SPEECH
Concerned Citizens Can Return America to its Roots
Synopsis: In this 1985 speech, Pat says a battle
is in progress for America's heart and soul. The stakes are
high: millions of babies have been aborted; AIDS ravages our
youth; and our schools have become battlegrounds. But God loves
America. And Americans must return to a love of God to restore
peace and decency. Pat congratulates this organization on its
commitment to that goal.
Concerned Women of America, July 27, 1985
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.
|