-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: 19 December 2000 Federalist #00-51/52.brf To retrieve today's Brief as HTML printer-friendly text, link to -- http://www.Federalist.com/current00-10.asp ______--------********O********--------______ PUBLISHER'S NOTE "...[E]ditors exist [because] most people don't have time to rummage through vast piles of hay for the specific needles they're looking for; we want professional needle-finders." --Jonah Goldberg The time is now.... After years of constitutional neglect, only the fittest defenders of liberty have survived. It is fair to say that if you are among our readers, you are a survivor! Now we need you to throw us a lifeline! The Federalist is distributed without a subscription fee; however, our publishing expenses are substantial. Our mission and operations are funded by -- and depend entirely upon the voluntary financial support of -- you, our readers, at the end of each year. We can only advance the timeless message of our Founders as far as your support allows. Help us reach a wide forum of readers in all levels of government, the print and TV media, college and university audiences, etc. If you have not already registered your support this year by making a contribution, please do so today. SUPPORT BY CREDIT CARD: Link to our Secure Commerce Page at http://www.federalist.com/supportfed.asp SUPPORT BY CHECK: If you prefer to support us by check, please make your contribution payable to: "The Federalist." Suggested support levels: Individual -- $20, Family -- $35, Corporate and Professional -- $50, Advocate -- $100 and Founder -- $250. Larger contributions are, of course, welcome. (To prevent the IRS from dictating our editorial content, we have not elected "charitable" corporate tax status.) Please note your e-mail address on your check for proper credit. Mail your contribution to our subscription fulfillment center at: Federalist Fulfillment Services, P. O. Box 507, Chattanooga, TN 37402-0507 CONTENTS: The Founders Insight Good News ICTUS Imprimis Faith & Family Culture Liberty Editorial Exegesis The Gipper Government Political Futures For the Record Policy Pages Reader Comments The Last Word ______--------********O********--------______ THE FOUNDERS "The eyes of mankind will be upon you to see whether the Government, which is now more popular than it has been for many years past, will be productive of more virtue moral and political. We may look up to Armies for our Defense, but Virtue is our best Security. It is not possible that any State should long remain free, where Virtue is not supremely honored." --Samuel Adams ______--------********O********--------______ INSIGHT "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke ______--------********O********--------______ GOOD NEWS "No one from the east or the west or from the desert can exalt a man. But it is God who judges: He brings one down, he exalts another." (Psalm 75:6,7) "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord." (Proverbs 16:33) "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves." (Philippians 2:3) "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it." (Matthew 7:13-14) "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." (Galatians 6:9) ______--------********O********--------______ ICTUS IMPRIMIS "In the twentieth century, the secularists, still living off the spiritual capital of Christianity, often pretended to chide Christians for having invented the term 'secularist,' a term which, they said, was devoid of meaning. Their leaders knew very well, however, that secularism, like any other parasite, derives its sustenance from the object on which it feeds, and so they were rather pleased when milquetoast Christians timidly offered, as a definition of secularism, 'living as though God did not exist.' What Christians should have called it was, rather, 'a contemptibly fraudulent way of living on the cheap, by reaping the maximum fruits of Christian effort, while contributing the minimum effort of your own.' When secularists accused Christians of 'living in the past,' the Christians ought to have retaliated by pointing out that secularists were 'living off the past.' By the time they got around to doing so, however, the majority of secularists had become morally incapable of seeing the point." --Geddes MacGregor, "From a Christian Ghetto" ______--------********O********--------______ FAITH & FAMILY "Christmas is being rapidly replaced with a generic holiday that, by coincidence, comes around Dec. 25. 'Merry Christmas' has been generally discarded in favor of 'happy holiday.' Stores have holiday sales. Schools have a winter recess. There's a holiday party at the office. Can holiday trees be far behind? ... Nostalgia aside, I don't have a personal stake in this. I'm Jewish, so it ain't my holiday that's being stiffed. ... Christianity is the religion of 86 percent of the American people. In a demographic sense, America is more Christian than Israel is Jewish. Try to imagine no signs of Purim or Passover in Jerusalem, or a Saudi Arabia where Ramadan is barely mentioned. But I forget, America is to be the first totally secular nation on earth, contrary to the vision of our founders. The secularists' war on faith has spilled over to the culture. ... When I was a child, the Knights of Columbus put up billboards urging the public to 'Keep Christ in Christmas.' Today, the challenge is to keep Christmas in Christmas." --Don Feder "We're fast approaching a world where kids will be seen to exist merely to enhance their parents' sense of fulfillment. And even if they aren't conceived as merely a source of spare parts, they will still -- through genetic manipulation -- be made to embody their parents' ideas of an ideal child. Parents creating the personality of their kids fits our narcissistic culture, but it is dehumanizing in the extreme. Now, nobody should doubt that, as soon as technology permits, parents will be screening embryos for desirable and undesirable genetic traits. In this kind of world, as technology critic Jeremy Rifkin puts it, 'children are the ultimate shopping experience.' If our culture is to avoid sliding even further down the slippery slope of manipulating life, Christians will have to be knowledgeable and courageous. We need to be knowledgeable about where these technologies are leading and courageous enough to stand against the accusations that we're hopeless reactionaries. It's not easy to say 'Not so fast!' when the subject is a sick child. But if the 'cure' takes humanity to places like this, we've got to say 'Stop!' If Christians don't deliver this message, who will?" --Charles Colson ______--------********O********--------______ CULTURE "The Blame Game -- that bestseller from our youth -- is alive and well today in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Winning and losing is so important to us that we have even formed professional teams: attorneys, judges, congressmen, presidents, corporate executives and spin-doctors. Like our homework assignment that somehow never made it to class, the truth has a difficult task weaving its way through the maze of stories we tell around the evidence." --Craige McMillan ______--------********O********--------______ LIBERTY "Supreme Court justices -- and, increasingly, judges generally -- no longer accept that the right of Americans to govern themselves is protected by the Constitution. For many years, the court's rhetoric has made it clear that the supreme commissars associate self-rule with prejudice, irrationality and the animus of intolerant majorities. The commissars no longer pretend to interpret the Constitution. Instead, the supreme commissars legislate from the bench. This usurpation of the constitutional power and authority of Congress directly violates the separation of powers and is grounds for impeachment. But Congress has found that rule by judges is a convenient way to avoid responsibility for divisive issues and has acquiesced in the court's aggrandizement. Congress pats itself on the back each time it sidesteps a politically dangerous issue. In truth, however, Congress has permitted the rise of judicial coercion. Both the Republican and Democratic parties acknowledge the fact of judicial rule. ...For many years now, both political parties have tacitly accepted a new political system in which law no longer originates only in elected representatives who are accountable to the people." --Paul Craig Roberts ______--------********O********--------______ OPINION IN BRIEF "Democratic partisans are complaining that the presidential election has been settled not by the people but by judges. This is amusing. Who turned this into a lawyers' contest anyway? Within hours of Election Night, the Gore campaign parachuted dozens, ultimately hundreds of lawyers into Florida with one objective: to find judges to undo their loss." --Charles Krauthammer ______--------********O********--------______ EDITORIAL EXEGESIS "House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle joined Jesse Jackson yesterday in refusing to say that George W. Bush's election was legitimate. In what critics saw as an extraordinary display of partisan rancor beyond anything in recent memory, the Democrats also declined to say that that his presidency, when it commences on Jan. 20, will be legitimate. Republicans said the three leading Democrats thus appeared to put the lie to Democratic leaders' claims that they will strive for comity and bipartisan cooperation with Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress." --Washington Times ______--------********O********--------______ THE GIPPER "It's only in finding and living the eternal meaning of the Nativity that we can be truly happy, truly at peace, truly home." --Ronald Reagan ______--------********O********--------______ GOVERNMENT "Partisanship sharpens debate and opens the possibility of grand compromise. Bickering adds spice to life and pungent language to public discourse. And gridlock, much derided by goo-goos who foolishly put unity ahead of diversity, is the glory of tripartite government. Put that in your lockbox and smoke it." --William Safire ______--------********O********--------______ POLITICAL FUTURES A fitting end for this chapter of Al Gore's legacy of prevarication and usurpation... "As my father once said, 'No matter how hard the loss, defeat may serve as well as victory to shake the soul and let the glory out'." --Albert Gore in his concession speech, 13 December 2000 "Defeat may serve as well as victory, to shake the soul and let the glory out." --Poet Edwin Markham (c. 1898) *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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