I am here to implore you as conservatives, not necessarily with a capital C, but conservatives in values, be you a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent, to raise your voice and take this country back. By that I don’t necessarily mean to take back the White House, since it has been in conservative hands for the last two terms; nor the Congress, though it is now controlled by Liberals; nor the Judiciary, which has continued its activism to legislate and seek social justice instead of merely applying or interpreting the law. What I am asking is that we begin the long and arduous task of winning back the soul, the heart and the mind of our freedom loving country.

Liberty and equality are not the same. Our Founding Fathers understood that. The United States has more recently fallen prey to the European ideal of equality. Liberty may not breed equality but it certainly provides the foundation upon which our personal and national dreams rest. Equality does not breed liberty, only a widespread bland uniformity that limits our ability to dream and carry out those dreams. We must strive to remain free to pursue our happiness through the ability to dream, for ourselves, for our families, for our country and for the betterment of this world. Throughout our history, as well as our future, this will be achieved by people having the liberty to succeed and fail. We have done very well in taking care of those who have not found success in our system. Our goal should not be to aspire to the diminished dreams of the less fortunate, but through our successes to raise them up with us.

It is our values that ultimately should help us to make a decision on who should lead our nation. I make the same call to our brethren in the Democratic Party. We may have some different ideas on how to continue to keep this country as the greatest beacon of hope, peace and prosperity in the world, but we should not be divided on that goal. The fate of the world depends on our strength.

Victor Frankl stated it so simply and eloquently in his book, "Man’s Search For Meaning", that the world can be divided into two types of people, the decent and the indecent. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, saw that there are good and bad people across all other artificial divisions. For me this means that if you are a man, it does not make you as irrelevant as a bicycle to a fish. If you are a woman, it doesn’t mean you are man with a female anatomy. If you are white, it does not make you an oppressor. If you are a minority, it does not make you a victim. If you are rich, it does not mean you only care about money. If you are poor, it does not mean you are unable to lift yourself out of poverty. If you are a Liberal, it doesn’t mean you don’t have standards. If you are a Conservative, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a heart. You are guaranteed to find the best and worst of people on either side.

The debate is over. Education is failing in this country. 40 years of programs, hundreds of billions of dollars, new teaching methods and emphasis on so much else but learning, have led us to a situation where we are far from helping our children to excel. The mantra we hear from the NEA, the ATF and the Department Of Education is "we need more money." They hold our children, and even our teachers, hostage until we give more. The results, however, do not change. I say, "No more." We need to allow state and local communities to determine where and how to spend their education budgets. We need to give parents a choice of where to send their children. Just ask your governmental leaders where they send their children to school. A great number of them send their children to private schools. Why can’t we have the same opportunity? Educational institutions will compete to have the opportunity to educate our children. Competition will breed excellence. Excellence in our schools will lead to the continued role of America as the world leader.

The debate is not over in terms of the environment. We must allow those scientists with a different perspective to voice their opinion. They are not ‘oil industry shills’ just as it is assumed that those that support global warming are not considered ‘environmental shills’. Science is not, and never has been, relegated to consensus. Science must always challenge that which we know, or presume to know, today, only to be challenged again by future scientists. I, like you, care about the environment. I want my children to inherit a world similar to the one I lived in, if not better. I do not, however, subscribe to the hysterical fear mongering which we are fed daily. If environmental prophecies were accurate, we should be living in an ice age by now or would have starved due to over population. At the core of global warming is an attempt to understand the weather, not just today’s weather but weather patterns over centuries and millennia. Climate change has occurred with and without human intervention. This is fact. The complexity of this world is more intricate than a spider’s web. I pray we do not cause greater damage to more change-sensitive parts of the world, specifically the Third World, over an idea that is faulty at best.

I ask that you look at the person next to you, regardless of gender, race, or color and see in them an American. No hyphens necessary. Personally, I do not look to advance Hispanic agendas. I would hope that any other American leader would look to advance our American ideals, not to segment our nation into groups with contradictory goals. E pluribus unum, ‘from many one’, is one of the foundations of this country. The moment we start to re-think the fabric of the American experiment and believe it to mean, ‘from one many’, we will have made great strides to undo the seam of our strength. Let me emphasize, however, that we do need some disunity. We need to have those individuals who will push us forward. There is something to be said for the red and blue states. Without the continued need to improve, innovation ceases and a society will be passed over by others with a need to advance.

We are not a divided America. We are a country of diverse beliefs and ideas, however, we are ultimately Americans and have faced the world as such when the opportunity has presented itself. We are not a racist country; however, racism does exist here. Racism has existed in every society throughout history. We are excellent as human beings in finding the differences which separate us. There are two key things to consider when it comes to racism. First, racist sentiments are not the sole property of whites. I have seen the flip side of racist remarks and attitudes in our minority communities. These racist words, ideas and actions are not only tolerated but accepted due to the fear that calling them for what they truly are is politically incorrect and will itself be taken as a racist reaction. We cannot have two sets of rules in this country, one for whites and one for minorities. Regardless of who says or does something which is racist, it must be recognized for what it is. I expect, and am quite capable of dealing with, true equality. I do not need the condescension from those who feel I need special protection or special programs. I am no more special than the Jews, the Irish, the Germans, the Italians and all the other immigrants which came into this country over the centuries. Secondly, racism is not the greatest obstacle for minorities getting ahead in this country. ‘The’ obstacle is the loss of the values which help us to overcome our challenges. We must learn English, not at the expense of our native language, but well enough to traverse the economic and educational landscape successfully. Ask someone in Bangalore, India how advantageous it is to speak English. Or in the Philippines. English is the accepted business language of the world. To not master it places those individuals in great economic jeopardy. It is that simple. At the core of this is to value education. We must maintain our strong work ethic and strong family values. We should expect to earn everything, and expect nothing for free. There is a high price for getting something for nothing and that is remaining in the same subnormal situation for the long term. That is no fair exchange.

For my Hispanic brethren, let me make this clear, efforts to stem the large amount of illegal immigration are not racist. In a Post 9/11 America we must be concerned with national security. This cannot be understated. It is also fact, that our social systems are being overwhelmed by our illegal population. To be clear again, our illegal immigrants do contribute to our society and our economy. They keep prices low for many goods and services which their labor touches. Consider, however, that there are countless people trying to get into this country from all over the world. I would ask those Hispanics who take offense to tackling the illegal immigration problem to consider how moral it is to keep other people, in far off lands, waiting while others cut in line. If you, as Hispanics, only care about other Hispanics trying to get into this country, you have to question your assertion of social justice as the reason for your position. We must also be concerned about the harrowing nightmare of crossing deserts to get into this country. We cannot be unconcerned about those who lose their lives in search of a better one. Ultimately, we must respect the sovereignty of the U.S.. There is a way into this country, there always has been. Many of us went through that process and are far better off for having done that. A final thought, either you or your ancestors made a decision to come here for a better life. Why would we want to turn this place into the place that we left for its lack of opportunities? Appreciate the greatness of this country. It is your country now.

Finally, we must strive to maintain the religious values upon which this country was founded. There is no established religion here. We are very open to any number of religious beliefs or no religious beliefs. Our ideals, however, come from our Judeo-Christian values. It is these values which allow for our tolerance and acceptance of the many religious beliefs which make up our nation. G.K. Chesterton once said that those who believe in nothing are doomed to believe anything. There is no reason for us to cease believing in this nation and the religious beliefs which are its foundation. I do not seek paradise on earth, but only a place where a greater number of people have the opportunity to live out their dreams. I seek my paradise somewhere other than here after I die. Be careful of those who wish to make their paradise on this earth. We need only to look at our former foes in the Soviet Union to realize what a godless society created. It was no paradise.

We have lost our way. We have not lost our empire, because unlike any other super power in history, we never had one. Instead of taking land we worked to instill the same ideals in other countries. We gave up our own fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, neighbors, everything we had to fight and protect those whose liberty was taken or threatened. It was not all completely altruistic, we did look out for our American interests, however, more than any other country in history we have produced more good than not. We cannot rest. We cannot feel entitled. We must fight for our ideals. We must make sure they are taken forward by our children. This will not happen by default, it is something we have to work hard at. Ultimately, we must remain free, not just from foreign forces but from our own worst natures which would exchange freedom for healthcare, for safety from second hand smoke, from hysterical fears about the weather. We, the people, have done very well handling our freedoms for over 230 years. We do not need a nanny state to ease our freedoms away, the price is too great, for us and for the world.