LYN NOFZIGER

Government should work to insure the rights of the individual, not plot to take them away.

Several things about Reagan are unusual in a public man. He was not a typical politician at all, but a private man in public life.

A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote.

I'm not a social friend of the Reagans. That's by their choice and by mine. They don't drink enough.

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

Most politicians - those people who live, eat and breathe politics - like to sit around and talk about politics and tell political war stories. Reagan didn't do that. His war stories were movie war stories and Hollywood war stories. He loved that.

The best thing going for us is Al Gore. I cannot conceive how the American people could elect him. On the other hand, I couldn't conceive how they could elect a Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton - especially Clinton in '96.

That guns do more than protect us from criminals; more importantly, they protect us from the ongoing threat of government.

These things I believe: that government should butt out.

That government is not a necessary good but an unavoidable evil.

That foreign trade should be fair rather than free.

Freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away. Individual freedom demands individual responsibility.

He and Reagan were not at all alike, because Reagan is an optimist and Dick Nixon wasn't. Yet in some ways they were alike. Neither really liked to talk on the telephone, for instance. And, in a lot of respects, both of them were very much loners.

I think the American people have become more reliant upon government and less reliant upon themselves and that they now tend to put security ahead of freedom, but I think freedom is the most important aspect of our lives.

One of the things that bothers me most is the growing belief in the country that security is more important than freedom. It ain't.

I don't like government, it's just that simple.

The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country.

I cannot show remorse because I do not believe I am guilty.

The executive branch has grown too strong, the judicial branch too arrogant and the legislative branch too stupid.

One other thing I think a conservative believes is that the parents, not government, are and should be responsible for the upbringing and behavior of their children.

The concerted effort to minimize Christmas has resulted in it being our national Happy Holiday holiday. The Christmas season is now the holiday season. Christmas parties are now holiday parties. Christmas is a time for giving and receiving presents and in many homes, nothing more. Who is this fellow, Jesus Christ, anyway?

The feminist women's organization NOW has endorsed Carol Moseley-Braun for president. Once again NOW has shown it is so far behind the times it should change its name to THEN.

I believe you can divide the people in to two basic groups, those who believe government is a necessary good and those who believe it is a necessary evil, those who want government to take care of them, those who want government to leave them alone.

As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom.

The Patriot Post not only does the best job of putting important news, policy and opinion in proper context, but also of cutting down to size the pompous praters and propagandists on the left.