A Nation Like No Other (31 page)

The beginning of an NBC New York story on January 30, 2010 said it all:

Having repeatedly denounced his predecessor's prosecution of the War on Terror, President Obama took office vowing to do away with military
tribunals for terrorism suspects and instead to try them in U.S. civilian courts.

But when the Obama administration announced its intention to transfer 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused terrorists to civilian courts in New York City, near the site of the most devastating terrorist attack on America in our history, Americans rose up in protest. The backlash was most visible in New York City itself, where numerous demonstrations were staged by grassroots organizations such as the 9/11 Never Forget Coalition, a diverse group comprising families of 9/11 victims, first responders, military families, war veterans, and other concerned Americans.

In advance of its December 2010 rally, the coalition announced, “This Coalition was formed to fight the decision of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to try the 9/11 co-conspirators in New York City's federal court, effectively giving war criminals the same rights as American citizens while endangering the safety of all New Yorkers.”
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As the public outcry intensified, local city leaders as well as national political figures began speaking out against the administration's plans to bring terrorists to the American mainland and treat them like ordinary criminals. Eventually, the administration was forced to back down and end its two-year-long moratorium on military tribunals for terror suspects. Thanks to the willingness of thousands of New Yorkers and many other Americans to take a public stand, today Khalid Sheikh Mohammed remains right where he belongs—in Guantanamo Bay.

In America we see protests all the time representing a galaxy of political perspectives. They used to be dominated by the Left, but in recent years, an energized, grassroots conservative movement has emerged whose adherents are unafraid to voice their objections to the constant encroachments of government. In tea parties and town hall meetings, from Bell, California, to New York City, Americans are speaking out like
never before against over-reaching and irresponsible government on the local, state, and national levels.

As we make our voices heard, we must never forget how few nations enjoy the most basic rights—to speak freely, worship freely, and petition their leaders for a redress of grievances. People throughout the world are persecuted for speaking against their governments the way we do every day. As I write these words, Syrian army units and police forces are killing their own people in the streets. The victims' crime? They gathered together to seek changes to government policies.

Though we sometimes take them for granted, our rights are unusual in this world—and they existed almost nowhere else when our Founders enshrined them in our nation's founding documents. To not only have these rights, but to live in a country founded for the express purpose of securing them, is an exceptional privilege enjoyed by every American—and one we must guard with eternal vigilance.

T
he election of 2012 will bring us to an historic crossroads. The direction we choose will determine whether we will continue as an exceptional nation or follow a path of decline and fade into mediocrity, inadequacy, and failure.

In 1900 many people believed that the twentieth century would be dominated by Britain, just as the previous century had been. Yet two world wars and two generations of socialism laid waste to British prosperity, power, and global leadership. By 2000 no one could deny the twentieth century had, in fact, been the American century. What will be said of the United States in the year 2100, or even 2050? That choice will be made by the American people.

Let's be clear what this choice entails: we can cultivate an America that reaffirms and recommits to the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence that have made us a nation like no other in history. This
choice leads to a future of even greater opportunities, a future that is freer, safer, healthier, and more prosperous.

Or we can reject these truths and surrender to a debt-ridden, government-centric system dominated by politicians and stultifying bureaucrats who will gladly manage our decline as long as they stay in charge. This choice will lead to economic ruin and an increasingly dangerous world.

Those are the stakes of the 2012 election.

While the election of 2012 is the first step toward a better future, I believe we must look further down the road than November 6, 2012; the key date is actually January 20, 2021.

If we are successful in replacing the Left and restoring American Exceptionalism, by January 20, 2021, eight years after the 2012 election, America will be stronger than at any time in our lifetimes. On that day, a new conservative president will be taking the oath of office. Looking on will be both houses of Congress, led by strong majorities that believe in American Exceptionalism and are working to strengthen and protect it every day. The federal government will have turned significant powers back to the states, local governments, and the people—including the more than 513,000 elected officials in the United States who serve as governors, state legislators, and as members of school boards, city councils, and county commissions. And our nation will be reaping the rewards that come from listening to the American people.

The hard, steady work of returning power to the people will be far more important than the decisions of any one person. No man or woman in the Oval Office can achieve change on this scale. It will require the active participation of millions of Americans.

Conservatives will need a long-term commitment and strategic vision to reverse the damage the Left has done to America. After all, in its quest to transform America into a radically secular, government-controlled utopia, the Left has spent a century building up a system dominated by bureaucrats and special interest groups. And the Left continues its crusade today despite the undeniable failure of its vision, as evident in the wreckage
of so many countries that turned to socialism or other forms of central planning. Its own track record shows that the left-wing governing philosophy of class warfare, class envy, and the redistribution of wealth is incapable of meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century.

The system we are fighting for is the one established by our Founders, a republic that rewards work and merit, cultivates civil society and faith, confronts and defeats threats to our way of life, and returns power to the American people. Benjamin Franklin wondered whether Americans could keep such a republic. Abraham Lincoln answered this question for his generation at a battlefield at Gettysburg four score and seven years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence:

Now, we too must answer Franklin's question for our own generation.

It will not be enough to reject the Left's big government policies at the ballot box—the American people did that in 1972, 1980, 1994, and 2010, yet the Left carries on, seemingly undiminished. That's because its power stretches beyond public office to the commanding heights of our society—our academic institutions, newsrooms, courtrooms, and throughout the fields of arts and entertainment.

If we are to reclaim our Founders' republic, we must not merely
reject
the Left and its failed policies, but
replace
them. To do that, we need three things: a positive vision to offer the American people; the votes to implement it; and the will to carry it through. This effort should be propelled by a political movement that can communicate why we must
change, how we can accomplish that change, and what responsibilities that change will require of every individual. In building this movement to replace the Left, we should take inspiration from the First Continental Congress, which in 1776, in the Declaration of Independence, made its own historic call for replacing the corrupt, abusive system of its day with a new model based on superior values.

The new conservative movement must be just as committed to freedom as were the revolutionary signers of the Declaration. Just as in their day, today's patriots are farmers, shopkeepers, doctors, entrepreneurs, coal miners, and workers from every corner of America. As the Left struggles to rend our traditional bonds of family, community, and country, and to dissolve the American nation into a collection of rival interest groups scrambling for their own piece of the government pie, it is the ideals of the Declaration which again must bind us together.

In the hard winter of 1778, General George Washington committed the American colonists to victory by building up a well-trained professional army. He recruited new soldiers, steeled the will of veterans, and equipped them all for the fight ahead. It was not enough to declare independence; it had to be won on the battlefield. As Thomas Paine so rightly declared in 1776, “Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

After their improbable victory, the Founders had to ensure the principles they had fought for were embodied in their founding documents, realized in their own lives, and preserved for generations to come. When their first attempt to codify these values of liberty—the Articles of Confederation—proved inadequate, they acknowledged its flaws and worked out a replacement. The result was the United States Constitution, the greatest source and guarantor of the rule of law and human liberty in history.

The Founders succeeded in their task in one generation; they rejected tyranny, won their liberty, and secured it for themselves and future generations. They challenged subsequent generations to safeguard the
republic and make it even stronger and freer. In their wisdom, they gave us the tools to accomplish that task. Generations of Americans since have accepted that challenge and proved themselves worthy of the Founders' bequest.

It is that endowment that gives us the means to restore American Exceptionalism. Our American Creed—that all men and women are created equal, possessed of a God-given dignity and personally sovereign—embodies truths that apply beyond America's borders; it is an invitation to
all
mankind to affirm its unalienable rights and pursue happiness. We must each live up to that Creed to keep faith with God and our forebears.

Countless Americans have struggled at great cost to ensure our country lives up to its ideals. Hundreds of thousands died fighting a wrenching Civil War that led to a new birth of freedom dedicated to the founding principles. In the following century, Americans extended our creed to millions in bondage when we defeated the tyrannies of fascism, Japanese militarism, and after a decades-long struggle, Soviet Communism. Back at home, civil rights activists pricked the nation's conscience with their dignified struggle to allow all Americans, regardless of race, to realize their unalienable rights.

The task of renewal now falls to us, to this generation of Americans. Our faith in a better future—one of the great features of the American character—is being shaken by ever-growing debt and deficits, broken bureaucratic systems, an increasingly intrusive government, rising hostility to God and traditional values, a sluggish economy, new economic and strategic challenges, and malevolent enemies bent on our destruction. For the first time in our lives, fully half of Americans believe that their children will be worse off than themselves. Only one in five Americans today believes that the future will be better.
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Our challenge is to stand with those believers in an even greater America and prove them right.

If we are successful, America in the twenty-first century will be a land of liberty—a land where the natural rights and inherent dignity of every man, woman, and child are both protected by government and affirmed
by fellow citizens. Risk-takers will reap their just rewards for their endeavors. Excellence, hard work, and merit will be honored and admired, not punished and scorned. Every citizen will have access to the tools of success and be encouraged to make use of them. Education—the best means of achieving social mobility—will no longer breed mediocrity for so many of our children, but will instead provide a path of upward mobility to all who seek it.