Reagan ______--------********O********--------______ POLITICAL FUTURES "...Back in the 1960's...it seemed to me we'd begun reversing the order of things -- that through more and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes, the government was taking more of our money, more or our options, and more of our freedom. I went into politics in part to put up my hand and say, 'Stop.' I was a citizen politician, and it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do." --Ronald Reagan ______--------********O********--------______ FOR THE RECORD The Senate voted, 58 to 42, to confirm John Ashcroft as U.S. Attorney General. Please thank those Senators who supported Mr. Ashcroft -- and remember those who didn't. Republicans Yes (All 50) Democrats Yes (8) Breaux (La.) Byrd (W.Va.) Conrad (N.D.) Dodd (Conn.) Dorgan (N.D.) Feingold (Wis.) Miller (Ga.) Nelson (Neb.) Democrats No (42) Akaka (Hawaii) Baucus (Mont.) Bayh (Ind.) Biden (Del.) Bingaman (N.M.) Boxer (Calif.) Cantwell (Wash.) Carnahan (Mo.) Carper (Del.) Cleland (Ga.) Clinton (N.Y.) Corzine (N.J.) Daschle (S.D.) Dayton (Minn.) Durbin (Ill.) Edwards (N.C.) Feinstein (Calif.) Graham (Fla.) Harkin (Iowa) Hollings (S.C.) Inouye (Hawaii) Johnson (S.D.) Kennedy (Mass.) Kerry (Mass.) Kohl (Wis.) Landrieu (La.) Leahy (Vt.) Levin (Mich.) Lieberman (Conn.) Lincoln (Ark.) Mikulski (Md.) Murray (Wash.) Nelson (Fla.) Reed (R.I.) Reid (Nev.) Rockefeller (W.Va.) Sarbanes (Md.) Schumer (N.Y.) Stabenow (Mich.) Torricelli (N.J.) Wellstone (Minn.) Wyden (Ore.) ______--------********O********--------______ POLICY PAGES & POINTS OF INTEREST (NOTE: For our subscribers with WWW access, if the URL line breaks, please select, copy and paste the entire link address into your browser's target address field.) 2001 Interactive Index of Economic Freedom HERITAGE http://www.heritage.org/index/ Homosexuality Is Not A Civil Right FRC http://www.frc.org/papers/insight/index.cfm?get=IS00L2&arc=yes ______--------********O********--------______ THE LAST WORD This Week's "Top Ten" Question: Tell us your choice of a theme song for the Clinton-Gore era. For example: "When Fools Collide" Add your "Two Cents" response to this issue at --http://www.federalist.com/twocents.asp Suggest a future "Two Cents" topic or question at -- http://www.federalist.com/suggesttopic.asp This Week's Leftoons: http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/garner.htm http://www.cnsnews.com/cartoon/welcome.asp -- PUBLIUS -- *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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