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Thank you very much, thank you very much. If i had known that I was going to get here
and see Jerry Falwell 34 lbs lighter and me 34 lbs heavier I don't think I would have
come here. But anyway, it is a great, great pleasure to be here with Jerry, and Becki,
Dr. Godwin. It is a great honor to be here.
I love Liberty University! Those of you who are old enough to remember the Rolling Stones
and who remember a wonderful song by the Rolling Stones called, "Give Me Shelter," will know
the feeling I had last night for some reason I was looking out the window of my hotel room
at a big, big sign on a building saying Liberty University and I said to my wife, "I feel
as if we're sheltered." Like in Give Me Shelter by the Rolling Stones.
My wife said to me, "Sleep well knowing that you are so blessed as to be near Liberty University..."
and that is how I feel. This morning I got up and I was awakened actually before my alarm
clock rang, by a call from my sister. My sister is 3 years older than I am, but looks alot
younger 'cause she hasn't worked since 1963.
Because she travels all over the world, she was calling me from Rome. She said, "I'm here
in Rome," and she doesn't care what time it is for me, but anyway, she said, "I'm going
to go shopping on the Via Condotti this morning and I'm going to go walk around the Spanish
Steps, I'm going to go to a museum, and then I'm going to have lunch at such and such restaurant
that she read about in the New York Times and then I'm going to go workout at the gym
and then I'm going to go have a massage or something at the gym and then I'm going to
have dinner at some other fancy restaurant," she and her husband, "uh....what are you going
to do today Benji?" By which she meant, "what are you going to do, my fat worthless blob
of a brother?"
And I said to her, "You know what I'm going to do today, Rachel? ...I just looked out
the window of my Hilton Garden Inn in Lynchburg, Virginia and I saw a construction truck with
an American flag on it and I realized that one more day I was privileged to wake up in
the United States of America and I am going to get on my knees and thank God for being
here, and that's how I'm going to spend my morning."
Now, I know we all have places to go today so I'm going to make this speech short and
sweet. This is a country whose greatness cannot be measured. It is an incredible country even
in my lifetime we have made fantastic, incredible progress in this country since I was born
in November of 1944. We have made incredible progress in civil rights.
This country is a totally different country from the segregated racially restrictive country
it was when I was born in 1944. The prosperity in this country even though we've been through
a very bad last 10 years, and particularly bad last 4 years, has been phenomenal. The
incredible wealth in this country is just beyond belief.
The fact that people, the ordinary person like me, not a superstar of discipline like
Jerry or like Becki, has to worry more about too much food than too little food is proof
of that.
We have legal protection beyond what anyone could of imagined in 1944. We have had an
amazing run. This country, this world has had nuclear weapons on both sides of the idealogical
divide. Now, since 1949 and yet there has been no nuclear war that has been an achievement
beyond measure.
Everyone my age and there are very few of us in this room - possibly Dr. Godwin might
be ten years younger, but I'm not sure - knows that many of us grew up expecting to be vaporized
by nuclear bombs at any time.
God's blessing has been upon mankind and we have not seen that happen. We have had progress
I think, I know I'm in Lynchburg and I say this with full heart. I just came here from
Greenville, VA or from Greensville, SC. The progress...I love South Carolina! Anyway,
we have made more progress, I believe in the southern, South Eastern United States than
anywhere else in this country. And anyone of the people in Hollywood who makes movies
about the South and who thinks its still run by the Ku Klux *** has had his head buried
in a very deep hole for a very long time.
Because the south is where the real progress in this country in human rights has been made.
But we do have great problems in this country. We have an economic crisis which is ongoing.
Caused by gross misconduct on Wall Street and very, very poor government regulation
and this was done by both the Republicans and the Democrats.
Please, please, please don't let any politician tell you this is the fault of any one party
but both parties had an enormous hand in it, and it's an amazing thing, it's an amazing
thing to me to see one of the candidates say that the problems were all caused by the previous
encumbant in the office, when he has now taken into his administration many of those same
people and positions of top authority in the economic realm.
But we're recovering, little by little, 850 billion dollars at a time. We're recovering
little by little and we will continue to recover. But we're not going to recovery, as far as
I can tell, by the history of the New Deal and the history of the Great Depression and
the history of this very, very serious correction. We're not going to recover by government writing
a huge check. You know its interesting, this morning I saw, I saw President Obama when
he was the candidate, (Thank you. I beg your pardon,) when he was a candidate in 2008 saying,
we've had a lot of spending and has put on a credit card of the Bank of China. And he
said, so we're gonna stop doing that. Now, 8 trillion dollars in debt later or 7 1/2
trillion dollars in debt later we're still doing it. We've gotta stop. We're not gonna
recover by writing checks and then asking that we be given debit cards from the Bank
of China. That's not gonna happen. We're gonna recover by small business, by entrepreneurship,
by the skills that you learn here at Liberty University, by one job at a time, one small
business at a time, one person with a good idea at a time.
I recently spoke at a gathering called Young Presidents in Dallas,Texas, and these people
are amazing people and Dallas is an amazingly vibrant town, and these people have business
ideas, have made jobs and they're creating business and the man I spoke to who impressed
me most had a business where he is disposing of treating transporting and disposing of
water used in fracking, which is gonna make America the leading energy producer in the
world within a just a very short period of time.
And he is doubling his employees every month. That's how the recession is going to end.
It's going to end one job at a time, one small business at a time, one genius or doesn't
have to be a genuis the magic sauce, the secret sauce that you no longer get in your cheeseburgers
Jerry, the secret sauce is not genuis. The secret sauce is hard work. But we don't need
government subsidies, we don't need huge government stimulus. We need government to get out of
the way. That's what we need.
So so though we will recover, we will recover. We're gonna ... there's never been a depression
that's lasted forever and its not going to be this time. But we face much more than an
economic crisis. We face a moral crisis in this country and the real issue in this country
right now is how we're going to deal with the moral crisis.
And I'm just going to list a few of them. One: Debt. We have an enormous debt. This
debt is now so large that we're going to have to default on it one way or the other. We're
going to have to default either by, just at some point saying we can't pay it, or else
by defaulting on the root of inflation and inflating our way out. And that means for
you young people in the audience you're going to see someday the $50 Big Mac. It's you think
it's impossible. I know you think it's totally impossible but it's going to happen by the
time you're my age.
Uh, I hope you live that long. Anyway. this debt is just overwhelming, it is criminal
to impose this much debt on our children, grandchildren great-grandchildren. You cannot
imagine how fast it's going to keep compounding unless we do something drastic to stop it.
Second moral crisis: Work. Too many people in this country won't work. We have roughly,
very, very roughly, this is a very rough number 12 million people out of work. That's 22 million
if you count those who are looking for full-time work and can't get it. But we have roughly
12 million out of work. But we also have roughly 5 million unfilled jobs that cannot get filled
because we don't have workers willing to do the work willing to train themselves to do
the work.
If we could fill those 5 million jobs overnight we would immediately end the recession. But
too many people in this country do not want to work. They just, they don't have the skills
and they don't have the mental setup to work. They just are not used to work, and they,
therefore become dependent on others who are working and they become a burden to those
who do work and to the whole society and its immoral. It is simply immoral not to work.
Work is part of man's destiny. Doesn't have to be work at a job but work as a homemaker,
work in some form. It's immoral. It is immoral not to work on Wall Street by having scams
instead of doing honest work and that's just as immoral as applying for a welfare check
when you don't really need it or what i see a lot of out in LA an astonishing amount applying
for disability. These people are able to work out at the gym for two hours a day somehow,
but are too disabled to go to work, and who get a check from the government.
See another thing which probably doesn't get talked much here at Liberty, but it should
be: *** on the internet. This is just an astonishing crime against mankind.
It degrades human relation. It degrades women. It degrades love. It degrades everything it
touches. Now there's some people in this country who talk a lot about the war on women. And
the war on women, it seems to be the real war on women takes many forms. One of them
is to degrade them and dehumanize them with ***.
This is a serious issue in this country. It isn't much talked about, but it is a serious
issue. I don't know how you solve it because its an issue involving free speech but somehow
the idea that it is allowed to put this kind of trash and this kind of dehumanizing garbage
on the internet everyday so that any child can see it is just disgusting.
Next: The collapse of the family. We have an amazing situation here with the family
collapsing in America. When I was a child, a tiny percentage, maybe 5 or 6 percent of
children in this country were born out of wedlock.
Now the number is above 80 percent for African Americans, its above 50 percent for Hispanics,
its approaching 50 percent for Caucasian women. This is a catastrophic situation for communities
and for children. The data is absolutely clear-cut. Could not be more clear-cut, that the family
with a the nuclear family - mother and father - is essential for the development of the
child.
Now, obviously, there are going to be some exceptions, but the basic concept laid down
in all historical texts, including the Bible, that there should be a mother and a father
in the family, that is basic, and when you take that away, there's going to be some stunting
of the human personality.
Now as I say, obviously there will be some exceptions, there'll be some people who are
very, very talented and who have creative abilities who will be able to triumph over
that, but in general, the problem is overwhelming.
We have another problem, and by the way I dont understand how that happens. I really
do not understand how that happens. That a man can impregnate a woman and just leave
her. I just cannot understand that level of indiscipline and irresponsibility. It's just
... its just not something ... its just not something that would have been tolerated when
I was a child and why its tolerated now, Im not sure, but it is an ongoing disgrace.
And speaking of ongoing disgraces, I think i can speak about this here at Liberty because
we don't have a problem with this year at Liberty: the collapse of education.
This has been an amazing phenomenon. The data is clear-cut. Among the major industrial countries,
the United States of America, which used to consistently rate first in mathematics and
science, is now consistently the last or very close to last.
The SATs consistently go down. They're constantly reworking them to make them easier to make
them seem as if they're doing better. It isn't working. The American college testing service
reports that only 1 quarter of high school seniors are capable of doing C level work
in college and as many of you know, C stands for chronic.
The SATs are recently reported - you're pretending like you don't know what that is - the SATs
are telling us that high school seniors know more about American history and American and
English literature than college seniors. This is a disgrace this is a disgrace to the United
States of America.
I saw it recently - I have a long story that I've told Jerry and Becki many times about
it, but i won't tell you that long story, but just recently I was talking to some high
school teachers. One of them came up to me with a story. He said he'd been trying to
tell his kids about the students about the origins of World War II and he tried to talk
to them about Pearl Harbor. And they all looked at him blankly, so finally he said to them,
well, do you know what Pearl Harbor was? And one of them said, "Is it a jewelry store at
the Huntington Beach Mall?"
No, it's not a jewelry store. It's a big giant attack on the United States by Japan that
started a World War II for the United States of America. We have another real problem,
serious, serious, serious problem in the United States of America's educational system: We
dont allow any real inquiry about science. I saw this first hand when we made the movie,
"Expelled." We ran into a bus, we asked some very obvious questions. If Darwinism explains
where life came from, where did life originate? If it didn't originate by intelligent design,
by the hand of the Creator, where did it come from? "Well, uh, it might've started from,
uh, crystals, from, uh, little dust on the backs of crystals."
Well, how would that happen? "Well, we're not sure, but it might've happened on the
backs of crystals." I asked Richard Dawkins, probably the most famous atheist, Darwinist
in the world, "How did life on earth originate if not by divine plan, a divine hand and creation?"
And he said, "Well, uh maybe people from outer space came and seeded the Earth with life."
Well, where did they come from? "Well, we're not sure, but maybe people from outer space."
And I sat in the movie, so Richard Dawkins, the most famous atheist in the world probably,
says that people from outer space created life on Earth, but he refuses to believe that
an intelligent, loving God could have created life in the world.
Well this is, uh, when we made this movie, we asked other questions, like, "If it all
happened by accident, where did the laws of gravity come from? How can you get a law of
gravity by accident? How could you get the laws of thermodynamics by accident? How could
you get the laws of motion by accident? How could that happen? How can you get a series
of physical laws that govern the universe by accident?" No one's allowed to answer the
question. If you are a university professor at some place other than Liberty, and you
even ask a question, you get fired! You don't just get politely asked to reconsider, you
get fired!
That's not science. No real scientific inquiry is allowed on this basic, basic subject. If
you even start to come close, at most universities or even high schools, to suggesting that there
was an intelligent design or intelligent creator you lose your job. That is not where great
education comes from. Great education comes from being unafraid to ask questions, not
from being not allowed to ask questions. This applies to many, many subjects and I'm not
going to mention them all because there are too many of them .
We have another issue, which to me is issue number one in this whole country. We have
an amazing situation in this country. Really, really interesting situation: If there's a
little town somewhere and a small boy falls down in a well we go to great lengths to save
him. We turn out the fire department. We turn out helicopters. We turn out the national
guard. We'll go to amazing lengths to save that little boy. But we purposely kill one
million of our most innocent human beings every year, and then we brag about it, and
say it's a great achievement, and call it "a woman's right to choose." No woman, no
man has the right to choose to kill another innocent human being. [applause] In this great,
great country we've had an astonishing, horrifying disgrace: the disgrace of human slavery. That
was absolutely abhorrent, disgusting, revolting, a crime against humanity. But now we have
another one. We have mass ***, a holocaust going on, and we call it "a woman's right
to choose." We're killing, as I say, roughly, the number can vary each year, but roughly
a million a year of the most innocent beings among us, who've done nothing wrong whatsoever,
and we're killing them on a horrific scale and we brag about it as progress, and if someone
questions it, and says, "These are innocent human beings; why are you killing them?" that
person is considered a monster. Look, a long, long time ago, when I was at Yale. Long, long
time ago, I was totally ignorant about this whole subject. To me, when the people - when
the pro-abortionists said, "It's not a human being, it's just a little mass of tissue,"
that's nonsense! I'm not allowed to curse from this stadium. Becki told me I'd have
my hands slapped very hard if I did, but you know this. You know what kind of nonsense
that is. It's not just a mass of tissue! [applause] It's a human being! It's a human being! And
every year in this country, we kill roughly 250,000 baby girls in sex-selection abortions.
And the abortionists say WE are conducting a war on women? We are trying to save those
women's lives! We are not conducting a war on women, we're trying to save their lives!
The war on women is the war of killing them in sex-selection abortions, degrading women
in ***, knocking them up and leaving them with babies and no means of support except
welfare or crime - welfare or crime ... That's the war on women! What does it all come down
to? Well, it all comes down to something, it seems to me, pretty simple: behaving decently
towards our fellow human beings as God commands us to do. It all comes down to doing a certain
kind of work: work to make a better world and work to be better friends and neighbors
and family members and parents and children - very important - your parent's have feelings
too - better, better children, and to follow God's Word for us to love and honor God and
obey his commands to love one another. We're gonna do it. We're gonna do it. Part of our
work today is to do it and part of our work as responsible citizens is to vote. We're
going to do it by work. We're going to do it because we're going to ask God to work
for us. But we can have it in our hearts and we must have it in our hearts that he can
only do that kind of work for us if we realize that here on Earth, God's work is our work.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very, very much. Thank you very,
very much. (Jerry Falwell, Jr.)
Ben would like to take a few questions. So if anybody's got anything they want to ... do
we have a microphone? (Johnnie Moore)
It's down on the floor. (Jerry Falwell, Jr.)
Right over here. I don't see it. OK, anybody brave enough to ask a question, here's your
chance. (male student)
Just because of the current inflation of the dollar, the dollar spends right now about
45 cents of what it normally have spent. How do you propose we solve the inflation?
(Ben Stein) We haven't seen anything in the way of inflation
compared to what it's going to be. I mean, we've had an astonishing situation in this
country. To fight the recession, the Federal Reserve has created paper money on a scale
that's never been seen before in the history of mankind. We had 5, roughly 5 trillion in
circulation when Mr. Bush left office. We now have something like 11 trillion in circulation.
When the velocity of that money starts picking up, the inflation is going to be fantastic.
I'll just tell you, generally speaking, money creation creates inflation. There's going
to be a fantastic, breath-taking inflation sometime in your lifetime, young man. Be prepared.
Yes, sir. (male student)
What do you think of auditing the Federal Reserve?
(Stein) I love the Federal Reserve, but I wish they
had people in it who were more concerned about inflation and less concerned about pleasing
the president. Yes. (female student)
Can you say, "Bueller"? (Stein)
OK. Adams, Adamly, Adamowski, Bueller, Bueller, Bueller, Fry.... Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank
you very much. Yes? (male student)
In your opinion, what would be the easiest evidence to put out to the abortionist crowd
for humanhood or personhood of the unborn? (Stein)
Just any kind of photo or x-ray or sonogram of a baby inside a woman, data that babies
in utero can react to music, can react to pain, that's a baby. And you know, let me
just tell you something. I'm not telling you how to vote, you guys have to decide how to
vote yourselves. It's a free country, and this is a free society, but several years
ago, when Mr. Bush was president, there was a bill in the senate to ban what is called
partial birth abortion, which is a baby is already been mostly out of the birth canal
and yet is killed by the abortionist, and there was a bill to ban that. Only one senator
voted to kill that bill. Can you guess who it was? From Illinois.
(male student) In the scientific community there's of course
that big hush when it comes down to the questions of Darwinism. What do you say to a future
scientist that - I'm going to finish with a Creation Studies minor - what kind of support,
what kind of guide would you give me? (Stein)
What the Darwinists always say is that intelligence is that intelligent design isn't science because
you can't replicate it. You can't prove it. You can't duplicate the research. And what
I always say is, "Neither can you!" Show us where life began. Show us where rules of,
laws of physics came from. Show us how a cell has 250,000 little, tiny moving parts that
can repair each other and replicate themselves. Show us how that happens. Look, we have just
as much evidence in the Bible of where creation and where life came from as they do in all
their libraries. We have more! Yes. (male student)
Mr. Stein, you're one of the few people I've met in my life, who has an interest in both
government and entertainment and as a pre-law and cinematic arts double major, I was wondering
if you had any words of wisdom. (Stein)
If you're going to come out to Hollywood, bring a lot of money, because it's going to
take you a while to get a job. And if you're going to be a lawyer, be prepared for a long
wait to get a job, but be patient, keep at it, and eventually you'll break through. Sir?
(male student) As you're well aware, the total credit market
debt is a percentage of the gross domestic product has been skyrocketing since the early
1980s. What implication do you see that this has on the decline ... I'm sorry, on the separation
of the increasing wealth inequality of the middle class, and also -
(Stein) I don't think it has anything to do with the
increasing wealth inequality of the middle class. I think the increasing wealth inequality
of the middle class has to do largely with the fact that very many members of the middle
class do not have useful skills and also do not save. I mean there has been very, very
little data connecting anything done on Wall Street with wealth inequality, and what it's
mostly correlated with is declining education and declining willingness to work and save.
Thank you. Yes, sir? (high-pitched voice)
I just had to say Bueller! Bueller! Bueller! (Stein)
OK. Well, now you've said it. And you're on your way. OK. Yes, sir.
(male student) Mr. Stein, can I ask you your personal opinion
on gay marriage? And that issue as the county moves forward?
(Stein) I think it should be decided on a state-by-state
basis and not by the federal government. OK. All right, well then, in that case, I'll leave
you to your own devices. God bless you. And let's all imitate the example of our fine
Jerry Falwell and not to eat so many burgers and fries.
(Falwell) All right, we're going to dismiss a little
early to give you time to get to the airport if that's what y'all are going to do. Great
questions, except for one. But, thank you and have a great day!