SPEECH

Concerned Citizens Can Return America to its Roots

I'm so excited about what you're doing, because you represent a move of God's Spirit in today's world that is going to have a powerful significance. I feel that in my heart. The fact that you already have about 600,000 members . . we're looking in the Freedom Council, various other organizations around the country, hundreds of thousands of Christians are concerned. They're concerned about America, they're concerned about the world, and they see a struggle.

You can't have a victory unless you have a battle, you know that? It would be nice to have victories with no battles but there's a battle coming. And the battle is summed up in two phrases. One was said by a Greek philosopher, "Man is the measure of all things." The other is the Bible which says, the word of the Apostle Paul, "In Him we live and move and have our being." (Acts 17:28) Now it's either we live and move and have our being in mankind as the measure of all things and the end of all things, or we're going to have our end in Jesus Christ, in God Almighty. And there really isn't any compromise.

Humanitarians, not Humanists

Now, I feel like a humanitarian. We're going to be feeding and clothing and helping this year as many as 10 million people. And that's humanitarian. There isn't one person sitting here who doesn't feel compassion for the poor and the needy, and feel humanitarian impulses for little children who don't have proper education, and families that are torn apart, and aborted babies, and all these other things. You have compassion, but you are not humanists. Because a humanist says humanity, man, is the measure of all things.

There's a verse in Proverbs that I was reading the other day which said, Without a vision, the people break through the law, they run amuck, whatever term you want to use. It also said, the people perish.

I looked up in all of the books I've got available to me, what is a vision? The vision is a concept of God. Without the knowledge of God, people break through the law and they do terrible things. They do foolish things. They do awful things. And in turn they destroy their society. And if society is to be strong as a free society, it is absolutely necessary that the people have inside of them an inner conscience, an inner regulator, and an inner knowledge of God. It is absolutely imperative. If you don't have that, we have dictatorship to control us.

Law Can't Control People

It was John Adams, one of the framers of our Constitution, who said, "We do not have the law available to us to control the animal passions of mankind." You cannot build a dictatorship large enough to control the people.

Now the Soviets have tried it. I've been in East Germany, and I've been in other communist countries, but the thing that struck me, when I went across the Berlin Wall, went into East Germany, was one thing, and this is all over the east bloc countries. People walk along with their heads to the ground. I have never seen anything as depressing in my life. Staring toward the ground. You know why? Because if they ever look out like a free man, there's somebody in the secret police to say, "That man's dangerous."

I heard of a couple of Christians who were over in Romania, and they began to sing songs, because Christians are happy. We're the children of God. And they began to sing. And it wasn't minutes before the secret police took them. They said, "Nobody sings here. Who are you? You're something strange."

World in Conflict

Now there's a conflict in the world between those who claim to be humanists, but who lead us to dictatorship and tyranny, and those who say they love God, they're part of the Judeo-Christian tradition which says God Almighty made you and me in His image, and we have rights that no government ever gave us and no government can take away from us. We have rights because we're children of God, and these things were given us by our creator.

That was the foundation of this nation, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men, all women, created in the image of God." We're joint heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ. We're not some tool of the state. The state doesn't give. The state can't take away. But that's one of the cardinal teachings of humanism.

In the name of humanity, ladies and gentlemen, in the name of humanism and human values, these same humanists have said to us: "The natural product of human reproduction, which should be as free, without any restraints of the outmoded religious beliefs, this reproductive process must be totally free, but the product of the sexual relationship of a man and a woman is not in itself human."

That is about as ideological a statement as I've ever heard of -- the product of the mating of dogs or horses or anything else is one of their own kind, like God said. But the product of the conception of the human species, because of unbridled sexuality, is a blob, a fetus, a thing, a mass of tissue, which can be eliminated at the will of the mother. And so we have butchered, in this country, during the last few years, as many as 17 or even 18 million unborn babies. In the name of the love of humanity, we have destroyed 18 million people.

The Cost is High

Do you know what the cost to our society is going to be of this? If this continues to the end of this century, we will have aborted 40 million unborn babies, a slaughter that equals that of Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, whatever dictator, whatever monster of history you want to name, we, who are supposed to be one nation under God, have killed 40 million of our own young.

This is going to cost us something. You know what it's going to cost? I'll tell you what it will cost. It will cost hands and feet and minds and hearts and concepts and work and productivity. And the cost to our society, by the year 2020, on the basis of the abortions we're performing right now, is going to be $1.4 trillion, and the loss from tax revenue from this to our government is going to be $300 billion, and the loss of support for the then-elderly yuppies of today who are aborting their kids is going to be nobody to look after them in their old age.

That is an extremely serious thing that nobody's thinking about now because we're all on a pleasure kick. It's hedonism, do your own thing, if it feels good baby do it. And yet we've said, we can't restrain this.

Why Did We Start?

Why did we start doing this? Is it because of people? Possibly. Is it because of schools? Yes. Some of the sex education in the schools you can't even put on television, it's so raw. Is it because of the television? Yes. But it's also because five people, or six, or whatever -- it only takes five -- non-elected officials in our country, by the stroke of the pen, came up with a novel concept, entered into science which they didn't know, entered into theology which they didn't know, attempted to play God and to say when does life begin -- is it conception, is it the first trimester, is it the second trimester? When does life begin, and when does a human being become a human being?

People have been debating this for centuries. And Justice Blackman says, "Well, I know the answer, I'm smarter than all the wisdom of the ages. It's this." It isn't this. It's total folly. And it's led to disaster in our society. Five non-elected people, sitting in black robes on a bench, coming to play God with our lives. What utter chaos they have wreaked in relation to the religious values.

Education is Failing

I'm interested in education, very much, and I know you are too. I'm a grandfather. My children are grown, and now my grandchildren are starting to come up. I've been seeing about reading and writing. I was in New York not too long ago, trying to start a literacy program in the Bedford- Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. Forty-three percent of all the students in the New York City public schools will drop out before they get through high school. Almost 49 percent of all the students grades two through seventh or eighth in New York City are reading below their reading level. They can't cope, and they can't function.

One of the reasons -- not all of the reasons -- one of the reasons is there is no restraint, there is no vision of God. Twenty, or 30, or 40 years ago, the main offenses in school were pushing, shoving, and lying, getting ahead, chewing gum, throwing spit balls. Now it's rape, aggravated assault, drug possession, drug pushing, drug dealing, that kind of thing.

We're generating 250,000 crimes of violence per month in the public school system of America, according to the Attorney General's report. And yet the Justices say, "They can't have the Ten Commandments on the walls of their school. They can't start with prayer. They can't read the Bible."

Open War

And it's getting worse and worse, as the humanists say, "We want to take control of the children." And in one of their magazines, they had the audacity to say, "So what, if Johnny can't read? We have him till he's 17 years old, and we can change his values." Now it's an open war we're dealing with. It's war in relation to education. It's war in relation to the court system and their concepts of what is right and wrong, it is war in relation to certain of the welfare programs which are antithetical, if you will, and opposite to the family.

They're tearing families apart instead of building them together. We have a tax structure right now -- the President is trying to get a family-oriented deduction system in to raise the personal exemption and deduction up to a point where families will be encouraged to stay together instead of break apart.

There Must be Change

Little by little, perhaps, there's going to be a change. But the time has come, it seems like to me, to enter into the arena, because God Almighty has a hand and a stake in this nation.

I believe God loves America. I believe America is a planting of God. I believe that the ancestors of most of us who came to this land way back in the 17th century, the 18th century, and even into the 19th century, loved God, and they came to worship God freely.

They didn't come to this land to be denied the freedom of worship by those who are atheists. They came to have freedom to worship God the way they wanted to -- to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

I know there are many politicians who say "Well, these really aren't important issues. What's really important is the budget." Let me tell you about the budget. Functional illiteracy in the United States has claimed 27 million people. If all those folks could read and write, we would have saved $220 billion on the federal budget and our budget would be in balance. Just straighten out the schools.

Get Serious

Someone else said, "Well, why are you concerned about AIDS? " The governor of the state, as a matter of fact, asked me that question. "Why are you all so concerned about homosexuals, and AIDS, and that kind of thing? Why are you fooling with this thing? Why don't you get, serious with the budget?"

A Harvard sociologist wrote, the other day, in Newsweek, in a letter to the editor, "Beginning in 1990 it's going to be the equivalent one 747 fully loaded with passengers crashing in America every single day as a result of the deaths of AIDS because we're getting in our country 1,000 new cases of AIDS every single day."

Definition of "Rights" Critical

It is one of the most horrible things that is sweeping through our society. The blood supply is being polluted with this awful virus. And we're saying it's a civil rights matter. Those of us who do not engage in certain practices, such as intravenous drug use, etc., don't we have any rights? Don't we have any rights in America?

Of course you have compassion for those who are sick. One of our staff sent me a memo just yesterday which said, in San Francisco, the victims of AIDS in the hospital who happen to be homosexual are given visiting rights in the hospital for their "lovers" to come into the hospital. They don't even let the heterosexuals do that.

No Vision

What kind of a monstrous thing have we got? When there is no vision of God, when there's no vision of God's law, when there's no vision of right and wrong, when there's no vision of ultimate reward and ultimate punishment, when there's no vision of decency, when there's no standard of values, society breaks apart and everybody does what he wants to do.

And I thank God that you are here to use your influence, and this organization to use its influence, to bring us once again so that we can be one nation under God, and that this nation will be a city set on a hill, a beacon for the nations of the world, one that honors God, and which God loves and honors.

May God bless you. Thank you very much.