Featured Speech
GOD BLESS AMERICA AND MEND ITS EVERY FLAW
by William Perry Pendley
It was a book package with a plastic zip cord. When I pulled the cord acrid white smoke billowed out-I remember the hiss and the strange smell-and moments later, a terrific flash.
These were the observations of Professor David Gelernter of Yale University who was nearly killed by the Unabomber in June 1993. They may well have been the observations of my friend Gil Murray, President of the California Forestry Association. But we will never know. Gil was killed instantaneously.
In Professor Gelernter's book Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber:
He chronicles his struggle to, in his words, "confront the world one-handed and one-eyed [for] there are precious few activities that don't involve clear vision and your right hand. My deep confusion is not a question of everyday tactics, it is the rest of my life."
He writes of the Unabomber, who was still at large at that point: "the manhunt rarely left our minds. Events as the months passed made the tension tighten, not slack off."
In late 1994, the Unabomber killed a man "with a family and children and … a big heart," leading Professor Gelernter to conclude, "An especially good man represents to a wicked one the ultimate danger-the conscience and justice he hates and can never silence."
In the summer of 1995, the Unabomber writes Gelernter, invoking, incredibly, the name of God: "May the Lord strike you dead, or better yet may I strike you dead and the Lord merely grant me the necessary skill with explosives."
At last, in 1996, the Unabomber was captured. Then came, for Professor Gelernter, the greatest shock of all, the response of intellectuals and the liberal, mainstream media to the Unabomber, his writings, and his deeds. Instead of the universal condemnation that Professor Gelernter expected, wanted, and needed, the media fawned over the "brilliant mathematician" who had sought refuge from civilization in a back to nature, rustic cabin in Montana.
"He makes a lot of good points, the media said. "We should listen to him," they cried. "We ignore his point of view at civilization's peril," they cautioned. Finally, for Professor Gelernter came the ultimate insult: People magazine named the Unabomber, a man Professor Gelernter called a "squalid cutthroat coward," "one of the most fascinating people of 1996." For Professor Gelernter, it took his breath away:
It forces you to ask what is wrong with us? What makes us blur the line between good and evil and, in so doing, invite criminals to attack us and terrorists to kill our children? I found myself turning this question over night and day; I had no choice.
When you are trying to figure out how a society thinks and feels, words are the surest route to the truth. In recent years we have gotten the habit of using "judgmental" as a pejorative.
Don't be surprised, don't be upset, don't be judgmental. Be passive; morally and spiritually. Our "resilience," our "practicality," our unsurprise, our noble disdain for "being judgmental"-how could it all possibly be just the effect of violence and no part of the cause?
I have thought often of Professor Gelernter and his book Drawing Life over the past few weeks and of the parallels to the events of September 11: the invoking of the name of God or Allah, the unending struggle to cope with pain and life-changing injuries, the tightening tension of the manhunt, the attack upon what is good and just, and the apparent invitation to do just that.
The morning of September 11, just hours before jets hit the World Trade Center, the New York Times hit the news stands with a laudatory article on the just-published memoirs of a "distinguished" professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago regarding his years as a bomber with the Weathermen. Professor Bill Ayers, who participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, the U.S. Capitol in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972, had no apologies. "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough."
And then the buildings began to fall.
In the days that followed the attack of September 11, we have learned and paid a terrible price for not being judgmental, for not having the courage, as a society, to call evil by its name and to condemn it. It would be laughable, for example, were the situation not so tragic, that the Clinton State Department stopped calling countries that foment and support terrorism, "rogue states." Instead, unwilling to be judgmental or give offense, Clinton's officials called them as "states of concern."
We have learned and paid a dreadful price for allowing our leaders--men like the late Senator Frank Church of Idaho, President Jimmy Carter, and President Bill Clinton--to destroy the CIA and its ability to do its job, not just, over the years, in monumental ways, but in minor ones too. Recently, for example, we have heard complaints from CIA employees that they spend endless amounts of time in sensitivity training seminars, some of which end with the stitching of "diversity quilts." In our dream world existence, of wars and rumors of war forever far removed from us, we have allowed the left to pervert the mission of our federal agencies:
In 1973, Congressman John Dingell of Michigan, urging passage of the Endangered Species Act, said that the problem with past such acts was that the Defense Department had asserted that it could not comply with them because its first duty was protecting the country. "Not any more," cried Dingell, "its number one job is protecting endangered species." I wonder if Dingell is saying that today, now that homo sapiens Americanus, in its habitat in New York City and Washington, D.C. is under assault.
In 1996, the Clinton Administration turned the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) into an international welcome wagon, ordering it to ignore the rules to rush through as many as half a million aliens, so they could vote in that year's presidential election.
And I wonder if any reporter will have the temerity to ask gubernatorial want-to-be Janet Reno if there might have been better things for the FBI to do than to lay siege to citizens at places like Waco, Texas.
We have learned and paid a heartbreaking price for allowing our leaders to look the other way when terrorists kill Americans:
241 Marines in their barracks in Beirut, Lebanon;
Navy diver Robbie Stethem on TWA flight 847;
CIA Officer William Buckley in 1985;
Marine Lt. Colonel William Higgins in 1989;
the men and women at the World Trade Center in 1993;
Americans and those working for them at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; and
the officers and men and women aboard the USS Cole in 2000.
For as Jeff Jacoby, of the Boston Globe, points out, the vicious terrorists of the world saw these events and "concluded that America was rich but cowardly, mighty in arms but weak in spirit, unwilling to fight for its principles or to risk its sons in battle. America, they decided had gone soft. And so the time had come to attack." And so they did. And so, as the only nation capable of setting the world free from the oppression of terrorism and the terror of oppression, we must respond. In the end, as one writer has suggested, quoting a Roman leader, oderint dum metuant ("let them hate, so long as they fear").
I believe, as I am sure you believe, that, to paraphrase the concluding words of the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! as spoken by the Japanese Admiral who led the attack on Pearl Harbor: "They have awakened a great sleeping giant."
As that giant has awakened, we have shown the world our best.
America is united as never before. I saw a political cartoon the other day portraying Americans before and after the attack. Before they wore a host of hyphenated American shirts, African-American, Japanese-American, Mexican-American, etc. After, their shirts all had the same word, American! It truly is as Justice Scalia said in the Adarand case, "[W]e are just one race here. It is American." By the way, on October 31, I will have the honor and privilege of arguing before the Supreme Court in the Adarand case; it will be the third time the Court has ruled on it and I hope the last. The issue before the Court is whether the federal government may distinguish between and among Americans on the basis of race. As Americans of all races and ethnicities stand shoulder to shoulder in uniform abroad, I eagerly await the argument of the United States. Will it really assert that, notwithstanding the September 11 attack on all Americans and our unity in response, that some Americans, solely on the basis of their race, must be treated differently?
America has demonstrated that it deserves its reputation as the world's most compassionate nation. Remember, before September 11, America led all other nations in the provision of privately funded relief to Afghanistan. And we have rushed, in an unprecedented way, to aid our fellow Americans in their time of need and grief. Today our condolences go out to the victims, their families, and friends and other suffering because of this unspeakable atrocity, and our prayers go forward to those who wear the uniform of this great country into the war that has been declared against us.
America has shown the world true heroism. New York City firemen and policemen ran toward the danger, not away from it, to save the lives of those placed in their care. I would like to share with you one other story of heroism, the story told by Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated, the story of the huge rugby player, the former high school football star, the one-time college baseball player, and the former national judo champion. It was these four men, aboard United Airlines flight 93, who fought back, forced their way into the cockpit, and flew the Boeing 757 into the ground near Pittsburgh instead of allowing the terrorists to fly it into the U.S. Capitol. So as you remember the names Church, Carter, and Clinton, who got us into this mess, remember too the names Beamer, Bingham, Burnett, and Glick who showed us the way out.
We learned from Beamer, Bingham, Burnett, and Glick yet another lesson. Too many of us have become passive. For example, we have allowed our government to say, "Give us your guns, your knives, and your mace and we will protect you." But it did not and it cannot. So much is up to us as individuals.
It is up to us in our homes and our families.
It is up to us in our jobs. And in saying this I am mindful of the man under arrest in Virginia who swore a false affidavit that was accepted by a clerk that allowed one of the terrorists to obtain a driver's license, without which the terrorist could not have obtained a credit card, without which the terrorist could not have bought a first class ticket, without which the terrorist could not have boarded that flight, without which…. What is it the Ten Commandments say about "bearing false witness?"
It is up to us as citizens. We have an obligation to demand more of our political leaders. We have an obligation to demand that our government fulfill its constitutional and statutory obligations, including, first and foremost, its duty to protect the nation's security. Salus populi suprema lex. We have an obligation, too, to make America better. For one of the great things about this, the greatest country ever, is that we as a people are committed to making it better, for all Americans. That was the vision of our Founding Fathers; it must be our vision as well. America is not only way ahead of whatever country is in second place, we are pulling even further ahead.
This occurred to me the other day in church as we were singing "America, the Beautiful." You remember the words, "God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, They liberty in law. May God thy gold refine, 'Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine."
Thus, we as citizens have an obligation to do what we at Mountain States Legal Foundation have done for the past quarter of a century, that is, to fight to preserve the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and to demand compliance by our government with the laws of the land. Mountain States Legal Foundation does that by representing people who can not afford an attorney to go to court to set nationally significant legal precedents for freedom. To do that takes hard work, courageous clients, and the support of tens of thousands of loyal donors from throughout the country. Those donors believe, not only in the work of Mountain States Legal Foundation, but also in its slogan all these many years, "Freedom is not free."
Let me also provide a practical consideration for why this very important work in which Mountain States Legal Foundation engages must continue in the weeks, months, and years ahead. Prior to September 11, the Bush Administration had great difficulty getting its appointees in place. In fact, just a few months ago, the only Bush appointee in the U.S. Department of Justice was Attorney General John Ashcroft. One of the jokes, if you can call it that, was that Secretary Norton was "Home Alone" at the Department of the Interior, the only Bush appointee in that vast and important agency. In the past several weeks, many, although not all, of those appointees have been put in place and most observers thought that President Bush could turn to accomplishing the initiatives he had spoken of during the campaign, especially as they relate to policies that affect the West and rural America.
However, with the attack of September 11, President Bush has made it clear that the predominant issue of his administration is eradicating the threat of terrorism to Americans, America, and the world. I can assure you, having served in the Reagan Administration, that President Bush has conveyed that message to his Cabinet officers and they have told their subordinates that they all share that same priority. As a result, for many of the top officials in the Bush Administration, efforts to undo the damage done by the Clinton Administration regarding domestic policy must wait.
That is why Mountain States Legal Foundation is not waiting. It is moving forward with litigation to undue the mistakes of the past, to restore the liberties of the Constitution, to demand compliance with federal law, and to fight for the rights of individual Americans. Let me share some of those efforts with you.
President Clinton was famous for his war on the West, beginning with his illegal creation of monuments throughout the west, by which he removed federal land from availability for economic and recreational activity. Mountain States Legal Foundation sued Clinton in Utah for creation of the Escalante-Grand Staircase National Monument, by which he prevented the mining of a rich coal reserve, which would have provided 1,000 jobs and an annual revenue stream of twenty million dollar to economically hard-pressed rural southern Utah. Mountain States Legal Foundation also sued Clinton in Washington, D.C. for national monuments in Washington State, Oregon, Colorado, and Arizona. Both of these lawsuits are still before federal trial courts.
Mountain States Legal Foundation challenged Clinton's lock up of sixty million acres of national forest. People in rural northwestern Montana assert that Clinton's lock up kills their attempt to diversify from the mining and timber jobs killed by Clinton to ones involving recreation. Other Mountain States Legal Foundation clients in the case assert that Clinton's lock up will prevent them from maintaining forest health and from fighting deadly forest fires. The Bush Administration, having suffered a defeat in a similar case in Idaho, has asked that the Montana case be delayed. Mountain States Legal Foundation is demanding that the case go forward.
In Nevada, Mountain States Legal Foundation represents John Bernt, a miner who staked mining claims on open national forest service lands. Much to his horror, he discovered federal employees, fraudulently and illegally, had backdated official documents to make it appear as if his claims were out of date. I believe those officials simply followed the example of President Clinton, concluding that, if Clinton can lie about matters trivial and tawdry, they could lie about matters immediate and important.
On behalf of rural people in Idaho and Montana, Mountain States Legal Foundation objected to the Clinton plan of putting grizzly bears where westerners live, work, and play. This is one Clinton policy that Secretary Norton, after notice of Mountain States Legal Foundation's planned lawsuit, abandoned.
Mountain States Legal Foundation is defending Kathy Stupak-Thrall in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, who was denied the right to use her property because it is near a federal wilderness area. In Arizona, Mountain States Legal Foundation is fighting Clinton Administration regulations that would deny the ability of nearly a million people a year, many of them elderly or infirm, to see the Grand Canyon. These regulations were adopted because a handful of youthful hikers said the faint and distant sounds of aircraft interfered with their national park experience. In these difficult economic times, how trivial such objections sound.
Mountain States Legal Foundation represents farmers and ranchers in southern Wyoming and northern Colorado who have been told by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that they must give up their water rights to save endangered species in Nebraska. These folks discovered, upon reading Forest Service documents, that the Forest Service, simply by harvesting more timber in the local forests, could, without harming water quality, generate more than enough water for the species. Remarkably, the Forest Service says it has no obligation to protect species, that private parties must do so by forfeiting their water rights.
One of the initiatives of the Clinton Administration was closing federal land to the public if Native Americans asserted that the land was "sacred." This policy began at Devils Tower in northeastern Wyoming. More recently, Mountain States Legal Foundation challenged the Clinton Administration's closure of portions of the Bighorn National Forest west of Sheridan, Wyoming, to timber harvesting. The Forest Service has declared that all of Medicine Mountain is to be managed as a "sacred site." By the way, the timber mill in Sheridan is the largest private employer in the county. Mountain States Legal Foundation has also challenged the closure of portions of the Rainbow Bridge National Monument in Utah to tourists.
Mountain States Legal Foundation has been aggressive in its defense of private property. Near Marthasville, Missouri, Mountain States Legal Foundation is defending the property rights of the Glosemeyer family. The Glosemeyers had a deed that gave a railroad an easement across their property. The easement provided that, when the railroad went away, the property would revert to the Glosemeyers. However, Congress passed the Rails to Trails Act, which interfered with that right, compelling the railroad easement to become a recreational trail. As a result, today, 20,000 people a weekend parade across the Glosemeyers' land. Mountain States Legal Foundation argued that their property had been taken and they were owed "just compensation;" the federal judge agree.
On September 13, Mountain States Legal Foundation prevailed in a long running battle involving Larry Squires of Hobbs, New Mexico. Years ago, Dr. Squires, a veterinarian, learned that the oil and gas industry intended to dispose of waters produced during oil and gas operations in sinkholes near his land. Because he is a self-proclaimed environmentalist, he wanted to make sure that such an activity was safe and prudent. He hired a hydrologist who advised him that there was 300 feet of impermeable clay beneath the sink holes, there was no ground water beneath that, and the nearest stream was forty miles away. So Larry entered into the business of disposing of those waters on his land.
In 1992, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) served him with a cease and desist order, asserting that his lands were "waters of the United States." What is the basis for the EPA's assertion, in an area with 13 inches of annual rainfall and an evaporation rate of more than 100 inches? The EPA argued that every one hundred years or so, it rains hard enough that water collects in the sinkholes and that, until the water evaporates, birds engaged in interstate commerce land there. That made the sinkholes "waters of the United States." Over the EPA's objection, a federal court has ruled that Larry Squires' property has been taken and he is owed just compensation.
In January 1999, Timothy Kornwolf heard a knock at the door of his home in Stillwater, Minnesota. The man at the door introduced himself as a Norwegian collector of native artifacts, who owned Laplander artifacts and was interested in purchasing Native American materials. He had heard Kornwolf had a golden eagle headdress and a dance shield. The man from Norway had a suitcase filled with money, which he opened for Kornwolf. After several hours Kornwolf agreed to sell the items, which he had been given by his great Uncle Nick who had traveled with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. What Kornwolf did not know was that the man from Norway was an undercover agent for the Fish and Wildlife Service and that, in addition to the money in his suitcase, he had a hidden camera and recorder.
Subsequently, Kornwolf was arrested and charged with selling feathers he had the legal right to own. It is the federal government's position that while Kornwolf could own the feathers, he could never sell them. Mountain States Legal Foundation, in a brief it filed in support of Kornwolf, disagrees noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected that notion. After all, one of the most essential aspects of property rights is the right to sell that property. One might want to ask Secretary Norton, on whose watch these events did not occur, if the best use of federal law enforcement officials is sending them into the homes of citizens with suitcases full of cash to persuade them to violate the law, especially during these dangerous times.
In a case related to Mountain States Legal Foundation's famous Adarand case, the Clinton Administration sued tiny Blaine County, Montana, asserting that Blaine County must racially gerrymander its commissioner districts to ensure the election of a Native American commissioner. In its lawsuit, it asserts that things done by the United States and by Montana more than 100 years ago demonstrate current racial bias. Blaine County asked Mountain States Legal Foundation's assistance in defending against this absurd and offensive lawsuit. This is yet another case that could make its way to the Supreme Court. To reaffirm the point I made earlier, about litigating against the Bush Administration, I regret to say that the Bush Administration is pressing forward with this lawsuit.
In two cases involving actions by local government, Mountain States Legal Foundation is defending the constitutional rights of all Americans. Years ago, Montana adopted a statute that gave the public access to private land by declaring that non-navigable streams across private land were open for recreation. Long time property owners asserted that the law deprived them of their rights in violation of the Due Process Clause. Mountain States Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit on behalf of those property owners.
In another case, Montana adopted a ballot initiative that barred corporations and groups receiving corporate support, like trade associations and grass roots groups, from participating in ballot initiatives. Because of this ban on the right of Montanans to speak and to hear speech, a ballot initiative banning certain types of mining was enacted. Mountain States Legal Foundation challenged the speech ban and the right of Montana to enforce the mining ban since it was adopted in a constitutionally tainted election. The speech ban was declared unconstitutional, but the mining ban was upheld. The Ninth Circuit held that although the First Amendment had been violated, it would be a hardship to require Montana to hold another election. That case is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Of course, there are a host of other cases in which Mountain States Legal Foundation is engaged. They are all set forth in great detail at the web site: www.mountainstateslegal.com. I urge you to explore that site.
In the days, weeks, and months ahead, as we persevere, as we prepare to prevail over tyranny and terror, I urge you to be of good cheer. Enjoy life, enjoy your families, enjoy one another, and enjoy this great, beautiful and wonderful country. As reported recently in National Review, in the early, dark days of World War II, Winston Churchill told British diplomats abroad:
to light their windows;
to hold their usual functions;
to conduct themselves with confidence and spirit.
It was good advice then. It is great advice now.
Thank you. And God bless America.
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