[endthematrix]

"The house odds are on our side. "

I pray that you are not teaching that to your grandchildren. The "It can't happen here" argument falls deaf upon the millions of exterminated corpses from Communism.

The annual death rate in Lenin's slave labor camps generally ranged between 10-30% per year. (Thus, the odds of surviving a five- year sentence ranged from 20-60%). Moreover, the high death rate required continuous large-scale arrests merely to keep the prison population stable. I'd suppose to argue this you would counter that they were the "bad" Communists and deserved to be there.

[Rockingham]

We resisted the Soviets, as did many others, and were ultimately successful. When Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire soon to be discarded on the trash heap of history, I wondered if he was carried away by optimism and a sense of faith.

Yet Reagan was proven right in his confidence that communism was perverse and could and would be defeated. He believed this as President, but he also believed it when he was just a B list actor fighting communist infiltrated unions in Hollywood.

I am in no sense complacent or inert against the evils that are loose in the world. The world is always in trouble, and we are always called to battle. Conservatives are not guaranteed victory, but when we fight, we have history, human nature, and God on our side -- the house odds.