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Posted on 09/10/2001 6:42:07 PM PDT by Mad Dawg

Golden Words, Living Memory

Dr. Ferrier Speaks in Dallas

Thank you all, thank you very much. First of all I’d like to acknowledge the presence of one other person who came all the way from California no, it’s not my wife and I think I saw him, though it’s hard to pick up in the lights here; he’s over this way: Glynn Custred. Stand up Glynn.

Glynn is a co-author of Prop 209 and he’s here representing the National Association of Scholars too, a group that’s done wonderful work in defense of true academic values, academic liberty and high standards all across this country. For you Texans and other folks not from California, Prop 209 goes by the name of the California Civil Rights Initiative. It was the initiative that banned preferences on the basis of race, ethnicity, color or national origin in the state of California; it is now Section I, Article 31 of the California State Constitution and you can thank that man!

Now, good ol’ Steve Spencer who knows how to put on a good event and knows that appearances are important told me not to wear my glasses. But I have a little note from the Chairman of the Prop 209 campaign, which he sent me, and I want to read it to you and I can’t see a thing without my glasses. This is from Ward Connerly:

Richard,

I am greatly impressed by the Declaration Foundation and would love to join you on the 24th. My admiration and respect for you and Alan is immense. However, on August 24th the court hearing will be held in Sacramento on Connerly vs. State Personnel Board. This is the case that former Governor Wilson and I filed to force compliance of state agencies with 209. And because Gray Davis withdrew from the case after his election [hmmm, you mean the executive branch can change its position in a court case.... well, well -rdf] I am standing alone as plaintiff and must be here Friday night.

Best to you and Alan,

Ward Connerly

Would you give Ward a hand in his absence? (applause) Now Steve, I’ll remember to take these glasses off.

The mission of the Declaration Foundation is one thing and one thing only. We aim to enkindle in the hearts and illumine in the minds of our fellow American citizens an affection for and an appreciation of the truth of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the founding principles of this country. It’s that simple.

Now when I speak to you, I think I speak to people who know that the following sentiment is not true but the world at large tends to think it’s true and it’s this: You say, I want to encourage assent to and understanding of, old words on an old piece of paper, and they’ll say, Words, words, words. Words mean nothing in this world, actions do, money does, power does what have you done? What have you done for me lately? Do you mean to tell me you have a Foundation that charges or asks or begs for a large sum of money for people to come down to a dinner, it gets people to fly from Utah and California and Lord knows where so that you can insist on the importance of some old words? That’s what you’re doing? They’d think you’re nuts, right? Well, you and I know that’s not true. In business, you want to deal with a man of his word, of his word. And when you get past that verbal bargain and you sign a contract, you sign your name, a word. And the words of the contract are binding. Words mean a lot, words are important.

A young man falls in love with a young woman. They court. What’s most of what he does? He talks. He tells her how beautiful she is, he tells her how much he loves her. If he’s eloquent, he maybe says a little more than that, if he’s Christian from Cyrano he can’t say too much more. But even the tongue-tied talk. Even the tongue-tied talk and when the courtship is successful, when they get to the marriage, when they come to the ceremony, when do they wed? What makes it real? She says, I do. He says, I do. Words, words, words.

I have eight children, I haven’t been a perfect father, I haven’t been too bad but I haven’t been perfect. How do I rule those children, my wife Kathy and I? What do we do, hit them, beat them, lock them in places, do powerful things to them? No! We talk to them; we use words, words as simple and direct as, Make your daddy proud!Be honest! Tell the truth. Words as tender as I love you. That’s the way human beings mostly deal with each other, with words.

So, are the golden words of the Declaration ‘mere words’? There’s hardly such a thing as ‘mere words’ unless those words carry the truth, the just, the good, and we ignore them. If the words of the Declaration say ‘All men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights,’ endowed by their Creator, with inalienable rights. And if those rights include life, and by our laws we tolerate, and with the power of the purse we fund, and by our personal inaction we let spread, the murder of the innocent, THEN, my friends, the words of the Declaration are mere words. When we turn our backs on them, when we harden our hearts to them, when we darken our minds concerning them, then they are mere words. But the Foundation is devoted to making them more than ‘mere words,’ to making them living torches of liberty in your hearts, in my heart, in the hearts of our children everywhere in this country.

Now, as the President of the Foundation I want to say a word or two about practical things. And I guess the first practical thing you might do with the Declaration is the kind of thing that a man here tonight, who’s going to be honored for it in a moment, did in the state of Texas. I’m talking about Representative Rick Green, the author of House Bill 1776. You know what Rick did? Well Rick insisted that people pay attention to those words. He got legislation passed in Texas to make the first week of the Texas public school calendar, all across the state, K-12, ‘Celebrate Freedom Week,’ and the bill requires that you actually look at the Declaration and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That’s a real achievement and Rick deserves credit for it. (applause)

Now Rick is not the first person to think of this, it’s a fact that our grandfathers and grandmothers had thought of it perfectly well and somehow we fell asleep about it over the last fifty years or so. But Rick Green started a kind of conflagration. There was a bill like that in New Jersey and our Chairman, Declaration Foundation Chairman Alan Keyes went down and spoke in New Jersey, tried to get it passed and made some progress but at the end of the day it didn’t work. Here in Texas you folks passed it. There’s a bill like that in Ohio. There’s a bill like that in Arizona; there’s a bill like that in Minnesota. I’ve been talking to people who want to do a bill like that in Florida. That’s what the Declaration Foundation can do, put those people in touch with each other. Ambassador Keyes came and spoke on behalf of House Bill 1776 here in Texas. He made a difference.

We in our national network at the Foundation are asking you to help us make that difference. Bring the founding principles into the classroom in the form of simple requirements like Declaration recitation bills and civic education bills like HB 1776. We have lighted a lamp, together with Rick and the others who’ve worked on these things.

We have lighted a lamp to guide our footsteps in the way, walk with us!

Now, some of you may have enough experience with the educational world -- I’ve been immersed in it for thirty years -- to know that if you make a simple little requirement like that, you say, You’ve got to teach American history and civics, it may not go too far, you know? Why not? Because the books aren’t very good. Perfectly ordinary decent schoolteachers say, yeah, that’s right, it’s ‘Celebrate Freedom Week’ in Texas. I’ll go down to the library and get the book or I’ll go down to the supply store of the local public school and get the book. What book? Well it’s a book that seems to think the Civil War was about economics, it’s a book that seems to have forgotten that the Founders mentioned God four times in the Declaration and that colonial preachers had something to do with the American Revolution. Right? They forget that! (applause) So Rick has done a good thing, he has made a good beginning.

He is also cunning enough to know he’s got to take the next step too. You got to have more than a bill saying, Study it, you have to find the book, right? How shall they believe if they have not heard? And how shall they hear unless a preacher is sent? Right? So, Alan asked me it was three years ago now I guess, right Alan? to write a civics textbook. The work is done. We now have a civics textbook; the Foundation has a civics textbook. It tells the truth about these things, it tells the truth about the family’s role in America, it tells the truth about the sanctity of life. (applause)

Now, I know I’m preaching to the choir here but let me say this. We know how to make such a book, and we did do it in such a way that it won’t be seen as ‘right-wing ranting’ or something like that. We go back to Jefferson and Madison and Lincoln, we go back to Aristotle and Cicero, we look at the real sources of American liberty, we read the colonial preachers’ sermons, we lay it out in a way that excites a student and he can use that book. And last week I sold twenty of them to a public school superintendent in the state of California, it can be done! (applause)

Now that book is for the eleventh grade. Those of you know much about the educational world know it’s roughly like this, you teach American ideas and history in eleventh grade, eighth grade, and fifth grade, right? Now our book concentrates on human equality and some questions about the family and religion. I need to write two more books there, I need one on economic liberty, the pursuit of happiness, property rights, the self-government of human beings watching over their income. I need that! Not done yet. That would be for the eleventh grade level. I need another one on America as ‘City on a Hill,’ I want to look at our role in the world, I want to look at the things that that our ‘John Wayne’ told us about, right? I want to look at our record of liberty and also our sins and blemishes. Then I’ll have a whole ‘Declarationist’ eleventh grade curriculum. I’ve got one book, I need two. In eighth grade, I need three; fifth grade, I need three more. I’ve written one book, I need somebody to help me get eight more. When the eight more are done I will have a complete curriculum for American civics and history education.

We have lighted a lamp to guide our footsteps, walk with us!

Now, say you have a book like that, a good, wonderful book. What if the teachers have themselves lapsed into forgetfulness, what if their minds have been corrupted by the modern university, what if they don’t know how to teach it? Well, the Foundation has made two extensive, well done I think, grant proposals for the teaching of the teachers of American history and civics. Done, signed, sealed, out the door and I’ll know in two or three weeks whether we get the money these are from the federal government. We’ve also made appeals to private foundations for that kind of work. One of the schools is in Rick Green’s district. We partnered with it, the Declaration Foundation, San Marcos prep school. You saw some of the kids associated with that community and the headmaster is Kyev Tatum and he’s here, stand up Kyev. (applause)

Okay, now that man is a hero. He’s doing this stuff on a shoestring and he is really an impressive man and if you don’t know him I hope you’ll talk to him. There’s another school that’s made an application with us these have to be public schools it’s in my hometown of Santa Paula, California. And it’s about seventy percent Hispanic kids. We want to talk to them and their teachers about what unifies America, we want to bring them back to founding principles.

You have to have partners in these grants, as I mentioned, one must be a public school, the Declaration Foundation, of course, is a partner. You know who another of our partners is in this grant? The Ronald Reagan Library and Foundation. They signed on with us, their director said it’s one of the most exciting things he’s ever seen. That grant also, that proposal, has extensive technological innovation involved in it so that it can be replicated and used in other places. The teachers must be taught. We’ve started!

We have lighted a lamp to mark our way, walk with us!

Ronald Reagan is memorialized in his foundation and library and it was Ronald Reagan who found and understood the talent of Ambassador Alan Keyes, hence his honorary title, Ambassador. In his Farewell Address (I didn’t know this, by the way, until about a month ago) in his Farewell Address, President Reagan turned towards the end to this question of recovering our civic heritage; he spoke of our civic festivals and of the teaching of American history and civics. He said in that speech, America is in danger of losing its civic memory.

In the inscrutable wisdom of the Lord of nature and of nature’s laws, twelve years ago, when Ronald Reagan was saying those words, he was in the course of losing his natural memory. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

While we have light, let us not walk the paths of blindness. While we have the living memory of the truth and power and justice of the American founding, let us cherish that memory and pass it on, a precious heritage to our children and their children’s children so long as this Republic shall endure.

I ask you with all my heart, do everything you can to support this work and I thank you for coming to this banquet.

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