The President Speaks: Custer

I’m standing in the rolling hills of the Little Big Horn in Montana. 147 years ago, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer went down here in the most famous defeat in America’s history.

The nation was shocked. How could a man with such confidence, talent, stamina, courage and luck be defeated? How could a man so in love with life and America, a man who personified the energy and optimism of our nation be defeated? America was on the rise, but the man with the greatest spirit and the free flowing hair was dead.

Unfortunately, today’s Americans are cynical. Many people are glad Custer was killed. They see arrogance rather than courage. They see selfishness rather than patriotism. Not only are these people glad Custer was killed, they are glad America is degenerating and cannot wait to see it defeated or decompose.

This troubles me. We, as a nation and as individuals, can and must learn from Custer’s big headedness. Up to now we have not seen it as an omen of what can happen to a nation because of the overconfidence of a president or Cabinet member. It is imperative that we move cautiously through the world and that as the nation’s leader, I do not have the hubris that has been recently exemplified.

Even so, Custer is one of America’s great men. Nobody loved being a soldier to the extent he did. This created envy among his colleagues who joined the Army to please their family or to avoid working.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? We work at jobs we cannot stand, only to be envious of our colleagues or bosses who love being there. In all our clamor for meaningful work, we should admire Custer for his love of soldiering before fulfilling careers were fashionable.

Another reason I think people love to denigrate Custer is because he was free. Americans today do not feel free, especially on the left. Someone who really does feel free, like Custer, who loves America and will die for it like Custer, is a threat to millions of unhapy Americans.

I know a lot of people criticize America’s Indian policy. They say Custer deserved to be killed and that nobody should complain. I am not complaining about his death. Neither would he.

What I am pointing out is that he was to people in the east in the 1870s what baseball players were to Americans in the 1910s. He had a job in a mythical arena, pursing a career most people did not have the ability to pursue.

He dealt with death yes. But death and violence are what make myths and stories and heroes. People love to look up to violent heroes or to heroes killed by violence.

Custer is heroic because he was free in one of the most unfree organizations: the military. He was a rebel who paid dearly for his rebellion during his career.

Freedom and rebellion no matter what the price is what made Custer great. It is also what should inspire we Americans to remember him, to mythologize him, to grow our hair long and wild, to live with relentless freedom and purpose.

The President Speaks: Father’s Day

I want to say Happy Father’s Day to Americas’s fathers. The most rewarding thing for most men is to have a wife he loves and who loves him, then bring that love to fruition by having children he loves dearly. He hopes his children love and admire him.

This is a difficult time to be a father. So many men have failed in their responsibilities. That failure has cast a harrowing shadow over men and fatherhood.

This is also a difficult time to be a man. Men are looked upon as being potential child molestors and rapists.

Men are expected to perform some of the traditional tasks of being a father – making enough money to support the family and devoting time and constructive energy to his children.

The most important task that the father had was to be the authority in the family, to have power over his family, to love his daughter and set an example of how girls and women should be treated, to tell his daughter not to confuse sex with love and a fashionable boy with a substantial boy.

The traditional father set an example for his son of manliness. Father instilled integrity and fairness into son. He told his son to fight for what you believe in and to admit when you are wrong.

The traditional father told his son not to take advantage of people. If the son stole or lied, he would be punished. If the son was a bully the father would hit his son so that the son would not bully anybody again.

This is fear. The son was supposed to fear his father. This fear carried over to school and social activities. The son feared to be a smart aleck at school because he knew what would happen if dad found out.

Fear is still here. Society fears obnoxious young people. Women fear men. Men fear to discipline their children because they might be reported or arrested for assault or child abuse.

Almost everyone agrees society is falling apart. Most people say children need fathers. But nobody says fathers have lost their power and that this power needs to be restored.

Nobody is saying that men need something meaningful to do and that boys need something meaningful to look forward to. Traditionally this has meant marriage and raising children.

In the 1980s women longed for men to take an interest in children. If not a man’s own, his nephews and nieces. Or a man could volunteer to work with children.

Following the disastrous neglect of children by their fathers between 1967 and 1980, women hoped men would see the light. One of the interesting things said was that children in hospitals needed to sit in the lap of a man.

All that has changed. A man is in danger if he lets his light shine. If he is affectionate with children he risks being accused of perversion. If he disciplines his rowdy son, he is accused of being violent against a child.

Women love to destroy the power, rights and confidence of men. Women with political power would rather a boy go to jail for grabbing a girl’s breast then be hit by his father for doing it. It’s okay for a boy to experience the violence of jail, but not an appropriate painful punishment from his father.

At the same time men are being destroyed by feminists and the government, our society is being destroyed because fathers have no role or power and men resort to crime and promiscuity, or succumb to alcoholism or drug addiction.

Fathers must fight for their place in the family and in society. You must fight for yourself even more vehemently than women have fought for the right to be promiscuous, have abortions, allow 14 year olds to have babies and receive day care at school, and to have you arrested because they think an act they do not like is a rape.

Men of America, you are not allowed to love being a man to the extent feminists love to destroy you. Our society desperately needs love, but you have to watch your moves. Love in America has been stifled.

As president, I am doing my best to provide men the political safety to love being a man, to risk your soul for a woman and to risk having children.

I am working with Congress to repeal the current sexual harrassment and rape laws. One or two of your senators and representatives are proposing legislation that will require somebody who accuses a man of a rape he is found innocent of to serve the sentence he would have served and to sign her assets to him.

My Education Secretary is suggesting that all elementary schools have 1/3 male teachers and that all high schools have one half male teachers. This should be an attainable goal if the other proposals are enacted.

This is an important start. Right now America is morally failing. It is failing its men, fathers and itself.

I hope that before my presidency expires, we are a nation of proud men and proud powerful fathers, that love has been restored between men and women and America is once again a blessed country.

The President Speaks: Nuclear arms

I want to take this opportunity today to address one of the most controversial issues regarding foreign policy. That issue is what countries should be allowed to have nuclear weapons?

Most countries do not develop nuclear weapons with the intention to strike first. The weapons are usually developed for defensive purposes.

With so many countries developing nuclear weapons, we must ask why is there so much mistrust between countries? What is each country doing that scares other countries?

Americans usually address this issue in the wrong way. We ask why are so many little countries developing nuclear weapons?

Part of the reason is they want to use them against each other. But a bigger reason is to protect themselves from the United States. They have perceived us as eager to take over the world, or at least prevent them from governing themselves without American intimidation.

Is America justified when we intimidate other countries? No we are not. Can we justifiably complain when other countries seek or are developing nuclear weapons? No we can’t. Should America be concerned that so many countries are as eager to develop nuclear weapons as we have been to control the world? Yes we should.

But it is important for us to remember that now we know how they feel. We still have more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined. Yet we always worry that someone will have what we have, though we have plenty, or someone will take back what we’ve stolen, though we will still have plenty.

We should worry that these countries will use their weapons, if not against us, then against some other country. The environmental disaster would be great. There is the possibility that the United States would become involved.

They might start something that we will finish. Then there will be no world for anyone to govern.

We cannot say that only we have the right to have and use nuclear weapons. When we do, other countries fear us and do not appreciate having to live in fear of us.

America must admit that we have far more nuclear weapons than we need. I have begun a disarmament policy with the Pentagon. The United States will reduce its nuclear arsenal to 10% of what we have.

90% of our nuclear weapons will be dismantled and recycled. We will still have plenty of weapons to defend ourselves from any nation trying to invade us or trying to physically take over the world like we have tried to financially control the world.

This means we will also reduce research funding for weapons by the same amount. A lot of people claim that if we reduce funding for weapons research, we will be vulnerable to another more ambitious country.

Yet America is so rich and has so many first rate research facililties, we could reignite a weapons program if we have to. But we won’t have to.

We won’t have to because if we cut our arsenal and our research we will be showing that we are fearless and have good intentions. Other countries will not fear us.

They can forget their plans to attain nuclear arms or stop the expansion of their programs. Our country and theirs willl be able to direct money from weapons of death to useful things for life.

But death is only part of what the world’s lust for weapons is about. The other aspect is fear.

Building so many nuclear weapons breeds fear. The increase in fear means that people or goverments will want more weapons to compensate for their fear.

This fear building makes people afraid to speak out against government policy. When they do speak out, it spreads animosity among Americans – one group saying the other group is aching for a fight, the second group claiming the people in the first group are naive or cowards. People lose the trust in each other that democracies are supposed to encourage.

Though it isn’t the image Americans have of ourselves, we have traditionally been aching for a fight. Most of the times our actions were cowardly. We are naive to think other nations do not have the right to protect themselves from us.

What I have done with my disarmament program is show that America no longer aches for a fight, that we will take the chance that other powers and nations be allowed to develop as they see fit.

But most importantly, I want America to be happy to the extent we are wealthy. It would be nice to spend money on hospitals, railroads, public transit, airports and seaports that went to researching and constructing nuclear weapons.

Our prosperity will increase noticeably. What will increase drastically is the trust, openness and good will that have been dormant for so long in America.

The President Speaks: Walt Whitman’s Birthday

Today we celebrate the birthday of Walt Whitman, America’s greatest poet. He is the poet who most believed in America and Americans, who loved his countrymen the way Tupac Shakur loved black people.

His love of America and its people was love founded upon the promise of democracy and the promise of America. What a combination.

Democracy allows people freedom. America allowed people a continent to be free in. You could find yourself in America, or you could invent yourself. The important thing to Whitman was everybody be genuine, love being genuine, demand others be genuine.

He believed when people were genuine, America would be glorious. He assumed everyone has a divine spark, that one is individual and a great person when you let yourself shine. He believed America would produce the world’s freest and greatest people because of our spiritual potential.

Whitman’s faith and exuberance is often considered naive. After all they say, we had slavery. We also had murder of Indians and slums of immigrants.

It is encouraging to know somebody had the faith and wisdom, no matter how naive, to believe in the ideals of America. It shows the power of faith, the power of the word Freedom, and the promise of democracy that Whitman could live America’s mantras.

Hardly anybody has done that. That is the challenge he poses, and also the hope.

Can we avoid the bad side of democracy like Whitman did? Can we, from here on out, reject the relentless pursit of money and materialism inherent in democracy that has prevented us from shining, from being genuine, from being beautiful?

We talk about too much stress. In his time artists bragged about having melancholia – that century’s term for depression. He rebelled against melancholia. He felt great and was going to shout to the world about it.

Whitman dares us to give up our stress, our conformity, our greed. The exhortations to be yourself – to seek others to show your real self off to, to marvel at their real self – have never been more timely.

That would destroy most of our stress. Our inflated sense of importance and struggle would be released.

We have failed Whitman. We love America but mainly because we are rich. We do not love each other.

Poets have failed Whitman and America. They have utilized their right to free speech, but not to praise the essence of America or demand and inspire Americans to be relentlessly true to what is great in them.

We have never known the great self in us. This is one of America’s worst tragedies. Slavery and the destruction of Indians could have been forgiven had we produced a nation of beautiful people living with a divine spark.

Parts of America have sung. Individuals in America have sung. But we as a nation have not sung.

As our industrial might and financial might diminishes, the rest of the world will be imitating our worst habits. We have an opportunity to fulfill Whitman’s vision, to grow up now that we’ve had everything that is frivilous and dangerous.

We, I hope, will love being who we are at the same time we love each other. I hope too, that people throughout the world see radiant faces and twinkling eyes in America, and that they say with envy: America has arrived.

The President Speaks: Memorial Day

This afternoon we commemorate Memorial Day.

Originally we observed Memorial Day to honor those who died in the Civil War. But as America engaged in more wars, it became our obligation to remember the militrary personnel who died in them.

I want first to talk about the Civil War. It was the event that shattered America’s image of itself. One historian wrote that people who had been raised to ask God for the grace to be a martyr, to die for His goodness without being violent, were called upon to be killers.

It was no longer just plantation owners and professional soldiers who were violent but one million or more men. As so many people said afterward, we lost our innocence, the belief that nothing bad could happen to us – especially something caused by ourselves.

Think what wars do. The Civil War made us realize we had stooped to the barbarism we always associated with Europe.

World War I destroyed the freeedom of movement between countries. In the United States civil liberties were removed. If you criticized the war or America’s foreign policy, you were arrested.

After World War II, rather than glory in our freedom we continued to wage war. Criticism of the mililtary and of foreign policy was dangerous. One could be branded a traitor for criticizing the nuclear arms race.

Our prosperity allowed us to forget the government’s suspicion of us. We trusted each other. We did not live in fear.

With Vietnam came division among us we had not experienced since the 1860s. The Vietnam War made America feel that we failed, that not only did we lose, we were wrong and we deserved to lose.

We became confident in the wrong way. We glorified drugs and cheap sex. We disrespected authority.

We felt that since the war was lost and also unjust, the government would learn its lesson.

While the government was supposedly learning its lesson, Americans abused personal freedom with as few qualms as those who waged the Vietnam War.

Then two Iraq wars revealed that we as a nation had not learned either a moral lesson, a political lesson or a constitutional lesson from Vietnam. Americans embraced each Iraq war, though each was unnecessary.

The sad thing about the Iraq wars was that our consumerism could not cancel out the government’s disrespect and mistrust of us. We lost our trust in each other at the same time we lost most of our civil liberties.

We were not able to see that if the government does not want you to be free, the next step is it won’t want you to be comfortable. The government that wants you afraid will eventually want you hungry.

Somebody just shouted, What’s the point? This.

War destroys civil liberties. It creates mistrust and cynicism. Our wars are claimed to be fought for freedom, but with each war people become less free.

In these cynical times it is easy to dismiss those who died for freedom because now we have little freedom. It is tempting to say their deaths have been a waste.

Likewise, those who passionately celebrate Memorial Day refuse to recognize how unfree America is. It is very difficult for my administration to try to bring freedom back to America and to keep the hawks in check.

We need to realize that battlefields are only one place where freedom is defended. The function of a battlefield is to protect freedom from foreign armies. Our heroes did their part.

We must do ours.

Fight for freedom at city council meetings, at the state legislature, at the offices of senators and representatives. Tell them you do not want to take loyalty oaths or be filmed all the time.

Meet with police departments and justice departments. Tell the officials their officers will be shot if they enter your house because they think you are suspicious. Tell them you will not answer questions about your neighbors.

But it isn’t just confrontation that preserves freedom. It is also lilfestyles. Our way of life does not preserve and encourage freedom. I read in a financial newspaper that democracies only work when citizens are not greedy.

I take this to mean if citizens are greedy, they do not pay attention to government.

When we decrease our shopping, as well as our fear of each other, we will start to feel what it’s like to be free. Then we will realize the military and law enforcement have attained too much power, that we foolishly assumed more laws and surveillance would protect us, that we are more afraid every year.

On this Memorial Day I want you my fellow citizens, to think about our heroes in a different way. If diplomacy fails to restore freedom, you owe it to them to dismantle our police state – physically, even if you have to strangle your brother who is an officer for Homeland Security or your sister who sells surveillance equipment to DHS.

The nation is in a crisis. There is no innocence to lose. Only gullibililty, deception and constant cowering.

If we do not rise against this police state, America will have failed, and will have failed with great cowardice, our courageous heroes.

The President Speaks: The Family

This evening I want to talk about the American family. A lot has happened in the last fifty years.

Families are not as big. The rate of divorce is high. Parents worry about their kids more. Fathers are often out of the picture.

There is a good thing though. Parents are not considered the enemy to the extent they were fifty years ago. Thanks to cell phones parents and kids can always communicate. Kids can call their mother for help. Mothers can call their kids to see how things are going.

But where is love? A lot of women have children without any intention of marrying the child’s father. Men do not seem to mind being on the periphery, to have no power and influence over their kids, to not live under the same roof as their kids and be a unit with the child’s mother.

America needs more love between men and women. America needs more couples marrying and having kids so we do not disappear from the map and Western culture does not disappear from the world.

It’s funny. People in their twenties have pets not children. Pornography viewing is astoundingly high. Sex with another man is the choice of an incredible number of men.

This lifestyle is celebrated throughout America. But this lifestyle does not produce children.

What can be done to make Americans want to have more kids? Some people say rent and loans to buy a house are too high for most people to plan to have children. Other people say health care is too expensive and wages are too low.

But there is more to it than this. Sex became a hobby over the last fifty years. People ridiculed marriage and men. Americans stopped believing in God. Too many Americans lost faith in their country and in Western culture.

My administration is pushing for rent control, more housing construction, cheaper home loans. We in Washington push for higher wages and affordable health insurance.

But if I succeed in all of these will Americans have more children? Our hedonism is ingrained in us. A hatred of Western culture is so deep and enjoyable for those who hate it, it’s as if they want our civilzation to disappear. If all of my administration’s economic measures became law, I doubt if there would be a large increase in the number of children.

I try to be optimistic but I am unable to be. A way to get Americans to have more children is for poiticians and movie stars to have 4-5 children so the rest of America is inspired by its leaders and heroes to create a populous America where parks are filled with children and streets and sidewalks are filled with kids playing outside.

In closing, it is a heartbreaker for me that my countrymen have no lust to have children, that our men are uninspiring.

We lust for the wrong things.

Good night.

The President Speaks: Free speech

Good evening. If I appear somber tonight, it is because I am troubled by recent controversies in the media. The controversies revolve around free speech – what somebody has the right to say and what somebody has the right not to hear.

As Americans, we have always been eager to exercise our right to free speech. We have not always had the maturity to use the right properly or the wisdom to know how easy it is to abuse that right. We also have not had, and do not have, the foresight to realize that if we abuse our right to free speech, the government can, and it should, take that right away.

Today we Americans are not strong. We use profanity freely. We become offended if somebody criticizes our bad language. In love with our so-called right to be a slob, we are enamored of ourselves rather than respectful of someone who demands their right not to listen to our garbage talk.

People who oppose profanity do not oppose my right or yours to have a strong, unusual or scary opinion. Like Thomas Paine said, I have a right to free speech but also a duty not to abuse it. For us that means not swearing in situations where it is not necessary or proper – such as on the radio or riding a bus.

What really do we need to be publicly profane about? Unjust wars. There was plenty of profanity used in protest of the Vietnam War. A few years ago there was a lot of profanity used opposing the Iraq War.

The problem with profanity is that it is easy. It is fun, energizing, rhythmic. People can rally profanely around a person or a cause that they hate, but become as disgusting and intolerant as those they oppose.

This is the danger of profanity, especially when it comes from poets, rappers, talk show hosts, film makers, comedians. The people we expect to have vision have led us into a cesspool.

We need new vision. We need people strong enough not to profanely reflect the disgusting morals many business leaders and my fellow politicans cultivate under noble words.

A truly spiritual emphasis by churches will attract people longing for goodness, who need an alternative to our profane greedy culture. These seekers desperately avoid the cynicism of profanely complaining about injustices. They wait to be inspired, to have somewhere to go to trust and feel honestly, to speak freely, to see how good others are.

We need artists to change, to create grand visions, even if it means producing less and making less money. Artists need to combine their anger and frustration with beauty so that listeners and viewers do not lose their spirit or their faith in institutions and America.

I think we have lost our ability to dream, not to fantasize about becoming rich, but to dream about a humble home where we can watch our children play in the back yard, and then, at middle age have the grandchildren come over for pie and a dip in the plastic wading pool we take delight in inflating.

These things make families happy. They make our neighborhoods stable and America great. You can always swear if you break your leg or get stung by a bee. People will understand.

There is a place for everything. We have misplaced profanity by using it all the time because we do not feel free. We show the extent of how powerless we are by how much we swear.

When Americans say we have the right to free speech, that humans have a right to free speech, we need to think our profanity through. Rather than challenge others to say why you shouldn’t be profane, ask yourself something. Will anyone dying, longing for peace, looking for truth or justice or courage, maturity, manhood, wisdom or spirituality be inspired by your profanity?

The President Speaks: Animal Rights

I am eager to talk today about animal rights. This is an important issue because it reveals a lot about us as a nation.

People who advocate for these rights are zealous. They understandably oppose hunting, slaughterhouses and the use of animals in research.

Advocates feel they are progressive in their zealousness. They assume America will have progressed when it has more respect for animals.

But animal rights advocates do not seem willing to listen or to admit they might be wrong. They do not acknowledge that maybe hunting is a wonderful way to be outdoors, that people enjoy meat and should not be forced to do without it, that researching on amimals helps science develop new medicines.

Advocates respond saying hunters murder. They say that there are other things to do outdoors besides hunt. They also say animals are in prison waiting to be slaughtered and that scientists are sadists torturing amimals.

Adocates think that they shine the light of morality and spirituality on American selfishness. They don’t. Their vision, like a lot of our American passion, is fashionable. They love to claim Western culture and science have destroyed the world – if only we were like the Hopis.

If somebody else is humbled by passion in The Bible, terrified of the hatred the Athenians and Spartans had for each other because it reminds him of ours and disgusted because previous presidents tried to transform our republic like Ceasar did his, animal rights advocates will smile at him. They well say those things are irrelevant today.

They will say we need to get beyond them. The person marvelling at Western history and culture will be told he needs an imagination cultivated by anything not Western.

A person listening to the advocates feels small. The person feels small because he is talked down to and because the advocates are narrow.

Nobody wants to feel small. When somebody makes someone else feel small, it is because that person is small himself.

Animal rights advocates do not ask themselves why they feel small, why they use their right to free speech to insult people, but do not form unions to give themselves rights at work and do not knock on doors to invite people to oppose our police state and the decreasing number of rights we have.

When animal rights advocates talk about animals in zoos as being in jail, the advocates forget that millions of American men need rights and guidance so they do not end up in jail.

Advocating for animal rights would be noble if it was based on respect for animals. As it is, advocates hate big business, hunters, meat eaters and any group of people who succeed in our system, more than they love animals.

Some animal rights advocates have gone to jail for their actions. They are proud of it. But it would be more courageous and a challenge or inspiration to others, if you were fired for starting a union at work, arrested for speaking against the Patriot Act and hated for saying most of our prisons should be closed and our young men provided jobs and job training.

Then you would be making people feel small in a proper way. They would feel small because they realize what they are up against. They would feel small because they are not doing anything to fight for themselves.

The world does not need to be conquered to be improved. I’d like to see animal rights advocates find out where the barking dogs in your neighborhood live, then force the owners to keep them quiet. You would benefit yourself, your neighbors and the dogs.

Think how good it would feel knowing that you kept cool while infuriated, that you did not speak rudely though you were determined to win. Think how proud and how strong you would feel.

Think of the example you would set, that you weren’t rude like the rude neighbor, that the neighbor, if he hated you, would hate you for your maturity. You would inspire others to feel big, and to seek the spiritual power that you have.

The President Speaks: Commencement address

It is an honor for me to speak to you this afternoon at your commencement ceremony. Not everyone is lucky enough to attend college. Not everyone has the good fortune to graduate from such a venerable and prestigious university.

At the same time, many people pooh pooh a college education. Maybe they do because they are envious. Maybe they do because they are lazy. Maybe because they lack imagination and can’t see the value in going to college, except to get a job.

One of the failings of our society is that we have made money the only thing that determines a person’s worth. This belief has influenced universities and colleges, both how they perceive themselves and how they are perceived.

The public no longer looks to universities as keepers of the truth of Western Culture. Universities no longer see their role to be educating students in Western history and philosophy. Large segments of the uneducated public no longer lust for Homer, the Greek tragedies, Plato, Shakespeare.

One critic of our academic culture, the late Alan Bloom, wrote that the public does not take the mission of a university seriously anymore because universities no longer teach Truth, nor are proud of the ideas and ideals that have influenced Western Culture and America. Rather he said, universities have caved in to pressure to teach that Truth is relative, that someone who reads mostly modern works has an equally valid claim to be educated than someone who is conversant about our tradition of literature, philosophy and political writings.

So, professor Bloom writes, someone who lusts for Truth, who aches to understand The Bible and Plato, has nowhere to go because our universities do not take the great books, with all their potential for emotion and thought, seriously.

My point is that there is something called Truth. If we do not believe in the truths of our tradition, we seriously lack imagination and we magnificently manifest cowardice. We are willing to crumble to the competition from Islam, Feminism, Multiculturalism, Homocentricism, and still unfortunately, Communism.

It isn’t that Islam, Feminism and Communism should not be studied. They should. So should histories of different regions and countries. But the assumption should be that Western morals are the best, that other philosophies can best be used to see where we are weak, not to replace our tradition.

It is true that the cannon is still taught. But it is not taught as the Truth. Multiculturalists and feminists would ban the great books of the West if they could.

For now they can’t. But they are working on it.

There is more to this than just objective truth. To be a great individual, you have to be true to what is in you. The point of Socrates and Jesus is that they were true to what was beautiful in them, no matter what the price.

The Western tradition has always balanced the subjective and objective truth. There is not this balance in our opposing religions, philosophies and isms. They are not seeking a better world for everyone, only their own group. They do not encourage members of their group to think outside of the box.

Universities have thought outside the box for too long. It is time to return to it, to encourage students to read The Bible every day until they finish, to read Phaedrus every couple of years until they understand it and can talk about love and true speech, to read The Tempest until the closing scence makes them unable to read anything else for days.

I mentioned talking about what was read. One of the weaknesses of the Western academic tradition is that professors were not required, and did not seek, unlike the East, to explain their knowledge to ordinary people in everyday words.

Multiculturalists seek to get their word out. They are aggressive and unashamed, though their ideas cannot hold a candle to the Western tradition.

Not only that, they have no fear. But their courage does not come from Truth or love or love of the Truth. It comes from hate, resentment, momentum and being part of a group that is fashionable.

Those of you here today are the most educated people in America. I want you to be proud of it. I especially want those of you who majored in one of the Western humanities to bring your fire, vision and gratitude into the world.

Tell people that the greatness of Western culture lies in the belief that you can find the God in you, either by being generous like Jesus or by not being greedy like Socrates, by living for love of the poor or love of simplicity, not a hatred of rich people.

You graduates are in a dilemma. You will be called elitists. But if you give up your positions and your wealth, and if you are not proud of your education, you will be laughed at.

My advice is to be proud of your education and your career. But do not flaunt your wealth. Be humble and assertive.

Tell the publilc that Socrates and Jesus were spiritually free. Jesus attained his freedom because of a great tradition. Socrates attained his because of a relatively new form of government. There was room in each of those situations to be free, but even then you had to be careful.

Jesus and Socrates were not careful. They knew they had become beautiful. They did not want to compromise their beauty to be accepted into ugliness.

Our society does its best to cultivate ugliness, whether it’s my fellow politicians, the advertising industry, multiculturalism or feminism, or the glorification of homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderhood.

These are lonely times. You must choose between how you are lonely. Do you want to be lonely because you see the light and are overwhelmed by your struggle to be true and beautiful? Or do you want to be lonely because you chose darkness and the false power of espousing ugliness?

My graduates, it has truly been an honor to speak today. I love America. I love our Western tradition.

I hope I inspire you to be daring. Courageous good will is the only thing that can save America and the West from all our internal enemies.

Thank you.

The President Speaks: Cross country hiking trails

I’m standing in the middle of Kansas ready to sign the Coast to Coast Border to Border bill that Congress has presented to me. There has seldom been a bill that has been passed with so much enthusiasm from so many groups and politicians. I am eager to sign it.

Before I do, I want to take these few moments to thank Congress for its co-operation with one another and its patience and high standards. I congratulate the staff and all the departments and companies that have worked on this bill. Finally, I want to tell the American people how much I admire you for pushing to come in contact with this great land we have inherited.

This bill will allow Americans the freedom to use their bodies to travel across our country. If we use this freedom, we will feel a greater love for our country, more enthusiasm toward one another and great personal pride for having seen on foot or by bicycle the extent of our land.

Hunger for land is what made our nation expand, and created this marvel we call the United States of America. Our new hunger is not based upon greed, but a realization that we were overzealous in our lust and that now we need to mature as a nation.

Our lust takes a daring direction. Though we have hungered for land the past 100 years, we labored in factories, offices and warehouses to get it. We were not physically attached to it.

Now, having been inside so long and so much, we have gotten hungry to touch, smell and wander through land – lots of it. Our homes and gardens and country property have tintillated us for something majestic.

We long for a breakdown in barriers. This is a majestic hope, for we have been fenced in a long time, literally and figuratively. Owning is not enough. Having refuge from each other is not enough.

We are eager to walk for days with someone of another color, another age, another walk of life, another class, another philosophy. We want to finally feel what it means to be free, to have confidence to listen without the need to interrupt and speak without being hurried or trying to win.

We are, in a sense, seeking truth. We are seeking to unite this nation of so many different types of people the way democracy is supposed to unite people. We are seeking to find our souls the only place that they can be found – outdoors with each other.

We are also redeeming the nation – cherishing land so many of our ancestors destroyed, seeking stillness and silence they did not understand. Where they hurried, we long to linger.

At last we live the enthusiasm of our visionaries Thoreau, Whitman, Muir, Bob Marshall. A land best serves its people when it is bicycled or walked across.

This bill, it is one of America’s greatest dreams and pronouncements, for we are saying we are ready to transform our fear of each other, that it is time to expand our hearts, find our essential love and participate in the greatness that has been promised to Americans who have the courage and wisdom to pursue it.

A new American Revolution has begun. I now put my pen to paper.