On December 11, 2012 the Center for Security Policy honored radio host and bestselling author Monica Crowley with the Mightier Pen Award and host its annual National Security and New Media Conference. The Mightier Pen Award recognizes journalists who promote the need for robust US national security policies through the indispensability of American strength to preserving international peace. As a political and foreign affairs analyst, Monica Crowley has been a long-standing supporter of the Center’s belief that America’s national power must be preserved and properly used; for it holds a unique global role in maintaining peace and stability. Ms Crowley’s new book, What the (Bleep) Just Happened?, asks the questions that are on the minds of Americans today and makes the case for a “great American comeback,” including a return to the security posture that made America great.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Those of you who were with us last year saw her in action here, when she provided the introduction to the recipient of that particular occasion, Roger Ailes. And it was a very sweet thing of her to do because I had actually had asked her to receive it on that occasion, having given up on Roger agreeing. And when he finally did after she had graciously agreed, we made a deal that she would give him the award the last time and receive it this time. And so we’re very pleased to be able now to fulfill our part of the bargain. I just wanted to say before introducing Andy to make the introduction to the woman who needs no introduction, it’s safe to say, that we’re meeting to talk basically about – as I know Monica will – the importance of not only the informed electorate as we discussed earlier and the role of the media in informing it, but specifically the importance of national security reporting and national security-mindedness in reporting. So that the public is informed about the issues that may well, let’s be honest, affect certainly their interests and possibly their lives. And those of their loved ones. And we’re doing this at a time when I think of ourselves as kind of afflicted with a lost generation. Not in the sense, of course, of having wasted an entire generation of young men as in World War One, but having through various influences – to some extent, the media, to some extent, academia, to some extent, the culture, to some extent, our leadership, we’ve essentially had a generation or so of people who have really not been steeped in these issues, have not been thinking about these issues. Have not been addressing these issues.

And when I say national security, I mean, really broadly defined. Basically since the end of the Cold War. Oh, yes, there was a blip with the unpleasantness down the street in 9-11, but we got over that and we went back to not thinking about these things. Except of course for those whose lives were disrupted or in some cases lost. Defending ourselves against the people who perpetrated that and their friends. But for most of us – and certainly, I would argue for most of our elite, for the better part of – what is it now? Twenty years? This portfolio has really not been the subject of serious national deliberation, debate, or thought. So this makes that much more important the subject that brings us together. Which is how do we overcome that? And how do we offset it? How do we cultivate a new generation of leaders, elected and appointed and in other walks of life who will understand these vitally important questions of our time? Lest we find ourselves – as I think many of us here in this room fear we may be as the experience of the previous lost generation gave rise to the late 1930s and the famous denunciation for example of the Oxford Union, of fighting for King and Country. Something that was rejected at that time. We’re not that far removed from this similar past, I’m afraid. And to the extent that we are not, it is no small measure thanks to the people that we’re here to share this podium with today, starting with one of the men I admire most in our country – and he may get up here and say the same thing about me, so you know it’s a mutual admiration thing, but still, I really mean it. Andy McCarthy is a heroic figure in our country at this juncture. Both for his service to it in public office, notably in the prosecution of the Blind Sheik. And subsequent to his laying down those burdens, his incredible work day after day after day, his writings in National Review Online, his writings in PJ Media, his writings in other outlets, his books, his contributions to various films and television broadcasts, including those made possible by people in this room. Have really made him almost an example of what we must be if this country is to survive in a dangerous world. Thoughtful, attentive, disciplined, and wherever possible, brilliant. With that, I invite you to welcome Andy McCarthy.

ANDREW McCARTHY: Well, boy, to get to talk about Frank Gaffney and Monica Crowley in one afternoon. Before I turn to Monica, I just want to take a second to thank Frank Gaffney because I think we have too many of these events that Frank pulls together and that happen sheerly because of Frank’s patriotism and his energy and we never take a second to say thank you to the guy who puts it all together Things are not good, but I shudder to think where we’d be without Frank. As for Monica, earlier this year, I saw a note on my calendar that Monica’s new book was about to come out. And I made a note in my calendar because Monica has been so characteristically gracious about things – many of the things that I’ve written and I wanted to make sure that I posted something at PJ Media and National Review and wherever else I could be heard to let people know that Monica’s book was out. But to be honest, I winced at the time because it was one of these particularly busy times. My friend, Roger Kimball, was bird-dogging me every five minutes or so about where my manuscript was, which was a fair complaint. And it was just one of these times where too many deadlines all came together at once. And that was the cause of the wincing. Because I happen to be one of these people who thinks this may be rare in the journalism business, but I think if you are actually going to say something about the book, you should actually have opened it. And seen what it says. So I sort of felt that I needed to at least flip through it to make sure I could be comfortable speaking about it. So I sat down to flip through it. And about six hours later, I found myself sitting in the same place, asking what the bleep just happened to my day? Like the rest of us, I already knew that besides being the best looking kid in the class, Monica is also the smartest kid in the class. Anyone that’s not news to me – anyone who listens to her on the radio or watches her dismantle lefties on FOX News knows that very well. What I didn’t know, but I should have figured is besides being a fierce, well-informed debater, Monica is a fabulous writer. A lot of good columnists, even good columnists, can’t sustain an argument beyond a few hundred words. And that’s why Monica’s book is such a treat. And if you haven’t read What the Bleep Just Happened: The Happy Warrior’s Guide To The Great American Comeback, do yourself a favor like I did and crack it open. You won’t be disappointed. I’m betting like me you probably won’t be able to put it down. Monica offers a comprehensive case about how the country has gone off-track. Interweaving our economy, our national security, and our culture. It’s thoroughly researched without clubbing you over the head with how thoroughly researched it is. And it’s powerfully argued. Monica’s wit is biting. And her irresistible charm jumps off every page of the book. When she talks about being a happy warrior, she’s not kidding. And she’s not kidding because it’s so obvious in the book and in everything she does that Monica loves America. Not the America that the left wants to create. But the America that is. The culture of liberty that everyone in this room thinks is so important to fight for. Now we’ve had a bad month, there’s no doubt about that. And it’s going to take gifted, committed people to win back what we’ve lost. Fortunately, that’s just what we have in Monica. Thank God she’s wielding her mightier pen for our side. And that’s why it’s such a delight and honor on behalf of the Center for Security Policy to present this year’s Mightier Pen Award to my friend, Monica Crowley.

MONICA CROWLEY: Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Andrew, thank you so much. First of all, I’m thrilled to have an actual pen because I am very old school. And I actually write my books a lot by longhand. I write up my interviews for my radio show longhand and I’m always going through pens. So the pen is actually a great gift in addition to being a great symbol for this extraordinary award. And I thank you so much for that warm welcome. It means the world to me to have all of you here, such good friends, so many people that I’ve admired for so many reasons. Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy day to be here today. Andy, God bless you. You are such a dear personal friend of mine. And you are such a hero to this Republic. Andy McCarthy was one of very few voices pre-9-11. After 9-11, everybody’s attention was really focused on radical Islam. And the fact that we were in the crosshairs of radical Islam. Which not a lot of people were focused on before the September 11th attacks. Andy McCarthy was one of those voices in the wilderness. Frank Gaffney, Steve Emerson, a few others. But they were lonely out there. And God bless you for keeping up the fight, particularly when nobody was watching and even now when it seems like nobody is watching. Andy McCarthy, God bless you and thank you for that extraordinary introduction.  And then there’s Frank Gaffney, also a dear friend and actually one of my oldest friends, I think, here in the room. I just have to remind everybody how we met. Because this was the early 1990s and I was working as foreign policy assistant to former president Richard Nixon. And one day a phone call came in and it was Frank. And since I was there as President Nixon’s foreign policy assistant, the phone call was directed to me and I had no idea who Frank was except he introduced himself as former undersecretary of defense for – did I get that right? Assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan. So right away I was dazzled and impressed. Reagan, of course, my big hero. Richard Nixon, also.

So I take the phone call in my best professional voice – Monica Crowley here. How can I help you? And he said that he wanted to, if possible, to come and see President Nixon to talk about the ABM treaty. Which President Nixon had signed with Leonid Brezhnev in 1972. And because the Soviet Union was no more, Frank thought in his wisdom, and of course he was right, because he’s right about everything, that since the other signatory to the treaty no longer existed that he should get the American signatory to call it null and void and call for vacating the treaty. So I said to President Nixon Frank Gaffney would like to come see you about vacating the ABM treaty and his eyes got huge. And he said, all right, bring him up. So Frank came to see President Nixon and used his considerable powers of persuasion on the president and the president agreed to disavow the ABM treaty. Thanks to Frank. And then President Nixon used his considerable powers of persuasion on Henry Kissinger and the two of them very publicly disavowed the treaty. Now it took a couple of years for the United States then to disavow the treaty, but ultimately George W. Bush finally did and it’s due to Frank. Frank is to be commended and honored for his single-minded focus and total dedication to this nation’s security. He is often a one-man band. He’s often attacked in the most grotesque and vicious ways and he’s also a voice in the wilderness. But he is always right and he’s always vindicated. And so we salute you for your gracefulness and your quiet heroism and sometimes not so quiet heroism. God bless you, Frank. Thank you. Well, to quote a recent bestseller, What The Bleep Just Happened, I hear that book is pretty good, by the way. So here we are, we’re a couple of weeks after the presidential election and I think a lot of us in this room would agree that we’re still walking around in a very surreal haze of utter disbelief about these results.

And I know, if you’re like me we can’t really believe it. I mean, part of me sometimes feels like we’re going to wake up and it’s going to be like October 20th and the hurricane will not have happened and the election will not have happened and everything of the last couple of weeks will have just been a bad dream. We all weren’t seeing things when we looked at the polls that showed either a tied race or Governor Romney ahead. We weren’t seeing things when we saw the energy on the Republican side and the huge rallies for Romney and Paul Ryan. And I think that’s why the results were so utterly shocking. Four years ago, we hoped John McCain would do it. But I think all of us deep down knew that was not going to be the case. This time around it was different, this time around we saw real energy on our side and proactive energy on our side. Not just a default, well, this guy’s not so bad. But we actually saw real turnaround, especially after the first presidential debate. Where people actually were excited about voting for Romney rather than just against Barack Obama. And that’s why I think the results of the evening of November 6th are still so startling and disturbing to all of us in this room. Today, given the work of Frank and the Center for Security Policy, I want to focus on our national security, because Frank is right when he says that there hasn’t been a lot of attention being paid to these critical issues. All you have to do is look at the coverage of Benghazi where you have four dead Americans, including the personal representative of the president of the United States, the US Ambassador, two former Navy Seals, and a long time foreign service officer. All you have to do is look at the lack of media coverage on that story to know what’s going on in America. And also to know at least a little bit about what’s going on with this foreign policy. Bill and I a couple of weeks ago went to see the movie Argo, and if you haven’t gone to see it, I commend it to you. It’s outstanding. But when you go to see it, you’re catapulted back to 1979. And one of the opening scenes – it’s actually a long sort of fifteen, twenty minute scene of the takeover of the US embassy by radical Islamists. And then after the taking of the hostages they flash back to the American homeland and for those of us who’ve lived through it – of course, I was a very little girl, very, very little girl. 1979. But we all remember the yellow ribbons that everybody put out. They hung their trees with them, on their mailboxes, the American people were outraged that our fellow citizens had been taken hostage by a radical Islamic force. Half a world away. We were screaming at President Carter. And we denied him reelection, not solely because of that, the economy was a huge issue also. But the Iran hostage crisis played a huge role because the American people were horrified that our fellow citizens were being held hostage, number one.

But what it symbolized, number two. Which was the abject humiliation of the United States of America. Flash forward, what, thirty-five years and here we are – where is the outrage? Where are the American people marching on the White House, screaming at president Obama about how this could have happened? How he could allow the abject humiliation of the United States of America. Remember, the Iranian hostage crisis, nobody died. Thank God. Here, we’ve got four dead American bodies and crickets out there in the homeland, crickets. A lot of it is due to the corrupt media. Thank God for FOX News. Thank God for the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal a few other outlets, talk radio, of which I am blessed to be a part. But other than that, it just doesn’t get covered. And so part of the lack of outrage is the lack of coverage, of course. But also, I fear that something bigger is happening in the country. And that is that Barack Obama and the far left have so changed the nature of America that it may be almost impossible, if not impossible to reverse. I do want to focus on our national security today. And why we are where we are. Which is in a period of accelerated American decline. Accelerated – and this is a very tough point for the American mind to process – but that period of accelerated American decline is being accelerated by the commander in chief. The commander in chief is a position – is a man, maybe someday it will be a woman, not Hillary Clinton, but that – the role of commander in chief, this is the person in whom we trust to protect and defend us but in whose hands now, we are set on a path, very deliberate path, a very rapid and dangerous descent. So in order to understand where we are right now, where we’re going, we’ve got to understand the commander in chief, first and foremost, where he comes from and what his philosophy is. I want to take you back to September 19th, 2001. I remember that day really well because it was only eight days after the 9-11 attacks and the wounds were still really raw and fresh.

And I also remember that day, it’s in my mind because it happened to be my birthday and just eight days after the attacks made that birthday particularly dark and grim. For those of you who were here in New York and even if you weren’t, you’ll remember that for weeks after the attack and certainly after that first – during that first week, there was a very surreal mood in the country. I mean, this city was almost at a standstill. In near silence. You still had emergency personnel looking for somebody, anybody, still alive in that twisted wreckage. We had a dark cloud of grief hanging over New York and Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, but indeed across the entire country. The whole nation was paralyzed because we had never seen an attack like this. Surprise attack, terrorist attack, it gave rise to fear and anger and dread and uncertainty that our whole reality was now different. But it also gave rise to this great sense of pride, right? In the heroism shown by so many people who, when those buildings were burning and everybody was running out, they were running in. And we also shared this deep-seated faith that America would smash the enemy, because that’s what America does. And that we would emerge stronger. On that day, September 19th, 2001, given this whole context, an undistinguished – very undistinguished state senator from Illinois wrote a piece and he published it in a nondescript Chicago area publication called The Hyde Park Herald – no, it’s Hot, right? Hyde Park – it’s like Vanity Fair. So he wrote this piece – and, by the way, if you try to look it up now, you can’t because Obama and his team have scrubbed it from the internet, so you can’t find it, but I want to share with you part of what he wrote. Because it’s very telling and it gives you a context into his mind and his mindset and how we get things like Benghazi and how we get things like the 1.2 trillion dollar defense sequester that has already kicked in. He wrote this, this was his – you know, he started with sort of a routine description about how we need heightened airport security and more effective intelligence operations and routine points like that. And then he said this, quote, we must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. It’s not difficult at all, Mr. Obama. It’s totalitarian Islam.

He continued, the essence of this tragedy – and note, he says tragedy instead of act of war – the essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers, an inability to imagine or connect with the humanity and suffering of others. They were jihadists, driven by their clearly articulated faith to kill the infidel, not empathize with them. But Obama keeps going back to the word empathy. He continues, such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent is not innate. Nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, you ready for this? Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, hopelessness and despair. As if we should have responded to the 9-11 attacks by airlifting food stamps and subsidized housing to al-Qaeda, which, by the way, after we have armed al-Qaeda in Libya, I’m sure the food stamps aren’t too far behind. Isn’t it really interesting the way the left describes all enemies of the United States in almost the exact same way? Whether it’s totalitarian communism or totalitarian Islam, the left always portrays these movements as a result of inequality and never as the militantly anti-American movements that they really are. Those who carried out the 9-11 attacks, they weren’t ignorant and they weren’t poor, by the way, they were middle to upper middle class and highly educated. But they weren’t ignorant. They were jihadis. Obama went on in the piece to counsel patience, of course, and against overreacting, as he called it, and then he wrote this, quote, finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe. Children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, eastern Europe and within our own shores. The United States had just been attacked by a barbaric and ruthless enemy, almost three thousand of our fellow Americans dead in the street, slaughtered in cold blood, and the nation was seized by grief. And yet Barack Obama took that moment to express compassion for the enemy, concern over imaginary American bigotry, a desire to socially engineer the rest of the world, and also an urge to apparently belt out the Whitney Houston song, the children are our future.

He placed all of the responsibility for the enemy’s attacks upon us and then he blamed us for regarding them as an enemy. It was astonishing. Obama’s first instinct was not to share in our national suffering. Not even to offer a note of sympathy to the families or even to recognize, God forbid, that these attacks were acts of war. Instead, it was that immediate left wing kneejerk anti-American radical reaction. That the United States is at the root of all evil. That it’s our fault that there’s so much injustice in the world and that therefore we deserve the hatred directed at us. American exceptionalism – and this illuminates his point about, well, I believe in American exceptionalism the way the British believe in British exceptionalism or the Germans believe in German exceptionalism. American exceptionalism in his mind and in the minds of the far left created these imbalances between the have nations and the have not nations. We’ve been a bully throwing our weight around the world and tossing foreign lands and peoples aside when they were no longer of use to us. Western Civilization overall is evil, dominated by white heterosexual Judeo-Christians and especially white heterosexual Judeo-Christian males. The horror of that. And America, of course, was particularly guilty because she was born into slavery. And then sought to emulate the noxious imperialism of Great Britain, France. Dinesh D’Souza writes about this in The Roots of Obama’s Rage about the anti-colonialism that has driven Obama and I think he’s completely right about this. So in order to make up for two hundred years of global rampaging, Obama and the left believe that we have to apologize openly and retrench – we’ve got to turn the United States from being a thuggish superpower into just another country. No better than any other nation, no more powerful, no more moral, no more influential. The mission of Obama and the far left is nothing short of this. The ultimate downgrade of American power. We use the – tend to think of the phrase and use the phrase downgrade in economic terms. Yes, we’re about to face another economic downgrade, by the way. With 16.3 trillion dollars in debt. But remember that the objective of Obama and the far left is so much bigger than just downgrading our economic situation and our debt, it’s about downgrading American power across the board. The way they are seeking to do this, they are so clever at this, we on the right, as conservatives we’re always playing checkers and the left is always playing chess.

We’re dealing with very sophisticated leftist psychology on the other side. Just look at Occupy Wall Street which was set into motion months before you actually saw people in the streets. It was all designed to provide Obama with his central campaign theme, which was inequality. Part of that also drives his approach to the world. But what he’s doing is not just limiting his social engineering here at home. It’s about social engineering the rest of the world. It’s about being a global redistributionist. So what he has sought to do and has had enormous success in just four short years is to redistribute everything that has made America great. If here were just limited to redistributing wealth here at home, it would be horrifying. Cause none of us here want to be socialists. But we could try to manage it, we could try to mitigate it, we could try to get a great candidate four years from now who could try to reverse it. The problem is, is that what he is doing is so much bigger. It’s part of a leftist grand project that has been in the works for decades and it wasn’t until Obama got into the presidency that they were able to accelerate that process. So what do I mean by redistributing everything that’s made America great? It’s not just our wealth here at home. It’s our military and economic power, it’s our diplomatic influence. Look, we’ve got a dead ambassador in Benghazi and not a word. Our cultural strength, our political appeal, and most importantly of course, our principle of individual freedom. I call it in the book that Andy so graciously talked about, I call it Obama’s declaration of dependence. The founders gave us a great Declaration of Independence. Obama’s turned that on its head. And it’s being applied internationally. Not just here at home, but to our global leadership. He is trying to make us increasingly dependent on other nations and multilateral institutions like the United Nations. He’s trying to get us to lean on international law over American law and interests. And ultimately, of course, he’s trying to seek transnationalism which is one-world global governing regime, which is something that Andy has written about and warned about for years now and it’s very real and it’s very dangerous. They honestly believe that this constitutional republic, because it is the root of all evil in the world, has no claim to global exceptionalism. Never mind national exceptionalism. In his very first address as president to the UN, on September of 2009, Obama said exactly that.

And look, in all of these arguments that I’m making, it’s not Monica Crowley saying this. You can go and look at Obama’s exact words. It’s him saying these things. He has never made a mystery of who he is and what he believes, what he intends to do, what he’s doing, and what he will do in the future. He said in the UN in September ’09, quote, in an era where our destiny is shared power is no longer a zero sum game. No world order that elevates one nation or group over another will succeed. In other words, the US should be on par with Paraguay. That is the future America wants. Usually we send out – a president out into the world to speak on our behalf, not this time. At least not for us. That was the future that we didn’t want, but that Obama and the far left want. America over, done. Again, just another nation on the world bloc. That kind of anti-American radicalism you saw in that piece that he wrote on 9-11 which now you can no longer get. Informs every single thing he does as commander in chief. And every time you see a foreign policy story or think about whether or not Obama really wants to go over the fiscal cliff, look at it from that lens. Understand the man and you will understand what he is doing. People argue, oh, Obama doesn’t want to go over the fiscal cliff. What are you, nuts? Of course he does. First of all, he needs the revenue of everybody’s tax rates going up. Secondly, he knows he’ll never get blamed for it. The Republicans will get blamed for everything. So he can cruise right in. But the other important element of this is the defense sequester. Which Frank has been talking about and arguing against valiantly for so long. The only thing Obama is willing to cut is defense. And, boy, is he getting it. Five hundred billion dollars already. Another five hundred billion dollars to come at least. So going over the cliff, Obama gets  everything he wants. He gets the higher tax rates and he gets the gutted US military. Do you remember the 3 am phone call ad four years ago? Hillary Clinton ran this ad, 3 am phone call. Questioning Obama’s national security experiment – experience and his judgment.

And the question was, question posed to all of us, I suppose, was who do you feel more comfortable with as commander in chief when that phone rings at an ungodly hour? Do you want the junior senator from New York whose national security experience was apparently limited to whatever knowledge she gained through osmosis as First Lady? Or did you want the junior senator from Illinois whose foreign policy experience was apparently limited to visits to Epcott with his girls. Well, fast forward to today and you have this Tweedledee, Tweedledum national security equation of Hillary and Barry and it’s got a whole new meaning. Right? Because in many cases the former junior senator from New York is now placing that three am phone call as Secretary of State. So you can see we really never had a choice four years ago, because these two foreign policy nitwits ended up talking to each other. Joe Biden had also warned about this early on where he said the American president was going to be tested. Do you remember that? He said, we’re about to elect   a brilliant, young forty-seven year old, a man as president like Jack Kennedy, he’s going to be tested. And it was true. And those tests came in the form of Somali pirates. Domestic terror attacks like the one in Fort Hood. The Christmas Day and Times Square bombers. Rogue regimes like Iran and Syria which slaughtered their own people in the streets as they were trying to voice for greater freedom. And also by their regime’s march towards nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. And of course the Muslim Brotherhood’s sweeping to power unchecked, in fact, encouraged by this administration. The tests haven’t always been tests. The virtue of America has always been in our genuine do-goodism. And we’ve always been able to project power as strength and as President Reagan once put it, strength through power. We’ve never been afraid to use that power and to use that influence for good. And as a result, we’ve always been able to be feared and respected in the world. That’s no longer true. The United States, in our brief history here, we’ve spent more blood and treasure liberating people from tyranny and oppression than any other nation in the world. And we’ve also asked for the least in return.

But the leftists don’t see this as a good and noble thing. They see it as an evil thing. And they also see it as something that needs to be changed. Or in Obama’s word, fundamentally transformed. In order to fundamentally transform America, the leftists have to do internationally what they are doing here domestically. And that means realigning the global power structure to take America down the power – the totem pole of power. Remember leading from behind? Here’s what leading from behind is really based on. And this – these points were actually explicitly made by that Obama senior official who was quoted in that New Yorker piece when he was quoted as saying leading from behind. What didn’t get covered were his five points about America which came directly from Obama. First, that America is in decline. Secondly, the decline is inevitable. And therefore, Obama’s job is to manage it not to fight it. Actually, I would argue to accelerate it. Third, China is passing us on the world stage. Fourth, everybody hates us. So we shouldn’t do anything to make them hate us more. And finally, by what he called shepherding us through this phase of accelerated American decline, they don’t mean to stronger, sunnier days ahead the way Reagan talked about it, they mean to weaker, darker days of diminished power. And it’s all being done deliberately. It’s all by design. President Obama has no problem being a surrender in chief. Not a commander in chief. A surrender in chief. He is operating intentionally as a declinist. And what they have done in four short years and I shudder to think what the next four holds for the United States, but they’re leaving America on her knees, staggering, bleeding, and leaving the rest of the world to run amok. We’ve seen this before when the leftists have had control over our foreign policy. And the movie never ends well. So what do we do? We all know in this room that as President Nixon once put it, there is no substitute for American power. But we also know that we are stuck here for awhile and the country is stuck leading from behind for awhile. So what do we do? Well, given that Obama has now another four years at least – duh, duh, duh!

By the way, on this point, I don’t think this is a totally crazy thing, because Obama has spent the last four years shredding the Constitution almost on a daily basis. Which is what I write about in What the Bleep Just Happened? Everyday I was doing research for the book and everyday I would say, oh, I forgot about that, that’s really crazy. I have to write that up. And then the next day, oh, I forgot he did this. That’s really crazy. I better write that up. I ended up with a six hundred page manuscript. Because literally, every single day this man has inflicted some leftists madness on us or some insane unconstitutional mandate on the American people or just gone around the Constitution completely. So there’s nothing holding him back from attempting to disregard the 22nd Amendment. He said something in his convention speech, his acceptance speech at the convention, which caught my attention. And everybody sort of focused on one part of the sentence and I focused on the other. He said, and I quote, Franklin Roosevelt needed more time for his experimentation. Everybody sort of focused on the experimentation part of that sentence. I focused on the Franklin Roosevelt part of that sentence. Because Roosevelt had four terms. Just a thought. So we have at least four years of Barack Obama and our challenges just get a lot steeper. But that doesn’t mean we just pack it in and we just give up the fight. I know that a lot of us are having a hard time being the happy warriors that I wrote about in the book and that Andy and Frank describe we have  – we, I know the three of us, everybody in this room naturally sort of are happy warriors and I know it’s really tough right now to be that way. I have to say every time I go on the radio or television it’s all I can do to build up a head of steam to try to convey to the American people that we can do this. But we can do it. And when it comes to national security in particular, we have to take whatever corner we’re in, because obviously, we’re not in the corridors of power right now. So whatever corner we’re in we should focus on two things. One, to try to reestablish from the outside or at least pressure this administration from the outside to develop a central organizing principle for American foreign policy that is based on US strength and values. Rather than on defeatism and decline. We have to let this administration know from the outside that we’re not going to put up with that. Also, that we will be willing to fight and stand up for American values, especially when it comes to people around the world, like the Iranian people four years ago who stood up and were fighting for a greater voice in their own affairs and what we value here in America, human rights, and so on. That when those people around the world give expression to that, that we, the American people, will stand up and back them up even when the American administration will not. Second major priority, I think for us on the outside is our military strength. And this is something that Frank does every single day of his life.

As I mentioned, five hundred billion dollar sequester already happening. Another five hundred billion more to come if this sequester goes through, which of course Obama wants. No responsible commander in chief would allow this to happen. To allow our military to be gutted and to have this nation irretrievably crippled. His own defense secretary, Leon Panetta said this point blank. We can’t let these cuts go through. We will not be able to defend ourselves and our allies and our interests. No responsible commander in chief would go down that road, but this one will. He not only will, he wants to. And so whatever we can do on the outside in these fierce budget battles ahead – and I know money is tight, we’re broke. The country has 16.3 trillion dollars in debt. But one thing we need to do from the outside and from our positions, regardless of where we are, is to make the very simple straightforward argument that I haven’t heard anybody make so simply before but can really grab the American people, that if – if we go through with this defense sequester, none of the domestic priorities will matter. None of them will matter if we are all dead. Defense is first. I want to leave you with a very quick story that I write about in What The Bleep Just Happened? Because every time I recount it, it makes me very emotional about America. And about where we are. Right after Obama became president, I got in a cab here in New York City and it was just a short trip, maybe it was to go to see Bill, I don’t know. But I remember this cab driver, he was huge, very hairy, and he spoke with a heavy eastern European accent. So at one point in the ride, you know, he was sort of chatting with me and he looked at me and he said, you’re an American, yes? And I said, yeah. And he – I turned to him and I said, where are you from? Where’s that accent from? And he said, The Bronx. And then he stopped, he kind of laughed and then he said, oh, you mean, where am I from? And I said, yeah. And he said, I was born in Bulgaria but I am an American.

And then he got emotional and he said this to me, he said, I’m an American by choice. And you’ll forgive me, but I think those of us who are Americans by choice rather than by birth have a different view. Many Americans, you do not appreciate your freedom. You have always had it and you don’t know anything else. I’ve lived under communism, he said. He said, I’ve been beaten and put in jail. I’ve heard the knock of the secret police at my door in the middle of the night. I’ve had neighbors disappear.  I’ve had the government open my mail and listen in on my phone. I’ve gone days eating only potatoes because the store shelves were bare. There was no medicine, no good doctors, he said. And he told me that his family had fled Bulgaria to, obviously to escape the tyranny and brutal oppression of the communists there. And he said, they came to America – it wasn’t just fleeing the negative, it was going to the positive. Coming to America for freedom. And everything that we represented, that shining city on a hill. And that’s when he asked me – and he got strong and sort of gruff and he said, tell me, what are you doing? And I said, what am I doing? Just sitting in the backseat. Trying to get my tip ready. He said, tell me, what are you doing? Why are you letting America be destroyed? And then his voice started to quake and he started talking about our enslaving debt – his words – enslaving debt, communist medicine, and a jackboot government. And then he drove up to my destination and he threw his arm over the back of the chair and he looked at me directly in my eyes and he pleaded with me, he said, please don’t let this happen to America. It’s creeping in here and it’s creeping in fast. He said we came to America to get away from socialism. If it comes here, where will we go? Where will any of us go? There’s no hope anywhere else. And then he said something really powerful.

He said, you’re letting your freedoms be taken from you. And you don’t even see it. Or you see it, but you don’t care, which is the worst kind of treason. And that word treason hit me like a pile of bricks. Because I pride myself on being an American patriot. And what he was describing – even though all of us in this room fight it everyday, but were we – were all of us on some level guilty of citizen malpractice because we were letting this go on? Or rewarding Republicans over many years who were going down this road of big government and big spending? But that grizzled New York City cab driver also illuminated something very positive for me, which is the words of Abraham Lincoln. When he referred to this country as the last best hope of earth. And he reminded me that despite our issues here – and we’ve got huge challenges and they just got a lot worse after November 6th, but still millions and millions of people look to us still as the last best hope of earth. And even now, though it feels like we’re slipping beneath the waves of collectivism and state domination and socialism and human misery that we’ve seen in every corner of the globe and we’ve seen it starting to happen here, are we going to let this happen? Are we going to let our freedoms just dissipate and have American power atrophy? Or are we going to listen to the words of Thomas Paine who said, quote, it is the duty of the patriot to protect their country from its government. This is our job now. This is why we fight. And as tough as it is to be happy warriors, we’ve got to do it. We can’t let the founders down, we can’t let every generation that’s come before us down, we can’t let the Greatest Generation down, we can’t let our children down. This is why we fight. And so it’s time to suit up again. Let’s roll. God bless you.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Well, just a final word of thanks to the happiest of warriors who inspires us all. If you think what Monica was saying was hyperbole, I just commend you a statement that was published yesterday, I believe, by the president’s foreign intelligence advisory board. That announced that the United States by 2030 will no longer be a superpower. We can debate whether that’s off by a factor of ten years or so, but the point is, that is a trajectory that we must not allow this country to go. And Monica, among others, has said many wonderful things about me. I appreciate it more than you can tell. I want to just thank all of the people who are part of this at the Center for Security Policy, many of whom are here. Who made this luncheon possible and who do the work of this organization. And not least to thank all of you who help us do this work. It is incredibly important to our ability to continue to do it. To be warriors at all, let alone happy ones. So I want to thank you very much for being here saluting Monica with us. To Andy McCarthy and our terrific panels this morning. And we look forward to visiting with you again soon. In the meantime, happy holidays to you and a good 2013. God bless you all.