The choice that we face today is between freedoms on the one hand, and ruin on the other.
There has never been a generation in our history that has been given
more than the generation which was born between 1945 and 1960.
They were given so much by their hard and hardy parents, who by
fighting through a real economic depression and a great world war,
helped bolster freedom for the free and bequeathed freedom to millions
of others who lived in the twilight of tyranny.
I call these sons and daughters of what we know as the Greatest
Generation, the Entitlement Generation, these people born between 1945
and 1960.
Many of them literally do not know where they are going or even why,
they just know that whatever they have, they deserve it. Whether they
built it or not.
And unfortunately they are the ruling class today. They are squandering our birthright.
In the 1960s they told us all we had to do was tune in, turn on and
drop out, do drugs and love each other and in foisting this false
religion on others they decimated an entire generation.
In the 1980s they discovered Wall Street and gave us junk bonds,
worthless paper backed by no credit whatsoever. It was a kind of a
dress rehearsal for what they did to the housing market in the last
twenty years.
In the 1990s they gave us “feelings” with Jerry Springer, and Oprah
and a president whose only restraint against the expression of his
feeling was the clasp of the zipper on his pants. And several, great,
big credit-enabled asset bubbles.
This is the Entitlement Generation that now governs us.
And the choice they have given us is between freedom on the one hand and ruin on the other.
Formed by the Great Depression, hardened in the fires of the Second
World War, when humanity as Eisenhower said, “hung on a cross of iron”
their parents bequeathed to them an America that guaranteed or fought
for freedom for literally billions of people in the last 70 years.
We do it today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Great Britain, Germany,
the Ukraine, Georgia, Australia, South Korea, Poland, Israel, the
Philippines and all of the western hemisphere.
Yet today in President Obama, this Entitlement Generation has finally
found their god, as he goes around the world and apologizes to others
for the freedom we protect and prints more worthless paper and empty
digits backed by no credit that we now call the dollar bill.
Tell me what nation in history has done more than we have in the cause of freedom and prosperity?
1000 years from now historians will write still about this Great
America; this empire of the free that often endured the unendurable so
others could be free.
But what will they write in our next chapter?
Will they write how instead of merely going into debt, this Entitlement Generation put us in bankruptcy?
Will they write about how this Entitlement Generation gave us so much
equality that hate crimes legislation guaranteed that some were in our
society were finally, unalterably more equal than others.
Or that under this Entitlement Generation wise Latina women finally
got a chance to fix our country after 230 years of misrule by dumb white
men?
I know plenty of wise Latina women. But the wisest of them all
understand what our Founder’s knew: Government serves as a reverse
barometer to our greatness.
I do know that whatever historians might write, it will just be a
paraphrase, a summary of the sum of actions taken or, if the case may
be, not taken, by people just like you reading these words.
Everyday institutions that we have come to count on are being
attacked by a new Social Democrat party lead by Pelosi, Reid and Obama; a
party that’s more European than it is American. This, even as Europe
collapses under the failed math of socialism.
Bedrock conservative -and American- principles like, smaller
government, free markets and a strong national defense are being
replaced by social experimentation, huge government spending and
appeasement.
And united as conservatives, we can’t let that stand.
I attended the CPAC convention in DC in February of 2009, right after Obama’s coronation.
I was amazed at the energy at the convention. Here the country had
suffered this grievous defeat; the media was telling everyone that
Ronald Regan conservatism was dead.
Newsweek even published that outrageous magazine cover with the line: “We’re all socialists now.” Do you remember that?
But there at CPAC was a group of patriots, who knew that the cause
was not dead, that the fight was not over and that the battle had just
begun. They knew then what most realize now: That this emperor has no
clothes.
So I got to speaking to a young liberal reporter who had been sent by
his elite eastern editor to CPAC to make fun of conservatives. For the
reporter it was his first real job. And he told me he was amazed by the
energy in the various events; by the determination and the zeal he saw
written on every face.
He expected gloominess.
He told me: “I expected that this would be your Valley Forge. This would be your hardest winter.”
And I laughed.
I said: “This is why you’ll and your liberal friends will never understand America.
“You see Valley Forge and you see privation and hunger and want and
death. And you want a government that’s going to protect you from that. I
see Valley Forge and I see hope and bravery and courage and freedom.
And I want a government that’s going to allow me to take that risk.”
“You say that the worst thing for you is hunger. But I say ‘death before dishonor.’”
I have faith in my fellow countryman. They’ll take action.
That’s why you’re here reading at Townhall Finance.
If this were literally Valley Forge, it would be your bloody
footprints that would be trailing in the snows.
That’s why it’s
difficult to write here today and ask you to do more, when you’ve done
so much for the country already.
But there’s work to be done and if you don’t do it, who will?
Al Gore and the unions will. That’s who.
Because the choice, my friends, is between freedom on the one hand and ruin on the other.
And if you don’t do this work, who will?
Thanks to all of you, God bless and keep our country strong.
