Posted on 04/28/2004 4:42:52 PM PDT by Ippolita
Dear Freepers,
This is first and foremost to thank all of YOU who made the following possible.
Last Friday I was asked to speak for Republicans Abroad at the meeting being held by the American International Club of Rome, Italy, where I live. This was a comparative political speech for the Agendas of the 2004 elections. Set topics were: History of the party, Taxes, Social Security, Well fare, Education and of course terrorism. Because I am a Historian and a professor of History of Religions, but I am not a politicain, not an economist, not an accountant, I posted a request for assitance to Freepers.
Thanks to Your help I was able to cram, and study up on the President's agenda, on all of these points (the first and last two being my ball game I did put in some stuff of my own, but I am happy to admit I brought along FR thread articles for support).
I showed up looking (not feeling) calm, cool, and collected, in my best spring suit, with all my little facts and sources lined up.
I spoke on all the set topics competently and coherently (not a minimal point in Italy where liberal use of wine is observed religiously, and we were supposed to speak AFTER the cocktail and luncheon).
My speech was as follows:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, I am honoured to speak today before you on behalf of Republicans Abroad. The first topic I wish to address is, in a nut shell, the questions that everyone of you has posed to themselves at one time or another: Who do I vote for? What do I stand for? What party best represents me, and my belief system?
The same question I have had to answer many times on a personal basis.
Why is someone like me, who is perceived as modern, progressive, liberal, a Republican?
I’m a Republican first and foremost in the broadest sense of the word: I believe the Republic is the best possible option in government.
And, as I often tell my students, it has to be a Republic: Democracy just isn’t enough.
I urge them all to remember that you can have democracy even under a King (as in England or Sweden or Spain). And though that may appear to be a small difference it’s actually huge. Property for example has a very different meaning in the USA and in GB.
Secondly I’m a Republican because of the actual GOParty’s history: The Republicans present will bear with me if I go on about this a bit, but I have found that often people are unaware of the role the Republican party has had in the forming of the USA as we now know it.
From the GOP offical web site:
http://www.gop.com/About/GOPHistory/Default.aspx
"The Republican Party is relatively recent, it was born in the early 1850's by anti-slavery activists and individuals who believed that government should grant western lands to settlers free of charge. In 1856, the Republicans became a national party when John C. Fremont was nominated for President under the slogan: "Free soil, free labour, free speech, free men, Fremont." Even though they were considered a "third party" because the Democrats and Whigs represented the two-party system at the time, Fremont received 33% of the vote. Four years later, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican to win the White House.
The Civil War erupted in 1861 and lasted four gruelling years. During the war, against the advice of his cabinet, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves. The Republicans of their day worked to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery, the Fourteenth, which guaranteed equal protection under the laws, and the Fifteenth, which helped secure voting rights for African-Americans.
The Republican Party also played a leading role in securing women the right to vote. In 1896, Republicans were the first major party to favor women's suffrage. When the 19th Amendment finally was added to the Constitution, 26 of 36 state legislatures that had voted to ratify it were under Republican control. The first woman elected to Congress was a Republican, Jeanette Rankin from Montana in 1917.
Presidents during most of the late nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century were Republicans. While the Democrats and Franklin Roosevelt tended to dominate American politics in the 1930's and 40's, for 28 of the forty years from 1952 through 1992, the White House was in Republican hands - under Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush. Under the last two, Reagan and Bush, the United States became the world's only superpower, winning the Cold War from the old Soviet Union and releasing millions from Communist oppression.
Republicans have a long and rich history with basic principles. Individuals, not government, can make the best decisions; all people are entitled to equal rights; and decisions are best made close to home.
The symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant. During the mid term elections way back in 1874, Democrats tried to scare voters into thinking President Grant would seek to run for an unprecedented third term. Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for Harper's Weekly, depicted a Democratic jackass trying to scare a Republican elephant - and both symbols stuck.
For a long time Republicans have been known as the "G.O.P." And party faithful thought it meant the "Grand Old Party." But apparently the original meaning (in 1875) was "gallant old party." And when automobiles were invented it also came to mean, "get out and push."
That's still a pretty good slogan for Republicans who depend every campaign year on the hard work of hundreds of thousands of volunteers to get out and vote and push people to support the causes of the Republican Party.
Abolishing slavery. Free speech. Women's suffrage. In today's stereotypes, none of these sounds like a typical Republican issue, yet they are stances the Republican Party, in opposition to the Democratic Party, adopted early on."
So you could say I’m a Republican PRECISELY because I’m modern, progressive and liberal.
It just all depends what you mean by those words.
To me Modernity is the capability of dealing with the present in an appropriate and positive manner.
Progressiveness is the capability of forecasting the challenges that the present will make on us at some point in the future and getting ready to deal with them.
And liberality means accepting that my freedom ends where someone else’s freedom begins within the framework of a state of law.
I hear the groans … but Republicans are conservative.
Right we are conservative: that means to me, that we are trying to go forwards without necessarily destroying what has already been built. It always amazes me that some of the most conservative people on earth (the environmentalists), feel that their form on conservation is progressive and good while mine is, obviously, retrograde and bad.
The issues we are here today to analyze are the USA economy, its taxes, and its social security and well fare systems. I would also however like to add a few words on education national security and terrorism.
Let’s start with the economic policies:
Notwithstanding the real slump in the economy due both to 9/11 and to Mr. Clinton’s strange concept of protectionism – under whom workers social security funds were allowed to be put into the stock market and companies like ENRON were allowed to juggle their accounting in a truly eccentric way – the USA economy has been returning on it’s proper course. The President’s agenda is well thought out and realistic as well as addressing many of the issues that are of primary importance to me such as important
- Tax cuts affecting millions of American workers, - Jobs for Americans in America - Strengthening of social security through add on volountary retirement accounts."
HERE I QUOTED EXCERPTS FROM THE AGENDA:
http://www.gop.com/About/PartyPlatform/default.aspx?Section=2
http://www.gop.com/About/PartyPlatform/default.aspx?Section=5
"I have heard Democrat quips on how we are back to “Reganomics”, a derogatory name for what Democrats saw as bad economics. Well, Alan Greenspan, put in his place in 1992 under the Clinton administration, has publicly upheld the Regan economic view.
He said: “Thanks to reforms launched during the Ronald Reagan administration, a flexible U.S. economy was outfitted to withstand shocks of the past three years that previously would have been "debilitating," Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Wednesday April 9 2003 in an interview with Rachel Koning for CBS market watch.
"That support began the process that has led today to the virtual elimination of inflation from the U.S. economy," Greenspan said at an event to honor the former president at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley.
Finally, Greenspan said he believes the most significant -- and he concedes most controversial -- Reagan step was the 1981 firing of striking air traffic controllers, allowed by law but never carried out by the Executive Branch. It opened the door for "right to work" policies at U.S. companies.
"There was great consternation among those who feared that an increased ability to lay off workers would raise the level of unemployment and amplify the sense of job insecurity. It turned out that with greater freedom to fire, the risks of hiring declined," Greenspan opined. "This increased flexibility contributed to the ability of the economy to operate with both low unemployment and low inflation."
"Whether the average level of job insecurity has risen is difficult to judge, but, if so, some offset to that concern should come from a diminished long-term average unemployment rate," he said.
Now, if that is Greenspan’s stand on reganomics, I can feel confident that the president is doing a good job. In fact one year after this interview was given, we can all see the raw data that indicates that the American economy is recovering."
At this point I switched to education and the NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.
"I'm a teacher in University, but I cannot stress enough the need to reform and up-grade our PUBLIC education system. I related events from my personal experience in the public school system in Manahttan back in the 1960-70 period, which was great, and the shambles now obvious to all.
I QUOTED EXERPTS FROM THE PRESIDENTS AGENDA 2004:
http://www.gop.com/About/PartyPlatform/default.aspx?Section=3
I then talked about TERRORISM, where I went on to relate my own personal experience ( I survived a PLO attack in 1973 at Fiumicino airport when I was 10 years old) to illustrate that real people like those in that room were the victims and not "capitalist, empirialist, powers" and I then quoted liberally from the following memorandum which I had culled off FR sometime ago.
http://www.worldthreats.com/al-qaeda_terrorism/iraq_terror.htm
I then went on to give everyone my e-mail address and offered to send all the documentation (with sources) to anyone who wanted it.
My opponent for the Democrats was Alan Epstein authour of "As the Romans do".
He gave them a nice little sob story on how as a child he, jewish undelined 70 times, could walk in cairo and Beirut feeling unafraid while NOW (because of BUSH) he cannot and his children cannot. How we should dialougue with our allies (the French, german, Russian and generally and umbrella-like the UN). How "an american vision" believes in borders, walls, defending, while another goes for dialogue, cooperation, understanding.
After we had both finished there was a short period devoted to questions.
The only QUESTIONS where for him because everyone understood what I said!
He got ripped apart by an English journalist present and then by a black lady who stood up and confirmed that the Republican party had been originally devoted to enfranchising the black americans and abolishing slavery (her great geat grandpa had been a member of the party back in 1856). She thanked me for being so concerned with education and calmly asked Epstein "Maybe the Republican math doesn't work, but ... where is yours?"
I then asked if I could ask him a question and when given permission I asked (sweetly):
"Are the Democrats planning to turn American national sovreignty over to UN?"
One split second of total stunned silence in which my message registered and ... I got a standing ovation!!!!!
It was all over for him then.
After the luncheon five people asked for a copy of the memorandum and I've been told today they have been forwarding it.
The american grapevine in Rome says I did well.
AND ALL THANKS TO YOU FREEPERS:
LETS KEEP AT IT!
W 2004!
I was in Italy a few months ago; many Italians were so supportive of our President and knew the importance of our going to war against Iraq. . . .
. . .and I remember a 'few' years ago, after Clinton has just been elected; I was standing in line in a Rome bank; thinking how everyone there, no doubt, was happy that Clinton was elected President; and I was miserable and embarassed just thinking of him. Suddenly the man behind me; said in a loud voice; 'HOW could you?! How? How could America elect such a man, to be their President!
Like here; there are of course, many 'others'. That said, Vive Italia! and many thanks, Ippolita, for your efforts in sharing Republican values and history.
The other day I passed by the offices of the Demokratichna Partiya Ukrainy (Ukrainian Democratic Party). I managed to stiffle the urge to start busting glass... but just barely.
I know, I know - no connection. But a nasty-sounding name all the same ;-)
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