Fighting the Enemy of Socialism
Delivered at the Kokomo Tea Party
Kokomo Events’ Center, Kokomo Indiana
January 26, 2010
Thank you, Matthew, I appreciate that, very much.
Uh, it’s great to see so many fellow “mobsters” here; I didn’t know what kind of crowd we’d have this evening, uh, with the weather, but uh, I think that everyone has shown that, uh, we’re all pretty dedicated to this cause.
Uh, Matthew, I didn’t get the, uh, dress code memo, or I would have been in my Colts’ gear like you and, uh, Kenlyn and Deb as well, but uh, you guys forget to send me that memo, so – OK.
A few days ago, I was talking to my cousin, who lives in San Antonio, and she was telling me that she had recently attended a Tea Party there in San Antonio, and the guest speaker was Glenn Beck, so I told her, well, now I understand why, why she enjoys living down there so much – she attends a Tea Party and she gets to listen to Glenn Beck; the folks here in Kokomo attend a Tea Party, and they have to listen to me, so – that’s the way it goes; we all know life’s not fair sometimes, but uh, look at it this way: it’s evenly unfair for all of us. I know you’d rather have Glenn Beck – and I’d like to have Glenn Beck’s money, so that’s the way it goes. (laughter)
Never the less, it is a tremendous honor and a privilege to be invited to speak here this evening. And it’s an honor and a privilege because of what this TEA party movement’s all about. We’re part of a growing movement across his country to rise up to one of the greatest challenges our county’s every faced. And throughout our history, Americans have always risen to the challenges they’ve faced. From those men and boys who fought for American independence in the Revolutionary War, to those men and boys who fought to preserve our Union during the Civil War. From World War I through Desert Storm, and now to those men and women who are fighting the war on terror, Americans in uniform have risen to the challenge of protecting our freedom and our way of life for over 230 years, and those of us who have never had to fire a shot for our country owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to those who have. (applause)
But it’s not only those in uniform who have risen to the challenges. It’s also the spouse who’s been left at home to take care of the family; it’s the child whose parent’s been deployed for over a year, and it’s the parents who’ve had to say “goodbye” to their child, not knowing whether or not that child would ever return home safely. All of these, too, have always risen to the challenges.
Americans, both black and white, who risked their lives to run an Underground Railroad so that a slave would have an opportunity at freedom, millions of Americans across this country who have given money, food, and supplies to those in a city that’s been devastated by a hurricane or to those in a country that’s been devastated by an earthquake, and the dozens of Americans who have done the same thing for a family in their local community whose home’s been destroyed by a fire. All of these have always risen to every single challenge that’s come along.
And now, here you are. You and millions like you across this country, who are rising to a new challenge, the challenge of facing a new enemy – not one invading from a foreign country, but the enemy of socialism rising up, right here from within our boarders. That’s the challenge that we face in America today. (applause)
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson had just finished writing the words of the Declaration of Independence, and the Second Continental Congress had just approved the final version of that document, and for the first time we read these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
From those words it’s very clear that our Founding Fathers believed that each and every one of us have been given certain rights, not by government, but by our Creator, Almighty God. (applause) They then listed what they must have considered to be the three most basic of those rights: the right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to pursue happiness.
Our founders then went on and said, “That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the purpose of government. Today, I hear all the time debate about what is the true role of government, what’s the proper role – yet there it is; it’s already written in the Declaration of Independence: the purpose of government is to secure the God-given rights of the people, yet our government, for over 30 years, has failed to secure the most basic of all human rights, the right to life, for millions of Americans who have had their lives taken from them before they had a chance to be born, (applause) and too many have turned and looked the other way …none of my business, doesn’t affect me, I’m only one person, what can I do about it?
But we’ve forgotten that when the rights of one group of individuals are trampled upon, it’s only a matter of time before our own rights are also trampled upon, and now we see that our government not only is failing to secure the second of our most basic rights, the right to liberty, but now they’re actively involved in taking away our freedom, but ladies and gentlemen, we’re no longer looking the other way; we’re no longer looking the other way because we understand that when freedom is taken from us, there will be no pursuit of happiness, and Americans are not going to allow that to happen -- And that’s why you and others just like you in cities, big and small, all across this nation are standing up and saying, “Enough is enough!” (applause)
I’d like to tell a little story, if you’ll allow me to. This is a true story. It’s a story about my family and about a small Eastern European country – Romania. (audience: “woohoo,” laughter) We’ve got some good Romanians right there in the front row. I brought my fan club. But more importantly, this is a story about what’s great about the United States and about what we can never allow to happen here.
In the early 1900’s, my great-grandfather owned a small farm in Romania. He didn’t have a lot of money; he was able to take care for his family, and that’s about it. But he wanted more for his family – and it was a growing family; he had a wife and two small daughters, one of whom would later become my grandmother. And because he wanted a better life for that family than what he was able to provide in Romania, he did what so many others around the world at that time did — he left his country, and in his case he had to leave his family as well for a time, and he went to America.
And he arrived at Ellis Island, and he was processed through all the proper paper work – he was a documented immigrant (applause) – and eventually, eventually, he ended up in Indiana. And when he arrived here, he found work, he found a place to live, he worked and saved until, in 1920, after eight years he was able to have his family join him in his new county.
I can’t imagine what that must have been like for my great-grandfather -- to leave your, leave your country, to go to a foreign country, to leave your family behind for eight years, but he knew that that was the only way he would ever be able to provide what he wanted to provide for that family, so he did what he had to do.
And when his wife and daughters joined him in his new country, they all worked hard; they all learned to speak English; they all became United States citizens. (applause) Eventually, both of his daughters owned their own homes and raised families of their own; in other words, every one of them carved for themselves a little piece of the American Dream.
And that’s what’s great about this country. Because of the freedoms we enjoy, every one of us can carve for ourselves a piece of the American Dream, and everyone who wants to come here from another country, and who wants to do it the right way, and who wants to obey our laws, and who wants to become a part of our society can carve for themselves a piece of the American Dream as well. (applause) But what we cannot do is we cannot allow that dream to be taken from us.
Do you remember that little farm that my great-grandfather left back in Romania? When he left, that farm was given to one of his nephews, and that nephew stayed there for many years and farmed that land – his land, until one day, sometime after World War II, the Communists came and took over the government of Romanian, and then they took the land. After that, he continued to farm the land, but he no longer owned it. He and all the other farmers then farmed that land as part of a collective farm, and everything that they produced belonged to the government, who kept whatever they wanted, and then what was left was spread around evenly among the workers. And it didn’t matter how hard an individual worked on that land; he only could receive no more than what the government allowed him to have because they were “spreading the wealth around,” – to quote the words of our current President. But it wasn’t wealth that was being spread around; it was poverty and destitution, because that’s all that’s ever left when government controls the means of production. (applause) END OF PART 1
Now I’m not suggesting that here in the United States we’re headed directly toward Soviet-style communism, although there are some who would suggest that maybe we are. I do know, however, that we’re headed down a very dangerous road toward a place that I don’t want to go, and a place that I don’t think many of you want to go either -- and that road is the road to socialism.
And I realize that there are some differences between socialism and communism, although over, over history, many have used the terms almost interchangeably, and some believe that socialism is nothing more than a “transitional” stage between capitalism and communism. However you want to look at it, one thing’s certain, and that’s that socialism and communism are based on some very similar philosophies and ideas.
That being said, all Americans need to be aware of what’s happening in our country right now. And I’m not talking only about the policies of our current President, although he’s certainly taken us much further down this road than we’ve ever been before, but we need to understand that we did not just begin to travel down this road since the last election. We’ve been traveling down this road for many, many years, and over those years there have been many people whom we could have and should have been listening to. Some of them were socialists and communists themselves, predicting what would one day happen in the United States; others were former communists, and even patriotic Americans warning us about what could happen if we didn’t pay attention.
Norman Thomas was one of the socialists who predicted what would someday happen in our country. Norman Thomas was an American socialist. He ran for President six times on the Socialist Party of America ticket. The current website of the Social Democrats, USA tells us that Thomas predicted what would happen when he said, "The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be socialist and not even know how it happened." (applause)
Ronald Reagan called that “creeping socialism,” and it’s evident today that socialism has, in fact, been creeping into our society for over 60 years. Since 1935 government programs have been enacted to provide: retirement income and supplemental security income, unemployment insurance and cash welfare payments, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, Medicare prescription drugs, school breakfast, school lunch, after-school snacks, public housing assistance, home weatherization assistance, telephone assistance, energy assistance -– and that’s just to name a few.
Some argue that if we were truly Christian, we wouldn’t mind paying higher taxes so that the government could fund more of these programs to help the poor. Ladies and gentlemen, don’t fall for that argument. That’s an argument designed just to guilt us into accepting of the very political philosophy that’s gotten into this mess.
Fred Thompson said it best, I think, when he said Christ didn’t tell us to go to the government and pass a bill to take care of some of these social problems; he told us to just do it. (applause) Charity is not when you take somebody else’s money, by force, and then use that to help those in need. Charity is when we use our own money, voluntarily, to help those in need, and the fact of the matter is many of you here and many in the in the Tea Party movement across this country are some of the most charitable people in the world. We just believe that we know better than government what constitutes a wise and charitable use of our money.
For example, our government recently spent 6 point - or sorry, sorry -$2.6 million of our tax money to find out whether consuming alcohol on the job increases the spread of AIDS among prostitutes in China. Does that sound like a wise and charitable use of our money? We spent $400,000 to study risky sexual behavior among gay men in bars in Argentina. Does that sound like a wise and charitable use of our money? (audience: “no”) We give $350 million every year to Planned Parenthood. This is an organization that performs over 300,000 abortions per year. That’s over 800 abortions every single day. Does that sound like a wise and charitable use of our money? (audience: “no”) Our government’s spending nearly $3 million to finance "green and efficient buildings" in China, $53 million on ACORN. They’ve spent over $100,000 to study the use of ecstasy, LSD, and other “party drugs” in Brazil, $200,000 for a tattoo removal program in California, and they spent $100 million on flight tickets that they never used and never bothered to collect a refund for, even though the tickets were refundable. Does any of this sound to you like a wise and charitable use of our money? (audience: “no”)
Norman Thomas’s words seem almost prophetic, because Socialism has, in fact, been creeping bit by bit into our society, and once these entitlements become enacted, we become dependent on them, and we don’t want to give them up, and then the socialists have us right where they want us. And ladies and gentlemen, I hate to say it, but we’re almost there. Last year a Rasmussen poll indicated that only 53% of all American adults now believe that capitalism is better than socialism, and among adults under the age of 30, that number is only 37%.
So how did we go from a country that believed in individual responsibility and individual freedom, that hard work and perseverance were the keys to success, and that, as John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address, the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God? How did we go from that to a country were a sizable proportion of our population now believe that socialism is better?
Part of the answer, of course, is that so many of our citizens have become dependent on these government programs that I mentioned, and upon others just like them. I’m not saying that any of these programs, in and of themselves, are necessarily bad, or that those who enacted them were insincere in their intent, or that there’s never a need for assistance. But too many of these programs have gone far beyond their intended purpose of providing temporary assistance, to the point of destroying individual incentive and ambition.
Abraham Lincoln once said, “You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
The intent of these programs might have been to help lift the poor up out of poverty, but instead most of these programs have sentenced the poor to a lifetime of poverty, and now we have, in some cases, several generations of families who have known nothing other than government assistance.
But it’s not only the growing dependency on these programs that get - that has gotten us to this point. There’s something else going on, something much more subtle that we need to be aware of.
Some of you may be familiar with a man by the name of Yuri Bezmenov, but if - for those who are not, let me give you a quick little background. Yuri Bezmenov is an ex-Soviet KGB agent who defected to the West in 1970, not because of any mistreatment that he, personally, had suffered under communism; Bezmenov said that he never, he never suffered from Communism, that he’d - most doors were open to him because he was the son of a high-ranking Soviet military officer. Bezmenov’s reason for defecting, he said, was what he called moral protest against the “inhuman methods of the Soviet system.”
So Bezmenov defected in 1970, and then in the 1980’s, he began to give a series of lectures and interviews on what the Soviets called “ideological subversion.” This was a type psychological warfare used by the Soviets in attempt to gain control over Western Society.
Bezmenov explained that this process was divided into four stages. The first stage was a very long stage; it was called “demoralization,” and it took from 15-20 years. The question is: “Why so long?” Listen carefully to Bezmenov’s answer to that question. He said that the process of demoralization took 15-20 years because that was the “minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy…” And when Bezmenov said educate, he was not talking only about our public schools and universities, although that certainly was a part of it; he said that he was also talking about the destruction of traditional moral values; in fact, he said most of the demoralization process was done by Americans to Americans because lack of moral standards.” Think about what we learn from Hollywood, from the music industry, from overindulgent sports stars, and other cultural icons. We certainly have had a lack of moral standards for a long time in this country.
In addition to the lack of traditional moral values, Bezmenov, of course, was also talking about what students learn in our public high schools and universities. In too many of these institutions, self-esteem is taught instead of personal responsibility; effort is rewarded instead of results; and students are taught to question authority rather than to respect it. Bezmenov pointed out that those who were educated in the 1960s are the ones now in positions of power, and that these people have been programmed to think and to react in a certain way. To them, he said, true information and true facts no longer matter.
Now, let me ask you a question: have you ever had a discussion with someone about a current issue, and that person just seems incapable of comprehending common sense and logic? I think many of us have had those discussions, and it’s always perplexed me: a person who you know is a highly intelligent person, yet they can’t seem to recognize facts when they’re right in front of them. Some of these people vote on emotion, often times for a candidate who represents the antithesis of everything that voter even believes in. It doesn’t make any sense, but maybe this process that Bezmenov has talked about helps to explain at least some of that. END OF PART 2
To turn things around, Mr. Bezmenov said that we needed another 15-20 years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded, common sense Americans. Unfortunately, he was saying these things in the 1980s, and instead of 15-20 years of educating patriotically-minded, common sense Americans, we’ve had another 25 years of the demoralization process.
So now, another generation has been educated to believe that America is the cause of most of the world problems: melting polar ice caps, world poverty, AIDS epidemics in Africa, drug violence in Mexico, and terrorism worldwide – it’s all America’s fault. Capitalism is evil, and the government should take from the rich to give to the poor. These are the – are the lessons that two generations, now, have been taught in this country.
I mentioned that Bezmenov explained that ideological subversion is a four-stage process, and I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about each stage, but let me just quickly mention the other three, and see if you recognize any of this in our society today.
The stage after demoralization is destabilization. This stage takes only 2-5 years, and what happens here is we see “the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideas” in key areas such as economy, foreign relations, and defense.
The third stage is called crisis. Bezmenov said it may only take up to six weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis. So what do you think? Did the rapid financial meltdown of 2008 qualify as crisis?
VIDEO SKIPS THE FOLLOWING WORDS: (The final stage is called “normalization,” and we reach this stage with a sudden change) of power, structure, and economy. If the financial meltdown of 2008 was the crisis, I think we can safely say that the November election of 2008 was, indeed, a sudden change of power. Barack Obama campaigned on hope and change. And the change that he’s given us is a $1.4 trillion debit – deficit, a $12 trillion debt. He’s given us the threat of cap-n-trade legislation that would cause energy prices to skyroc, and – skyrocket – and the looming healthcare bill that would represent the greatest government takeover of our economy in history. And ladies and gentlemen, make no mistake about this: the real goal of healthcare legislation is uni - single-payer, universal healthcare. We have video of Barack Obama saying, “I happen to be a proponent of single-payer, universal healthcare.” Now he tells us that he never said he was a single-payer supporter. Evidently, when Barack Obama talks about the “audacity of hope,” what he means is that he has the audacity to hope that we’ll believe him when he says that he never said what he said, even when we have video of him saying it. (applause)
So I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that we certainly are in a period of a sudden change of power, structure, and economy. What we see in our society today is pretty strong evidence that Yuri Bezmenov knew exactly what he was talking about.
And that being the case, we’d be wise to consider what else he had to say in terms of what it would take to turn this country back around, and the first thing he said is that we need to return to traditional moral values. Now for our friends who want to start shouting, “separation of church and state,” he didn’t say to try to force anybody to convert to any religion; he did not say to create a theocracy. We’ve never had a theocracy in this country, but we’ve also never until recently seen the attacks on traditional morals that we’re seeing now. This country was founded on Judeo-Christian values, and upon the principles based upon those values, and as Bezmenov once said (applause) - as Bezmenov once said in one of his – in one of his lectures, “Society will stand on faith in God. Without it, society will crumble.”
In addition to returning to moral values, Bezmenov said we also need to promote patriotism, work ethic, and all traditional national values. He said we need to elect “responsible,” not “charismatic” leaders. And finally, he said that we need to educate ourselves and to understand the real danger from the socialist state that we’re now facing.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would say that it’s not going to be enough to educate ourselves to the danger; we’re going to have to also educate our friends and our neighbors so that they, too, understand the danger.
For example, how many of our friends and neighbors do you think knew before the last election that Barack Obama was endorsed in his 1996 run for the Illinois State Senate by an openly socialist political party; or that many of his mentors and advisors and political supporters are self-declared socialists and communists? These are - these are documented facts, facts that nobody in the mainstream - mainstream media wants to report, but they’re documented facts just the same.
Someone once said that the definition of insanity is to continue to do what you’ve always done and expect different results. Well ladies and gentlemen, we cannot continue to do what we’ve always done. We have to return to traditional moral values. We have to educate ourselves, our families, friends, and relatives so that they, too, understand the danger that we now face.
We cannot continue to elect the same leaders that we’ve always elected just because we recognize their last name or because they can give a good speech; we have to look at what they’ve actually done in office. (applause) Do their records match their rhetoric, or do they talk about Hoosier values at home and vote - vote the party line when they get to Washington?
We can no longer allow disingenuous politicians to betray us with false promises that they have no intention of keeping. If they’ve truly been representing our values and our will, then by all means, put ‘em back in office. But if not, it’s time to show ‘em the door, and to elect someone who has the courage and the integrity to truly represent our will and our values. (applause)
And folks, if the people of Massachusetts can do that, so can the people of Indiana and every other state in this nation. (applause)
We have to build on the momentum that’s been generated so far by the TEA party
movement, because it’s easy to get excited about a cause for a short period of time; it’s much more difficult to endure the hard work that follows, but endure we must until the battle is won.
In 1863 Abraham Lincoln stood on a field in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of one of the great battles of the American Civil War. Those who had fought at that place, he said, had “nobly advanced” the cause of freedom, and it was up to those still living, to “highly resolve” that those who had died advancing that cause “shall not have died in vain.”
Ladies and gentlemen, today freedom is once again under attack, this time by a new enemy, and that enemy is socialism. The battle rages on, not with guns and cannons, but with ideology and legislation foreign to the American way of life. You and I and millions like us across this country are the soldiers in the trenches, and the battle will be long and difficult. It won’t be won’t next week or next month or next year, but we can gain small victories, day by day; and we can gain a tremendous victory when we vote next November; but even then the battle will continue. It‘ll continue through the 2012 elections, and probably beyond.
Ladies and gentlemen, the work has already begun. Over the course of our history, more that a million Americans have died to advance the cause of freedom. It’s up to us, again, to “highly resolve” that those who have died advancing that cause “shall not have died in vain,” and that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Thank you very much.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
