Good morning.  Good morning.  How y'all doing.  We had some people who rode some buses in this morning, right?  [laughs]  Well don't fall asleep yet.  I hope you slept on the bus.  But I want to welcome all of you to Road to Majority.  Yesterday we had Ted Cruz, we had Marco Rubio, we had Allen West, we had Ambassador John Bolton; we had Senate Minority Leader soon to be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, we had Sen. John Cornyn, and that was just the first day. 

And we are going to have an incredible line up over the next two days.  We're going to equip you, we're going to empower you, we're going to encourage you, and we're going to send you back to your respective states to build the organization that will turn out a record number of evangelical and faithful Catholic voters, and come November, Harry Reid is going to be retired as the majority leader of the U.S. Senate.

And frankly, it can't come soon enough.  I want us to take stock this morning of the state of our country and look out upon the fiscal, the cultural, and the foreign policy chaos that is America as we gather this morning.  We are a nation that is $17 trillion in debt, which is equal to the entire U.S. economy.  Which is viewed by most economists as a red warning light that goes off on the dashboard and tells you your engine is about to shut down.  When your debt equals the size of your economy.  That's never been true in the history of our country, even during World War II, even during the Cold War, and 40-percent of that debt has been run up in just the last five years by this administration. 

We have between $65 and $85 trillion in unfunded entitlement obligations that we have promised to future generations and we have no way to pay and that's not even included in the debt.  Last year for the first time since the Social Security system was created in 1935, the Social Security Administration took in less money than it paid out, and by the year 2024 they will be unable to pay benefits to beneficiaries.  And the system will either require a multi-trillion dollar bailout, which we have no means to pay or it will go bankrupt.

We have an economy that has grown at a roughly 1- to 2-percent growth rate, an anemic Eurozone-type rate, and a largely jobless recovery.  We have if you include the underemployed, the unemployed and those who have given up and simply stopped working, we have 14 million unemployed or underemployed and we have the lowest labor participation rate since the 1970s.  That's the fiscal and economic picture.

Then you look at the cultural picture and we have one out of every two marriages in America ending in divorce, we have a majority of all the children being raised in America today are being raised with one of their two parents not present in the household.  Forty-percent of all the children born in America this year will be born out of wedlock.  That figure is 72-percent in the African-American community, it is 53-percent in the Latino community.  Folks, there is no way to sustain vibrant communities with that many children being born and raised out of wedlock.  Without the benefit of the tough love and the nurture of both parents. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control one out of every four 18- to 24-year olds in America today is a regular, that is to say a weekly or more frequently regular user of marijuana or other illegal drugs.  One out of four.  Highest level since the 1970s.  And when states around the country are beginning to legalize marijuana in violation of federal law, this administration announces publicly they will no longer enforce federal law.  They just pick and choose which laws they're going to enforce. 

In New York City 80-percent of the graduates of public high schools, 80-percent, require remedial classes to perform basic functions or are functionally illiterate, and in this city, New York City and other major cities, an African-American under the age of 25, an African-American male, has a higher statistical likelihood of being killed before the age of 25 than an American soldier did in Iraq or in Afganistan. 

Now that's the domestic picture.  And folks these are tough words, but they are the truth.  As a society, after 50 years of if it feels good do it, we have reaped what we have sowed.  We have turned our back on God and his precepts and like a prodigal child we now live with those consequences.

Beyond our shores, Russia has seized Crimea and threatens not only Ukraine but the other former Baltic republics.  Syria is in flames; a bloodthirsty tyrant over 160,000 innocent civilians and three million people are displaced throughout Syria and surrounding areas including a million refugees in Jordan alone.  We have an al-Qaeda offshoot that is on the verge of toppling the government of Iraq, and this administration fiddles while Rome burns.  And I don't know about you, but I thought it was more important for Barack Obama to come back to Washington and convene an emergency meeting of his national security council than it was for him to stay in Palm Springs and play golf for two days when al-Qaeda was marching across the Middle East.  In Iran, the mullahs stand between 120 and 180 days of having enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, and there are 30,000 centrifuges spinning at their nuclear installations in Fordow and Natanz.

Now I ask you, do I paint an accurate picture or do I exaggerate.  I think it's an accurate picture.  And this is our message to the people of America this weekend.  These are not just money problems and these are not just military problems.  My friends, these are moral problems that will only be solved with moral and spiritual solutions.

And if you don't believe me, just look at the moral and spiritual corruption that has led to a hearing that is going on right now in the House of Representatives as we speak in which the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is being called to testify under oath about what was a systematic and deliberate campaign, I believe coordinated with the White House and the Justice Department, to try to harrass, intimidate and silence opponents of this administration.  And after they got called on that, they have now destroyed the evidence of their crimes.  And make now mistake about it my friends, these were federal crimes.  It is a crime to abuse the power of the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes and those who were responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for that abuse. 

Now they say that two years of emails between Lois Lerner, the White House and the Department of Justice are missing.  They can't find them.  This is the bureaucratic equivalent of "the dog ate my homework."  This comes after these emails have been under subpeona for I believe two and a half years, in which the IRS has claimed they were complying.  And not only did Lois Lerner hard drive "crash," but the hard drives of six other IRS officials who were involved in this conspiracy have also "crashed." 

And while this was going on, you probably know, I know you know that this year the IRS attempted to promulgate new rules that would have cracked down on the ability of grassroots citizen organizations like Faith & Freedom Coalition and others to educate, inform and register voters prior to elections.  And I don't know how closely you looked at this, but these regulations were so draconian and so nefarious that they would have prohibited voter registration drives in churches within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election; they would have outlawed the ability of groups like ours to even post the votiing record of an incumbent member of Congress on a website.  Folks, this is a total infringement of our God-given, not just our American rights, our God-given rights as free people. 

And we were not about to take it lying down.  So Faith & Freedom Coalition emailed, phoned, texted, text messaged and otherwised contacted approximately two million of our close personal friends all across the country and said if you don't speak out now, they're going to take away your First Amendment rights.  And let me tell you what happened.  Seventy one thousand six hundred members and activists and supporters of Faith & Freedom Coalition filed comments with the IRS.  That was roughly half of the 150,000 comments that were received, and the IRS has now announced that they have stopped that rule-making procedure because of the efforts that you undertook.

Now look, we have to remain vigilant.  Because when they made that announcement, and this is typical of this administration, they said we've stopped this rule-making procedure, we've turned off the switch; we're now going to start a new rule-making procedure.  So we're going to have to do it all over again, and that's fine because the price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and we're going to remain vigilant. 

And let me tell you what we're going to do after we kill these regulations once and for all.  We're going to see a new Senate and a new House come January of 2015.  And we are not going to stop until we abolish this agency, clear that building, fumigate it.  I think we ought to raze that building to the ground and build a monument on the rubble so that future generations will know that we stood up and stopped tyranny so that they would remain free.  Later on I'll tell you what I really think about this issue.  [laughs]  I'm sort of dialing it back right now.

But, you know what, as important as that is, and it is important, it's important for us to make sure, as the Apostle Paul so eloquently said, that we complete the work and we finish the job of those who surround us like a great cloud of witnesses and call us to complete the job.  Because we're not here this morning by accident.  The price of our ability to mobilize, to organize, to vote, to encourage like-minded citizens to do the same, to contact our elected officials, to make our views known, to petition those in government and make them responsive to our will.  Folks this is not the norm, not only in the history of Western civilization and this planet, it's not the norm today.  Look at Crimea, look at Ukraine, look at Libya, look at what's unfolded in Egypt and throughout the Middle East and I mentioned Iraq and Syria.  This is a precious right that has been purchased with the blood of patriots and we should not take it lightly.  And as important as it is, I really believe this with all my heart, whatever problems we have as a nation, God is bigger than every one of them.  And whatever problems we have, and I think this has probably always been true, but I think the Lord has brought us to this place so that we all realize it and it's irrefutable.

Look, we're going to turn out a big vote in November, and believe you me change is coming, the calvary is on its way, but what ails America is not going to be solved by throwing out one group of politicians and replacing them with another group of politicians.  And it's not going to be solved by repealing their bad laws and replacing them with other laws.  Now those are important things, but there is only one thing, only one thing that will bring this nation back to economic, military and moral greatness, and that is we need an awakening, a moral and spiritual awakening that will call our nation back to brokenness, humility, reliance and dependence upon almighty God.  That's what this nation needs. 

You know when Ronald Reagan took the oath of office, and you may remember that Reagan had asked when he was inaugurated to move the inaugural ceremonies that had been held at the East Front of the Capitol throughout the history of the country as long as they have been doing it at the Capitol, and he asked that it be moved to the West Front of the Capitol so that he could look down the Mall at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial and take in what had made America great.  And before he stepped to that podium to deliver that inaugural address, when he took the oath of office you may know that he took the oath by placing his hand on his mother Nell's Bible. 

His mother was a deeply committed Christian.  You know Reagan didn't lead a charmed life.  He was the son of an alcoholic; he grew up in a home that knew the tragedy and the pain of chemical dependency, and he became a believer when he was I think 11 or 12 years old.  It was his mother's Bible, that well-thumbed, well-marked Bible that had guided him through that turbulent childhood, and that Bible was open to 2 Chronicles 7:14, that's where he placed his hand, that was his theme verse.  And that verse says, "If my people, who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear their prayer from Heaven and I will forgive their sins and I will heal their land." 

I want you to think about that verse for a minute and note that it doesn't say "if others will pray."  If all those sinners or all those bad people or all those folks on the other side of the divide, if they will.  No, it says if my people, if the people called by my name.  That means us.  We're the ones who have to repent.

[missing the last minute]

Copyright © 2014 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action. All rights reserved.