While I realize that political speeches are not everyone's cup of
tea - I personally believe that, in America and the world today, we are
in a situation which calls for we Conservative Americans to "sink or swim."
And, I want to see all Americans "swimming"
toward restoring our homeland to its pre-Obama state of world respect
and economic growth. That is why you see, and will continue to see, me
add these questions to many of my Facebook posts:
Are YOU ready to VOTE IN 2016 to
Restore Sanity In America?
Are YOU ready to VOTE IN 2016 to send all of the Liberal
Socialists and RINOs home into permanent retirement?
Are YOU ready to VOTE IN 2016 to elect Conservative American
Leaders who will listen, hear, honor, and respect the voices of "We
The People" - spoken in English?
Let's all VOTE IN 2016 to take back our American homeland! God
bless you and God bless America, Bill
In recent past years, far too many Conservative Americans have become "couch potato" Americans - taking the position, "Well, my vote really does not count that much. I will just stay home instead of voting; no need for me to waste my time." At the same time the minority activist organizations are getting out the votes within their liberal, gay, illegal immigrant, etc., communities - and taking control of America away from the "We The People"
majority who do not want to take the time to vote.
That is why we
have Same-Sex Marriage spreading across America. That is why we see
Amnesty Marches spreading across America. That is why we are seeing a great Racial Schism growing in America. That
is why we are seeing these liberal motivated minorities taking over our
school systems and teaching their beliefs to our children.
And, that is why we see Obama and his Liberal Socialist administration
scoffing at and ignoring the Constitution which has been the building
block, the foundation, of our American homeland for over 200 years.
Finally, that is what Senator Tom Cotton is addressing in his speech below, given at the Hillsdale College’s Sixth Annual Constitution Day
Celebration in Washington, D.C., on September
15, 2015.
In Senator Cotton's speech transcript below, the bold, italic,
underline, and parenthetical emphasis is mine - to draw your attention
to issues which I feel are urgent for us to consider, issues we should
be talking about as the 2016 Elections are drawing close.
If you do not
have time to read the full transcript, I ask you to at least take note
of those highlighted issues - and keep them in mind as you enter the
voting booth to VOTE IN 2016.
By Tom Cotton, U.S.
Senator from Arkansas
Hillsdale College "Imprimis" - October 2015 issue
http://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/foreign-policy-the-constitution/
Tom Cotton was elected to the
U.S. Senate from Arkansas in 2014, following one term in the
U.S. House of Representatives. He serves on the Senate Banking
Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Senate
Armed Services Committee. A graduate of Harvard College, he
studied government at the Claremont Graduate School and received
his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2002. In 2005, he was
commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, rose to 1st
Lieutenant, and served deployments in Iraq with the 101st
Airborne and in Afghanistan with a Provincial Reconstruction
Team. His military decorations include the Bronze Star Medal,
Combat Infantry Badge, and Ranger Tab.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered on September
15, 2015, at Hillsdale College’s Sixth Annual Constitution Day
Celebration in Washington, D.C.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In the last week, President Obama moved ahead with a nuclear-arms
control agreement with a mortal and unrepentant enemy, having the
support only of a rump, partisan minority in Congress. This
dangerous turn of events offers an occasion to reflect on the
state of American foreign policy today and on the Constitution’s
place in our foreign policy.
Over the past 25 years, a major preoccupation of foreign-policy
elites has been to forge a new grand strategy for the United
States. Scholars and practitioners tend to see a foreign policy
adrift after the fall of the Soviet Union, when containment of
Soviet expansion became obsolete overnight. Seeing no major
ideological or military rival, some believed the Owl of Minerva
had taken flight, and that the end of history had reduced the need
for strategic thinking. Alas, that fantasy came crashing down
along with two big towers (World Trade Center) 14 years ago this month. Again,
foreign-policy elites searched for a new strategy, this time for
the age of Islamic terror.
Circumstances do change, and foreign policy, often a matter of
prudence, must change with them to achieve the same ends. Too
often, however, the search for a new strategy simply becomes the
search for something new. This way of thinking carries
a hint of disdain for the principles and foreign-policy traditions
of our past -- and disdaining those principles and traditions is a
mistake. When the makers of breakfast cereals roll out a new
product, after all, they say it’s “new and improved,”
because the former doesn’t necessarily imply the latter.
Likewise, every new and fashionable idea in foreign policy isn’t
necessarily an improvement. To the contrary, we ought to pay some
respect to older foreign policy ideas -- the ideas that took us
from a small and weak colonial outpost to the greatest superpower
in history in just 170 years. With that track record, common
sense would suggest there’s something special we can learn from
the Constitution -- and the strategies that arose from it -- to
help us chart our way in the world.
* * *
Our Founders gave us a constitutional democracy, a system of
government that informs our foreign policy just as it does our
domestic policy. For many foreign-policy elites, especially those
abroad, this is a serious problem for U.S. foreign policy. The
Constitution empowers the people, these critics say, and the
people, they believe, can be ignorant, emotional, and fickle,
swinging wildly from war mongering to isolationism, from moralism
to callousness. Far better, they say, is what Walter Mead has
called the “auteur theory of foreign policy” -- a
foreign policy guided by a brilliant strategist, insulated
from the unruly masses.
One hears an echo of this viewpoint in the praise for what these
critics see as the coherent and decisive strategic thinking of
Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Putin is praised
as a brilliant strategist who is redefining 21st-century warfare.
Xi has been called a game-changer in China’s rise, one whose
ambitions and power rival those of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
I’ll admit that Putin and Xi may have stolen a march on our
president here and there. But that’s an indictment of
President Obama’s particular abilities and policies, not of our
system. By the traditional measures of international
influence -- economic might, per capita measures of well-being,
military and trade cooperation agreements, cultural weight -- the
United States far outpaces both Russia and China, as well as
the rest of the world.
And while a brooding auteur (a brilliant intellectual strategist) may in fact have strategic
foresight, intellect, and prudence, no man is infallible, no
matter how talented. Napoleon, brilliant general that he was,
still marched the Grand Armée across the Nieman River into
Russia. Otto von Bismarck toiled for decades to unify the German
states, only to see his fragile work undone a few years later by
Wilhelm II’s militarism and adventurism. In the same way, I
believe that over time Putin and Xi -- to say nothing of North
Korea’s Kim Jong Un or the ayatollahs in Tehran -- will also
miscalculate and suffer strategic setbacks.
But the United States is different from these regimes. Our
constitutional system doesn’t depend on brilliant leaders. “Enlightened
statesmen,” as Madison wrote in Federalist 10,
“will not always be at the helm.” Our system is based on
individual rights, safeguarded by well crafted, ultimately
democratic institutions. While we always hope for wise leaders,
our Constitution works in their absence by filtering the wisdom of
the people through those institutions.
Bill Gray Note:
The Federalist is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay promoting the
ratification of the United States Constitution (Wikipedia).
A Federalist 10 Summary tells us, "Madison
begins perhaps the most famous of the Federalist papers by stating that
one of the strongest arguments in favor of the Constitution is the fact
that it establishes a government capable of controlling the violence
and damage caused by factions. Madison defines that factions are groups
of people who gather together to protect and promote their special economic interests and political opinions.
Although these factions are at odds with each other, they frequently
work against the public interests, and infringe upon the rights of
others." (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D4N5wCIRCSeetd57bJjRFjizZYSzXWw0Ornf-DQRa1w/preview)
This approach couldn’t be more at odds with the auteur
theory of foreign policy. From that perspective, our
system looks like some kind of policy-making Frankenstein.
Authority is divided between the Executive and the Legislative,
and the Executive itself is divided among competing departments.
The President and Secretary of State serve short tenures compared
to the kings and ministers of the Old World. Equal representation
of states in the Senate gives considerable influence to regional
interests. The arcane rules of the Senate, along with the
separation of powers itself, slow the whole process down. How
could this ever work?
Yet it does, again and again. The talent of a single leader or a
small group with outsized control over foreign policy can never
match the moderation, prudence, and self-correcting capability of
our constitutional democracy over the long term. And in
international relations, it’s the long term that counts.
In the realm of domestic policy, these ideas are familiar. Our
constitutional system works to ensure that all the individuals,
interests, factions, lobbies, and others who influence and are
influenced by domestic policy are more or less satisfied -- or
perhaps minimally dissatisfied. And the same thing plays out in
foreign policy. America’s foreign policy tradition is flexible,
agile, and multifaceted - and it therefore tends to produce
positive results for us in a complicated world.
Again, I cannot stress enough how alien and unfashionable this way
of thinking is in Foggy Bottom (Foggy Bottom is one of the oldest late 18th and 19th-century neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. where George Washington University is located) and in the West Wing, not to
mention European ministries. Among many foreign-policy elites,
these democratic influences are something to be suffered and
overcome -- as we’ve seen most recently in the debate about the Iran
nuclear deal.
In the end, though, we usually survive mistakes by particular
leaders because leaders are not the foundation of our system. The
foundation of U.S. foreign policy is the views and values of the
American people, filtered by elected representatives through
democratic institutions, proven by time.
This foreign policy tradition is not an accident. When designing
the Constitution, the Founders were very conscious of the need to
invest the federal government with strong foreign-affairs powers,
while accounting for the interests of the states and the people.
A driving force behind the Constitutional Convention was the
failure of the Continental Congress to manage the foreign affairs
of the young republic. This imperative was clear in the
ratification debates. The first five papers of The Federalist
are devoted to the necessity of blunting the influence of foreign
powers and to the organization of U.S. military power. Fifteen
additional papers focus on international relations and civilian
control of the military.
Against this background, the Constitution could be understood not
only as a national charter, but also as a strategic document. The
institutions established by the Constitution to channel the
conduct of foreign policy imply certain principles of foreign
policy. We ought to keep these timeless principles in mind as we
craft strategy for today’s world.
One principle we find in the Constitution is so simple it’s
usually overlooked: the states are stronger as a Union than as
separate powers. A Union of the states overcame divisions of
culture, economic interest, and military capacity -- divisions that
would have been exploited by foreign powers to turn one state
against another, and to weaken and cow the American continent into
submitting to their designs.
A Union strengthened the collective power of the states in their
foreign relations. It allowed them to pool their various resources
to create advantages of scale and scope in military and economic
power. As Federalist 4 states, “The people of America .
. . consider union and a good national government as necessary to
put and keep them in such a situation as, instead of inviting war,
will tend to repress and discourage it.” Further, “If [foreign
powers] see that our national government is efficient . . . our
trade prudently regulated, our militia properly organized and
disciplined, our resources and finances discreetly managed, our
credit re-established, our people free, contented, and united,
they will be much more disposed to cultivate our friendship - than
provoke our resentment.” Conversely, if the states remained
divided, the U.S. would earn not only the “contempt” of foreign
nations, but their “outrage.”
This principle came under threat -- but survived -- during the Civil
War. In his First Annual Message to Congress, President Lincoln
sent a clear warning to foreign powers to refrain from interfering
in the war. At the same time, he acknowledged that “factious
domestic division” exposed the nation to “disrespect abroad.”
We may take this principle for granted today, but it’s very much
in play around the world. The European Union, for example, has a
greater combined population and economy than the U.S. But
political division greatly reduces the EU’s role in world affairs.
The smaller nation-states of Central and Eastern Europe, in
particular, find themselves at risk from -- or perhaps at the mercy
of -- Russia. Likewise, the countries of the Asia-Pacific region,
from South Korea to India, worry about China’s aggressive drive
for regional hegemony. Yet they struggle, due to their own enmity
and rivalries, to form a united strategy to counter China.
The primacy of Union gives rise to a second, subsidiary principle:
treaties with foreign powers are very serious business, ought not
be entered into lightly, and must be widely supported across the
country.
The Founders believed the violation of major foreign commitments
was a chief source of friction and war in international relations.
In fact, Federalist 3 recognized only two sources of
war: direct violence and the breach of treaties. Thus the
Constitution requires that a major foreign commitment that binds
our nation have a broad consensus among the people, and not result
from the parochial interests of a minority or even a narrow
majority. As matters of war and peace, treaties should reflect a
strong Union, not a divided nation.
This principle led to the Treaty Clause, which empowers the
president to negotiate treaties - but requires two-thirds of the
Senate to approve them and -- if necessary -- to demand changes. This
extraordinary requirement is really just an ongoing expression of
the original decision to form a Union. And it has produced a
system in which treaties routinely go through many iterations and
rounds of negotiations, even after initial signature by the
president. Treaties throughout our history carry scores of
conditions, reservations, and amendments added by Congress,
precisely to ensure widespread acceptance among the people.
This was in fact how the first treaty ratified under the Treaty
Clause played out. The Jay Treaty with Britain -- negotiated by a
co-author of The Federalist -- only gained Senate approval
on the condition that Jay rework the treaty to add a clause
regarding trade between the United States and the British West
Indies.
Another principle of foreign policy rooted in the Constitution is
that the Union must have a strong military, but one that is at the
same time restrained and subject to the control of the people.
At the time of the Founding, a powerful and restrained military
was something of an oxymoron. Federalist 11, for
instance, states that a strong military -- and in particular a strong
navy -- is vital not only to deter aggression, but also to secure and
expand international trade. Yet Federalist 26
recognizes that military might has historically posed a grave
threat to individual liberty. This presented what seemed to be a
Hobson’s choice (a free choice in which only one option is actually offered. As a
person may refuse to take that option - the choice is therefore really
decided between taking the option or not. In other words, one may "take
it or leave it." Wikipedia) between a strong military and a weak military,
both of which would threaten liberty over time.
But our Founders charted a way out of this dilemma. The
Constitution empowered the president, as commander-in-chief, to
defend against attack and take decisive military action where
necessary. At the same time, it entrusted the people’s
representatives in Congress with a wide range of foreign affairs
powers as a means of fostering prudence, democratic control, and
protection against tyranny. Thus only Congress can raise and
support armies; only Congress may declare war and invoke the legal
obligations and protections that this state of international
relations confers; only Congress regulates foreign commerce, and
with it control over important levers of influence with foreign
nations in order to better relations, exact costs, and prevent
war.
* * *
Under President Obama, there has been considerable drift away from
all three of these principles. And that drift has contributed to
the general drift of U.S. foreign policy. Even former President
Carter has said, “I can’t think of many nations in the world where
we have a better relationship now - than when he took over.” Our
interests are threatened, our alliances are stressed, our honor is
stained, and our adversaries are increasingly tempted into new
episodes of adventurism and aggression.
The most recent example of this drift is the Iran nuclear deal.
This is a major arms-control agreement with a mortal enemy -- an
enemy with the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands, and
for whom “death to America” is a foreign-policy bedrock. And the
agreement goes to the heart of the gravest threat facing the
world: a terror-sponsoring state armed with nuclear weapons. It is
precisely the type of agreement that the Founders intended to be
tested and refined by the treaty process. It is precisely the type
of agreement implicating matters of war and peace that must be
supported by a widespread consensus of the American people.
But the President didn’t submit the Iran nuclear deal as a treaty.
From the beginning, his intention was to circumvent the people’s
representatives and obligate the U.S. to the ayatollahs by a mere
executive agreement. Instead of rallying two-thirds of the Senate
to support the deal, he relied on a tiny, partisan minority to
protect his executive agreement from the judgment of the American
people.
This is dangerous and nearly unprecedented. Executive agreements
are and should be reserved for technical matters. Among the first
executive agreements in our history were the 1792 agreements
between the United States and other nations to coordinate mail
delivery. Executive agreements have also traditionally been used
to assign claims and debts between nations. These issues are
low-stakes, and are not breeding grounds for armed conflict. They
are akin to deciding whether cars will drive on the right or left
side of the road. That’s why they do not need to be tested by a
super-majority vote.
Nuclear weapons agreements are different. The dividing line
between subjects reserved for treaties and subjects reserved for
less formal scrutiny is not precise at the margins. But this isn’t
anywhere near the margins. Historically, major arms control
agreements that bind the U.S. have almost invariably been reached
through treaty. One notable exception was the Agreed Framework
with North Korea negotiated under President Clinton in 1994, which
aimed at keeping North Korea from becoming a nuclear power. I
doubt President Obama would like to cite the North Korea case as
precedent -- although it surely is a precedent in its contempt for
Congress, and likely in its failure as well.
Why did President Obama ignore the Treaty Clause? The answer is
stunning. Secretary of State Kerry lamented in testimony to
Congress that it is “physically impossible” to get a treaty
through the Senate in these polarized times. (Bill Gray Note: And, that is exactly why the writers of the Constitution put the Treaty Clause in the Constitution)
Of course, this (Kerry's) logic
could apply to any politically inconvenient part of the
Constitution. Moreover, Secretary Kerry must have forgotten that,
as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he guided a
nuclear arms control treaty with Russia to ratification less than
five years ago.
The simple fact is that the President ignored the Constitution
because he knew the Senate would reject his deal. This disregard
for the Treaty Clause is the height of hubris. It mistakes tunnel
vision for principle - closed-mindedness for superior wisdom - and
personal legacy for the vital national interest. The nuclear deal
with Iran is a travesty, one that betrays our close friend Israel,
provides billions for Iran’s campaign of terror, and paves the way
for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons capability.
Besides the immediate damage to our national security, the deal
also damages the foundational principle that major foreign
commitments should be backed by a broad consensus of the people as
reflected by Congress. This episode, added to the North Korea
example, will make it extremely tempting for future presidents to
avoid the expenditure of political capital required to pass a
treaty. Presidents will be tempted to reach expedient deals on
momentous issues, deals that divide rather than unite the nation.
* * *
While the Iran deal is the latest blow to our foreign policy
tradition, a long-festering wound is the decline of our military
might. Our military has endured 15 years of war and six years of
repeated budget cuts. It is now breaking under the burden of a
mindless sequestration that indiscriminately cuts across the board
and treats every dollar of federal spending equally -- whether for
defense or for pork.
As a consequence, our military is facing a
crisis. The Navy has 260 ships -- the smallest number since the end
of the Cold War. Our Air Force is the smallest and oldest force in
our history. The Army and the Marine Corps are on track to drop
below 450,000 and 190,000 personnel, respectively -- the bare minimum
levels our commanders say we need to fulfill our missions.
These unwise cuts to our military call into question U.S. resolve
and security commitments. It’s not a coincidence that, in the span
of a few years, we have seen a revisionist Russia exert its will
in Ukraine and in the Middle East - radical Jihadism metastasize
across the Middle East and North Africa - China project power over
more and more aerial and maritime territories - and Iran
out-negotiate us while it spreads chaos across the Middle East
through its proxies and clients.
This picture isn’t pretty, but as I said earlier, the American
foreign policy tradition has a knack for self-correction, for
turning the ship around and reversing past mistakes. To make that
happen, however, we need to look back to the foundational
principles of our Constitution.
To restore respect for the Treaty
Clause, we must make every effort over the next year to isolate
and impugn the President’s nuclear deal with Iran as a singular,
one-off agreement that ought never to be repeated. We must put
every nation and every business on notice that this deal is
temporary and unique. They must understand that U.S. sanctions on
Iran -- either through new legislation or through a new
president -- will return.
We must work to elect a new president who
will rescind the Iran nuclear deal -- and who will restore the
credible threat of force.
Put simply, our allies and our adversaries must understand that
this nuclear arms control deal reached by executive agreement is
not secure. They have to understand that it is in our interest, and
in their interest, to conclude stable and long-lasting agreements
by way of treaties. And all future presidents should see that
building consensus through the constitutionally mandated advice
and consent of the Senate will afford them a genuine, lasting
legacy.
A restoration of the Treaty Clause must be accompanied by a
restoration of our military might. Frederick the Great said,
“Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments” -- in
other words, inert, inaudible, and ineffective. If we want our
diplomacy to be effective and our agreements to be strong, we must
rebuild our military.
The American tradition has never been to seek war, or to seek it
first in a dispute. Lincoln, again in his First Annual Message to
Congress, prized diplomacy as a means of defusing tensions with
foreign powers and maintaining our “rights and honor.” But he also
called for a military build-up. “Aggressions,” said his Secretary
of War Simon Cameron, “are seldom made upon a nation ever ready to
defend its honor and to repel insults.”
To ensure that we are ready to defend our national honor today, we
will need significantly more defense spending than Congress and
the President have managed to agree upon in recent years. Our
current defense budget is little more than a political compromise,
which may be appropriate for highway funding or tax policy, but
which is no way to fund a military or to counter rising
threats. Congress and the President must return to the
foundational principle that our military edge must not be
challenged. We must give our fighting men and women the resources
they need to deter, fight, and win wars.
* * *
The Founders and generations of statesmen since have recognized
the unique advantages with which the United States is blessed. We
are a continental nation, and we enjoy the protection of two
oceans that separate us from the historic cauldrons of conflict in
Europe and Asia. We have abundant natural resources and an
industrious society, making us a powerful trading partner. Ours is
a people slow to anger, but imbued with a martial tradition and a
fighting spirit. Our democratic culture is vigorous, resilient,
and cherished by the people. These strengths are channeled by the
Constitution into our foreign policy tradition. U.S. strategy
abroad -- while not successful in every instance -- has brought us from
being a world-affairs backwater to being the world’s superpower.
As we think about our future and new strategies, it would serve us
well to look back at old truths. We must hold fast to foundational
principles. We must continue our rich foreign policy tradition,
and vigorously fight any efforts to undermine it. While each
Congress and president will have particular differences, we should
all share the same goal: a world of peace and freedom, of
prosperity and opportunity, of hope.
We have a duty to be true to
our beliefs, to use our great power wisely on behalf of freedom,
guided by constitutional principle. As Ronald Reagan admonished in
his speech to the British Parliament in 1982, “Let us go to our
strength. Let us offer hope. Let us tell the world that a new age
is not only possible but probable.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So, let me close by reminding you:
Are YOU ready to VOTE IN 2016 to Restore Sanity In America?
Are YOU ready to VOTE IN 2016 to send all of the Liberal Socialists and RINOs home into permanent retirement?
Are YOU ready to VOTE IN 2016 to elect Conservative American Leaders who will listen, hear, honor, and respect the voices of "We The People" - spoken in English?
Let's all VOTE IN 2016 to take back our American homeland!
God bless you and God bless America,
Bill Gray
