Emmeline Pankhurst: 'This last fight for human freedom', Canada speech - 1912

14 January 1912, Canada

Women never took a single step forward without being pushed back first of all by their opponents. 

We did not mind being laughed at as long as by laughter we could get our way  to the vote.

 But the laughter was also turned against the statesman who refused to answer us. The statesman is a sort of serious individual not to be mocked or jeered at, but it was somewhat undignified for the first  minister of the crown to make his way out by the rear  entrance with a horse cloth over his head or to pass by an underground passage to the post office and then be shot down the parcel tube. 

People began to take us seriously then. A leading paper, when Mr. Asquith went to Birmingham, sent a wire to its local correspondent. 

“Never mind the prime minister. What are the suffragettes doing?”

Our next move was the canvass, and with a distinct woman's platform we took the field. 

We said, “Vote against the government till it gives women the vote.”

 Candidates then began to complain that we took their audiences from them, but our reply was that the country was free, and if they wished to have a bigger house they should give better speeches. 

 Particularly in the working class districts we gained ground and we found that we went into the social problems that were within the province of women we found the support of men who were not skilled in party lore, but had human hearts. 

We then became a real power in the election and government candidates where we worked against them were often defeated

There has been a great deal of talk lately of new legislation for those who are about to enter into marriage. Woman should have a say as one of the contracting parties. There are the questions of divorce and of the training of children. Who knows better of these matters than do women? There are also the trades and professions which are at the present time open to women. It is only right that we should have some say in the legislation concerning us. We have heard much of the English divorce law. It is a disgrace to any civilized country. 

The only redeeming feature of the matter is that the bulk of men are better than the law allows.But there is the minority, and the law should be severe for them. They are as bad as the law allows them to be. If woman only had weight in politics this would be rectified soon. 

She will serve to call more attention to such questions of national welfare. If we are to have any divorce law at all, and that is a muchdebated question, it should be a law that is equal both for man and woman. Unless women get the vote we have no guarantee that it will be so. 

There is again the legal status of married persons. 

Nature has given the child twoparents, the law gives but one, and it is the father when the child id born in wedlock, but if the child is born out of wedlock, it is the mother. Men have made these laws, but what we want is to have Nature’s law as man’s law

…

 If we look around in the world, where do we see women happy, well treated and satisfied unless where the world has been made what women wish it to be? Men are responsible if they allow the present condition of things to continue. Women have the power to work out their own salvation. But as it’s, if a woman is ruined, if a child id injured, man is responsible for it all. It is a responsibility I would not care to have, and, as things are, I would not be a man for the entire world. If women fail as men have failed, then they will bear the burden with them. But since men cannot protect and shield us, let us share the duty with them, let us use our power so that woman may be a participant, not to tyrannize over man but to taketo share in the responsibilities of ruling, without which there is no real representative government. 

What we really are interested in this fight is the uplifting of the sex and better conditions of humanity than men can secure. In the legal home there is but the man. What we want is the combined intelligence of man and woman working for the salvation of the children of the race. This will make for the world a better time than ever before in its history. 

It will raise mankind to heights of which now it has little conception. We must only make this last fight for human freedom that as the class distinction disappeared so that sex distinction may pass, and then you will get better things than men can by themselves secure. 

Theodopre Roosevelt: 'The new nationalism', Osawatomie speech - 1910

August 1910, Osawatomie, Kansas, USA

We come here today to commemorate one of the epoch-making events of the long struggle for the rights of man--the long struggle for the uplift of humanity. Our country--this great Republic-means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy, the triumph of popular government, and, in the long run, of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him. That is why the history of America is now the central feature of the history of the world; for the world has set its face hopefully toward our democracy; and, O my fellow citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your country, but the burden of doing well and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind.

There have been two great crises in our country’s history: first, when it was formed, and then, again, when it was perpetuated; and, in the second of these great crises--in the time of stress and strain which culminated in the Civil War, on the outcome of which depended the justification of what had been done earlier, you men of the Grand Army, you men who fought through the Civil War, not only did you justify your generation, but you justified the wisdom of Washington and Washington’s colleagues. If this Republic had been founded by them only to be split asunder into fragments when the strain came, then the judgment of the world would have been that Washington’s work was not worth doing. It was you who crowned Washington’s work, as you carried to achievement the high purpose of Abraham Lincoln.

Now, with this second period of our history the name of John Brown will forever be associated; and Kansas was the theatre upon which the first act of the second of our great national life dramas was played. It was the result of the struggle in Kansas which determined that our country should be in deed as well as in name devoted to both union and freedom; that the great experiment of democratic government on a national scale should succeed and not fail. In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts. This is true everywhere; but, O my friends, it should be truest of all in political life. A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election; and, if he makes such a pledge and does not keep it, hunt him out of public life. I care for the great deeds of the past chiefly as spurs to drive us onward in the present. I speak of the men of the past partly that they may be honored by our praise of them, but more that they may serve as examples for the future.

It was a heroic struggle; and, as is inevitable with all such struggles, it had also a dark and terrible side. Very much was done of good, and much also of evil; and, as was inevitable in such a period of revolution, often the same man did both good and evil. For our great good fortune as a nation, we, the people of the United States as a whole, can now afford to forget the evil, or, at least, to remember it without bitterness, and to fix our eyes with pride only on the good that was accomplished. Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed. Looking back, we are all of us now able to do justice to the valor and the disinterestedness and the love of the right, as to each it was given to see the right, shown both by the men of the North and the men of the South in that contest which was finally decided by the attitude of the West. We can admire the heroic valor, the sincerity, the self-devotion shown alike by the men who wore the blue and the men who wore the gray; and our sadness that such men should have to fight one another is tempered by the glad knowledge that ever hereafter their descendants shall be fighting side by side, struggling in peace as well as in war for the uplift of their common country, all alike resolute to raise to the highest pitch of honor and usefulness the nation to which they all belong. As for the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic, they deserve honor and recognition such as is paid to no other citizens of the Republic; for to them the republic owes it all; for to them it owes its very existence. It is because of what you and your comrades did in the dark years that we of to-day walk, each of us, head erect, and proud that we belong, not to one of a dozen little squabbling contemptible commonwealths, but to the mightiest nation upon which the sun shines.

I do not speak of this struggle of the past merely from the historic standpoint. Our interest is primarily in the application to-day of the lessons taught by the contest a half a century ago. It is of little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises. It is half melancholy and half amusing to see the way in which well-meaning people gather to do honor to the men who, in company with John Brown, and under the lead of Abraham Lincoln, faced and solved the great problems of the nineteenth century, while, at the same time, these same good people nervously shrink from, or frantically denounce, those who are trying to meet the problems of the twentieth century in the spirit which was accountable for the successful solution of the problems of Lincoln’s time.

Of that generation of men to whom we owe so much, the man to whom we owe most is, of course, Lincoln. Part of our debt to him is because he forecast our present struggle and saw the way out. He said:

"I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind."

And again:

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

If that remark was original with me, I should be even more strongly denounced as a Communist agitator than I shall be anyhow. It is Lincoln’s. I am only quoting it; and that is one side; that is the side the capitalist should hear. Now, let the working man hear his side.

"Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable; is a positive good in the world."

And then comes a thoroughly Lincoln-like sentence:

"Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

It seems to me that, in these words, Lincoln took substantially the attitude that we ought to take; he showed the proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights and property rights. Above all, in this speech, as in many others, he taught a lesson in wise kindliness and charity; an indispensable lesson to us of today. But this wise kindliness and charity never weakened his arm or numbed his heart. We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us today. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail.

In every wise struggle for human betterment one of the main objects, and often the only object, has been to achieve in large measure equality of opportunity. In the struggle for this great end, nations rise from barbarism to civilization, and through it people press forward from one stage of enlightenment to the next. One of the chief factors in progress is the destruction of special privilege. The essence of any struggle for healthy liberty has always been, and must always be, to take from some one man or class of men the right to enjoy power, or wealth, or position, or immunity, which has not been earned by service to his or their fellows. That is what you fought for in the Civil War, and that is what we strive for now.

At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. That is nothing new. All I ask in civil life is what you fought for in the Civil War. I ask that civil life be carried on according to the spirit in which the army was carried on. You never get perfect justice, but the effort in handling the army was to bring to the front the men who could do the job. Nobody grudged promotion to Grant, or Sherman, or Thomas, or Sheridan, because they earned it. The only complaint was when a man got promotion which he did not earn.

Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.

I stand for the square deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service. One word of warning, which, I think, is hardly necessary in Kansas. When I say I want a square deal for the poor man, I do not mean that I want a square deal for the man who remains poor because he has not got the energy to work for himself. If a man who has had a chance will not make good, then he has got to quit. And you men of the Grand Army, you want justice for the brave man who fought, and punishment for the coward who shirked his work. Is that not so?

Now, this means that our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. That is one of our tasks to-day. Every special interest is entitled to justice--full, fair, and complete--and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the wealthy man, whomsoever he may be, for whom I have the greatest contempt, I would fight for him, and you would if you were worth your salt. He should have justice. For every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.

The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.

There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

We must have complete and effective publicity of corporate affairs, so that the people may know beyond peradventure whether the corporations obey the law and whether their management entitles them to the confidence of the public. It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public-service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.

It has become entirely clear that we must have government supervision of the capitalization, not only of public-service corporations, including, particularly, railways, but of all corporations doing an interstate business. I do not wish to see the nation forced into the ownership of the railways if it can possibly be avoided, and the only alternative is thoroughgoing and effective legislation, which shall be based on a full knowledge of all the facts, including a physical valuation of property. This physical valuation is not needed, or, at least, is very rarely needed, for fixing rates; but it is needed as the basis of honest capitalization.

We have come to recognize that franchises should never be granted except for a limited time, and never without proper provision for compensation to the public. It is my personal belief that the same kind and degree of control and supervision which should be exercised over public-service corporations should be extended also to combinations which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil, or coal, or which deal in them on an important scale. I have no doubt that the ordinary man who has control of them is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he would like to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help him realize that desire to do well.

I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.

Combinations in industry are the result of an imperative economic law which cannot be repealed by political legislation. The effort at prohibiting all combination has substantially failed. The way out lies, not in attempting to prevent such combinations, but in completely controlling them in the interest of the public welfare. For that purpose the Federal Bureau of Corporations is an agency of first importance. Its powers, and, therefore, its efficiency, as well as that of the Interstate Commerce Commission, should be largely increased. We have a right to expect from the Bureau of Corporations and from the Interstate Commerce Commission a very high grade of public service. We should be as sure of the proper conduct of the interstate railways and the proper management of interstate business as we are now sure of the conduct and management of the national banks, and we should have as effective supervision in one case as in the other. The Hepburn Act, and the amendment to the act in the shape in which it finally passed Congress at the last session, represent a long step in advance, and we must go yet further.

There is a wide-spread belief among our people that, under the methods of making tariffs which have hitherto obtained, the special interests are too influential. Probably this is true of both the big special interests and the little special interests. These methods have put a premium on selfishness, and, naturally, the selfish big interests have gotten more than their smaller, though equally selfish, brothers. The duty of Congress is to provide a method by which the interest of the whole people shall be all that receives consideration. To this end there must be an expert tariff commission, wholly removed from the possibility of political pressure or of improper business influence. Such a commission can find the real difference between cost of production, which is mainly the difference of labor cost here and abroad. As fast as its recommendations are made, I believe in revising one schedule at a time. A general revision of the tariff almost inevitably leads to logrolling and the subordination of the general public interest to local and special interests.

The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need to is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading their army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered-not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective-a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

The people of the United States suffer from periodical financial panics to a degree substantially unknown to the other nations, which approach us in financial strength. There is no reason why we should suffer what they escape. It is of profound importance that our financial system should be promptly investigated, and so thoroughly and effectively revised as to make it certain that hereafter our currency will no longer fail at critical times to meet our needs.

It is hardly necessary to me to repeat that I believe in an efficient army and a navy large enough to secure for us abroad that respect which is the surest guaranty of peace. A word of special warning to my fellow citizens who are as progressive as I hope I am. I want them to keep up their interest in our international affairs; and I want them also continually to remember Uncle Sam’s interests abroad. Justice and fair dealings among nations rest upon principles identical with those which control justice and fair dealing among the individuals of which nations are composed, with the vital exception that each nation must do its own part in international police work. If you get into trouble here, you can call for the police; but if Uncle Sam gets into trouble, he has got to be his own policeman, and I want to see him strong enough to encourage the peaceful aspirations of other people’s in connection with us. I believe in national friendships and heartiest good-will to all nations; but national friendships, like those between men, must be founded on respect as well as on liking, on forbearance as well as upon trust. I should be heartily ashamed of any American who did not try to make the American government act as justly toward the other nations in international relations as he himself would act toward any individual in private relations. I should be heartily ashamed to see us wrong a weaker power, and I should hang my head forever if we tamely suffered wrong from a stronger power.

Of conservation I shall speak more at length elsewhere. Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.

Moreover, I believe that the natural resources must be used for the benefit of all our people, and not monopolized for the benefit of the few, and here again is another case in which I am accused of taking a revolutionary attitude. People forget now that one hundred years ago there were public men of good character who advocated the nation selling its public lands in great quantities, so that the nation could get the most money out of it, and giving it to the men who could cultivate it for their own uses. We took the proper democratic ground that the land should be granted in small sections to the men who were actually to till it and live on it. Now, with the water-power, with the forests, with the mines, we are brought face to face with the fact that there are many people who will go with us in conserving the resources only if they are to be allowed to exploit them for their benefit. That is one of the fundamental reasons why the special interests should be driven out of politics. Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation. Let me add that the health and vitality of our people are at least as well worth conserving as their forests, waters, lands, and minerals, and in this great work the national government must bear a most important part.

I have spoken elsewhere also of the great task which lies before the farmers of the country to get for themselves and their wives and children not only the benefits of better farming, but also those of better business methods and better conditions of life on the farm. The burden of this great task will fall, as it should, mainly upon the great organizations of the farmers themselves. I am glad it will, for I believe they are all well able to handle it. In particular, there are strong reasons why the Departments of Agriculture of the various states, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the agricultural colleges and experiment stations should extend their work to cover all phases of farm life, instead of limiting themselves, as they have far too often limited themselves in the past, solely to the question of the production of crops. And now a special word to the farmer. I want to see him make the farm as fine a farm as it can be made; and let him remember to see that the improvement goes on indoors as well as out; let him remember that the farmer’s wife should have her share of thought and attention just as much as the farmer himself.

Nothing is more true than that excess of every kind is followed by reaction; a fact which should be pondered by reformer and reactionary alike. We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far. The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

But I think we may go still further. The right to regulate the use of wealth in the public interest is universally admitted. Let us admit also the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest of the common good. The fundamental thing to do for every man is to give him a chance to reach a place in which he will make the greatest possible contribution to the public welfare. Understand what I say there. Give him a chance, not push him up if he will not be pushed. Help any man who stumbles; if he lies down, it is a poor job to try to carry him; but if he is a worthy man, try your best to see that he gets a chance to show the worth that is in him. No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so after his day’s work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load. We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life by which we surround them. We need comprehensive workman’s compensation acts, both State and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, and, especially, we need in our common schools not merely education in book-learning, but also practical training for daily life and work. We need to enforce better sanitary conditions for our workers and to extend the use of safety appliances for workers in industry and commerce, both within and between the States. Also, friends, in the interest of the working man himself, we need to set our faces like flint against mob-violence just as against corporate greed; against violence and injustice and lawlessness by wage-workers just as much as against lawless cunning and greed and selfish arrogance of employers. If I could ask but one thing of my fellow countrymen, my request would be that, whenever they go in for reform, they remember the two sides, and that they always exact justice from one side as much as from the other. I have small use for the public servant who can always see and denounce the corruption of the capitalist, but who cannot persuade himself, especially before election, to say a word about lawless mob-violence. And I have equally small use for the man, be he a judge on the bench or editor of a great paper, or wealthy and influential private citizen, who can see clearly enough and denounce the lawlessness of mob-violence, but whose eyes are closed so that he is blind when the question is one of corruption of business on a gigantic scale. Also, remember what I said about excess in reformer and reactionary alike. If the reactionary man, who thinks of nothing but the rights of property, could have his way, he would bring about a revolution; and one of my chief fears in connection with progress comes because I do not want to see our people, for lack of proper leadership, compelled to follow men whose intentions are excellent, but whose eyes are a little too wild to make it really safe to trust them. Here in Kansas there is one paper which habitually denounces me as the tool of Wall Street, and at the same time frantically repudiates the statement that I am a Socialist on the ground that that is an unwarranted slander of the Socialists.

National efficiency has many factors. It is a necessary result of the principle of conservation widely applied. In the end, it will determine our failure or success as a nation. National efficiency has to do, not only with natural resources and with men, but it is equally concerned with institutions. The State must be made efficient for the work which concerns only the people of the State; and the nation for that which concerns all the people. There must remain no neutral ground to serve as a refuge for lawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers of great wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal cunning which will teach them how to avoid both jurisdictions. It is a misfortune when the national legislature fails to do its duty in providing a national remedy, so that the only national activity is the purely negative activity of the judiciary in forbidding the State to exercise power in the premises.

I do not ask for the over centralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism where we work for what concerns our people as a whole. We are all Americans. Our common interests are as broad as the continent. I speak to you here in Kansas exactly as I would speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital problems are those which affect us all alike. The National Government belongs to the whole American people, and where the whole American people are interested, that interest can be guarded effectively only by the National Government. The betterment which we seek must be accomplished, I believe, mainly through the National Government.

The American people are right in demanding that New Nationalism, without which we cannot hope to deal with new problems. The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage. It is impatient of the utter confusion that results from local legislatures attempting to treat national issues as local issues. It is still more impatient of the impotence which springs from over division of governmental powers, the impotence which makes it possible for local selfishness or for legal cunning, hired by wealthy special interests, to bring national activities to a deadlock. This New Nationalism regards the executive power as the steward of the public welfare. It demands of the judiciary that it shall be interested primarily in human welfare rather than in property, just as it demands that the representative body shall represent all the people rather than any one class or section of the people.

I believe in shaping the ends of government to protect property as well as human welfare. Normally, and in the long run, the ends are the same; but whenever the alternative must be faced, I am for men and not for property, as you were in the Civil War. I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends; but I rank dividends below human character. Again, I do not have any sympathy with the reformer who says he does not care for dividends. Of course, economic welfare is necessary, for a man must pull his own weight and be able to support his family. I know well that the reformers must not bring upon the people economic ruin, or the reforms themselves will go down in the ruin. But we must be ready to face temporary disaster, whether or not brought on by those who will war against us to the knife. Those who oppose reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.

If our political institutions were perfect, they would absolutely prevent the political domination of money in any part of our affairs. We need to make our political representatives more quickly and sensitively responsive to the people whose servants they are. More direct action by the people in their own affairs under proper safeguards is vitally necessary. The direct primary is a step in this direction, if it is associated with a corrupt-services act effective to prevent the advantage of the man willing recklessly and unscrupulously to spend money over his more honest competitor. It is particularly important that all moneys received or expended for campaign purposes should be publicly accounted for, not only after election, but before election as well. Political action must be made simpler, easier, and freer from confusion for every citizen. I believe that the prompt removal of unfaithful or incompetent public servants should be made easy and sure in whatever way experience shall show to be most expedient in any given class of cases.

One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States.

The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so long as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens. Just in proportion as the average man and woman are honest, capable of sound judgment and high ideals, active in public affairs,-but, first of all, sound in their home, and the father and mother of healthy children whom they bring up well,-just so far, and no farther, we may count our civilization a success. We must have-I believe we have already-a genuine and permanent moral awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything; and, on the other hand, we must try to secure the social and economic legislation without which any improvement due to purely moral agitation is necessarily evanescent. Let me again illustrate by a reference to the Grand Army. You could not have won simply as a disorderly and disorganized mob. You needed generals; you needed careful administration of the most advanced type; and a good commissary-the cracker line. You well remember that success was necessary in many different lines in order to bring about general success. You had to have the administration at Washington good, just as you had to have the administration in the field; and you had to have the work of the generals good. You could not have triumphed without the administration and leadership; but it would all have been worthless if the average soldier had not had the right stuff in him. He had to have the right stuff in him, or you could not get it out of him. In the last analysis, therefore, vitally necessary though it was to have the right kind of organization and the right kind of generalship, it was even more vitally necessary that the average soldier should have the fighting edge, the right character. So it is in our civil life. No matter how honest and decent we are in our private lives, if we do not have the right kind of law and the right kind of administration of the law, we cannot go forward as a nation. That is imperative; but it must be an addition to, and not a substitute for, the qualities that make us good citizens. In the last analysis, the most important elements in any man’s career must be the sum of those qualities which, in the aggregate, we speak of as character. If he has not got it, then no law that the wit of man can devise, no administration of the law by the boldest and strongest executive, will avail to help him. We must have the right kind of character-character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, and a good husband-that makes a man a good neighbor. You must have that, and, then, in addition, you must have the kind of law and the kind of administration of the law which will give to those qualities in the private citizen the best possible chance for development. The prime problem of our nation is to get the right type of good citizenship, and, to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.

David Lloyd George: 'Why should I put burdens on the people?', Limehouse speech - 1909

31 July 1909, London, England

A few months ago a meeting was held not far from this hall in the heart of the City of London, demanding that the Government should launch into enormous expenditure on the Navy. That meeting ended up with a resolution promising that those who passed the resolution would give financial support to the Government in their undertaking. There have been two or three meetings held in the City of London since, attended by the same class of people but not ending up with a resolution promising to pay. On the contrary, we are spending the money, but they wont pay. What has happened since to alter their tone? Simply that we have sent in the bill. We started our four Dreadnoughts. They cost eight millions of money. We promised them four more. They cost another eight millions.

Somebody has got to pay; and then these gentlemen say: Perfectly true; somebody has got to pay but we would rather that somebody were somebody else. We started building; we wanted money to pay for the building; so we sent the hat round. We sent it round amongst the workmen and winders of Derbyshire and Yorkshire, the weavers of High Peak and the Scotsmen of Dumfries who, like all their countrymen, know the value of money. They all dropped in their coppers. We went round Belgravia; and there has been such a howl ever since that it has completely deafened us.

Taxes that will bring forth fruit

But they say 'It is not so much the Dreadnoughts we object to; it is Pensions'. If they objected to Pensions, why did they promise them? They won elections on the strength of their promises. It is true they never carried them out. Deception is always a pretty contemptible vice, but to deceive the poor is the meanest of all. But they say, 'When we promised Pensions, we meant Pensions at the expense of people for whom they were provided. We simply meant to bring in a Bill to compel workmen to contribute to their own Pensions'. If that is what they meant why did they not say so? The Budget, as your Chairman has already so well reminded you, is introduced not merely for the purpose of raising barren taxes, but taxes that are fertile, taxes that will bring forth fruit - the security of the country, which is paramount in the minds of all. The provision for the aged and deserving poor - it was time it was done. It is rather a shame for a rich country like ours - probably the richest in the world, if not the richest the world has ever seen, that it should allow those who have toiled all their days to end in penury and possibly starvation. It is rather hard that an old workman should have to find his way to the gates of the tomb, bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of poverty. We cut a new path for him, an easier one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn. We are raising money to pay for the new road, aye, and to widen it, so that 200,000 paupers shall be able to join in the march. There are so many in the country blessed by Providence with great wealth, and if there are amongst them men who grudge out of their riches a fair contribution towards the less fortunate of their fellow-countrymen they are very shabby rich men. We propose to do more by means of the Budget. We are raising money to provide against the evils and the sufferings that follow from unemployment. We are raising money for the purpose of assisting our great friendly societies to provide for the sick and the widows and orphans. We are providing money to enable us to develop the resources of our own land. I do not believe any fair-minded man would challenge the justice and the fairness of the objects which we have in view in raising this money.

But there are some of them who say, 'The taxes themselves are unjust, unfair, unequal, oppressive notably so the land taxes'. They are engaged, not merely in the House of Commons, but outside the House of Commons, in assailing these taxes with a concentrated and sustained ferocity which will not allow even a comma to escape with its life. Now, are these taxes really so wicked? Let us examine them; because it is perfectly clear that the one part of the Budget that attracts all the hostility and animosity is that part which deals with the taxation of land. Well, now let us examine it. I do not want you to consider merely abstract principles. I want to invite your attention to a number of concrete cases; fair samples to show you how in these concrete illustrations our Budget proposals work. Now let us take them. Let us take first of all the tax on undeveloped land and on increment.

The fraud of the few and the folly of the many

Not far from here, not so many years ago, between the Lea and the Thames you had hundreds of acres of land which was not very useful even for agricultural purposes. In the main it was a sodden marsh. The commerce and the trade of London increased under Free Trade, the tonnage of your shipping went up by hundreds of thousands of tons and by millions; labour was attracted from all parts of the country to cope with all this trade and business which was done here. What happened? There was no housing accommodation. This Port of London became overcrowded, and the population overflowed. That was the opportunity of the owners of the marsh. All that land became valuable building land, and land which used to be rented at £2 or £3 an acre has been selling within the last few years at £2,000 an acre, £3,000 an acre, £6,000 an acre, £8,000 an acre. Who created that increment? Who made that golden swamp? Was it the landlord? Was it his energy? Was it his brains - a very bad look out for the place if it were - his forethought? It was purely the combined efforts of all the people engaged in the trade and commerce of the Port of London - trader, merchant, shipowner, dock labourer, workman, everybody except the landlord. Now, you follow that transaction. Land worth £2 or £3 an acre running up to thousands.

During the time it was ripening the landlord was paying his rates and taxes, not on £2 or £3 an acre. It was agricultural land, and because it was agricultural land a munificent Tory Government voted a sum of two millions to pay half the rates of those poor distressed landlords, and you and I had to pay taxes in order to enable those landlords to pay half their rates on agricultural land, while it was going up every year by hundreds of pounds through your efforts and the efforts of your neighbours. Well, now, that is coming to an end. On the walls of Mr Balfour's meeting last Friday were the words: 'We protect against fraud and folly. So do I. These things I am gong to tell you of have only been possible up to the present through the fraud of the few and the folly of the many'.

We mean to value all the land in the kingdom

Now, what is going to happen in the future? In future those landlords will have to contribute to the taxation of the country on the basis of the real value - only one halfpenny in the pound! Only a halfpenny! And that is what all the howling is about. But there is another little tax called the increment tax. For the future what will happen? We mean to value all the land in the kingdom. And here you can draw no distinction between agricultural land and other land, for the simple reason that East and West Ham was agricultural land a few years ago! And if land goes up in the future by hundreds and thousands an acre through the efforts of the community, the community will get 20 per cent. of that increment. Ah! What a misfortune it is that there was not a Chancellor of the Exchequer who did this thirty years ago. Only thirty years ago, and we should now be enjoying an abundant revenue from this source.

Now I have given you West Ham. Let me give you a few more cases. Take cases like Golders Green and other cases of similar kind where the value of land has gone up in the course, perhaps, of a couple of years through a new tramway or a new railway being opened. Golders Green is a case in point. A few years ago there was a plot of land there which was sold at £160. Last year I went and opened a Tube railway there.

What was the result? This year that very piece of land has been sold for £2,100 - £160 before the railway was opened - before I was there - £2,100 now. I am entitled to 20 per cent. Now there are many cases where landlords take advantage of the exigencies of commerce and of industry - take advantage of the needs of municipalities and even of national needs and of the monopoly which they have got in land in a particular neighbourhood in order to demand extortionate prices. Take the very well known case of the Duke of Northumberland when a County Council wanted to buy a small plot of land as a site for a school to train the children, who in due course would become the men labouring on his property. The rent was quite an insignificant thing.

His contribution to the rates - I forget - I think it was on the basis of 30s. an acre. What did he demand for it for a school? £900 an acre. All we say is this - Mr Buxton and I say - if it is worth £900, let him pay taxes on £900.

There are several of these cases that I want to give to you. Take the town of Bootle, a town created very much in the same way as these towns in the East of London - purely by the commerce of Liverpool. In 1879, the rates of Bootle were £9,000 a year - the ground rents were £10,000 - so that the landlord was receiving more from the industry of the community than all the rates derived by the municipality for the benefit of the town.

In 1898 the rates had gone up to £94,000 a year - for improving the place, constructing roads, laying out parks and extending lighting and opening up the place. But the ground landlord was receiving in ground rents £100,000. It is time that he should pay for this value. A case was given me from Richmond which is very interesting. The Town Council of Richmond recently built some workmen's cottages under a housing scheme. The land appeared on the rate-book as of the value of £4, and being agricultural the landlord paid only half the rates, and you and I paid the rest for him. It is situated on the extreme edge of the borough, therefore not very accessible, and the Town Council naturally thought they would get it cheap. But they did not know their landlord. They had to pay £2,000 an acre for it. The result is that instead of having a good housing scheme with plenty of gardens and open space, plenty of breathing space, plenty of room for the workmen at the end of their days, forty cottages had to be crowded on two acres. Now if the land had been valued at its true value, the landlord would have been at any rate contributing his fair share of the public revenue, and it is just conceivable that he might have been driven to sell at a more reasonable price.

I do not want to weary you with these cases. But I could give you many. I am a member of a Welsh County Council, and landlords even in Wales are not more reasonable. The police committee the other day wanted a site for a police station. Well, you might have imagined that if a landlord sold land cheaply for anything it would have been for a police station. The housing of the working classes that is a different matter. But a police station means security for property.

Not at all. The total population of Carnarvonshire is not as much - I am not sure it is as great - as the population of Limehouse alone. It is a scattered area; no great crowded populations there. And yet they demanded for a piece of land which was contributing 2s. a year to the rates, £2,500 an acre! All we say is, If their land is as valuable as all that, let it have the same value in the assessment book as it seems to possess in the auction-room. There are no end of these cases.

There was case from Greenock the other day. The Admiralty wanted a torpedo range. Here was an opportunity for patriotism! These are the men who want an efficient Navy to protect our shores, and the Admiralty state that one element in efficiency is straight shooting, and say: We want a range for practice for torpedoes on the coast of Scotland. There was a piece of land there. It was rated at something like £11 10s. a year. They went to the landlord - they had to pay for it - well now, just you guess, whilst I am finding it out. It had a rating value of £11 2s., and it was sold to the nation for £27,225. And these are the gentlemen who accuse us of robbery and spoliation! Now all we say is this: In future you must pay one halfpenny in the pound on the real value of your land.

In addition to that, if the value goes up - not owing to your efforts - if you spend money on improving it we will give you credit for it - but if it goes up owing to the industry and the energy of the people living in that locality, one-fifth of that increment shall in future be taken as a toll by the State. They say: Why should you tax this increment on landlords and not on other classes of the community? They say: You are taxing the landlord because the value of his property is going up through the growth of population, through the increased prosperity for the community. Does not the value of a doctor's business go up in the same way?

The landlord is a gentleman who does not earn his wealth

Ah, fancy their comparing themselves for a moment! What is the landlord's increment? Who is the landlord? The landlord is a gentleman - I have not a word to say about him in his personal capacity - the landlord is a gentleman who does not earn his wealth. He does not even take the trouble to receive his wealth. He has a host of agents and clerks to receive it for him. He does not even take the trouble to spend his wealth. He has a host of people around him to do the actual spending for him. He never sees it until he comes to enjoy it. His sole function, his chief pride, is stately consumption of wealth produced by others. What about the doctor's income? How does the doctor earn his income? The doctor is a man who visits our homes when they are darkened with the shadow of death: who, by his skill, his trained courage, his genius, wrings hope out of the grip of despair, wins life out of the fangs of the Great Destroyer. All blessings upon him and his divine art of healing that mends bruised bodies and anxious hearts. To compare the reward which he gets for that labour with the wealth which pours into the pockets of the landlord purely owing to the possession of his monopoly is a piece - if they will forgive me for saying so - of insolence which no intelligent man would tolerate. Now that is the halfpenny tax on unearned increment.

This system is not business, it is blackmail

Now I come to the reversion tax. What is the reversion tax? You have got a system in the country which is not tolerated in any other country of the world, except, I believe, Turkey; the system whereby landlords take advantage of the fact that they have got complete control over the land to let it for a term of years, spend money upon it in building, in developing it. You improve the building, and year by year the value passes into the pockets of the landlord, and at the end of sixty, seventy, eighty or ninety years the whole of it passes away to the pockets of a man who never spent a penny upon it. In Scotland they have a system of nine hundred and ninety-nine years lease. The Scotsmen have a very shrewd idea that at the end of nine hundred and ninety-nine years there will probably be a better land system in existence, and they are prepared to take their chance of the millennium coming round by that time. But in this country we have sixty years leases. I know districts - quarry districts in Wales where a little bit of barren rock where you could not feed a goat, where the landlord could not get a shilling an acre for agricultural rent, is let to quarrymen for the purpose of building houses, where 30s or £2 a house is charged for ground rent. The quarryman builds his house. He goes to a building society to borrow money. He pays out of his hard-earned weekly wage contributions to the building society for ten, twenty or thirty years. By the time he becomes an old man he has cleared off the mortgage, and more than half the value of the house has passed into the pockets of the landlord.

You have got cases in London here. There is the famous Gorringe case. In that case advantage was taken of the fact that a man has built up a great business, and they say: Here you are, you have built up a great business, you cannot take it away; you cannot move to other premises because your trade and goodwill are here; your lease is coming to an end, and we decline to renew it except on the most oppressive terms.

The Gorringe case is a very famous case. It was the case of the Duke of Westminster. Oh, these dukes, how they harass us! Mr Gorringe had got a lease of the premises at a few hundred pounds a year ground rent. He built up a great business there. He was a very able business man, and when the end of the lease came he went to the Duke of Westminster, and he said: Will you renew my lease? I want to carry on my business here. He said: Oh yes, I will; but I will do it on condition than the few hundreds a year you pay for ground rent shall in the future be £4,000 a year. In addition to that he had to pay a fine - a fine, mind you! - of £50,000, and he had to build up huge premises at enormous expense according to plans submitted to the Duke of Westminster. All I can say to this - if it is confiscation and robbery for us to say to that duke, being in need of money for public purposes, we will take 10 per cent. of all you have got, for that purpose, what would you call his taking nine-tenths from Mr Gorringe?

These are the cases we have got to deal with. Look at all this leasehold system. This system - it is the system I am attacking, not individuals - is not business, it is blackmail. I have no doubt some of you have taken the trouble to peruse some of these leases, and they are really worth reading, and I will guarantee that if you circulate copies of some of these building and mining leases at Tariff Reform meetings, and if you can get workmen at those meetings and the business men to read them, they will come away sadder but much wiser men. What are they? Ground rent is a part of it - fines, fees; you are to make no alteration without somebody's consent. Who is that somebody? It is the agent of the landlord. A fee to him. You must submit the plans to the landlords architect and get his consent. There is a fee to him. There is a fee to the surveyor; and then, of course, you cannot keep the lawyer out - he always comes in. And a fee to him. Well, that is the system, and the landlords come to us in the House of Commons and they say: If you go on taxing reversions we will grant no more leases? Is not that horrible? No more leases! No more kindly landlords with all their retinue of good fairies - agents, surveyors, lawyers - ready always to receive ground rents, fees, premiums, fines, reversions - no more, never again! They will not do it. We cannot persuade them. They wont have it. The landlord has threatened us that if we proceed with the Budget he will take his sack clean away from the hopper, and the grain which we are all grinding our best to fill his sack will go into our own. Oh, I cannot believe it.

There is a limit even to the wrath of outraged landlords. We must really appease them; we must offer up some sacrifice to them. Suppose we offer the House of Lords to them? Well, you seem rather to agree with that. I will make the suggestion to them.

I say their day of reckoning is at hand

Now, unless I am wearying you, I have just one other land tax, and that is a tax on royalties. The landlords are receiving eight millions a year by way of royalties.

What for? They never deposited the coal there. It was not they who planted these great granite rocks in Wales, who laid the foundations of the mountains.

Was it the landlord? And yet he, by some divine right, demands as his toll - for merely the right for men to risk their lives in hewing these rocks - eight millions a year. Take any coalfield. I went down to a coalfield the other day, and they pointed out to me many collieries there. They said: 'You see that colliery there. The first man who went there spent a quarter of a million in sinking shafts, in driving mains and levels. He never got coal, and he lost his quarter of a million. The second man who came spent 100,000 - and he failed. The third man came along, and he got the coal'. What was the landlord doing in the meantime. The first man failed; but the landlord got his royalty, the landlord got his dead-rent - and a very good name for it. The second man failed, but the landlord got his royalty.

These capitalists put their money in, and I said: 'When the cash failed what did the landlord put in?' He simply put in the bailiffs. The capitalist risks, at any rate, the whole of his money; the engineer puts his brains in; the miner risks his life.

I was telling you I went down a coalmine the other day. We sank into a pit half a mile deep. We then walked underneath the mountain, and we did about three-quarters of a mile with rock and shale above us. The earth seemed to be straining - around us and above us - to crush us in.

You could see the pit-props bent and twisted and sundered until you saw their fibres split in resisting the pressure. Sometimes they give way, and then there is mutilation and death. Often a spark ignites, the whole pit is deluged in fire, and the breath of life is scorched out of hundreds of breasts by the consuming flame. In the very next colliery to the one I descended just a few years ago three hundred people lost their lives in that way. And yet when the Prime Minister and I knock at the door of these great landlords, and say to them: 'Here, you know these poor fellows who have been digging up royalties at the risk of their lives, some of them are old, they have survived the perils of their trade, they are broken, they can earn no more. Wont you give them something towards keeping them out of the workhouse?' they scowl at us, and we say: 'Only a hapenny, just a copper'. They say: 'You thieves!' and they turn their dogs on to us, and you can hear their bark every morning. If this is an indication of the view taken by these great landlords of their responsibility to the people who at the risk of life create their wealth, then I say their day of reckoning is at hand.

The other day at the great Tory meeting held at the Cannon Street Hotel they had blazoned on the walls, 'We protest against the Budget in the name of democracy, liberty and justice'. Where does the democracy come in in this landed system? Where is the liberty in our leasehold system? Where is the seat of justice in all these transactions?

The ownership of land is not merely an enjoyment, it is a stewardship

I claim that the tax we impose on land is fair, is just and is moderate. They go on threatening that if we proceed, they will cut down their benefactions and discharge labour. What kind of labour? What is the labour they are going to choose for dismissal? Are they going to threaten to devastate rural England by feeding and dressing themselves? Are they going to reduce their gamekeepers? Ah, that would be sad! The agricultural labourer and the farmer might then have some part of the game which they fatten with their labour. But what would happen to you in the season? No week-end shooting with the Duke of Norfolk or anyone.

But that is not the kind of labour they are going to cut down. They are going to cut down productive labour - their builders and their gardeners - and they are going to ruin their property so that it shall not be taxed.

All I can say is this - the ownership of land is not merely an enjoyment, it is a stewardship. It has been reckoned as such in the past; and if they cease to discharge their functions, the security and defence of the country, looking after the broken in their villages and in their neighbourhoods then these functions which are part of the traditional duties attached to the ownership of land, and which have given to it its title - if they cease to discharge those functions, the time will come to reconsider the conditions under which the land is held in this country.

No country, however rich, can permanently afford to have quartered upon its revenue a class which declines to do the duty which it was called upon to perform since the beginning. And, therefore, it is one of the prime duties of statesmanship to investigate those conditions. But I do not believe it. They have threatened and menaced like that before. They have seen it is not to their interest to carry out these futile menaces. They are not protesting against paying their fair share of taxation of the land, and they are doing so by saying: 'You are burdening industry; you are putting burdens upon the people which they cannot bear'. Ah! They are not thinking of themselves. Noble souls! It is not the great dukes they are feeling for, it is the market gardener, it is the builder; and it was, until recently, the smallholder. In every debate in the House of Commons they said: 'We are not worrying for ourselves. We can afford it without broad acres; but just think of the little man who has only got a few acres'. And we were so very impressed with this tearful appeal that at last we said: We will leave him out. And I almost expected to see Mr Pretyman jump over the table when I said it, fall on my neck and embrace me. Instead of that he stiffened up, his face wreathed with anger, and he said: 'The Budget is more unjust than ever'.

We are placing burdens on the broadest shoulders. Why should I put burdens on the people? I am one of the children of the people. I was brought up amongst them. I know their trials; and God forbid that I should add one grain of trouble to the anxieties which they bear with such patience and fortitude. When the Prime Minister did me the honour of inviting me to take charge of the National Exchequer at a time of great difficulty, I made up my mind, in framing the Budget which was in front of me, that at any rate no cupboard should be barer, no lot would be harder. By that test I challenge them to judge the Budget.

Bob Dole: 'Tonight, this hall belongs to the party of Lincoln', RNC acceptance of nomination - 1996

15 August 1995, San Diego, California, USA

Here is the most quoted paragraph from the speech:

If there is anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to every race and religion, then let me recommend to you. Tonight, this hall belongs to the party of Lincoln. And the exits, which are clearly marked, are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.

Here is the full speech:

hank you. And he appreciated it very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, delegates to the convention, and fellow citizens, I cannot say it more clearly than in plain speaking. I accept your nomination to lead our party once again to the presidency of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: Go, Bob, Go! Go, Bob, Go! Go, Bob, Go! Go, Bob, Go!

Thank you. I will.

And I am profoundly moved by your confidence and trust, and I look forward to leading America into the next century. But this moment...

(APPLAUSE)

But this is not my moment, it is yours. It is yours, Elizabeth. It is yours, Robin. It is yours, Jack and Joanne Kemp.

And do not think I have forgotten whose moment this is above all. It is for the people of America that I stand here tonight, and by their generous leave. And as my voice echoes across darkness and desert, as it is heard over car radios on coastal roads, and as it travels above farmland and suburb, deep into the heart of cities that, from space, look tonight like strings of sparkling diamonds, I can tell you that I know whose moment this is: It is yours. It is yours entirely.

(APPLAUSE)

And who am I that stands before you tonight?

I was born in Russell, Kansas,...

(APPLAUSE)

... a small town in the middle of the prairie surrounded by wheat and oil wells. As my neighbors and friends from Russell, who tonight sit in front of this hall, know well, Russell, though not the West, looks out upon the West.

And like most small towns on the plains, it is a place where no one grows up without an intimate knowledge of distance.

And the first thing you learn on the prairie is the relative size of a man compared to the lay of the land. And under the immense sky where I was born and raised, a man is very small, and if he thinks otherwise, he is wrong.

I come from good people, very good people, and I'm proud of it. My father's name was Doran and my mother's name was Bina. I loved them and there's no moment when my memory of them and my love for them does not overshadow anything I do -- even this, even here -- and there is no heighth to which I have risen that is high enough to allow me to allow me to forget them -- to allow me to forget where I came from, and where I stand and how I stand -- with my feet on the ground, just a man at the mercy of God.

(APPLAUSE)

And this perspective has been strengthened and solidified by a certain wisdom that I owe not to any achievement of my own, but to the gracious compensations of age.

Now I know that in some quarters I may not -- may be expected to run from this, the truth of this, but I was born in 1923, and facts are better than dreams and good presidents and good candidates don't run from the truth.

I do not need...

(APPLAUSE)

I do not need the presidency to make or refresh my soul. That false hope I will gladly leave to others. For greatness lies not in what office you hold, but on how honest you are in how you face adversity and in your willingness to stand fast in hard places.

(APPLAUSE)

Age has its advantages.

And the first thing you learn on the prairie is the relative size of a man compared to the lay of the land. And under the immense sky where I was born and raised, a man is very small, and if he thinks otherwise, he is wrong.

I come from good people, very good people, and I'm proud of it. My father's name was Doran and my mother's name was Bina. I loved them and there's no moment when my memory of them and my love for them does not overshadow anything I do -- even this, even here -- and there is no heighth to which I have risen that is high enough to allow me to allow me to forget them -- to allow me to forget where I came from, and where I stand and how I stand -- with my feet on the ground, just a man at the mercy of God.

(APPLAUSE)

And this perspective has been strengthened and solidified by a certain wisdom that I owe not to any achievement of my own, but to the gracious compensations of age.

Now I know that in some quarters I may not -- may be expected to run from this, the truth of this, but I was born in 1923, and facts are better than dreams and good presidents and good candidates don't run from the truth.

I do not need...

(APPLAUSE)

I do not need the presidency to make or refresh my soul. That false hope I will gladly leave to others. For greatness lies not in what office you hold, but on how honest you are in how you face adversity and in your willingness to stand fast in hard places.

(APPLAUSE)

Age has its advantages.

Let me be the bridge to an America than only the unknowing call myth. Let me be the bridge to a time of tranquility, faith and confidence in action.

And to those who say it was never so, that America's not been better, I say you're wrong. And I know because I was there. And I have seen it. And I remember.

(APPLAUSE)

And our nation, though wounded and scathed, has outlasted revolutions, civil war, world war, racial oppression and economic catastrophe. We have fought and prevailed on almost every continent. And in almost every sea.

We have even lost. But we have lasted, and we have always come through.

And what enabled us to accomplish this has little to do with the values of the present. After decades of assault upon what made America great, upon supposedly obsolete values, what have we reaped? What have we created? What do we have?

What we have in the opinions of millions of Americans is crime and drugs, illegitimacy, abortion, the abdication of duty, and the abandonment of children.

And after the virtual devastation of the American family, the rock upon which this country was founded, we are told that it takes a village, that is collective, and thus the state, to raise a child.

CROWD: No.

The state is now more involved than it ever has been in the raising of children. And children are now more neglected, more abused and more mistreated than they have been in our time.

This is not a coincidence. This is not a coincidence. And with all due respect, I am here to tell you it does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a family to raise a child.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp!

If I could by magic...

CROWD: Go, Bob, Go! Go, Bob, Go! Go, Bob, Go! Go, Bob, Go!

If I could by magic restore to every child who lacks a father or a mother that father or that mother, I would.

And though I cannot, I would never turn my back on them. And I shall as president vote measures that keep families whole.

And I'm here to tell you that permissive and destructive behavior must be opposed.

(APPLAUSE)

That honor and liberty must be restored and that individual accountability must replace collective excuse.

(APPLAUSE)

And I'm here to say...

(APPLAUSE)

I am here to say to America, do not abandon the great traditions that stretch to the dawn of our history. Do not topple the pillars of those beliefs -- God, family, honor, duty, country -- that have brought us through time, and time, and time, and time again.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

And to those who believe that I am too combative, I say if I am combative, it is for love of country.

(APPLAUSE)

It is to uphold a standard that I was I was born and bread to defend. And to those who believe that I live and breathe compromise, I say that in politics honorable compromise is no sin. It is what protects us from absolutism and intolerance.

(APPLAUSE)

But one must never compromise in regard to God and family and honor and duty and country. And I'm here to set a marker, that all may know that it is possible to rise in politics, with these things firmly in mind, not compromised and never abandoned, never abandoned.

(APPLAUSE)

For the old values endure and though they may sleep and though they may falter, they endure. I know this is true. And to anyone who believes that restraint honor and trust in the people cannot be returned to government, I say follow me, follow me.

(APPLAUSE)

Only right conduct, only right conduct distinguishes a great nation from one that cannot rise above itself. It has never been otherwise.

Right conduct every day, at every level, in all facets of life. The decision of a child not to use drugs; of a student not to cheat; of a young woman or a young man to serve when called; of a screenwriter to refuse to add to mountains of trash; of a businessman not to bribe; of a politician to cast a vote or take action that will put his office or his chances of victory at risk, but which is right.

And why have so many of us -- and I do not exclude myself, for I am not the model of perfection -- why have so many of us been failing these tests for so long? The answer is not a mystery. It is to the contrary quite simple and can be given quite simply.

It is because for too long we have had a leadership that has been unwilling to risk the truth, to speak without calculation, to sacrifice itself.

An administration, in its very existence, communicates this day by day until it flows down like rain and the rain becomes a river and the river becomes a flood.

(APPLAUSE)

Which is more important, wealth or honor?

AUDIENCE: Honor.

It is not as was said by the victors four years ago, the economy stupid. It's a kind of nation we are. It's whether we still possess the wit and determination to deal with many questions including economic questions, but certainly not limited to them. All things do not flow from wealth or poverty. I know this firsthand and so do you.

All things flow from doing what is right.

(APPLAUSE)

The cry of this nation lies not in its material wealth but in courage, and sacrifice and honor. We tend to forget when leaders forget. And we tend to remember it when they remember it.

The high office of the presidency requires not a continuous four year campaign for re-election, but rather broad oversight and attention to three essential areas: the material, the moral and the nation's survival in that ascending order of importance.

And in the last presidential election...

(APPLAUSE)

In the last presidential election, you the people were gravely insulted. You were told that the material was not only the most important of these three, but in fact, really the only one that mattered.

I don't hold to that for a moment. No one can deny the importance of material well-being. And in this regard, it is time to recognize we have surrendered too much of our economic liberty. I do not appreciate the value of economic liberty nearly as much for what it has done in keeping us fed, as to what it's done in keeping us free.

(APPLAUSE)

The freedom of the marketplace is not merely the best guarantor of our prosperity. It is the chief guarantor of our rights, and a government that seizes control of the economy for the good of the people ends up seizing control of the people for the good of the economy.

(APPLAUSE)

And our opponents portray the right to enjoy the fruits of one's own time and labor as a kind selfishness against which they must fight for the good of the nation. But they are deeply mistaken, for when they gather to themselves the authority to take the earnings and direct the activities of the people, they are fighting not for our sake but for the power to tell us what to do.

And you now work from the first of January to May just to pay your taxes so that the party of government can satisfy its priorities with the sweat of your brow because they think that what you would do with your own money would be morally and practically less admirable than what they would do with it.

And that simply has got to stop. It's got to stop in America.

(APPLAUSE)

It is demeaning...

(APPLAUSE)

It is demeaning to the nation that within the Clinton administration, a core of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered and never learned, should have the power to fund with your earnings their dubious and self-serving schemes.

(APPLAUSE)

Somewhere, a grandmother couldn't afford to call her granddaughter, or a child went without a book, or a family couldn't afford that first home because there was just not enough money to make the call, or to buy the book, or to pay the mortgage. Or, for that matter, to do many other things that one has the right and often the obligation to do.

Why? Because some genius in the Clinton administration took the money to fund yet another theory, yet another program and yet another bureaucracy. Are they taking care of you...

CROWD: No.

... or are they taking care of themselves?

CROWD: Yes.

I have asked myself that question. And I say, let the people be free. Free to keep...

(APPLAUSE)

Let the people be free to keep as much of what they earn as the government can strain with all its might not to take, not the other way around.

(APPLAUSE)

I trust the American people to work in the best interest of the people. And I believe that every family, wage earner and small business in America can do better -- if only we have the right policies in Washington, D.C.

And make no mistake about it, my economic program is the right policy for America and for the future, and for the next century.

(APPLAUSE)

Here's what it will mean to you. Here's what it will mean to you. It means you will have a president who will urge Congress to pass and send to the states for ratification a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

(APPLAUSE)

It means you will have a president and a Congress who have the will to balance the budget by the year 2002.

(APPLAUSE)

It means you will have a president who will reduce taxes 15 percent across-the-board for every taxpayer in America.

(APPLAUSE)

And it will include a $500 per child tax credit for lower and middle income families in America.

Taxes for a family of four making $35,000 a year would be reduced by more than half -- 56 percent to be exact. And that's a big, big reduction.

(APPLAUSE)

It means you will have a president who will help small businesses, the businesses that create most new jobs, by reducing the capital gains tax rate by 50 percent. Cut it in half.

(APPLAUSE)

It means you will have a president who will end the IRS as we know it.

(APPLAUSE)

It means you will have a president who will expand individual retirement accounts, repeal President Clinton's Social Security tax increase, provide estate tax relief, reduce government regulations, reform our civil justice system, provide educational opportunity scholarships and a host of other proposals that will create more opportunity for all Americans and all across America.

(APPLAUSE)

And I will not stop there. Working with Jack Kemp and a Republican Congress I will not be satisfied until we have reformed our entire tax code and made it fairer and flatter and simpler for the American people.

(APPLAUSE)

The principle involved here is time-honored and true, and that is, it's your money.

(APPLAUSE)

You shouldn't have to apologize for wanting to keep what you earn.

(APPLAUSE)

To the contrary, the government should apologize for taking too much of it.

(APPLAUSE)

The Clinton administration -- the Clinton administration just doesn't get it. And that's why they have got to go.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: Go Bob Dole! Go Bob Dole! Go Bob Dole!

Thank you.

The president -- the president's content with the way things are. I am not. We must commit ourselves to a far more ambitious path that puts growth, expanding opportunities, rising incomes and soaring prosperity at the heart of national policy.

(APPLAUSE)

We must also commit ourselves to a trade policy that does not suppress pay and threaten American jobs. And by any measure, the trade policies of the Clinton administration has been a disaster. Trade deficits are skyrocketing and middle income families are paying the price.

(APPLAUSE)

My administration will fully enforce our trade laws and not let our national sovereignty be infringed by the World Trade Organization...

(APPLAUSE)

...or any other international body.

Jack Kemp and I will restore the promise of America and get the economy moving again, and we'll do so without leaving anybody behind.

(APPLAUSE)

And I have learned in my own life, from my own experience that not every man, woman or child can make it on their own. And that in time of need, the bridge between failure and success can be the government itself. And given all that I have experienced, I shall always remember those in need. That is why I helped to save Social Security in 1983 and that is why I will be, I will be the president who preserves and strengthens and protects Medicare for America's senior citizens.

(APPLAUSE)

For I will never forget the man who rode on a train from Kansas to Michigan to see his son who was thought to be dying in an Army hospital.

When he arrived, his feet were swollen and he could hardly walk because he had to make the trip from Kansas to Michigan standing up most of the way. Who was that man? He was my father. My father was poor and I love my father. Do you imagine for one minute that as I sign the bills that will set the economy free, I will not be faithful to Americans in need? You can be certain that I will.

For to do otherwise would be to betray those whom I love and honor most. And I will betray nothing.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: Go Bob Go! Go Bob Go! Go Bob Go! Go Bob Go!

Let me speak about immigration. Yes. Let me speak about immigration. The right and obligation of a sovereign nation to control its borders is beyond debate. We should not have here a single illegal immigrant.

(APPLAUSE)

But the question of immigration is broader than that, and let me specific. A family from Mexico arrives this morning legally has as much right to the American Dream as the direct descents of the Founding Fathers.

(APPLAUSE)

The Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents -- The Republican Party is broad and inclusive. It represents many streams of opinion and many points of view.

But if there's anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you, tonight this hall belongs to the Party of Lincoln. And the exits which are clearly marked are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.

(APPLAUSE)

And though, I can only look up -- and though I can look up, and at a very steep angle, to Washington and Lincoln, let me remind you of their concern for the sometimes delicate unity of the people.

The notion that we are and should be one people rather than "peoples" of the United States seems so self-evident and obvious that it's hard for me to imagine that I must defend it. When I was growing up in Russell, Kansas, it was clear to me that my pride and my home were in America, not in any faction, and not in any division.

In this I was heeding, even as I do unto this day, Washington's eloquent rejection of factionalism. I was honoring, even as I do unto this day, Lincoln's word, his life and his sacrifice. The principle of unity has been with us in all our successes.

The 10th Mountain Division, in which I served in Italy, and the Black troops of the 92nd Division who fought nearby were the proof for me once again of the truth I'm here trying to convey.

The war was fought just a generation after America's greatest and most intense period of immigration. And yet when the blood of the sons of immigrants and the grandsons of slaves fell on foreign fields, it was American blood. In it you could not read the ethnic particulars of the soldier who died next to you. He was an American.

(APPLAUSE)

And when I think how we learned this lesson I wonder how we could have unlearned it. Is the principle of unity, so hard-fought and at the cost of so many lives, having been contested again and again in our history, and at such a terrible price, to be casually abandoned to the urge to divide?

The answer is no.

Must we give in to the senseless drive to break apart that which is beautiful and whole and good?

CROWD: No.

And so tonight I call on every American to rise above all that may divide us, and to defend the unity of the nation for the honor of generations past, and the sake of those to come.

(APPLAUSE)

The Constitution of the United States mandates equal protection under the law. This is not code language for racism. It is plain speaking against it.

And the guiding light in my administration will be that in this country, we have no rank order by birth, no claim to favoritism by race, no expectation of judgment other than it be even-handed. And we cannot guarantee the outcome, but we shall guarantee the opportunity in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I will speak plainly -- I will speak plainly on another subject of importance. We're not educating all of our children. Too many are being forced to absorb the fads of the moment.

Not for the nothing are we the biggest education spenders and among the lowest education achievers among the leading industrial nations.

The teachers unions nominated Bill Clinton in 1992. They're funding his re-election now. And they, his most reliable supporters, know he will maintain the status quo.

CROWD: Boo!

And I say this -- I say this not to the teachers, but to their unions.

(APPLAUSE)

I say this, if education were a war, you would be losing it. If it were a business, you would be driving it into bankruptcy. If it were a patient, it would be dying.

And to the teachers union, I say, when I am president, I will disregard your political power for the sake of the parents, the children, the schools and the nation.

(APPLAUSE)

(APPLAUSE)

I plan to enrich your vocabulary with those words you fear -- school choice and competition and opportunity scholarships.

(APPLAUSE)

All this for low and middle income families so that you will join the rest of us in accountability, while others compete with you for the commendable privilege of giving our children a real education.

(APPLAUSE)

There is no reason why those who live on any street in America should not have the same right as the person who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- the right to send your child to the school of your choice.

(APPLAUSE)

And if we want to reduce crime -- if we want to reduce crime and drug use and teen pregnancies, let's start by giving all our children a first-class education.

(APPLAUSE)

And I also want these children to inherit a country that is far safer than it is at present. I seek for our children and grandchildren a world more open and with more opportunity than ever before.

But in wanting these young Americans to be able to make the best of this, I want first and foremost for them to be safe. I want to remove the shadow that darkens opportunities for every man, woman and child in America.

(APPLAUSE)

We are a nation paralyzed by crime. And it's time to end that in America.

(APPLAUSE)

And to do so...

(APPLAUSE)

... to do so, I mean to attack the root cause of crime -- criminals, criminals, violent criminals.

(APPLAUSE)

And as our many and voracious criminals go to bed tonight, at say, 6:00 in the morning, they had better pray that I lose this election...

(APPLAUSE)

... because if I win, the lives of violent criminals are going to be hell.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: Go, Bob, Go! Go, Bob, Go! Go, Bob, Go! Go, Bob, Go!

During the Reagan administration -- during the Reagan administration we abolished parole at the federal level. In the Dole administration we will work with the nation's governors to abolish parole for violent criminals all across America.

(APPLAUSE)

And with my national instant check initiative, we will keep all guns out of the hands of criminals.

(APPLAUSE)

And I have been asked if I have a litmus tests for judges. I do.

(LAUGHTER)

My litmus test for judges is that they be intolerant of outrage; that their passion is not to amend, but to interpret the Constitution...

(APPLAUSE)

... that they are restrained in regard to those who live within the law, and strict with those who break it.

(APPLAUSE)

And for those who say that I should not make President Clinton's liberal judicial appointments an issue in this campaign, I have a simple response. I have heard your argument.

The motion is denied.

(APPLAUSE)

I save my respect for the Constitution, not for those who would ignore it, violate it or replace it with conceptions of their own fancy.

My administration will zealously protect civil and constitutional rights while never forgetting that our primary duty is protecting law abiding citizens, everybody in this hall.

(APPLAUSE)

I have no intention of ignoring violent -- I said violent criminals, understanding them or buying them off. A nation that cannot defend itself from outrage does not deserve to survive. And a president who cannot lead itself against those who prey upon it does not deserve to be president of the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

I am prepared to risk more political capital in defense of domestic tranquility than any president you have ever known.

The time for such risk is long overdue.

And in defending our nation from external threats, the requirements of survival cannot merely be finessed. There is no room for margin of error. On this subject perhaps more than any other, a president must level with the people and be prepared to take political risks. And I would rather do what is called for in this regard and be unappreciated, than fail to do so and win universal acclaim.

(APPLAUSE)

And it must be said because of misguided priorities there have been massive cuts in funding for our national security. I believe President Clinton has failed to adequately provide for our defense. And for whatever reason the neglect, it is irresponsible.

(APPLAUSE)

I ask that you consider these crystal-clear differences. He believes that it is acceptable to ask our military forces to more with less. I do not.

He defends giving a green light to a terrorist state, Iran, to expand its influence in Europe. And he relies on the United Nations to punish Libyan terrorists who murdered American citizens. I will not.

(APPLAUSE)

He believes that defending our people and our territory from missile attack is unnecessary. I do not.

(APPLAUSE)

And on my first day in office, I will put America on a course that will end our vulnerability to missile attack and rebuild our armed forces.

(APPLAUSE)

It is a course President Clinton has refused to take. And on my first day in office, I will put terrorists on notice. If you harm one American, you harm all Americans.

(APPLAUSE)

And America will pursue you to the ends of the earth.

(APPLAUSE)

In short, don't mess with us if you're not prepared to suffer the consequences.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Thank you. And furthermore, the lesson has always been clear, if we are prepared to defend, if we are prepared to fight many wars and greater wars than any wars that come, we will have to fight fewer wars and lesser wars and perhaps no wars at all.

(APPLAUSE)

It has always been so and will ever be so. And I'm not the first to say that the long gray line has never failed us, and it never has.

For those who might be sharply taken aback and thinking of Vietnam, think again. For in Vietnam the long gray line did not fail us, we failed it in Vietnam.

(APPLAUSE)

The American soldier -- the American soldier was not made for the casual and arrogant treatment that he suffered there, where he was committed without clear purpose or resolve, bound by rules that prevented victory, and kept waiting in the valley of the shadow of death for 10 years while the nation invaded the undebatable question of his honor.

No, the American soldier was not to be thrown into battle without a clear purpose or resolve, not made to be abandoned in the field of battle, not made to give his life for indifference or lack of respect. And I will never commit the American soldier to an ordeal without the prospect of victory.

(APPLAUSE)

And when I am president, and when I am president every man, and every women in our armed forces will now the president is commander- in-chief, not Boutros Boutros-Ghali or any other UN secretary general.

(APPLAUSE)

CROWD: U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

(APPLAUSE)

This I owe not only to the living, but to the dead, to every patriot, to every patriot grave, to the ghosts of Valley Forge, of Flanders Field, of Bataan, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh, and the Gulf.

This I owe to the men who died on the streets of Mogadishu not three year ago, to the shadows on the bluffs of Normandy, to the foot soldiers who never came home, to the airmen who fell to earth, and the sailors who rest perpetually at sea.

This is not an issue of politics, but far graver than that. Like the bond of trust between parent and child, it is the lifeblood of the nation. It commands not only sacrifice but a grace in leadership embodying both caution and daring at the same time. And this we owe not only to ourselves. Our Allies demand consistency and resolve, which they deserve from us as we deserve it from them. But even if they falter, we cannot, for history has made us the leader, and we are obliged by history to keep the highest standard possibly (sic).

(APPLAUSE)

And in this regard may I remind you of the nation's debt to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush. President Nixon engaged China and the Soviet Union with diplomatic genius. President Ford, who gave me my start in 1976, stood fast in a time of great difficulty, and with the greatest of dignity.

Were it not for President Reagan, the Soviet Union would still be standing today.

(APPLAUSE)

He brought the Cold War to an end, not, as some demanded, through compromise and surrender -- but by winning it. That's how he brought the Cold War to an end.

(APPLAUSE)

And President Bush, with a mastery that words fail to convey, guided the Gulf War coalition and its military forces to victory.

A war that might have lasted years and taken the lives of tens of thousands of Americans passed so swiftly and passed so smoothly that history has yet to catch its breath and give him the credit he is due.

(APPLAUSE)

History is like that.

(APPLAUSE)

History is like that. Whenever we forget its singular presence, it gives us a lesson in grace and awe.

And when I look back on my life, I see less and less of myself and more and more a history of this civilization that we have made that is called America.

And I am content and always will be content to see my own story subsumed in great events, the greatest of which is the simple onward procession of the American people. What a high privilege it is to be at the center in these times -- and this I owe to you, the American people.

I owe everything to you. And to make things right, and to close the circle, I will return to you as much as I possibly can. It is incumbent upon me to do so. It is my duty and my deepest desire. And so tonight...

(APPLAUSE)

And so tonight, I respectfully -- I respectfully ask for your blessing and your support.

(APPLAUSE)

The election will not be decided -- the election will not be decided by the polls or by the opinion-makers or by the pundits.

It will be decided by you. It will be decided by you.

(APPLAUSE)

And I ask for your vote so that I may bring you an administration that is able, honest, and trusts in you.

For the fundamental issue is not of policy, but of trust -- not merely whether the people trust the president, but whether the president and his party trust the people, trust in their goodness and their genius for recovery.

That's what the election is all about.

(APPLAUSE)

For the government cannot direct the people, the people must direct the government.

(APPLAUSE)

This is not the outlook of my opponent -- and he is my opponent, not my enemy.

And though he has tried of late to be a good Republican..

(LAUGHTER)

... and I expect him here tonight...

(LAUGHTER)

... there are certain distinctions that even he cannot blur. There are distinctions between the two great parties that will be debated and must be debated in the next 82 days.

He and his party brought us the biggest tax increase in the history of America. And we are the party of lower taxes -- we are the party of lower taxes and greater opportunity.

(APPLAUSE)

We are the party whose resolve did not flag as the Cold War dragged on. We did not tremble before a Soviet giant that was just about to fall, and we did not have to be begged to take up arms against Saddam Hussein.

We are not the party, as drug use has soared and doubled among the young, hears no evil, sees no evil, and just cannot say, "Just say no."

We are the party that trusts in the people. I trust in the people. That is the heart of all I have tried to say tonight.

My friends, a presidential campaign is more than a contest of candidates, more than a clash of opposing philosophies.

It is a mirror held up to America. It is a measurement of who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. For as much inspiration as we may draw from a glorious past, we recognize American preeminently as a country of tomorrow. For we were placed here for a purpose, by a higher power. There's no doubt about it.

(APPLAUSE)

Every soldier in uniform, every school child who recites the Pledge of Allegiance, every citizen who places her hand on her heart when the flag goes by, recognizes and responds to our American destiny.

Optimism is in our blood. I know this as few others can. There once was a time when I doubted the future. But I have learned as many of you have learned that obstacles can be overcome.

And I have unlimited confidence in the wisdom of our people and the future of our country.

Tonight, I stand before you tested by adversity, made sensitive by hardship, a fighter by principle, and the most optimistic man in America.

(APPLAUSE)

My life is proof that America is a land without limits. And with my feet on the ground and my heart filled with hope, I put my faith in you and in the God who loves us all. For I am convinced that America's best days are yet to come.

May God bless you. And may God bless America. Thank you very much.

Dolores Ibárruri: "¡No Pasarán!, They shall not pass!', Defense of 2nd Spanish Republic - 1936

19 July 1936, Government Ministry Building, Madrid, Spain

Workers! Farmers! Anti-fascists! Spanish Patriots! Confronted with the fascist military uprising, all must rise to their feet, to defend the Republic, to defend the people's freedoms as well as their achievements towards democracy! Through the statements by the government and the Popular Front (parties), the people understand the graveness of the moment. In Morroco, as well as in the Canary Islands, the workers are battling, united with the forces still loyal to the Republic, against the uprising militants and fascists. Under the battlecry 'Fascism shall not pass; the hangmen of October shall not pass!' workers and farmers from all Spanish provinces are joining in the struggle against the enemies of the Republic that have arisen in arms. Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, and Republican Democrats, soldiers and (other) forces remaining loyal to the Republic combined have inflicted the first defeats upon the fascist foe, who drag through the mud the very same honourable military tradition that they have boasted to possess so many times. The whole country cringes in indignation at these heartless barbarians that would hurl our democratic Spain back down into an abyss of terror and death. However, THEY SHALL NOT PASS! For all of Spain presents itself for battle. In Madrid, the people are out in the streets in support of the Government and encouraging its decision and fighting spirit so that it shall reach its conclusion in the smashing of the militant and fascist insurrection.

Young men, prepare for combat! Women, heroic women of the people! Recall the heroism of the women of Asturias of 1934 and struggle alongside the men in order to defend the lives and freedom of your sons, overshadowed by the fascist menace! Soldiers, sons of the nation! Stay true to the Republican State and fight side by side with the workers, with the forces of the Popular Front, with your parents, your siblings and comrades! Fight for the Spain of February the 16th, fight for the Republic and help them to victory! Workers of all stripes! The government supplies us with arms that we may save Spain and its people from the horror and shame that a victory for the bloody hangmen of October would mean. Let no one hesitate! All stand ready for action. All workers, all antifascists must now look upon each other as brothers in arms. Peoples of Catalonia, Basque Country, and Galicia! All Spaniards! Defend our democratic Republic and consolidate the victory achieved by our people on the 16th of February.

The Communist Party calls you to arms. We especially call upon you, workers, farmers, intellectuals to assume your positions in the fight to finally smash the enemies of the Republic and of the popular liberties. Long live the Popular Front! Long live the union of all anti-fascists! Long live the Republic of the people! The Fascists shall not pass! THEY SHALL NOT PASS!

Translated from the original Spanish

¡Obreros! ¡Campesinos! ¡Antifascistas! ¡Españoles patriotas!... Frente a la sublevación militar fascista ¡todos en pie, a defender la República, a defender las libertades populares y las conquistas democráticas del pueblo!...

A través de las notas del gobierno y del Frente Popular, el pueblo conoce la gravedad del momento actual. En Marruecos y en Canarias luchan los trabajadores, unidos a las fuerzas leales a la República, contra los militares y fascistas sublevados.

Al grito de ¡el fascismo no pasará, no pasarán los verdugos de octubre!... los obreros y campesinos de distintas provincias de España se incorporan a la lucha contra los enemigos de la República alzados en armas. Los comunistas, los socialistas y anarquistas, los republicanos demócratas, los soldados y las fuerzas fieles a la República han infligido las primeras derrotas a los facciosos, que arrastran por el fango de la traición el honor militar de que tantas veces han alardeado.

Todo el país vibra de indignación ante esos desalmados que quieren hundir la España democrática y popular en un infierno de terror y de muerte.

Pero ¡NO PASARÁN!

España entera se dispone al combate. En Madrid el pueblo está en la calle, apoyando al gobierno y estimulándole con su decisión y espíritu de lucha para que llegue hasta el fin en el aplastamiento de los militares y fascistas sublevados.

¡Jóvenes, preparaos para la pelea!

¡Mujeres, heroicas mujeres del pueblo! ¡Acordaos del heroísmo de las mujeres asturianas en 1934; luchad también vosotras al lado de los hombres para defender la vida y la libertad de vuestros hijos, que el fascismo amenaza!

¡Soldados, hijos del pueblo! ¡Manteneos fieles al gobierno de la República, luchad al lado de los trabajadores, al lado de las fuerzas del Frente Popular, junto a vuestros padres, vuestros hermanos y compañeros! ¡Luchad por la España del 16 de febrero, luchad por la República, ayudadlos a triunfar!

¡Trabajadores de todas las tendencias! El gobierno pone en nuestras manos las armas para que salvemos a España y al pueblo del horror y de la vergüenza que significaría el triunfo de los sangrientos verdugos de octubre.

¡Que nadie vacile! Todos dispuestos para la acción. Cada obrero, cada antifascista debe considerarse un soldado en armas.

¡Pueblos de Cataluña, Vasconia y Galicia! ¡Españoles todos! A defender la República democrática, a consolidar la victoria lograda por el pueblo el 16 de febrero.

El Partido Comunista os llama a la lucha. Os llama especialmente a vosotros, obreros, campesinos, intelectuales, a ocupar un puesto en el combate para aplastar definitivamente a los enemigos de la República y de las libertades populares. ¡Viva el Frente Popular! ¡Viva la unión de todos los antifascistas! ¡Viva la República del pueblo! ¡Los fascistas no pasarán! ¡No pasarán!

Paul Keating: 'We don't. We see them as equal', talkback on John Laws program, post Mabo decision - 1993

17 June 1993, 2UE studios, Sydney, Australia

PM (at 13.45) : Well can I just say, the thing to look forward to is a country which is in its soul at peace with itself. That is not prospering in including the dispossession of another people and that is the point of the High Court decision, that is the point of the reference I just read about the dispossession injustice. I mean, we are a unique country now, this is a multicultural country it has changed enormously since the war. It has tremendous opportunities, it is an island continent, we are the only nation in the world that has a continent to itself, we don't share a border with anybody, we are located in the fastest growing part of the world. We have the natural protection of the sea. There are great opportunities here. But to go forward together as a people means we have to go forward together on terms on which we all agree. And to have the original inhabitants not agreeing, saying that they were dispossessed and largely disadvantaged means we will never do that completely. Now that is why the Mabo decision is an opportunity. It is an opportunity to deal very late in the piece, but better late than never, with the injustice of Aboriginal dispossession. And that is what it is about. But it doesn't threaten, see the point about it is that it doesn't threaten anyone else's property in these areas of Australia we are talking about, but what it does, it brings up on a basis of equality the opportunity of the original inhabitants to have a piece of the country themselves.

(at 10.53) Caller: “My question to the prime minister – I would like to actually ask him quite a few questions on Mabo, but just a very broad question, Mr Keating, why does your government see the Aboriginal people as a much more equal people than the average white Australian?”

Keating: “We don’t. We see them as equal.”

Caller: “Well you might say that, but all the indications are that you don’t.”

Keating: “But I think it was implied in your question that you don’t. You think that non-Aboriginal Australians – there ought to be discrimination in their favour against blacks.”

Caller: “Not whatsoever. I don’t see that at all. But myself and every person I talk to, I am not racist, every person I talk to.”

Keating: “That’s what they all say, don’t they? They put these questions, they always say, ‘I am not racist but, you know, I don’t believe that Aboriginal Australians ought to have a basis in equality with non-Aboriginal Australians’. Well of course that is part of the problem.”

Caller: “Aren’t they more equal than us at the moment with the preferences they get?”

Keating: “It is not for me to be giving you a history lesson, they were largely dispossessed of the land they held.”

Caller: “I think there is a question over that. I think a lot of people would tell you that. You are telling us one thing and expecting us to believe it.”

Keating: “Well, if you are sitting on the title of any block of land in New South Wales you can bet an Aboriginal person at some stage was dispossessed of it.”

Caller: “You know that for sure, do you?”

Keating: “Well of course we know it for sure.”

Caller: “Yeah. Well, going on to your last caller there, I think he had some pertinent things to say that you couldn’t answer either.”

Keating: “Yeah I know but you hold his view, don’t you?”

Caller: “Of course I do.”

Keating: “That’s part of the problem.”

John Laws: “Let’s clarify the view. What is the view?”

Caller: “My question in general, I mean is with regard just to the whole Aboriginal question, is why does the average white Australian feel that he is prejudiced against? Why? Because of the things your government does.”

Keating: “Like what?”

Caller: “The preferential treatment.”

Keating: “Are you challenging the high court decision? Are you saying that the high court has got this all wrong?”

Caller: “No, I am not saying that at all. I wouldn’t know who was on the high court.”

Keating: “Well why don’t you sign off, if you don’t know anything about it and you’re not interested, goodbye. You can’t challenge these things and then say I don’t know about them.”

John Laws: “Well, he’s gone. But you see sadly what you are hearing there is in some ways very typical of the feeling that exists and it may be a very unhealthy feeling but it exists there. What do you do to placate those people who feel that strongly, and they do feel, I talk to them every day, they do feel that they are being disadvantaged by what is being given to the Aboriginal people.”

Keating: “Well, what is being given to the Aboriginal people is at this stage limited land. Let’s say, before the Mabo judgment, limited land opportunities and some income support and social justice in education and in health, so there are commonwealth programs for health and social justice to deal with such things as diseases which particularly afflicted Aboriginal people, like glaucoma of the eyes, and infant mortality and all these other problems they had; we have tried to direct funding to deal with those problems, to extend educational opportunities to Aboriginal people.”

David Cicilline: 'How the Grinch stole middle class tax cuts', Congress floor speech - 2017

19 December 2017, Congress, Washington DC, USA

With a little help from Dr. Seuss, I’d like to share the story of How the Grinch Stole Middle Class Tax Cuts.

Every middle class family wanted tax cuts a lot,
But the Grinch, who lived in a big white house, did not!
The Grinch hated middle class tax cuts.   He wanted the whole tax code uneven.
Now please don’t ask why.  No one quite knows the reason.

It could be his head was screwed on a bit wrong.
It could be his ties were two inches too long.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
Was his heart (or his hands) were two sizes too small.

Whatever the reason, his heart or his ties,
He stood on Christmas Eve, planning workers’ demise.
Staring out from his office with a sour, Grinchy frown,
At the workers’ warm lighted windows below in their town.

"Tomorrow is Christmas! It's practically here!"
He said from his office with a terrible sneer.
“Why, for 71 years I’ve put up with it now!”
"I MUST stop these middle class tax cuts! But HOW?"

Then he got an idea! An awful idea!
The Grinch got a terrible, awful idea.
"I know just what to do!" The Grinch thought with a pause.
"With this coat and this hat, I look like Santa Claus!"

Then he loaded some empty bags on his plane,
And he took off to cause some mean grinchy pain.
While working families dreamed of sweet tax cuts without care,
The Grinch came to the first little house on the square.

"This is stop number one," the old Grinch Claus hissed,
And he climbed to the roof, empty bags in his fist.
Then he slid down the chimney, Santa suit all in place,
And he stuck his head out of the small fireplace.

Where the tax deductions all hung in a row.
"These deductions," he grinned, "are the first things to go!"
Personal Exemptions!  Home Equity Interest! State and Local Taxes Too!
“I’ll take almost every deduction away from you!”

Then he slunk to the tax brackets—the corporate tax cuts were HUGE!
Why, that Grinch even took the Arctic Wildlife Refuge…
"And NOW!" grinned the Grinch, with his sacks in a net.
“I’ll stack the deficit with one trillion in debt!”

Then he heard a small sound, a child’s soft cry,
"Why are you taking our deductions, Grinch? WHY?"
But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick,
That he thought up a fib, and he thought it up quick!

"Why, my sweet little tot," the Grinch said on the fly,
“I’m here because corporate taxes are far too high”
“So I’m taking most of your deductions away,”
“To help corporations…and you get to pay!”

“See my dear child, there’s no reason to frown,”
“We’ll make them more wealthy, but it will all trickle down.”
His fib fooled the child. Then he patted her head,
And he got her a tax postcard and sent her to bed.

The Grinch took one last look at her sad little pup,
And he went to the chimney and shoved the deficit up!
Health care for 13 million was the last thing he took,
Then he slithered away without another look.
In their homes he left nothing but debt and despair

While giving handouts to corporations, the Grinch didn’t care
And the one deduction that he extolled,
Was even too small for a single household.
He rode with his load of deductions for dumping!

"Pooh Pooh to the middle class" he said gleefully jumping.
"They're just waking up! I know just what they'll do!"
"Their mouths will hang open a minute or two,
And they’ll all cry “‘Boo Hoo!’”

"That's a noise," grinned the Grinch, "That I simply MUST hear!"
So he paused. And the Grinch put his hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow.

He stared down aghast! The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise!
Every American, the tall and the small,
Loudly demanding tax cuts for all.

We want our deductions and A Better Deal,
Not tax cuts for corporations while you cut Meals on Wheels.
And the Grinch, with his small hands ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?"

Am I a fool? Are my policies all wrong?
Without those deductions, can the nation be strong?
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he’d not tweeted before!

“Maybe tax cuts should help more than just corporations,”
“Maybe this Christmas I can help the whole nation!”
“America’s middle class is what made it thrive,
“They need these deductions if they’re to survive!”

We all know how the real story ends,
The Grinch finds his heart and he makes amends.
Now we know this tax bill won’t end with such glee,
Because the President and corporate lobbyists control the GOP.

This Christmas, families will get just coal in their stocking,
Thanks to President Trump, the final result will be shocking.

Henry A. Wallace: 'The century on which we are entering can be and must be the century of the common man', Free World Association address- 1942

8 May 1942, Commodore Hotel, New York City, USA

Madam Chairman, and you who have spoken so eloquently tonight, and you who represent 33 different nations on this particular occasion; and I wish especially to recognize those who are representing the 14 nations from Latin America:

I want to say to all -- all who in a formal or an informal way represent most if not all of the free people -- free peoples of the world who are met here tonight, that we are meeting in the interests of the millions of all the nations who have freedom in their souls. To my mind, this meeting has just one purpose: to let those millions in the other countries know that here in the United States are 130 million men, women, and children who are in this war to the finish. Our American people are utterly resolved to go on until they can strike the relentless blows that will assure a complete victory, and with it a new day for the lovers of freedom everywhere on this earth.

This is a fight between a slave world and a free world. Just as in the United States in 1862, we could not remain "half slave" and "half free,"1 so in 1942 the world must make its decision for a complete victory, one way or the other.

As we begin the final stages of this fight to the death between the free world and the slave world, it is worthwhile to refresh our minds about the march of freedom for the common man. The idea of freedom -- the freedom that we in the United States know and love so well -- is derived from the Bible, with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual. Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity.

The prophets of the Old Testament were the first to preach social justice. But that which was sensed by the prophets many centuries before Christ was not given complete and powerful political expression until our nation, here in the United States, was formed as a Federal Union a century and a half ago. Even then, the march of the common people had just begun. Most of them did not yet know how to read and write. There were no public schools. Men and women can not be really free until they have plenty to eat, and time and ability to read and think and talk things over. Down the years, the people of the United States have moved steadily forward in the practice of democracy. Through universal education, they can now read and write and form opinions of their own. They have learned, and are still learning, the art of production -- how to make a living. They have learned, and are still learning, the art of self-government.

If we were to measure freedom by standards of nutrition, education, and self-government, we might rank the United States and certain nations of Western Europe very high. But this would not be fair to other nations where education has become widespread only in the last 20 years. In many nations, a generation ago, 9 out of 10 of the people could not read or write. Russia, for example, was changed from an illiterate to a literate nation within one generation and, in the process, Russia's appreciation of freedom was tremendously increased. In China, the growth in education in reading -- and the ability of the people to read and write during the past 30 years has been matched by an increased interest in real liberty.

Everywhere, reading and writing are accompanied by industrial progress, and industrial progress, sooner or later, inevitably brings a strong labor -- labor movement. From a long-time and fundamental point of view, there are no backward peoples which are lacking in mechanical sense. Russians, Chinese, and the Indians both of India and the Americas, all learn to read and write and operate machines just as well as your children or my children. Everywhere the common people are on the march. By the millions they are learning to read and write, learning to think together, learning to use tools. They're learning to think and work together in labor movements, some of which may be extreme or a little impractical at first, but which eventually will settle down to serve effectively the interests of the common man.

When the freedom-loving people march; when the farmers have an opportunity to buy land at reasonable prices and sell the produce of their land through their own organizations; when workers have the opportunity to form unions and bargain through them collectively; and when the children of all the people have an opportunity to attend schools which teach them that truth of the real world -- when these opportunities are open to everyone, then the world moves straight ahead.

But in countries where the ability to read and write has been recently acquired -- mind you, 62% of the world today do not yet know how to read and write. But in those countries where the ability has been recently acquired or where the people have had no long experience in governing themselves on the basis of their own thinking, it is easy for demagogues to arise and prostitute the mind of the common man to their own base ends. Such a demagogue may get financial help from some person of wealth who is unaware of what the end result will be. With this backing, the demagogue may dominate the minds of the people, and, from whatever degree of freedom they have, lead them back into a most degraded slavery. Herr Thyssen, the wealthy German steel man, little realized what he was doing when he gave Hitler enough money to enable him to play on the minds of the German people.

The demagogue is the curse of the modern world, and of all the demagogues, the worst are those financed by well-meaning wealthy men who sincerely believe that their wealth is likely to be safer if they can hire men with political "it" to change the -- the sign posts and lure the people back into slavery. Unfortunately for the wealthy men who finance movements of this sort, as well as for the people themselves, the successful demagogue is a powerful genie who, when once let out of his bottle, refuses to obey anyone's command. As long as his spell holds, he defies God Himself, and Satan is turned loose on the world.

Through the -- Through the leaders of the Nazi revolution, Satan is now trying to lead the common man of the whole world back into slavery and darkness. For the stark truth is that the violence preached by the Nazis is the devil's own religion of darkness. So also is the doctrine that one race or one class is by heredity superior and that all other races or classes are supposed to be slaves. The belief in one Satan-inspired Fuhrer, with his Quislings, his Lavals, his Mussolinis -- his "gauleiters" in every nation in the world -- is the last and ultimate darkness. Is there any hell hotter than that of being a Quisling, unless it is that of being a Laval or a Mussolini?

In a twisted sense, there is something almost great in the figure of the Supreme Devil operating through a human form, in a Hitler who has the daring to spit straight into the eye of God and man. But the Nazi system has a heroic position for only one leader. By definition only one person is allowed to retain full sovereignty over his own soul. All the rest are stooges. They are stooges who have been mentally and politically degraded, and who feel that they can get square with the world only by mentally and politically degrading other people. These stooges are really psychopathic cases. Satan has turned loose upon us the insane.

The search of the freedom -- The march of freedom of the past 150 years has been a long-drawn-out people's revolution. In this Great Revolution of the people, there were the American Revolution of 1775, the French Revolution of 1792, the Latin-American revolutions of the Bolivarian era, the German Revolution of 1848, and the Russian Revolution of 191[7]. Each spoke for the common man in terms of blood on the battlefield. Some went to excess. But the significant thing is that the people groped their way to the light. More of them learned to think and work together.

The people's revolution aims at peace and not at violence, but if the rights of the common man are attacked, it unleashes the ferocity of the she-bear who has lost a cub. When the Nazi psychologists tell their master Hitler that we in the United States may be able to produce hundreds of thousands of planes, but that we have no will to fight, they are only fooling themselves and him. The truth is that when the rights of the American people are transgressed, as these rights have been transgressed, the American people will fight with a relentless fury which will drive the ancient Teutonic gods back cowering into their caves. The Götterdämmerung has come for Odin and his crew.2

The people are on the march toward an even fuller freedom than the most fortunate peoples of the world have hitherto enjoyed. No Nazi counter-revolution will stop it. The common man will smoke the Hitler stooges out into the open in the United States, in Latin America, in India. He will -- He will destroy their influence. No Lavals, no Mussolinis will be tolerated in a Free World.

The people, in their millennial and revolutionary march toward manifesting here on earth the dignity that is in every human soul, hold as their credo the Four Freedoms enunciated by President Roosevelt in his message to Congress on January 6th, 1941. These four freedoms are the very core of the revolution for which the United Nations have taken their stand. We who live in the United States may think there is nothing very revolutionary about freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom from fear -- freedom from the secret police. But when we begin to think about the significance of freedom from want for the average man, then we know that the revolution of the past 150 years has not been completed, either here in the United States or any place else in the world. We know that this revolution can not stop until freedom from want has actually been attained.

And now, as we move forward toward realizing the Four Freedoms of this people's revolution, I would like to speak about four duties.

It is my belief that every freedom, every right, every privilege has its price, its corresponding duty without which it can not be enjoyed. The four duties of the people's revolution, as I see them, as of this day, are these:

1. The duty to produce to the limit.

2. The duty to transport as rapidly as possible to the line of battle.

3. The duty to fight with all that is in us.

And,

4. The duty to build a peace -- just, charitable, and enduring.

The fourth duty is that which inspires the other three.

We failed in our job after World War Number One. We did not know how to -- how to go about it, to build an enduring world-wide peace. We did not have the nerve to follow through and prevent Germany from rearming. We did not -- We did not insist that she "learn war no more." We did not build a peace treaty on the fundamental doctrine of the people's revolution. We did not strive whole-heartedly to create a world where there could be freedom from want for all the peoples. But by our very errors we learned much, and after this war we shall be in position to utilize our knowledge in building a world which is economically, politically, and, I hope, spiritually sound.

Modern science, which is a by-product and essential part of the people's revolution, has made it technologically possible to see that all the people of the world get enough to eat. Half in fun, half seriously, I said the other day to Madame Litvinov: "The object of this war is to make it sure that everyone can have a quart of milk to drink every day." And she said: "Yes, even half a pint." The peace must mean a better standard of living for the common man, not merely in the United States and England, but also in India, Russia, China, and Latin America -- not merely in the United Nations, but also in Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Some have spoken of the "American Century." I say that the century on which we are entering -- the century which will come into being after this war -- can be and must be the century of the common man.

Perhaps it will be America's opportunity to -- to support the Freedom[s] and Duties by which the common man must live. Everywhere, the common man must learn to build his own industries with his own hands in practical fashion. Everywhere, the common man must learn to increase his productivity so that he and his children can eventually pay to the world community all that they have received. No nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path to industrialization, but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism.

The methods of the 19th century will not work in the people's century, which is now about to begin. India, China, and Latin America have a tremendous stake in the people's century. As their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, their standard of living will double and treble. Modern science, when devoted whole-heartedly to the general welfare, has in it potentialities of which we do not yet dream.

And modern science must be released from German slavery. International cartels that serve American greed and German will to power must go. Cartels in the peace to come must be subjected to international control for the common man, as well as being under adequate control by the respective home governments. In this way, we can prevent the Germans from again building a war machine while we sleep. With international monopoly pools under control, it will be possible for inventions to serve all the people instead of only the few.

Yes, and when the time of peace comes, the citizen will again have a duty; the consumer will have a duty -- the supreme duty of sacrificing the lesser interest for the greater interest of the general welfare. Those who write the peace must think of the whole world. There can be no privileged peoples. We ourselves in the United States are no more a master race than the Nazis. And we can not perpetuate economic warfare without planting the seeds of military warfare. We must use our power at the peace table to build an economic peace that is charitable and enduring.

If we really believe that we are fighting for a people's peace, all the rest becomes easy. Production? Yes. It will be easy to get production without either strikes or sabotage, production with the whole-hearted cooperation between willing arms and keen brains; enthusiasm, zip, energy geared to the tempo of keeping everlastingly at it day after day. Hitler knows as well as those of us who sit in on the War Production Board meetings that we here in the United States are winning the battle of production. He knows that both labor and business in the United States are doing a most remarkable job and that his only hope is to crash through to a complete victory some time during the next six months.

Then there is the task of transportation to the line of battle by truck, and railroad car, and ship. We shall joyously deny ourselves so that our transportation system is improved by at least 30 percent. And there will have to be some denying, and you're going to hear plenty about it.

I need say little about the duty to fight. Some people declare, and Hitler believes, that the American people have grown soft in the last generation. Hitler agents continually preach in South America that we are cowards, unable to use, like the "brave" German soldiers, the weapons of modern war. It is true that American youth hates war with a holy hatred. But because of that fact and because Hitler and the German people stand as the very symbol of war, we shall fight with a tireless enthusiasm until war, and the possibility of war, have been removed from this planet. We shall cleanse the plague spot of Europe, which is Hitler's Germany, not the real Germany, and with it the hellhole of Asia, which is Japan.

The American people have always had guts and always will have. You know the story of Bomber Pilot Dixon, and Radioman Gene Aldrich, and Ordnanceman Tony Pastula -- the story which Americans will be telling their children for generations to come as an illustration man's ability to master any fate. These men lived for 34 days on the open sea in a rubber life raft, 8 feet by 4 feet, with no food but that which they took from the sea and the air with one pocket knife and a pistol. And yet they lived it through and came at last to the beach of an island they did not know. In spite of their suffering, they stood like men, with no weapon left to protect themselves, no shoes on their feet or clothes on their backs, and walked in military file because, they said, "If there were Japs, we didn't want to be crawling."

The American fighting men, and all the fighting men of the United Nations, will need to summon all their courage during the next few months. I am convinced that the summer and fall of 1942 will be a time of supreme crisis for all of us. Hitler, like the prize fighter who realizes that he is on the verge of being knocked out, is gathering all his remaining forces for one last, desperate blow. There is abject fear in the heart of the madman and a growing discontent among his people as he prepares for his last all-out offensive.

We may be sure that Hitler and Japan will cooperate to do the unexpected -- perhaps an attack by Japan against Alaska and our northwest coast at the time when German transport planes will be shuttled across from Dakar to furnish leadership and stiffening to a German uprising in Latin America. In any event, the psychological and sabotage offensive in the United States and Latin America will be timed to coincide with, or anticipate by a few weeks, the height of the military offensive.

We must be especially prepared to stifle the fifth columnists in the United States who will try to sabotage not merely our war material plants but, even more important -- infinitely more important -- our minds. We must be prepared for the worst kind of fifth-column work in Latin America, much of it operating through the agency of governments with which the United States at present is at peace. When I say this, I recognize that the peoples -- the peoples both of Latin America and of the nations supporting the agencies through which the fifth columnists work, are overwhelmingly on the side of the democracies. We must expect the offensive against us on the military, propaganda and sabotage fronts, both in the United States and Latin America, to reach its apex some time during the next few months. The convulsive efforts of the dying madman will be so great that some of us may be deceived into thinking that the situation is bad at the very time when it is really getting better.

But in the case of most of us, the events of the next few months, disturbing though they may be, will only increase our will to bring about complete victory in this war of liberation. Prepared in spirit, we cannot be surprised. Psychological terrorism will fall flat. As we nerve ourselves for the supreme effort in this hemisphere we must not forget the sublime heroism of the oppressed in Europe and Asia, whether it be in the mountains of Yugoslavia, the factories of Czechoslovakia and France, the farms of Poland, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium, among the seamen of Norway, or in the occupied areas of China and the Dutch East Indies. Everywhere the soul of man is letting the tyrant know that slavery of the body does not end resistance.

There can be no half measures. North, South, East, West, and Middle West -- the will of the American people is for complete victory.

No compromise with Satan is possible. We shall not rest until the victims under the Nazi and Japanese yoke are freed. We shall fight for a complete peace as well as a complete victory.

The people's revolution is on the march, and the devil and all his angels can not prevail against it. They can not prevail, for on the side of the people is the Lord.

He giveth power to the faint; [and] to them that have no might He increaseth strength....they that wait upon the Lord...shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; [and] they shall walk, and not be faint.

Strong in the strength of the Lord, we who fight in the people's cause will never stop until that cause is won.

Halsey: 'Be a voice for all those who have prisoner tongues', A Story Like Mine, Women's March 2018

22 January 2018, New York City, USA

This speech/poem contains graphic descriptions of rape /sexual assault.

I was in DC last year, and I came back to do a speech this time, but I don’t really know how to do a speech unless it rhymes – so I’m gonna do a little poem for you guys.

It's 2009 and I'm 14 and I'm crying

Not really sure where I am but I'm holding the hand of my best friend Sam

In the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood

The air is sterile and clean, and the walls are that not gray, but green

And the lights are so bright they could burn a hole through the seam of my jeans

My phone is buzzing in the pocket

My mom is asking me if I remembered my keys 'cause she's closing the door and she needs to lock it

But I can't tell my mom where I've gone

I can't tell anyone at all

You see, my best friend Sam was raped by a man that we knew 'cause he worked in the after-school program

And he held her down with her textbook beside her

And he covered her mouth and he came inside her

So now I'm with Sam, at the place with a plan, waiting for the results of a medical exam

And she's praying she doesn't need an abortion, she couldn't afford it

And her parents would, like, totally kill her

It's 2002 and my family just moved and the only people I know are my mom's friends, too, and her son

He's got a case of Matchbox cars and he says that he'll teach me to play the guitar if I just keep quiet

And the stairwell beside apartment 1245 will haunt me in my sleep for as long as I am alive

And I'm too young to know why it aches in my thighs, but I must lie, I must lie

It's 2012 and I'm dating a guy and I sleep in his bed and I just learned how to drive

And he's older than me and he drinks whiskey neat and he's paying for everything

This adult thing is not cheap

We've been fighting a lot, almost 10 times a week

And he wants to have sex, and I just want to sleep

He says I can't say no to him

This much I owe to him

He buys my dinner, so I have to blow him

He's taken to forcing me down on my knees

And I'm confused 'cause he's hurting me while he says please

And he's only a man, and these things he just needs

He's my boyfriend, so why am I filled with unease?

It's 2017 and I live like a queen

And I've followed damn near every one of my dreams

I'm invincible and I'm so f***ing naive

I believe I'm protected 'cause I live on a screen

Nobody would dare act that way around me

I've earned my protection, eternally clean

Until a man that I trust gets his hands in my pants

But I don't want none of that, I just wanted to dance

And I wake up the next morning like I'm in a trance and there's blood

Is that my blood?

Hold on a minute

You see I've worked every day since I was 18

I've toured everywhere from Japan to Mar-a-Lago

I even went on stage that night in Chicago when I was having a miscarriage

I mean, I pied the piper, I put on a diaper

And sang out my spleen to a room full of teens

What do you mean this happened to me?

You can't put your hands on me

You don't know what my body has been through

I'm supposed to be safe now

I earned it

It's 2018 and I've realized nobody is safe long as she is alive

And every friend that I know has a story like mine

And the world tells me we should take it as a compliment

But then heroes like Ashley and Simone and Gabby, McKayla and Gaga, Rosario, Aly

Remind me this is the beginning, it is not the finale

And that's why we're here

And that's why we rally

It's Olympians and a medical resident and not one f***ing word from the man who is President

It's about closed doors and secrets and legs and stilettos from the Hollywood hills to the projects in ghettos

When babies are ripped from the arms of teen mothers and child brides cry globally under the covers

Who don't have a voice on the magazine covers

They tell us take cover

But we are not free until all of us are free

So love your neighbor, please treat her kindly

Ask her story and then shut up and listen

Black, Asian, poor, wealthy, trans, cis, Muslim, Christian

Listen, listen and then yell at the top of your lungs

Be a voice for all those who have prisoner tongues

For the people who had to grow up way too young

There is work to be done

There are songs to be sung

Lord knows there's a war to be won

Jeff Flake: 'Our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies', Senate speech on Trump, media and truth - 2018

17 January 2018, Senate, Washington DC, USA

Mr. President, near the beginning of the document that made us free, our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident....” So, from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth. The founders were visionary in this regard, understanding well that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America.

As the distinguished former member of this body, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, famously said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” During the past year, I am alarmed to say that Senator Moynihan’s proposition has likely been tested more severely than at any time in our history.

It is for that reason that I rise today, to talk about the truth, and its relationship to democracy. For without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last.

2017 was a year which saw the truth — objective, empirical, evidence-based truth — more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year which saw the White House enshrine “alternative facts” into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods. It was the year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally-protected free press was launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. “The enemy of the people,” was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017.

Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase “enemy of the people,” that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader.

This alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president’s party. For they are shameful, repulsive statements. And, of course, the president has it precisely backward – despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him “fake news,” it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.

I dare say that anyone who has the privilege and awesome responsibility to serve in this chamber knows that these reflexive slurs of “fake news” are dubious, at best. Those of us who travel overseas, especially to war zones and other troubled areas around the globe, encounter members of U.S. based media who risk their lives, and sometimes lose their lives, reporting on the truth. To dismiss their work as fake news is an affront to their commitment and their sacrifice.

According to the International Federation of Journalists, 80 journalists were killed in 2017, and a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists documents that the number of journalists imprisoned around the world has reached 262, which is a new record. This total includes 21 reporters who are being held on “false news” charges.

Mr. President, so powerful is the presidency that the damage done by the sustained attack on the truth will not be confined to the president’s time in office. Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful – in fact, we question the powerful most ardently – to do so is our birthright and a requirement of our citizenship -- and so, we know well that no matter how powerful, no president will ever have dominion over objective reality.

No politician will ever get to tell us what the truth is and is not. And anyone who presumes to try to attack or manipulate the truth to his own purposes should be made to realize the mistake and be held to account. That is our job here. And that is just as Madison, Hamilton, and Jay would have it.
Of course, a major difference between politicians and the free press is that the press usually corrects itself when it gets something wrong. Politicians don’t.

No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to these assaults on our institutions. And Mr. President, an American president who cannot take criticism – who must constantly deflect and distort and distract – who must find someone else to blame -- is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the president adds to the danger.

Now, we are told via Twitter that today the president intends to announce his choice for the “most corrupt and dishonest” media awards. It beggars belief that an American president would engage in such a spectacle. But here we are.

And so, 2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power that would weaken it. In this effort, the choice is quite simple. And in this effort, the truth needs as many allies as possible. Together, my colleagues, we are powerful. Together, we have it within us to turn back these attacks, right these wrongs, repair this damage, restore reverence for our institutions, and prevent further moral vandalism.

Together, united in the purpose to do our jobs under the Constitution, without regard to party or party loyalty, let us resolve to be allies of the truth -- and not partners in its destruction.

It is not my purpose here to inventory all of the official untruths of the past year. But a brief survey is in order. Some untruths are trivial – such as the bizarre contention regarding the crowd size at last year’s inaugural.

But many untruths are not at all trivial – such as the seminal untruth of the president’s political career - the oft-repeated conspiracy about the birthplace of President Obama. Also not trivial are the equally pernicious fantasies about rigged elections and massive voter fraud, which are as destructive as they are inaccurate – to the effort to undermine confidence in the federal courts, federal law enforcement, the intelligence community and the free press, to perhaps the most vexing untruth of all – the supposed “hoax” at the heart of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

To be very clear, to call the Russia matter a “hoax” – as the president has many times – is a falsehood. We know that the attacks orchestrated by the Russian government during the election were real and constitute a grave threat to both American sovereignty and to our national security. It is in the interest of every American to get to the bottom of this matter, wherever the investigation leads.

Ignoring or denying the truth about hostile Russian intentions toward the United States leaves us vulnerable to further attacks. We are told by our intelligence agencies that those attacks are ongoing, yet it has recently been reported that there has not been a single cabinet-level meeting regarding Russian interference and how to defend America against these attacks. Not one. What might seem like a casual and routine untruth – so casual and routine that it has by now become the white noise of Washington - is in fact a serious lapse in the defense of our country.

Mr. President, let us be clear. The impulses underlying the dissemination of such untruths are not benign. They have the effect of eroding trust in our vital institutions and conditioning the public to no longer trust them. The destructive effect of this kind of behavior on our democracy cannot be overstated.

Mr. President, every word that a president utters projects American values around the world. The values of free expression and a reverence for the free press have been our global hallmark, for it is our ability to freely air the truth that keeps our government honest and keeps a people free. Between the mighty and the modest, truth is the great leveler. And so, respect for freedom of the press has always been one of our most important exports.

But a recent report published in our free press should raise an alarm. Reading from the story:
“In February…Syrian President Bashar Assad brushed off an Amnesty International report that some 13,000 people had been killed at one of his military prisons by saying, “You can forge anything these days, we are living in a fake news era.”

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has complained of being “demonized” by “fake news.” Last month, the report continues, with our President, quote “laughing by his side” Duterte called reporters “spies.”

In July, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro complained to the Russian propaganda outlet, that the world media had “spread lots of false versions, lots of lies” about his country, adding, “This is what we call 'fake news' today, isn't it?”
There are more:

“A state official in Myanmar recently said, “There is no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news,” referring to the persecuted ethnic group.

Leaders in Singapore, a country known for restricting free speech, have promised “fake news” legislation in the new year.”

And on and on. This feedback loop is disgraceful, Mr. President. Not only has the past year seen an American president borrow despotic language to refer to the free press, but it seems he has in turn inspired dictators and authoritarians with his own language. This is reprehensible.

We are not in a “fake news” era, as Bashar Assad says. We are, rather, in an era in which the authoritarian impulse is reasserting itself, to challenge free people and free societies, everywhere.

In our own country, from the trivial to the truly dangerous, it is the range and regularity of the untruths we see that should be cause for profound alarm, and spur to action. Add to that the by-now predictable habit of calling true things false, and false things true, and we have a recipe for disaster. As George Orwell warned, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.”

Any of us who have spent time in public life have endured news coverage we felt was jaded or unfair. But in our positions, to employ even idle threats to use laws or regulations to stifle criticism is corrosive to our democratic institutions. Simply put: it is the press’s obligation to uncover the truth about power. It is the people’s right to criticize their government. And it is our job to take it.

What is the goal of laying siege to the truth? President John F. Kennedy, in a stirring speech on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America, was eloquent in answer to that question:
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

Mr. President, the question of why the truth is now under such assault may well be for historians to determine. But for those who cherish American constitutional democracy, what matters is the effect on America and her people and her standing in an increasingly unstable world -- made all the more unstable by these very fabrications. What matters is the daily disassembling of our democratic institutions.

We are a mature democracy – it is well past time that we stop excusing or ignoring – or worse, endorsing -- these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost.

I sincerely thank my colleagues for their indulgence today. I will close by borrowing the words of an early adherent to my faith that I find has special resonance at this moment. His name was John Jacques, and as a young missionary in England he contemplated the question: "What is truth?" His search was expressed in poetry and ultimately in a hymn that I grew up with, titled “Oh Say, What is Truth.” It ends as follows:

“Then say, what is truth? 'Tis the last and the first,
For the limits of time it steps o'er.
Tho the heavens depart and the earth's fountains burst.
Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,
Eternal… unchanged… evermore.”

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Cory Booker: “When ignorance and bigotry is allied with power, it's a dangerous force in our country”, response to Kirstjen Nielsen amnesia about Trump’s ‘shithole’ remarks - 2018

16 January 2018, Washington DC, Senate Committee, USA

I wanna just turn, though, and you'll have to forgive me. Listening to the testimony has changed my line of questioning a bit, because this is very personal to me. I sit here right now because when good white people in this country heard bigotry, or hatred, they stood up.

Cory BookerMoving into my home community, we were denied housing because of the colour of our skin. There was white Americans from Burgon County who banded together to fight against racism, to fight against hate speech. To fight against people who had broad brush generalities about people based upon their ethnicity, based upon their origin, based upon their religion.

What went on in the White House, what went on in the Oval Office, is profoundly disturbing to me. I'll tell you this, I heard about it when I was in Puerto Rico, when it happened. Here I was, there, trying to help a community dealing with savage challenges. I can't tell you how many Puerto Ricans brought up that conversation in the White House.

I returned to Atlanta, to go to the King Centre Awards. And from the greatest luminaries from the Civil Rights Movement, down to average Americans, this was on their mind.

I returned to Newark New Jersey, and I talked to African-Americans, from Africa. I talked to Central American Americans. I talked to regular Newarkers. This was top on their mind.

Yesterday I talked to the Ambassador from Haiti. And to see all that they're doing as a result of this conversation. I've been in the Oval Office many times. When the Commander in Chief speaks, I listened. I don't have amnesia on conversations I had in the Oval Office going back months, and months, and months. I've had individual meetings with the President, and I've had group conversations where there was, as you said, crosstalk.

Why is this so important? Why is this so disturbing for me? Why am I, frankly, seething with anger? We have this incredible nation, where we have been taught that it does not matter where you're from. It doesn't matter your colour, your race, or religion. It's about the content of your character. It's about your values and your ideals. And yet, we have language that from Dick Durbin, to Lindsey Graham, they seem to have a much better recollection of what went on.

You're under oath. You, and others in that room that suddenly cannot remember. It was Martin Luther King that said, "There's nothing in this world more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." And so here we are in the United States of America, and we have a history that is beautiful, and grand, and also ugly. Where from this nation to others, we know what happens when people sit by and are bystanders and say nothing.

When Oval Office rhetoric sounds like social engineering, we know from human history the dangers of that. Our greatest heroes in this country spoke out about people who have convenient amnesia, or who are bystanders.

King said, "A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to stand."

Elie Weisel says, "We must take side. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

Gandhi said, "Silence becomes cowardice." Cowardice, when we the occasion demands speaking out like Lindsey Graham did, and acting accordingly.

This idea that the Commander of Chief of this country could, with broad brushes talk about certain nations, and thus cast a shadow over the millions of Americans who are from those communities, and that you could even say in your testimony, the Norwegians were preferenced by him because they're so hardworking.

K. Nielsen I didn't say-

Excuse, let me finish.

K. Nielsen Happy to.

Let me just draw a connection of why that matters. I'm sure you remember the six words from our President, the six words that he said after Charleston Virginia, last summer. People marching with tiki torches and hate. When he said, "There are very fine people on both sides." "Very fine people on both sides."

When the Commander in Chief speaks, or refuses to speak, those words just don't dissipate like mist in the air. They fester. They become poison. They give licence to bigotry and hate in our country.

I know you're aware of a 2017 GAO report that found, and I quote, "Out of the 85 violent extremist incidences that resulted in deaths in September 12, 2001, far right wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 73%." When I go through the Black Belt in the south, Atlanta, black churches in Newark, they're concerned about Jihadist Islamic Terrorism. We watched the Twin Towers from Newark go down. But since 9/11, 85 violent incidents, 73% were with people that hold bigoted, hateful ideas about minorities.

One American, killed in Charleston Virginia, dozens injured. Nine Americans killed in a church shooting in Charleston South Carolina by a white supremacist. An American killed, and another wounded in Kansas after a white supremacist targeted them for their ethnicity, saying, "Get out of my country." Six Americans killed, and four others wounded in Wisconsin, where white supremacists targeted individuals for their religion.

The Commander in Chief, in an Oval Office Meeting, referring to people from African countries, and Haitians, with the most vile and vulgar language. That language festers. When ignorance and bigotry is allied with power, it is a dangerous force in our country.

Your silence and your amnesia is complicity. Right now, in our nation, we have a problem. I don't know if 73% of your time is spent on whit supremacist hate groups. I don't know if 73% of your time is spent concerned about the people in fear in communities in this country: Sikh Americans, Muslim Americans, Black Americans.The fact pattern is clear of the threats in this country.

I hurt. When Dick Durbin called me, I had tears of rage when I heard about this experience in that meeting. And for you not to feel that hurt, and that pain, and to dismiss some of the questions of my colleagues, saying "I've already answered that line of questions," when tens of millions of Americans are hurting right now, because of what they're worried about would happen in the White House. That's unacceptable to me.

There are threats in this country. People plotting. I receive enough death threats to know the reality. Cond receives enough death threats to know the reality. Maisie receives enough death threats to know the reality. And I've got a President of the United States, whose office I respect, who talks about the country's origins of my fellow citizens, in the most despicable of manner.

You don't remember. You can't remember the words of your Commander in Chief.

Lidia Thorpe: 'Being Aboriginal is not all I am, but it's the centre of who I am', maiden speech - 2017

29 November 2017, Victorian Parliament, Melbourne, Australia

Lidia Thorpe, MP Northcote, is the first aboriginal woman to be elected to a lower house seat in the Parliament of Victoria.

I would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri Willam and Yalukit Willam clans - two of 300 clans and 38 language groups in Victoria who have never ceded sovereignty. I stand before you today a proud Gunnai-Gunditjmara woman, living on Wurundjeri country. For an Aboriginal kid who grew up in public housing and left school at 14, taking my seat in this chamber is something I was told could never happen. Too many of our kids grow up believing this. Their lives are debated but not reflected in our political system. As long as those voices are missing from the heart of our democracy, we limit our children's potential. They cannot be what they cannot see. This is why today matters. It is a moment 161 years in the making, and it does not only belong to me. I have been inundated with messages from Aboriginal people across the country. I speak today on behalf of them. I am honoured to be the first Aboriginal woman elected to the Victorian Parliament. We have sustained and protected this land for thousands of years, and now in Victoria we finally have a say in how our land is governed.

I am also proud to embark on this journey as a Greens MP, a party that shares my passion for social justice, protecting country and giving voice to those who would otherwise not have one. And I am honoured to represent Northcote, a diverse and compassionate community of vibrant multiculturalism, youthful innovation and a real sense of optimism. From the peak of Ruckers Hill all the way to the waterways that surround us on three sides - the Darebin and Merri creeks to the east and west and the mighty Birrarung flowing to the south - Northcote is a place of natural beauty, and I am so proud to call it home. I want to take this opportunity to say to every resident of Northcote, Thornbury, Alphington, Fairfield, Preston South and West Preston: whether you voted for me or not, I promise I will not let you down.

I also want to acknowledge that the road to this moment came about in tragic circumstances after the untimely passing of Fiona Richardson. I extend my heartfelt condolences to her family, friends and colleagues. As a survivor of domestic violence I am personally grateful to Fiona for the work she has done in increasing protections for women.

The possum skin cloak I wore when I walked into Parliament today was made for me by the Loddon Campaspe Indigenous family violence action group and the Centre for Non-Violence. It was hand sewn by a community who share my country and presented to me this week by Aunty Beryl, a Gunnai-Gunditjmara elder from the Victorian Aboriginal embassy.

I stand here on the shoulders of my ancestors. None of this would have been possible without the strong line of Aboriginal women before me. They taught me resilience, self-determination and the importance of standing up against injustice. My nan, Alma Previous HitThorpeNext Hit, who is here today, has worked her whole life for grassroots community change. Raised in Fitzroy, she left school at 12 to work in a shoe factory and support her family. Her mum, my great-grandmother Edna, came to the area after being forced off the Framlingham Aboriginal reserve near Warrnambool as part of the White Australia assimilation policy during the Great Depression. The house Nan grew up in was run-down and often had no electricity. Everyone had to do their bit. But she never looked for pity.

Self-determination was at the heart of everything she taught me. Her motto has always been 'You get up and you have a go', and she did. After the 1967 referendum gave Aboriginal people the right to vote she applied for a loan that helped her and my nan Edna set up the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service. That service saved lives and helped hundreds of thousands of people across this country. To this day it continues to be a vital community hub.

Growing up, Nan's house was a magnet for political discussion. I would listen to the tough conversations our elders had about how they could improve the lives of Aboriginal people. It was not just talk; my family's activism started at home. Nan took in countless people and offered them a safe place to live - like Uncle Lou, a soldier who grew up on an Aboriginal mission where he contracted tuberculosis. If it was not for Nan, he would have had nowhere to go.

It was this upbringing that taught me community is everything. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and that is the life I have known. Growing up in a public housing estate I knew everyone. When mum was out working I would go downstairs to the homework club with the other kids and feel that sense of safety and belonging. Later in life as a young single mum, public housing gave my son and I stability and community. It helped shape the father he is today. From the Turkish neighbour who brought us homemade pizza to the elderly lollipop man who lived on the ground floor, people in public housing communities took care of each other. We cannot remove the only support and security these people have.

At Walker Street in Northcote, one of nine public housing sites across Melbourne being sold to developers, I recently met a family who came to Australia from Somalia. They were anxious that being forced from the community they love will make it harder for their young Muslim son to be accepted. One of the most important jobs in this Parliament is to look after the vulnerable in our community. We cannot marginalise these families. Everyone deserves a safe place to call home, and that is why we must do politics differently. The profits of developers cannot be put before people. Gambling companies must not be allowed to destroy our communities with pokie machines. The system is rigged against the little guy because of dodgy donations flowing into politics. It has to stop.

We need fairness and we need transparency. We need leaders who understand the importance of protecting country, have the guts to tackle climate change and will stand up to the mining companies poisoning our land. We need to protect our native forests from logging and create a great forest national park. As a young woman I led the protest to save the Nowa Nowa gorge from a pipeline that would have destroyed one of the most beautiful places in our state.

I have stood in front of bulldozers, and I will continue to stand up for our communities and our environment. There is a fire in my belly for justice, equality and protecting country. I will bring that to this Parliament. Nan always said politics was my destiny. I cannot separate my culture from my politics. When your people have fought for centuries to survive, it teaches you how to face up to those who hold power.

Being Aboriginal is not all I am, but it is the centre of who I am. My mother's family lived their lives as refugees in their own country on Gunnai land in Gippsland. They were poisoned, shot and herded off cliffs in one of the most ruthless and systematic attempted genocides the world has ever seen. The survivors were rounded up onto Lake Tyers mission and imprisoned on rations. Decisions made in this very chamber took our language away, removed children from our families and forced us from our land. Those scars run deep for all Aboriginal people.

But despite the deep sense of loss, I grew up surrounded by people who refused to give in to hopelessness. Nan Alma taught me to stand up for our community and always stay true to myself: 'Never forget where you come from. Never forget our people'. So I fought hard for my identity. At school, where my cousin and I were the only two black kids, I was picked on by students and teachers for being Aboriginal. It only made me more determined. I never felt for one moment that I could be beaten down. It does not matter where you come from or who you are, education should be accessible for everyone. Today we are joined by Aboriginal students from schools across the Northcote electorate and my daughter, who is going into year 12. I promise that I will fight for you to have the opportunities that I never had. And I look forward to seeing the school funding you have been promised delivered in full.

Although I left school early, I went to work straightaway. I have not stopped working since. Every job I have had, in health, housing, employment and land rights, has been about empowering those who have been denied opportunity. As Victorian NAIDOC chair, I was proud we delivered a calendar of inclusive events, including NAIDOC's first-ever Pride Awards.

Bringing community together is at the core of who I am. I have always been a fighter, but it breaks my heart to think of all the Aboriginal people who have lost that will to survive. There is trauma passed down through generations and entrenched by society that does not see our humanity and treats us only as a problem to be fixed. Many of the kids I grew up with are gone, lost to drugs and alcohol, chronic illness and suicide. I have been to too many funerals for someone my age and I do not want my nine-year-old daughter to have to go through the same. Something has to change.

In Victoria in 2017 Aboriginal children are still being removed from families, our literacy rates are amongst the lowest in the state and our people are locked up at a rate 11 times higher than the general population. This is not because of fundamental flaws in their character but because of a system that has written them off. For some of the elders in our community it has led to a sense of profound despair. They see the extreme poverty, the forced closures of Aboriginal communities and skyrocketing suicide rates, and they ask, 'Has anything really changed since our ancestors were wiped from this land?'.

Clinton Pryor, a young Aboriginal man, walked 6000 kilometres across the country out of a sense of desperation. He walked and gathered stories, many of them soul-destroying. It was a heavy burden for a young man, but he listened - and that is what politicians must do. Our First People must be at the centre of decision-making processes. We need a clan-based treaty to ensure self-determination is at the heart of our future. We are not a problem to be fixed. We are the custodians of this land and the oldest living culture in the world. We must be heard. For those who feel they are not being counted, for those who have lost the will to fight and for those who are no longer with us, I will be that voice. I will fight for you. You have my word, and I will never sell you out.

I extend this promise to all the people of Northcote. Whatever your heritage or cultural background, you are part of a community that I am so proud to call home. My commitment to you is to act with integrity. I will have the courage to put our community first, even when those decisions are tough. And I will respect and protect this land which we all share. Together we can walk forward to a more hopeful future for our kids and grandkids.

I am grateful to many people for getting me here today: firstly, to my ancestors, whose spirit of strength and guidance I feel with me every day of this journey; to my elders, my family and my friends; to the staunch black activists who paved the way for a kid from the commission flats to make it all the way to the Victorian Parliament; to the Greens, who had faith in me from the beginning; to my parliamentary colleagues, for their support; to my campaign team and my wonderful volunteers, I will never be able to thank you enough for you hard work, dedication and passion; and to my children and my grandchildren, I know the work I do has come at a cost to you.

I want to finish today with a story that sums up what this moment means. It is a story of a seven-year-old Aboriginal boy with autism called Eli from Penders Grove Primary School in Thornbury. After the by-election results came in, his mum sent me a video she had taken of his reaction when he found out I had won. It moved me to tears. 'What do you think of that?', she asked him. 'Well,' Eli said, 'Aunty Previous HitLidia'sNext Document got the key that's going to open the door to all Aboriginal people'.

I feel so very honoured to have been given that key. My job now is to keep the door open and to make sure it never closes again. Thank you.

Tim Watts: 'While I'm glad to be able to vote for this bill, I cannot take joy from it', Marriage Amendment Bill - 2017

5 December 2017, Canberra, Australia

I want to begin my remarks tonight by saying to all LGBTI Australians that I'm sorry. I'm sorry that the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Bill 2017 took so long. Every day that a person is forced to live in our society with lesser rights than their neighbour is an injustice. We perpetuated and perpetrated an injustice on LGBTIQ Australians for far, far too long.

It is right that the parliament will this week vote to extend equality before the law to LGBTIQ couples and their families. It is right that elected members of this place will vote to afford the most basic of dignities to LGBTIQ Australians: the recognition that their relationships are just as loving, that their relationships are just as meaningful and that their relationships are just as committed as anyone else's.

I'm sorry, too, for what this parliament put LGBTIQ Australians through to get to this vote. I take responsibility for the inaction of previous Labor governments on this issue during our time in office, recognising the efforts of the member for Whitlam in introducing the 2012 marriage equality private member's bill and the 42 members of parliament, including the Leader of the Opposition, who voted for it. I recognise also the extraordinary work of people like Senator Penny Wong, who worked assiduously within party forums for many years to change Labor Party policy on this issue so that when marriage equality passes in this parliament this week it will do so with more votes from the Labor Party than any other party—but recognising our responsibility for failing to get it done in the past.

I'm sorry that LGBTIQ Australians were forced by this parliament to submit themselves, to submit their rights as equal members of our society, to a national public debate and opinion poll before we could get them to this point in this place. For these reasons, while I'm glad to be able to vote for this bill, I cannot take joy from it. Historians will note the public celebrations following the announcement of the results of this survey, celebrations that the Prime Minister had the good sense to realise that he would not be welcome at. But, in doing so, they will miss a deeper truth of this period in our history. Australians who support justice, equality and human dignity celebrated this result because the alternative would have been unimaginably painful. We celebrate it because a process that inflicted totally unnecessary pain and suffering on LGBTIQ Australians and their families would have re-traumatised these Australians had the result been in the negative. We celebrate it because the next generation of LGBTIQ kids will not have to go through a similar national debate on the worth of themselves and their families.

But these celebrations obscured the hurt, confusion and anxiety that I saw my LGBTIQ friends and family had been put through in this ghoulish process. History should record the repulsion that many of us felt at seeing the Prime Minister take credit for these celebrations while denying the suffering that he chose to inflict on LGBTIQ Australians and their families. I want to give these deeply mixed feelings a voice in this debate today. To this end I want the Hansard to record for posterity the reflections of a comedian who I admire, Rebecca Shaw, and her experience of this process. Bec wrote:

I thought that hearing that the Yes side had won would make me feel happy; that perhaps the months of tension and anger that had built up in my body would dissipate. But the instant I heard those words, I felt my stomach knot further. I turned to my group, more subdued than most of the people around me. I hugged my friends, holding on quietly and for a long time. One looked at me from under her glasses; her face was solemn, but I saw tears streaming down her face. Another was shaking their head angrily. Around me, people were smiling and hugging; … I saw an old couple embrace tearfully. I cried a bit, then – how could I not? But the knot didn't budge.

I can't speak on the perspective of an LGBTIQ person myself, but I can feel this knot in my stomach in this debate today, and I could feel it coming in the lead-up to the results.

I knew I wouldn't be in the mood to celebrate on the day of the results, so I had accepted an invitation to speak at the graduation ceremony of my old high school on the day before. I was optimistic for my old school in regional Queensland, in Toowoomba, which, it was clear to me, was far more enlightened today than it was when I was there 20 years ago. The school now had LGBTIQ kids and transitioning kids, things that were simply denied when I was at the school. But my optimism turned to bitterness when, watching the results, a 'no' result was returned for the seat of Groom in the survey. I felt for those kids as the 'no' result was returned. How did this unnecessary public process of judgement make them feel, this public confirmation of their worst fears about the community that they lived in? What message does this send to an LGBTIQ kid in that community?

It is clear we still have a long path to walk to ensuring that all LGBTIQ Australians throughout our country are afforded recognition as fully equal members of our society. For those who inflicted this process on Australia, I can only express my hope that future governments have the good sense and the political courage not to let it loose on the human rights of other groups. Regardless, the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party will have to live with the question of why they forced LGBTIQ Australians to submit their rights, their equality as citizens, to a national debate when no other race or religious group has been forced to do the same without constitutional requirement. This is the Prime Minister's legacy in this debate.

All of us in this place should make amends for the way that we have failed LGBTIQ Australians leading up to this bill by ensuring that we do not perpetrate similar injustices in future, that we do not commit similar failures of empathy. The relationships of future generations of LGBTIQ Australians won't be subject to legal discrimination, but we will need to continue to ensure that they do not confront social and other forms of discrimination. The reactionaries in our society who seek to exploit and accentuate anxieties about people who are perceived to be different will move on to a new target.

The parliament and the public have so clearly rejected homophobia. The tiny minority of people who think that religion is like a toy plastic sheriff's badge to wave at other people rather than a source of personal moral reflection will be tutting their fingers at someone else soon enough. Indeed, it is clear from the way that the 'no' campaign desperately tried to make the marriage equality survey about anything other than marriage between LGBTIQ Australians that the reactionaries have already chosen their new target—trans kids. The disgracefully dishonest and fact-free campaign against the Safe Schools program comprehensively detailed by Ben Law in his tour de force quarterly essay is a sign of things to come on this front. So, to the MPs who are professing to a Damoclean conversion on marriage equality and recognising the equal human dignity of gay and lesbian Australians in the chamber this week: I implore you not to make the same mistake over again with trans Australians. To the trans Australians and their families watching this debate with trepidation, I want to say that I see you and I will not abandon you.

I have a few happier words to end on. I want to thank and pay tribute to all of the campaigners who ensured that Australia said yes in this survey. Thank you to The Equality Campaign, Australians for Marriage Equality, GetUp! and the Australian trade union movement, particularly the Victorian Trades Hall Council. I want to particularly acknowledge the work of a constituent of mine, Wil Stracke, who led the trades hall campaign and acquired the most famous fence in Australia in the process. Your mum would have been proud, mate. Also I want to thank Raymond Pham for coordinating my office's 'yes' campaign in Gellibrand. In a perfect world, we could have done without their good deeds, but we are thankful for them regardless.

Finally, I want to thank all of those LGBTIQ Australians who lost people that they loved during the long, long wait for this day. When the Western Bulldogs won the flag after a 62-year drought, one of the most common things that I heard at the family day at Whitten Oval the day after the premiership was people wishing that they could have shared this long-anticipated moment of happiness with a loved one who never got to see the day. Lovers, family and friends will be feeling the same way about the vote in this parliament: lovers who never got to propose to the person they love; parents who never got to walk their child down the aisle; children who didn't have a parent there to walk them down the aisle; and friends who never believed that this day of equality would come. The happiness of the breakthrough moment after so long makes the feeling of these losses freshly painful. Many people in the LGBTIQ community and their family members will be feeling this way at the moment. I know I'm feeling this way. I'm thinking of those members of my family who are in the same boat.

Jesse Jackson: 'Old wine skins must make room for new wine', DNC - 1984

Tonight we come together bound by our faith in a mighty God, with genuine respect and love for our country, and inheriting the legacy of a great Party, the Democratic Party, which is the best hope for redirecting our nation on a more humane, just, and peaceful course.

This is not a perfect party. We are not a perfect people. Yet, we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission: to feed the hungry; to clothe the naked; to house the homeless; to teach the illiterate; to provide jobs for the jobless; and to choose the human race over the nuclear race.

We are gathered here this week to nominate a candidate and adopt a platform which will expand, unify, direct, and inspire our Party and the nation to fulfill this mission. My constituency is the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised. They are restless and seek relief. They have voted in record numbers. They have invested the faith, hope, and trust that they have in us. The Democratic Party must send them a signal that we care. I pledge my best not to let them down.

There is the call of conscience, redemption, expansion, healing, and unity. Leadership must heed the call of conscience, redemption, expansion, healing, and unity, for they are the key to achieving our mission. Time is neutral and does not change things. With courage and initiative, leaders change things.

No generation can choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born an age of enlightenment, an age of jobs, and peace, and justice. Only leadership -- that intangible combination of gifts, the discipline, information, circumstance, courage, timing, will and divine inspiration -- can lead us out of the crisis in which we find ourselves. Leadership can mitigate the misery of our nation. Leadership can part the waters and lead our nation in the direction of the Promised Land. Leadership can lift the boats stuck at the bottom.

I have had the rare opportunity to watch seven men, and then two, pour out their souls, offer their service, and heal and heed the call of duty to direct the course of our nation. There is a proper season for everything. There is a time to sow and a time to reap. There's a time to compete and a time to cooperate.

I ask for your vote on the first ballot as a vote for a new direction for this Party and this nation -- a vote of conviction, a vote of conscience. But I will be proud to support the nominee of this convention for the Presidency of the United States of America. Thank you.

I have watched the leadership of our party develop and grow. My respect for both Mr. Mondale and Mr. Hart is great. I have watched them struggle with the crosswinds and crossfires of being public servants, and I believe they will both continue to try to serve us faithfully.

I am elated by the knowledge that for the first time in our history a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, will be recommended to share our ticket.

Throughout this campaign, I've tried to offer leadership to the Democratic Party and the nation. If, in my high moments, I have done some good, offered some service, shed some light, healed some wounds, rekindled some hope, or stirred someone from apathy and indifference, or in any way along the way helped somebody, then this campaign has not been in vain.

For friends who loved and cared for me, and for a God who spared me, and for a family who understood, I am eternally grateful.

If, in my low moments, in word, deed or attitude, through some error of temper, taste, or tone, I have caused anyone discomfort, created pain, or revived someone's fears, that was not my truest self. If there were occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart. My head -- so limited in its finitude; my heart, which is boundless in its love for the human family. I am not a perfect servant. I am a public servant doing my best against the odds. As I develop and serve, be patient: God is not finished with me yet.

This campaign has taught me much; that leaders must be tough enough to fight, tender enough to cry, human enough to make mistakes, humble enough to admit them, strong enough to absorb the pain, and resilient enough to bounce back and keep on moving.

For leaders, the pain is often intense. But you must smile through your tears and keep moving with the faith that there is a brighter side somewhere.

I went to see Hubert Humphrey three days before he died. He had just called Richard Nixon from his dying bed, and many people wondered why. And I asked him. He said, "Jesse, from this vantage point, the sun is setting in my life, all of the speeches, the political conventions, the crowds, and the great fights are behind me now. At a time like this you are forced to deal with your irreducible essence, forced to grapple with that which is really important to you. And what I've concluded about life," Hubert Humphrey said, "When all is said and done, we must forgive each other, and redeem each other, and move on."

Our party is emerging from one of its most hard fought battles for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in our history. But our healthy competition should make us better, not bitter. We must use the insight, wisdom, and experience of the late Hubert Humphrey as a balm for the wounds in our Party, this nation, and the world. We must forgive each other, redeem each other, regroup, and move one. Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow -- red, yellow, brown, black and white -- and we're all precious in God's sight.

America is not like a blanket -- one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt.

Even in our fractured state, all of us count and fit somewhere. We have proven that we can survive without each other. But we have not proven that we can win and make progress without each other. We must come together.

From Fannie Lou Hamer in Atlantic City in 1964 to the Rainbow Coalition in San Francisco today; from the Atlantic to the Pacific, we have experienced pain but progress, as we ended American apartheid laws. We got public accommodations. We secured voting rights. We obtained open housing, as young people got the right to vote. We lost Malcolm, Martin, Medgar, Bobby, John, and Viola. The team that got us here must be expanded, not abandoned.

Twenty years ago, tears welled up in our eyes as the bodies of Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were dredged from the depths of a river in Mississippi. Twenty years later, our communities, black and Jewish, are in anguish, anger, and pain. Feelings have been hurt on both sides. There is a crisis in communications. Confusion is in the air. But we cannot afford to lose our way. We may agree to agree; or agree to disagree on issues; we must bring back civility to these tensions.

We are co-partners in a long and rich religious history -- the Judeo-Christian traditions. Many blacks and Jews have a shared passion for social justice at home and peace abroad. We must seek a revival of the spirit, inspired by a new vision and new possibilities. We must return to higher ground. We are bound by Moses and Jesus, but also connected with Islam and Mohammed. These three great religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, were all born in the revered and holy city of Jerusalem.

We are bound by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, crying out from their graves for us to reach common ground. We are bound by shared blood and shared sacrifices. We are much too intelligent, much too bound by our Judeo-Christian heritage, much too victimized by racism, sexism, militarism, and anti-Semitism, much too threatened as historical scapegoats to go on divided one from another. We must turn from finger pointing to clasped hands. We must share our burdens and our joys with each other once again. We must turn to each other and not on each other and choose higher ground.

Twenty years later, we cannot be satisfied by just restoring the old coalition. Old wine skins must make room for new wine. We must heal and expand. The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Arab Americans. They, too, know the pain and hurt of racial and religious rejection. They must not continue to be made pariahs. The Rainbow Coalition is making room for Hispanic Americans who this very night are living under the threat of the Simpson-Mazzoli bill; and farm workers from Ohio who are fighting the Campbell Soup Company with a boycott to achieve legitimate workers' rights.

The Rainbow is making room for the Native American, the most exploited people of all, a people with the greatest moral claim amongst us. We support them as they seek the restoration of their ancient land and claim amongst us. We support them as they seek the restoration of land and water rights, as they seek to preserve their ancestral homeland and the beauty of a land that was once all theirs. They can never receive a fair share for all they have given us. They must finally have a fair chance to develop their great resources and to preserve their people and their culture.

The Rainbow Coalition includes Asian Americans, now being killed in our streets -- scapegoats for the failures of corporate, industrial, and economic policies.

The Rainbow is making room for the young Americans. Twenty years ago, our young people were dying in a war for which they could not even vote. Twenty years later, young America has the power to stop a war in Central America and the responsibility to vote in great numbers. Young America must be politically active in 1984. The choice is war or peace. We must make room for young America.

The Rainbow includes disabled veterans. The color scheme fits in the Rainbow. The disabled have their handicap revealed and their genius concealed; while the able-bodied have their genius revealed and their disability concealed. But ultimately, we must judge people by their values and their contribution. Don't leave anybody out. I would rather have Roosevelt in a wheelchair than Reagan on a horse.

The Rainbow is making room for small farmers. They have suffered tremendously under the Reagan regime. They will either receive 90 percent parity or 100 percent charity. We must address their concerns and make room for them. The Rainbow includes lesbians and gays. No American citizen ought be denied equal protection from the law.

We must be unusually committed and caring as we expand our family to include new members. All of us must be tolerant and understanding as the fears and anxieties of the rejected and the party leadership express themselves in many different ways. Too often what we call hate -- as if it were some deeply-rooted philosophy or strategy -- is simply ignorance, anxiety, paranoia, fear, and insecurity. To be strong leaders, we must be long-suffering as we seek to right the wrongs of our Party and our nation. We must expand our Party, heal our Party, and unify our Party. That is our mission in 1984.

We are often reminded that we live in a great nation -- and we do. But it can be greater still. The Rainbow is mandating a new definition of greatness. We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but the manger up. Jesus said that we should not be judged by the bark we wear but by the fruit that we bear. Jesus said that we must measure greatness by how we treat the least of these.

President Reagan says the nation is in recovery. Those 90,000 corporations that made a profit last year but paid no federal taxes are recovering. The 37,000 military contractors who have benefited from Reagan's more than doubling of the military budget in peacetime, surely they are recovering. The big corporations and rich individuals who received the bulk of a three-year, multibillion tax cut from Mr. Reagan are recovering. But no such recovery is under way for the least of these.

Rising tides don't lift all boats, particularly those stuck at the bottom. For the boats stuck at the bottom there's a misery index. This Administration has made life more miserable for the poor. Its attitude has been contemptuous. Its policies and programs have been cruel and unfair to working people. They must be held accountable in November for increasing infant mortality among the poor. In Detroit one of the great cities of the western world, babies are dying at the same rate as Honduras, the most underdeveloped nation in our hemisphere. This Administration must be held accountable for policies that have contributed to the growing poverty in America. There are now 34 million people in poverty, 15 percent of our nation. 23 million are White; 11 million Black, Hispanic, Asian, and others -- mostly women and children. By the end of this year, there will be 41 million people in poverty. We cannot stand idly by. We must fight for a change now.

Under this regime we look at Social Security. The '81 budget cuts included nine permanent Social Security benefit cuts totaling 20 billion over five years. Small businesses have suffered under Reagan tax cuts. Only 18 percent of total business tax cuts went to them; 82 percent to big businesses. Health care under Mr. Reagan has already been sharply cut. Education under Mr. Reagan has been cut 25 percent. Under Mr. Reagan there are now 9.7 million female head families. They represent 16 percent of all families. Half of all of them are poor. 70 percent of all poor children live in a house headed by a woman, where there is no man. Under Mr. Reagan, the Administration has cleaned up only 6 of 546 priority toxic waste dumps. Farmers' real net income was only about half its level in 1979.

Many say that the race in November will be decided in the South. President Reagan is depending on the conservative South to return him to office. But the South, I tell you, is unnaturally conservative. The South is the poorest region in our nation and, therefore, [has] the least to conserve. In his appeal to the South, Mr. Reagan is trying to substitute flags and prayer cloths for food, and clothing, and education, health care, and housing.

Mr. Reagan will ask us to pray, and I believe in prayer. I have come to this way by the power of prayer. But then, we must watch false prophecy. He cuts energy assistance to the poor, cuts breakfast programs from children, cuts lunch programs from children, cuts job training from children, and then says to an empty table, "Let us pray." Apparently, he is not familiar with the structure of a prayer. You thank the Lord for the food that you are about to receive, not the food that just left. I think that we should pray, but don't pray for the food that left. Pray for the man that took the food to leave. We need a change. We need a change in November.

Under Mr. Reagan, the misery index has risen for the poor. The danger index has risen for everybody. Under this administration, we've lost the lives of our boys in Central America and Honduras, in Grenada, in Lebanon, in nuclear standoff in Europe. Under this Administration, one-third of our children believe they will die in a nuclear war. The danger index is increasing in this world. All the talk about the defense against Russia; the Russian submarines are closer, and their missiles are more accurate. We live in a world tonight more miserable and a world more dangerous.

While Reaganomics and Reaganism is talked about often, so often we miss the real meaning. Reaganism is a spirit, and Reaganomics represents the real economic facts of life. In 1980, Mr. George Bush, a man with reasonable access to Mr. Reagan, did an analysis of Mr. Reagan's economic plan. Mr. George Bush concluded that Reagan's plan was ''voodoo economics.'' He was right. Third-party candidate John Anderson said "a combination of military spending, tax cuts, and a balanced budget by '84 would be accomplished with blue smoke and mirrors." They were both right.

Mr. Reagan talks about a dynamic recovery. There's some measure of recovery. Three and a half years later, unemployment has inched just below where it was when he took office in 1981. There are still 8.1 million people officially unemployed; 11 million working only part-time. Inflation has come down, but let's analyze for a moment who has paid the price for this superficial economic recovery.

Mr. Reagan curbed inflation by cutting consumer demand. He cut consumer demand with conscious and callous fiscal and monetary policies. He used the Federal budget to deliberately induce unemployment and curb social spending. He then weighed and supported tight monetary policies of the Federal Reserve Board to deliberately drive up interest rates, again to curb consumer demand created through borrowing. Unemployment reached 10.7 percent. We experienced skyrocketing interest rates. Our dollar inflated abroad. There were record bank failures, record farm foreclosures, record business bankruptcies; record budget deficits, record trade deficits.

Mr. Reagan brought inflation down by destabilizing our economy and disrupting family life. He promised -- he promised in 1980 a balanced budget. But instead we now have a record 200 billion dollar budget deficit. Under Mr. Reagan, the cumulative budget deficit for his four years is more than the sum total of deficits from George Washington to Jimmy Carter combined. I tell you, we need a change.

How is he paying for these short-term jobs? Reagan's economic recovery is being financed by deficit spending -- 200 billion dollars a year. Military spending, a major cause of this deficit, is projected over the next five years to be nearly 2 trillion dollars, and will cost about 40,000 dollars for every taxpaying family. When the Government borrows 200 billion dollars annually to finance the deficit, this encourages the private sector to make its money off of interest rates as opposed to development and economic growth.

Even money abroad, we don't have enough money domestically to finance the debt, so we are now borrowing money abroad, from foreign banks, governments and financial institutions: 40 billion dollars in 1983; 70-80 billion dollars in 1984 -- 40 percent of our total; over 100 billion dollars -- 50 percent of our total -- in 1985. By 1989, it is projected that 50 percent of all individual income taxes will be going just to pay for interest on that debt. The United States used to be the largest exporter of capital, but under Mr. Reagan we will quite likely become the largest debtor nation.

About two weeks ago, on July the 4th, we celebrated our Declaration of Independence, yet every day supply-side economics is making our nation more economically dependent and less economically free. Five to six percent of our Gross National Product is now being eaten up with President Reagan's budget deficits. To depend on foreign military powers to protect our national security would be foolish, making us dependent and less secure. Yet, Reaganomics has us increasingly dependent on foreign economic sources. This consumer-led but deficit-financed recovery is unbalanced and artificial. We have a challenge as Democrats to point a way out.

Democracy guarantees opportunity, not success.

Democracy guarantees the right to participate, not a license for either a majority or a minority to dominate.

The victory for the Rainbow Coalition in the Platform debates today was not whether we won or lost, but that we raised the right issues. We could afford to lose the vote; issues are non-negotiable. We could not afford to avoid raising the right questions. Our self-respect and our moral integrity were at stake. Our heads are perhaps bloody, but not bowed. Our back is straight. We can go home and face our people. Our vision is clear.

When we think, on this journey from slave-ship to championship, that we have gone from the planks of the Boardwalk in Atlantic City in 1964 to fighting to help write the planks in the platform in San Francisco in '84, there is a deep and abiding sense of joy in our souls in spite of the tears in our eyes. Though there are missing planks, there is a solid foundation upon which to build. Our Party can win, but we must provide hope which will inspire people to struggle and achieve; provide a plan that shows a way out of our dilemma and then lead the way.

In 1984, my heart is made to feel glad because I know there is a way out -- justice. The requirement for rebuilding America is justice. The linchpin of progressive politics in our nation will not come from the North; they, in fact, will come from the South. That is why I argue over and over again. We look from Virginia around to Texas, there's only one black Congressperson out of 115. Nineteen years later, we're locked out of the Congress, the Senate and the Governor's mansion. What does this large black vote mean? Why do I fight to win second primaries and fight gerrymandering and annexation and at-large [elections]. Why do we fight over that? Because I tell you, you cannot hold someone in the ditch unless you linger there with them. Unless you linger there.

 If you want a change in this nation, you enforce that Voting Rights Act. We'll get 12 to 20 Black, Hispanics, female and progressive congresspersons from the South. We can save the cotton, but we've got to fight the boll weevils. We've got to make a judgment. We've got to make a judgment.

It is not enough to hope ERA will pass. How can we pass ERA? If Blacks vote in great numbers, progressive Whites win. It's the only way progressive Whites win. If Blacks vote in great numbers, Hispanics win. When Blacks, Hispanics, and progressive Whites vote, women win. When women win, children win. When women and children win, workers win. We must all come up together. We must come up together.

Thank you.

For all of our joy and excitement, we must not save the world and lose our souls. We should never short-circuit enforcing the Voting Rights Act at every level.  When one of us rise[s], all of us will rise. Justice is the way out. Peace is the way out. We should not act as if nuclear weaponry is negotiable and debatable.

In this world in which we live, we dropped the bomb on Japan and felt guilty, but in 1984 other folks [have] also got bombs. This time, if we drop the bomb, six minutes later we, too, will be destroyed. It's not about dropping the bomb on somebody. It is about dropping the bomb on everybody. We must choose to develop minds over guided missiles, and think it out and not fight it out. It's time for a change.

Our foreign policy must be characterized by mutual respect, not by gunboat diplomacy, big stick diplomacy, and threats. Our nation at its best feeds the hungry. Our nation at its worst, at its worst, will mine the harbors of Nicaragua, at its worst will try to overthrow their government, at its worst will cut aid to American education and increase the aid to El Salvador; at its worst, our nation will have partnerships with South Africa. That's a moral disgrace. It's a moral disgrace. It's a moral disgrace.

We look at Africa. We cannot just focus on Apartheid in Southern Africa. We must fight for trade with Africa, and not just aid to Africa. We cannot stand idly by and say we will not relate to Nicaragua unless they have elections there, and then embrace military regimes in Africa overthrowing democratic governments in Nigeria and Liberia and Ghana. We must fight for democracy all around the world and play the game by one set of rules.

Peace in this world. Our present formula for peace in the Middle East is inadequate. It will not work. There are 22 nations in the Middle East. Our nation must be able to talk and act and influence all of them. We must build upon Camp David, and measure human rights by one yard stick. In that region we have too many interests and too few friends.

There is a way out -- jobs. Put America back to work. When I was a child growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, the Reverend Sample used to preach every so often a sermon relating to Jesus. And he said, "If I be lifted up, I'll draw all men unto me." I didn't quite understand what he meant as a child growing up, but I understand a little better now. If you raise up truth, it's magnetic. It has a way of drawing people.

With all this confusion in this Convention, the bright lights and parties and big fun, we must raise up the simple proposition: If we lift up a program to feed the hungry, they'll come running; if we lift up a program to study war no more, our youth will come running; if we lift up a program to put America back to work, and an alternative to welfare and despair, they will come working.

If we cut that military budget without cutting our defense, and use that money to rebuild bridges and put steel workers back to work, and use that money and provide jobs for our cities, and use that money to build schools and pay teachers and educate our children and build hospitals and train doctors and train nurses, the whole nation will come running to us.

As I leave you now, we vote in this convention and get ready to go back across this nation in a couple of days. In this campaign, I've tried to be faithful to my promise. I lived in old barrios, ghettos, and reservations and housing projects. I have a message for our youth. I challenge them to put hope in their brains and not dope in their veins. I told them that like Jesus, I, too, was born in the slum. But just because you're born in the slum does not mean the slum is born in you, and you can rise above it if your mind is made up.

I told them in every slum there are two sides. When I see a broken window -- that's the slummy side. Train some youth to become a glazier -- that's the sunny side. When I see a missing brick -- that's the slummy side. Let that child in the union and become a brick mason and build -- that's the sunny side. When I see a missing door -- that's the slummy side. Train some youth to become a carpenter -- that's the sunny side. And when I see the vulgar words and hieroglyphics of destitution on the walls -- that's the slummy side. Train some youth to become a painter, an artist -- that's the sunny side.

We leave this place looking for the sunny side because there's a brighter side somewhere. I'm more convinced than ever that we can win. We will vault up the rough side of the mountain. We can win. I just want young America to do me one favor, just one favor. Exercise the right to dream. You must face reality -- that which is. But then dream of a reality that ought to be -- that must be. Live beyond the pain of reality with the dream of a bright tomorrow. Use hope and imagination as weapons of survival and progress. Use love to motivate you and obligate you to serve the human family.

Young America, dream. Choose the human race over the nuclear race. Bury the weapons and don't burn the people. Dream -- dream of a new value system. Teachers who teach for life and not just for a living; teach because they can't help it. Dream of lawyers more concerned about justice than a judgeship. Dream of doctors more concerned about public health than personal wealth. Dream of preachers and priests who will prophesy and not just profiteer. Preach and dream!

Our time has come. Our time has come. Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end, faith will not disappoint.

Our time has come. Our faith, hope, and dreams will prevail. Our time has come. Weeping has endured for nights, but now joy cometh in the morning.

Our time has come. No grave can hold our body down. Our time has come. No lie can live forever.

Our time has come. We must leave racial battle ground and come to economic common ground and moral higher ground. America, our time has come. We come from disgrace to amazing grace.

Our time has come. Give me your tired, give me your poor, your huddled masses who yearn to breathe free and come November, there will be a change because our time has come.

Tony Burke: 'Penny just uttered the words, 'Say black instead of gay and hear how it sounds.'', Marriage Amendment Bill speech - 2017

5 December 2017, Parliament House, Canberra, Australia

There would be no greater contrast than me speaking immediately after the member for Melbourne. While his electorate had the highest 'yes' vote in the country, mine had the second highest 'no' vote in the country.

A few things have astonished me since then—first of all, the number of people who were surprised that that was the case. I have always had the understanding that, in my electorate, the opinion polls are roughly the reverse of what they are nationally. Secondly, I was astonished by the number of people who have said, as a democratic principle, I was obliged to break an election commitment as a result of the postal ballot. It's the first time I've ever heard the breaking of an election commitment being described as a democratic principle, but that's how a number of people have sought to put it.

Last time this issue was raised in the Parliament, I did vote no. Last time this issue was raised in the Parliament, I did not speak. In fact, in the many hours of debate we've had on marriage equality, this is the first time I've come to the dispatch box. When we first dealt with a marriage equality bill, there had been a resolution that the member for Melbourne just referred to in his speech, where we were told, and it was resolved, that we should consult with our electorates and, having consulted, we should vote accordingly. That meant a very different thing in my part of Sydney to what it meant in many parts of Australia. But, after that vote had taken place, we had a discussion within the cabinet room about marriage equality, and different people were putting their views as to why they'd voted particular ways.

I've checked with Senator Penny Wong that she's okay with me saying this. I would never give up something that was said in the cabinet room, but, only yesterday, she let me know that she is okay with it being repeated. At the end of that discussion in the cabinet room, where different people had put different views, we were about to move to the next item on the agenda and, in a very soft, gentle but clearly audible voice, Penny just uttered the words, 'Say black instead of gay and hear how it sounds.'

I can't think of a single sentence that has had a deeper effect on me than the words that Penny Wong said in the cabinet room—'Say black instead of gay and hear how it sounds'—not only because of the emotion of hearing those words but also because, when you think about my electorate, my part of Sydney does know discrimination.

The people in my part of Sydney don't know terribly well the discrimination that this legislation seeks to fix, but they know discrimination. When discrimination on the basis of race is happening, including from some prominent people at the other end of this building, my electorate gets targeted full-on. When there's discrimination against people on the basis of their faith, my electorate gets targeted absolutely.

They need someone who will fight discrimination and will win. They don't need someone who will run some sort of argument that some forms of discrimination are okay and others aren't. If I'm going to be true to the needs of my electorate, of my part of Sydney, of my neighbours and of that little three-kilometre circle that I've lived inside all my life, where most of the rest of the people have travelled around the world to be there, they need someone who will fight discrimination fearlessly because, on national polls, in my part of Sydney, the people who get discriminated against are never in the majority. So, if I'm willing to defend them as minorities, I can't pick and choose.

Within my part of Sydney, there are census figures which can't be true. In my suburb of Punchbowl, there are something like 4,000 coupled households and yet only eight identify as same-sex. You look at the statistics around the rest of the country and you think, 'What could that mean?' It means a whole lot of people move out, it means a whole lot of people just don't identify and it also means a lot of people, no doubt, find themselves in terribly unhappy heterosexual relationships.

It would manifest itself in a number of ways. But, ultimately, it also means that there are young people in my part of Sydney who, on top of the religious discrimination and on top of the discrimination on the basis of their race and ethnic origin, cop this one too. For heaven's sake, I'm not going to leave them on their own. We can't have a situation where there is a credible argument that says, 'Because you represent a multicultural community, there is a form of discrimination that you must endorse.' I can't be party to that.

On the amendments that have been put forward and that have been flagged: I indicated before any amendments were proposed in any way that I would be opposing them. That includes amendments that the member for Melbourne will put, which will come from one direction, and the amendments that the member for Warringah will put, which come from another. I indicated that I would oppose them for a very simple principle: if this House approves marriage equality in a different form to the Senate we run a very real likelihood that we will get a dispute between the houses, and where we are dealing with conscience votes we have no way of resolving that.

If we go through the entire process that the postal ballot was about and we get to the end of this year—after the public have been forced through what they've been forced through and after the affected community have gone through what they've gone through—and we still don't get it done, the Australian people will have every right to be deeply frustrated and sick to death of this place. There will be some amendments that will have a level of merit, I have no doubt, from one side or the other, but to contemplate this not getting done I think is truly unthinkable.

It's also the case that some of the amendments that have been put to me by some people locally, who I deeply respect, are amendments that defend principles which I agree with. They are principles which I do not believe are in the slightest way put at risk by this legislation. This legislation is not the first time that the Marriage Act has presented different definitions to those of the Christian faith, or the Buddhist faith or the Muslim faith.

In fact, for the entire history of this act, it has never been an exact match to any form of religious marriage. Therefore, I don't for the life of me see how people will suddenly be able to stop observing their religious beliefs. I don't see how charities will suddenly have a problem when they already have a view of marriage that doesn't match the Marriage Act. I can't for the life of me see how these problems will arise and, therefore, I can only form the view that there are some people, whether they are inside the Parliament or without it and have been part of the 'no' lobby, are simply trying to play a game of messaging. I don't see why the Parliament should be part of that.

So, if we ended up with a clear question and I thought there were a threat to people being able to preach their religion in their temples, in their synagogues, in their prayer rooms or in their mosques—if I thought that was going to be at threat—then I would support legislation that dealt with that. If there is ever legislation that puts that at threat, I'll be speaking pretty loudly against it. This legislation doesn't; it absolutely doesn't. It is disingenuous for people in this House, who deal with legislation as the core business of what we do, to pretend for a minute that those issues are at threat.

I have always been conscious of the fact that the forms of discrimination and hate speech that I have dedicated most of my political career to opposing are forms of discrimination I will never experience. I'll never know what it's like to travel on the train and be abused by a stranger for what I wear. I'll never know what it's like to be in the playground and to be pushed around by other kids because of the colour of my skin. Nor will I know in my life what it's like to be considered different from other people, and less than other people, because of who I love.

But how can I defend the person who gets abused on the train and defend the child in the school playground, and not also defend the person who is discriminated against on the basis of who they love?

My electorate, my part of Sydney, needs someone who can. My part of Sydney needs someone who can fight discrimination fearlessly and win.

I'll be voting yes. There will be plenty of people in my electorate who are disappointed by that, but no-one will be surprised and no-one will see it as anything other than me being completely consistent with the person who presented to them and who they chose to elect.

Theresa May: 'This Conservative Party must pledge to renew the British Dream in this country', Conservative Party Conference Speech - 2017

4 October 2017, London, USA

A persistent cough, collapsing set and a prankster with a P45, the speech was reported for its disasters. Here it is in its entirety.

A little over forty years ago in a small village in Oxfordshire, I signed up to be a member of the Conservative Party. I did it because it was the party that had the ideas to build a better Britain.  It understood the hard work and discipline necessary to see them through.

And it had at its heart a simple promise that spoke to me, my values and my aspirations: that each new generation in our country should be able to build a better future. That each generation should live the British Dream. And that dream is what I believe in.

But what the General Election earlier this year showed is that, forty years later, for too many people in our country that dream feels distant, our party’s ability to deliver it is in question, and the British Dream that has inspired generations of Britons feels increasingly out of reach.

Now I called that election. And I know that all of you in this hall – your friends and your families – worked day and night to secure the right result. Because of your hard work we got 2.3 million more votes and achieved our highest vote share in 34 years. That simply would not have been possible without the long days and late nights, the phone calls, the leaflet drops. The weekends and evenings spent knocking on doors. So for everything that you do, let me say – thank you.

But we did not get the victory we wanted because our national campaign fell short. It was too scripted. Too presidential. And it allowed the Labour Party to paint us as the voice of continuity, when the public wanted to hear a message of change. I hold my hands up for that. I take responsibility. I led the campaign. And I am sorry.

But the choice before us now is clear: Do we give up, spend our time looking back? Or do we do our duty, look to the future and give the country the government it needs?  This country will judge us harshly if we get this decision wrong.

Because all that should ever drive us is the duty we have to Britain and the historic mission of this party – this Conservative Party – to renew the British Dream in each new generation. That dream that says each generation should do better than the one before it. Each era should be better than the last. The dream that, for decades, has inspired people from around the world to come to Britain. To make their home in Britain. To build their lives in Britain. The dream that means the son of a bus driver from Pakistan serves in a Conservative Cabinet alongside the son of a single mother from a council estate in South-West London. And in a way, that dream is my story too.

I know that people think I’m not very emotional. I’m not the kind of person who wears their heart on their sleeve. And I don’t mind being called things like the Ice Maiden – though perhaps George Osborne took the analogy a little far.  But let me tell you something. My grandmother was a domestic servant, who worked as a lady’s maid below stairs. She worked hard and made sacrifices, because she believed in a better future for her family. And that servant – that lady’s maid – among her grandchildren boasts three professors and a prime minister. 

That is why the British Dream inspires me. Why that dream of progress between the generations spurs me on. And it is why today at this conference, this Conservative Party must pledge to renew the British Dream in this country once again. To renew that dream is my purpose in politics. My reason for being. The thing that drives me on. And it has never wavered through good times and hard times. My belief that this Conservative government can renew it has always remained strong.  

For whenever we are tested as a nation, this party steps up to the plate. Seven years ago, our challenge was to repair the damage of Labour’s great recession – and we did it. The deficit is down. Spending is under control. And our economy is growing again. But we didn’t limit ourselves to that ambition. We have achieved so much more. 

An income tax cut for over 30 million people. Four million taken out of paying it at all. Employment up to a record high. Unemployment down to a historic low. Income inequality at its lowest for thirty years. More women in work than ever before.

Over 11,000 more doctors in our NHS. Over 11,000 more nurses on our hospital wards. Free childcare for 3 and 4 year olds doubled. 1.8 million more children in good or outstanding schools. 3 million more apprenticeships. Crime down by more than a third.

More young people from disadvantaged backgrounds going to university than at any time in the history of our country. Britain leading the world in tackling climate change, eradicating global poverty, and countering terrorism wherever it rears its head. Same sex marriage on the statute book, so that two people who love each other can get married, no matter what their gender…

And a National Living Wage – giving a pay rise to the lowest earners – introduced not by the Labour Party, but by us, the Conservative Party. So let us never allow the Left to pretend they have a monopoly on compassion. This is the good a Conservative Government can do – and we should never let anyone forget it.

But it’s easy when you’ve been in government for a while to fall into the trap of defending your record, and standing for the status quo. Yes, we’re proud of the progress we have made, but the world doesn’t stand still. 

Change, as Disraeli taught us, is constant and inevitable. And we must bend it to our will. That means staking out an agenda for Britain – and uniting behind it too. And the agenda that I laid out on day one as prime minister still holds. It burns inside me just the same. 

Because at its core, it’s about sweeping away injustice – the barriers that mean for some the British Dream is increasingly out of reach. About saying what matters is not where you are from or who your parents are. The colour of your skin. Whether you’re a man or a woman, rich or poor. From the inner city or an affluent suburb. How far you go in life should depend on you and your hard work.

That is why I have always taken on vested interests when they are working against the interests of the people. Called out those who abuse their positions of power and given a voice to those who have been ignored or silenced for too long.     

And when people ask me why I put myself through it – the long hours, the pressure, the criticism and insults that inevitably go with the job – I tell them this: I do it to root out injustice and to give everyone in our country a voice. That’s why when I reflect on my time in politics, the things that make me proud are not the positions I have held, the world leaders I have met, the great global gatherings to which I have been, but knowing that I made a difference. That I helped those who couldn’t be heard.

Like the families of the 96 men, women and children who tragically lost their lives at Hillsborough. For years they saw people in authority closing ranks and acting against them, but now they are on the way to seeing justice served. 

That’s what I’m in this for. Like the victims and survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, ignored for years by people in positions of power, now on the long road to the truth. That’s what I’m in this for.

Like Alexander Paul, a young man who came to this conference three years ago to tell his story. The story of a young black boy growing up in modern Britain who without causing any trouble – without doing anything wrong – found himself being stopped and searched by people in authority time and time and time again. 

Alexander spoke so eloquently about his experience and how he came to mistrust those in positions of power as a result. So inspired by his example, we took action. We shook up the system, and the number of black people being stopped and searched has fallen by over two thirds. I am sad to have to tell you that last year, Alexander – who inspired us all with his passion – was diagnosed with brain cancer. And in June of this year he tragically passed away. He was just 21. Let us today remember the courage he showed in coming to our conference to speak out against injustice, take pride that we gave him a platform – and inspired by his example, redouble our efforts to give a voice to the voiceless at every opportunity. That’s what I’m in this for.

And that same commitment is the reason why one of my first acts as Prime Minister was to establish the ground-breaking racial disparity audit – investigating how a person’s race affects their treatment by public services, so that we can take action and respond.

We already know, for example, that members of Black and Minority Ethnic communities have a higher risk of illnesses such as high blood pressure that may lead to the need for an organ transplant.

But our ability to help people who need transplants is limited by the number of organ donors that come forward. That is why last year 500 people died because a suitable organ was not available. And there are 6,500 on the transplant list today. So to address this challenge that affects all communities in our country, we will change that system. Shifting the balance of presumption in favour of organ donation. Working on behalf of the most vulnerable. That’s what I’m in this for. 

It’s why after seeing the unimaginable tragedy unfold at Grenfell Tower, I was determined that we should get to the truth. Because Grenfell should never have happened – and should never be allowed to happen again. So we must learn the lessons: understanding not just what went wrong but why the voice of the people of Grenfell had been ignored over so many years. That’s what the public inquiry will do. And where any individual or organisation is found to have acted negligently, justice must be done. That’s what I’m in this for.

And because in this – as in other disasters before it – bereaved and grieving families do not get the support they need, we will introduce an independent public advocate for major disasters. An advocate to act on behalf of bereaved families to support them at public inquests and inquiries. The strong independent voice that victims need. That’s what I’m in this for.

It’s why tackling the injustice and stigma associated with mental health is a particular priority for me. So we are building on our record of giving mental and physical health parity in law by investing more in mental health than ever before. But there is widespread concern that the existing Mental Health legislation passed more three decades ago is leading to shortfalls in services and is open to misuse. Detention rates under the Mental Health Act are too high. And it is people from black and minority ethnic populations who are affected the most. So today I can announce that I have asked Professor Sir Simon Wessely to undertake an independent review of the Mental Health Act, so that we can tackle the longstanding injustices of discrimination in our mental health system once and for all. That’s what I’m in this for.

This is the Conservatism I believe in. A Conservatism of fairness and justice and opportunity for all. A Conservatism that keeps the British Dream alive for a new generation. That’s what I’m in this for. That’s what we must all be in this for. 

And we must come together to fight for this mainstream Conservative agenda. To win the battle of ideas in a new generation all over again. For those ideas are being tested. And at stake are the very things we value.

Our precious union of nations – four nations that are stronger as one – threatened by those with their narrow, nationalist agendas that seek to drive us apart. The strength of our society, in which we understand the obligations and responsibilities we have to one another, under attack from militant forces who preach animosity and hate. The free-market economy – for so long the basis of our prosperity and security. An idea that has lifted millions around the world out of poverty – called into question by those who would imperil our future by adopting the failed experiments of the past.

That idea of free and open markets, operating under the right rules and regulations, is precious to us. It’s the means by which we generate our prosperity as a nation, and improve the living standards of all our people. It has helped to cement Britain’s influence as a force for good in the world.

It has underpinned the rules-based international system that helped rebuild post-war Europe and the world beyond. It has ushered in the fall of the Berlin Wall; the end of communism, and the dark days of the Iron Curtain; securing the advance of freedom across Europe and across the world. It has inspired 70 years of prosperity, raising living standards for hundreds of millions of people right across the globe.

So don’t try and tell me that free markets are no longer fit for purpose. That somehow they’re holding people back. Don’t try and tell me that the innovations they have encouraged – the advances they have brought – the mobile phone, the internet, pioneering medical treatments, the ability to travel freely across the world – are worth nothing.

The free market – and the values of freedom, equality, rights, responsibilities, and the rule of law that lie at its heart – remains the greatest agent of collective human progress ever created. So let us win this argument for a new generation and defend free and open markets with all our might.  Because there has rarely been a time when the choice of futures for Britain is so stark. The difference between the parties so clear.

And it’s the Conservative Party that has a vision of an open, global, self-confident Britain, while our opponents flirt with a foreign policy of neutrality and prepare for a run on the pound. Some people say we’ve spent too much time talking about Jeremy Corbyn’s past. So let’s talk about his present instead. 

This is a politician who wants to pile on taxes to business just when we need them to invest in our country the most. This is a politician who wants to borrow hundreds of billions of pounds to nationalise industries without the slightest idea of how much it will cost or how he will ever pay it back. This is a politician who wants to strip us of our nuclear deterrent, without being honest with voters about his plans. This is a politician who lets anti-Semitism, misogyny and hatred run free, while he doesn’t do a thing to stop it. This is a politician who thinks we should take the economics of Venezuela as our role-model.

No… Jeremy Corbyn.

By contrast, when I look around the cabinet table, I have confidence that we have a team full of talent, drive and compassion. A team that is determined that this party – this great Conservative Party – will tackle the challenges of the future together. A team that is determined we will always do our duty by our country.

And our first and most important duty is to get Brexit right. The people have decided. We have taken their instruction. Britain is leaving the European Union in March 2019.

I know some find the negotiations frustrating. But if we approach them in the right spirit – in a spirit of cooperation and friendship, with our sights set firmly on the future – I am confident we will find a deal that works for Britain and Europe too. And let’s be clear about the agreement we seek. It’s the agreement I set out earlier this year at Lancaster House and again in my speech in Florence ten days ago.

It’s a new deep and special partnership between a strong, successful European Union and a sovereign United Kingdom. A partnership that allows us to continue to trade and cooperate with each other, because we see shared challenges and opportunities ahead. But a partnership that ensures the United Kingdom is a sovereign nation once again. A country in which the British people are firmly in control.

I believe it is profoundly in all our interests for the negotiations to succeed. But I know that are some are worried whether we are prepared in the event that they do not. It is our responsibility as a government to prepare for every eventuality. And let me reassure everyone in this hall – that is exactly what we are doing.   So a deep and special partnership is our ambition and our offer. And I look forward to that offer receiving a positive response.

And let me say one more thing – because it cannot be said often enough. If you are a citizen of the EU who has made their life in this country, I know you will feel unsettled and nervous. But let me be clear that we value the contribution you make to the life of our country. You are welcome here. And I urge the negotiating teams to reach agreement on this quickly because we want you to stay.    

Whatever the outcome of our negotiations, Britain’s long-term future is bright. The British Dream is still within reach. For as we look to that future, we do so with the fundamentals of our country strong.

Ten years after Northern Rock, our economy is back on track. The deficit is back to pre-crisis levels, we are firmly on course to get our national debt falling and business investment is growing. The work to get there hasn’t been easy. It’s meant big decisions and huge sacrifices. I know the public sector has had to carry a heavy burden. The private sector has played its part too. But with government, businesses and the public sector working together, we have bounced back – creating record numbers of jobs, and getting more people into work than ever before.  

So while we will never hesitate to act where businesses aren’t operating as they should, let this party celebrate the wealth creators, the risk takers, the innovators and entrepreneurs – the businesses large and small – who generate jobs and prosperity for our country, and make British business the envy of the world. Because we understand that it is the wealth creators whose taxes fuel our public services. It is their success that funds the things we want to do. 

And the difference between us and Labour is that we understand that to deliver the things we want, private enterprise is crucial. That you can’t get something for nothing. Prosperity is key. And when politicians offer the earth but have no means of delivering their promises, disillusionment with politics only grows. 

So over the years ahead this government will adopt a balanced approach to the economy – dealing with our debts, keeping taxes low, but investing in our priorities too. Things like our vital public services, our schools, our police, housing, and our great national achievement, our NHS. Let us not forget that it is this party that has invested in the National Health Service and upheld its founding principles through more years in government than any other.

For we understand that the NHS doesn’t just bring us into this world, make us well if we fall ill, and nurse and care for our families through their final hours. It doesn’t just bear witness to moments of joy and to times of intense sorrow. It is the very essence of solidarity in our United Kingdom. An institution we value. A symbol of our commitment to each other, between young and old, those who have and those who do not, the healthy and the sick. 

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Like most people in this hall, it has been there for me when I have needed it. I have early childhood memories of visiting my family GP. More recently, it was the NHS that diagnosed my type 1 diabetes and taught me how to manage it so I could get on with my life. And in recent months, I have seen it at its most brilliant – in the world-class response shown by the doctors, nurses and paramedics when terrorists struck London and Manchester.

To them all – and indeed to the public servants everywhere who so often go unsung – let me say this: for your service, your hard work and for your dedication – thank you. So I rely on the NHS. I believe in the NHS. And because we believe in ensuring that a world class NHS will be there for generations to come, we will increase funding per head for every year of this parliament, we will oversee the biggest expansion in training for doctors and nurses, and we will always support the service to deliver safe, high quality care for all – free at the point of use. That’s what our balanced approach to the economy will help us to do.

With our economic foundation strong – and economic confidence restored – the time has come to focus on Britain’s next big economic challenge: to foster growth that works for everyone, right across our country. That means keeping taxes low, spreading prosperity to all corners of this United Kingdom, and getting out into the world to trade, export and help our economy grow.  

So as the world’s leading advocate for free markets and free trade, we will pursue new free trade agreements with countries around the world. As we roll out our modern industrial strategy, we will attract and invest in new high-paid, high-skilled jobs – spreading prosperity and opportunity to every part of this country. Tackling our economy’s weaknesses like low levels of productivity, backing our nation’s strengths, and bringing investment, jobs and opportunities to communities that feel they have been forgotten for far too long.

We will continue to reform education and skills training so that people growing up in Britain today are ready and able to seize the opportunities ahead. Starting in our schools – those great drivers of social mobility – where our record is strong and our legacy is proud. Because our reforms are working. And after years of stagnation under the last Labour Government, we are turning things around. But there is more to do. Our reform programme goes on. Because it’s simply not good enough that if you live here in the North, you have less chance of attending a good school than someone living in the South.

So we will extend the Free Schools programme for a new generation of young people – building 100 new Free Schools in every year of this Parliament. Not because our ideology says so… but because Free Schools work. And it’s the right thing to do.    

And we need to bring that same energy to skills training too. Preparing our young people for the world of the future. Setting them up to succeed. Taking skills seriously with new T-levels for post-16 education, a new generation of Technology Institutes in every major city in England – providing the skills local employers need, and more technical training for 16-19 year olds. A first-class technical education system for the first time in the history of Britain. Keeping the British Dream alive.

That’s how we will prepare Britain for an open, global future. I know that some young people worry that Brexit means we’re turning our back on the world. That Britain will no longer be open, but closed. But we reject both the isolationism of the hard-left and those who would have us turn inward, and we choose a global Britain instead.

As Asia booms and the world looks to the East, we will reach beyond the borders of Europe to become a trusted friend to nations all around the world. We will meet our commitments to international security, with the finest armed forces and intelligence services anywhere on the planet. We will build an outward looking Britain that cooperates with other nations to tackle the great challenges of our time like mass migration, modern slavery and climate change. And we will provide a moral lead in the world, and set an example for others.

Meeting our commitments on security: committing fully to the NATO alliance and spending 2% of our GDP on defence. Remaining firmly committed to renewing our independent nuclear deterrent, to help uphold the security of the world. And leading the world in cracking down on modern slavery – because if you are buying and selling another human being, you are undermining all that is right. The very basis of our humanity.And we must bring this outrage to an end. 

And under this government, we will continue to meet the international aid target, spending 0.7% of our GNI on international development. That’s not just because it’s good for Britain, but because it is the right thing to do.

Today, UK Aid is being used to bring food to starving children in conflict zones like Syria and Iraq. UK Aid is being used to bring water to drought stricken parts of Africa. UK Aid is helping to educate women and girls in parts of Asia where that most basic of human rights has been denied to them for so long. Yes, charity may begin at home, but our compassion is not limited to those who carry the same passport. We should be proud that under a Conservative Government, this country is one of the few that is meeting its duty to some of the poorest people in our world. And as Prime Minister, I will ensure that’s something Britain always continues to do.

But let me also be clear: it is absurd that international organisations say we can’t use the money to help all those that have been hit by the recent Hurricanes in the British Overseas Territories. Many people on those islands have been left with nothing. And if we must change the rules on international aid in order to recognise the particular needs of these communities when disaster strikes, then that’s what we will do. 

This then is the Britain we choose. Not a Britain that retreats behind its borders, but a global Britain that stands tall in the world. A beacon of hope and an example to others. A modern, compassionate Britain that we can all be proud to call home. 

And we must renew the British Dream at home through a determined programme of economic and social reform. A programme that champions our belief in free markets by being prepared to reform them when they don’t work. That ensures our economy and society work for everyone in every part of this country, not just the privileged few. Because for too many, the British Dream feels increasingly out of reach. 

The effects of the financial crisis – nearly a decade of low growth, stagnating wages and pay restraint – linger. The boom in the housing market means that while some have done very well, for many the chance of getting onto the housing ladder has become a distant dream. And it’s that fact, perhaps more than any other, that means for too many the British Dream is increasingly out of reach.

Just over a decade ago, 59% of 25-34 year olds owned their own home. Today it is just 38%. It has always been a great sadness for me and Philip that we were never blessed with children. It seems some things in life are just never meant to be. But I believe in the dream that life should be better for the next generation as much as any mother. Any father. Any grandparent. The only difference is that I have the privileged position of being able to do more than most to bring that dream to life.

So I will dedicate my premiership to fixing this problem – to restoring hope. To renewing the British Dream for a new generation of people. And that means fixing our broken housing market. 

For 30 or 40 years we simply haven’t built enough homes. As a result, prices have risen so much that the average home now costs almost 8 times average earnings. And that’s been a disaster for young people in particular. We have begun to put this right. The number of new homes being delivered each year has increased significantly since 2010. Our Housing White Paper set out plans to increase it further, ensuring councils release more land for housing, and giving them new powers to ensure that developers actually build homes once they’re given planning permission to do so. And because it will take time for greater housebuilding to translate into more affordable house prices, we have introduced schemes like Help to Buy to support people who are struggling right now.

But the election result showed us that this is not nearly enough. We’ve listened and we’ve learned. So this week, the Chancellor announced that we will help over 130,000 more families with the deposit they need to buy their own home by investing a further £10 billion in Help to Buy. 

We have announced measures to give the increasing number of families who rent from a private landlord more security – and effective redress if their landlord is not maintaining their property. And today, I can announce that we will invest an additional £2 billion in affordable housing – taking the Government’s total affordable housing budget to almost £9 billion.

 We will encourage councils as well as housing associations to bid for this money and provide certainty over future rent levels. And in those parts of the country where the need is greatest, allow homes to be built for social rent, well below market level. Getting government back into the business of building houses. A new generation of council houses to help fix our broken housing market. So whether you’re trying to buy your own home, renting privately and looking for more security, or have been waiting for years on a council list, help is on the way.

It won’t be quick or easy, but as Prime Minister I am going to make it my mission to solve this problem. I will take personal charge of the government’s response, and make the British Dream a reality by reigniting home ownership in Britain once again.  

And let me say one more thing. I want to send the clearest possible message to our house builders. We, the government, will make sure the land is available. We’ll make sure our young people have the skills you need. In return, you must do your duty to Britain and build the homes our country needs.

And to renew the British Dream for a new generation of young people we must also take action on student debt. As Conservatives, we know education can be the key to unlocking the future. That’s why for more than a century, it has been Conservative Education Secretaries who have driven the reforms that have widened access and raised standards. And it’s why we want everyone to have the opportunity to benefit from studying more after they leave school. Because it’s good for them and good for the country too.

But today, young people take on a huge amount of debt to do so. And if we’re honest, some don’t know what they get from it in return.

We have listened and we have learned. So we will undertake a major review of university funding and student financing. We will scrap the increase in fees that was due next year, and freeze the maximum rate while the review takes place. And we will increase the amount graduates can earn before they start repaying their fees to £25,000 – putting money back into the pockets of graduates with high levels of debt.  

For while we are in favour of free markets, we will always take action to fix them when they’re broken. We will always take on monopolies and vested interests when they are holding people back. And one of the greatest examples in Britain today is the broken energy market.

Because the energy market punishes loyalty with higher prices. And the most loyal customers are often those with lower incomes: the elderly, people with lower qualifications and people who rent their homes. Those who for whatever reason, are unable to find the time to shop around. That’s why next week, this Government will publish a Draft Bill to put a price cap on energy bills. Meeting our manifesto promise.  And bringing an end to rip-off energy prices once and for all. 

So we have a big task before us. An agenda to follow. A duty to uphold. To renew the British Dream for a new generation, and bring our country together again. For a country that’s divided can never make the most of its potential. And we need to harness that potential if we’re to compete and succeed in the years ahead.

That’s why where others seek to bring division, we must stand united. Recognising as Jo Cox put it that we have more in common than what divides us. It’s why I will always be proud to call myself a Unionist – and proud to be the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party too. Because that word means something special to me. It stands for this great union of nations that has so much to offer the world. And it stands for this great union of people – people from all over the world who have made their homes here and are proud to call themselves British. Attracted by the strength of the British Dream. We are an example to the world of how people of different colours and creeds can live side-by-side. And we celebrate that. 

And as a proud Unionist, I take comfort that the General Election saw the threat of nationalism set back, the case for a second referendum in Scotland denied. And wasn’t it a brilliant result for the Scottish Conservatives and their superb leader, Ruth Davidson? 

Together, quite simply, we are stronger. So we must unite the country around our Conservative vision of a global, prosperous Britain in which the British Dream is alive. That means showing that we’re determined to make a difference. To doing something, not being someone. To doing our duty by Britain again. Because people are fed-up with the game-playing, the name-calling. The refusal to listen to the other’s point of view. We can look around the world and see where this approach to politics gets us – anger, recrimination and polarisation too. 

So we must – all of us – look inside. Consider how we conduct our politics in this country. And find a better way. For there is a big problem in our politics when an MP from one party refuses to be friends with those of another. There is a problem in our politics when a leading journalist from our national broadcaster has to hire bodyguards just to be able to do her job. There is a problem when one of our two great political parties is so riven with the stain of anti-semitism that even one of its own council leaders questions if they will be welcome in his city again.

Let me be clear: racism, intolerance and hatred has no place in British politics or British society. This party will never permit it. We will always stamp it out. Britain can do better than this. For this country is – and has always been – the home of tolerance, a bastion of freedom and a beacon of democracy. And this city of Manchester knows it better than anyone. Because four months ago, this city came under attack from those who hate our country and despise our values.

The liberty we extend to everyone, whoever they are and wherever they are from. The way in which our society is open, accepting, and tolerant of others. The fact that we celebrate diversity and champion difference. The way we encourage people from all backgrounds and beliefs to live their lives in freedom. To be all they want to be. And because of this hatred, they chose to take out their rage on the defenceless and vulnerable. The innocent and the young.

Let us be in no doubt: the responsibility for such an outrage lies with no one other than those who planned it, and those who saw it through. And this party, which knows the terrible toll of terrorism all too well, will never seek to justify or excuse such acts of terror. We will stand strong in the face of terrorism and ensure our values always prevail.

But what we remember most from the cowardly attack on the Manchester Arena is the response of the Spirit of Manchester. People throwing open their doors to strangers, giving them a place to shelter. Taxi drivers helping people get home safely, accepting no fare in return. Ordinary people rushing to the scene of destruction. Putting themselves in harm’s way. The incredible men and women of the emergency services running towards the carnage, while others dropped what they were doing and went back to work to help.

But above all, an image of a community coming together. Men and women, young and old, black and white, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Hindu, Jew, standing together as one. And it was that image of this city – an image of modern Britain in all its diversity, compassion and strength – that was shared around the globe.

And it said something about us. It said that this is modern Britain. A country of promise, of potential, of hope. And perhaps we too easily forget that. But we must hold on to that essential truth. For we are a nation of dreamers, with the capacity to deliver those dreams too.

Cities like Manchester were the pioneers that fired the industrial revolution, helping to make Britain the workshop of the world. And it’s this heritage that means today we export to and trade with nations in every corner of the globe. It was here in Britain that we discovered the structure of DNA, the biological code for life. All the technologies for sequencing the human genome have been developed in this country. And today we are using this knowledge to improve human health.

Back in the 1970s it was scientists in Oxford who invented the lithium ion battery which powers all laptops and mobile phones. Today we continue to be pioneers in this sector, funding new battery technologies for electric cars and renewable energy. Technologies we will soon be exporting around the world. Within a few hundred yards of here you will find the world’s first passenger railway station. And a few hundred yards beyond that a new research facility to develop the extraordinary material Graphene, for which two scientists here in Manchester won the Nobel prize.

And let me say this to George Osborne – you were right to back it as part of the Northern Powerhouse and this Government will back it too. So the future is bright, our potential is great, and if we choose the right path, the British Dream can be renewed. So let us do our duty by Britain. Let us shape up and give the country the government it needs.   

For beyond this hall, beyond the gossip pages of the newspapers, and beyond the streets, corridors and meeting rooms of Westminster, life continues – the daily lives of working people go on. Many pay little attention to great conferences and gatherings like this. They get up early and go to work. They want to know their job is going to last and that they are going to get paid a fair wage. They want to know that the school their children go to is the best it can be. That they will be cared for when they fall ill. That they will have safety and security as they advance towards old age. 

And they want to believe in the British Dream: that their children will do better than themselves. That they will have the opportunity to lead happy, successful, secure lives. That they will have the chance to be all they want to be. These are the priorities that it is our duty to respond to. The priorities of working people up and down this land. And they must be our only focus.

Not worrying about our job security, but theirs. Not addressing our concerns, but the issues, the problems, the challenges, that concern them. Not focusing on our future, but on the future of their children and their grandchildren – doing everything we can to ensure their tomorrow will be better than our today.  

That is what I am in politics for. To make a difference. To change things for the better. To hand on to the next generation a country that is stronger, fairer and more prosperous. And to renew the British Dream for a new generation again.

None of this will be easy. There will be obstacles and barriers along the way. But it has never been my style to hide from a challenge, to shrink from a task, to retreat in the face of difficulty, to give up and turn away. For the test of a leader is how you respond when tough times come upon you. When faced with challenge, if you emerge stronger. When confronted with adversity, if you find the will to pull through.  And it is when tested the most that we reach deep within ourselves and find that our capacity to rise to the challenge before us may well be limitless.

That is the story of our party. That is the story of our country. And that is the resolve and determination we need as we turn to face the future today.

So let us go forward together. Confident in our values. Clear in our vision. Sure in our purpose. With a rich, ambitious agenda to follow. A bold, exciting mission to pursue. Let us fulfil our duty to the British people.Let us fulfil our duty to our country. Let us fulfil our duty to Britain. Let us renew the British Dream.

Donald Trump: 'By the way, just a question, did President Obama ever come to a Jamboree?', 19th Boy Scout Jamboree - 2017

24 July 2017, West Virginia, USA

TRUMP: Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much. I am thrilled to be here. Thrilled.
(APPLAUSE)
And if you think that was an easy trip, you’re wrong. But I am thrilled.
(LAUGHTER)
19th Boy Scout Jamboree, wow, and to address such a tremendous group. Boy, you have a lot of people here. The press will say it’s about 200 people.
(LAUGHTER)
It looks like about 45,000 people. You set a record today.
(APPLAUSE)
You set a record. That’s a great honor, believe me.
Tonight we put aside all of the policy fights in Washington, D.C. you’ve been hearing about with the fake news and all of that. We’re going to put that…
(APPLAUSE)
We’re going to put that aside. And instead we’re going to talk about success, about how all of you amazing young Scouts can achieve your dreams, what to think of, what I’ve been thinking about. You want to achieve your dreams, I said, who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m in front of the Boy Scouts? Right?
(APPLAUSE)
There are many great honors that come with the job of being president of the United States. But looking out at this incredible gathering of mostly young patriots. Mostly young. I’m especially proud to speak to you as the honorary president of the Boy Scouts of America.
(APPLAUSE)
CROWD: USA! USA! USA!
TRUMP: You are the young people of character, integrity who will serve as leaders of our communities and uphold the sacred values of our nation.
I want to thank Boy Scouts President Randall Stephenson, chief Scout executive Michael Surbaugh, Jamboree Chairman Ralph de la Vega and the thousands of volunteers who made this a life-changing experience for all of you. And when they asked me to be here, I said absolutely yes.
(APPLAUSE)
Finally — and we can’t forgot these people — I especially want to salute the moms and the dads and troop leaders who are here tonight.
(APPLAUSE) Thank you for making scouting possible. Thank you, mom and dad, troop leaders.
When you volunteer for the Boy Scouts you are not only shaping young lives, you are shaping the future of America.
(APPLAUSE)
The United States has no better citizens than its Boy Scouts.
(APPLAUSE)
No better.
(APPLAUSE)
The values, traditions and skills you learn here will serve you throughout your lives. And just as importantly, they will serve your families, your cities, and in the future and in the present will serve your country.
(APPLAUSE)
The Scouts believe in putting America first.
(APPLAUSE)
You know, I go to Washington and I see all these politicians, and I see the swamp, and it’s not a good place. In fact, today, I said we ought to change it from the word “swamp” to the word “cesspool” or perhaps to the word “sewer.”
(APPLAUSE)
But it’s not good. Not good. And I see what’s going on. And believe me, I’d much rather be with you, that I can tell you.
(APPLAUSE)
I’ll tell you the reason that I love this, and the reason that I really wanted to be here, is because as president, I rely on former Boy Scouts every single day. And so do the American people.
It’s amazing how many Boy Scouts we have at the highest level of our great government. Many of my top advisers in the White House were Scouts. Ten members of my cabinet were Scouts. Can you believe that? Ten.
(APPLAUSE)
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is not only a Boy Scout, he is your former national president.
(APPLAUSE)
The vice president of the United States, Mike Pence — a good guy — was a Scout, and it meant so much to him.
(APPLAUSE)
Some of you here tonight might even have camped out in this yard when Mike was the governor of Indiana, but the scouting was very, very important.
And by the way, where are our Indiana scouts tonight?
(APPLAUSE)
I wonder if the television cameras will follow you? They don’t doing that when they see these massive crowds. They don’t like doing that.
Hi, folks.
(APPLAUSE)
There’s a lot of love in this big, beautiful place. A lot of love. And a lot of love for our country. And a lot of love for our country.
Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke is here tonight.
Come here, Ryan.
(APPLAUSE)
Ryan is an Eagle Scout from Big Sky Country in Montana.
(APPLAUSE)
Pretty good.
And by the way, he is doing a fantastic job. He makes sure that we leave our national parks and federal lands better than we found them in the best scouting tradition.
So thank you very much, Ryan.
(APPLAUSE)
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry of Texas, an Eagle Scout from the great state.
(APPLAUSE)
The first time he came to the National Jamboree was in 1964. He was very young then. And Rick told me just a little while ago, it totally changed his life.
So, Rick, thank you very much for being here. And we’re doing — we’re doing a lot with energy.
(APPLAUSE) And very soon, Rick, we will be an energy exporter. Isn’t that nice? An energy exporter.
(APPLAUSE)
In other words, we’ll be selling our energy instead of buying it from everybody all over the globe. So that’s good.
(APPLAUSE)
We will be energy dominant.
And I’ll tell you what, the folks in West Virginia who were so nice to me, boy, have we kept our promise. We are going on and on. So we love West Virginia. We want to thank you.
Where’s West Virginia by the way?
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you.
Secretary Tom Price is also here today. Dr. Price still lives the Scout oath, helping to keep millions of Americans strong and healthy as our secretary of Health and Human Services. And he’s doing a great job. And hopefully he’s going to gets the votes tomorrow to start our path toward killing this horrible thing known as Obamacare that’s really hurting us.
(APPLAUSE)
CROWD: USA! USA! USA!
TRUMP: By the way, are you going to get the votes? He better get them. He better get them. Oh, he better. Otherwise I’ll say, “Tom, you’re fired.” I’ll get somebody.
(APPLAUSE)
He better get Senator Capito to vote for it. He better get the other senators to vote for it. It’s time.
You know, after seven years of saying repeal and replace Obamacare we have a chance to now do it. They better do it. Hopefully they’ll do it.
As we can see just by looking at our government, in America, Scouts lead the way. And another thing I’ve noticed — and I’ve noticed it all my life — there is a tremendous spirit with being a Scout, more so than almost anything I can think of. So whatever is going on, keep doing it. It’s incredible to watch, believe me.
(APPLAUSE)
Each of these leaders will tell that you their road to American success — and you have to understand — their American success, and they are a great, great story, was paved with the patriotic American values and traditions they learned in the Boy Scouts. And some day, many years from now, when you look back on all of the adventures in your lives you will be able to say the same, I got my start as a Scout, just like these incredibly great people that are doing such a good job for our country. So that’s going to happen.
(APPLAUSE)
Boy Scout values are American values. And great Boy Scouts become great, great Americans.
(APPLAUSE)
As the Scout law says, a scout is trustworthy, loyal — we could use some more loyalty I will tell that you that.
(CROWD CHANTING)
That was very impressive. You’ve heard that before. But here you learn the rewards of hard work and perseverance, never, ever give up. Never quit. Persevere. Never, ever quit. You learn the satisfaction of building a roaring campfire, reaching a mountain summit or earning a merit badge after mastering a certain skill. There’s no better feeling than an achievement that you’ve earned with your own sweat, tears, resolve, hard work. There’s nothing like it. Do you agree with that?
(APPLAUSE)
I’m waving to people back there so small I can’t even see them. Man, this is a lot of people. Turn those cameras back there, please. That is so incredible.
By the way, what do you think the chances are that this incredible massive crowd, record setting, is going to be shown on television tonight? One percent or zero?
(APPLAUSE)
The fake media will say, “President Trump spoke” — you know what is — “President Trump spoke before a small crowd of Boy Scouts today.” That’s some — that is some crowd. Fake media. Fake news.
Thank you. And I’m honored by that. By the way, all of you people that can’t even see you, so thank you. I hope you can hear.
Through scouting you also learned to believe in yourself — so important — to have confidence in your ability and to take responsibility for your own life. When you face down new challenges — and you will have plenty of them — develop talents you never thought possible, and lead your teammates through daring trials, you discover that you can handle anything. And you learn it by being a Scout. It’s great.
(APPLAUSE) You can do anything. You can be anything you want to be. But in order to succeed, you must find out what you love to do. You have to find your passion, no matter what they tell you. If you don’t — I love you too. I don’t know. Nice guy.
(APPLAUSE)
Hey, what am I going to do? He sounds like a nice person. He — he, he, he. I do. I do love you.
(CROWD CHANTING)
By the way, just a question, did President Obama ever come to a Jamboree?
(APPLAUSE)
And we’ll be back. We’ll be back. The answer is no. But we’ll be back.
In life, in order to be successful — and you people are well on the road to success — you have to find out what makes you excited, what makes you want to get up each morning and go to work? You have to find it. If you love what you do and dedicate yourself to your work, then you will gain momentum? And look, you have to. You need the word “momentum.” You will gain that momentum. And each success will create another success. The word “momentum.”
I’ll tell you a story that’s very interesting for me. When I was young there was a man named William Levitt. You have some here. You have some in different states. Anybody ever hear of Levittown?
(APPLAUSE)
And he was a very successful man, became unbelievable — he was a home builder, became an unbelievable success, and got more and more successful. And he’d build homes, and at night he’d go to these major sites with teams of people, and he’d scour the sites for nails, and sawdust and small pieces of wood, and they cleaned the site, so when the workers came in the next morning, the sites would be spotless and clean, and he did it properly. And he did this for 20 years, and then he was offered a lot of money for his company, and he sold his company, for a tremendous amount of money, at the time especially. This is a long time ago. Sold his company for a tremendous amount of money.
And he went out and bought a big yacht, and he had a very interesting life. I won’t go any more than that, because you’re Boy Scouts so I’m not going to tell you what he did.
(CROWD CHANTING)
Should I tell you? Should I tell you?
(APPLAUSE)
You’re Boy Scouts, but you know life. You know life.
So look at you. Who would think this is the Boy Scouts, right? So he had a very, very interesting life, and the company that bought his company was a big conglomerate, and they didn’t know anything about building homes, and they didn’t know anything about picking up the nails and the sawdust and selling it, and the scraps of wood. This was a big conglomerate based in New York City.
And after about a 10-year period, there were losing a lot with it. It didn’t mean anything to them. And they couldn’t sell it. So they called William Levitt up, and they said, would you like to buy back your company, and he said, yes, I would. He so badly wanted it. He got bored with this life of yachts, and sailing, and all of the things he did in the south of France and other places. You won’t get bored, right? You know, truthfully, you’re workers. You’ll get bored too, believe me. Of course having a few good years like that isn’t so bad.
But what happened is he bought back his company, and he bought back a lot of empty land, and he worked hard at getting zoning, and he worked hard on starting to develop, and in the end he failed, and he failed badly, lost all of his money. He went personally bankrupt, and he was now much older. And I saw him at a cocktail party. And it was very sad because the hottest people in New York were at this party. It was the party of Steve Ross — Steve Ross, who was one of the great people. He came up and discovered, really founded Time Warner, and he was a great guy. He had a lot of successful people at the party.
And I was doing well, so I got invited to the party. I was very young. And I go in, but I’m in the real estate business, and I see a hundred people, some of whom I recognize, and they’re big in the entertainment business.
And I see sitting in the corner was a little old man who was all by himself. Nobody was talking to him. I immediately recognized that that man was the once great William Levitt, of Levittown, and I immediately went over. I wanted to talk to him more than the Hollywood, show business, communications people.
So I went over and talked to him, and I said, “Mr. Levitt, I’m Donald Trump.” He said, “I know.” I said, “Mr. Levitt, how are you doing?” He goes, “Not well, not well at all.” And I knew that. But he said, “Not well at all.” And he explained what was happening and how bad it’s been and how hard it’s been. And I said, “What exactly happened? Why did this happen to you? You’re one of the greats ever in our industry. Why did this happen to you?”
And he said, “Donald, I lost my momentum. I lost my momentum.” A word you never hear when you’re talking about success when some of these guys that never made 10 cents, they’re on television giving you things about how you’re going to be successful, and the only thing they ever did was a book and a tape. But I tell you — I’ll tell you, it was very sad, and I never forgot that moment.
And I thought about it, and it’s exactly true. He lost his momentum, meaning he took this period of time off, long, years, and then when he got back, he didn’t have that same momentum.
In life, I always tell this to people, you have to know whether or not you continue to have the momentum. And if you don’t have it, that’s OK. Because you’re going to go on, and you’re going to learn and you’re going to do things that are great. But you have to know about the word “momentum.”
But the big thing, never quit, never give up; do something you love. When you do something you love as a Scout, I see that you love it. But when you do something that you love, you’ll never fail. What you’re going to do is give it a shot again and again and again. You’re ultimately going to be successful.
And remember this, you’re not working. Because when you’re doing something that you love, like I do — of course I love my business, but this is a little bit different. Who thought this was going to happen. We’re, you know, having a good time. We’re doing a good job.
(APPLAUSE)
Doing a good job. But when you do something that you love, remember this, it’s not work. So you’ll work 24/7. You’re going to work all the time. And at the end of the year you’re not really working. You don’t think of it as work. When you’re not doing something that you like or when you’re forced into do something that you really don’t like, that’s called work, and it’s hard work, and tedious work.
So as much as you can do something that you love, work hard and never ever give up, and you’re going to be tremendously successful, tremendously successful.
(APPLAUSE)
Now, with that, I have to tell you our economy is doing great. Our stock market has picked up since the election, November 8th — do we remember that day? Was that a beautiful day?
(APPLAUSE)
What a day.
Do you remember that famous night on television, November 8th where they said, these dishonest people, where they said, there is no path to victory for Donald Trump. They forgot about the forgotten people.
By the way, they’re not forgetting about the forgotten people anymore. They’re going crazy trying to figure it out, but I told them, far too late; it’s far too late.
But you remember that incredible night with the maps, and the Republicans are red and the Democrats are blue, and that map was so red it was unbelievable. And they didn’t know what to say.
(APPLAUSE) And you know, we have a tremendous disadvantage in the Electoral College. Popular vote is much easier. We have — because New York, California, Illinois, you have to practically run the East Coast. And we did. We won Florida. We won South Carolina. We won North Carolina. We won Pennsylvania.
(APPLAUSE)
We won and won. So when they said, there is no way to victory; there is no way to 270. You know I went to Maine four times because it’s one vote, and we won. We won. One vote. I went there because I kept hearing we’re at 269. But then Wisconsin came in. Many, many years. Michigan came in.
(APPLAUSE)
So — and we worked hard there. You know, my opponent didn’t work hard there, because she was told…
(BOOING)
She was told she was going to win Michigan, and I said, well, wait a minute. The car industry is moving to Mexico. Why is she going to move — she’s there. Why are they allowing it to move? And by the way, do you see those car industry — do you see what’s happening? They’re coming back to Michigan. They’re coming back to Ohio. They’re starting to peel back in.
(APPLAUSE)
And we go to Wisconsin, now, Wisconsin hadn’t been won in many, many years by a Republican. But we go to Wisconsin, and we had tremendous crowds. And I’d leave these massive crowds, I’d say, why are we going to lose this state?
The polls, that’s also fake news. They’re fake polls. But the polls are saying — but we won Wisconsin.
(APPLAUSE)
So I have to tell you, what we did, in all fairness, is an unbelievable tribute to you and all of the other millions and millions of people that came out and voted for make America great again.
(APPLAUSE)
And I’ll tell you what, we are indeed making America great again.
CROWD: USA! USA! USA!
TRUMP: And I’ll tell you what, we are indeed making America great again. What’s going on is incredible.
(APPLAUSE)
We had the best jobs report in 16 years. The stock market on a daily basis is hitting an all-time high.
We’re going to be bringing back very soon trillions of dollars from companies that can’t get their money back into this country, and that money is going to be used to help rebuild America. We’re doing things that nobody ever thought was possible, and we’ve just started. It’s just the beginning, believe me.
(APPLAUSE)
You know, in the Boy Scouts you learn right from wrong, correct? You learn to contribute to your communities, to take pride in your nation, and to seek out opportunities to serve. You pledge to help other people at all times.
(APPLAUSE)
In the Scout oath, you pledge on your honor to do your best and to do your duty to God and your country.
(APPLAUSE)
And by the way, under the Trump administration you’ll be saying “Merry Christmas” again when you go shopping, believe me.
(APPLAUSE)
Merry Christmas.
They’ve been downplaying that little beautiful phrase. You’re going to be saying “Merry Christmas” again, folks.
(APPLAUSE)
But the words “duty,” “country” and “God” are beautiful words. In other words, basically what you’re doing is you’re pledging to be a great American patriot.
(APPLAUSE)
For more than a century that is exactly what our Boy Scouts have been. Last year you gave more than 15 million hours of service to helping people in your communities. Incredible. That’s an incredible stat.
(APPLAUSE)
All of you here tonight will contribute more than 100,000 hours of service by the end of this Jamboree — 100,000.
(APPLAUSE)
When natural disaster strikes, when people face hardship, when the beauty and glory of our outdoor spaces must be restored and taken care of, America turns to the Boy Scouts because we know that the Boy Scouts never ever, ever let us down.
(APPLAUSE)
Just like you know you can count on me, we know we can count on you, because we know the values that you live by.
(APPLAUSE)
Your values are the same values that have always kept America strong, proud and free.
And by the way, do you see the billions and billions and billions of additional money that we’re putting back into our military? Billions of dollars.
(APPLAUSE)
New planes, new ships, great equipment for our people that are so great to us. We love our vets. We love our soldiers. And we love our police, by the way.
(APPLAUSE)
Firemen, police. We love our police. Those are all special people. Uniformed services.
Two days ago I traveled to Norfolk, Virginia to commission an American aircraft carrier into the fleet of the United States Navy.
(APPLAUSE)
It’s the newest, largest and most advanced aircraft carrier anywhere in the world, and it’s named for an Eagle Scout — the USS Gerald R. Ford.
(APPLAUSE)
Everywhere it sails that great Scout’s name will be feared and revered, because that ship will be a symbol of American power, prestige and strength.
(APPLAUSE)
Our nation honors President Gerald R. Ford today because he lived his life the scouting way. Boy Scouts celebrate American patriots, especially the brave members of our Armed Forces. Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
American hearts are warmed every year when we read about Boy Scouts placing thousands and thousands of flags next to veterans’ grave sites all across the country. By honoring our heroes, you help to ensure that their memory never, ever dies. You should take great pride in the example you set for every citizen of our country to follow.
(APPLAUSE)
Generations of American Boy Scouts have sworn the same oath and lived according to the same law. You inherit a noble American tradition. And as you embark on your lives, never cease to be proud of you who you are and the principles you hold dear and stand by. Wear your values as your badge of honor. What you’ve done few have done before you. What you’ve done is incredible. What you’ve done is admired by all. So I want to congratulate you, Boy Scouts.
(APPLAUSE)
Let your scouting oath guide your path from this day forward. Remember your duty, honor your history, take care of the people God put into your life, and love and cherish your great country.
(APPLAUSE)
You are very special people. You’re special in the lives of America. You’re special to me. But if you do what we say, I promise you that you will live scouting’s adventure every single day of your life, and you will win, win, win, and help people in doing so.
(APPLAUSE)
Your lives will have meaning, and purpose and joy. You will become leaders, and you will inspire others to achieve the dreams they once thought were totally impossible. Things that you said could never, ever happen are already happening for you. And if you do these things, and if you refuse to give in to doubt or to fear, then you will help to make America great again, you will be proud of yourself, be proud of the uniform you wear, and be proud of the country you love.
(APPLAUSE)
CROWD: USA! USA! USA!
TRUMP: And never, ever forget, America is proud of you.
(APPLAUSE)
This is a very, very special occasion for me. I’ve known so many Scouts over the years. Winners. I’ve known so many great people. They’ve been taught so well, and they love the heritage. But this is very special for me.
And I just want to end by saying, very importantly, God bless you. God bless the Boy Scouts. God Bless the United States of America. Go out, have a great time in life, compete, and go out and show me that there is nobody, nobody like a Boy Scout.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much, everybody. (APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much
(APPLAUSE)

Tommy Douglas: 'My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea' The Story of Mouseland', political allegory - 1944

First broadcast by CBC, 1944, Canada

Story was written by Clarence Gillis, one of Douglas' close friends. Douglas made it famous.

This is the story of a place called Mouseland. Mouseland was a place where all the little mice lived and played. Were born and died. And they lived much as you and I do. They even had a parliament. And every four years they had an election. They used to walk to the polls and cast their ballot. Some of them even got a ride to the polls. They got a ride for the next four years afterward too. Just like you and me. And every time on election day, all the little mice used to go to the ballot box and they used to elect a government. A government made up of big black fat cats.

Now if you think it’s strange that mice should elect a government made up of cats. You just look at the history of Canada for the last ninety years and maybe you’ll see they weren’t any stupider than we are.

Now I am not saying anything against the cats. They were nice fellows; they conducted the government with dignity. They passed good laws. That is, laws that were good for cats.

But the laws that were good for cats weren’t very good for mice. One of the laws said that mouse holes had to be big enough so a cat could get his paw in. Another law said that mice could only travel at certain speeds so that a cat could get his breakfast without too much physical effort.

All the laws were good laws for cats. But oh, they were hard on the mice. And life was getting harder and harder. And when the mice couldn’t put up with it anymore they decided something had to be done about it. So they went en masse the polls.

They voted the black cats out. They put in the white cats. The white cats had put up a terrific campaign. They said all that Mouseland needs is more vision.  They said the trouble with Mouseland is those round mouse holes we’ve got. If you put us in we’ll establish square mouse holes. And they did. And the square mouse holes were twice as big as the round mouse holes. And now the cat could get both his paws in. And life was tougher than ever.

And when they couldn’t take that anymore they voted the white cats out and put the black ones in again. And then they went back to the white cats, and then to the black, they even tried half black cats and half white cats. And they called that coalition. They even got one government made up with up cats with spots on them. They were cats that tried to make a noise like a mouse but they ate like a cat.

You see my friends the trouble wasn’t with the colour of the cats. The trouble was that they were cats. And because they were cats they naturally look after cats instead of mice.

Presently there came along one little mouse who had an idea. My friends watch out for the little fellow with an idea. He said to the other mice. “Look fellows why do we keep electing a government made up of cats, why don’t we elect a government made up of mice?” Oh, they said, he’s a Bolshevik. So they put him in jail. But I want to remind you that you can lock up a mouse or a man but you can’t lock up an idea.

Jack Layton: 'We can build the Canada we want', election night speech - 2011

2 May 2011, Toronto, Canada

Step by step, working together, we can build the Canada we want. A country worthy of the hopes and dreams of those young Canadians who said no to the same old cynicism, to the negativity, to the politics of usual and they said yes to a Canada where anything is possible, where we all stick together and no one is left behind.

Brian Mulroney: 'Peter Newman, go f*** yourself', Press Dinner - 2005

22 October 2005, Canada

Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister of Canada from 1984-1993. This was a response to Peter Newman's book, 'The Secret Mulroney Tapes'. This was produced for a lighthearted Press Dinner.

Your excellencies, Prime Minister, Justices of Supreme Court of Canada, Distinguished members of the press Gallery, Madames and Monsieurs, Good evening.

Peter Newman, go fuck yourself.

Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen, and good night.