WRITING A BOOK, ESPECIALLY this book, is a solitary and time-consuming undertaking. A special thank-you is owed my amazing children, Lauren and Chase, for their love and understanding. I adore them and could not be more proud of them. It is for them, and their generation, that I wrote this book. And to Kendall, the most decent person I have ever known.
Thank you to my wonderful parents, Jack and Norma, who sacrificed so my brothers and I might succeed and encouraged me throughout my life with their love, wisdom, and guidance. They are my heroes. I can never repay them. And there are no better and more loyal brothers than Douglas and Robert, to whom I am forever grateful and for whom I am deeply blessed.
I want to thank my longtime and dear friend Eric Christensen for his invaluable insight, counsel, and research assistance, as well as my friends and outstanding colleagues at Landmark Legal Foundation—Richard Hutchison, Robert Levin, Michael O’Neill, and Matthew Forys—for their excellent research assistance. Thanks to Professor Thomas West for his kind response to an inquiry respecting the Declaration of Independence.
This is the third book in which my editor, Mitchell Ivers of Simon & Schuster, has provided superb input. Thanks to him and my publisher, Louise Burke, for their enthusiasm for this project. And thanks to my friend and lawyer, David Limbaugh, for his wise advice and many kindnesses, and Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity for their friendship, generosity, and support.
Finally, to my fellow Americans—you have sacrificed so much for the betterment of mankind, for which you are owed the world’s gratitude. But we must now muster the same strength, courage, and wisdom to confront the perils we face at home today. We cannot put it off to some future date. Our generation is duty-bound to the next generation to preserve this great republic, just as our forefathers were duty-bound to us. The day is late and the hour is now.