Keynote Address
Speech by Pat Buchanan to the Christian Coalition Convention September 9, 1995, Washington D.C.
Text obtained from the Christian Coalition web page (url: http://www.cc.org)
Body of Speech (in progress) "...they'll humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear them and forgive their sins, and I will hear....valid land." So we need to do more than win an election, or win a House, or win the Presidency, my friend, we need to make this beloved country of ours, God's country once again! My friends, there are other differences where I have disagreements with my friends and rivals: I'm the only candidate in either party to have opposed NAFTA, and GAP and at the World Trade Organization and the whole New World Order! Let me talk; let me speak about those issues. People ask why I oppose NAFTA. We predicted what would happen: Mexico devalued the peso last year, as a result, a trade surplus of $1 billion has become a trade deficit of $15 - 18 billion. 350,000 American jobs will be lost this year. Illegal narcotics are pouring into this country, poisoning the souls and poisoning the bodies of American children. Illegal immigration is soaring, and you and I have been placed on the hook for $50 billion in loans and loan guarantees to the corrupt government in Mexico City. Now for whose benefit those $50 billion in loans - it wasn't for the American workers - it wasn't for the people of Mexico who have been robbed again and again by that government - it was to enable the government of Mexico to pay off Citibank and Chase Manhattan and Goldman Sax - they're holding all those bonds! You know they call me a "protectionist" - that's one of the nicest things they do call me. I don't think there's a name in American politics I haven't been called. But they say you're a "protectionist", well the truth is, when I oppose NAFTA, I did want to protect the wages of the American worker and American workers from being forced into competition with Mexicans who have to work for fifty cents or a dollar an hour. I lost that battle - and we lost that battle. But look who they did protect. They did protect the big banks in New York so they would take no losses on their bad bonds. They did protect Goldman Sax. They did protect all those people who make the big corporate contributions, who have their hooks in both parties. Well, I don't need their money, my friends, and I want to give my word to those fellows who think they have such a sweet deal - when I get to the Oval Office, I will cancel NAFTA, and there will be no more $50 billion bail-outs of socialist regimes anywhere in the world! They say "why did you oppose GAP?". I'll tell you why - very simply, I think it's un-American to force a single mom in a textile mill making $10/hour to have compete with Chinese sweat shop labor that has to work for 25 cents/hour. That is just wrong. What are we doing to own people? The median income of working people in this country has gone down 20% in 20 years. Kids graduating from high school, now, can expect an income of 25% below what they could when I graduated, if they go out into the job market, and they want to get married. What are we doing to our brothers and sisters? We read yesterday Brown Shoes is going to shut down 2,400 manufacturing jobs - gone. I was out in Red Oak, Iowa, a tiny town, being interviewed by a young lady, who said "You know what's happened to the plant down the road, Mr. Buchanan - the Eveready Plant? They're shutting it down - 300 jobs gone." It's a dead town. I said "Where have they gone?" "Oh, they think they can get better deal over in Singapore." What are we doing to our own country, my friends? My mother grew up in a town on the Monogahale River called Shellroy - iron and steel. Four of her brothers went off to World War II, one of them came back with a silver star and he doesn't have a leg now. But when they came home to those iron and steel factories, suddenly they found themselves undercut by iron and steel from Germany - produced by martial plan factories - so those towns are ghost towns all along the Mon (sic) River. Take the City of Detroit, my wife's hometown, it's like Beirut. I read a story just today, a friend of mine - a columnist, he said "his father ask his brother, 'Won't you drive us back into town? Let's go take a look at the house we grew up in'. He said they got about a mile away from that house, and the brother had tears in his eyes and said 'I don't want to see it' because that's a bombed-out, gutted city that used to be the forge and furnace of the arsenal of democracy." So that's why I oppose GAP, and I oppose it for another reason: We have got to stop these endless surrenders of American sovereignty on the alter of this New World Order. You know, when I had a conference last year, about the time of this conference, up in Boston, my wife and I went out to Lexington and Concord and stood on the green, and we went over to Concord Bridge, and you can not see that scene without it bringing tears to your eyes, as you see those kids who stood in that square as the greatest army in the world marched down the road right at them - and cut them down. Then the British marched over the Concord Bridge and ran into some tougher fellows - some farmers and their older brothers, and they stopped them cold. And those men told the British, "On this continent, and in this country, we will be sovereign here. Here, the people will rule." We're not going to take dictation ever again from foreign countries, London or foreign capitals; so what are they doing surrendering our sovereignty to a World Trade Organization where we get one vote out of a 120 and Fidel Castro can cancel America's vote? The Constitution gives the authority over trade to the Congress of the United States. What are we doing surrendering that authority? Look how far we have gone my friends; look how far we have gone! When those sixteen Americans died in that helicopter crash, shot down by "friendly fire" in Iraq, the Vice President of the United States issued a formal statement in Marakesh, he said "the parents of these young Americans can be proud, they died in the service of the United Nations". They didn't sign up to fight in blue helmets, they didn't take an oath to the United Nations, they took an oath to you and me and to the Constitution of the United States, and when I get to the Oval Office, never again will young Americans be sent into battle, except under American offices, and to fight under an American flag! Let me tell you something else. American taxpayers are never again going to pay for a crazy conference like that idiocy that's going on right now in Beijing! Can you believe this? Can you believe that UN report? They said there aren't two sexes - there are five genders. They started with heterosexual, I followed them there; they went on to homosexual, I was slowing down; they said "transsexual" as the third one; I don't understand the last two. I'll tell you this: God created man and woman. I don't care what Bela Abzug says! You know people say, "Pat, what is this New World Order - you and Pat Robertson got some kind of conspiracy theory? What's this all about?" Well, let me tell you what it's all about. You know, before I ran for office, I had a small party at my house, a small group of friends that helped in '92 came over. One of them had on a bracelet - one of those POW bracelets - I said "you're still wearing that, huh?" He said "Yes". I said "Let me see it." So, he took it off, and he showed it to me. I said "Where did you get this?" He said "Oh, they sent it to me, I've worn that one a long time." The name on the bracelet was Captain Humbert Bersais - only I knew him as Rocky Bersais - I knew him in high school - I was a year younger than he. He was a tough kid. I knew him when he was fifteen years old, and ten years after I knew him, the Viet Cong took him out in the jungle and executed him because he had been captured, he was an advisor with another American hero, and that hero had escaped, so they executed Rocky Bersais. And then, three weeks ago, I picked up the paper, and I saw with the World Bank, whose loans you and I guarantee, was making a low-interest $265 million loan to Hanoi. So that means Rocky Bersais' mom is guaranteeing the loan to the people that murdered her son. That's your New World Order, my friends. Let me say to its architects, and its acolytes, whether they're in Tokyo, or New York, or Paris, or Geneva - when I take my hand to take that oath of office, you're New World Order comes crashing down! Let me talk now about this issue that has been tabled before the American Nation, the issue of immigration and illegal immigration. Let me begin by saying that the Mexican people, who make up most of this illegal immigration, are good people, and are hard-working people, and they've been dealt badly by their government. But we have a problem on our border, Ronald Reagan said "A country that can't defend it's borders, isn't really a country anymore." Every year 1 - 2 - 3 million people walk across our borders - some of them commit crimes, 25% of federal prisoners are now illegal aliens, some of them go onto welfare, and they're bankrupting states, like California, others of them take jobs, at any wages they can get driving down the wages of American workers. My friends, we have got to put a stop to illegal immigration. And so, I promise you - I promise you, the people in this city are too timid and frightened to do what the Constitution tells the Government to do, which is to protect the states of the Union from foreign invasion, and I will build a security fence along our Southern borders and stop this illegal immigration - cold! Well people say "Well, maybe you can stop it, maybe you can't - but look what happened with Proposition 187. As soon as they passed it with 60% of the vote, a federal judge got up and threw it out - said 'You can't do that. I don't care if the people voted for it - I've decided you can't have Proposition 187.'" Well, let me tell you, I've decided we've got to do something about these arrogant federal judges. And, as you might imagine, I have an idea. In the Constitution of the United States, the Supreme Court is set out constitutionally. But all the lower courts, the federal district courts, and the federal appellate courts - they are creations of Congress - so Congress creates those courts, and can set the conditions of the judges. So I say that before my first term ends, there will not only be term limits on members of Congress - there will term limits on every federal judge in America! Thank you. You know, people in Washington ask "Where can we cut this federal budget, Pat? How do we cut it?" The answer is there. We were given the road map by the founding fathers - it's called the Constitution, it's called the Tenth Amendment. Let's take, for example, the U.S. Department of Education. Now this little beauty spends 6% of the education budget for primary and secondary schools, and hands down 55% of the mandates. One of the things they did before George Bush left office was send $2 million to the University of California to prepare guidelines on America's history for American children from 5th grade to 12th. What did the guidelines come back with? There was no mention of Paul Revere's ride. No mention of Robert E. Lee. One mention of U.S. Grant. No mention of Thomas Edison. No mention of the Wright Brothers - invented the airplane - one of the great moments in American history. No mention of Jonas Salk - a man who did wonders for my generation: he cured polio. I grew up, I knew kids who that had polio, and I knew what the terror in the mother's eyes when they heard about that, and Jonas Salk did that, and they don't mention him. But there are 17 mentions of Klu Klux Klan. The people that right these histories despise America's history, and they've got an agenda that is to inculcate and indoctrinate America's children in their contempt for America's past. That's what they're trying to do. They're trying to make the children and grandchildren of this generation - they may look like you - but they're going to think like them when they grow up. That's what it's all about. But I'll tell you, we don't need some miserable, secular, humanist in sandals and thieves at the Department of Education telling us how to educate America's children! So let me make you one solemn promise: if I am elected, we will abolish Goals 2000, we will abolish outcome, and we will shut down the Department of Education and send the money back to the states and the people! You know, it's a fair question to ask our Republican Congress, "Why haven't they de-funded this monster already?" Take that question to them. You know, I've been talking there about those standards in history and that deals with a subject that I raised at Little Convention three years ago, in Houston. I spoke in Houston that first night, and I spoke after. I didn't think anybody's was going to remember what I said there, because I spoke after Alan Keyes, the great speaker, and I spoke before the great communicator himself, so I said I'm going to get my message out, and I'm getting out of here - because they aren't going to remember what I said. Yeah, they do! They remember what we said, because we said there's a cultural war going on for the soul of this country - and there is, my friends! What are its aspects? Listen, when we see God and the Bible, sources of morality expelled from the public schools, and the Playboy Magazine and the condoms brought in, that's part of this cultural war. You know when we see Easter give way to Earth Day, that's part of this cultural war. Did you see what happened out in California? The National Education Association - California Branch does not mention on its calendar of important days Christmas or Labor Day, but they do set aside December 29th to recall the Battle of Wounded Knee, and October 11th for something called National Coming-Out Day. Now, Ralph, I don't think that refers to debutantes! This nonsense is part of this cultural war. Look what they're doing to this country, my friends. You know, even on Custer's battlefield, they had to change the name of that! I asked a liberal friend "Why did you have to do that? I mean that's where the 7th Cavalry fought to a man and died to a man. It's where Custer fell. Why did you have to take his name off the battlefield?" And this liberal said, "Pat, the Indians didn't like Custer." I said "I know that, that's why they shot him full of arrows." Well, what is going on in this country when we allow them to take and trash our history and our past, well we're going to fight this battle with a glad heart, my friend. You know when I was growing up, right down - not far from here - I grew up in this City of Washington, the greatest hidden secret of American politics is that at ten years old, I used to deliver the Washington Post. They still owe me money. They still owe me money! But I was saying, when I grew up as a little kid, it was Washington's Birthday was a day when you could go downtown and sleep out in front of a store, and they had sales, and for fifty cents or a dollar you could buy TV sets - first three people in. Look what they've done! Washington's Day doesn't exist. It's become President's Day when we can all pay homage to Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Bill Clinton. When I get there, it's Washington's Birthday all over again folks! You know, in closing, let me talk about one more issue, which is dividing and polarizing this country. That's this issue of Affirmative Action. And people ask me, "Why do you oppose it, Pat? Do you not agree that black folks are still subject to discrimination?" And the answer is: they are subject to discrimination, and I agree that they are. But race-based discrimination is wrong, and Affirmative Action is Government-enforced race-based discrimination, and therefore, it is wrong. You know, you do not change the evil character of a racial quota by changing the color of the victim and the color of the beneficiary. Justice Scalia, one of the greatest men in our government, wrote a recent opinion, he said "in our Government's eyes, we have only one race here, and that is Americans." You know when those 260 Marines died in Beirut on that horrible morning, we-all woke up to see them taking the bodies out, reports didn't say, "so many African-American Marines died, and so many Catholic Marines died, and so many Jewish, and Moslem and Hispanic Marines died", they said 260 Americans were killed in this terrorist atrocity. If we can be unified in death why, in heaven's name, is it people, can't we be unified in life? So let us together, try to bury this false notion of hyphenated Americanism, and let us become again - or become as we should be - a land of equal justice for all, and special privilege for none. In closing, let me just say this: my friends, we are closing the threshold of a new millennium and a new century, I want to lead this country, but I can't do it without your help, but I sure can't do it without God's grace. So I'm asking for that help, and together, my friends, in the words of Micah, "Let us go forth from this place to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God" for the time is not far distant when we are all going to have to gird ourselves and take that long march up to Armageddon to do battle for the Lord. God bless you all and God bless America!