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View Full Version : Flashback: Pat Buchanan's 1996 Presidential Announcement Speech




AuH20
12-02-2011, 11:36 AM
I wish Ron could talk in a rousing manner with such moving clarity. Despite this speech being close to 15 years old, it's still incredibly applicable to today's problems. I quoted the highlights of the speech:

http://www.4president.us/speeches/patbuchanan1996announcement.htm


But we shall remind them: The Buchanan Brigades are not leap-year conservatives. We have borne the day's heat. We have labored in these vineyards from the very first hour. And we stand here today to resume command of the revolution that we began here three years ago—because we intend to lead that revolution to triumph and into the White House in 1996.

But this campaign is not about yesterday. It is about tomorrow. It is about America's future. It is about taking America forward toward the dream of a Constitutional Republic that first stirred in the hearts of the boys who stood their ground on the Lexington Green and the men who held at the Concord Bridge. This campaign is about an America that once again looks out for our own people and our own country first.


What are we doing to our own people? What is an economy for if not so that workers and their families can enjoy the good life their parents knew, so that incomes rise with every year of hard work, and so that Americans once again enjoy the highest standard of living in the world? Isn't that what an economy is for?

Our American workers are the most productive in the world; our technology is the finest. Yet, the real incomes of American workers have fallen 20 percent in 20 years.

Why are our people not realizing the fruits of their labor?

I will tell you. Because we have a government that is frozen in the ice of its own indifference, a government that does not listen anymore to the forgotten men and women who work in the forges and factories and plants and businesses of this country.

We have, instead, a government that is too busy taking the phone calls from lobbyists for foreign countries and the corporate contributors of the Fortune 500.

Well, I have not forgotten that man at James River, and I have come back to give him my answer here in New Hampshire.

When I am elected president of the United States, there will be no more NAFTA sellouts of American workers. There will be no more GATT deals done for the benefit of Wall Street bankers. And there will be no more $50 billion bailouts of Third World socialists, whether in Moscow or Mexico City.

In a Buchanan White House, foreign lobbyists and corporate contributors will not sit at the head of the table. I will.

We're going to bring the jobs home and we're going keep America's jobs here, and when I walk into the Oval Office, we start looking out for America first.


And we Americans must also start recapturing our lost national sovereignty.

The men who stood at Lexington and at Concord Bridge, at Bunker Hill and Saratoga, they gave all they had, that the land they loved, might be a free, independent, sovereign nation.

Yet, today, our birthright of sovereignty, purchased with the blood of patriots, is being traded away for foreign money, handed over to faceless foreign bureaucrats at places like the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the U.N.


A year ago, two United States helicopters flying surveillance over northern Iraq were shot down by American fighter planes in a terrible incident of friendly fire. Captain Patrick McKenna of the Citadel, where I just visited, commanded one of those helicopters. Every American on board was killed. And when the story hit the news, the vice president, then visiting in Marrakesh at the World Trade Organization meeting, issued a statement that said the parents of these young men and women can be proud their sons and daughters died in the service of the United Nations.

But those young men and women didn't take an oath to the United Nations. They took an oath to defend the Constitution and the country we love. And let me say to you, when Pat Buchanan gets into that Oval Office as Commander in Chief, no young men and women will ever be sent into battle except under American officers and to fight under the American flag.


But today, in too many of our schools our children are being robbed of their innocence. Their minds are being poisoned against their Judeo-Christian heritage, against America's heroes and against American history, against the values of faith and family and country.

Eternal truths that do not change from the Old and New Testament have been expelled from our public schools, and our children are being indoctrinated in moral relativism, and the propaganda of an anti-Western ideology.

Parents everywhere are fighting for their children. And to the mothers and fathers waging those battles, let me say: This campaign is your campaign. Your fight is our fight. You have my solemn word: I will shut down the U.S. Department of Education, and parental right will prevail in our public schools again.

NewRightLibertarian
12-02-2011, 12:34 PM
Buchanan is fantastic!

Alex540
12-02-2011, 01:53 PM
I love Pat Buchanan.

Southron
12-02-2011, 02:31 PM
You can definitely tell why he was a Presidential speech writer.