Backbone Radio

Civic virtue anyone?

Slated on Backbone Radio, March 16 Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver.. 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs... and streaming live at 710knus.com.

Civic virtue is an old idea you won't hear about on the cable channels, but it's alive and well on our radio show. It means the moral qualities and character attributes required of citizens in a free society. Integrity, honesty, probity, and trustworthiness, being in fact what you claim to be, stand high on any list of indispensable civic virtues -- and they are even more essential in officers of the public trust than in private citizens. This, not the childish squabble over sexual mores, is the lesson of the spectacular downfall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer after this week's prostitution scandal. Once his crusading career of public righteousness was shown to be a sustained fraud, he was at least man enough to resign. The Hillary Clinton super-delegate stopped short of Bill Clinton-style shamelessness.

So the Empire State moves on under new Gov. David Paterson, and our attention will soon return to the presidential race, the dwindling credibility of Bill Ritter, and the Rockies' upcoming season. On Backbone Radio this Sunday we'll look at the condition of civic virtue in America -- top to bottom, not just among the famous -- and we'll survey the headlines as well as the spiritual weather on Palm Sunday 2008. I hope you will be listening.

** Former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, state chairman for McCain, will update us on the Republican nominee's campaign. Black conservative commentator Joseph C. Phillips will size up the Obama-Ferraro flap, the howling Rev. Wright, and other race-laden concerns on the Democratic side.

** Plus a deeper look at the war with radical jihadism from Marvin Hutchens of ThreatsWatch.org, and the latest common sense from Rocky Mountain News columnist Jay Ambrose, our politically incorrect Backbone regular.

"Our constitution," as John Adams said to Thomas Jefferson, "was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Power checking power, as with the federal prosecutors who brought down Spitzer, is one safeguard for liberty; but the only ultimate safeguard is civic virtue. Which is, come to think of it, backbone by another name. That's why we do this program!

Yours for self-government, JOHN ANDREWS

Yes: McCain for President

Slated on Backbone Radio, March 9 Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver.. 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs... and streaming live at 710knus.com.

"Stand up with me and fight. Fight for America. The contest begins tonight," said John McCain on Tuesday in Texas as he clinched the Republican nomination for President. I'll gladly stand beside him in the fight. The alternative of entrusting our country's security and liberty to an Obama or another Clinton in the White House for the next four years is simply unacceptable. I was in the fight with this American hero once before, when he was a naval aviator and I a naval submariner (undergoing nothing close to the hazards and hardships he did) in the Pacific during the 1960s, His father, Admiral McCain, was in fact my commander.

I am enthusiastic about Sen. McCain's proven qualifications for keeping our country safe, our judiciary in check, and our fiscal house in order. I've not hesitated, and will not hesitate while he runs and if he wins, from constructively criticizing Mac's policy lapses, even as I criticized those of Nixon from within his staff --and would have done the same (I like to think) for the lapses of Ike, TR, or Lincoln himself in an earlier day.

But his imperfections don't deter me from urging without reservation: McCain for President. We cannot afford -- repeat after me, cannot afford -- the high risk of electing a Democrat instead. My 2012 nightmare column spells out that risk. This week on our blog, Mark Hillman warned about it while Dave Crater was doubtful. I'm with Hillman and the Republican nominee.

We'll talk about all of it on Backbone Radio this Sunday, along with a survey of the dangerous world our next president will face, by foreign policy experts Frank Gaffney, Carolyn Leddy, and Daveed Gartenstein-Ross.

** Plus Bill Moloney, our regular contributor and former state education commissioner, on Gov. Ritter's dreamy illusions about school reform, and teacher Kris Enright on a new professional group outflanking the CEA union monopoly.

Don't let the best become the enemy of the good, wise men have counseled since ancient times. The ideal conservative candidate is not (and never was) on the menu for Americans this year. The battle-tested John McCain is. Let's go all out to get him elected.

Yours for the Republic, JOHN ANDREWS

Gods of the Copybook Headings

Slated on Backbone Radio, March 2 Listen every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, Denver.. 1460 KZNT, Colorado Springs... and streaming live at 710knus.com.

If only pigs had wings and wishes were horses. If only water wouldn't wet us and fire wouldn't burn us. If only. Wishful thinking may sustain an open borders policy, a blind eye to radical Islam, cheap money, Obamania, and other fantasies of liberalism -- but reality won't. Kipling diagnosed all of it long ago in "The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (see below). That classic conservative poem is on my mind this week with the passing of William F. Buckley Jr., one of the greatest Americans of our time. For half a century, Bill Buckley brilliantly showed how the old truths and virtues remain essential to current politics, even when others "found them lacking in uplift, vision, and breadth."

** This week on Backbone Radio we'll talk about his legacy with Charles Kesler of the Claremont Institute, conservative activist Richard Viguerie, and James Humes, speechwriter to five Republican presidents.

** Latin American expert Thor Halvorssen will report on Castro's Cuba and Chavez's Venezuela.

** Plus Mike Riebau on illegal alien crime and the Cory Voorhis case, and Mike Littwin on Hillary's last stand in Texas and Ohio.

WFB and National Review were willing to stand athwart history yelling "Stop!" when too many sheeplike Americans were content, as Kipling put it, to "follow the march of mankind. He didn't halt history, of course, but he changed it markedly for the better. To help all of us follow his example, even a little, is the goal of Backbone Radio. Please join us.

Yours for conservative renewal, JOHN ANDREWS

The Gods of the Copybook Headings By Rudyard Kipling, 1919

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place, But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch, They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch; They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings; So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

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