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Our brave reader drpatois transcribed Sarah Palin's speech at the CSU Stanislaus gala. The transcript is in "Palinese" because it was the only way drpatois could face the task without going completely ga-ga. A bit of humour is always helpful on these occasions.
Thank you so much! Thank you. Well thank you so much. Oh I so appreciate that warm introduction and I tell you what, you are a bold man. You are a bold man.
Um, I am so honored to get to be here and before we get started let me just get through some logistics really quickly. First, um, I got my water... do I have my straz? I want my straz. And I want ‘em bent, pleaz, thank you. At least that’s what I read in some of the lamestream media outlets. Is that I was demanding straz or some ridiculous thing. So, I’m just so glad that we got some of those con contractual demands out of the way and finally settled. I think though that my speaker bureau, Washington speaker’s bureau, I think that this is one of the toughest contracts I think that they ever ended up getting to sign. Um, they found it to be one tough event to sort out because it seemed to them they were negotiating with the entire state of California. And here you know, the rest of us looking in and kind of following what was going on with you know some of the shenanigans with like Jerry Brown and friends. Come on this is California; do you not have anything else to do? Goodness, gracious! Priorities!
And then though, you know I was expecting quite a few protests, protesters, I, I thought that, you know I’d get a little bit of the Ann Coulterism um, and I thought hey, that would be cool, I, love Ann Coulter, and more power to her as she goes on college campuses and she talks about America and American values and principles and what it means to be an American and I expected a little bit of that but it’s been nothing but absolute loveliness here in this part of California and I so appreciate the hospitality and again, I do appreciate your boldness thank you for the invitation!
What Sarah Palin saw of the protests
What she didn't see
In spite of some of the hoopla leading up to this dinner I am as I say extremely delighted to get to be here and be back in beautiful California and especially Turlock it’s gorgeous. And uh, relating to so many of you who are the family farmers in this part of the country, um, I have great respect for you in fact kind of in that same realm Todd and I we have a family commercial fishing business and that too is a business that you want to pass on generation-to-generation and Todd today he couldn’t be with me because he headed over to our fishing grounds this morning in Bristol Bay and that’s where he is but getting to speak with many of you today and hearing about you’re um, entrepreneurial spirit and your work ethic as you are raising your children to help take over some of the family farming business it’s very impressive and I’ve learned much about your business even in this day and I’ll never call an almond an almond again. I will call it an amen. Yes.
But that relationship and that connection with that family farming business and our own commercial fishing business that uh, has really made a wonderful connection and it’s good to be here in the home of the Warriors. I was raised a Warrior too, Wasilla Warriors is our mascot, so I feel that connection. And I was telling Willow about that and happy that my daughter Willow could get to be with me and, yes, my entourage is with me today, the one, the Willow, that’s, that’s, that’s what I got.
So it’s going to be funny as more of this contract business is being brought to court and what they’re doing whatever they’re doing as they look at what the demands were to put this event together I think they’re going to be really surprised that there not really being a there, there. There’s not a whole lot uh, of controversy I think involved in this and I’m just so happy that uh you uh stuck with this program, you stuck with this event and uh you didn’t cancel on me I appreciate it very much you guys. I do.
It’s evident that there is something special here there is something different and really I think it’s made manifest an event like this. I so appreciate it. Uh, the Golden State, always being nice to be here and uh always feeling such a connection here a special place in my heart is California uh because this is Regan country and YEAH and perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California’s Eureka College would become so woven within and inter-linked to the Golden State and it was here, that he, of course, that Reagan became famous as an actor and then distinguished himself as such a good governor and then launched his bid for President and then of course found his final resting place underneath the warm, blue, California sky.
And I thought of Reagan as I was preparing for this evening because of course speaking at a California University as I say, I figured that I’d probably have a welcoming committee of a lot of uh perhaps angry demonstrating protesters. Couldn’t help but remember that as governor of California Reagan too he had his share of confrontations with his state the college protesters from here and remember back then they’d call him a fascist, they called him an idiot, ah, but the Gipper he would return the compliment and he was never one to shy away from confrontation but he would return the compliment.
Uh, I read one quote from him in speaking about these protesters these um well they look like Tarzan they walk like Jane and they smell like Cheetah. So, maybe not a lot has changed in the last 40 years. Reagan liked to crack a joke or two about the college protests essentially because he recognized what they were protesting was differing views? And um, not wanting to maybe apply freedom of speech to those with whom they perhaps would be disagreeing but uh, he never failed to stress the importance of the education though that his students in the state that the students were receiving and I wanna talk about that tonight and again it being such an honor to be here with this organization associated with one of the most prestigious university systems in the nation and one of the largest in the world. Congratulations on your success and helping prepare our next leaders, the warriors that will be leading this nation. Congratulations on your success. And such a gorgeous campus. Gorgeous.
I’ve certainly been thinking a lot about this topic though, this teaching of the next generation. I want to talk about our civic education and how it touches upon the idills of our youth and the idills of our country and the topic came up for me some weeks ago when I was presenting a speech in Denver and I had the privilege following the speech of participating in a Q & A panel with two uh well respected radio talk show hosts Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager both very bold individuals and I have a lot of respect for both of them so I was pleased to get to participate. One question asked by the moderator, “If you could name a single threat to our society, one above all others, what would it be?"
And Dennis Prager was the first to answer this question. Now he could have chosen any number of important life or death threats to our country and our culture. He could have said greatest threat is our exploding national debt and the record setting deficits because this is where we’re going, this is, we’re putting our country on a path of insolvency and that’s immoral, that’s unethical, it’s wrong, it’s generational theft because we’re stealing opportunity from our children as we incur these great debts and we will be an insolvent country if we continue down this road. So, he could have said that um, and remind people that with this debt we are less safe and we are less free. Or he could have said that the growing threat to our energy security is the number one threat because Washington and it seems our President doesn’t understand the inherent link between domestic energy production and our own prosperity. Or energy and our freedom, energy and our security. There seems to be that missing link there in Washington not understanding. Or he could have said the international terrorisms attempt to destroy us both at home and abroad or to destroy our allies an, a consistent strong ally like Israel. A threat to that country.
Coulda mentioned that, but instead Prager looked beyond these immediate threats and he focused on something that would affect us all forevermore in a longer-term sense. His biggest fear he said “is that we’re not passing on what it means to be an American to this new generation.”
And I agreed with his concerns but I offered a caveat when it was my turn to respond. I had to ask then; recognizing that yeah we’re not doing as well as we could passing on what it means to be an American to the next generation but then how could it be if we’re not teaching the next generation what it means to be free and how important it is to be free? How then can it be that we have America’s finest with our thousands and thousands of young men and women who are choosing, as patriots, my own teenage son being one of them having chosen though never having tasted anything but freedom to join our United States military. Just kind of inherently knowing how important it is to fight for freedom and to protect our Constitution to know that America’s worth defending. They enlist then voluntarily in our U.S. military to defend freedom. And that is so encouraging.
So how could it be, it can’t be possible that we are losing this next generation, not when you see that proof of that acknowledgement of how important an American is and living that American idill is when you see who is enlisting in our military. Perhaps these kids and so many of them are just kids, perhaps they not being able to articulate what it is that instills in them this inherent belief that they need to protect the blessings of liberty. But they get it and thank God they get it and they’re willing to lay down their lives for us and lay it all on the line to sacrifice to deba, defend and to serve something greater than self. To defend the American idea of liberty. Thank God for these kids.
But even considering the example of young people like our servicewomen and our servicemen, Prager is right perhaps it is that we are not properly educating our youth in the exceptional nature of America and our liberty. It’s worrisome because this belief in American exceptionalism is something that every new generation has to make its own if we expect our Republic and our liberties to be secure and to live on. For America to survive, we’ve got to pass this on to that next generation. And to understand that we have to go back to the beginning of our Republic and to the heart of what it means to be an American and I do wish that we had a lot of time tonight to talk about a lot of examples that we could give of things we’re doing right bu things that we could be doing better we don’t have much time but I want to hit on this you see that most countries are accidents of history. Either wars of conquest or peace treaties things like that.
But America is different. We’re not the product of historical accident but of design. We’re the only country in history that was founded on an idill and that idill is liberty. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and among those life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the genius of our founding fathers is that they took that took what the Declaration of Independence called the laws of nature and of nature’s God and those laws that as the apostle Paul says are written on our hearts and these providential forefathers of ours they designed a constitution that enshrined them and allowed people to live within them and it’s an awesome gift given to us in this Declaration of Independence which really was a declaration of responsibility too and in our Constitution including the Bill of Rights.
There’s an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher, who’s a big fan of America, she was a good friend of Ronald Reagan’s remembering, she agreed with this enshrinement of God given liberty. It’s said that during a meeting about the British Conservative Party’s best course of action to take during an economic crisis in the seventies that she was arguing with some so called political pragmatist who was arguing in favor of a third way between free market capitalism and socialism and before he was even finished Margaret Thatcher reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty and she slapped it on the table and she says, “this is what we believe in, this Constitution of Liberty.”
And in that same way, every American should and could whenever she or he is challenged to define what America really stands for? That American should be able to pull out a copy of our very own Constitution of Liberty and say, “this is what we stand for, this, is what makes us different.” It’s the very thing that all of our politicians and our men and women in uniform, it is what they swear to uphold and to defend and it’s the glue that holds us together as Americans as we strive for a more perfect union. But something seems to be missing and especially it seems like in this last year or two something’s missing in this more enlightened day I guess some people want to consider this day.
But here’s the crux of the issue, it’s what Dennis Prager was trying to get at. The Constitution has giving (sic) us an amazingly valuable governing principle and institution that this Constitution provides us with, checks and balances and limited government with enumerated powers and an independent judiciary and states rights as protected under the 10th amendment. But those principles, that are enshrined, hmm, are still the best possible protection against tyranny. They’re not enough in and of themselves to assure the survival and the success of liberty or the survival of our country. There have been other countries that have sometimes managed to kind of live by essentially the same laws of nature that America has that we enshrined in our founding documents.
Countries have tried to copy our Constitution and our institutions but if you think about it not all of them are still free today. But it is human nature to want to be free. People living in these countries, they so want to be free. Countries that have tried to copy what it is that America does but they haven’t been successful. In all countries, even in the worst tyrannies you’ll find people courageous enough to stand up for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And it is in this striving that helped bring down the Berlin wall, remember, and it made one brave man stare down a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square and it brought thousands of people onto the streets of Tehran to defy the unelected dictatorship of their country. What a contrast, by the way, between the ultimate sacrifice, made about a year ago, about a year ago. Made by the beautiful young Iranian woman Naija (sic) Soltan (Neda Agha Soltan). She was shot through the heart and bleeding to death on the streets of Tehran while demonstrating for her FREEDOM! And for women’s rights, for equal rights.
What a contrast between her and the students, or the political operatives anyway, maybe not students necessarily. Here. Who spent their valuable precious time diving through dumpsters before this event IN ORDER TO SILENCE SOMEONE WITH WHOM THEY PREJUDICIALLY THOUGHT THEY WOULD MAYBE DISAGREE WITH! WHAT A WASTE OF RESOURCE. Now a suggestion for those dumpster divers. Instead of trying to tell people to sit down and shut up maybe you tell, spend some time telling people like our President to finally stand up and speak out for those like Nadia (sic) her, as she sought her freedom. She was willing to die for it and to speak about perhaps the brutal, brutal suppression of Iran’s Green Movement and maybe become a Green Revolution. Students and political operatives who have been a part of the controversy of this event tonight goodness gracious, you have a chance to hold America’s leadership to the high idills of which this country was founded. Please take that opportunity it really is much more worthy and important than rummaging through garbage bins to REVEAL TO THE WORLD PERHAPS, SOMEONE’S DEMAND for bendy straz.
Speaking to a couple of new friends that I made on this day, who’ve come from Iran as a matter of fact. They have reminded me of America’s opportunity to export our democracy in such a good way. Hmm, that is so encouraging and so inspiring to me to keep up the good fight. But, okay, back to the point that as inspiring as these revolutions are, these aforemissioned (sic) revolutions, and as hopeful as the efforts at emulating our successful Constitution may be in the end we can learn as much though from the failed attempts at copying our institutions as from the successful ones. And again I wish that we had more time.
Uh, one way to get more examples of some of these failed revolutions and what we can learn from them so that we do not repeat the mistakes of other countries in the past, is, uh, I’ll do a little advertisement here, if you watch on Fridays, Founder’s Fridays, Glenn Beck he highlights much, in fact (raises palm of hand) Founder’s Fridays, this is my reminder. Yes. The poor man’s version of the teleprompter. That’s one thing you forgot, you didn’t get me a teleprompter. But, um, yeah, when the media hands you lemon (sic) ya make lemonade.
Every speech I do I get to do a free advertisement cause I know you guys are going to pick it up, back there. So Glenn Beck’s Founder’s Fridays, he’ll tell ya a lot more about these failed attempts, maybe successful attempts and with other countries even in the past and historians agree though for example that, one example we hear much about the German Weimar Republic had the most democratic Constitution in the world. Did you know that? In human history, the historians look back and say; man their Constitution was even more democratic than our own. But that same Constitution allowed a man named Adolph Hitler to seize power because of some tweaks in the law and some misinterpretations of what the Constitution actually said. It allowed, it allowed them Adolph Hitler to seize power and plunge the world into a NIGHTMARE period of chaos and war and genocidal murder. These failures like that one show us that freedom doesn’t just depend on institutional guarantees or words written on a document it is also and above all a question of culture.
And here’s where the university system comes in. To most Americans freedom isn’t just an idill or words written on a, uh, charter of liberty. It is a way of life for most of us and it’s in our lively public debates which give us opportunity to exercise our Constitutional Rights, to free speech even and it’s in our free markets which give everyone with an idea and with a willingness to work hard, too really work hard, to make something of themselves in this country. And it’s in our country’s voluntary associations and our culture of most generous voluntary charitable giving when you see someone having troubles for instance our instinctive response for most of us it’s not well what is the government going to do about it? No our response is what can I do to help? How can I jump in there and help. It’s this love of freedom and the moral capital that’s generated through these free markets and these free associations that has helped keep our great republican experiment alive for more than 200 years now.
So when we see Washington straying from those idills and the free market system that has built America into the strongest the strongest most generous country on earth it’s why we know we’re on the wrong path right now and we have to turn some things around and America may be founded by laws see but it’s sustained by a morality that’s recognized by so many other countries even as a French writer, Alexis de Tocqueville said, “America is a great country because America is a good country.”
And Dennis Prager’s point that night in Denver was that this uniquely American culture, of freedom, it needs protecting and nurturing and it needs to be carefully handed over from one generation to the next and Regan use to speak of this too. So schools, the universities need to take note of this message I wish, it’s where education does comes in. President Kennedy once spoke of the survival and success of liberty. Well there can be no survival and success of liberty without an education in freedom and the values that made this country great. Values like thrift and perseverance and responsibility and work ethic reward for honest hard work.
And some might say there is a contradiction here perhaps. They’d argue that academic freedom is incompatible with our need for a civic education that instills in young people the wisdom and the patriotic grace necessary for the survival and the success of liberty but I think that they are wrong. I think that they are dangerously wrong. The fact that we allow, or should allow for, a healthy and free academic debate of all ideas doesn’t mean that we have to believe that all ideas are equally valid. Unfortunately, too often, that turns into just one small step away from claiming that, well there just isn’t just one right answer to the question what is right what is good or just or true. To saying that well, uh, there are no right answers to these questions there’s, that’s where relativism comes into play and that turns into nihilism. And then we find people saying well then nothing is truth therefore anything goes. Just, just do it, every things permitted.
There’s no truth. If this cultural relativism is confined merely to just a few individuals, the exceptions to the norm, well that’s one thing but we have seen before what happens when whole sections of society fall into that trap. Take note of this, uh, consider that would the brutality of communism have lasted as long as it did if there hadn’t been a large group of people here in the west who were willing to essentially accommodate it for fear of daring to even condemn it. For a long time, folks it was kinda consider, considered sophisticated to take a position somewhere between freedom and communism.
And it took a supposedly unsophisticated graduate from lowly Eureka College to bring Communism to its knees. And he did it by simply calling an evil empire what it was, evil. There’s an important lesson here for us today. A free republic can only survive if its citizens are willing and able to defend it ideologically and to stand up for its founding principles.
And there’s an old conservative joke it, it says that an elite liberal is someone who is so broad minded that they can’t even take their own side in an argument. I think that could apply to some of the college professors I’ve met and so, uh. But you know. But that’s really no joke when we have seen, hmm, even recently, American diplomats apologizing to a communist dictatorship because of one of our sister states here in the good ol’ United States of America, Arizona just trying to enforce an American federal law? To apologize for that? Or, if we get an administration, if we get an administration that unilaterally tries to end a war on terror, not by winning it but by instead no longer referring it, to it, as a war on terror as if the evil terrorists will stop attacking us once we proclaim that we just won’t call it terrorists or terrorism anymore.
That’s not how we’re gonna win this thing. That is as dangerously naïve as the supposedly broadminded intellectuals who defend repulsive practices like, like female mutilation in some countries simply because well they claim, oh that’s part of their culture. So, shh, we don’t talk about it. We’ll tolerate that, that’s part of their culture.
That reminds me of the 19th century British General Sir Charles Napier. He was a Commander in Chief in India. Years ago he made a controversial decision to ban the barbaric practice of suttee and that’s where Indian men would burn a widow alive by putting her on a funeral platform, a pyre, with her dead husband, ah, I. When Indian men protested, that hey, this ritual is just part of our culture, well, Napier answered that if they insisted on exercising that cultural rite then they’d introduce them to a British custom. And what he told them was well in Britain when men burn a woman alive we hang ‘em. So you build your funeral platforms and we’ll build our gallows. You follow your custom, we’ll follow ours. And needless to say that terrible crime against women became scarcer and scarcer under Napier’s insistence. Like him, we too, we have to have the courage of our convictions in taking a stand against evil when confronted with it and sometimes that means calling evil by its name.
For example, regardless of what some politically correct intellectuals say a terrorist like Osama bin Laden is not a freedom fighter. He does not fight for freedom he fights against it and um, he, he fighting against democracy and all of our ancient liberties, how, how dare we want to label his, him anything that has kinda a positive connotation of being a freedom fighter. And it’s not just about calling evil, evil. It’s not just about being against something but it is being for something right. It’s about being unashamed to defend what is good about our culture and in our country. Not thinking that we must apologize for what America stands for but we must honor our belief in the fundamental rights, in the dignity of every innocent human being.
And we must celebrate our relentless sunny optimism. Remember that’s what Reagan was known for that had to have come from California, that sunny optimism. And, and that pioneering spirit that built this country, it inspired us to cross oceans and carve out a life in the wilderness and by the sweat of our brow to create and contribute and to build a better life in America. We must embrace our entrepreneurial drive to build, and to produce, and to innovate and allow America to remain the world’s standard-bearer for excellence. And we must affirm our willingness to stand up for people across the globe who are yearning to be free. They look to us. We are that beacon of hope for what it means to be free. And truly that is nothing to apologize for.
Now we could spend the precious valuable time trying to build some complicated, bureaucratically blessed new national civics curriculum I’m sure and uh, in all of our schools and but to be honest in the end, it all comes down to good old fashioned commonsense. And I know that on a lot of college campuses that ain’t a real cool thing. It’s not real hip to just have some commonsense. Eh, I know, I know. But uh, ask parents, what they want in their child’s education and they’re probably gonna tell you that they don’t care much for all this political stuff. What a parent desires for their child’s education it’s basic you know they want the three R’s and they want true history taught. Our country, our laws, our traditions, our arts, and our literature, and our heroes, and our statesmen. They want true teachin’ of our geography and biology and getting to know the world in which we live in and the beautiful creatures, which we share this planet with. Within Science, finding out how things work and unraveling the mysteries of the universe and not shying away from being able to debate different sides of theories and ideas.
And a basic knowledge of right and wrong that’s what we desire in our children’s education. And obviously these things aren’t exclusively the purview of universities but schools and universities do play such a crucial role in educating young people about what it means to be an American. And it is up to the universities to help make sure that our liberties are secured for the next generation. And you do that by promoting those values on which our free society has been built. And sometimes too by opposing those that undermining, that undermine it. To have the boldness, the courage like Ham has at this University to kind of buck the tide, to not just go with the flow.
As a commercial fisherman I look down there at the run of fish and I notice only dead fish go with the flow. But someone like Ham… not just going along to get along but not being afraid to kind of shake it up and to allow that debate of different sides of issues. That’s what’s valuable. Here, on this campus.
Politicians have to do their part too by ensuring the survival of the institutions on which our free society is built. One can’t do one without the other. President Kennedy said, liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain. From Valley Forge, to Gettysburg, to Omaha Beach the fate of America has always kinda skirted a precipice but most of us we never doubt that it’s been a providential hand that has guided us and is guiding us towards a better future.
Education's highest aim should be instilling in students a sense of this uniquely American predicament. Of the fragility of it? As well as the greatness of this republican experiment of ours and an awareness of the survival and the success of liberty depends on them.
And I do believe that America is great because she is good. And that we are a force for good in this world, not, again, not something to apologize for but something to be proud of. America is truly the exceptional country and we are in the words of Lincoln,” that last best hope on earth” and if we do it right we remain in the words of the Golden State’s Ronald Regan, “the shining city on a hill” where the abiding alternative to tyranny. So let us help our young people understand this, let’s teach the next generation what it means to be American and we’re so on the right track here at CSU. So God bless you, thank you for being part of the solution.
God bless you and God bless America!
Thank you! Thank you very much. Thank you guys.
BONUS:
The crew (open mic comments - snippets):
What’s your problem?
Oh my god I feel like I just stepped off of a roller coaster! Go round and round and up and down and shit flying out of everywhere and standing. Remember when you had to write a report as a college student and you just tried to jam in as many quotes as possible? You know, from as many random things you could get, you know, that’s what I got.
I got she didn’t ever finish a statement.
Right.
Did she make a statement? Cause I didn’t catch that either.
I think she said, “Hi” and “Thanks”.
To think she could even quote Kennedy.
Twice.
You guys have a tough job; I don’t know how you’re going to make a story out of that.
Well… that’s the story.
Now I know…. That dumbness doesn’t have to be soundbites.
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Reading the transcript is not as painful as listening to the actual speech and the inaccuracies become clearer than when we're subjected to spoken word-salad. A few passages were quite obviously wrong or taken out of context. Sarah Palin is very fond of saying that she googles before certain events. I like googling, also, too. I noticed that the first item shown on the search results is very often a Wikipedia entry. It doesn't get simpler than that...
Thank you so much! Thank you. Well thank you so much. Oh I so appreciate that warm introduction and I tell you what, you are a bold man. You are a bold man.
Um, I am so honored to get to be here and before we get started let me just get through some logistics really quickly. First, um, I got my water... do I have my straz? I want my straz. And I want ‘em bent, pleaz, thank you. At least that’s what I read in some of the lamestream media outlets. Is that I was demanding straz or some ridiculous thing. So, I’m just so glad that we got some of those con contractual demands out of the way and finally settled. I think though that my speaker bureau, Washington speaker’s bureau, I think that this is one of the toughest contracts I think that they ever ended up getting to sign. Um, they found it to be one tough event to sort out because it seemed to them they were negotiating with the entire state of California. And here you know, the rest of us looking in and kind of following what was going on with you know some of the shenanigans with like Jerry Brown and friends. Come on this is California; do you not have anything else to do? Goodness, gracious! Priorities!
And then though, you know I was expecting quite a few protests, protesters, I, I thought that, you know I’d get a little bit of the Ann Coulterism um, and I thought hey, that would be cool, I, love Ann Coulter, and more power to her as she goes on college campuses and she talks about America and American values and principles and what it means to be an American and I expected a little bit of that but it’s been nothing but absolute loveliness here in this part of California and I so appreciate the hospitality and again, I do appreciate your boldness thank you for the invitation!
What Sarah Palin saw of the protests
What she didn't seeBut that relationship and that connection with that family farming business and our own commercial fishing business that uh, has really made a wonderful connection and it’s good to be here in the home of the Warriors. I was raised a Warrior too, Wasilla Warriors is our mascot, so I feel that connection. And I was telling Willow about that and happy that my daughter Willow could get to be with me and, yes, my entourage is with me today, the one, the Willow, that’s, that’s, that’s what I got.
So it’s going to be funny as more of this contract business is being brought to court and what they’re doing whatever they’re doing as they look at what the demands were to put this event together I think they’re going to be really surprised that there not really being a there, there. There’s not a whole lot uh, of controversy I think involved in this and I’m just so happy that uh you uh stuck with this program, you stuck with this event and uh you didn’t cancel on me I appreciate it very much you guys. I do.
It’s evident that there is something special here there is something different and really I think it’s made manifest an event like this. I so appreciate it. Uh, the Golden State, always being nice to be here and uh always feeling such a connection here a special place in my heart is California uh because this is Regan country and YEAH and perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California’s Eureka College would become so woven within and inter-linked to the Golden State and it was here, that he, of course, that Reagan became famous as an actor and then distinguished himself as such a good governor and then launched his bid for President and then of course found his final resting place underneath the warm, blue, California sky.
And I thought of Reagan as I was preparing for this evening because of course speaking at a California University as I say, I figured that I’d probably have a welcoming committee of a lot of uh perhaps angry demonstrating protesters. Couldn’t help but remember that as governor of California Reagan too he had his share of confrontations with his state the college protesters from here and remember back then they’d call him a fascist, they called him an idiot, ah, but the Gipper he would return the compliment and he was never one to shy away from confrontation but he would return the compliment.
Uh, I read one quote from him in speaking about these protesters these um well they look like Tarzan they walk like Jane and they smell like Cheetah. So, maybe not a lot has changed in the last 40 years. Reagan liked to crack a joke or two about the college protests essentially because he recognized what they were protesting was differing views? And um, not wanting to maybe apply freedom of speech to those with whom they perhaps would be disagreeing but uh, he never failed to stress the importance of the education though that his students in the state that the students were receiving and I wanna talk about that tonight and again it being such an honor to be here with this organization associated with one of the most prestigious university systems in the nation and one of the largest in the world. Congratulations on your success and helping prepare our next leaders, the warriors that will be leading this nation. Congratulations on your success. And such a gorgeous campus. Gorgeous.
I’ve certainly been thinking a lot about this topic though, this teaching of the next generation. I want to talk about our civic education and how it touches upon the idills of our youth and the idills of our country and the topic came up for me some weeks ago when I was presenting a speech in Denver and I had the privilege following the speech of participating in a Q & A panel with two uh well respected radio talk show hosts Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager both very bold individuals and I have a lot of respect for both of them so I was pleased to get to participate. One question asked by the moderator, “If you could name a single threat to our society, one above all others, what would it be?"
And Dennis Prager was the first to answer this question. Now he could have chosen any number of important life or death threats to our country and our culture. He could have said greatest threat is our exploding national debt and the record setting deficits because this is where we’re going, this is, we’re putting our country on a path of insolvency and that’s immoral, that’s unethical, it’s wrong, it’s generational theft because we’re stealing opportunity from our children as we incur these great debts and we will be an insolvent country if we continue down this road. So, he could have said that um, and remind people that with this debt we are less safe and we are less free. Or he could have said that the growing threat to our energy security is the number one threat because Washington and it seems our President doesn’t understand the inherent link between domestic energy production and our own prosperity. Or energy and our freedom, energy and our security. There seems to be that missing link there in Washington not understanding. Or he could have said the international terrorisms attempt to destroy us both at home and abroad or to destroy our allies an, a consistent strong ally like Israel. A threat to that country.
Coulda mentioned that, but instead Prager looked beyond these immediate threats and he focused on something that would affect us all forevermore in a longer-term sense. His biggest fear he said “is that we’re not passing on what it means to be an American to this new generation.”
And I agreed with his concerns but I offered a caveat when it was my turn to respond. I had to ask then; recognizing that yeah we’re not doing as well as we could passing on what it means to be an American to the next generation but then how could it be if we’re not teaching the next generation what it means to be free and how important it is to be free? How then can it be that we have America’s finest with our thousands and thousands of young men and women who are choosing, as patriots, my own teenage son being one of them having chosen though never having tasted anything but freedom to join our United States military. Just kind of inherently knowing how important it is to fight for freedom and to protect our Constitution to know that America’s worth defending. They enlist then voluntarily in our U.S. military to defend freedom. And that is so encouraging.
So how could it be, it can’t be possible that we are losing this next generation, not when you see that proof of that acknowledgement of how important an American is and living that American idill is when you see who is enlisting in our military. Perhaps these kids and so many of them are just kids, perhaps they not being able to articulate what it is that instills in them this inherent belief that they need to protect the blessings of liberty. But they get it and thank God they get it and they’re willing to lay down their lives for us and lay it all on the line to sacrifice to deba, defend and to serve something greater than self. To defend the American idea of liberty. Thank God for these kids.
But even considering the example of young people like our servicewomen and our servicemen, Prager is right perhaps it is that we are not properly educating our youth in the exceptional nature of America and our liberty. It’s worrisome because this belief in American exceptionalism is something that every new generation has to make its own if we expect our Republic and our liberties to be secure and to live on. For America to survive, we’ve got to pass this on to that next generation. And to understand that we have to go back to the beginning of our Republic and to the heart of what it means to be an American and I do wish that we had a lot of time tonight to talk about a lot of examples that we could give of things we’re doing right bu things that we could be doing better we don’t have much time but I want to hit on this you see that most countries are accidents of history. Either wars of conquest or peace treaties things like that.
But America is different. We’re not the product of historical accident but of design. We’re the only country in history that was founded on an idill and that idill is liberty. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and among those life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and the genius of our founding fathers is that they took that took what the Declaration of Independence called the laws of nature and of nature’s God and those laws that as the apostle Paul says are written on our hearts and these providential forefathers of ours they designed a constitution that enshrined them and allowed people to live within them and it’s an awesome gift given to us in this Declaration of Independence which really was a declaration of responsibility too and in our Constitution including the Bill of Rights.
There’s an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher, who’s a big fan of America, she was a good friend of Ronald Reagan’s remembering, she agreed with this enshrinement of God given liberty. It’s said that during a meeting about the British Conservative Party’s best course of action to take during an economic crisis in the seventies that she was arguing with some so called political pragmatist who was arguing in favor of a third way between free market capitalism and socialism and before he was even finished Margaret Thatcher reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty and she slapped it on the table and she says, “this is what we believe in, this Constitution of Liberty.”
And in that same way, every American should and could whenever she or he is challenged to define what America really stands for? That American should be able to pull out a copy of our very own Constitution of Liberty and say, “this is what we stand for, this, is what makes us different.” It’s the very thing that all of our politicians and our men and women in uniform, it is what they swear to uphold and to defend and it’s the glue that holds us together as Americans as we strive for a more perfect union. But something seems to be missing and especially it seems like in this last year or two something’s missing in this more enlightened day I guess some people want to consider this day.
But here’s the crux of the issue, it’s what Dennis Prager was trying to get at. The Constitution has giving (sic) us an amazingly valuable governing principle and institution that this Constitution provides us with, checks and balances and limited government with enumerated powers and an independent judiciary and states rights as protected under the 10th amendment. But those principles, that are enshrined, hmm, are still the best possible protection against tyranny. They’re not enough in and of themselves to assure the survival and the success of liberty or the survival of our country. There have been other countries that have sometimes managed to kind of live by essentially the same laws of nature that America has that we enshrined in our founding documents.
Countries have tried to copy our Constitution and our institutions but if you think about it not all of them are still free today. But it is human nature to want to be free. People living in these countries, they so want to be free. Countries that have tried to copy what it is that America does but they haven’t been successful. In all countries, even in the worst tyrannies you’ll find people courageous enough to stand up for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And it is in this striving that helped bring down the Berlin wall, remember, and it made one brave man stare down a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square and it brought thousands of people onto the streets of Tehran to defy the unelected dictatorship of their country. What a contrast, by the way, between the ultimate sacrifice, made about a year ago, about a year ago. Made by the beautiful young Iranian woman Naija (sic) Soltan (Neda Agha Soltan). She was shot through the heart and bleeding to death on the streets of Tehran while demonstrating for her FREEDOM! And for women’s rights, for equal rights.
What a contrast between her and the students, or the political operatives anyway, maybe not students necessarily. Here. Who spent their valuable precious time diving through dumpsters before this event IN ORDER TO SILENCE SOMEONE WITH WHOM THEY PREJUDICIALLY THOUGHT THEY WOULD MAYBE DISAGREE WITH! WHAT A WASTE OF RESOURCE. Now a suggestion for those dumpster divers. Instead of trying to tell people to sit down and shut up maybe you tell, spend some time telling people like our President to finally stand up and speak out for those like Nadia (sic) her, as she sought her freedom. She was willing to die for it and to speak about perhaps the brutal, brutal suppression of Iran’s Green Movement and maybe become a Green Revolution. Students and political operatives who have been a part of the controversy of this event tonight goodness gracious, you have a chance to hold America’s leadership to the high idills of which this country was founded. Please take that opportunity it really is much more worthy and important than rummaging through garbage bins to REVEAL TO THE WORLD PERHAPS, SOMEONE’S DEMAND for bendy straz.
Speaking to a couple of new friends that I made on this day, who’ve come from Iran as a matter of fact. They have reminded me of America’s opportunity to export our democracy in such a good way. Hmm, that is so encouraging and so inspiring to me to keep up the good fight. But, okay, back to the point that as inspiring as these revolutions are, these aforemissioned (sic) revolutions, and as hopeful as the efforts at emulating our successful Constitution may be in the end we can learn as much though from the failed attempts at copying our institutions as from the successful ones. And again I wish that we had more time.
Uh, one way to get more examples of some of these failed revolutions and what we can learn from them so that we do not repeat the mistakes of other countries in the past, is, uh, I’ll do a little advertisement here, if you watch on Fridays, Founder’s Fridays, Glenn Beck he highlights much, in fact (raises palm of hand) Founder’s Fridays, this is my reminder. Yes. The poor man’s version of the teleprompter. That’s one thing you forgot, you didn’t get me a teleprompter. But, um, yeah, when the media hands you lemon (sic) ya make lemonade.
Every speech I do I get to do a free advertisement cause I know you guys are going to pick it up, back there. So Glenn Beck’s Founder’s Fridays, he’ll tell ya a lot more about these failed attempts, maybe successful attempts and with other countries even in the past and historians agree though for example that, one example we hear much about the German Weimar Republic had the most democratic Constitution in the world. Did you know that? In human history, the historians look back and say; man their Constitution was even more democratic than our own. But that same Constitution allowed a man named Adolph Hitler to seize power because of some tweaks in the law and some misinterpretations of what the Constitution actually said. It allowed, it allowed them Adolph Hitler to seize power and plunge the world into a NIGHTMARE period of chaos and war and genocidal murder. These failures like that one show us that freedom doesn’t just depend on institutional guarantees or words written on a document it is also and above all a question of culture.
And here’s where the university system comes in. To most Americans freedom isn’t just an idill or words written on a, uh, charter of liberty. It is a way of life for most of us and it’s in our lively public debates which give us opportunity to exercise our Constitutional Rights, to free speech even and it’s in our free markets which give everyone with an idea and with a willingness to work hard, too really work hard, to make something of themselves in this country. And it’s in our country’s voluntary associations and our culture of most generous voluntary charitable giving when you see someone having troubles for instance our instinctive response for most of us it’s not well what is the government going to do about it? No our response is what can I do to help? How can I jump in there and help. It’s this love of freedom and the moral capital that’s generated through these free markets and these free associations that has helped keep our great republican experiment alive for more than 200 years now.
So when we see Washington straying from those idills and the free market system that has built America into the strongest the strongest most generous country on earth it’s why we know we’re on the wrong path right now and we have to turn some things around and America may be founded by laws see but it’s sustained by a morality that’s recognized by so many other countries even as a French writer, Alexis de Tocqueville said, “America is a great country because America is a good country.”
And Dennis Prager’s point that night in Denver was that this uniquely American culture, of freedom, it needs protecting and nurturing and it needs to be carefully handed over from one generation to the next and Regan use to speak of this too. So schools, the universities need to take note of this message I wish, it’s where education does comes in. President Kennedy once spoke of the survival and success of liberty. Well there can be no survival and success of liberty without an education in freedom and the values that made this country great. Values like thrift and perseverance and responsibility and work ethic reward for honest hard work.
And some might say there is a contradiction here perhaps. They’d argue that academic freedom is incompatible with our need for a civic education that instills in young people the wisdom and the patriotic grace necessary for the survival and the success of liberty but I think that they are wrong. I think that they are dangerously wrong. The fact that we allow, or should allow for, a healthy and free academic debate of all ideas doesn’t mean that we have to believe that all ideas are equally valid. Unfortunately, too often, that turns into just one small step away from claiming that, well there just isn’t just one right answer to the question what is right what is good or just or true. To saying that well, uh, there are no right answers to these questions there’s, that’s where relativism comes into play and that turns into nihilism. And then we find people saying well then nothing is truth therefore anything goes. Just, just do it, every things permitted.
There’s no truth. If this cultural relativism is confined merely to just a few individuals, the exceptions to the norm, well that’s one thing but we have seen before what happens when whole sections of society fall into that trap. Take note of this, uh, consider that would the brutality of communism have lasted as long as it did if there hadn’t been a large group of people here in the west who were willing to essentially accommodate it for fear of daring to even condemn it. For a long time, folks it was kinda consider, considered sophisticated to take a position somewhere between freedom and communism.
And it took a supposedly unsophisticated graduate from lowly Eureka College to bring Communism to its knees. And he did it by simply calling an evil empire what it was, evil. There’s an important lesson here for us today. A free republic can only survive if its citizens are willing and able to defend it ideologically and to stand up for its founding principles.
And there’s an old conservative joke it, it says that an elite liberal is someone who is so broad minded that they can’t even take their own side in an argument. I think that could apply to some of the college professors I’ve met and so, uh. But you know. But that’s really no joke when we have seen, hmm, even recently, American diplomats apologizing to a communist dictatorship because of one of our sister states here in the good ol’ United States of America, Arizona just trying to enforce an American federal law? To apologize for that? Or, if we get an administration, if we get an administration that unilaterally tries to end a war on terror, not by winning it but by instead no longer referring it, to it, as a war on terror as if the evil terrorists will stop attacking us once we proclaim that we just won’t call it terrorists or terrorism anymore.
That’s not how we’re gonna win this thing. That is as dangerously naïve as the supposedly broadminded intellectuals who defend repulsive practices like, like female mutilation in some countries simply because well they claim, oh that’s part of their culture. So, shh, we don’t talk about it. We’ll tolerate that, that’s part of their culture.
That reminds me of the 19th century British General Sir Charles Napier. He was a Commander in Chief in India. Years ago he made a controversial decision to ban the barbaric practice of suttee and that’s where Indian men would burn a widow alive by putting her on a funeral platform, a pyre, with her dead husband, ah, I. When Indian men protested, that hey, this ritual is just part of our culture, well, Napier answered that if they insisted on exercising that cultural rite then they’d introduce them to a British custom. And what he told them was well in Britain when men burn a woman alive we hang ‘em. So you build your funeral platforms and we’ll build our gallows. You follow your custom, we’ll follow ours. And needless to say that terrible crime against women became scarcer and scarcer under Napier’s insistence. Like him, we too, we have to have the courage of our convictions in taking a stand against evil when confronted with it and sometimes that means calling evil by its name.
For example, regardless of what some politically correct intellectuals say a terrorist like Osama bin Laden is not a freedom fighter. He does not fight for freedom he fights against it and um, he, he fighting against democracy and all of our ancient liberties, how, how dare we want to label his, him anything that has kinda a positive connotation of being a freedom fighter. And it’s not just about calling evil, evil. It’s not just about being against something but it is being for something right. It’s about being unashamed to defend what is good about our culture and in our country. Not thinking that we must apologize for what America stands for but we must honor our belief in the fundamental rights, in the dignity of every innocent human being.
And we must celebrate our relentless sunny optimism. Remember that’s what Reagan was known for that had to have come from California, that sunny optimism. And, and that pioneering spirit that built this country, it inspired us to cross oceans and carve out a life in the wilderness and by the sweat of our brow to create and contribute and to build a better life in America. We must embrace our entrepreneurial drive to build, and to produce, and to innovate and allow America to remain the world’s standard-bearer for excellence. And we must affirm our willingness to stand up for people across the globe who are yearning to be free. They look to us. We are that beacon of hope for what it means to be free. And truly that is nothing to apologize for.
Now we could spend the precious valuable time trying to build some complicated, bureaucratically blessed new national civics curriculum I’m sure and uh, in all of our schools and but to be honest in the end, it all comes down to good old fashioned commonsense. And I know that on a lot of college campuses that ain’t a real cool thing. It’s not real hip to just have some commonsense. Eh, I know, I know. But uh, ask parents, what they want in their child’s education and they’re probably gonna tell you that they don’t care much for all this political stuff. What a parent desires for their child’s education it’s basic you know they want the three R’s and they want true history taught. Our country, our laws, our traditions, our arts, and our literature, and our heroes, and our statesmen. They want true teachin’ of our geography and biology and getting to know the world in which we live in and the beautiful creatures, which we share this planet with. Within Science, finding out how things work and unraveling the mysteries of the universe and not shying away from being able to debate different sides of theories and ideas.
And a basic knowledge of right and wrong that’s what we desire in our children’s education. And obviously these things aren’t exclusively the purview of universities but schools and universities do play such a crucial role in educating young people about what it means to be an American. And it is up to the universities to help make sure that our liberties are secured for the next generation. And you do that by promoting those values on which our free society has been built. And sometimes too by opposing those that undermining, that undermine it. To have the boldness, the courage like Ham has at this University to kind of buck the tide, to not just go with the flow.
As a commercial fisherman I look down there at the run of fish and I notice only dead fish go with the flow. But someone like Ham… not just going along to get along but not being afraid to kind of shake it up and to allow that debate of different sides of issues. That’s what’s valuable. Here, on this campus.
Politicians have to do their part too by ensuring the survival of the institutions on which our free society is built. One can’t do one without the other. President Kennedy said, liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain. From Valley Forge, to Gettysburg, to Omaha Beach the fate of America has always kinda skirted a precipice but most of us we never doubt that it’s been a providential hand that has guided us and is guiding us towards a better future.
Education's highest aim should be instilling in students a sense of this uniquely American predicament. Of the fragility of it? As well as the greatness of this republican experiment of ours and an awareness of the survival and the success of liberty depends on them.
And I do believe that America is great because she is good. And that we are a force for good in this world, not, again, not something to apologize for but something to be proud of. America is truly the exceptional country and we are in the words of Lincoln,” that last best hope on earth” and if we do it right we remain in the words of the Golden State’s Ronald Regan, “the shining city on a hill” where the abiding alternative to tyranny. So let us help our young people understand this, let’s teach the next generation what it means to be American and we’re so on the right track here at CSU. So God bless you, thank you for being part of the solution.
God bless you and God bless America!
Thank you! Thank you very much. Thank you guys.
BONUS:
The crew (open mic comments - snippets):
What’s your problem?
Oh my god I feel like I just stepped off of a roller coaster! Go round and round and up and down and shit flying out of everywhere and standing. Remember when you had to write a report as a college student and you just tried to jam in as many quotes as possible? You know, from as many random things you could get, you know, that’s what I got.
I got she didn’t ever finish a statement.Right.
Did she make a statement? Cause I didn’t catch that either.
I think she said, “Hi” and “Thanks”.
To think she could even quote Kennedy.
Twice.
You guys have a tough job; I don’t know how you’re going to make a story out of that.
Well… that’s the story.
Now I know…. That dumbness doesn’t have to be soundbites.
+++
Reading the transcript is not as painful as listening to the actual speech and the inaccuracies become clearer than when we're subjected to spoken word-salad. A few passages were quite obviously wrong or taken out of context. Sarah Palin is very fond of saying that she googles before certain events. I like googling, also, too. I noticed that the first item shown on the search results is very often a Wikipedia entry. It doesn't get simpler than that...
LET'S CHECK SOME OF THE FACTS IN PALIN'S SPEECH:
Sarah Palin:
Uh, the Golden State... always being nice to be here and uh always feeling such a connection here a special place in my heart is California uh because this is Reagan country and YEAH and perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California’s Eureka College would become so woven within and inter-linked to the Golden State and it was here, that he, of course, that Reagan became famous as an actor and then distinguished himself as such a good governor and then launched his bid for President and then of course found his final resting place underneath the warm, blue, California sky.
Wikipedia:
Eureka College is a liberal arts college in Eureka, Illinois related by covenant to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and founded in 1855. It has a strong focus on history, political science, and the fine and performing arts.
Conservapedia:
Reagan was born and raised in Illinois, and was nicknamed "Dutch." In high school he earned low grades, mostly because of his focus on extra-curriculars.
He attended Eureka College, where he quickly developed a reputation as a "jack of all trades", excelling in campus politics, sports and theater. Reagan was a member of the football and track teams, the basketball cheerleading squad, captain of the swimming team, yearbook editor and was elected student body president. Reagan was a political liberal at that point and led a student revolt against the college president. In his first year at Eureka, the president of the college tried to cut back the faculty. Reagan helped organize a student strike.
If Sarah Palin (or her speech writers) had googled just a little bit, she wouldn't have shown her ignorance about her greatest hero.
Sarah Palin:
What a contrast, by the way, between the ultimate sacrifice, made about a year ago, about a year ago. Made by the beautiful young Iranian woman Naija (sic) Soltan. She was shot through the heart and bleeding to death on the streets of Tehran while demonstrating for her FREEDOM! And for women’s rights, for equal rights.
What a contrast between her and the students, or the political operatives anyway, maybe not students necessarily. Here. Who spent their valuable precious time diving through dumpsters before this event IN ORDER TO SILENCE SOMEONE WITH WHOM THEY PREJUDICIALLY THOUGHT THEY WOULD MAYBE DISAGREE WITH! WHAT A WASTE OF RESOURCE. Now a suggestion for those dumpster divers. Instead of trying to tell people to sit down and shut up maybe you tell, spend some time telling people like our President to finally stand up and speak out for those like Nadia (sic) her, as she sought her freedom. She was willing to die for it and to speak about perhaps the brutal, brutal suppression of Iran’s Green Movement and maybe become a Green Revolution. Students and political operatives who have been a part of the controversy of this event tonight goodness gracious, you have a chance to hold America’s leadership to the high ideals of which this country was founded. Please take that opportunity it really is much more worthy and important than rummaging through garbage bins to REVEAL TO THE WORLD PERHAPS, SOMEONE’S DEMAND for bendy straws.
Wikipedia:
The footage of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan (Persian: ندا آقا سلطان - Nedā Āġā Soltān; January 23, 1982 – June 20, 2009) drew international attention after she was killed during the 2009 Iranian election protests. Her death was captured on video by bystanders and broadcast over the Internet and the video became a rallying point for the reformist opposition.
Those who knew her maintain that Agha-Soltan had not previously been very political – she had not supported any particular candidate in the 2009 Iran elections – but that anger over the election results prompted her to join the protest.
Again, some research would have given her little story some context and perhaps pointed to the correct name of the person Sarah Palin so eloquently exhorted. Neda wasn't fighting for women's rights, she was arriving at protest about the 2009 elections and wasn't really prepared to die.
Sarah Palin:
There’s an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher, who’s a big fan of America, she was a good friend of Ronald Reagan’s remembering, she agreed with this enshrinement of God given liberty. It’s said that during a meeting about the British Conservative Party’s best course of action to take during an economic crisis in the seventies that she was arguing with some so called political pragmatist who was arguing in favor of a third way between free market capitalism and socialism and before he was even finished Margaret Thatcher reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty and she slapped it on the table and she says, “this is what we believe in, this Constitution of Liberty.”
Wikipedia:
Hayek wrote an essay titled "Why I Am Not a Conservative" (included as an appendix to The Constitution of Liberty), in which he disparaged conservatism for its inability to adapt to changing human realities or to offer a positive political program. Although he noted that modern day conservatism shares many opinions on economics with classic liberals, particularly a belief in the free market, he believed it's because conservatism wants to "stand still," whereas liberalism embraces the free market because it "wants to go somewhere."
Ah, context, context!
Sarah Palin:
And I do believe that America is great because she is good. And that we are a force for good in this world, not, again, not something to apologize for but something to be proud of. America is truly the exceptional country and we are in the words of Lincoln,” that last best hope on earth” and if we do it right we remain in the words of the Golden State’s Ronald Reagan, “the shining city on a hill” where the abiding alternative to tyranny. So let us help our young people understand this, let’s teach the next generation what it means to be American and we’re so on the right track here at CSU.
Abraham Lincoln Online:
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
Lincoln did not make reference to American exceptionalism. He was more concerned about ensuring that the freeing of the slaves was not seen by historians as a mere paper exercise.
+++
This speech was probably the worst in Sarah Palin's career as a paid speaker. The president of the CSU Stanislaus Foundation Matt Swanson told the press that the event was a non-political fundraiser.
Swanson said his organization is not obligated by law to disclose financial details. He also dismissed some of the criticism, saying political agendas played into it.
"You know, we're not here to make a political statement. We're here to raise money," Swanson said.
Well, his star speaker decided to go rogue and couldn't resist bashing the present administration.
There are other aspects of this speech which are troubling, but they can be explored in a future post.
Sarah Palin:
Uh, the Golden State... always being nice to be here and uh always feeling such a connection here a special place in my heart is California uh because this is Reagan country and YEAH and perhaps it was destiny that the man who went to California’s Eureka College would become so woven within and inter-linked to the Golden State and it was here, that he, of course, that Reagan became famous as an actor and then distinguished himself as such a good governor and then launched his bid for President and then of course found his final resting place underneath the warm, blue, California sky.
Wikipedia:
Eureka College is a liberal arts college in Eureka, Illinois related by covenant to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and founded in 1855. It has a strong focus on history, political science, and the fine and performing arts.
Conservapedia:
Reagan was born and raised in Illinois, and was nicknamed "Dutch." In high school he earned low grades, mostly because of his focus on extra-curriculars.
He attended Eureka College, where he quickly developed a reputation as a "jack of all trades", excelling in campus politics, sports and theater. Reagan was a member of the football and track teams, the basketball cheerleading squad, captain of the swimming team, yearbook editor and was elected student body president. Reagan was a political liberal at that point and led a student revolt against the college president. In his first year at Eureka, the president of the college tried to cut back the faculty. Reagan helped organize a student strike.
If Sarah Palin (or her speech writers) had googled just a little bit, she wouldn't have shown her ignorance about her greatest hero.
Sarah Palin:
What a contrast, by the way, between the ultimate sacrifice, made about a year ago, about a year ago. Made by the beautiful young Iranian woman Naija (sic) Soltan. She was shot through the heart and bleeding to death on the streets of Tehran while demonstrating for her FREEDOM! And for women’s rights, for equal rights.
What a contrast between her and the students, or the political operatives anyway, maybe not students necessarily. Here. Who spent their valuable precious time diving through dumpsters before this event IN ORDER TO SILENCE SOMEONE WITH WHOM THEY PREJUDICIALLY THOUGHT THEY WOULD MAYBE DISAGREE WITH! WHAT A WASTE OF RESOURCE. Now a suggestion for those dumpster divers. Instead of trying to tell people to sit down and shut up maybe you tell, spend some time telling people like our President to finally stand up and speak out for those like Nadia (sic) her, as she sought her freedom. She was willing to die for it and to speak about perhaps the brutal, brutal suppression of Iran’s Green Movement and maybe become a Green Revolution. Students and political operatives who have been a part of the controversy of this event tonight goodness gracious, you have a chance to hold America’s leadership to the high ideals of which this country was founded. Please take that opportunity it really is much more worthy and important than rummaging through garbage bins to REVEAL TO THE WORLD PERHAPS, SOMEONE’S DEMAND for bendy straws.
Wikipedia:
The footage of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan (Persian: ندا آقا سلطان - Nedā Āġā Soltān; January 23, 1982 – June 20, 2009) drew international attention after she was killed during the 2009 Iranian election protests. Her death was captured on video by bystanders and broadcast over the Internet and the video became a rallying point for the reformist opposition.
Those who knew her maintain that Agha-Soltan had not previously been very political – she had not supported any particular candidate in the 2009 Iran elections – but that anger over the election results prompted her to join the protest.
Again, some research would have given her little story some context and perhaps pointed to the correct name of the person Sarah Palin so eloquently exhorted. Neda wasn't fighting for women's rights, she was arriving at protest about the 2009 elections and wasn't really prepared to die.
Sarah Palin:
There’s an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher, who’s a big fan of America, she was a good friend of Ronald Reagan’s remembering, she agreed with this enshrinement of God given liberty. It’s said that during a meeting about the British Conservative Party’s best course of action to take during an economic crisis in the seventies that she was arguing with some so called political pragmatist who was arguing in favor of a third way between free market capitalism and socialism and before he was even finished Margaret Thatcher reached into her purse and pulled out a copy of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty and she slapped it on the table and she says, “this is what we believe in, this Constitution of Liberty.”
Wikipedia:
Hayek wrote an essay titled "Why I Am Not a Conservative" (included as an appendix to The Constitution of Liberty), in which he disparaged conservatism for its inability to adapt to changing human realities or to offer a positive political program. Although he noted that modern day conservatism shares many opinions on economics with classic liberals, particularly a belief in the free market, he believed it's because conservatism wants to "stand still," whereas liberalism embraces the free market because it "wants to go somewhere."
Ah, context, context!
Sarah Palin:
And I do believe that America is great because she is good. And that we are a force for good in this world, not, again, not something to apologize for but something to be proud of. America is truly the exceptional country and we are in the words of Lincoln,” that last best hope on earth” and if we do it right we remain in the words of the Golden State’s Ronald Reagan, “the shining city on a hill” where the abiding alternative to tyranny. So let us help our young people understand this, let’s teach the next generation what it means to be American and we’re so on the right track here at CSU.
Abraham Lincoln Online:
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
Lincoln did not make reference to American exceptionalism. He was more concerned about ensuring that the freeing of the slaves was not seen by historians as a mere paper exercise.
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This speech was probably the worst in Sarah Palin's career as a paid speaker. The president of the CSU Stanislaus Foundation Matt Swanson told the press that the event was a non-political fundraiser.
Swanson said his organization is not obligated by law to disclose financial details. He also dismissed some of the criticism, saying political agendas played into it.
"You know, we're not here to make a political statement. We're here to raise money," Swanson said.
Well, his star speaker decided to go rogue and couldn't resist bashing the present administration.
There are other aspects of this speech which are troubling, but they can be explored in a future post.
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Read all the reports by Palingates about the CSU Stanislaus-Palin scandal HERE.
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