A Program for Victory

by Will Christensen (California)

Speech given at the Freedom Forum of the IAP National Conference, August 3, 2002, Salt Lake City, Utah.  Will Christensen is the Western States Coordinator of the Independent American Party.

Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here. And by the way, do you know what it means when a political speaker puts his watch on the podium? Not a darn thing. (Laughter)

So I want to talk about a "program for victory" because -- if we're not going to win, what are we doing? Why are we here? And if I forget anything, do you know why the memory loss and old age go together? I can't remember? (Laughter)

So I hope that the Spirit of Freedom will be with us as we discuss how we're going to win this situation. By the way, I hope that you feel that the five hours that we spent putting this platform together have been five hours well spent. And I hope that you realize what we've done. This thing is a great document. And I'm very pleased to have had a part with that.

I'd like to begin by telling you a story. I was down in Provo by LaMar's Club, which is no longer there. That's one of the few bars in Provo. And I saw a couple of good old boys standing there out in front, and I was listening to them. And the one says -- why don't you come into LaMar's and drink beer with us like you used to? And the other one says -- well, beer is a nickel a bottle cheaper over in Springville, so I go over to Springville and drink. And the first one says -- well, let's see, it's eight miles over to Springville. At 20 cents a mile how's it cheaper to go to Springville to drink? And the second one says -- well I just sit there and drink until I show a profit. (Laughter)

So, I submit that that's the economic program of the Bush administration.

I'd like to tell you a little bit about the make-up of America as I see it. We are a nation of good people that is in bondage to a criminal conspiracy. We have a conspiracy that has taken over our nation. But we are a nation of good people. Let me just remind you of some of the good points of our people. And I'm talking 80 plus percent of our people. We've got about 10 or so percent that make the newspapers. But the 80 plus percent don't make the newspapers; and that's what I want to talk about -- good people just like you. Think about your neighbors and those you know, and see if they don't kind of fit in to this.

We are a religious people as Americans -- religious thought and religious activities are on the rise. And I consider that's a good sign, because that means that this nation's repenting. And that's what we need. We need repentance here. We're helpful as a people and we're the most charitable people on earth and you all know that. You've heard it before many times. We usually choose the right as a people unless we've been overly influenced by a media blitz. But generally we will choose the right.

We're mostly ignorant of history. Do you believe that? -- and the founding principles of our nation. Our people generally don't know them. They don't understand them. We've been brain washed and duped about the two-party system. Has anybody read the book by Carroll Quigley -- Tragedy and Hope. You're familiar with that? He wrote another book called The Anglo-American Establishment. Anybody here read that book? Excellent, excellent book. And in that book he said that the two-party system is made so that the American people can throw the rascals out -- but the policies of the government still remain the same. And he says that was a goal of the people who took over our government.

Okay, our people are usually inactive in the political process. Can you go along with that? Okay. They also hate to be fooled or taken advantage of. Americans hate to be fooled. I mean -- to be conned -- that's bad news. They also have a gut feeling that something is wrong with our leaders and with our government.

Let me give you some statistics here that were compiled by the University of Virginia about four or five years ago. Twenty-four percent of the people surveyed said that the phrase "Involved in a conspiracy" describes the governing elite. Do you believe that? Twenty-four percent of the people surveyed said that "involved in a conspiracy" describes the governing elite. And fully 20 per cent of our American population agrees that the people who run our society's major institutions are involved in a conspiracy. That's about one out of five.

You may not run across those too much, but you know, I think if those 20 percent were asked why do you think that these people are involved in a conspiracy, they wouldn't be able to put their finger on it. But they've got a gut feeling. The spirit is bearing witness to them that this is so. And that makes our job a lot easier.

Okay, let's talk about the make-up of our media leaders. Our media leaders have a CFR dominance. Council on Foreign Relations -- the Council on Foreign Relations has almost total control over the media, the major media in our nation. And as such, they choose the issues -- both political and what's news worthy.

For those of you who have run for office, you found out that the issues that you bring up, that are salient issues in our time, are usually ignored by the press. They choose the issues both political and what is news. They are a very small but powerful group. Now that's the bad news.

Here's the good news. Their power rests on a very fragile foundation of ignorance. Do you believe that? The power of the media rests on a fragile foundation of ignorance. And what is the enemy of ignorance? Truth. Ones that ignorance is destroyed by truth, it takes years to rebuild it. So what's our job? We've got to get the truth out.

Now you look at where you are -- where you were before you became politically involved, and for me that was 50 years ago. But something caused us to get involved -- some defining point that made us leave the majority of the American people and become politically active. And that was a defining moment in your life. Because once most people get involved in the political process, and they understand why they're involved, they stay involved. So what we need to do is increase the number of people that are involved. Increase those defining moments.

Let's talk about the make-up of congress. Do you agree with me that congress attracts power seekers? -- that the political process attracts power seekers. We agree on that. All right. So how many of our Congress -- and let's just talk about the house for a minute. How many of the House are dedicated socialists or totalitarians? My guess is about 10 percent.

Okay. I think that there's about 15 per cent who are really connected with the cause of freedom. About 15 per cent I would say. So that leaves 75 per cent by my figures who are what? Politicians. (Laughter)

Politicians! They're not dedicated right-wingers, they're not dedicated left-wingers, what are they dedicated to? Staying there. That's what they're dedicated to, and the power that accrues from that position.

The House of Representatives is the key to retaining and enhancing our freedom. Now I'm just going to state that and I hope that you'll go along with that. Let me just give you a couple of reasons why I believe that.

The House controls the money right? Okay, now a law can be passed or there can be an organization or a program, but if that program doesn't get any money, how many of those bureaucrats are going to stay there and work for nothing and keep that program going? Zero! Okay. They're there for what they can get out of it. The house generally is given the power to initiate legislation. That's a good power. Good power. Money, legislation.

Thirdly, the House and the Senate this time -- have the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. How many here feel that the Supreme Court is out of control. Okay. We agree on that then. How do we get it back in control? The founding fathers told us how. Look at Article 3 Section 2 Paragraph 2. It's very clear. I just happen to have it right here. It's a coincidence of course. But Paragraph 2, halfway down -- in all other cases and the number of cases that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over are listed in Paragraph 1. In all other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact. With such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.

Okay, how do we apply this? Let's say that this is what we're in the process of doing. Let's say that we decided that prayer in public buildings is a good gut issue with the American people, and I believe it is. I believe that most people believe that we ought to be able to pray in a school or in a public building. They pray in Congress. I wonder how many of them listen sometime. But they do pray. So what do we do? We put a bill in Congress that limits the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to decide on cases having to do with prayer in public buildings. And by previous decisions, that nullifies any other decisions once Congress passes that bill. And the Senate doesn't have to ratify it. This is the House. This is only the House. So that's powerful.

The founding fathers decided which parts of the Congress were, and our government were, going to be most powerful, and they gave those the shortest duration. You notice the House gets elected every two years. They've got the money, they've got the jurisdiction over the Supreme Court, they initiate most legislation. All right.

Who's got it next? The President. Okay, four years. Who's next. Six years -- that's the Senate. And who is supposed to have the least power? That's the Supreme Court who are appointed for life or until Congress removes them. Okay. Most powerful the House -- 2 years. Next the President -- 4 years. Next the Senate -- 6 years. And the least -- but we've got that out of whack don't we? The Supreme Court is very powerful right now and shouldn't be. If you read the Constitution you'll see why.

The solution. Now but that's our problem and that's just basic -- that's foundational. The solution to preserving and enhancing our freedom --. You know and let me just make one point here. If we're out to only preserve our freedom, we're going to lose. We need to enhance it and get it back to where it was in the late 18th century, early 19th century. Okay. And if we're only concerned about our freedom, I think then we don't deserve to win. We need to be concerned about freedom for all the world. But right now, the battle is here, isn't it. And if we win here -- not if we win -- WHEN we win -- and it's going to be close, it's going to be soon. WHEN we win, then our most popular export ought to be the freedom ideas in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. That should be our major export.

The solution to preserving and enhancing our freedom is to make it popular to support freedom issues. Well how do we do that? That's a big a tall order isn't it? Well, enough of the constituents of a congressman want something or that something gets done, doesn't it? Pretty much. Pretty much. Politicians tend to move towards the way they perceive that political power is moving. Remember, most of them are not dedicated right-wingers or dedicated left-wingers, they're dedicated to staying there, and in order to stay there, they've got to please their constituents.

When freedom is popular we will have a veto-proof congress, won't we? We'll still have about the 15 per cent who are attached to freedom. We'll still have the 10 per cent socialists or totalitarians or whatever you want to call them, but we'll have that 75 per cent who will go with freedom.

Let me tell you a couple of stories. About six years ago I was looking for a candidate in my house district for the Utah House. And I couldn't find one and I thought oh, phooey, I'm going to have to run. And I'd run before, and that's no big deal, but my wife says, "Who do you have running in this district?" And I said, so far I don't have anybody. I guess I'll have to. She says "Well what about me?" Well, I said, my goodness. I didn't know you wanted to run. She says "I DON'T want to run, but I think I ought to. The spirit is pushing on me to run." Well, I said, okay, let's do it. I'll pay your filing fee. Because I don't have to run.

The long and the short of the campaign was -- they had a fairly strong Democrat running, and of course she ran on the Independent American Party -- and the Republican came and sat on MY couch in MY living room and said, "We need to combine our forces." What he meant was, You need to drop out. Okay?

And my wife is a little feisty sometimes and she said, "Why should I do that?" Well, so the Democrat doesn't get it. And she says "Well how are you so much better than he is?" And so we started to ask him some questions and we found out from the questions that we asked him that he was a moderate Republican.

Anyway, so we went ahead and ran. And it was a family affair. It was a fun campaign. But what was important about this story is the debates. I love female candidates, because in all the debates they get to speak first and they get to set the tone, they get to decide what they're going to talk about, because whatever the first speaker talks about, the other speakers have to reply to. So she got up there and she just told her story and why she was doing it and so on. And the Democrat was a total socialist. He had been in education all of his life and in administration most of his life and he was very attached to the big government idea. And so he espoused that in his first speech. Well, that didn't weigh many friends in our district. And in the second debate, he was a little bit quieter. And on the third debate -- third or fourth -- he got up and said, "Well I've always been a believer of small government." What a lie! Good Grief!

Anyway, so she moved him from his socialistic position at least publicly to a position where he was more middle of the road and really kind of over on our side. Now what happened to the moderate Republican? Well he learned a lot during those debates. And he got elected and went to the state House and became a Constitutionalist. And that was interesting, because my wife changed him. And that's what we do as we go around and lecture. The thing is, he learned some things and he had enough guts once he learned them to stick with them. He was one of the few that voted against our Governor getting his pay raise. And that's another story, and we'll talk about that another time.

Those who won't study history and our current events are doomed to repeat them over and over and over again -- and that's the history of the American people. They don't study, and so we go through the same thing over and over and over again.

So what have we seen in this program is that when the Congress decides that the average person in their district is for something, that it really works?

Let me give you the Defense of Marriage Act: The Defense of Marriage Act was sponsored by Bob Barr in 1996. He's the representative from Georgia. And it was in response to the homosexual agenda where they were going to get same sex marriages recognized in the People's Republic of Hawaii. So if you know Hawaii, it's a pretty socialistic state -- look at their representatives. So they had a good chance of getting homosexual marriages codified. Bob Barr came up with the Defense of Marriage Act that said Marriage is a legal union between one man and one woman, and so they put the force of law between the homosexuals and their objection. And so now they've got to get not only get the legislature to recognize the homosexual marriage, they have to get the law overturned. So that was good. That Defense of Marriage Act went through by about 380 to 40. That overwhelming majority -- also in the Senate.

So do you remember the Patent Bill -- The Patent: that was a bill where we were going to pattern our patent office after the Japanese system, which gives the individual inventor almost no protection. Well the Eagle Forum, the Birch Society, a lot of organizations got on this Patent Bill about 1998 and we stopped it cold.

Okay. The ICC -- what about the ICC? If the average person wasn't against the ICC, the President wouldn't have come out and say we're not going to put our signature off that. And so on and so on. By the way, two anti-United Nations resolutions have been passed in two states in the last thirty days. One of them being Idaho, and I forget what the other one was.

But the point is, when we mobilize the constituency and they make their wants known, we're going to have the vast majority of the members of the House on the freedom side rather than on the socialist side. Politicians will we say, oh, I've always believed in freedom.

Okay. How are we going to do this? We're going to expand the committee of Correspondence. For those of you who know the history of our nation, the Committee of Correspondence was the pre-Revolutionary war Internet. It was a committee where they would write a letter, and then they'd send it out to five people, and they'd send it out to five, and it just got all over the nation that way. That's what we're going to do. We're going to expand that. We've got almost three hundred members right now. This Committee of Correspondence will be a source of information and activity. The Party will send alerts and the members of the committee are expected to send those alerts to their e-mail list, and so you see, we get a ripple effect -- and also make five copies and distribute it to those who don't have the internet.

We are going to ask them to write frequent letters to the editor -- one or two per month. Circulate petitions as needed -- our UN petitions. We've got three of them over there if you haven't signed them; they're over there on the table. Be a source of information in their precinct and community. And we're going to ask them to pray with faith for our nation.

And you see as this expands, this prayer for our nation will have a tremendous effect on the work that we're doing and on our members of Congress. Our goal is to to begin with two members in each precinct and then move that up to ten as we can.

We're also going to expand the Legislative Development Committee. Let me just tell you a quick story. In 1999 the Panama Canal was being given away. There were a number of members of our Party at a dinner function, and I talked to three of them and I said, "We need to create a bill to rescind the Panama Canal Treaty." And so the four of us got together and we created a bill. We sent it out to about 85 members of Congress. Rep. Helen Chenowith from Idaho picked that bill up, ran it through her staff, made it better, and it came out as HJR77.

So with that as a foundation, we decided we ought to do this more often. And that's what we're doing. Here's some of the things that we're doing. We're going to rescind the Patriot Act. We're going to send out a bill to the top 50 Congressmen to rescind the Patriot Act. Somebody will pick it up. We're going to make a bill that will limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court on prayer. We're going to send out to the other 49 states letters on stating that they should pass a bill similar to the one that Ohio passed limiting partial birth abortion. And HR1046, the United Nations Bill and so on.

Let me finish. Freedom is not free. It takes work! And I know you know that. This is not a one shot political campaign. It's going to go on for years, but it's doable and it's possible. And as I see it, it's the only thing we have.

George the III -- George Washington was George the I, George the II was George Bush's dad, and George the III is W. -- has a goal date of 2005 for the Free Trade Association of the Americas. That will essentially destroy the sovereignty of our nation.

Well, we have an earlier date than that for our removal from the United Nations. And we're going to do that.

Let me talk about responsibility for just a minute. Freedom and responsibility are the different sides of the same coin. If we're not willing to take responsibility then we don't deserve freedom. I would like you to take responsibility for the political thought in your precinct and in your community. Set the example. Be a source of information in your community.

Let me just tell you about this book for a second. Freedom from Fear. Okay I don't have time to do anything except read one section. It says in here this is how to get rid of fear in your life. It says "Invest 30 minutes a day in reading books that will make you stretch. Avoid the easy stuff. You won't grow. Thirty minutes a day for six months will make you one of the most knowledgeable people in your office." After a year in your town, two years the county, five years the state, and so on. We don't have five years. But we do have two, so become one of the most knowledgeable people in your county by reading 30 minutes a day. It's a good habit to get into. By the way, you might want to subscribe to the New American. This is one of the best sources of news that I've ever seen. It's straight. It's Honest. It's Good.

George Washington said, "Truth is mightier than error if enough pains are taken to bring it to light. Freedom is our heritage and our destiny."

Again, I say I'm honored to be in your presence. You do so much good in this world. You stand up for freedom and it's an honor to be here. I salute you for what you do. Many of you've fought for freedom for decades. You have the power and the experience which will make the difference in this battle. Our challenge for us -- become more influential and more powerful. For some of us, our income is limited -- our influence is limited by our income. We need to increase that income, but we need to become a power in our community and achieve more for freedom. With God's help and your efforts, we will defeat the forces of slavery and evil. (Applause)