It didn't take very long, did it? Already, the Democrats have chosen to raise up a little stir about a Bush Cabinet nominee--John Ashcroft, a man of honor, which he clearly proved by not whining and protesting an election that saw selective Democratic areas of the state of Missouri given extended hours on election night and saw a dead man's wife claim a Senate seat that, in my opinion, is less than 100% legally hers. Senator John Ashcroft accepted the decision on election night and walked away with all of his integrity in hand (unlike a certain Democratic candidate I could name). Now the very men and women John Ashcroft served with in the Senate are making less than favorable comments about him and his nomination as Attorney General. Personally, I was thrilled to hear Ashcroft's nomination for Attorney General, especially in light of the pro-abortion Governor Whitman's nomination to head the EPA. Senator Ashcroft is the first true conservative named to Bush's Cabinet, and I urge all of my fellow conservatives to support him vigorously. Some of you out there may not care as much as I do about this issue; after all, as I well understand, the vast majority of us will be thrilled to have anyone in that position who is not Janet Reno. However, it is very important that Bush be kept from straying too far from the right in the pursuit of balance in his Cabinet and harmony between the Washingtonians. I am all for working together to try and get things done--but not when such activity undermines our true values. There is absolutely nothing wrong with standing firm on your ideas and fighting for what you believe in. Policy-making that involves wetting your finger, sticking it in the air, and seeing which way the winds of "the people" are blowing does no good for this country, which is something proven time and again by Bill Clinton. That sort of politics polarizes people on both sides of any issue--as a result, although a bunch of moderates may feel okay about things going one way or another, each decision made on this basis in fact pushes the two political parties farther apart. To prove my point, just look at some of the recent articles in leading newspapers describing Bill Clinton as having polarized this nation to a degree we have not seen in decades.
What is Senator Ashcroft accused of doing, I ask you? Do you actually mean to say that Ashcroft had the audacity to say something good about George Washington? In this day and age? And what else, you say? He actually had respectful words for Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis? Good heavens! Why isn't this guy locked up somewhere? These last few lines, though obviously blatantly ridiculous (and written sarcastically), are actually indicative of American political thought these days--another wonderful gift from Comrade Clinton. I remember when Northerners as well as Southerners recognized Robert E. Lee as well as Abraham Lincoln as true gentlemen, worthy of respect even by their enemies. Lee didn't want this nation to fracture, but when the War Between the States did break out, he reluctantly and solemnly chose to fight for Virginia's cause. No man has ever conducted a more honourable war than Robert E. Lee. I can see how Northerners would refrain from throwing huge parties to celebrate the words and deeds of General Lee (admittedly, I as a true Southerner--which is a dying breed in and of itself these days--can't really get myself revved up over U.S. Grant or General Sherman), but to denigrate Senator Ashcroft for his respect for Robert E. Lee and the kind of man he was is ridiculous.
What really burns me up, though, is this epidemic we now have in this country of condemning our Founding Fathers. Suddenly, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the rest of our Founding Fathers are racists and thus purely evil. Certainly, these men owned slaves, but we cannot judge them solely by the values and culture of today's world. No one is going to defend slaveholding, but clearly the world was a different place back then. Southerners weren't the only slaveholders in history, of course (I won't even mention the fact that many a Northerner once benefited monetarily from the slave trade). Many of the ancient Greeks owned white slaves, but I've never heard anyone going around condemning modern Greeks for the slaveholding practices of their ancestors or tried to keep the likes of Plato and his crowd out of our classrooms (although, on second thought, I can almost believe some liberals out there may have started Anti-Plato campaigns).
I fear that most people do not realize the level of the attack against the Founding Fathers that has taken place over the last eight years--the news media doesn't mention a lot of this kind of news. I can tell you, though, as one example, that we are seeing schools named after George Washington being forced to change their names because, all of a sudden, George Washington was a racist. This really saddens me. It is one thing to attack the Old South, an era which I love and respect (despite its negative aspects) for supporting individualism, state's rights, Victorian ideals, the virtue of Womanhood, and (dare I say) freedom--not freedom for the slaves, unfortunately, but the freedom of American citizens from the intrusion of the federal government; it is quite another thing to begin denigrating our Founding Fathers. This whole political correctness campaign is first and foremost an attack on our federal Constitution. Liberals want to weaken our Constitution in hopes of increasing the federal government's influence in our individual lives and taking away the freedoms that they don't believe we American citizens are responsible enough to deserve. The right to bear arms is the primary target on this liberal agenda, but it will be but the first of a number of crippling restrictions on our freedom. The Founding Fathers would roundly condemn the activities of today's liberals, I assure you; in fact, they wrote the Constitution in order to keep these kind of people from ever threatening our basic rights. As a result, today's liberals have decided that the only way to overcome the Constitutional obstacles to their plans is to destroy the respectability and merit of the men who wrote that document and who built the kind of nation that has prospered and excelled over all other countries for over two centuries now. We cannot let this happen.
In the end, the liberals can belittle and attack James Madison, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many other true patriots, but they can never change the words these men uttered or the principles of government they built this great nation on. The Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal--those words ring true today even more strongly than they did when they were written. Frankly, it doesn't matter who said those words, or whether that man owned slaves or not; the words are paramount and, to some of us, sacred. When we go to another country, one in which human rights are violated egregiously every day, we point to our own Constitution and Declaration of Independence, and we use those great documents to work for freedom for all people all over the globe. I for one will not just sit by and watch our Constitution soiled by today's liberals, and I will never compromise my principles--they are simply too important to me and to mankind as a whole. We need more individuals like John Ashcroft--patriots who love this country and the ideals upon which it was founded, who honour and truthfully commit themselves to the defense of our Constitution, and who recognize the good as well as the bad in all people (even my Confederate ancestors).
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