Michele Bachmann: Hi everybody. Hello everyone and thank you Senator Spector. I want to say greetings to the majority in waiting, how does it feel? We are in the middle of a political bull market, doesn’t it feel wonderful? It’s rip roaring times. I want to say thank you so much to Ed Morrissey the blogger of the year, didn’t he do a great job? And Rush that tribute that was absolutely wonderful. Minnesota may be the land of 10,000 liberals but we have some pretty hot bloggers, political bloggers coming out of Minnesota. We first produced the power line blog guys who exposed CBS and Dan Rather and Rather Gate, do you remember that? Those were our guys, John Henderocker, Scott Johnson out of Minnesota and now Ed Morrissey so we are just so thrilled and so honored that we have these wonderful, talented, gifted bloggers out of Minnesota.

We really have a great sense of humor in Minnesota, we do, we are very good humored people and if you could put the first slide up for me if you would, I am walking up -You like that. I do too. I am lucky enough to be the representative for these very creative, innovative business people who put this wonderful billboard together. Let me tell you they got their advertising dollars worth out of this billboard. I encourage you, use your creativity, use your innovation, you have no idea what you will do to take back Washington and they’re doing that in my district. As a matter of fact at Christmastime my husband and I were sitting at home with our oldest son, he’s just finishing medical school and he revealed to us that he had a goal when he went to medical school. We said well what is it and he said his goal was to persuade one liberal to become a conservative, a pretty good goal and so as fate would have it his roommate was a San Francisco liberal. I’m not making this up. It’s absolutely true and so this conservative kid from Minnesota worked powers of persuasion day after day, week after week, in between exams, in between the years and he has now been so successful that he texted me last night and he said mom his roommate’s name just emailed me a Pat Buchanan column out of World Net Daily. I say that’s a success.

We’re seeing so many great things and by the way I challenge everyone in this room to do what our son did. If he can persuade a San Francisco liberal to flip and be a Pat Buchanan World Net Daily reading conservative you can do it too. Think of, think of all those relatives that you sit with during Thanksgiving and Christmas. There’s so many there, you know what, you know who I’m talking about or that person sitting across the cube from you in your office, this is what it’s about. These elections won’t even be close if we take one person and make it our priority to utilize what we know is true. The power of persuasion to persuade one person at a time and we’ll take back Washington, D.C. So I’m excited, are you?

I also want to give you another success story. One week ago today there was a very brave Republican party chair in North Dakota. His name is Gary Eminack and he worked together with a local radio guy named Scott Hennan and they cooked up an idea, it was pretty good and it was pretty brave. They decided to reverse the tables on the politicians and have a town hall where the people spoke at the town hall and the politicians had to listen. Pretty good idea. So they had a listing post including the very brave governor, Republican governor of the State of North Dakota. Now this is a lot for a politician to think that people are going to go to a microphone and they don’t know what they’re going to hear but the people went and I’m telling you the people were so sophisticated and they were so on top of their information it was a fabulous event. In a state of 620,000 approximately people in North Dakota they had between 1,000 and 1,500 people show up last week. This is amazing to take back Washington, D.C. North Dakota is right! I was lucky enough to be able to be there and give a keynote speech. This is a state where 100 percent of their federal delegation is democrat. Both U.S. senators after they took their infamous Christmas Eve healthcare vote dropped 22 points in the polls in North Dakota. And it’s now bye bye Byron in North Dakota and there state representative also is democrat and a poll was done in North Dakota that showed that the state rep in North Dakota is losing by 9 percent to other on the ballot. I’m not making this up. So it’s take back Washington time. We’ve got the fever. We’ve got the hope. We’re ready for the change! So thank you so much. I am so excited.

In the next few moments that we have together I want to discuss a topic that’s been on my heart a lot lately and perhaps on yours too. I know some words about that were mentioned this morning by one of my good colleagues, Mike Pence when he talked about decline in America and the concept that has been coming to me over the last few weeks is that the joy of being an American is that we get to choose. We get to choose our destiny, whether it’s decline or whether it’s greatness, it’s in our hands to make the choice and there was a pivotal article that was written last October, and perhaps you’ve read it. It was by Charles Krauthammer. He’s a genius. Charles Krauthammer you love him too. We love Charles Krauthammer. It was published in the Weekly Standard in October. You can Google it. The article will come up from the Weekly Standard it’s called Decline is a Choice and Krauthammer made a very prescient point. He said that decline is not a condition for America. It is not our inevitable trajectory. It’s a choice. There’s a difference. Krauthammer is right. He wrote the current liberal ascendency in the United States controlling the executive and both houses of Congress dominating the media and cultural elite has set us on a course for decline. He went on to quote in Strasberg President Obama was asked about American exceptionalism. His answer I believe in American exceptionalism just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. Well isn’t that special. I guess if everyone’s exceptional then no one’s exceptional. Krauthammer went on to say that the president went on to indict America for arrogance for dismissiveness for divisiveness toward Europe, for maltreatment of natives, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo Bay, for unilateralism and for insufficient respect of the Muslim world. Well I think we’re all going to need a self-esteem course or two after that litany and we can’t blame anyone for feeling despondent in the midst of all that.

Decline can happen quickly even to a great nation. It’s a sobering thought. I want to take you to July of 2009, a economist from Arizona State University wrote in an article on the front page of the Washington Times newspaper and he said that since the inception of bailout nation which occurred in September, 2008 the federal government has taken ownership or control of 30 percent of the private economy. Now consider that prior to the inception of bailout nation 100 percent of the private economy was private. Banks, insurance companies, AIG, American’s largest insurance company, Freddie Fanny the secondary mortgage buyers, Chrysler, GM, the student loan industry, every bit was taken over by the government and with no exit strategy for getting out and with no limit on further government infusions of cash into these entities. Then the president decided to swamp the boat with debt after his trillion dollar stimulus and the porky 9,000 earmarks. If it’s up on the screen and if I’m pushing the button right the green button the next slide should go up. Mr. Producer please, if I’m doing it right, let’s see, I’ve got this really great slide. Let’s see if it goes up. Oh there we go. That’s a chart, those are the rosy figures that was issued by the office of management and budget. Those are the figures that the president issues on the debt in his budget. If you look from left to right we begin with the debt incurred during the Carter era, then the debt during the Reagan era, then the debt during George Herbert Walker Bush, the Clinton era, you can see where Republicans took over Congress when we have surpluses under President Bill Clinton, then under George W. Bush when we, we’re in deficit and then you look at the rosy case scenario under President Obama. This is intending to fail. That’s what this, intending to fail.

And in a matter of months we’ve watched as the Obama Administration has accumulated more debt than in all previous 233 years of American history. Did you hear what I said? In a matter of months, taking us from $10 trillion to $14 trillion, 40 percent level of increase in debt accumulation. Think of it this way, $4 trillion, if you took 4 trillion dollar bills, stack them tightly on top of one another you would have to go, a pillar 268 miles up into the atmosphere to finally reach $4 trillion. Or think of it this way in terms of time. If you took 4 trillion seconds that would equal 128,000 years. That’s a 123,000 years longer than all of recorded history. This is a tremendous accumulation of debt even for Washington, D.C. standards, this is real money and if that wasn’t historic enough the president, Speaker Pelosi, Leader Reid continue to push and are continuing to push to take over another 18 percent of the American private economy with the job killing government takeover of healthcare and another 8 percent of the private economy they want to take over or control with the cap and trade which is the taking over by the federal government of the energy industry. Imagine the federal government owning or controlling 56 percent of the private economy in less than two years’ time. It’s stunning. It’s stunning. So I guess the president meant it when he said during the campaign, do you remember this, we can’t drive SUVs, set our thermostat at 72 degrees and eat as much as we want. I guess that’s true unless we’re Al Gore.

The director of congressional budget office’s name is Douglas Elmendorf. He warned us that the economy is on an unsustainable path. We hear that a lot lately. It’s on an unsustainable path. He said and I quote the fundamental disconnect has to be addressed to avoid serious long-term damage to the economy and the well being of the population. Hear this again, this is the head of our non partisan budget office saying we’re looking at serious long-term damage to the economy and the well being of our people. I would say that’s a pretty serious prognosis. But then we really have to sober up because what we need to do is realize that the only people with the power to change this very bad diagnosis is President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid. I wonder what the odds are in Vegas for that happening. I wonder? We’ve all seen this movie before. It’s called massive national debt implosion and it’s not a pretty sight. We’ve seen this in Germany in the 1920s. We’ve seen this in Argentina in the 1940s and we’re seeing it happen right now today with Greece and the end doesn’t work out real well. People can indulge in fantasy football but you can’t indulge in fantasy economics. It just doesn’t work.

In the 1930s when FDR took office in the midst of a recession, office in the midst of a recession, FDR took a very interesting course of action, not very Calvin Coolidge like. He decided to choose massive government spending and the creation of monstrous bureaucracies. Do we detect a Democrat pattern here in all of this? He turned what was a manageable recession and turned it into a ten-year depression and in the midst of that the forgotten man was the poor beleaguer taxpayer who had to pick up the difference and the small businessmen who saw collapse after collapse and foreclosure after foreclosure because of the massive spending and the government intervention that never worked. We thank Amity Schlais and Burt Colson for their great books for telling us that story.

Now take a quantum leap forward to the 1960s under President Johnson and his Democrat majority’s building upon the legacy of FDR. He created the modern welfare state as you know and having spent every dime and then some of all of the receipts that have come in from Social Security, from Medicare, they have left us now holding an invoice in excess of $105 trillion in unfunded federal net liabilities which obviously wasn’t enough of a debt load for the current administration. It sounds to me like someone is choosing decline.

But that isn’t what the founders chose. The founders of this great nation did not choose decline. They chose us and they chose greatness for us. They were wise and they gave us a legacy unlike any and the recorded annals of all human history. It was John Quincy Adams who wrote on the 61st Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence for the first time since the creation of the world was laid the foundation of government upon the principles of human rights and comprised, if it goes up on the screen we’ll see, and comprised of a few short sentences you probably know this from memory and you don’t need it, we hold these truths self evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the government. That’s our mission statement. That’ the American mission statement. It’s our creed. It’s the essence of who we are as a people. We are creatures, made by God, God gave us rights. These are rights that government can never give to us and the beauty of that is that these are rights that government can never take away from us. And there’s only one reason that government exists, it exists to secure these rights back to us, to the people and government derives its power from the consent of the people. It’s a beautiful story, this American story. John Quincy Adams went on to say in his speech never before in the history of man had there been an example of a government directly and expressly instituted on this principle of consent by the governed. What a concept, I mean just imagine you mean like if two thirds of the American people repudiate a policy like the job killing government takeover of healthcare, you mean like government might listen? Yes, that’s exactly what the founders were thinking, exactly.

That among these are life. This is our birthright, the founders said, it’s the most personal life, the most personal of all our rights. It’s the one that ascribes dignity and worth to every human being. Without life there is no other rights. Therefore it is the ultimate human life and must be respected. Liberty, liberty is the right, it’s the right to be free in our conscience, in our mind, free in our decision making, now what does that tell you about the Obama thought police, the Obama speech police. That is not what the founders intended and the pursuit of happiness. Now this is the fun in alienable right, the pursuit of happiness. This requires however according to the founders economic liberty. Pursuit of happiness meant you and I have a right to our labor. We have a right to the fruits of our labor. Now today we take this for granted. We say yeah Michele so what, that’s the way it is. No this was a radical concept in the history of man. What I produce belongs to me, not the king, not government, that’s us, that’s our legacy, the world never knew that before the United States of America. It’s private property that drives our economy. And, and the bond holders at Chrysler only know this all too well. Liberty, self government, these are the ideals that animated the founding fathers and Matt Spaulding a great scholar from Heritage Foundation wrote about America’s greatness in some stories in his wonderful book, We Still Hold These Truths.

Let me tell you just a couple of those stories. One is about a young man, Levi Preston, he was in his early 20s in the spring of 1775. He lived near Concord, Massachusetts and the time came for the call for him on liberty, Levi Preston answered the call. Here he was a young man, took up his musket, he risked everything to fight outnumbered against the greatest military power in the world but he was brave and he was asked later as an older man when he was Captain Preston he was asked, was it the intolerable oppression of the British Colonial policy, was it the Stamp Act, Levi said I never saw any stamps. What about the tax on tea? I never drank a drop of this stuff. The boys threw it all overboard. Well it must have been your reading of John Locke on Liberty, wasn’t that it? Levi said I never heard of him. In my house we only read the Bible, the Catechism, Watts Hymnal, the Almanac. Well what was it, asked the interview, what made you take up your arms against the British? Young man what we meant in going for those Red Coats was this, we always had governed ourselves and we always meant to. And he said that the British didn’t think that they should. Levi Preston on that fateful day chose liberty, suffering, self sacrifice and he chose greatness, not decline for America.

It was in a similar vein a young medical doctor named Joseph Warren, perhaps you’ve heard of him. He was the head of the public safety committee and he was the head of the Massachusetts provincial congress. He stayed in Boston easily the most dangerous era at that time in our country’s history. He, that was the epicenter of trouble in Boston, but he chose to stay there because that’s where the British were headquartered and he wanted to lead the American opposition to the British. You should also know this about Joseph Warren he was the father of four young children and he was a widower. It was Warren who made the decision to send out Paul Revere on that fateful night to warn the good people of Concord that the British were coming, the British were coming. He was elected a major general but he chose to fight as a volunteer private. Twice the British regulars attacked and twice the Americans held their fire until the very end when the advancing regiments came upon the Americans, when they were at close range then they decimated the British ranks and they forced them to fall back but the Americans were short of powder as you know, short of ammunition as you know, short of reinforcements. The Americans then were overwhelmed on the third try by the British. The soldiers swarmed the read out. They stabbed with their bayonets and later they found Joseph Warren’s body lying below the bodies of his fellow countrymen. Three months before this occurred Joseph Warren spoke these powerful words to his friends: our streets are filled with armed men. Our harbor is crowded with ships of war. But these cannot intimidate us. Our liberty must be preserved. It is far clearer than life. No longer could we reflect with generous pride on the heroic actions of our American forefathers. If we but for a moment entertain the thought of giving up our liberty our country is in danger but not to be despaired of, our enemies are numerous and powerful but we have many friends determining to be free and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question of which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves. Joseph Warren risked everything. He laid down that final full measure of his devotion for us because he chose greatness not decline for the United States.

And every successive generation of Americans from the time of Levi Preston and Joseph Warren have had to make that decision. Will they choose decline for the United States or will they choose greatness? In 1943, 67 years ago, just last week 902 American young GI boys crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a World War II transport ship. They were one of three ships in a convoy. They were 100 miles west off of Greenland. It was 1:00 in the morning when a periscope came up out of the waters. It belonged to a Nazi German submarine. The periscope took aim and it fired at the flank in the icy waters off the coast of Greenland. It hit the starboard side of the ship. Instantly the explosion occurred. Young GIs many of them were killed in a matter of seconds below deck. The power was knocked out. The radio was knocked out. As you can imagine panic, chaos set in with these boys. Men jumped the ship into the few lifeboats that there were. Some of them in life jackets. But on deck there stood four chaplains. One was a Catholic priest, another a Jewish Rabbi, two were Protestant. They were calm. They were courageous. They called to the young boys. Many were pleading. They were crying. They were praying but the chaplains preached courage, courage men, courage! They opened a storage locker. They took out the remaining life jackets they could find and they handed them out praying, saying courage, holding the hands of these young men saying put them on, they handed out the life jackets until there were more men than jackets. And wordlessly the four chaplains removed their jackets and put them on the fearful shaking bodies of the young GIs. Later witnesses recorded that the four chaplains took their arms and gathered around one another and they held on to each other. It took less than 20 minutes from the time the torpedo hit the ship until the ship slid into the icy water. They held onto each other and they cried out to the young men courage boys, hold on. They prayed for the boys. They prayed for the survivors and they prayed for those who were lost and they prayed until the chaplains were no more and of the 902 brave American GIs on board that night 672 died and one of the greatest acts of valor the four chaplains demonstrated clearly what the holy scripture says to us greater man hath no love than this but that he lay down his life for his friend.

It is of this suffering and of this self sacrifice that our nation was built upon. It was this that granted us our liberty. It was this that granted us our self government. They chose greatness for us rather than decline. That is our history. That is the American story. And so I charge you again today let us act with great courage with that spirit of sacrifice, that spirit of nobility as Joseph Warren said, act worthy of yourselves and I thank you.

 

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