SOUTH DAKOTA STRAIGHT TALK

BEN STEIN SPEECH

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

JULY 20, 2002

Dems are on the warpath again. The days of national unity are obviously numbered. Biggest lie going: that Bush is somehow responsible for the climate of dishonesty and greed on Wall Street and in corporate America. I have been toiling in this vineyard a long time. The scams and dishonesty started in a huge way in the late '90's under Clinton. The whole bubble was a Clinton era invention. No supervision, complete craziness on Wall Street. This is a Clinton era artifact, derived from Clinton's own extraordinary lying.

This President is cleaning it up. At great cost in time and effort, he is cleaning up the Democrats' mess, which is how it usually is.

Next biggest lie, that the GOP is under the thumb of big business. The truth: the Dems get far more of their money from fat cats. The Dems are totally under the thumb of few big unions and some fat cats. New York, San Francisco, and Hollywood. Ma and Pa Kettle, Mr and Mrs America in the suburbs and on Main Street, are the ones who support the GOP...and with good reason. It is just an outrage that this lie of the GOP as the party of the rich gets around endlessly. This has to be a big job for the party – to get out the truth.

Ordinary people paying ordinary bills, loving their country, supporting the cops and the military-this is the GOP. Ordinary people who believe in old fashioned virtues and new technology, decent families and hard work. A party that judges people by who they are, not what interest group they belong to. That is the GOP. The party that was founded to recognize the sacred worth of every individual still says the ultimate worth of a society is how it protects each individual. That is the GOP.

The GOP is the party that wants the nation united under the paradoxical but real banner of individualism. The Democrats are the ones who want to divide it in every way they can to win an election. Black against white, poor against rich, left against right, men against woman and women against men, and teachers against everyone else.

The GOP wants to unite under truth, freedom and affection. One country held together by love of all that is noble that is common to all humanity. The Democrats' goal: a fractured, angry, quarrelsome nation divided into whatever it takes to win an election, whether that's a lie about racism or a lie about stealing an election or a lie about big business owning the other party.

The GOP wants to unite and elevate America. The other side wants to divide and anger by appealing to the lowest possible emotions and fears.

I am very proud to be an American and very proud to be a Republican, a member of the party that invites everyone to be partners with everyone else to build a better life for everyone. This is a noble goal. To build America instead of tearing America apart. Politics should be about putting things together, not just taking them apart.

I think in this regard the GOP is the closest to the heart of America. Americans are a loving people. They are a forgiving people. There is no hate in the heart of the real American. There is a wish to help and to build together.

This is how I see the GOP. It is the party of love and kindness, of peace of mind, of gratitude to God for this shining city on a hill, as Ronald Reagan put it so beautifully.

And while we are at it, if Hollywood never did another good thing, just bringing Ronald Reagan, the greatest President of the twentieth century, to the national stage, bringing him to enough national attention so he could get to be the greatest governor California ever had and then the greatest President of the last 100 years, well, that's enough for Hollywood to make it a worthwhile place. We love George W. Bush. We loved Bush 41. I loved Richard Nixon. But Ronald Reagan bestrode this earth like a colossus.

Anyway, let me talk a bit more about the GOP. People always ask why I, a Jewish boy from Maryland, became a Republican. Well, my grandparents were all Republicans on both sides, and my father and mother were Republicans so that helped.

But what really helped was this. I grew up in a middle class suburb of D.C. All of our neighbors were left wing Democrats. They were always whining and moaning about how the Rosenbergs were innocent, about how McCarthy was persecuting the Jews, about how bad things were in America.

I read history. I knew these people were deeply confused. Things were not bad in America-they were unbelievably good. For us Jews especially, we had it better than any Jews in history had ever had it. No one was trying to kill us. No one was putting us in concentration camps. Yes, there were restricted neighborhoods and clubs, but we had our own great neighborhoods and clubs. And the restrictions were all coming down anyway.

Our lives in America were bliss compared with what had happened to Jews everywhere else through history. What on earth were these complaining Liberals talking about? In fact, life was great for Irish Americans, and German Americans, and Italian Americans, and Asian Americans. And even for the African Americans, for whom things had once been truly atrocious, conditions were improving dramatically and rapidly. For Hispanic Americans, however things were here, they were incomparably better than in Mexico.

The media, the commentators, the liberals did not understand this and complained endlessly. Who understood that America was unique and blessed beyond all the nations of the earth? The Republicans. They looked at America through the prism of gratitude. I had a neighbor on my street named David Scull. He was from a very famous old Republican family in Philadelphia and he was in Montgomery County politics in Maryland. His son was my best friend, so Mr. Scull took us to Republican rallies and fundraisers, and the scales fell from my eyes.

These Republicans were just what I had been looking for: they were not angry. They were not bitter. They were not looking for a fight. They were not paranoid. They were not anti-Semites or racists. They were grown ups, with a fine appreciation of just how wonderful life in these United States was.

Nor did the GOP have its head in the sand. The GOP was not reactionary. We did not say that everything was perfect and nothing needed changing.

Under Dwight Eisenhower, the first major beginnings were made of desegregating the public schools. He stood up to the worst racism calmly, without hysterics, but firmly. Under Dwight Eisenhower, we stood up to the Russians and fought the cold war vigorously and resolutely. In the Eisenhower years we had eight long years of prosperity and no inflation, a record still not matched.

Under Nixon, we ended the last of the school segregation. We started the long struggle to clean up the environment. He brought the POWs home and brought about the framework to end the cold war by recognizing China and showing Russia it could not win the cold war or a hot war

Plus, something that Nixon is never given enough credit for: Richard Nixon saved Israel in the '73 Yom Kippur War. Lyndon Johnson, who got all of the Jewish votes, in 1964, had not lifted a finger to help Israel in 1967 when the whole Arab world was against Israel. But Richard Nixon, who had gotten almost no votes from Jews in 1968 and not a lot in 1972, moved heaven and earth to resupply Israel and save Israel's life. He did this out of a deep principle of humanitarianism. When I hear him, the savior of Israel, the appointer to high office of Kissinger and Burns and my own father, Herbert Stein, described as an anti-Semite, it makes me want to scream. This man was the best friend the Jews ever had.

Then one of the most decent solid men ever to sit in the White House, Gerald Ford, and my hero, Ronald Reagan. The man who believed the sun was rising, not setting, on freedom, the man who energized America to win the cold war. If ever there was a man whom every school child should thank God for, it would be Ronald Reagan.

Then the two Bushes. Bush 41, who stood up to Saddam Hussein, who showed that the free could be motivated to fight aggression. And now the perfect man to fight the war against terror-George W. Bush. A man without anger except in defense of human life, a man who does not equivocate or find excuses for our enemies the way Clinton does. A man who sees it plain: America is the best hope of a decent mankind. The terrorists are the enemies of life itself.

If ever the man and the moment had met, it is now, when we have a man of essential decency, fighting the war for a decent humanity. I thank God every night that he is our President, especially at this moment. And those of you from the White House who are here, please carry back the message: forget the critics and the complainers. The nation is with you in this struggle for the life of the nation and of every decent man, woman and child, and for freedom itself. The critics may carp at this or that. But the American people are with you.

But I want to get back to something more local, more individual, on both a smaller and a larger scale than the President. I am a Republican in very large measure because Republicans, Conservatives, have nice looks on their faces. They do not look angry or bitter or Farbissineh, as my mother would say. They don't look crazy. They look sane and friendly and rational.

If you are in a room of liberals, some will be very nice and some will be pleasant, but many of them will look like they are spoiling for a fight. They look angry and crazed.

Republicans, conservatives, look calm and happy and confident. If you want to see a normal, sane looking crew, look at the Republicans or Conservatives in Little Rock or Heber Springs, Arkansas or in Idabel, Oklahoma. They look so darned normal and unthreatening it makes my heart sing.

And now I come to the meat of my thoughts. I firmly believe that politics grows from personality. People with sane minds have sane politics and they have nice looks on their faces. People who had happy childhoods have happy politics. People who but love and respect their parents sane politics, whether Republican or not-but usually Republican. And these sane people are our natural allies in this insane world.

I love being at Republican conventions. I love being at fundraisers for Republicans in Orange County. Because I love being around friendly, kind people, and that's what Conservatives usually are. My mother, God bless her soul, used to say about the Republicans, that there is more compassion in a small room full of Republicans than at all of Harvard.

And this is again why the Republican Party is the primary engine for decency in the world. The Party is a party made up of essentially decent people, happy with themselves and not at war with the world. This is why the Republicans can make sound policies. They are sound inside themselves. And it shows.

Now, I am going to close with a few words of humble thanks. I have pretty much given up on the liberals. They defend the most virulent haters. The Democrats' liberal wing-which is almost all of them now-defend vile anti-Semites, defend those who defend terrorists, will not stand up for human life in the womb, in the United States, in Israel. The liberals in Europe are leading the way for the liberals in America to be a party of frank, old-fashioned anti-Semitism. Only the Grand Old Party, in all of the world, stands up and shouts that it will defend freedom, defend the weakest and most innocent among us, born or not yet born. Only the happy warriors of the GOP stand up for poor little Israel when everyone else has forsaken Israel. Only the good people of Main Street in ten thousand American towns and small cities stand up for allowing the Jewish people to have some rights to survival. God bless you for that.

And this, again, is the essence of the Republican party. It is a great party because it has great people in it. People with wonderful looks on their faces. People with great hearts. People who see America through the prism of gratitude. We see problems, but we mostly see an America well worth praising and preserving.

We see the whole world through the glass of our own gratitude to God for what we have and who we are, and we are determined to protect and preserve what God has given us in this shining city on a hill. That is what makes us Republicans. And I am very glad to be one.

I am honored to have spoken to you this early morning. You know in your hearts what every decent American knows. That we love this country and want to help her. That we must ask God to help America, but that in the still small place in our heart, we hear the Almighty saying back to us, that here on earth, God's work must truly be our own. END.