Patriot Post Vol. 07 No. 03 | 17 January 2007
THE FOUNDATION
“Strive to be the greatest man in your country, and you may be disappointed. Strive to be the best and you may succeed: he may well win the race that runs by himself.” — Benjamin Franklin
INSIGHT
“I can only say that I am nothing but a poor sinner, trusting in Christ
alone for salvation.” —Robert E. Lee
“The shortest
and surest way to live with honor in the world is to be in reality what
we would appear to be.” —Socrates
“It is almost a
miracle that modern teaching methods have not yet entirely strangled
the holy curiosity of inquiry.” —Albert Einstein
“I
cannot think of a single example at any time or any place where there was
a large measure of political freedom without there also being something
comparable to a private enterprise market form of economic organization
for the bulk of economic activity.” —Milton Friedman
“Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that
was the closest our country has ever been to being even.” —Will Rogers
UPRIGHT
“Conservatives are often accused of being anti-government. It’s an
unfair rap—coming, ironically, from liberals whose blind faith in
government causes plenty of social ills—but the myth persists. In
fact, conservatives favor a limited government that carries out
its express duties (and no more) as efficiently and effectively as
possible.” —Rebecca Hagelin
“Our elites have become
so insulated from reality that they imagine America can suffer defeat
without inconvenience to themselves. Defeat would be an embarrassment to
President Bush, but nothing more.” —Jack Kelly
“One of
the scariest aspects of our times is how easy it is for glib loudmouths
to turn us against each other, weakening the whole framework of society,
on which we all depend.” —Thomas Sowell
“As a broad
rule, intentions are the currency of the left, while results matter most
to the right. That is why Bill Clinton made a point of feeling our pain,
while Ronald Reagan insisted that facts were stubborn things.” —Jeff
Jacoby
“In the wake of New York City’s ban on restaurant
use of trans fat, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the ban is ‘not going to
take away anybody’s ability to go out and have the kind of food they
want, in the quantities they want... We are just trying to make food
safer.’ That, my friends, is tyrannical double-talk.” —Walter Williams
EDITORIAL EXEGESIS
“Not only do American high schools fail to educate students about U.S. history and civics, but by the time many students finish college they know even less. That’s the conclusion of ‘the largest statistically valid survey ever conducted to determine what colleges and universities are teaching their students about America’s history and institutions.’ That study, conducted for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute by the University of Connecticut’s Department of Public Policy, surveyed 14,094 college freshmen and seniors at 50 U.S. colleges and universities from Massachusetts to California. It found a stunning ignorance. Seniors scored an average of 53.2 on the 60-question civics test. That’s a big, fat F. More than half of college seniors could not identify the correct century in which the Jamestown colony was founded or name the battle that ended the American Revolution. Truly frightening, more than half also did not know that the Bill of Rights forbids the federal government from establishing a national religion. These are college seniors. Among the institutions whose students were surveyed: Dartmouth, Yale, Harvard, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Michigan. It should go without saying that in a republic, civic education is a fundamental necessity. If even our elite college graduates have no idea what the First Amendment does, the country is in trouble.” —New Hampshire Union Leader