This is a speech given at the "Restore the Spirit of America" rally on April 13, 2002, in Medford, Oregon:
A very great judge once said, "liberty lies in the hearts of men and women, and when it dies there, no constitution, no court can even do much to help it."
Today we take a step toward fanning the the flame of liberty alive in our hearts. And over time, we can fan that flame until it becomes a fire that burns throughout the Pacific Northwest. And over time, we can make the Pacific Northwest a light for the Nation. Lord knows, we need some light.
Science Is Dead
For these are dark times. Our enormous State and Federal bureaucracies are filled with Leftists. They want to control the People's land. They want to control the People's water. They want to control the People's minerals. They want to control the People's minds.
They will say anything to get this control. Their lies are daggers in the body of science. They have driven so many daggers into the body of science that science itself is a bleeding corpse.
Citizens come before these agencies, like the farmers of the Klamath, and say wait, Mr. Scientist, how come you're keeping the Lake full to protect fish, and the only fish kills have happened when the Lake is full? They ask, why do you complain about water quality when we made a beautiful Lake out of a stinking, fetid swamp?
Nobody bothers to answer their questions, because it's not about saving fish. The Leftists are convinced that they have to save the world, and they have to save the world by getting rid of you.
You might things have gotten better since President Bush was appointed, but they haven't. Last week, President Bush's pick for the guy in charge of the so-called endangered salmon finally got around to issuing standards for taking fish off endangered species lists. Listen to what he said:
"In order to be considered completely recovered, spring chinook (and steelhead) populations should be able to utilize properly functioning habitat in multiple spawning streams within each major tributary, with patterns of straying among these areas, free from human caused disruptions".
You know what "properly functioning habitat means"? It means wilderness land. You know what "free from human-caused disruptions" means? No people allowed. So this Bush appointee is now telling us that the federal government is here to stay until we have fish everywhere and people nowhere.
And here in Oregon, our so-called Republican Legislature has just increased the budget for natural resources spending by 17%. That's 17% more enviro-cops to harass the People, at the same time they say they don't have enough money to keep the schools open.
And the darkest development of all is our schools. The Leftists have seized control of our schools and are working to turn our children into Leftist sheep.
In the schools of Oregon, they teach that there is no such thing as a Constitution. Let me explain what I mean by that. Our forefathers fought and died for a principle, that principle set forth in the Declaration of the Independence, that there are unalienable rights possessed by citizens that no government can take away. Our forefathers died to make sure that it was government that feared the people, and not the people who feared the government.
But today our schools teach that the Constitution has an "elastic clause", so that the government can do whatever it wants. So the Constitution has no meaning.
Our schools teach environmentalism instead of science, African folk tales instead of The Ten Commandments, and "problem solving" instead of arithmetic.
Last month, my kid's elementary school even had Leftists come in especially for a musical propaganda assembly to teach that cows kills poor people by eating too much grain, cause global warming by farting, and cause "reproductive disorders" from bovine growth hormone. You can watch 45 minutes of Leftist lies all in a video on my website.
And worst thing of all that the Leftists teach, over and over, in a hundred different ways, is that the State knows better than us, and that it our duty to compromise with others, because there are no absolutes. No one is ever right or wrong--except the Government.
You know what a great slogan of the Revolutionary War was? "We have no King but Jesus." You won't find that in the history books, but once upon a time, the churches were the moral leaders of the country. Now environmentalists and Leftists are taking over the churches, so that the highest commandment is not to love the Lord and love thy fellow men, but to love Nature and to love Government as the protector of Nature.
Don't any of you pay attention to what's happening to your churches? Why isn't it a mission of your church to help the victims of overbearing government? Why doesn't your church work to see that the righteous lead the community, rather than the rotten?
I know, oh, gosh, we might lose our tax exemption. Do you think Jesus would have remained silent on the great moral issues of the day if his followers had told him the synagogues might lose their tax exemptions? Do you think that the African Methodist churches that host the likes of Clinton and Gore worry about their tax exemptions?
Now we saw something happen down in the Klamath Basin last summer that illustrates a fundamental truth. This is not a truth that you are going to like. It is not a truth that you are going to believe easily. But I am going to ask you to be like Patrick Henry, who said in a fiery speech to the Virginia House of Delegates back in 1775:
"Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope.
"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren [of hope], till she transforms us into beasts.
"Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?
"Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears hear not . . .?
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it."
Do you know where I have met the most people in the Pacific Northwest who rise to the example of Patrick Henry? I have met them in the Klamath Basin. I have met them in the Methow Valley. I have met them in Orofino, Idaho. I have met them everywhere that the sloppy, groping hands of the Federal government have put their dead weight upon righteous communities.
Down in the Klamath Basin, the People rose up and said, this will not stand. We will put our bodies on the line to make sure that this does not stand. It was a glorious time, a time where the words of our Forefathers in the Declaration of Independence echoed in the background: "We pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor". These folk pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, and it worked. This year, the water flows again, at least for the time being, while the forces of evil have run away from the harsh light of truth that these patriots cast upon them.
And what is the great unpleasant truth we must learn from this? The great anti-slavery activist Frederick Douglass said it best: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will." Like the slave owners, the bureaucrats respond to only one thing: power.
Law Is Dead
Now some of you are going to say, what is he talking about with all this "power" stuff? Why can't we just sue those bureaucrats and put them in their place? I have fought courtroom battles for more than ten years, and I am here to tell you that the law is a bleeding corpse just like science is. What happens when you ask for the evidence to support the government's conclusions? Nothing, because the only evidence allowed in court is the evidence hand-picked by the government's lawyers.
What can the court do when it sees that government scientists are nuts, if the court can even see that? Nothing, because according to the Supreme Court, courts are not supposed to second-guess agency science.
What can the court do if an agency simply won't grant a permit that it is supposed to grant? Nothing, because, after all courts can't force the government to spend money, unless something politically-correct is involved, like taking over local school districts.
Sure, once in a while, you will find a court willing to rule on some arcane and technical point of law, far from the merits of the dispute. The Pacific Legal Foundation had a victory like that when they found a technicality about how the Federal Government had defined "species" under the Endangered Species Act. But the coho salmon are still listed
I just had a victory like that when I found a technicality about how the State of Washington was imposing flow targets on water rights. But my clients still don't have their water.
Instead of the rule of law, we have the rule of expediency: who cares if the government is acting illegally or not, because after all, they're trying to do the right thing, so let them do it.
There is only one thing that causes Leftists to retreat, and that is countervailing power. And there is only one way for ordinary citizens to get that power: by learning the truth, and putting their bodies on the streets to spread that truth. Learning the truth is easy, because there's one place left to get it, and it's even free: the Internet.
Putting your bodies on the line to spread that truth is not easy. But it's the only way we're going to win. You know what labor unions do? They have people bring sleeping bags and occupy the legislature. You know what ghetto shake-down activists do? They bus ghetto folks out to the suburban homes of politicians.
They do that because it works. They do that because it makes the politicians sit up, and take notice, and change what they were going to do, so as to get rid of these people. And the Leftists have been using these tactics to drive this country to the Left for decades.
Things are going to get worse, and worse, and worse, until you begin to adopt the tactics of the Leftists. You cannot rely upon the government to act in the public interest when it is in the hands of Leftists. You can only rely upon the government to move further and further to the Left, until our very sovereignty itself is gone, and we are all slaves to a New World Order.
When bureaucrats say you can't use a chemical on your land that is no more toxic than ordinary salt, hold your next Grange meeting in their lobby, and the next one, and the next one after that.
When your school district says that we can't sing Christmas carols with the word Christ in them, blockade the school doors and sing those Christmas carols and give them a concert then and there.
When bureaucrats say that salmon are endangered, when the only thing that might endanger them is the overfishing that the same bureaucrats rubber-stamp, bring dead fish to their meetings and tell them it must be their rules that we are smelling.
And when bureaucrats go beserk and say that farmers can't irrigate their land, the farmers ought to take their old tractors and park them in the middle of I-5, and say, we're not leaving until you stop harassing us. That's what the French farmers do, by the way.
And most importantly, when one of you steps from among us and says, I am willing to stand for a public office to help root out the great evil that threatens this country, join him in his struggle. It may be County Commissioner, it may be a member of the School Board, it may be for State Legislature. Because government is no better than the people in it, and government will get no better until we throw out the Leftists and replace them with patriots.
Now I want you to take a big leap with me, and actually give this stuff a try. Let's imagine we are all packed into a hearing room, and some Leftist crook is trying to tell us that the State needs to take our property.
Can you do a little chant with me?
Government science is full of lies; it can't fool us because we've got eyes
We don't want your stupid rules; we're patriots, not Leftist fools.
Water is the life of land; if they grab it, slap their hand
We will win the War on the West; because our people are the best.
Do you feel that? That is the feeling of winning. I hope and pray that you will go out there and begin to win, because together, we can drive these Leftists out of office. Thank you and God bless you all.
© James Buchal, April 14, 2002
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