The reason for the season

You thought I was referring to Christmas? No. I'm referring to New Years Day. The day when Lincoln freed the slaves. You didn't know that? Steven Vincent did, and he sees many parallels between that war, that so shaped the heart of America, and the war in Iraq.

As Martin Luther King declared a century later, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

A month from now, we will witness that arc and see where it will bend.  We can only pray the the Iraqi people rise to the occasion, and meet its call.  It is not a sure thing.  Although the freedom train eventually reaches the station, the passage is difficult and the schedule unclear--and many wait their lives in vain.  Federal troops may not have given a hardtack biscuit for Confederate slaves, but their sacrifices led to the freedom of those African men and women.  From the ashes of the World Trade Center to dusty palm groves of the Sunni Triangle to places yet to come, Americans--soldiers and civilians alike--are making the same sacrifice for the same cause of freedom.  And, God willing, we shall prevail.

May we never forget the sacrifices made by our brave men and women, and may we as Americans rededicate ourselves to the cause of freedom and human rights.

Not the bogus cause championed by liberals and socialists, but the true cause led by our founders. The cause that does not ask a man to trade dictatorship of the tyrant for dependence upon an evermore-demanding government, but instead asks him to raise his eyes toward the light and stand on his own two feet, making his way as he sees fit, without interference from a state that attempts to regulate his every move. The cause that beckons, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country."