(Don't worry, the audio is of higher quality than the photo!)
Posted on 05/20/2007 4:23:04 PM PDT by CheyennePress
http://www.regent.edu/events/commencement/2007/video_high.cfm
The clip of Mitt begins at 29:00. It's an excellent, well-delivered speech, even moving. Much better than a lecture on the Palestinian rights I received at mine. Some excerpts:
"You know, I don't remember when it was exactly when I went beyond the sandbar. My family had a cottage on the shores of one of the Great Lakes. For the first 40 feet or so, the lake is shallow, warm, and protected from the big waves by a sandbar. That's where I spent most of the hot summer days as a boy. I liked it there. One day, my brother got me up on water skis. Perhaps fearing that a turn would cause me to fall, he drove the boat – and me – straight out into the deep. By the way, the lake is over 100 miles wide. I screamed the whole terrifying ride. But ever after, the deep water is where I wanted to be – body surfing in the breakers, water skiing, diving. Oh yes, the water wasn't as warm and calm, but it was clean and powerful and invigorating. I got out of the shallow water for good.
"Over the years, I have watched a number of people live out their lives in shallow water.
"In the shallows, life is all about yourself – your job, your money, your rights, your needs, your ideas, your comforts.
"In the deeper waters, life is about others – spouse, family, friends, faith, community, country. In the deep waters, there are challenging ideas, opposing opinions, protracted battles of consequence."
"You are, of course, giving a great deal of thought to your career. The economic environment may be more turbulent and competitive than my generation has known. Some of you will be tempted to stay near shore, where there are no big breakers and where you will never make any waves. Others will push beyond the sandbar, pursuing new frontiers, exploring new ideas, driving to achieve, to learn, to influence, to contribute.
"That, of course, is the heritage of this land. The people who came to Jamestown 400 years ago may not have all been saints. But they were all pioneers. They crossed the broadest waters and dreamed the grandest dreams. Their spirit is the American spirit. It is why America surpassed our native England to become the world's most powerful nation. And it is the heart and spirit of the American people that make this country the hope of the world. Great people have made a great nation."
"If there ever was a time for great Americans, great and good Americans, Americans who are willing to cross into the deep waters of life, it is now.
"You cross into the deep waters by marrying and raising good children. There is no work more important to America's future that the work that is done within the four walls of the American home.
"You cross into the deep waters by driving yourself in your education and in your avocation beyond the safe and comfortable, to reach new insights, to make contributions, to serve.
"You cross into the deep waters by serving in your church, in your community, in the military, in government or in volunteer service.
"I am optimistic about the future of America because I have seen the spirit and heart of the American people."
I liked it, it was encouraging and a positive message.
Um is this the one where he got French marriage laws and science fiction mixed up?
LOL
I guess I’m hearing a Mormon version of compassionate conservatism. He could mean well, but with his past of supporting gay rights, abortion rights, and gun control, he’s going to have to swim out into the deep water a little further and show us he can really swim. Ron Paul is looking better and better to me.
I've listened to the entire speech two times and agree with David Brody when he remarked, "Romney has consistently talked about hope and optimism. He did it during the GOP debate and he did it again Saturday at Regent. It may be a speech that is remembered for a long time."
bttt
I disagree.
You might not be irritated and offended if Michael Moore was selected to speak at your graduation ceremony, but I would be livid. A graduation ceremony is not a platform for someone to give a political viewpoint.
It is an occasion for someone with a specific life experience (the speaker) to celebrate the day for all of the participants, regardless of their political leanings.
I think that can be done without a poltical soapbox.
He spoke quite concretely and specifically about the importance of the traditional family. Hardly meaningless drivel.
You are making my point. Leftists politicize everything and even under our beloved GWB, the country is drifting left. It’s time for Conservatives to get Reagan-specific whenever the cameras are on; you are living in a dream world if you don’t think college graduations are about politics.
Mormon "compassionate conservatism" is about rolling up one's sleeves and working hard. It sympathizes personal responsibility, sacrifice, and self-reliance.
Ronald Reagan marveled at the LDS Church's welfare system and promoted it as THE model for how to keep people from becoming dependent on others and helping them to improve their lives so they, in turn, can assist others in the same way.
It's about as far as one can get from "compassionate" nanny statism.
If you're sneering at it, bear in mind that you are sneering at and belittling Reagan's high regard for it.
I’ll give him some credit for taking a brief brush at the nature of family life. (He got as close as he could for a guy who once pandered shamelessly to the homo lobby.)
No, I think you misunderstand my point.
I stated what graduation ceremonies SHOULD be, not what they often ARE.
If the perspective helps, Ann Coulter is my favorite political commentator...:)
I have a brother who is about to leave the church because the church is NOT what it was; his ward is full of unwed mothers. Don’t talk to me about what Reagan once observed, because he’s gone and the Mormon church is hosting UN confabs. Your intelligence is old.
>>Romney left everyone free to make up their own definition of what he means by the “deep water.”<<
That’s an idea I find completely offbase. Romney did reveal exactly what he meant by deep water. And it was a devotion of one’s self to one’s spouse, children, God, and serving one’s fellow man. To bigger things than money, success, or career. To seeing a child as the greatest responsibility and duty one will ever take upon one’s shoulders.
Politics pale in comparison, and politics will not solve problems within the family for the most part. They can only exacerbate them.
There’s nothing meaningless in devoting yourself to that pursuit. In fact, I think far too many are too focused on meaningless drivel and lose sight of the big picture along the way. Silent dinnertables are the direct result of this—a failure of devotion, askance priorities.
I guess that depends on where you are. Most of the Mormons that I know:
1) do a remarkable job of abstaining from alcohol and coffee
2) marry early, stay married, and have kids after marriage. Multiple kids.
3) are overachievers in everyway. As an example, there were more kids in UVA Law from BYU than Columbia, Darmouth, or Penn.
Mormons rarely fail to impress me. Perhaps my limited experience, but I can’t name a higher-achieving segment of our population.
This is a POLICY year. Conservatives expect to hear Reaganesque formulations defining the nature—in detail—as to how we tread the deep water. Obviously, devotion to family is a basic, but there are voters out there who want to know if Romney really means to tread the deep water by FIGHTING for the life of the unborn, by restoring our republic, by reducing taxes. John Adams swam the deep water and left Abigail to tend six children during the summer of the 2nd Continental Congress. Was he less a family man because he cared about the life of the republic? This rather obvious homily of Romney’s doesn’t tell us very much about what kind of life guard he would be, what kind of father he would be to the American family. It’s touching—but it’s the expected “what a fine man” speech. Bill Clinton could have given it.
I don’t disagree, generally, but if you are as close to the Mormon church as I am (through relatives) you know the church has not been “holding the line,” and Hinkley has done more to disengage mormon political leaders from their core beliefs than any of his predecessors. Romney claims he came late to the “abortion is wrong,” conclusion, but—listem to me carefully—he would have had to wilfully ignore the teachings of his own church the entire time he was pandering to the gay and abort lobby. This guy is an opportunist.
True, the ugly trend of more Divorce is affecting mormons also. It was specificallly addressed this April (and over the last few years) by Apostle Dallin Oaks.
Church leaders address Divorce
Elder Dallin H. Oaks Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
A good marriage does not require a perfect man or a perfect woman. It only requires a man and a woman committed to strive together toward perfection.
I have felt impressed to speak about divorce. This is a sensitive subject because it evokes such strong emotions from persons it has touched in different ways. Some see themselves or their loved ones as the victims of divorce. Others see themselves as its beneficiaries. Some see divorce as evidence of failure. Others consider it an essential escape hatch from marriage. In one way or another, divorce touches most families in the Church. Whatever your perspective, please listen as I try to speak plainly about the effects of divorce on the eternal family relationships we seek under the gospel plan. I speak out of concern, but with hope.
I. We live in a world in which the whole concept of marriage is in peril and where divorce is commonplace.
The concept that society has a strong interest in preserving marriages for the common good as well as the good of the couple and their children has been replaced for many by the idea that marriage is only a private relationship between consenting adults, terminable at the will of either.........
Preaching like that apparently didn’t effect Mitt when he pandered to the gay lobby, and that’s the problem—Mormons don’t think their own, largely Protestant work ethic is good enough to govern America. They’ll go to the Celelestial kingdom and everyone else will be servants in the terrestial or telestial heavens. I don’t want to America patronized by a President who thinks the rest of the world is a gentile. The speech was pure fluff in a world demanding answers.
D&C 137: 1, 7, 10 1 The heavens were opened upon us, and I beheld the celestial kingdom of God, and the glory thereof, whether in the body or out I cannot tell. • • • 7 Thus came the voice of the Lord unto me, saying: All who have died without a knowledge of this gospel, who would have received it if they had been permitted to tarry, shall be heirs of the celestial kingdom of God;
The Celestial kingdom will be open to all who want to go there.
From Unmarked Package’s homepage.
Homosexual Rights
Romney has always opposed same-sex marriage. He diligently lobbied Congress in favor of a Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution defining marriage to be between one man and one woman. Romney testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the Federal Marriage Amendment, and sent a letter to all 100 U.S. Senators on June 2, 2006 asking them to vote for the Amendment. Sen. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani opposed the FMA.
Governor Romney: “A lot of people get confused that gay marriage is about treating gay people the same as treating heterosexual people, and that’s not the issue involved here.”
“This is about the development and nurturing of children. Marriage is primarily an institution to help develop children, and children’s development, I believe, is greatly enhanced by access to a mom and a dad.”
“I think every child deserves a mom and a dad, and that’s why I’m so consistent and vehement in my view that we should have a federal amendment which defines marriage in that way.”
(ABC News This Week interview with Mitt Romney on Feb 18, 2007) (Mitt TV Clip)
When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in the case of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, Gov. Romney identified and enforced a little-known 1913 state law that forbids nonresidents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be recognized in their home state. This prevented gay couples living outside Massachusetts from flocking to MA to be married and then returning to their home states to demand the marriages be recognized, thus opening the door for nationwide same-sex marriage. Implementation of the 1913 law was contested in court by same-sex couples from outside MA, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in March, 2006 to uphold the application of the law.
(Mass. high court says nonresident gays cannot marry in state, Boston Globe, March 30, 2006)
Gov. Romney provided active support for a citizen petition drive in 2005 that collected 170,000+ signatures for a state constitutional amendment protecting marriage. He rallied citizens to place pressure on the Legislature for failing, through repeated delays, to fulfill their constitutional obligation to vote on placing the marriage amendment on the ballot. Gov. Romney filed suit in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) asking the court to clarify the legislators’ duty to vote on the issue of the amendment, or place the amendment on the ballot if the Legislature failed to act. The SJC declared that legislators had a constitutional duty to vote on the petition in a ruling handed down on Dec. 27, 2006. The suit was successful in pressuring the Legislature to vote on the issue of the amendment. A vote was taken on January 2, 2007 and the measure passed. Through Governor Romney’s considerable efforts and leadership, a state constitutional amendment defining marriage to be between one man and one woman has passed a critical hurdle to get it placed on the 2008 ballot where voters in Massachusetts will have the power to restore traditional marriage in their state.
Mitt Romney does not favor action at the national level to sanction civil unions and would leave it to the several states to define the permissible contractual relationships between two people. Romney would not seek to impose, at the national level, a prohibition on contractual relationships between two people.
(ABC News This Week interview with Mitt Romney on Feb 18, 2007)
Governor Romney strongly defended the right of Catholic Charities in Massachusetts to deny placing adoptive children in the homes of gay couples; saying it was unjust to require a religious agency to violate the tenets of its faith in order to satisfy a special-interest group. Romney filed “An Act Protecting Religious Freedom” in the Legislature, a bill to exempt Catholic Charities of Boston and other religious groups from the state anti-discrimination law.
(Romney files ‘religious freedom’ bill on church and gay adoption, Boston Globe, March 15, 2006)
Mormon doctrine is as fluid as the comic book paper it is written upon. That was expressly NOT the instruction of the Sunday School teachers I remember. “...who would have received if they had been permitted to tarry..” expresses two qualifiers that contradict your conclusion, but, again, Joseph Smith’s “translations” of the Pearl of Great Price have been proven fraudulent, post Rosetta Stone, so it is pointless to embroider upon a fraudlent authors’ premise. The same people who allowed the Mountain Meadows Massacre to occur and who still refuse to apologize for it, should not be the bearers of God’s law to the masses.
Looking forward to hearing more about this allegation. What is your reasoning? Sources?
Harry Reid. I don’t need to go any further. If Gordon Hinkley had an ounce of conviction he would have pulled that reprobate into his office and read him the riot act. You know it, so don’t get all Dannite on me.
Your misunderstanding of Doctrine surrounding the Celestial Kingdom is not your Sun. Sch. teacher's responsibility, IMO.
Is there something your not telling us? You said earlier you had relatives who were Mormon. You are/were not one are you? This sentence just makes it seem like you may be. Did you attend Sunday School often?
Mormons believe in Freedom of religion, political belief and conscience. You want us to get all Commie on another’s political belief? It’s not the way God works. He lets us choose to follow him or not. IMO, Reid will reap what he sows but I am not his judge the Lord is.
I grew up in the Mormon church and have relatives who are still close to it, (my source for their take on current trends in the church). Yes—”Often.” Most religions tend to get more plurarlistic with every passing generation and the Mormon church is no different. Do I need to quote Brigham Young’s observation in the Journal of Discourses, stating that Joseph Smith Junior holds all the keys to heaven, that no man is allowed into the kingdom without Joseph Smith’s approval? That was papered over by the time I was attending Sunday School, just as Hinkley tried to paper over eternal progression with Mike Wallace on 60 minutes. The point is that the Mormon church is very fluid, and very capable of being driven by market surveys. Romney is no different. When faced with Massachussetts liberals, he becomes one, in order to gain power. What will he become if he gains power at the federal level. I humbly suggest: it is anyone’s guess.
I really hope people come around on their thinking of him. He would be so great as President. He would finally be a second Ronald Reagan. He can speak so clearly and exact. Wouldn’t that be a huge change for the Republicans. I am still for Duncan Hunter if he ever gets past one percent. Fred Thompson is fine, but the First Lady, grandpa picking husband, is going to be chastised thoughout the entire campaign and not sure if we need that.
huh?
I don't like Reid and one day when I saw him in my ward, I wanted to say a few things than I was reminded in my heart this is the Lord House and he is welcome here as I am.
If it was proven he broke a covenant I am sure his stake pred would call him on it, in the mean time we are all entitled to our own thoughts!
No church is free of hypocrits and those with more patience than I pray they change their ways!
BTW what's this slur about something I see you have no knowledge of but wanted to spite it out for good measure I guess!
so don’t get all Dannite on me you silly boy!
Gee the more I read of you I wonder where the light of the Lord lives in the bitter dark cellar of yours!
Children of darkness like you call darkness light and light darkness.
Now the other shoe drop!
you keep trying to justify the bed you made, by smacking those who remind you...
Ronald Reagan had a burning conviction that free markets and political freedom were blessings worth fighting for. Pre-election, he wrote burning invective against the Soviet Union. He peppered it all with good humor and a lot of charisma. Romney has the charisma, and the business sense, but I don’t think he has core beliefs. His religion is based on a fraudulent charlatan who stole other men’s wives and made up scripture. I don’t blame Romney for that, necessarily, but he has a history of pandering to our enemies. He’s going to have be very, very, very blunt about his conversion to the truth in order to get my vote. He seems to be a “son of tradition,” a guy living up to his father’s preppie dreams, just like GWB, and we’ve seen what happens when a resume is more important than conviction. This week’s give-away of our sovereignty should be a reminder that we can’t settle for smooth talk and credentials over substance.
Heah, I’m not the one too chicken to call Harry Reid to repentance.
It has nothing to do with that if you ever were a member.
Each of us are responsible for working our own salvation.
It is up to Harry to be sincere and humble in the Lord, it is not something another can do or demand, Love comes from the heart alone and the desires to honore the Lord!
Jesus the original author of scriptures trumps Paul. He invited the sinners to sup with him. This really upset the Pharisees.
Re-read Matt. 18 again. You’ve got it wrong: Jesus inspired Paul; he didn’t “trump” him, that is unless you don’t believe scripture is inspired and you are asserting that scripture contradicts itself. The calling of Jesus to evangelize and the calling of Paul to organize the church represents two different functions of the body. You wouldn’t let a flaming child molester play the church organ, nor should you let Harry Reid into your temples, that is unless the temples really are a place where child killers are glorified.
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