Week of Dec. 17-24, 2007

The Heritage Foundation believes, along with the British historian Paul Johnson, that words are"the essen tial units on which a civilization rests." Like the former Czech president and playwright Vaclav Havel, we have faith in"the power of words to change history." It was Havel's eloquent words as leader of the Civic Forum in the fall of 1989 that sparked the Velvet Revolution and caused the sudden eclipse of Communism in Czechoslovakia.

It was the calm yet resolute words of Nelson Man dela calling for an end to apartheid and for free and open elections that convinced the white Afri kaner government to accept the man they once labeled a terrorist as a national leader.

It was the blunt words of Ronald Reagan describ ing the Soviet Union as an"evil empire" that stunned the Soviets and encouraged the dissi dents in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe to stand up to their Communist oppressors.

Believing as we do in the power of words, The Her itage Foundation has produced a mighty river of them over the years. In 2006 alone, Heritage produced nearly half a million words with its 203 Backgrounders, Executive Memoranda, Legal Memoranda, Center for Data Analysis Reports, and Heritage Lectures. It generat ed another 1.3 million words through the 1,354 tele vision and radio appearances of its policy analysts.

As a mass memorial service was held today for the seventy-three victims of the massacre at the New Life Church, one of the largest such grim tolls in the nations' history, gun-control advocates pointed out the continuing folly of allowing civilians access to pistols and assault weapons.

"This never would have happened had Matthew Murray not been able to get his hands on those weapons," said Sarah Brady, head of Handgun Control, Incorporated."He had two handguns, an assault rifle, and a thousand rounds of ammunition. Seventy-three people are dead now, and thousands more wounded, because the NRA continues to block reasonable gun-control measures."

With Sunday's slaughter still fresh in the minds of many, she pointed out that now was the time to end such incidents once and for all, with effective laws against both handguns and assault weapons.

The presidency is a bacterium. It finds the open wounds in the people who hold it. It infects them, and the resulting scandals infect the presidency and the country. The person with the fewest wounds usually does best in the White House, and is best for the country.