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Thank you Mike Long and thank
you ladies and gentlemen.
Charles Edison was a man of
great personal integrity, a governor, a Secretary of the Navy, a man
who revered the U. S. Constitution.
He once said that the central
tenet of his political philosophy was that "the states of the Union
must be preserved as vigorous democracies…They must be laboratories
where political statesmen can learn the business of government."
Amen! I know I would have
liked this man. I came out of one of those laboratories and I
consider it a very high honor to receive this prestigious award named
in his honor.
It is also a great personal
pleasure to be with all of you, my friend the governor for whom I have
such a high regard and Lt. Governor Donohue.
I have a thing about
lieutenant governors. I was one for sixteen years.
I used to have what I called
the lieutenant governors handshake. When I shook hands with my
governor I'd extend two fingers up his cuff just a little and take his
pulse.
Both the governors I served
with were healthy as horses, and I pray this one is also.
Mike Long, you are a dear and
cherished Marine Brother - Semper Fi. You have a lot of guts to bring
someone in here with this accent. You folks may not believe it but I
can actually take you to a place in the United States of America where
everyone sounds just like I do.
I feel a closeness to this
group. We're all conservatives. We don't exactly hie to the two
party lines.
When I was up here, peddling
books, you were kind enough to invite me to meet and speak briefly
with you. I admired the camaraderie. I loved your spirit.
Then, I saw many of you again
at the recent Conservative Union dinner in Washington, D.C. and I'm
delighted to be with you tonight even if I do have to rush away to
catch a plane to fly to Paris to be with several of my colleagues and
President Bush for the 60th Anniversary of D-Day.
But before I go, I do have a
few things I want to say about out country, our armed forces, our
President for whom I have so much respect. We served together as
governors. And yes, I want to say a few words about his opponent, -
a man, I also know well - who seems to be doing a Michael Jackson
moonwalk in this campaign.
You know what I'm talking
about? It's sort of a gravity-defying thing: he looks like he's
vigorously moving in one direction, but, in reality, he's gliding in
another.
When the President came to
office, the economy was already taking a turn for the worse. Job
growth was slowing down. The stock markets were moving in the wrong
direction.
"Strong medicine" was
needed. The first dose was a tax relief plan designed
to jump start our economy be getting money out of Washington, D.C.,
what I call the National Center for Redistribution in the Potomac, and
into the pockets of the workers and the small business owners who
earned it.
I was proud to be a co-sponsor
of those tax relief plans, which lowered the tax bills for 11 million
taxpayers - including 25 million small business owners.
We've had ten
consecutive quarters of economic growth. And in the last
three-quarters the economy has been stronger than any three
consecutive quarters in nearly 20 years.
Jobs are coming back, too.
More than 1.1 million jobs have been created since August, and more
are on the way. Home ownership is the highest ever. Manufacturing
activity is picking up.
George W. Bush has done an
outstanding job shepherding our economy through tough times. On the
other hand, John Kerry's plan for the economy is tax, spend and
redistribute income.
This economic recovery has bee
spurred on by lower taxes. Kerry's higher taxes would
stifle economic growth and take money out of people's pockets.
There once was a candidate who
said he wanted "to feel your pain". Now, we've got a candidate who
wants to "steal your gain".
I'm old enough to remember
when both Democrats and Republicans did what was
necessary to keep America safe and the world free.
It was a strong bipartisan
commitment. Back then, it was said partisanship stopped at the
water's edge. No more. I'm sorry to say, no more.
Today's National Democratic
Party led by Al Gore, Howard Dean, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry see
America as an occupier, some kind of Darth Vader military empire
trying to colonize people.
They believe any nation that
would ally themselves with America is as John Kerry has put it part of
"a coalition of the coerced and the bribed". That's disgraceful.
Kerry's voice may
roar with the force of the late George C. Scott…but he uses the
weasel words of Michael Moore.
Yes, the Lieutenant
John Kerry did in Vietnam is to be praised and we should thank him for
it. But not his shameful record on national Defense as a U. S.
Senator.
When he came to the Senate
almost 20 years ago his first great foreign policy cause was
the "nuclear freeze," challenging Sam Nunn over the funding of
research into missile defense, which, of course, Kerry wanted to cut.
It only got worse. Much
worse. Senator Kerry went on to vote against every single major
weapons system that won the Cold War.
He voted to cut or de-fund the
B-1 Bomber, the B-2, the F-15, F14-1, the F-14D, the Harrier jet, the
apache helicopter, the Patriot missile, the Aegis air-defense cruiser,
the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the Trident Missile.
This man NOW wants to
be the "Commander-in-Chief of the U. S. Armed Forces, armed
with what, spitballs?
This man wants to be the
leader of the free world. Free for how long?
I believe the greatest lesson
of history is that there is always - always - that ongoing struggle
between tyranny and freedom. And one must always make a choice
between the two.
It always exacts a terrible
toll, but when freedom wins, it also often results in the most
glorious of payoffs.
It was true as far back as 490
BC. The citizens' soldiers of ancient Athens, Greece, turned back on
the plains of Marathon a Persian army three times as big and much
better equipped.
And a man named Phidippides
ran the 26 miles back to Athens with the news of the great victory.
Marathoners still run that
distance, but a far greater significance of this battle was that free
men defeated the hired soldiers and slaves of a king.
And this victory led the way
to Athenian democracy and all the good things that came with it --
individual rights, trial by jury, freedom of speech.
The glorious payoff also was
true that April day in 1775, when the local militia of the American
colonists stood up to the British Redcoats at Lexington and Concord
and fired the shot heard 'round the world.
Two weeks later, George
Washington took command of the Continental Army against the tyranny of
George III.
The payoff was gloriously true
in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln made his famous address at that
Gettysburg ceremony where 7,000 men had died and their bodies lay
rotting for months after the battle.
President Lincoln's few words
explained better than anyone else ever has what the Civil War was all
about.
"A test", Lincoln called it,
"a test of whether a new nation conceived in liberty," -- conceived in
liberty - "can long endure."
It was true in 1917, when
within just a few months more than a million Americans volunteered to
fight the Germans in World War I and turned the tide from possible
defeat into an allied victory on the Western front.
My father was among them. He
died when I was two weeks old.
I never knew him, but I can
remember wearing his coat with those sergeant stripes on it when I was
so young; it dragged on the floor, and my arms did not extend more
than halfway down its sleeves.
The glorious payoff was true
that late spring of 1940, because of that one single strong voice, a
magnificent and eloquent voice that would not let up in his opposition
to Adolf Hitler, as evil a man as ever lived.
Winston Churchill repeatedly
warned against the dangers of the appeasement and pleaded that the
evildoer be toppled and destroyed. But nobody would listen.
Until, finally, when just
about all of Europe was gone and only Britain was left, in
desperation, England then turned to Churchill as their prime
minister.
And with stirring oratory and
unflinching courage, he led them out from under the heel of Hitler
during Britain's finest hour.
I had come to believe that
unless American found its own versions of Winston Churchill, that the
same spirit of appeasement, the same kind of softness and
self-indulgence was turning my country into a land of cowering
before the world's mad bullies.
For years, terrorists
had been killing Americans and striking at American interests
around the world. Each and every attack was met with a totally
inadequate response.
Is it any wonder that
the terrorist thought American would never fight back? For
years we had been sending them an engraved invitation to attack us.
Finally, and unfortunately, they accepted.
America was blessed that
George W. Bush was leading America exactly when we most
needed a steel spine in the White House.
He immediately took the
fight to the terrorists, cleared out their base of operations in
Afghanistan and toppled one of their biggest fans in Iraq.
The President recognized that
at a time when terrorists are growing bolder, we had to change the way
the government fights the terrorists thereat.
He created the Homeland
Security Department, the modern day equivalent of the national
security reorganization that President Truman undertook at the
beginning of the Cold War.
It was not easy. Even
after terrorists had attacked our nation and killed our citizens on
our own soil, my democratic colleagues seemed more concerned about
protecting old union rules than giving the President the flexibility
to respond to a national emergency.
I signed on immediately, but
every other Senator on my side of the aisle had the opposite view on
it.
For eleven votes, 112 days, I
was the lone Democrat to stand with the President.
The other Democrats, including
Senator John Kerry, stalled it for four long months - at a
critical moment for America's security.
But President Bush hung in
there tough and finally, after the 2002 election he won approval of
the Homeland Security Department.
That's what this race
will come down to on November 2nd. Which candidate
has the consistency, the steady resolve, and the firm
conviction to lead America in a time of war?
I also gave the President my
full support for the regime change in Iraq. And at that time, I told
this true story to my colleagues:
I was doing some work on my
back porch in Young Harris, Georgia, tearing out a section of old
stacked rocks, when all of a sudden, I uncovered a nest of copperhead
snakes. Now, as you may know, a copperhead is poisonous; it will kill
you.
It could kill one of my
grandchildren. It could kill one of my four great grandchildren who
play around there all the time.
And, you know, when I
discovered those copperheads, I didn't call my wife Shirley, like I do
about everything else. I didn't ask the city council to pass a
resolution. I didn't even call any of my neighbors.
I just took a hoe, chopped
their heads off, and killed them dead as doorknobs. Now, I guess you
could call it a unilateral action. Or maybe a pre-emptive strike.
I took their poisonous heads
off because they were a threat to me, and they were a threat to all I
hold dear. And isn't what this is all about?
One of our goals in invading
Iraq was to demonstrate to rogue dictators everywhere what their fate
might be if they pursued such a policy. Kadhafi got the message. He
"got religion" right quick. And I have no doubt others of his ilk
ultimately will also.
Of course, it's not easy. It
is horrible. "War is hell" to quote a general named Sherman who came
marching through Georgia in 1864.
Winston Churchill, who knew
war as few men have, called war "squalid" and Abraham Lincoln was just
as blunt and just as realistic. He once said, "you don't fight a war
by blowing rosewater through cornstalks."
Churchill and Lincoln, each
the greatest man of his century knew well the horrors of war. But
they also knew that war is sometimes necessary, that there is more to
civilization than just comfortable self-preservation.
There are some of our citizens
who believe war is politically pointless and that foreign policy is
just some kind of fuzzy-feeling social work. I reject that.
Sometimes, a short war must be
fought to prevent a longer war. Sometimes, hundreds must die in order
to save thousands. Sometimes, the long view of history must be taken.
Make no mistake about it: we
are fighting another one of the great battles for human freedom. And
its outcome could well determine how this world, especially that
critical part of the world, is going to look for a long, long time.
In my Senate office in the
Dirksen Building in Washington, I have a three-by-five foot painting
of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. I had it behind my desk at
the state capitol in Atlanta when I was governor.
To me, that image of six men
raising an American Flat on Mt. Suribachi in one of the bloodiest
battles ever fought is one of the worlds' most vivid symbols of the
price of freedom.
Those flag-raisers were very,
very young men. They were just bouts, really, from all corners of the
country.
There was a coal miner's son
from Pennsylvania; a tobacco farmer's son from Kentucky; a mill
worker's son from new England; a dairy farmer's son from Wisconsin;
one came out of the oil fiends of Texas, and one was a Pima Indian
from a reservation in Arizona.
Three of those boys would
never leave that island and would be buried in that black volcanic
ash. One would leave on a stretcher.
And two would come home to
live miserable lives of drunkenness and despair.
As one looks at this photo,
this image of courage and sacrifice - I hope you can see it in your
mind and remember that photo. When one looks at it, it is easy to
miss what I consider to be the most important thing about it.
There are six boys in it, but
unless you look very, very closely, you see only five. Only a single
helping hand of one is visible.
Most significantly, they are
all virtually faceless. If you are like most Americans who have
looked at this famous scene time and time again over the past six
decades, you may have missed that: You cannot really identify a
single face.
But isn't that really the way
it has always been with most of freedom's soldiers -- unknown and
all-too-often unappreciated, faceless, nameless grunts who fight our
wars to keep us free?
I cannot help but wonder --
where do we keep getting these marvelous young men and women? Where
do they come from?
It's amazing that our country
produces these young warriors when we consider how many d not have
this kind of love for country nor a willingness to die for it.
In the long course of world
history, freedom has died in many ways. Freedom has died on the
battlefield; freedom has died because of ignorance and greed. But the
saddest death of all is when freedom dies and no one cares.
As Americans, as lovers of
freedom, we must not allow that to happen.
We owe it to those who bore
the burden and paid the price before us --, to those who are doing it
now --, and to those who will come after us.
I believe that the next five
years will determine the kind of country that my four grandchildren
and four great grandchildren -- and your children and great
grandchildren -- are going to live in.
The hard lesson of history
demonstrates all too clearly what disastrous results inevitably
follow when we don't have a strong Commander-in-chief. It is
crucial.
I'm on my way to celebrate the
60th anniversary of D-Day. Stephen Ambrose wrote a great
book about D-Day. H uses his last couple of paragraphs to relate the
story when General Eisenhower was interviewed on Omaha Beach by Walter
Cronkite, 20 years later, in 1964. Here's how Ambrose tells it and
how I want to end these remarks.
"Looking out at the
Channel, Eisenhower said, 'You see these people out here swimming
and sailing there little pleasure boats and taking advantage of the
nice weather and the lovely beach, Walter, and it is almost unreal
to look at it today and remember what it was.
'But it's wonderful thing
to remember what those fellows twenty years ago were fighting
for and sacrificing for, what they did to preserve our way of life.
"not to conquer any
territory, not for any ambitions of our own. But to make sure that
Hitler could not destroy freedom in the world.
Eisenhower continued, 'I
think it's just overwhelming. To think of the lives that were given
for that principle, paying a terrible price on this beach alone, on
that one day, 2000 casualties.
'But they did it - so
that the world could be free. It just shows what free men will do
rather than be slaves.'"
Thank God for Freedom's Soldiers.
God Bless our President and God Bless
America." |
