COEUR d'ALENE - YouTube video producer Bill Whittle, famous for his Afterburner series and his more recent Virtual President vignettes, held the Kootenai County Tea Party Patriots spellbound Saturday with a defense of conservative logic that revealed the ultimate morality of the freedoms that the Founders of our Constitutional Republic envisioned.

Emcee Brent Regan began the evening by weaving together a number of America's historical highlights into a lesson in freedom that culminated with a vision for America where education excites and challenges its young people without coddling them by excusing poor performance. Even while advancing new ways to approach public education, Regan admitted he didn't know all the answers but promised he would keep an open mind trying to do what's best for our youth.

Whittle began his talk by noting that some people lead for just a brief moment in history based upon their gifts needed at the time, such as Ronald Reagan's City on a Hill vision of America. Winston Churchill, who had trumpeted the dangers of Hitler's Germany, was the natural choice to lead the British government when Nazi Panzer tanks rolled through the low countries and into France in June 1940. His speeches in 1940-41 still echo because they helped stiffen the resolve of a fearful country, where a weaker leader might have sued for peace and forfeited Britain's freedoms.

So too must America's conservative movement look for leaders who hold fast to principle and enunciate a vision that provides solutions that work in today's world, Whittle said. That vision should enable a parallel economic structure that entices current nanny-state recipients to seek jobs where freedom acquired through effort is rewarded.

Whittle was adamant that conservatives stop ceding battlefield coordinates chosen by the leftist power elite, where epithets meant to demean and marginalize are hurled at conservatives fighting at a place and time not of their choosing. What is amazing is that even when the left does everything right to get its message out, Whittle said, and the right seemingly does everything wrong, the country is still split about 50-50.

When Whittle speaks at colleges, he asks how many students just want to be left alone and most raise their hands. When he asks how many want to control other people, few hands are raised, although he conceded that some people might not want to admit to it. Then he tells them that conservatives just want to be left alone to live their lives in freedom.

To reach young people the conservative brand needs to change.

"We are the rebel alliance," he said. "They can relate to that."

The most ignored resource in American education is our retired persons, Whittle said. There is so much knowledge that could be tapped by arranging for some of our experienced seniors to mentor young students.

During a Virtual President question and answer period, he compared abortion to the Civil War. Consulting the Constitution, we see that property rights are to be respected and, given that the South regarded slaves as property, they felt Constitutionaly justified. That is until the North asserted that slaves were human and therefore not to be considered someone's property, which raised the argument to a whole new level. Whittle juxtaposed that example to the feminists' notion that a fetus is part of the mother and therefore its fate can be decided by her and her alone.

Whittle contends that when a fetus is conceived, its DNA is a whole new person, not its mother's and not its father's, but a combination of them both. As such, to decide to kill a fetus at one week or at four weeks or three minutes before birth or three minutes after birth becomes nothing but an academic discussion. It is still killing a human being as defined by its totally unique DNA. Expecting a fellow American to help pay for abortions when he sees it as murder, is truly an immoral act.

American authorities have to be right every time in order to thwart terror attacks while the terrorists only need to be right once, he said. Similarly, conservatives need to win every time to preserve America's inherited freedoms handed to us through our Constitution and Bill of Rights, while statists only need to be right once in a while to accomplish an ever-closing noose of laws intended to enslave us, Whittle said.

To watch Whittle's YouTube videos, google "Bill Whittle afterburner" or "Bill Whittle Virtual President" and click on a link to a video.

Mike Satren is a Hayden resident and former Outdoors editor for The Press.