The Other Minutemen: Missile Defense Arrives, Just in Time

Our wives and daughters are safer this week because of George W. Bush.

by Rod D. Martin
July 4, 2006

Every day brings news of the Minutemen on Mexico's border; and on this 230th birthday of the American idea, we recall the original Minutemen, who stood ready to meet the British threat at a moment's notice.

But little noticed even by those conservatives who hungered for its creation since long before Ronald Reagan's 1983 “Star Wars” speech, another Minuteman stands ready this Fourth of July. And in its job, minutes are the difference between life and millions of deaths.

In 1776, the British were determined to strangle America's freedom in its cradle; but even so, they shared more values with the colonials than not, and defeat, however tragic, would not have meant the wholesale slaughter of the U.S. population.

Today the threat is very different indeed. An evil assortment of equally resolute foes -- foes of both our liberty and that of the rest of the world -- directly seeks our annihilation. Just this Monday, North Korea, that sick cross between 1984 and Atlas…