Conservative, now there is a word to reckon with if there ever was one. I respect real conservative thinkers who try to preserve much of what is good in the world for the next generation. Revolutionaries were in vogue when I was young. I always wondered how much they really accomplished with their revolutions except in the case of our own founders. There I found huge merit because their revolution was based on the hope that the dignity and greatness of the human spirit would triumph over oppression, and other common ills. They are so common because they also stem from human nature. The founders were uncommon men in their intelligence, clarity of vision and hope for a future that they could never know.

What would they have thought of this speech if they could have been there? If Washington and Jefferson and Adams and the other signers of our Constitution were there, would they have understood the President's promotion of the Patriot Act? Would any of those Men have believed that it was in our interests to occupy a nation half a world away? Or their contemporaries, the men and women of the revolution, if they could have been there on Tuesday last, would they have clapped and cheered? It is more than an idle question for me, because after sixty years of life I still revere those men and women of our revolutionary times.

Would Benjamin Franklin have seen Dick Cheney lurking behind the President and asked whether he was the real power in that room? Would Thomas Paine have stood and cheered the President's defense of marriage as an institution that needs protection? Or would all of those men have sat in silence and despair at seeing their dream come to this moment, when an Imperious President stands crowing about his power and displaying his arrogance for all to see.

We, of course, will never know what such a scene might have brought about; unfortunately those great people are gone. We are left with what is left of the institutions that they tried to establish as a means of preserving their great revolution. We are left with a Federal Government whose police powers extend into every home and across every State boundary with total impunity. We are left with a Military Industrial Complex that costs hundreds of billions of dollars every year to maintain. We are living with a standing army in our airports and other public places. We are living with a Federal Government that has overwhelming power and is only restrained by the inertia of the bureaucrats that run it most of the time. The Founders would almost certainly not be pleased. They would be appalled at our electoral politics and how candidates are funded.

We have declared war on Drugs and Terror and Cancer but not on ignorance. We are spending and consuming voraciously but our economy is growing weaker in the middle where the working people live and die. We have what would have been to those Men, unimaginable wealth, and yet we are dependent on oil producing nations and other country's workers for much of what we use. Those Men would not long marvel at our video games or our television coverage of world events. They would love our dentistry and be amazed at how our medical science has progressed. They would not accept that Insurance Companies were the best solution to our Medical coverage crisis. Nor would they accept that the Federal Government should take so much money from the States. Especially when the Government redistributes it to Industries and States based on a royal court of bribers and panderers called lobbyists.

I would have liked to hear from those Men what they thought of this strutting popinjay that we call President today. I think I know the answer but it would be nice to have them here if just for a little time to help us adjust our institutions and rethink how we will approach the future. I like to think that we will find leaders like those Men again in our future. We could use one or two right now. God bless and keep you all safe in these times of our vainglory and fear.