Newt's remarks at
the Institute for Policy Innovation
November 17,
2010 6pm
Newt's speech from the Institute for Policy Innovation's Reclaiming Liberty
Event, held Thursday, November 11, 2010 in Dallas, Texas.
Listen to a
Podcast version of the speech here.
Thank you all very, very much and thank you Michael (Williams) for that warm
introduction. I did warn him before and I said, gI start to get worried if the
introductionfs so good that I get excited about listening to the person.h
(laughter) And then I realize itfs me. But Ifm glad to be here, Ifm glad, Mark
(Davis), to be back with you again. We had a great time raising some money for
charity a few weeks ago and itfs always fun to be on your show so Ifm just
delighted to have the chance to be with you tonight.
Itfs really important, I think, to recognize the Institute for Policy
Innovation and I particularly wanted to come down here tonight and I set it out
in my schedule a long time ago because I work very closely with Peter Ferrara
and I do agree with what Tom said. He is a truly national treasure and a man of
just extraordinary knowledge and insight who all way back to the Reagan years
has played a role in designing the right economic policies that would maximize
our growth, maximize our prosperity, maximize the wealth of every American. So
Peter, Ifm delighted to be here with you tonight and Ifm delighted to be here
with the Institute. And I thank all of you who are supporters and I encourage
those of you who are not yet supporters, to look seriously at this remarkable
institution which has an impact extraordinarily out of proportion to its size
and its budget. And I think really did in fact, I think itfs really helpful to
have institutions that are outside of Washington and donft get up every morning
trying to find out who was invited to the last Georgetown cocktail party but
instead actually worry about long-term policy.
I think reclaiming liberty is a very, very important concept. And in that
context, Michaelfs right. He and Ifve had a personal friendship that goes back
for a decade. He is a great conservative leader of enormous principle. I think
he has a great future and Ifm just honored, Michael, you introduced me tonight
and thank you very much for that.
I also thank those of you that gave Pete (Sessions) a standing ovation. He
totally earned it. I have been working with Pete for two years on this project.
I was actually laughed at. In March of 2009, I said that if the Democrats
continued to move to the left, and if their budget vote is as bad as their
stimulus vote, that we could get a majority. And at the time one of the leading
analysts of Congress, Stu Rothenberg wrote, gGingrichfs idea is lunacy. It ought
to be knocked down immediately.h Recently he wrote a column in which he thoughts
that the Republicans would gain control of Congress and since then, it turned
out that he was right (laughter). I would say, and I say this with a pretty good
bit of detailed personal knowledge, I would say that along with Speaker John
Boehner, there is no other single person who did more to make sure that we had
the candidates, we had the resources, we had the messages, we had the strategy,
and we had the training necessary to win and I give Pete a great deal of credit
for a remarkable year (applause).
I have to confess, I was asked shortly after the election a question, having
been through 1994 and the gContract with Americah and the first Republican
majority in forty years, how I felt about the fact that Pete and John had
actually surpassed us? We got 53 seats, theyfre somewhere between 60 and 61 or
63, depending on the recounts and thefts (laughter). And I mean after all, you
start looking at races in places like Illinois, you go OK, how many people
really voted and how many people showed up twenty years after their death. Which
is actually a sign of very determined citizenship, if you think about it
(laughter).But I was asked how I felt about it and did I feel diminished. And I
said. gnoh. I said, gI feel like a general manager whose team just won their
second Superbowl and that I think of Pete as being the quarterback on the field
and John being the Head Coach. And the team won an enormous victory on election
night.h And Pete was very kind and came by the American Solutions election night
(event) and it was just a wonderful feeling. We were, and candidly, while the
House victory, which is the largest since 1932 is extraordinary, so is the state
legislative victory which is 682 seats (applause). If you think about long-term
political development, 682 seats switching from Democrat to Republican is a
generation of loss for the Democratic Party which I have to confess makes me
feel good (laughter).
But I want to recognize a couple other dear friends. When we were trying
desperately with no one believing in us to create that first majority, remember,
we hadnft been a majority since 1952 and there were a lot of people who thought
we couldnft be including most of the Republicans. One of the people who
courageously went out and raised money, recruited candidates, did everything he
could, helped me win the Whipfs raise without any question, wouldnft have won
the race without him was Joe Barton and so itfs a thrill for me to have Joe here
(applause).
And I want to report to Joe that in honor of his staff who many years ago in
a great Texas Aggie tradition, took me to Billy Bobfs, that I sent three of my
younger staff to Billy Bobfs last night on the grounds that they too needed to
experience a version of Texas they had probably never seen before. And they
reported to me today, a little blearily, that in fact it was a different
experience than theyfd ever had before. I have not yet asked if any of them
tried to ride the mechanical mule because, or the mechanical bull, because there
are certain things I believe that employers shouldnft actually know about the
people that work for them.
Let me say that Louie Gohmert that he is a terrific national asset. He has a
remarkable range of innovative ideas. My favorite was early last year when the
President was busily trying to maximize government spending, strengthen the
government employee unions, and do everything he could to waste your money on
behalf of his majority. Louis had this great idea which I wish we had actually
followed as a vote on the House floor. If you took $780 billion, instead of
spending it through trickle-down bureaucracy, if you had simply given every
American that amount of money as a tax holiday, it turned out that no American
would have paid any income tax until after August. And I think a vote that said,
do you agree to do more to stimulate the economy by you having all of your
income, by the way, which also included, that most Americans would have
discovered a shocking way of how much they were actually paying. I thought this
was a brilliant insight and Louie, I just hope that you will have the courage
despite the occasional slowness and boring detail of staff around you and hope
that you will have brilliant ideas like that because I think that was actually a
tremendous insight and youfve already told me a couple tonight that Ifm sure
will show up in the very near future.
Kay Grangerfs been a favorite of mine since she first was mayor and then
became Congresswoman and therefs a spirit of public service and a spirit of
making Texas and America a better place that she brings into every room Ifve
ever been with her. And so when she walked in tonight, I just, I felt better
just by the act of you walking in the door. Thank you for being here with us
tonight (applause).
Reverend James Robisonfs an amazing person. He was a leader in the Reagan
years. He has, I think, the most important thing that a Pastor can have, which
is a sincere, deep, total belief that helping Christ to enter the lives of
others will permanently and decisively change who they are. And I think all the
rest of us are busy doing many other things but having people walk up to you,
look you in the eye and say that Christ truly loves you and that your life can
be changed if you would just surrender to that love, is an enormous part of the
best of America. And so when you were here tonight, I just wanted to thank you
for a lifetime of living what you believe and living what you preach
(applause).
What I want to focus on tonight is the concept of replacement. And I want to
suggest to you that I say this, let me give you a little bit of background. I
was convinced, my dad was a career soldier and on Veteransf Day I feel in
particular, the 27 years he spent serving the United States Army, the depth of
his belief that defending America was a moral cause. And in that context, I want
to talk about where we are but I talk about it from a position of relatively
unique experience. When my dad was stationed in Orleans, France in 1957-58, the
French Fourth Republic was dying. It was fighting a war in Algeria that it was
losing. It was 100% inflation. There was still World War II and World War I
battle damage. We went to an American Army school and past World War II damage.
And we went to stay at a friend of my fatherfs at Verdun. My fatherfs friend had
been drafted in 1941, sent to the Philippines and served in the Baton Death
March and spent three and a half years in Japanese prison camp. Any of you who
ever saw the movie, gThe Great Raidh, would have some idea of his experience. We
spent several days touring the largest battlefield of the Western Front in
Verdun in which some 600,000 men were killed in a nine month period. We spent
every evening talking about his experiences having been defeated and trying to
survive in the Japanese prison camp. I had gone into that particular vacation
thinking Ifd be either a zoo director or a invertebrate paleontologist; I came
out of it convinced that countries die. And that the quality of civilian
leadership is central to their survival. And so between my freshmen and
sophomore years in high school, in August of 1958, after several months of
prayer and reflection, I concluded that my job was to try and understand three
things: what is it we have to do to survive as a country, how would you explain
it with such clarity that the American people would give you permission, and how
would you then implement it in such a way that it both worked and they would
give you permission to continue. Ifve literally now, for 52 years, been trying
to understand this. So what I share with you tonight is the result of 52 years
of reflection. I think we have to move from a rejection model of conservatism to
a replacement model of conservatism and these two words are enormously
important. And by either smart planning, good luck, or providential
intervention, I think that the novel we just released, gValley Forgeh, really
reflects precisely this turning point.
Think of the Declaration of Independence as an act of rejection. The American
people concluded that we had rights and that the British were trampling on our
rights. And so we rejected that and said we declare wefre independent. However,
that didnft make us independent. We declared our opinion. In order to successful
and independent, there had to be two enormous acts of replacement. The first
occurred in the winter of 1778 at Valley Forge. When George Washington, after
two long painful years of defeat, came to the conclusion that only by having a
first class Army, capable in a disciplined way of fighting in the field, could
we defeat the British. And with the help of foreigners, a point I would inject
into the immigration debate, Lafayette and Von Steuben created an American Army
that in the spring of 1778 defeated head-on a first-class British Army in a
shocking moment in which all of a sudden the British were forced to realize the
Americans probably were not going to ever be defeated. But it was the
replacement of British military power with American military power which made
the difference.
A few years later, the wisest and most sophisticated Americans had come to
the conclusion that the Articles of Confederation were too weak for the country
to survive. And they met for 55 days in Philadelphia and they wrote the
Constitution of the United States which was an act of replacement. It wasnft
just the Articles of Confederation arenft adequate. It was here is an
alternative. And I think, my position today, I first got directly active in the
summer of 1960 between my junior and senior years of high school as a volunteer
in the Nixon-Lodge campaign in Columbus, GA at a time when there was no
Republican party in Georgia and therefore, I could rise with enormous speed
because nobody was there. I mean you walked in and they said ghi, how would you
like to be really important tomorrow morning? By the way, nobody else will be at
the meeting.h
And I think back to all that and herefs what want to pose for you. Having
lived through the Goldwater Revolution, having lived through the rise of Reagan,
having helped create the gContract with Americah, herefs my core formula for all
of you to think about. The American people repudiated the left in 1972. I mean
George McGovern was annihilated for all practical purposes. The left didnft
notice it because the power of the left isnft in popular elections. The power of
the left is in tenured academics. The power of the left is the news media. The
power of the left is the bureaucracy. The power of the left is union leadership.
The power of the left is inside the judgeships. The power of the left is in fact
in the Hollywood literati. And so the left just kept going further to the left.
Then the American people repudiated the left in 1980. People forget. Jimmy
Carter carried exactly the same number of states as Herbert Hoover. The 1980
election was an annihilating defeat for the left. In 1984, it got worse. Walter
Mondale was repudiated carrying one state, his home state, only because Reagan
didnft go and campaign there. If Reagan had campaigned in Minnesota the last
weekend, he would have carried 50 states. He thought it was somehow
ungentlemanly.
In 1994 the left was repudiated again and for the first time in forty years,
the Republicans got control of the House, and we kept it for twelve years. Now
let me just say, for those who worry about closing the government, after we
proved we were serious, for the first time since 1928, the American people
re-elected the House Republicans, because we did not allow the President of the
United States to bluff us into caving in on principle, and we told him wefd take
whatever he could do to us, and whatever the news media could do to us, because
we were serious about balancing the budget by controlling spending, and we were
not going to raise taxes.
And last Tuesday, the left was once again repudiated. Do you think they
noticed it? (laughter ) Do you think that anybody at MSNBC decided to move to
the center? Do you think anybody on the tenure faculty at Columbia decided to
actually study whether Ronald Reagan, rather than Gorbachev, ended the cold war?
Do you think anybodycdo you think Paul Krugman decided supply side economics is
right? The fact is rejection is an inadequate, long-term strategy if you are
serious about saving America, because rejection doesnft fix a center left
coalition, which has been in power since 1932. And that requires us to adopt, I
believe, a fundamentally new strategy: a strategy of replacement. We have to
look at every level of American society, and every level of American government,
and we have to decide that we are going to replace the left, with policies,
systems, and institutions that reflect the heart of the American tradition.
We canft plan for two years. I totally oppose those who try to think in term
of the next two years. We have to think in terms of January 2021. Now some
people will tell you, therefs Gingrich having these wild ideas. I think it is
fair to say, if you look at my career, from helping create the Georgia
Republican Party, which now occupies every statewide elected position and
controls both houses of the State Legislature and the majority of the Congress,
to creating the first majority in forty years, and the first re-elected majority
since 1928, to four balanced budgets in a row, paying off 405 billion dollars of
debt, on occasion, I can actually be practical.
And I think the heart of practicality is to know where you are going before
you start traveling. And where we have to go is a goal, is to create a majority
thatfs governed so decisively, with such positive results, that in January 2021,
we are inaugurating a team which understands why it is continuing a center-right
majority, understands why it is continuing a prosperous America, understands why
itfs continuing a safe America, and understands why it is continuing the most
free society in history. And only if you think out to that achievement, can you
understand the challenge of the next two years, because this is an enormously
complex country.
So what wefre now describing is a replacement model, which is a citizen
movement, with local government, state government, and federal government
implications. That is how big a change we are describing. And I think it is not
about thinking in a fantasy way about 2021, itfs about what we do tomorrow
morning, what we talk about next week, what happens in the lame duck, what do
Republicans do the day they take over the House, what does the governor do with
a new Legislature. Itfs an immediate process, which has long term implications.
And we have to think that way. Michael Burgess has enormous courage. He is one
of the most sincere people I know. He brings everything that led him to be a
doctor, all of his concern for the patient, all of his desire to cure people,
all of his desire to master disease. He brings all of that to Congress. And we
work with many, many people at the Center for Health Transformation. I just find
it a great joy to have him here tonight and to have him in the Congress and I
want to thank you for the dedication (applause).
There are 513 thousand elected officials. School boards, city council, county
commission, county judges in the case of Texas, state legislatures, governors,
judges. And what does that mean? It means, if you truly want a wave of change
that ends a majority system, which has been around since 1932, the wave canft be
the oval office. Not that the presidency isnft important, and not that I may
come back here another day and talk to you about that different topic, but that
topic by itself is too narrow. The only way the presidency matters is if there
is a wave of citizens prepared to help at every level, and a wave of citizens
prepared to step in, because if we centralize power out of Washington, and I was
with your governor Rick Perry today who I think is a great governor, doing a
great jobcand he agrees with me. The Tenth Amendment doesnft say send power from
Washington to Austin. The Tenth Amendment says gThe States and the people
thereofh and so the trick is to get the power through Austin back home. But if
we get the power back home, that means citizens have to be engaged.
Now, at American Solutions, we have begun to develop the concept of
replacement. But, what I want to suggest to you is a movement. Itfs that we
think about how deeply this has to happen, and that we create very clear
choices.
You know, the defeat of the Soviet empire, which is under-studied because it
causes such enormous angst in the academic community to study how Ronald Reagan
eliminated the Soviet empire, but people just refuse to take it seriously. But
if you read Peter Schweizerfs books, which are brilliant on this topic, Reagan
set out in 1947, when he encountered a Stalinist in Hollywood, and he came to
the conclusion that this would be bad. Again Reagan used to say, gItfs not that
things canft be simple, itfs just that simple things can be very hard.h And so
he decided in 1947, that defeating communism would be a good deal. And he set
out on what would be a forty-four year venture.
Now when he got to be elected president, remember, at the time hefs elected
president, now I say this because a lot of you are going to tell me about
entitlements and how people feel that they are entitled to things, and whether
or not we are in a society where people can learn how to be responsible. In
1979-1980, every member of the elite understood the Soviet Union was permanent,
it was unchallengeable, we had to find détente, which was a fancy French word
meaning understanding, we had to deal with the Soviets with great respect.
Reagan is asked by a reporter, gWhatfs your vision of the Cold War?h And he says
four words that change history, gWe win, they lose.h
Now, why did this matter? First of all, no liberal could have said that,
those four words. You just watched President Obama, first take the word gweh. A
narrowing, chauvinistic, nationalist term, that probably didnft include the
whole planet, and the various countries that love peace, want peace, and have
always been in favor of peace in between brutalization and savagery.
Second, the word win, which implies somebody lost. I mean such a harsh,
unnecessary view of history, when in fact if only we were together, we would
love each other in a way that was deeply meaningful, and we would find a method
of transcending such trivial ideas. As Gorbachev once said to the Stanford
Faculty, gOnly an American faculty member can believe things like this.h And I
actually think you understand Obama much better if you just assume he is sort of
a tenured faculty member who got loaned a new job, for one term.
Anywaycso let me start with a key organizing principle of the next ten years,
which is as clear and as vivid and as simple as gwe win, they lose.h There is a
party, and I try to explain to people it is a very simple model, I actually
tried to reduce this to a short-enough sentence that Vice President Biden could
have sort have gotten it. Job killing policies kill jobs. Itfs only five words.
I think it sort of captures it. By the way, you can decide what are job-killing
policies by going out to people who create jobs and saying, gHi, did this kill
jobs?h And if it turns out that every small business in your area say, gyesh,
probably theyfre right. If you happen to have a Harvard econometrician who says,
gWell I donft think so because based on our theoretical model of how the world
ought to work, if one of those small business people were really stupid, theyfd
realize this new policy would actually be fabulous, and theyfd love it totally,h
donft do it, because they havenft got a clue, they havenft created a job in
theyfre life.
So start with the idea, job-killing policies kill jobs. The Democrats over
the last few years, starting by the way, if you track the economy from Pelosi
and Reid taking over in January 2007, all of the bad economy has occurred while
the Democrats were in charge of the Congress, and mark my word, the economy will
start to improve next year, and it will be because the Republicans are winning a
series of policy fights, as a result of which business decide to invest the two
trillion dollars that are currently locked up in corporations. And Obama will
promptly claim credit for having adopted Republican policies, which he will hope
we donft notice. But the fact is, if you just mark the collapse of the American
economy by the day Pelosi took over and the day Pelosi left, and then you say,
ok what now happened in the post-Pelosi period, which could be called if you
want at MSNBC, gthe Republican periodh, but that would be such a harsh term. You
are going to find the economy; my prediction is the economy will improve next
year. It will improve next year because there will be stability on the tax code,
and in fact yesterday, and this is a great tribute to the Republicans and to
Pete Sessions in particular, yesterday Axelrod, the Presidentfs advisor, said
gWe will probably sign a bill that says no tax increase on any American, on any
levelh, because after all the Republicans won.
So a party, which has policies which kill jobs, creates income
redistribution, because when you lose your job, Barrack Obama sends you food
stamps. Now we want to be, and we are going to send at American Solutions, we
are going to send every elected Republican a chart for their wall that says,
gWhat have I done today to help create jobs and paychecks?h This is much more
important than balancing the budget, and all that other stuff. The first goal
has to be putting Americans back to work, which by the way is the biggest single
step towards balancing the budget. If you go from 9.6% unemployment to 4%
unemployment, you take 5.6% of the country off food stamps, off unemployment,
off Medicaid, and you get them back to paying taxes, there is no single step
towards balancing the budget bigger than full employment. And that should be the
number one Republican goal. They should fight over it every single day. They
should fight over it with litigation reform, they should fight over it with
regulation reform, they should fight over it reforming the systems, they should
fight over it on taxes. But if you take the model, then it is fair to say that
the choice that we want to offer in 2012 is very straight forward. If you think
your children ought to have food stamps, you have a party you should vote for.
If you think your children ought to have a paycheck or own their own business,
you have a party you ought to vote for.
I believe in Texas, you can go into every neighborhood of every ethnic
background, and you can say would you rather have your children have food stamps
or paychecks, and by 80% or better in every neighborhood, theyfre going to say,
gYou know, I really like that paycheck idea.h Now thatfs the courage we have to
have, is to be clear about it, to be disciplined about it, to mean it, and then
to go out and tell everybody, we want them to have that kind of a future.
When I describe replacement, I think there are five goals for replacement. I
will describe them very briefly and then take a minute on each one. The first
goal has to be to reassert and reestablish the American Exceptionalism.
The second goal has to be to commit ourselves to benchmarking China and
India, and undertaking the reforms necessary to be the most productive, most
creative, and most prosperous country in the world, because that is the base to
have a national security system that enables us to be the safest, and freest
country.
The third goal has to be to recognize that government has been the fourth
bubble after information technology in 1999, housing in 2007, and Wall Street in
2008. The government has to become dramatically smaller, dramatically less
expensive, much more decentralized out of Washington, and that every major
interest group, starting with the government employee unions, will fight
bitterly against that kind of change, and that we have to have the courage to
stand up on behalf of the American people, our children, and our grandchildren,
and the future of this country.
The fourth is we have to have the courage to tell the truth about radical
Islamists, and we have to have the courage to act on that truth.
And the fifth example is that we have to be prepared to say, with the deepest
of meaning, that we truly believe that every American is endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. And that we are determined to go into the poorest
communities, of every part of America, whether it is in the valley, the inner
city, poor rural areas, you name it. And we are going to change the culture, we
are going to change the bureaucracy, we are going to change the tax code, we are
going to do whatever it takes, so that every American is truly capable of
pursuing happiness as they have been endowed by their creator. And I believe,
the morning all Americans believe that we, as conservatives, are serious about
them having the right to pursue happiness. We will create a 70 to 75% majority
that will be staggering in the scale of it, and the reach of it, in the
neighborhoods we never thought we could carry, simply for a practical reason. We
can offer their children and grandchildren a vastly better future than the
bureaucratic welfare state of dependency, coercion, and ineffectiveness
(applause).
Let me go back to the very first principle. Ifm going to take a couple
minutes and appreciate your indulging me to do this because I think itfs so
important. And I want to start by saying my thinking was very dramatically
changed when my wife Callista and I did two movies. The first was gRonald
Reagan: Rendezvous with Destinyh and the second was gNine Days that Changed the
Worldh.
We set out to do a film about Reagan and in the process of doing the film,
and itfs frankly a pretty good film because you put Reagan on the screen for a
while itfs inevitably pretty good. And as we were doing it, we went to Europe
and we interviewed Lech Walensa in Gdansk, Poland, the electrician who became
the head of Solidarity and ended up as the president of Poland. And then we went
to Prague and we interviewed Václav Havel who was the poet and playwright who
spent three years in jail fighting for freedom, ended up as the president of
Czechoslovakia. And we asked each of them, gWhat was the decisive moment in
breaking down the Soviet Empire?h We thought wefd get a great Reagan anecdote
and they surprised us. Both of them said you know it was a year and a half
before Reagan was elected, in June of 1979 when Pope John Paul II went back to
Poland for a nine day pilgrimage. And what happened was that the Polish people
were reminded of the depth of their Christianity, they were reminded of the
depth of their national identity. And the Pope convinced them of two things.
The first, the phrase that marked his Papacy, gbe not afraid.h And they took
seriously being not afraid. One of them says in our movie suddenly it was the
government who was afraid because the people werenft. And second, the Pope said,
gFreedom is based on faith and no government has the right to come between any
person and God and you can shelter under the cross and the government in the end
can do nothing to you because Christ is there.h Itfs a remarkable period. My
wifefs fatherfs family is from the Krakow region and shefs very devout and sings
at the Basilica. And this was too much for her. We had to do this. We had to do
this film, gNine Days that Changed the World.h And two things came out of it.
One was this marvelous moment. It turned out that the bishops who distrusted the
Soviet TV system had given out cameras. They had hundreds of hours of footage
that had never been seen before and they allowed us to mine it and get really
great shots. And it turned out that the first day the Pope arrives in Warsaw, he
holds Mass in Victory Square and three million people show up. And as one of the
Poles says in our film, gwe looked around and we suddenly realized there are
more of us than there is of the government . Why should we be afraid of them?h
Now remember, this is a government which prohibited praying in school, tore down
crosses, and in which it was safer to be an Atheist than a practicing Christian.
I know itfs hard for you to imagine a government like that (laughter).
The second thing that came out of it, as we were studying this and trying to
understand it, the Poles spend ten years, literally ten years, June 2, 1979 the
Pope arrives, June 4, 1989, first free-election in Poland. Itfs an amazing, ten
years. And by the way, five months after the Polish elections, the Berlin Wall
falls. Polandfs the first country to have a free election in the Soviet Empire
and five months later the Berlin Wall falls, the empirefs collapsing.
Because theyfre fighting a dictatorship, which can lock them up, it can beat
them up, it can kill them, they use subtlety, so, they put signs in store
windows that say, gFor Poland to remain Poland, two plus two must always equal
fourh. And I get fascinated with what were they getting at? We actually got a
copy of one of the signs. And at American Solutions, we created a bumper
sticker. Itfs bold, itfs out on the edge (laughter), I think, and Ifm quite
serious about this, I believe this is the most important governing slogan of the
next 25 years. The reason I believe it is, gtwo plus two equals fourh allows no
ground for situation ethics. This is a truth. gTwo plus two equals fourh no
matter your ethnic background, gtwo plus two equals fourh whether youfre happy
or unhappy. Now it leads- we began to research it- it leads to some fascinating
places. Camus wrote, in his novel The Plague,gThere are times when a man can be
killed for saying etwo plus two equals fourf because the authorities canft stand
the truth.h That got us so fascinated, Callista and I recently released a movie
which I think will eventually be extraordinarily important, called gAmerica at
Risk: The War with No Nameh.And your Texas Congressman Lamar Smith is in the
film, and for 90 seconds he asks the Attorney General whether or not he thinks
therefs any connection between terrorism and radical Islam, and if you watch
this 90 seconds, I mean it is painful! If you watch the President two days ago,
failed to explain jihadto kids in India, itfs painful! These are people who have
to lie to themselves about reality, for in their world, two plus two equals
whatever number it takes to avoid facing the truth. So this is a big deal!
George Orwell wrote in 1984,and he said this, hefs a left-wing intellectual, he
said, g1984 is about the danger of centralized bureaucracy.h I mean, if you want
to know why the EPA is wrong, why the entire Justice Department is wrong, why
the IRS is wrong, read 1984.Orwell said, Orwell pointed out, it doesnft take
place in Moscow, it takes place in London! His point is a democracy can create
bureaucrats who then destroy freedom in the implementation. You look at
Obamacare and then you read Orwell and you understand. And he has the state
terrorist say to the innocent citizen, if the state tells you two plus two
equals four, it equals four. I mean, if they say it equals five, it equals five.
And if the state says it equals three, it equals three. And the citizenfs
thinking, gBut what if it equals four?h And he decides hefs tired of being
tortured, so he just doesnft say anything. Well, you look at Henry Waxmanfs
reaction to AT&T telling the truth about the cost of Obamacare, and you will
understand entirely what Camus and Orwell are saying.
Now how does that apply? First, American exceptionalism. This is the most
important argument of the next twenty years and it is the centerpiece of the
future of this country, and it will allow you to go into every neighborhood in
this country and win an absolute majority. And itfs very simple. And the
President, by the way, showed last year in Europe he didnft have a clue. He was
asked in a, in a press conference in Strasberg, gWhat do you think of American
exceptionalism?h And his answer was, gWell, you know, Ifm sure that the British
think theyfre exceptional, and the Greekfs think theyfre exceptionalh, which is
nonsense! American exceptionalism is a specific reference to a fact, like gtwo
plus two equals fourh. Not a theory, a fact. It is a fact, that the founding
document of the United States of America, a political document, The Declaration
of Independence, says, gWe hold these truthsh, not this ideology, not these
principles, not this theory. gWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equalh and gthat they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.h
Now I want to drive home and I hope the legislators are here will go back to
the legislature next year and will insist that every year from K through 12 and
every year at state colleges and universities, students will spend at least one
full day on the Declaration of Independence, because (applause), because it
poses for the National Education Association, the simple clear question, gHow do
you explain Creator?h gHow do you explain unalienable rights?h Founding Fathers
are clear about this. The Founding Fathers believed, this is why itfs American
exceptionalism, itfs the only country in history that says, gPower comes from
God, to each one of you, personally. You are personally sovereignh (applause).
You loan power to the state. The state does not loan power to you, it is the
oppositeof Obama-ism. Now, it goes on to say its gunalienableh, that means no
judge, no lawyer, no bureaucrat, no politician can alienate your from your
power. It then says, what are the rights? gLife, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.h Two key parts about pursuit.
First, happiness in the Scottish Enlightenment, which is where Jefferson got
the phrase from, I actually, at the Library of Congress saw the book he took it
from and the underlining in his own personal library, happiness meant gwisdom
and virtueh, not ghedonism and acquisitionh. The Founding Fathers all believed
that only a wise people could remain free. That a foolish people would
inevitably end up in a dictatorship.
The second, notice that it says gpursuith. Therefs no provision in the
Declaration of Independence for an entitlement to happiness. Therefs no
provision for a Department of Happiness (laughter). Therefs not provision for
happiness stamps, so that the under-happy can be compensated (laughter). Therefs
no provision for the right to sue if youfre unhappy (laughter). And therefs no
provision for a politician to walk in and say, gI am taking from the overly
happy to redistribute to the underly happy (applause and laughter), and thatfs
why Obama-ism is a fundamental, radical break from all of American history and
represents some weird combination of academic theory and European
secular-socialism. But then that leads us to core values. Because American
exceptionalism means the work ethic, which is why I believe we should replace
all unemployment compensation with a training program that says, gIf you canft
find a job, we will help you, but in return for the help, you must take a
course, you must acquire skills, you must do something, we will give no one
money for doing nothing. (applause)
Our second goal, its pretty simple and straightforward, benchmark China and
India. Simple model: Volvo is a Chinese company. Jaguarfs an Indian company.
They believe they can pursue happiness, theyfre rolling up their sleeves, they
want to come play. The correct answer is to roll up our sleeves. Itfsa little
pathetic, frankly, to watch the President of the United States go around the
world saying, gYou know the Germans and the Chinese ought to quit being
competitive ecause itfs too hard.h Thatfs the wrong answer. The right answer is
replace trial lawyers with entrepreneurs, replace bureaucrats with small
business leaders, focus on an education system that works, you know, adopt a
principle, for example, in Detroit and elsewhere, that the primary purpose of
the school system is not to pay the union members, the primary purpose is to
educate children. Itfs a bold, itfs a radical, itfs sort of outside the box
model (laughter), but, if we go back, if we take seriously competing with China
and India, we will be the dominant country on the planet for the next hundred
years. If we donft have the courage to compete with China and India, we will
rapidly cease to be safe and will rapidly cease to be free.
I do not want my two grandchildren, Maggie whose 11 and, by the way, is in
the Nutcracker Suite this year doing a great job at the Fox Theater in Atlanta,
any of you have friends in Atlanta, go to the Fox Theater, youfll see Maggie
there. Anyway, Maggiefs 11, Robert is 9. I donft want them to grow up in a world
in which Chinafs the leading country. I donft trust the Chinese autocracy.
I donft believe it is safe for our freedom, and that means if you want
American national security to be number one, you better want American use of
science and technology, the American economy, the American manufacturing base,
and that means all you have to do is reform seven areas: litigation, regulation,
taxation, education, health, energy, and infrastructure. You reform those seven,
piece of cake, we got it done, thatfs a fact. (laughter and applause).
This goes back to gtwo plus two equals fourh. I donft believe you can make a
business case, you can avoid any of the seven areas and compete with China. And
Ifm personally prepared to go to the country and say, everybody who thinks we
ought to relax and let the Chinese be dominant youfre on that side of the room,
everybody whofd like America to compete and be number one, youfre on this side
of the room, I think we win that 80-20 or better. But we have to have the
courage to make the case.
The third challenge, governmentfs too big, too expensive, too in debt, and
itfs not going to want to change. The interest groups wonft want to change, the
government employee unions donft want to change. Scott Walker, the new governor
of Wisconsin had the greatest phrase, he said, gWefve entered an era, a period,
where the government employee unions are the haves and the taxpayers are the
have-nots.h Now, in a free society, that wonft last very long, because there
ainft enough of them to dominate us. And that requires the courage to say, you
know, that periodfs over, and I hope that the House Republicans will pick
up.
In the article I saw yesterday, when the federal employees are paid as much
more than the average taxpayer as they are, the time has come to have a deep and
meaningful conversation about compensation. I think, for example, you can solve
much of the post officefs problems if you simply start hiring new postal workers
at a market wage and you find the market wage easy. You advertise for vacancies
and find out what people show up for and youfll find out itfs about a third of
the current cost. And I think we just have to be honest and clear about this and
I also hope the House Republicans are going to move a bill in the first month or
so of their tenure to create a venue for state bankruptcy, so that states like
California and New York and Illinois that think theyfre going to come to
Washington for money can be told, you know, you need to sit down with all your
government employee unions and look at their health plans and their pension
plans and frankly if they donft want to change, our recommendation is you go
into bankruptcy court and let the bankruptcy judge change it, and I would make
the federal bankruptcy law prohibit tax increases as part of the solution, so no
bankruptcy judge could impose a tax increase on the people of the states
(applause).
The fourth area of change, the fourth goal I take in some ways is the most
difficult. We are in a war which is fully as dangerous as the Cold War. If our
enemies get nuclear weapons, we will lose cities. If our enemies learn how to be
more sophisticated, we will suffer horrendous casualties. And I first wrote
about terrorism in 1984 in a book called Window of Opportunity. I first dealt
with terrorism in 1979 as a freshman when the Iranians seized the American
embassy. Remember, that in Mark Bowdenfs book, Guests of the Ayatollah,which is
about the Iranian hostage crisis, his subtitle is gIranfs first Actions in the
War Against America.h The current Iranian dictatorship in its mind, has been at
war with us for 31 years. There are today between fifty and one hundred thousand
missiles, in South Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, aimed at Israel. We have no
understanding of whatfs coming. We are living in a foolfs paradise with an elite
that is hiding, I mean, it makes ostriches look like wise owls (laughter). They
live in a fantasy world. I say this, Ifm the longest serving teaching in the
senior military. I served on the Defense Policy Board, I started working with
Armyfs Training and Doctrine command in 1979. I grew up in the US Army. I have a
deep, passionate concern about the survival of this country. We have an
administration which canft even tell the truth about who our enemies are. The
terrorist who was arrested in New York for trying to build a car bomb for Times
Square was asked by the judge at the sentencing, how he could do this, since he
has sworn an oath of allegiance to the States for his citizenship? And the
terrorist stared at the judge like he was crazy. And he said, gYou are my enemy!
I lied!h
Now that is so hard to get across to the Attorney General, and frankly itfs
so hard to get across to John Brennan, the National Security Advisor to the
President, and apparently so hard to get across to the President, who lives in a
fantasy world in foreign policy. He goes around the planet saying things that
are patently untrue. And whatfs really dangerous, and what Ronal Reagan once
said, gWhatfs really frightening is that they actually believe things that
arenft true. And they act on those beliefs.h And wefre faced with a long, long
conflict. And a hard conflict. And as I said, Callista and I just did a movie
called gAmerica at Risk: The War with No Nameh. I believe that we are not going
to have a success in three years, or five years, or ten years, which means we
better rethink places like Afghanistan to make them sustainable. Wefre not, this
is not World War II, wefre not going to mobilize and win in three years. And so
we better figure out, whatfs the right strategy, how do we bring our power to
bear, how do we defeat our opponents? And we havenft even begun that
conversation.
We are where the United Nations, the United States was between 1947 and 1950,
when we were first coming to grips with the Soviet Union. But thinking that
through and getting that done, and making sure that we understand our enemies,
and we defeat our enemies, is central to the survival of the United States and
that has to be one of the top five goals.
The last one I want to go back to for a minute because itfs so central, both
to our health as a country, to our majority as a movement, and to our
responsibility as people of faith. We owe it to every citizen in America, to
find a way to help them live in a country, where they truly have been gendowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rightsh. I am sickened by how our
prisons currently work. I am appalled at neighborhood with drive by shootings. I
am personally enraged by schools which protect bad teachers that destroy
students. And I am infuriated by local politicians who kill jobs, impoverish
neighborhoods, and preside over the devastation of people. We have to take the
moral commitment to help every single American of every ethnic background truly
have the right to pursue freedom, and, (applause) Ifm sorry the right to pursue
happiness, and we have to have the moral courage to go into every community and
have the argument. And the morning, every community believes conservatism is
about them, as Jack Kemp used to say, gThey have to know that you care, before
they care that you knowh. The morning people believe we are serious about this,
the world will change for a half-century or longer, and we will be the natural
governing majority of America (applause).
Let me close with this comment, and Ifm partly inspired to do this because of
conversation I had the other night with James Robison. Obviously, Callista and I
in the near future, are faced with some very big decisions. But I would ask you
to pray not for us, bur for our country. What really matters isnft the two of
us. What really matters is each one of you. If we become, once again, the
America, you know, it wasnft Washington at Valley Forge, there were 14,000
people who had the courage to be with him. It wasnft Washington the year before,
who crossed the Delaware, there were 2500 people, a third of whom didnft have
boots. They had wrapped their feet in burlap bags and they left a trail of
blood. Itfs not the leader, itfs the community. If we can arouse the community
of faith, the community of belief, a community of patriotism, then the job
Callista and I will have to do is very easy. And if we canft, then our jobfs
hopeless. So I hope, as you think about tonightfs message, youfll think at the
bottom of your heart, of your own family, your own loved ones, and your country,
what it is we have to do, so that we can bring America back to the country it
should be. Thank you (applause).