The Eve of the American Reawakening
The following is an excerpt of a speech that Rep. McClintock
delivered to the Council for National Policy in Washington DC.
Click here to read the entire speech.
To those who say we should put the Reagan era behind us – I
have a better idea. Let's put the Bush era behind us.
To those who say we should redefine our principles, I have a
better idea: we don't need to redefine our principles; we need
to return to them.
To those of the Republican establishment, who misled our party
for years, who dismantled so much of what Ronald Reagan
accomplished and now tell us "the other side has something"
and we have nothing. To them I can't improve upon Cromwell's
words: "You have sat here too long for any good you have been
doing; it is not fit that you should sit here any longer. You shall
now give way to better men. Now depart and let us have done
with you, I say, in the name of God, GO!"
"The other side has something and we have nothing?"
What is the something the other side has – that some say we
have to be respectful and mindful of?
Statism. Shortage. Paternalism. That's their "something" that
seems to so overawe and over-impress these scions of a failed
party establishment.
Statism, Shortage and Paternalism is what we are told to be
mindful and respectful of? I don't think so.
Their statism is "something" so extreme that the entire national
debt accumulated from the first day of the George Washington
administration to the very last day of the George W. Bush
administration will literally double in the next five years and
triple in the next ten.
The tax increases already proposed to support it will rob every
family of more than $2,500 from its purchasing power every year.
We're supposed to respect that? The American people don't
respect it. The American people know that you cannot spend
your way rich; that you cannot borrow your way out of debt
and you cannot tax your way to prosperity. And they know
that if you live well beyond your means today, you must of
necessity live well BELOW your means in the future. And
that's not a future we want for our children.
Their entire policy is predicated on maintaining shortages of
everything from health care to energy and then using the force
of government to ration that shortage according to their own
whims. The "something" that they propose to solve their
government-induced shortages is having bureaucrats tell us
what medical treatments our kids may have and when they
may have them; raising energy prices until we bicycle to work;
telling us what kind of light bulbs to use, where to set our
thermostats, when to use our appliances.
And then there's Paternalism. That's what Rick Santelli was
talking about. When your neighbor buys the house he can't
afford – it's now your job to pay his mortgage. When the
fraternity brothers of Paulson and Geitner party their
investments into the ground – now it's your job to cover
their losses. When the reckless country-clubbers of General
Motors and Chrysler give away the farm to the UAW – now
it's your job to make up the difference, and by the way, now
it's Barney Frank's job to tell you what kind of car you may buy.
That is the "something" that seems to send these self-described
"New Republicans," into paroxysms of awe and policy-envy.
That's the "something" that some people are so deathly afraid
of saying "NO" to. Churchill said, "Alexander the Great
remarked that the people of Asia were slaves because they
had not learned to pronounce the word "NO." Let that not
be the epitaph of the English-speaking peoples or of
parliamentary democracy ... There, in one single word, is
the resolve which the forces of freedom and progress, of
tolerance and goodwill, should take."
What is the "nothing" that we have that so dismays and
disgusts these same messiahs of mediocrity – this "nothing"
that's convinced them that we must wean ourselves from our
unseemly nostalgia with such irrelevant has-beens as
Reagan, and Lincoln and Jefferson – I add the others because
they stood for exactly the same principles as Reagan.
We stand for freedom.
We stand for abundance.
We stand for individual responsibility.
Freedom. Abundance and Responsibility. That is our platform.
Those who call that "nothing" are the same failed leaders who
disdained it during the Reagan years and dismantled it as soon
as the Reagan years were over.
They stand for statism. We stand for freedom: The God-given
right to enjoy the fruit of our own labor; the right to raise our
children according to our own values; the right to express our
opinions and our faith freely and without reserve; the right to
defend ourselves and our families; the right to enter into
voluntary associations with each other for our mutual
betterment without an army of busy-bodies telling us what
is best for us.
They stand for the rationing of shortage. We stand for
abundance: what happens when free men and free women
enjoy the liberty to go as far as their desire, talent and
imagination can guide them and as far as their labor,
industry and enterprise can take them. Societies prosper
when freedom protects the rights of each of us to decide
on our own what we will produce and what we will consume.
Government exists to protect the conditions that produce
abundance, not to ration shortages that government has caused.
They stand for paternalism. We stand for personal responsibility.
That means you stand by your promises. That means you tell
your customers the truth about your products and investments.
It means if you bring a child into the world then by God you look
after that child. And it means if you make a bad decision, you
set it right and you learn from it – and you realize that the bad
decisions we all make from time to time is the price we pay for
the freedom to make all the good decisions in our lives.
Freedom. Abundance. Responsibility. Ladies and Gentlemen,
that ain't "nothing." That's everything.
Click here to read the entire speech, "The Even Of The American Reawakening"
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