June 19, 2020 --

The Wikipedia entry for former Defense Secretary James Mattis indicates that he supported the policy, recommended by a Maine Corps chaplain, of giving chilled bottles of water to protesters in heated climes, on the theory that it is difficult to hurl rocks while drinking chilled water in 120 degree heat. Gen. Mattis might have considered drinking chilled water before he sent his anti-Trump screed to The Atlantic magazine. What could he think he would accomplish by accusing the president of dividing the country? Succeeding in creating a military coup to overthrow President Trump? The president's love of the United States, and the honor he pays his oath of office, is there for all to see, in his stirring commencement address to West Point's Class of 2020.  

Victor Davis Hanson, in the June 7 issue of National Review, "Not-So-Retiring Military Leaders," takes issue with retired generals and admirals who feel free to denounce President Trump.  LPR recommends that LPR clicksters google Hanson by name, artricle title and magazine name, and read this incisive article which, among other things, suggests that retired military officers entitled to pay, like active personnel, violate the Universal Code of Military Justice when they criticize the president.  It is not consistent, after all, with the Constitution to topple the commander-in-chief by military coup.  That is the stuff of a banana republic, or a dictatorship, not the stuff of constitutional government.

LPR, incidentally, sees nothing wrong in President Trump's walk to St. John's Church,, with Bible in hand, to honor a house of worship that had been set on fire by hoodlums. Neither does LPR regard this walk,as Gen. Mattis, and others called it, "a photo op." Probably those who denounce the president for walking over to the church have been denouncing him since January 20, 2017, when he walked over to the podium, at the Capitol, to take the oath of office.

We seem to be living in Orwellian times, when truth is turned on its head.   In the world Orwell described in his novel "1984" -- "War Is Peace," "Freedom Is Slavery," "Ignorance Is Strength."  And "two minutes hate" are held daily at the workplace. The recent months of Covid-19 lockdown, interrupted by protests, peaceful and violent (and in violation of the lockdowns) suggests these real life Orwellianisms proclaiming: "Free Speech is Hate Speech," "Common Sense Is Racism," "Government By Decree Is Democracy."

Conservative columnists  Michael Goodwin, in the New York Post, and Kimberley A. Strassel, in The Wall Street Journal, have recently chided President Trump for acting in a way leading to his defeat for re-election, November 3rd.  Rather than chide the president for drawing fire from "persistently hostile" sources, to borrow a term from Winston S. Churchill, explaining, not long after World War I, why he did not listen to the anti-government press, conservative journalists should, along with Republican members of Congress,, and conservative citizens at large, stand up in support of the president when he comes under  predictably invidious attack from the left.

Acknowledging, in her June 12 Wall Street Journal column, that the stakes, November 3rd, are high, Ms. Strassel wrote that the president has to decide how much help he wants to get. LPR would turn her words around. 

Because the stakes for November 3rd are so high, Ms. Strassel and all conservatives must decide just how important it is that they help President Trump get re-elected. 

LPR would add that the failure to re-elect President Trump would make an Orwellian world a reality in the U.S.A.