Click this link to hear Dr. Bill Bennett, President Reagan’s secretary of education, and Dr. Paul Kengor discuss the relationship between President Obama and Planned Parenthood on Bennett’s nationally-syndicated “Morning in America” radio program.

During the interview, Bennett asked Kengor about the significance of abortion revenue to Planned Parenthood’s overall operations. Planned Parenthood does not specifically report its abortion revenue but the organization does note that it performed 333,964 abortions (see page 5) in the 2011-2012 reporting period. The nation’s largest abortion provider charges  $300-$950 for a first trimester abortion and $300-$800 for a medication abortion (abortion pill).  Planned Parenthood reported more than $1 billion in revenue (see page 8) in 2011-2012 with $311.5 million coming from “non-government health services.”

For me, Memorial Day happens twice within a week. The first, the official holiday at the end of May, is quickly reinforced a week later, every June 6: D-Day.

Of all the wartime anniversaries, none strike me quite like D-Day — the invasion of Normandy, the liberation of France, the final push to defeat Nazi Germany. It was June 6, 1944, a date that sticks like December 7, like July 4, like September 11. The mix of extreme sorrow and triumph has been unforgettably replicated on film by Steven Spielberg in the stunning opening of Saving Private Ryan.

What must it have been like to be among those first waves at the beaches? Indescribable, simply indescribable.

When I think of D-Day, I always think of two presidents, neither of which were president at the time: Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. What they had to say about the event was profound.

Ike was Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, a long way from humble beginnings as a Kansas farm boy. He gave the final order to send an armada of 5,000 ships, 12,000 aircraft, and 155,000 soldiers — the largest amphibious assault in history. The morning prior, the forecast wasn’t good. Ike asked each of his subordinates what they thought about proceeding.

“Ike wasn’t taking a vote,” recorded Stephen Ambrose, the late WWII historian who was also Ike’s biographer. “Ike asked all 14 men in the room. Seven of them said to postpone and seven of them said to go ahead.” Everyone stared at General Eisenhower for what seemed like forever. Finally, Ike said simply, “Okay, let’s do it.”

Ike then wrote a note to himself: “Our landings… have failed.”

If failure resulted, Ike would take the blame. Of course, failure didn’t result, though a lot of horror came in the process. The men who battled on those beaches sampled their own taste of Armageddon. It was hell on earth.

Ike never forgot those boys. When he visited Omaha beach 20 years later — by then an ex-president as well as an ex-general — he told Walter Cronkite: “You know, Walter, I come here and the thought that overwhelms me is all the joy that Mamie and I get from our grandchildren. I look at these graves out here and I just can’t help but think of all the families in America that don’t have the joy of grandchildren.”

Another 20 years later still, June 6, 1984, another president, Ronald Reagan, visited those beaches, and gave two memorable speeches. The first paid tribute to the men who did return to that beach, and the second acknowledged a man who didn’t return.

The first speech was given at 1:20 PM at the U.S. Ranger Monument at Pointe du Hoc, France, where a group of American veterans of Normandy had re-convened for a special ceremony. Reagan stated:

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs….

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers — the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machineguns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After 2 days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there.

These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.

As Reagan spoke, these “boys of Pointe du Hoc,” by then men in their 60s, dabbed their eyes with their sleeves. Indeed, they were the guys who took those cliffs, who helped free a continent, and who ended a vicious war that killed 50 million.

The second Reagan speech that day came at 4:33 p.m. at the Omaha Beach Memorial. It was most poignant because of Reagan’s discussion of a veteran who never made it back to Normandy, a Private Robert Zanatta. Said Reagan:

Some who survived the battle of June 6, 1944, are here today. Others who hoped to return never did.

“Someday, Lis, I’ll go back,” said Private First Class Peter Robert Zanatta, of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion, and first assault wave to hit Omaha Beach. “I’ll go back, and I’ll see it all again. I’ll see the beach, the barricades, and the graves.”

Those words of Private Zanatta come to us from his daughter, Lisa Zanatta Henn, in a heart-rending story about the event her father spoke of so often….

When men like Private Zanatta and all our allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy 40 years ago they came not as conquerors, but as liberators….

Lisa Zanatta Henn began her story by quoting her father, who promised that he would return to Normandy. She ended with a promise to her father, who died 8 years ago of cancer: “I’m going there, Dad, and I’ll see the beaches and the barricades and the monuments. I’ll see the graves, and I’ll put flowers there just like you wanted to do. I’ll feel all the things you made me feel through your stories and your eyes. I’ll never forget what you went through, Dad, nor will I let anyone else forget. And, Dad, I’ll always be proud.”

Through the words of his loving daughter, who is here with us today, a D-day veteran has shown us the meaning of this day far better than any president can. It is enough for us to say about Private Zanatta and all the men of honor and courage who fought beside him four decades ago: We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.

The video of the Zanatta speech, as well as the Pointe du Hoc speech, need to be seen (click here and here for highlights). This article can’t do justice to the image of Lisa, her mother and brothers weeping as the president of the United States shared Private Zanatta’s words with the world, and as Reagan got choked up delivering them.

This past weekend, I spoke to Tony Dolan, Reagan’s chief speechwriter, who wrote such classics as the Evil Empire speech and the Westminster Address, among hundreds of others. What are his recollections about that day in June 1984?

“The irony,” says Dolan, “is that the Dublin speech was the big speech.” Dolan was referring to Reagan’s speech to the Irish Parliament on June 4, which indeed was a remarkable speech, albeit largely forgotten. Instead, what stole the show during Reagan’s trip to Europe came not in Ireland but France.

“Peggy did Pointe du Hoc,” says Dolan, pointing to Peggy Noonan, the gifted speechwriter. When I asked Dolan if he had written the second speech, he typically deferred credit: “It wasn’t my speech, Paul. It was Reagan’s.”

I asked Dolan about the Zanatta reference. He recalled that he had struggled with that speech until “around 11 or midnight” late one evening. And then, “I found this letter from this gal [Lisa Zanatta]. I knew how she felt. Her dad was always going to go back [to Normandy], but he never made it.”

Dolan worked the letter into the speech. “I was on it until 4:00 or 5:00 AM. The next morning, I was driving across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, and I thought, ‘Gee, someone is going to turn this into a NATO speech!’”

Fortunately, no one did. Dolan knew what appealed to Reagan, and Reagan, who had already exchanged letters with Lisa Zanatta, wasn’t about to let it turn into a NATO speech — not with a story like Private Zanatta.

“I played a game with myself called, ‘Choke-the-Gipper-up,’” says Dolan with a laugh. No matter how sentimental the thought, the Gipper usually delivered it flawlessly, the consummate communicator behind the camera. But not this time. “I got him on this one,” says Dolan.

He sure did. “Ronald Reagan was so profoundly moved by this gal and her words,” adds Dolan. “And think about this, Paul: There was something about him[Reagan] that made her write to him. What was it?”

Perhaps it was that Reagan had what Ike had: He looked at Normandy and he saw not NATO, or strategic plans, troop formations, tactical maneuvers, battlefield gamesmanship, or foreign-policy theory. He saw children, grandchildren, and men like Private Zanatta and the boys of Pointe du Hoc.

And that’s who we, too, should see on every anniversary of Normandy. This June 6, let’s remember.

Speaking of whom, Memorial Day always brings another constant, a sad one: each new Memorial Day brings less World War II veterans. They are leaving us at a rapid clip. Anyone who entered World War II at age 18 in 1945—the final stretch when someone could have joined the war effort—would now be 86 years old. Anyone who entered the war at age 18 in 1941 is 90. There aren’t as many now as there were 10 years ago, and 10 years from now … well, do the math.

A colleague of mine was reminded of this universal reality just a few weeks ago. His name is Glenn Marsch. He teaches with me at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. As a professor of physics, Glenn understands something about constants and universal laws. This Memorial Day will be his first without the constant of his father. He lost his dad in March.

Glenn’s dad became a soldier in October 1944, shipping off to the Pacific. He was an army construction engineer, often a dangerous job. He had fellow troops—friends of his—who were killed. He personally incurred a serious wartime injury. Because he didn’t talk about the injury (or the war), Glenn didn’t learn the full extent of it until the funeral. “My oldest brother revealed that Dad had been burned over much of his body,” says Glenn. “He recovered and went back to active duty, but I never saw him on a beach without a shirt and long shorts. Upon smelling something disgusting, he would say, ‘smells like human flesh burning.’”

Think about that: Glenn never caught his dad without a shirt and pants or long shorts—not even at the beach in the summer. His father stoically concealed his wounds. Never talked about them.

Glenn’s dad instead quietly came home from combat and served his country in another way—as a good, God-fearing American who held a job, loved his wife, raised his kids, and made a better culture and country. And there were millions like him.

Another was John Shrode. Born in Rockport, Indiana, August 11, 1925, just four days after the birth of the girl (Martha) he would marry and take care of for 67 years, John landed on Omaha Beach at 7:35 a.m. on June 6, 1944—D-Day. He was literally among the first Allied troops to storm the beaches of Normandy. The French government awarded him the Croix de Guerre for rescuing France from the Nazis.

“He will forever be my hero,” says his daughter-in-law, Kendra Shrode. Kendra’s husband, who was John’s first-born child, died in 1989 without ever really knowing about John’s service. “He had not yet reached the point of talking about it,” remembers Kendra. “With my children he did, and I am so grateful they had that opportunity.”

John’s life wasn’t easy. He grew up in a broken home, had only an eighth-grade education, and lost a child. Later in life, he developed three types of cancer, atop other illnesses. He struggled to take care of his wife as she came down with Alzheimer’s. Nonetheless, says Kendra, “He was the most well-read ‘uneducated’ man I have ever known. And his life code was integrity…. The strength of this man lives on in his children and grandchildren.”

A dairy and grain farmer, John went on to work for Caterpillar Tractor Company for 31 years. He loved his wife, raised his kids, and made a better culture and country.

For Kendra and the many Shrode children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, this will be a Memorial Day without “Papa John.” John Denzil Shrode, 8th Platoon, Company C, 6th Naval Beach Battalion, died November 5, 2011.

John’s final resting place is quintessentially American. It sits aside a tombstone awaiting his beloved wife and across from the baseball field in small-town America where he played and coached his children for years.

“As I stood looking at the flag tributes and glanced over at the fields,” says Kendra of a recent visit to John’s grave, “I realized he will be forever with us all.”

For all of those veterans who didn’t make it to Memorial Day this year, I say thank you. You remain constants—forever with us all.

Every human life is special, unique, unrepeatable — to borrow from Pope John Paul II. Every loss of life is a loss. Some losses, however, seem larger, leaving a void no one else can fill. When some people go, too much goes with them. That’s undoubtedly the case with the loss of Herbert Romerstein, who died this week after a long illness. With Herb’s passing, we lose not only a good guy, but a vast reservoir of knowledge that is not replaceable. If only we could have downloaded the man’s brain. Alas, we could not, and our knowledge of the 20th century is suddenly less than it was.

Herb knew the Cold War and communist movement unlike anyone. He understood it because he lived it and breathed it. Born in Brooklyn in 1931, he himself had been a communist, having joined the Communist Youth League before becoming a card-carrying member of Communist Party USA (CPUSA). He broke ranks over 60 years ago, the final straw being the Korean War, which made clear to him that he was dealing with inveterate liars, whether in Korea, Moscow, or among communists on the home-front. He went on to become one of America’s best anti-communists and most respected authorities, regularly testifying before Congress. He became a chief investigator for the House Committee on Internal Security. In the 1980s, he joined the Reagan administration, where his full-time job at the U.S. Information Agency was to counter Soviet disinformation, a duty for which few were so well-equipped or enthusiastic. He relished the role of taking on professional Soviet propagandists such as Georgi Arbatov and Valentin Falin. Later, he did the highly touted analysis of the Venona transcripts, which he published as The Venona Secrets.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I cannot do justice to how this translated into action. I never tire of listening to stories from Herb’s longtime friend Charlie Wiley on how they penetrated the communist-run World Youth Festivals in the 1950s, or challenged a Soviet official successfully spooning the Party line to open-mouthed progressives at the All Souls Church in New York, or tossed a wrench into this or that meeting of communist youth leaders. Guys like this were one of a kind who lived life to its fullest. They were warriors — unafraid, cheerful, colorful Cold Warriors.

I first met Herb Romerstein in June 2005. I was writing a book on Ronald Reagan and the end of the Cold War, which became The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism. I was nearing the end of the manuscript when I got a remarkable email from Marko Suprun, whose father had survived the 1930s Ukrainian genocide perpetrated by Stalin. I didn’t know Marko, but he brought to my attention a stunning document, a highly sensitive May 1983 letter from the head of the KGB, Viktor Chebrikov, to the head of the Soviet Union, the odious Yuri Andropov. The letter concerned a secret offer by Senator Ted Kennedy that, in effect, sought to undermine President Reagan’s security policy and perhaps his reelection bid. It allegedly came from Soviet archives in Moscow. I embarked upon a long process of confirming the letter’s authenticity. I exchanged emails with Walter Zaryckyj, who had turned the document over to Marko for translation. Walter immediately recommended I contact Herb Romerstein. If anyone could confirm this, it was Herb, said Walter, describing Herb as a “national treasure.”

I talked to Herb and he assuaged me. “Don’t worry,” he assured. “It’s real. Take it to the bank.”

I spent the next few months confirming what Herb had told me from the outset. Yes, it was real.

This began a partnership and friendship. Herb loved the fact that I was a Cold War researcher half his age and planning to do more, including a book on Cold War dupes — a unique category of Cold War individual that Herb knew too well. He took me under his wing, eager to provide counsel on anything related to the Cold War. Having access to his mind was like having the Library of Congress, the FBI files, the Soviet archives, Daily Worker microfiche, thousands of congressional reports, and CPUSA holdings all rolled into one, retrievable by a quick phone call or email from my BlackBerry. The process would go something like this: “Hi, Herb. A question on Arthur Miller: Did he ever join the Party?” The response was instantaneous: “In 1956, Arthur Miller testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. They published his Party application card. You can find it in the official report on the hearings. He wrote for New Masses, the Daily Worker loved him….”

We would meet in-person (less often, unfortunately) during my visits to Washington to do research. Herb introduced me to the Soviet Comintern Archives on CPUSA. He showed me how to use them, helped me get my library card — covering all bases. I fondly remember when he first introduced me to M. Stanton Evans. We spent hours at Stan’s office one summer afternoon going over everything imaginable on Soviet penetration of the Roosevelt administration and other vital areas in the 1930s and 1940s. We also had lunch at the Hawk n’ Dove on Capitol Hill, a favorite place of Herb and Stan.

Why their interest in me? Because, as they openly admitted, they were getting old and “wouldn’t be around much longer.” They were hoping I would be. There weren’t many of them left. I was one of a very small few to whom they might pass the torch.

Fittingly, on my desk right now is a copy of Herb’s final work, Stalin’s Secret Agents, co-authored with Stan Evans. It’s a superb must-read. We’ve waited years for the book’s material on Alger Hiss alone.

Certain Herb aphorisms related to the Cold War stick in my mind, resounding there in the sound of his scratchy, whispery voice:

I asked him if there was a particular group of Americans most susceptible to being duped by communists. His immediate answer: “The Religious Left, Paul, especially from the mainline Protestant denominations. They were the biggest suckers of them all.”

And what of American communists, especially those who went so far as to join CPUSA? Said Herb: “They were loyal Soviet patriots.” As Herb knew, they were dedicated first and foremost to Mother Russia. CPUSA members “were not the useful idiots,” not the “suckers;” they were not the dupes. Quite the contrary, said Herb: “They were fully aware of exactly what they were doing. They manipulated the useful idiots on behalf of Soviet interests.”

Another: “from 1919, when it [the American Communist Party] was formed, to 1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed, it was under total Soviet control.”

And then there were his judicious warnings about this or that suspected communist: “Be careful, Paul. That guy was not a communist. He was a fellow traveler, to some degree — a dupe — but not a communist. And the other guy, he was a small ‘c’ communist who never joined the Party.”

That last warning holds a crucial lesson very revealing of Herb Romerstein and his work: He was no bomb-thrower. He was the epitome of responsible, informed anti-communism. He was careful about drawing the necessary lines of distinction between a liberal, a liberal anti-communist, a genuine progressive, a closet communist masquerading as a “progressive,” a socialist, a small “c” or big “C” communist/Communist, a Party member or non-Party member, and so forth. He never wanted to falsely accuse anyone. I doubt his detractors on the left will pause to credit him for such prudence. For many on the left, every anti-communist rightly concerned with Soviet agents or agents of influence was merely another burgeoning Joe McCarthy. (Click here for a particularly cruel piece on Herb by Dana Milbank.)

Herb Romerstein was anything but. And he wanted those of us who follow in his footsteps, or who are concerned about communism still — and about truth above all — to be likewise as careful and thoughtful. Perhaps our best tribute to Herb’s memory would be to do our best to expose what he exposed and remind Americans and the world of what he reminded.

Herbert Romerstein, indeed a national treasure. A happy warrior who fought the good fight, and left the wrong side for the right side. Well done, my friend. Rest in peace.

Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan’s daughter, recently speculated on where her father might stand on same-sex marriage. Politico published her thoughts under the headline, “Patti Davis says Reagan wouldn’t have opposed gay marriage.”

The impact of the article was immediate. A quick Google search yielded multiple follow-up articles and blog posts. Liberals nationwide were off and running with a new same-sex marriage endorsement: this one from Reagan, the conservative’s conservative.

This is not the first time liberals have rushed to recast Reagan according to their policy preferences. Immediately after his death in June 2004, he was trotted out as a poster-boy for embryonic stem-cell research.

Please, not so fast.

In Davis’ defense, she starts with a crucial point about her father, one liberals had utterly refused while the man was alive: “He was a very tolerant person.”

Indeed, Reagan was tolerant — on religion, on race, on ethnic differences, on differences of opinion on many things, and also toward gays. As Davis notes, “He did not have prejudices against gay people.” Davis gives just a few of many examples.

But she then goes where I don’t think we should. She states of her father and same-sex marriage: “I don’t think he would stand in the way of it, at all. I don’t think he would stand in the way of two people wanting to make a commitment to one another.”

Davis then uses an argument that is libertarian (which Reagan was not), and which fails to understand the essence of conservatives’ objection to same-sex marriage: “I also think because he wanted government out of peoples’ lives, he would not understand the intrusion of government banning such a thing. This is not what he would have thought government should be doing.”

The problem with that statement, applied to the same-sex marriage debate, is this: Conservatives object to the federal government rendering unto itself the unprecedented ability to redefine marriage. Such is a massive step toward government intervention (one that should worry libertarians), toward powerful government, toward big government — not restrained and limited government.

It is a step that breaks entirely new ground in not only American history but human history, one with unimaginable and extraordinary effects yet to come on the family, the culture, the economy, government services and (among others) the court system.

The essence of conservatism is to preserve and conserve time-tested values that have endured for good reason and for the best of society and for order. Conservatives — which is what Reagan was — aim to conserve. By their nature and definition, conservatives do not rush into radical changes or what they fear may be another fad or fashion or popular demand. They also, by their definition, ground their ideals in both natural law and biblical law.

I know that secular liberals don’t want to hear religious arguments against same-sex marriage, but, if we’re talking about Reagan (and conservatives), we cannot exclude them.

Contrary to the image of him as president, Reagan was very religious and would not have so easily consented to a culture suddenly demanding the right to redefine what the scriptures (Old Testament and New Testament) say clearly about a man and a woman leaving their parents and coming together to form one flesh in marriage.

Reagan’s religious roots were deep, inculcated by his mother, an extremely devout, traditional Christian, and others who profoundly influenced him in Dixon, Illinois, in the 1920s. He said that “everything” he learned about the values that shaped his life and presidency he learned back in Dixon. It was his “inheritance,” one that never left him. Needless to say, Reagan did not learn to support same-sex marriage in Dixon.

Moreover, Reagan was unwavering in his conviction of the importance of a father and a mother raising children and the next generation of American citizens and understood marriage as a vital bond between a man and a woman.

To cite just one example from the final days of his presidency (January 12, 1989), Reagan insisted that “we must teach youngsters the beauty of the loving, lifelong relationship between husband and wife that is marriage.”

Yes, Reagan was tolerant of gay people — as is everyone I know who opposes same-sex marriage — but that in no way means he would have advocated redefining marriage. Toleration of something certainly does not automatically translate into advocating its legalization.

We could list innumerable things that we tolerate — including from friends and family and loved ones — but wouldn’t argue legalizing. Even then, that’s not quite the issue. The issue, after all, isn’t whether homosexuality should be legal (no one objects to that) but whether marriage will now begin a long process of continual redefinition.

It’s a form of intellectual laziness for liberals/progressives to reflexively assume that anyone who disagrees with them on redefining marriage is a recalcitrant bigot with no possible legitimate reasons.

After all, same-sex marriage opponents are adhering to the prevailing definition of marriage according to its literal and ancient roots; they believe in the cross-cultural norm that humanity has adhered to since the dawn of humanity, to a human understanding as old as the Garden of Eden. It’s remarkably short-sighted to dismiss them as hopeless bigots.

That brings me back to Ronald Reagan.

It’s funny, people on the political left spent eight years calling Reagan a bigot. When liberals weren’t denouncing him as an unregenerate racist — the single most unfair charge unceasingly flung at Reagan — they were saying that he didn’t like gay people and did nothing about AIDS because he was happy to let gays die.

Davis remembers this well, as she does the vicious accusation that her father was a nuclear warmonger. To say that liberals were unhinged in their nastiness to Reagan is insufficient. Now, in his death, they’d like to remold him in their own image, crowning him a poster boy for same-sex marriage.

The simple truth is that Reagan was a committed and principled conservative who had thoughtful and firmly grounded reasons for his positions. That, too, ironically, is a fact that liberals ignored, caricaturing Reagan as an idiot, a simpleton, an “amiable dunce,” as Clark Clifford famously called him.

He would not have merrily hopped on the same-sex marriage bandwagon without first carefully considering how the issue fit with his understanding of the laws of nature and nature’s God, of the first things and first principles that conservatives of Reagan’s generation spent years discussing at great length in their books and publications and conferences.

Could we at least agree on this much?

Reagan was silent on same-sex marriage, as was everyone of his generation. He, like all liberals of his time, could not have conceived of same-sex marriage, and he, like the entirety of the Democratic Party just a decade or two ago, unwaveringly supported traditional marriage.

Let’s leave it at that.

Maybe it’s a measure of progressives’ refusal to look back, to always move “forward.” Otherwise, they should be celebrating right now. In fact, President Obama and fellow modern progressives/liberals should be ecstatic all this year, rejoicing over the centenary of something so fundamental to their ideology, to their core goals of government, to their sense of economic and social justice—to what Obama once called “redistributive change.”

And what is this celebratory thing to the progressive mind?

It is the progressive income tax. This year it turns 100. Its permanent establishment was set forth in two historic moments: 1) an amendment to the Constitution (the 16th Amendment), ratified February 3, 1913; and 2) its signing into law by the progressive’s progressive, President Woodrow Wilson, October 3, 1913. It was a major political victory for Wilson and fellow progressives then and still today. By my math, that ought to mean a long, sustained party by today’s progressives, a period of extended thanksgiving.

President Obama once charged that “tax cuts for the wealthy” are the Republicans’ “Holy Grail.” Tax cuts form “their central economic doctrine.” Well, the federal income tax is the Democrats’ Holy Grail. For progressives/liberals, it forms their central economic doctrine.

As merely one illustration among many I could give, former DNC head Howard Dean and MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell were recently inveighing against Republican tax cuts. Dean extolled “what an increase in the top tax rate actually does.” He insisted: “that’s what governments do—is redistribute. The argument is not whether they should redistribute or not, the question is how much we should redistribute…. The purpose of government is to make sure that capitalism works for everybody …. It’s government’s job to redistribute.”

What Dean said is, in a few lines, a cornerstone of the modern progressive manifesto. For Dean and President Obama and allies, a federal income tax based on graduated or progressive rates embodies and enables government’s primary “job” and “purpose.” They embrace a progressive tax for the chief intention of wealth redistribution, which, in turn, allows for income leveling, income “equality,” and for government to do the myriad things that progressives ever-increasingly want government to do.

And so, in 1913, progressives struck gold. The notion of taxing income wasn’t entirely new. Such taxes existed before, albeit temporarily, at very small levels, and for national emergencies like war. The idea of a permanent tax for permanent income redistribution broke new ground. The only debate was the exact percentage of the tax. In no time, progressives learned they could never get enough.

In 1913, when the progressive income tax began (and the first 1040 form, with instructions, was only four pages long), the top rate was a mere 7 percent, applied only to the fabulously wealthy (incomes above $500,000). By the time Woodrow Wilson left office in 1921, the great progressive had hiked the upper rate to 73 percent. World War I (for America, 1917-18) had given Wilson a short-term justification, but so did Wilson’s passion for a robust “administrative state.”

Disagreeing with Wilson were the Republication administrations of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, his immediate successors. Along with their Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, they reduced the upper rate, eventually bringing it down to 25 percent by 1925. In response, the total revenue to the federal Treasury increased significantly, from $700 million to $1 billion, and the budget was repeatedly in surplus.

Unfortunately, the rate began increasing under Herbert Hoover, who jacked the top rate to 63 percent. It soon skyrocketed to 94 percent under another legendary progressive, FDR, who, amazingly, once considered a top rate of 99.5 percent on income above $100,000 (yes, you read that right).

Appalled by this was an actor named Ronald Reagan, himself a progressive Democrat—though not much longer. Reagan often noted that Karl Marx, in his “Communist Manifesto” (1848), demanded a permanent “heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” Indeed, it’s point 2 in Marx’s 10-point program, second only to his call for “abolition of property.”

The upper tax rate wasn’t reduced substantially until 1965, when it came down to 70 percent. Alas, President Ronald Reagan took it down to 28 percent. And despite claims to the contrary, federal revenues under Reagan increased (as they did in the 1920s), rising from $600 billion to nearly $1 trillion. (The Reagan deficits were caused by excessive spending and decreased revenue from the 1981-3 recession.)

The upper rate increased again (to 31 percent) under George H.W. Bush and under Bill Clinton (39.6 percent). George W. Bush cut it to 35 percent. Barack Obama has returned it to the Clinton level of 39.6 percent.

Here in 2013, 100 years henceforth, the wealthiest Americans—the top 10 percent of which already pay over 70 percent of federal tax revenue—will be paying more in taxes this year than any time in the last 30 years. For progressives, this is justice. But it is also bittersweet: As progressives know deep inside, it still isn’t enough. For them, it’s never enough.

To that end, my enduring question for progressives is one they typically avoid answering, especially those holding elected office: In your perfect world, where, exactly, would you position the top rate? I routinely hear numbers in the 50-70 percent-plus range.

Democrats like President Obama complain about Republican “intransigence” in raising tax rates but, truth be told—and as any liberal really knows—if it wasn’t for Republican resistance, progressives would rarely, if ever, cut taxes. America would remain on a one-way upward trajectory in tax rates, just like under Woodrow Wilson and FDR, and just as it has been in its unrestrained spending for nearly 50 years. Like their refusal to cut spending (other than on defense), progressives are dragged kicking and screaming into tax cuts. They need high income taxes for the government planning and redistributing they want to do; for Obama’s sense of redistributive justice.

This year, the progressive income tax turns 100. For progressives, getting it implemented was a huge triumph. Their success in making it a permanent part of the American landscape is a more stunning achievement still.

I’ve referred to her as one of my Cold War seven: Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Boris Yeltsin, and Margaret Thatcher. They were the seven figures who dissolved an Evil Empire, and only Walesa and Gorbachev still remain with us.

The world dubbed her the Iron Lady, a title that duly fits. Many, however, mistake the Iron Lady moniker as referring solely to her strength in the Cold War. There was much more to it. Consider:

Margaret Thatcher is arguably the most complete British leader of the last 100 years, surpassing even Winston Churchill. Like Churchill, she was tough and successful in foreign policy, taking on and vanquishing totalitarian evil. Churchill warned the world as the Iron Curtain descended across Europe. Decades later, the world celebrated as the Iron Lady helped break the Iron Curtain.

But unlike Churchill, Margaret Thatcher had enormous domestic successes that Churchill couldn’t touch, and didn’t dare try to touch. When World War II closed, the British people booted Churchill from the prime ministership in preference of Labour leader Clement Attlee, who gave the British populace Keynesian socialism. The masses wanted their welfare state, and Attlee, equipped with promises of “change” and “forward,” gave them a fundamental transformation. In no time, Attlee’s party was spending money unlike anything Britain had ever seen, nationalizing everything under the sun, including with the progressive left’s coup de grace: government healthcare. It was a giant government binge that would bury Britain for decades.

This fundamental transformation to welfare-statism was so thorough, and so imbibed by the electorate, that when Churchill later returned to office for another term (1951-55) the World War II hero couldn’t stand up to the sacred cows of Britain’s new nanny state. By the late 1970s, the United Kingdom was smothered not only by massive government expenditures and debt but by the enormous and disastrous government unions that the Labour Party had built and nurtured.

All of this came to a crashing head in the late 1970s, and fittingly under the Labour Party, this time led by Prime Minister James Callaghan. The signature event was the Winter of Discontent (1978-79). The economy was an utter train wreck, debt-ridden and hampered by a prolonged un-recovering “recovery.” Things were made far worse by continual work stoppages by striking public-sector unions. Given that the government ran just about everything, thanks to decades of the British left nationalizing everything, there was garbage literally rotting in the streets and dead people not being buried because of striking government refuse workers and gravediggers.

Things got so bad that the British electorate was willing to elect a bona fide conservative to run their government: Margaret Thatcher. This was not some squishy moderate that we in the United States would have called a Rockefeller Republican or (today) a RINO. This was the real McCoy; the genuine article. Here was a new leader who actually understood and could articulate what was wrong with Britain—and had the courage to do something about it.

And so, Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first-ever female prime minister, embarked upon an extraordinary run from 1979-90 that featured three consecutive electoral victories, including the landslide that brought her to power. She then proceeded to take on not just the Soviets abroad, but, at home, the powerful government unions, the Keynesian spending, the bloated cradle-to-grave welfare state, the punitive taxes, the burdensome regulations, and decades of government nationalizations/seizures. As to the latter, Thatcher began a comprehensive campaign of privatization that returned freedom, solvency, and sanity to Britain.

It was an amazing performance. You can now expect a remarkable outpouring of emotion and appreciation in Britain, much like what America saw with the death of Ronald Reagan and what the world witnessed with the passing of John Paul II, her two Cold War partners and kindred souls. And like her two great Cold War allies, she fortunately lived to see the collapse of the Soviet empire.

Lady Thatcher outlived both Reagan and John Paul II. Her health, unfortunately, had been in decline for a long time. I recall that she recorded a video eulogy for Reagan’s funeral rather than address the audience live and directly. That was 2004, almost 10 years ago.

I also recall her parting words to Ronald Reagan: “Well done, thy faithful servant.”

And now, we can second that tribute. Well done, Lady Thatcher.

Bill and Hillary Clinton have endorsed gay marriage, completely reversing their support of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between one man and one woman, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton calls herself a “progressive.” It’s funny, I wrote an entire book on Hillary Clinton, and never once heard her call herself a “progressive.”

Well, that’s just as well. The progressive tag fits best. After all, that’s what she and other liberals are doing: they are ever evolving, changing, progressing along to something. Their positions are forever in flux, with the only commonality being that they favor more government centralization to handle perceived injustices. The evolution across issues is so vast, so unceasing, that no progressive can tell you where they will stand years from now. They merely know they’re progressing.

The marriage issue is an excellent case in point. No progressive 100 years ago could have conceived of gay marriage. In fact, merely a decade-and-a-half ago, the entirety of the Democratic Party supported traditional marriage, codified under law. And yet, Democrats turned on a dime in faithful obedience to Barack Obama’s mountaintop-message sanctifying gay marriage a year ago.

Obama promised “change” and “fundamental transformation.” His faithful supporters roared approval, projecting upon his blank screen whatever they had in mind. In Obama’s mind, this included bestowing unto himself the monumental ability to literally redefine marriage, granting himself and his government a power heretofore reserved for the laws of nature and nature’s God.

As for the Clintons, consider their change, their fundamental transformation, their progress on this bedrock issue:

As noted, in 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act. The Arkansas Baptist stood for marriage as always understood.

As for Hillary, the lifelong Methodist was firmly in the camp of not rendering under government the ability to redefine marriage. Her youth pastor and mentor, the Rev. Don Jones, once said: “She is for gay rights…. But I think both she and Bill still think of heterosexuality as normative.”

Yes, they did. Campaigning for the Senate in 2000, Hillary insisted: “Marriage has historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman.” In 2003, she reaffirmed: “marriage … should be kept as it historically has been.” She continued that position throughout the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Alas, jump ahead to last week, where Hillary proudly proclaimed: “LGBT Americans are … full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes gay marriage.”

Gee, what happened?

Well, if you’re confused, you need to unravel the illogic of progressive ideology. By progressive thinking, the Hillary and Bill of, say, 5, 10, 15, or 50 years ago were not finished progressing. This should also mean that the Clintons were in fact wrong at each way-station in their journey to today’s progressive “truth” on marriage. Thus, too, it should mean that every Democrat who agreed with them was wrong. Current progressive ideology asserts that only current progressives are currently “right” on marriage.

Are you with me?

But here’s the kicker: How can the Clintons—or any modern progressive—know they’re right now? How do they know they’ve progressed to the “correct” point on marriage? Progress, after all, never stops progressing.

And so, for progressives, where’s their next redefinition in the ongoing process of redefining marriage? Does the evolution end with one man and one woman, or one man and one man, or one woman and one woman? Why could it not next progress to one man and multiple women? Could it involve an adult and a minor? Could their evolving redefinition include first cousins or a parent and child? Could it include multiple heterosexuals or homosexuals in single or even joint or group spousal relationships?

The answer: progressives, by their very definition, cannot answer you.

We do know, however, that progressives are happy to do with marriage what they do with everything: hand it over to the federal government. Render under government what is government’s. And what is government’s province? It’s anything progressives decide.

As for Bill Clinton, who once assured us “the era of big government is over,” he’s on board for the grand project.

Progressives might disagree with conservatives, but at least they know where conservatives stand: we look to tradition, to Biblical law, to Natural Law, to time-tested things worth conserving. We see marriage best as it has been since the Garden of Eden. We can tell you our end-goal, our ideal. Progressives cannot.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a train-wreck of an ideology, with literally no end to its havoc. It is currently careening into the most fundamental building block of human civilization: the family.

Hillary Clinton supports gay marriage. This is a major shift. Yet, as someone who wrote a book on Clinton’s faith, I can’t say I’m surprised.

Hillary Clinton is a lifelong Christian, a committed member of the United Methodist Church. She had long been committed to marriage as between one man and one woman. As once noted by the Rev. Don Jones, Clinton’s youth minister and mentor in Park Ridge, Ill., in the 1960s: “Surely, she is for gay rights. There’s no question about that. But I think both she and Bill still think of heterosexuality as normative.”

It was in that spirit that Hillary Clinton supported the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by her husband, President Bill Clinton. The law bans federal recognition of gay marriage and allows states to ignore same-sex unions licensed elsewhere.

Not long after that, her position on various gay rights issues was consistently challenged and began a slow evolution—most notably as she campaigned for New York’s Senate seat in 2000. In December 1999, speaking to gay contributors at a New York fundraiser, she said she supported “domestic-partnership measures” that permitted homosexual partners to receive the same benefits as married couples. Significantly, however, her spokesperson stressed that she continued to support the Defense of Marriage Act. She made that stance clear a few weeks later in White Plains, N.Y.: “Marriage has historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman.”

Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton’s position remained a burning, unavoidable issue.

In June 2003, Sen. Clinton introduced legislation to grant homosexual couples the same rights as heterosexual couples. With that, her position on marriage had not substantially or publicly changed. Privately, however, she might have been starting to reconsider.

In the New York Post the next month, Deborah Orin reported that Mrs. Clinton suddenly wouldn’t take a position on the Defense of Marriage Act, and that Bill Clinton’s office was notably silent on whether the former president still backed the bill he signed into law. Orin quoted Hillary Clinton spokeswoman Karen Dunn, who said, “This issue is in a state of evolution.”

It sure was.

What was going on? Was Mrs. Clinton suddenly conflicted?

On June 18, 2003, she gave an interview to New York’s WNYC, where she affirmed: “You know, marriage has a meaning that … I think should be kept as it historically has been, but I see no reason whatsoever why people in committed relationships can’t have … many of the same rights and the same … respect for their unions that they are seeking. And I would like to see that be more accepted than it is. … I also think that we can realize the same results for many committed couples by urging that states and localities adopt civil union and domestic partnership laws.”

Her position remained fairly clear, but she was expressing it with rising ambivalence. I wrote in my 2007 book that it seemed that if the public changed its attitude on gay marriage, she would probably follow suit.

As late as the 2008 presidential race, Clinton still opposed same-sex marriage, advocating civil unions and leaving the legality of marriage to the states.

All of this changed this week, when the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group with which Clinton has personal ties, posted a video where Clinton came out for gay marriage. The timing comes as the Supreme Court readies to hear two pivotal cases on gay marriage. “LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones, and they are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship,” said Clinton. “That includes gay marriage.”

Alas, here we are: Hillary Clinton favors gay marriage.

Some will charge that Clinton has embraced gay marriage out of political opportunism, that she sees the direction of her party, and therefore looking ahead to the 2016 presidential race, there’s no way she would oppose gay marriage.

Perhaps there’s some truth to the claims, but I interpret her position as steadily evolving. It’s an honest shift, one that thrills liberals.

On the other hand, it’s a blow to the moderate image Clinton has tried to craft. I’ve commented previously on her stunning total silence on the Obama HHS mandate, which flies in the face of her onetime position as a champion of religious liberty, demonstrated by her 2005 co-sponsoring (with Sen. Rick Santorum) of the Workplace Religious Freedom Act.

What happened to Hillary the moderate? Her endorsement of gay marriage is the final blow to that coveted label.

It’s also an endorsement that doesn’t surprise me.

— Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College, executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include “God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life.”

The gushing, almost angelic praise for Hugo Chavez by the left in America and around the world has been shocking to behold, but hardly surprising. I will not bother repeating the litany here. Rather, I’d like to focus on another surreal aspect of Chavez’s death—namely, the rush to preserve and display his body, so the faithful may pilgrimage and pay homage for decades to come.

Here again, I’m sadly not surprised. The far left has never been shy about venerating its heroes. This is supremely ironic, given that many of the subjects of veneration, as well as those doing the venerating, were not merely agnostics and atheists but militantly so. Recent examples include Asian communists Mao Tse-Tung and Ho Chi Minh, but the best example remains Vladimir Lenin.

Upon his death in January 1924, Lenin’s body was embalmed and preserved in a tomb, actually a shrine, in Red Square, whereby the faithful could forever honor the Great One. Etched in the marble holding the Bolshevik godfather’s body is this inscription: “Lenin: The Savior of the World.”

For an atheist state angrily committed to a war on religion, this would seem odd. In fact, however, it is precisely what we came to expect from communist regimes. In short order after Lenin’s death, poems and songs were written in praise of the “eternal” Lenin who “is always with us.” Yuri Gagarin, the first Soviet cosmonaut, visited Lenin’s mausoleum immediately before his flight so he could meditate over Lenin’s rotting flesh and draw strength for his mission. Later, Gagarin returned to the sacred site to report to Lenin on his mission.

The “Leninization” of the Soviet state’s spiritual life quickly took flight. Throughout the USSR, “Lenin Corners” were established, modeled on the Icon Corners of the Russian Orthodox Church. These mini-shrines included icon-like paintings of Lenin along with his words and writings.

A “secular religion” was established, one that, as noted by Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin’s biographer, demanded “unquestioning obedience” from its disciples. So certain was the Party of Lenin’s infallibility that in 1925, one year after his death, the Politburo established a special laboratory to remove, dissect, and study Lenin’s inactive brain. The purpose, said Volkogonov, was to show the world that the man’s great, infallible ideas had been hatched from an almost supernatural mind.

This nonsense (if not blasphemy) continued for decades. Just ask any former Soviet citizen who suffered through the extended nightmare. A Ukrainian citizen, Olena Doviskaya, once told me: “Everywhere you went, there were statues everywhere of Lenin. They wanted you to worship Lenin.”

Most curious about this Lenin reverence and mysticism is the fact that Lenin himself considered any worship of a divinity an outrage. Lenin blasted the notion of “god-building.” He thought the most horribly unimaginable things about religion, calling religion “abominable” and “a necrophilia.” A vicious, hateful man, Lenin might have hastily shot those responsible for deifying him.

Nonetheless, communists and certain elements of the far left have engaged in such behavior for a long time, readily placing their faith in (leftist) men and replacing traditional religion—Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, etc.—with a Marxism or socialism that they essentially treat as a religion. Brian Lowe of the University of Virginia notes that in the Soviet system, Marx was the Messiah, the Party was the Church, the Proletariat was the Elect, the Revolution was the Second Coming, and more. The Communist Manifesto was accorded a level of sanctity approaching Holy Scripture. Marx and Lenin and Stalin were deemed other-worldly.

All of which brings me back to Hugo Chavez and his enshrinement—and its paradoxes.

Chavez comes from a Roman Catholic country, whereas Lenin came from a Russian Orthodox country. In both the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox traditions, suspected saints—people who lived uniquely holy lives—have been placed in special tombs for purposes of veneration and to see if their dead body is ultimately incorruptible, divinely protected on earth even in death.

The Bolsheviks turned this upside down. They created atheist museums where dead priests/saints were displayed with worm-holes and other decay. They attempted to pose this in contrast to Lenin’s incorruptibility, even as the jaundiced Lenin consistently required removal and re-embalming and re-waxing.

And so, is the left currently in the process of enshrining Hugo Chavez’s body as a form of saintly veneration? Will he become a symbol of the left’s sacred cows of collectivism, wealth redistribution, and nationalization?

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that secular/atheistic progressives and socialists don’t have saints and martyrs. They’re every bit as faithful as the most Bible-thumping fundamentalist. And with the death and preservation of Hugo Chavez, they might be preparing themselves a new saint.