Tag Archives: Speech

Videos

Senator Marco Rubio’s speech at the conservative CPAC 2012 conference

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If I had to choose one Republican who gives great speeches on what it means to be a conservative, I would pick Marco Rubio. (25 minutes)

Here’s an article from Human Events about the speech, for those who can’t watch it or listen to it.

Excerpt:

Rubio ranked the strength of the American people alongside the importance of economic and military strength, for it is our people – not our government – who have made us great.  He sees critical institutions of society, which contribute to the strength of citizens and families, under assault by the Obama Administration.  “We have a President who, just a few days ago, issued a mandate ordering religious institutions to follow his ideals… telling religious-based organizations that they must, by mandate of the federal government, pay for things that religion teaches is wrong.  You may not agree with that religion’s teachings, but that’s not the point.  The point is that the First Amendment still applies.  Religious freedom still exists.”

He confessed he isn’t sure what the foreign constitutions Justice Ginsburg admires might have to say on the matter, but he knows what the United States Constitution says: “The federal government does not have the power to force religious organizations to pay for things that organization thinks is wrong!”

On the scale of history, only a “moment” has passed since world wars were fought against totalitarian evil.  What followed could hardly be described as “world peace,” and cleaning the blood from the edge of the statist hammer has not softened its essential nature.  “Today millions of people around the world are part of the middle class because of the rise of democracy and free enterprise.  Did that happen on its own?  Is that the natural state of man?”  Rubio suggested a study of humanity’s long history beneath the boots of oppressors answers that question.

Democracy and free enterprise spread, not because they are humanity’s default condition, but because “the most powerful nation in the world believed in these things, fought for these things, spoke out for these things… and most importantly, was an example of these things.”  The power of the American example transcends military and political force, because “all around the world, there are people who know there is someone just like them, living here, doing things they cannot.”

“What happens if we diminish, because we can no longer afford to be the leader of the free world?” Rubio asked.  “What happens if we diminish because our leaders decide they don’twant to be the leaders of the free world anymore?  What happens if we retreat?  What happens is that we’ll leave a space, and that space will be filled by someone else.”  The likely candidates for our successor as global hyperpower are totalitarian states like Russia and China… whose measure Rubio took by noting that they’ve vetoed United Nations efforts to rein in Syria’s dictator, Bashar Assad, because they reserve the right to use such brutal tactics against their own people.

Rubio understands that the clash of civilizations cannot be won from an easy chair, or a death bed.  “The greatest thing we can do for the people of the world is be America,” he concluded.  “That’s what’s at stake here.  That’s what November will be about.”

It would be a shame if all the people who flee to America, to escape from socialist decay and totalitarian repression, found the very things they fled awaiting them on our shores.  It pays to take a moment and see our exceptional nation through the eyes of those tired, poor, huddled masses, as Marco Rubio has done.

You can listen to an MP3 of the speech here. (12 Mb)

He’s only 40 years old. We have a deep, deep bullpen.

Videos

Video and transcript of Rick Santorum’s inspiring Iowa victory speech

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The speech is 20 minutes long, and it sounds like what a Republican sounds like.

Here is the full transcript of Rick Santorum’s Iowa speech.

Excerpt:

SPEAKER: FORMER SEN. RICK SANTORUM, R-PA.,

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

[*]

SANTORUM: Thank you. Thank you. Game on.

(APPLAUSE) As all of you know, I do not speak from notes, but there’s a couple things I want to say that are a little — little more emotional, so I’m going to read them as I wrote them.

C.S. Lewis said a friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you’ve forgotten the words. My best friend, my life mate, who sings that song when I forget the words, is my wife, Karen.

(APPLAUSE)

People have asked me how I’ve done this, sitting back at the polls and not getting a whole lot of attention paid to us. How did you keep going out to Iowa, in 99 counties, and 381 town hall meetings and speeches? Well, every morning when I was getting up in the morning to take on that challenge, I’ve required a strength from another particular friendship, one that is sacred. I’ve survived the challenges so far by the daily grace that comes from God.

(APPLAUSE)

For giving me his grace every day, for loving me, warts and all, I offer a public thanks to God.

(APPLAUSE)

Third, thanks. Thank you so much, Iowa.

(APPLAUSE)

You — you, by standing up and not compromising, by standing up and being bold and leading, leading with that burden and responsibility you have to be first, you have taken the first step of taking back this country.

(APPLAUSE)

This journey started officially just a few months ago in June, when I stood on the steps of the county courthouse in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. I decided to go there, not the typical place someone announces for president — it’s not where I was born, it’s not where I ever lived — but it’s where my grandfather came back in 1925. He came by himself, even though he was married with two children, one of them being my father. He came after having fought in World War I, because Mussolini had been in power now three years, and he had figured out that fascism was something that would crush his spirit and his freedom and give his children something less than he wanted for them.

So he made a sacrifice. He left to the coal fields of southwestern Pennsylvania. He worked in the mine at a company town, got paid with coupons, he used to call them, lived in a shack. Eventually, he figured out that that was a trip to nowhere, so he started taking less — taking money less so he could start to save, and he did. And after five years, he got his citizenship and brought my father over at the age of 7. He ended up continuing to work in those mines until he was 72 years old, digging coal. I’ll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin. And all I could do — eye level — was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was those hands dug freedom for me.

And so to honor him, I went to Somerset County, because I believe foundationally, while the economy is in horrible condition, while our country is not as safe as it was, and while threats are rising around the world, while the state of our culture under this administration continues to decline with the values that are unlike the values that built this country, that the essential issue in this race is freedom, whether we will be a country that believes that government can do things for us better than we can do for ourselves, or whether we believe, as our founders did, that rights come to us from God and, when he gave us those rights, he gave us the freedom to go out and live those — live those rights out to build a great and just society not from the top down, but from the bottom up.

(APPLAUSE)

My grandfather taught me basic things that my dad taught me over and over again: Work hard, work hard, and work hard. And I think about that today. There are so many men and women right now who would love to work hard, but they don’t have the opportunity.

And we have two parties who are out talking about how they’re going to solve those problems. One wants to talk about raising taxes on people who have been successful and redistributing money, increasing dependency in this country, promoting more Medicare and food stamps and all sorts of social welfare programs, and passing Obamacare to provide even more government subsidies, more and more dependency, more and more government, exactly what my grandfather left in 1925.

And then there’s another vision, with another vision, the Republican vision, which is, let’s just cut taxes, let’s just reduce spending and everyone will be fine.

I believe in cutting taxes. I believe in balancing budgets. I propose cutting $5 trillion from this budget over the next five years. I support a balanced budget amendment that puts a cap at 18 percent of GDP as a guarantee of freedom for this country. But …

(APPLAUSE)

But I also believe we as Republicans have to look at those who are not doing well in our society by just cutting taxes and balancing budgets, and that’s why I put forth a plan that Iowans responded to. It’s a plan that says, yes, let’s flatten the tax code, get rid of it, replace it with five deductions. Let’s create two rates, 10 percent and 28 percent. Why 28 percent? If it’s good enough for Ronald Reagan, it’s good enough for me.

(APPLAUSE) And then I take the corporate tax, cut that in half, because it’s the highest in the world, and we need to be competitive. But when I traveled around Iowa to the small towns, I found a lot of those small towns were just like the small towns that I traveled around in Pennsylvania. They were towns that were centered around manufacturing and processing, those good jobs that built those towns, and those jobs slowly, whether it’s in Hamburg, whether it’s in Newton, or any place in between, we found those jobs leaving Iowa.

Why? Because our workers didn’t want to work? Because our workers weren’t competitive? No. It’s because government made workers uncompetitive by driving up the cost of doing business here. It’s 20 percent more expensive to do manufacturing jobs in this country than it is in the top nine trading partners that we have to compete with. And that’s why we’re losing our jobs.

And so when Republican purists say to me, well, why are you treating manufacturing different than retail? I say because Wal- Mart’s not moving to China and taking their jobs with them.

(APPLAUSE)

So we eliminate the corporate tax on manufacturing so we can compete. We take the regulations, every regulation that’s over $100 million, and we repeal all those regulations, repeal them all, and there’s a lot of them. Under the Bush and Clinton administrations, they averaged 60 regulations over $100 million a year. This administration hit 150 last year.

You don’t want to know what’s crushing business. This administration is crushing business.

I’m taking a second look at Santorum’s economic policies and it seems to me that they will very good for blue collar workers especially. By cutitng corporate taxes, everyone in the country who makes anything at all is going to have about 6 job offers before noon.

As far as social policy and foreign policy, Santorum is number one. He really is a fine candidate. My endorsement of Rick Santorum is here. I previously liked Bachmann and Cain, but with those two now out, I find that Rick Santorum is actually better than either of them in many ways.

UPDATE: Wow! Rick Santorum raised over a million dollars already today!

News

Conservative MP introduces bill to abolish Section 13 speech code

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Here is the description for that video, posted by SDAMatt: (Note: Tory = Conservative)

Tory backbencher Brian Storseth wants to eliminate Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA). That is the provision in federal law that gives the Canadian Human Rights Commission authority to hear complaints of hate speech on the Internet. We wish Mr. Storseth, the MP from Westlock-St. Paul in Alberta, well in this campaign. Section 13 is a particularly pernicious infringement on free speech. Originally added to the CHRA in 2001 as a protection for vulnerable groups against racist or violence-promoting websites, the clause has more often been used by minority activists (or those purporting to act on behalf of minorities) to silence those who do not share their opinions.

The biggest problem with Sec. 13 is that its provisions make it far too easy for commissioners to find an alleged offender guilty. Unlike in a court of law – where the presumption of innocence, rules of evidence and bans on hearsay testimony protect defendants from wrongful prosecution – at a human rights tribunal complainants may remain anonymous and complaints may be filed by third parties with no direct interest in the case at hand. (Some folks even make a profitable hobby out of launching these complaints.) Hearsay evidence is perfectly acceptable, the onus to prove one’s innocence often falls on the accused, and tax dollars pay for the plaintiff’s lawyers while the accused is on his or her own to fund a defence.

A further flaw in Sec. 13 is that neither the truth nor the lack of intent to harm is permitted as a defence. It does not matter whether the offending Internet message was truthful or if adjudicators find it “likely to expose an identifiable group to hatred or contempt” (the standard employed under criminal law) – the owner of the website on which it appears and the person who posted it are guilty anyway.

In 2007, Sec. 13 was used against writer Mark Steyn for material he wrote in Maclean’s magazine that four Muslim students claimed had offended them. That same year, a similar provision in Alberta provincial human rights law was used to prosecute Ezra Levant for publishing the infamous Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in the now-defunct Western Standard magazine. In both cases, the clear intent of the complainants was to limit legitimate debate about religious extremism.

Fears that getting rid of Sec. 13 will lead to a flood of vicious anti-Semitism and the like are unfounded. Sections 318 through 320 of the Criminal Code already prohibit “hate propaganda” – including “any writing, sign or visible representation that advocates or promotes genocide.” And it has been used several times to prosecute true hatemongers, James Keegstra, most famously. Nothing in Mr. Storseth’s proposal would affect those laws.

The Conservatives have a majority in the House of Commons and the Senate, and they have Prime Minister Stephen Harper there to sign the bill. They need to do this right away, and then ban political contributions by large corporations and public sector unions.

But wait! There’s more! (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

The Supreme Court of Canada recently laid the smack down on Human Rights Tribunals across the country. In a recent decision, B.C. Workers’ Compensation Board v. Figliola, a five-judge majority dramatically reduced the discretion of human rights tribunals to rehear discrimination complaints already decided by other administrative bodies such as workers’ compensation boards.

According to lawyer Peter Gall, who is also representing Dr. Brian Day in a health care related case that the Canadian Constitution Foundation is also assisting in, “the practice of workers taking a second kick at the can in front of human rights tribunals after their discrimination complaints had already been dismissed by a labour board or other administrative decision-maker ‘was happening often enough that it was a real problem'”.
This Supreme Court decision applies to all human rights tribunals across Canada and is very important to the business community of British Columbia and Canada because it provides for finality and prevents “forum shopping” and the issue of multiple proceedings.

I know that there are  a lot of conservative voters who are disillusioned with the Canadian Tories over the abortion issue and the free speech issue. The Conservatives need to get something done on these issues, immediately.