That crazy redneck is at it again!

[fintstone]

Darned neocon.....

Zell Miller's Speech Transcript
From the Ronald Reagan Award Gala 9/23/04

In New York City earlier this month I said I was proud to stand with George W. Bush.

I am also proud to stand here tonight with Malcolm Wallop, George Landrith, Jason Wright, and all of you who, like the man this award is named for, are committed to maintaining America's freedom and greatness.

Frontiers of Freedom is a voice that can be trusted and I am honored to accept this award.

No idea in the history of the world, has been more influential than the idea of freedom. It has been the definitive idea of our civilization and the central theme of our history.

And yet, far too many Americans take our freedom for granted; hardly give a thought to where it came from or what it really means.

And yet if you count up all the people who have lived in the history of the world, only one percent has lived in freedom.

But, while we rejoice in the freedom of that one per cent, it is the fate of those other 99 that we should also think about.

If 99 of 100 who have ever lived, did so in tyranny, it says not only is their this endless struggle between freedom and tyranny but also that freedom too often rarely wins.

The fate of the 99 speaks from the grave to say that mankind is almost totally deaf to this roar of history, that each generation tends to ignore its own struggle between freedom and tyranny. The 99 represents the fact that "most don't believe this struggle applies to them."

I think history's greatest lesson is that there is always an ongoing struggle between freedom and tyranny. Each generation must make a choice between the two. And not to make a choice is to make a choice.

The choice can often exact a terrible toll. But if freedom wins, it also often results in the most glorious of payoffs.

It was true as far back as 490 B.C. The citizen soldiers of ancient Athens, Greece, turned back on the plains of Marathon a Persian army three times as big and much better equipped.

And a man named Phidippides ran the 26 miles back to Athens with the news of the great victory.

Marathoners still run that distance, but a far greater significance of this battle was that free men defeated the hired soldiers and slaves of a tyrant.

And this victory led the way to Athenian democracy and all the good things that came with it –– individual rights, trial by jury, freedom of speech.

The glorious payoff also was true that April day in 1775, when the local militia of the American colonists stood up to the British Redcoats at Lexington and Concord and fired that shot heard 'round the world. Two weeks later, George Washington took command of the Continental Army against the tyranny of George III.

The payoff was gloriously true in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln made his famous address at that Gettysburg ceremony where 7,000 men had died and their bodies lay rotting for months after the battle.

President Lincoln's few words explained better than anyone else ever has what the Civil War was all about.

"A Test," Lincoln called it, "a test of whether a new nation conceived in liberty," —— conceived in liberty - "can long endure."

It was true in 1917, when within just a few months a million Americans volunteered to fight the Germans in World War I and turned the tide from possible defeat into an allied victory on the Western front.

My father was among them. He died when I was two weeks old. I never knew him, but I can remember wearing his coat with those sergeant stripes on it when I was so young; it dragged on the floor, and my arms did not extend more than halfway down its sleeves.

The glorious payoff was true that late spring of 1940, because of one single strong voice, the magnificent and eloquent voice of Winston Churchill who would not let up in his opposition to Adolf Hitler, as evil a man as ever lived.

And then came the Cold War where America's commitment to freedom was once again tested. Ronald Reagan, who was bitterly opposed every step of the way by some who are leading my party today, not only restored economic prosperity but provided a guiding moral sense to a nation that had lost its way.

When he told Mr. Gorbachev, "Tear down this wall," what had seemed like a wishful thought only years before became a reality. The Soviet Empire and the threat of Communism collapsed and freedom scored another victory.

I had come to believe that unless America could find another Reagan or our own version of Churchill, the softness and self-indulgence of our leadership was turning my country into a land cowering before the world's mad bullies.

I watched with disgust when we did nothing after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, killing six and injuring more than 1,000 Americans.

I was amazed in 1996 when 16 U.S. servicemen were killed in the bombing of the Kohbar Towers, and still, we did nothing.

When our embassies in Africa were attacked in 1998, killing 263 people, our only response was to fire a few missiles into an empty tent.

And then came September 11, 2001, the "worst day in our history," David McCullough has called it.

Nineteen men - nineteen - armed only with box cutters, the skill to pilot a jet aircraft, and a fanatical zeal changed forever the meaning of keeping our citizens safe.

In just two hours, thousands of Americans were killed on our own soil and before our very eyes as we watched in horror.

I immediately went to the Senate floor and said our response must be swift and sustained.

Later, I would be the only Democrat in the Senate to support President Bush on his Homeland Security Bill, and still later I gave him my full support for the regime change in Iraq.

And at that time, I told this true story to my colleagues:

I was doing some work on my back porch in Young Harris, Georgia, tearing out a section of old stacked rocks, when all of a sudden, I uncovered a nest of copperhead snakes.

Now, as you may know, a copperhead is poisonous; it will kill you. It could kill one of my grandchildren. It could kill one of my four great grandchildren who play around there all the time.

And, you know, when I discovered those copperheads, I didn't call my wife Shirley, like I do about everything else.

I didn't ask the city council to pass a resolution. I didn't even call any of my neighbors.

I just took a hoe and chopped their heads off and killed them dead as doorknobs.

Nor, I guess you could call it a unilateral action. Or maybe a preemptive strike.

I took their poisonous heads off because they were a threat to me, and they were a threat to my home and to my family. They were a threat to all I hold dear. And isn't that what this is all about?

There are many in the Democratic Party today who believe war is pointless and that foreign policy is just some kind of fuzzy-feeling social work that should be outsourced. I reject that.

I was born at a time when there were strong isolationist views in this country.

But when the calm of an early Sunday morning was shattered in a distant port called Pearl Harbor, those views were quickly abandoned.

I came of age when America's calling was to eradicate militant fascism and after World War II to counter international communist insurgency.

continued

[fintstone]

I was elected as a young state senator in 1960, the same year John Kennedy was elected President and would continue to lead a worldwide containment against Communism - and cut taxes.

Back then, it was a bipartisan commitment, by both Democrats and Republicans, to do what was necessary to keep America safe... and the world free. It was said of U.S. foreign policy back in those days that partisanship stopped at the water's edge.

And then I witnessed my Party, like my country, ripped apart by the conflict in Vietnam.

No one can deny nor forget the heroism of those who served in Vietnam. They will forever have my respect and my gratitude. But what is necessary today is not to confuse the lessons learned from Vietnam.

For some today, Vietnam seems to be the first, last and only lesson to consider when it comes to the threats to world peace and freedom.. and America's responsibility in that struggle.

To them, all the other major struggles during the 20th century - World War I, World War II, Korea, the Cold War, - all hold no lesson, no relevance to America's role today.

To them, Vietnam defines us, it defines them, it defines America.
To them, Vietnam is not the exception, it is the rule. The only rule.

They are the protesters of yesteryear, the Sixties radicals of San Francisco. Oh, the clothes and the hair and the music may have changed, but not what is in their hearts and in their heads.

These people don't believe America is a liberating force. Instead, they see America as an occupier, a Darth Vader military empire trying to colonize people.

They see any who would ally themselves with America as corrupt puppets or hired mercenaries. The "coerced and the bribed," as John Kerry describes them.

For every world problem, this crowd always blames America first. They see despotic regimes as nuisances not as threats. And, dictators are always given every benefit of the doubt.

They don't believe there is any great threat requiring military action. They believe that military force has never solved anything, and that if it did, it shouldn't have.

In their rise to prominence, these leaders have been on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of freedom during the last three decades.

As I have said many times and underline again tonight, it is not their patriotism –– it is their judgment that has been lacking.

They claimed Ronald Reagan's defense buildup would lead to war. They were wrong.

They claimed militant insurgents across the globe were not communists. They were wrong.

They claimed rejecting a nuclear freeze would destabilize world peace rather than the Soviet Union. Again, they were wrong.

They opposed President Ronald Reagan's policies of military resistance to Communist inroads and they were vigorous opponents of aiding the anti-Communist contras.

They believe that U. S. military force should only be used as approved by the U.N.

Before Pearl Harbor the old isolationists saw the threat but wanted no international entanglements. Today, these new isolationists want international entanglements, but see no threat.

And, if they are blind to the threat of Iraq after 9/11, how can one believe these enlightened souls would have foreseen the threat of Al Queda before 9/11. And what other threats will they refuse to see?

It's hard to see a threat to America from abroad when you view America as a threat to those abroad.
Ultimately, this boils down to a question of how each of us sees America today.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, do we see America as the America of Vietnam, or is it the America of World War II, Korea and the Cold War?

What do we see as America's role in a time of turmoil? Through this debate and this election, America will once again define its security role.

As we look at the past to define our role for the future, I believe we have to be careful about what lessons we claim to have learned from history, and particularly Vietnam.

If it becomes fixed in the minds of a few persons that the wrong lesson is the right lesson, it matters little.

But if the wrong lesson is adopted as the right lesson by a majority in a democracy, it can take forever to erase a mistruth, and then only with great pain.

History shows nations can become confused. For example, in France, the competing principles of equality and freedom have warred against each other since the French Revolution.

How can man be equal yet also be free to become unequal.

America too could become confused, and the principles of security and freedom could begin to war with each other here.

If you see America through the prism of Vietnam, if you see America as a conqueror, an oppressor, then your vision of America's role in the world will differ greatly from those who see America as a liberator and an ally for those who are free and want to be free.

This election will go greatly toward deciding which America we believe we are. America must resolve these questions because you see, our opponents may also have learned from Vietnam.

Our opponents may have learned that the lesson from Vietnam was that the way to beat America's military power is to break America's willpower.

Our opponents may have learned that a measure of your success in weakening America's willpower is seen by what the opposition party says it is. And, also, what the American media says it is. Right now, both lean toward an anti-war position.

Our opponents may have learned from Vietnam it is possible to throw out your tormentor if your actions can move U. S. voters against their President.

Our opponents may have learned that a thousand protestors on U. S. streets may mean more for victory than twenty thousand uniformed soldiers on the battlefield.

And so, because politics no longer end at the water's edge, future opponents will look not only at military reports but also the U. S. press, where they believe you can measure whether you are breaking the will of the American people.

So our opponents may maintain militant efforts on such false premises or target events to impact national elections, as they did in the Madrid bombings.

And once we become so pliable, America and the world are in real trouble. Because, as a democracy easily bent by terrorist manipulations, we will no longer play an international role, or else to do so, we will have to be less of a democracy.

Security and Freedom will begin to war with each other.

And, either way, at that point, America will retreat into an isolationism not seen since before Pearl Harbor.

Oh yes, history has lessons to teach us. Has it ever! But the lessons of reality are not found solely in the jungles of Vietnam.

They are also to be found in the waters of Pearl Harbor, the forests of Argonne, the ovens of Auschwitz, the turbulent air over Germany, the shores of Normandy, the beaches of Iwo Jima, the frozen mountain ranges of Korea, the mass graves of Iraqi deserts, and yes, on the streets of lower Manhattan.

Each of these is a lesson in reality. Despite the radical anti-war voices of some, the truth about freedom does not lie with just one lesson alone, it lies within them all.

About 150 years ago, the great Fredrick Douglas said that freedom was born by what he called "earnest struggle" and he continued, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

And that is why our work today in this "earnest struggle" is so important and why I am so honored to be with you.

God bless our President and God bless America.

[A Quiet Boom]

Two words, HE'S RIGHT

[widebody911]

Translation: we NeoCons like war for the sake of war, so let's go blow some ***** up before the liberals can stop us.

[jm951]

Ok, we see where you get your info from, CBS and Al Jazeera.

[pwd72s]

correction, jm...it is now "See-BS"...

[jm951]

my bad, how silly of me to think they might should be telling the truth.

Every time I think about crap with Rather, it reminds me of the James Bond movie with the media mogul whacko who manipulates the world for his own ends. Art follows life or is it the other way round?

[CamB]

Snakes - people, they're all the same - CHOP OFF THEIR HEADS.

I think it's fair to say that whatever sway Miller had (though his "Democrat" moniker) with anyone not already agreeing with him is pretty much gone. I would expect as much impact on your beliefs if I posted Robert Byrd...