SL 02-10-2012

As Broadcast on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America
February 10, 2012
By Seth Leibsohn

This morning, I am—as I usually am—in Phoenix, Arizona.  But the CPAC conference is taking place in Washington, DC.  And I want to focus a bit on a speech that was given there yesterday.  It’s the kind of talk from a Republican and a conservative we don’t hear enough of, and perhaps few are capable of making it.  Perhaps. But it is the kind of thing Bill Bennett and I have been urging on candidates for as long as I can remember.  Talk about our tax code, yes.  Talk about the importance of a robust defense, yes.  Talk about what binds us all together and makes everything else here possible: the family—of course.

But do not neglect the forest for the trees, do not neglect to talk about what makes this plot of earth—governed by two of the most unique documents in all the world, this shining city on a hill, and what makes its light shine so bright—do not neglect to talk about America.

In fact if you think about it, when candidates talk about the vision of America they win transformative elections.  Think of Ronald Reagan and, yes, think of Barack Obama.  One had the vision right and one had the vision wrong, but they both talked about it.  Or, as Lincoln said something on this in describing those who used to speak of liberty:  One side in Lincoln’s time spoke of the liberty of the individual while the other spoke of the liberty of property in owning individuals.  Lincoln said “We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.”  That is my point about what the right and the left have to say when they speak of America.  Both declare for the country; but in speaking of the same country they do not all mean the same thing.

The point is America is something very, very special.  We spoke of this last week when I said that it sometimes feels as if we wake up in a country we no longer recognize.  This country, or a large part of it, has been struggling to come to terms with an administration that, last week, told the Catholic Church it could no longer be Catholic.  Was this a surprise?  In part yes, in part no.

It is a truth that when government expands, individual freedom contracts.  What we got from a new rule on the health care legislation that passed by the votes, exclusively of one party, was a new truth: when government power expands into our very own lives and our own healthcare, religious freedom not only contracts, it is actually made illegal.

Our founding, America’s very idea, was based on limiting the means government so that we would not limit the ends of man.  And now we have an administration that has set its course on expanding the means of government so far that it has resulted in limiting not just our economic freedoms but our freedoms of speech and religion.  Our very first freedoms.

My point is this:  We, of course all Americans, but most especially we conservatives, have a duty.  The great conservative scholar, my teacher, Harry Jaffa, put it this way: “The salvation of the West must come, if it is to come, from the United States. The salvation of the United States, if it is to come, must come from the Republican Party. And the salvation of the Republican Party, if it is to come, must come from the conservative movement within it. And the salvation of the conservative movement, if it is to come, must come from the renewal and reaffirmation of the principles of the American Founding, embodied above all in the Declaration of Independence.”
So what is our duty?  It is to, hopefully, save this country so that we may, hopefully, save our world.  We are not on a crusade to save the world through military might—that is not what I am speaking of.  I am speaking of what Marianna and Ethan and others who called in last week spoke of.  I am speaking of what Ronald Reagan spoke of when he said:

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

Tony Blair recently put it another way, but meant the same thing.  Here is what he wrote in his memoirs:  “When you see other nations, you see power corruptly wielded, a nation held back, people oppressed, and a future denied.  There is no house on the hill that makes the present struggle worthwhile; just a horizon full of deeper despair as far as the eye can see.  For those people in that bleak wilderness, America does stand out; it does shine; it may not be a house in their land they can aspire to, but it is a house they can see in the distance, and in seeing, knowing how they do live is to know it is not how they must live.”

We are losing that.  A report out this week on economic freedom revealed that

the United States has fallen from No. 6 to No. 10 since the end of the George W. Bush administration in 2009.   The U.S. also has dropped rank in the ease of doing business, as measured by the World Bank, and in global competitiveness, as measured by the World Economic Forum.  The United States has dropped from No. 19 to No. 24 in Transparency International's corruption index over the past three years. Reporters Without Borders' index shows an enormous drop in press freedom in the U.S. over the past three years, from a ranking of No. 20 to a dreadful No. 47.

This is on the economic front.  Never mind our defense front for the time being, where we are limiting pay raises for troops, increasing health insurance fees for military retirees, and closing bases in the United States while at the same time we are cutting 500 billion dollars out of defense budgets and reducing the size of the Army and Marines while at the same time the world is becoming not safer, but more dangerous.

So what is it we have forgotten?  We have forgotten the specialness, the dearness, of America and what it means to both the world and us.  But there was a speaker at CPAC yesterday who got it.  And got it right.  U.S. Senator Marco Rubio.  This is what he said:

AUDIO:

“My parents, my father, my grandfather, I think they were better men than I was. And yet they never got to accomplish their dreams. Why? What was the difference between them and me?

“The difference is that I was born with the privilege and the honor of being a citizen of the single greatest nation in all of human history.

“And so, being an American, is a blessing. And it is also a responsibility. A responsibility not just to protect America here at home, but to ensure that by doing the right things here that we are an example for the world.

“My favorite President, someone I think you probably like too, is named Ronald Reagan. I told you! What did you think, Jimmy Carter? He used to talk about a ‘shining city on a hill’. But really, that comes from a biblical reference, where Jesus said that a lamp can’t be hidden, but you show your light to the world so that you can honor and glorify God.

“America is a light. Our light. Your light. What you have done in your lives every single day, the light of everyday Americans who without the government telling them what to do, today will give a ride to their neighbor to the doctor. They don’t wait for the government bus to come do it.  They take it upon themselves. The light of everyday people who have a good idea and will take their life savings in pursuit of that idea and it works.

“The light of everyday people whose names you will never know, whose stories will never be told, whose face will never be on the cover of a magazine, but make a real difference in the real lives of real people. That light.

“The light of a nation who, when it engages around the globe militarily whether you agree with it or not, never does it because we want their land. We don’t want Afghanistan to be another state. We’re not looking to annex Iraq. Whether you agree with it or not, when Americans send their sons, and increasingly their daughters, to die overseas, they do it for other people’s liberty. For other people’s freedoms. And what nation in the world has ever done that?

“This is who we’ve been. This is who we are.

“Being America has changed the world and made it better.

“And now we must decide if we are prepared to continue that or to recede and become just like everybody else. And that is the choice in November.

“That is the choice. It is not a choice between a person we like and a person we don’t. It is not even a choice between a Republican and a Democrat. It is a choice between someone who has failed over the last three years and is asking for four more and a change in direction.

“One that embraces the source of our greatness so that the twenty-first century will be an American Century as well. And the stakes, I can’t imagine them being any higher. For ultimately what we discuss is what the kind of nation and world we leave our children and their children.

“We have a historic opportunity. We should be grateful and thank God every night that he has placed us here in this nation at this time in our history. Because he has given us the chance to do what few people in human history have ever had the chance to do, and that is through our example and the way we lead our lives and run our nation, change the world for the better, forever.

“Thank you very much, may God bless all of you.”

That is how we must think.  That is how we must talk.  Because this is the only way we will continue to be able to live as the freest people on earth with the most to offer not only to others, but in our own well-being and in our own consciences, the most to offer ourselves and our progeny.  Keep the faith as Peggy Noonan reminds us, literally, keep it.