As I had already explained at some length on several occasions, whatever electoral pacifists may say, I believe in voting defensively; the prospect that Hillary Clinton might be elected—further extending the reign of vile, brutalitarian collectivism that began with the election of spymaster George H.W. Bush—was so bleak and repulsive to me that I would have voted for practically anybody to prevent the end of Western Civilization.

I awoke the morning after the election, filled with a relief and joy that I have never felt before. I'm still feeling it. I suspect that many of those writing to me experienced exactly the same joy and are now desperately ashamed of it. They don't have to be. We won our first battle in a long time, and we still have the war to keep us going. At my age, those are both considerations.

It is true that Trump purposes to do many things—reduce taxes, abolish regulations—that I approve of highly. He has other intentions—dangerous, punitive tariffs, "enhanced interrogation" —that I had thought were thoroughly discredited by our national experience of history. But above all, he was not—and is still not—Hillary Clinton, with all of her evil ideas and dubious connections with the fetid underbelly of international criminal politics. I sincerely hope she gets on her bicycle and pedals away and that I never have to see her grotesque, greenish face or listen to her sinister cackling again. Or am I confusing her with Margaret Hamilton?