[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.

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