PERKINS: I want to introduce to you our next speaker, he needs little
introduction, but he is one who is very passionate about this
issue. He's a friend of mine, he's a friend of families all across
this globe. Please help me welcome Dr. James Dobson.
DOBSON: Thank you everybody. My goodness, what a warm reception, thank
you very much for inviting us back to Kentucky, it's a pleasure to see
you all and I wish we were gonna be here a little longer and have a
chance to get acquainted with more of you.
I don't want to go an inch further without introducing to you the
chairlady of the National Day of Prayer, my beloved wife Shirley in
whom I'm well pleased. Shirley would you please stand.
Shirley is a great lady, doing a great work. She's a little sassy, but
that's ok. And um we have now been married for forty-four years and I
think it's gonna work. I do hope you have a chance to get acquainted
with her, I look forward to meeting some of you myself, you know, I
wish you could meet our whole family cause we're just wonderful
people.
Anyway we're delighted to be here and delighted to have a chance to
participate in this very very important evening. My goodness, I just
cannot imagine anything more significant than what we're about to
do. I want to welcome you and thank you for coming, others have said
that but I also want to thank those who are participating in churches
all across the country, for those that are watching on television, on
the radio or through the webcast or Sky Angel or wherever it happens
to be, this is a tremendous outpouring, it reflects what's going on
and the angst that is there over this issue, and so we welcome you.
I also want to welcome members of the press and the media. It's my
understanding that there are sixty separate entities here,
organizations that are represented, really the media of the nation is
here and I'm glad you're here. We don't always get a fair hearing on
our point of view, and you came tonight and I hope tonight we will get
a fair hearing because this is a message that needs to be heard.
Now I have a grand total of 12 minutes left to talk to you tonight and
I've got so much to say, I've never been so full with things I need to
say. And I'm going to really to crash, and so I'm gonna get right to
it. Obviously we're talking about the unconstitutional, I think,
inappropriate use of the filibuster to prevent these honorable men and
women from serving on the court, it's not right, it's wrong. And I
think this is one of the most significant issues we've ever faced as a
nation because the future of democracy and ordered liberty actually
depends on the outcome of this struggle.
Why? Because the issues that we care about and the values that are
important to us are now threatened by the court system and especially
the United States Supreme Court. There's a, you know, majority on the
Supreme Court that is, and you'll have to pardon me but this is the
way I see it, they're unelected and unaccountable and arrogant and
imperious and determined to redesign the culture according to their
own biases and values, and they're out of control. And I think they
need to be reined in.
And in that regard I want it said loud and clear, that I appreciate
and agree with Majority Leader Tom DeLay and what he has been trying
to do. He's had the courage to put his neck out and he's being
vilified and treated very very unfairly and I think it's time to
get off his back.
Now let me go back to my own childhood, when I was ten years of age,
and I want to address something that Chuck Colson just said in the
video. Because when I was in the fourth grade, I was sitting in class,
my teacher was Mrs. Eunice Harris, I remember her well, great teacher,
and I was sitting right in the middle of the class and I remember one
day that she went to the board and she put the three branches of
government on the board, she wrote them down, the executive, the
legislative and the judicial branch, branches of government, and
talked about what each one of them was designed to do and the
Constitution and what the founding fathers had in mind.
Then she went on to describe the fact that the founding fathers knew
the nature of men. Those were the days when schoolkids were taught
something a little different than they are now, and she talked about
the fact that there's a tendency for all of us, we're all flawed
individuals. The founding fathers knew that, and they set up a system
to keep one branch of government from becoming too powerful and
overwheming the other two. And they call it checks and balances. As a
ten year old I understood that. We can't seem to get it today but
they, we understood what checks and balances meant, and that meant
that each branch of government checks the other two.
Now it works very well with regard to the executive branch and the
legislative branch, they check each other, there's the veto, and then
they can override the veto and there's all kinds of struggles that go
on back and forth between the exeutive and the legislative. But the
founding fathers intended those two branches of government to check
the judiciary, and it hasn't done it, and won't do it because it
doesn't have the political gumption to do it, because the moment they
do, the media rises up like a mighty shield to keep this from
happening. As a result, what do you have? You have a court that is out
of control.
Did you know that the Constitution of the United States specifically
gives the Congress the right to control the courts? Not that it's not
independent, but the Constitution in Article 3 section 1 says that
below the Supreme Court the courts of the United States serve at the
pleasure of the Constitution. They have the responsibility, and then
of course by the confirmation process they have the responsibility to
have an impact on these courts, and they have not been willing to do
that, and therefore we're lacking in checks and balances. And you
have a court that is imperious and that is imposing its will on the
people of this country and that was never what was intended by the
founding fathers.
And it's why we must address that. I think it was Lord Acton who said
that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
So you have a court that has essentially absolute power, they're the
final arbiters. In fact that goes back to Thomas Jefferson, who was
very concerned about the possibility that a court would get out of
control like this and would destroy our ordered liberty. And after
Marbury versus Madison, which is a decision that the Court rendered on
its own behalf in 1803, essentially said it had the right to make all
decisions of a Constitutional nature both inside and outside the
government.
So by that decision they put themselves in preeminence, and instead of
having co-equal branches of government you have one that is
preeminent. And so Jefferson complained about that and for twenty
years he wrote about it warning us about what could happen under those
circumstances. I want to read to you what he said, he said it is
dangerous, it's a dangerous doctrine to consider judges as ultimate
arbiters of all Constitutional questions. That's what we have
today. It is one that would place us under the despotism of an
oligarchy. Did you hear that? An oligarchy. What's an oligarchy? It is
a government by a few, that's what we have, five black-robed justices
on the Supreme Court can tell the rest of us and the other two
branches of government how it's gonna be, and there's no redress and
there's no second chance, there's no one else to appeal and that's
what is happening and I am concerned about it.
The Supreme Court after all is made up of men and women, flawed
like you and me, they're not gods, they don't do everything right, as,
y'know, that's true of every single one of us. And the Supreme Court
through the years has done some horrible things, they have, y'know in
the Dred Scott decision in 1858 ruled that black people are not fully
human, not entitled to a full vote and so on. That decision rendered
tremendous chaos and contributed in many ways to the Civil War that
resulted in six hundred thousand deaths, the saddest period in
American history, it came from the Supreme Court, essentially.
And in 1973 the Roe v Wade decision, the Supreme Court labored forth
and came to us with the abortion, the decision that all abortion is
protected by the Constitution. And that has now resulted in forty-four
million deaths, the biggest holocaust in world history that came out
of the Supreme Court.
I can't believe what's happening to that clock, I'm just getting
started and here I am almost out of time. The problem with the Court
when it is not checked is that it has an agenda, for forty-three years
the Supreme Court has been on a campaign to limit religious freedom,
religious liberty. It goes back to 1962 with Bible reading, in '63,
prayer in schools, both prohibited. And from there to your state, here
in Kentucky, when the Ten Commandments could not be posted on the
schools, that was 1980. In 1985 you couldn't even let kids meditate as
a group in school. And then you couldn't pray at football games,
couldn't pray at graduation ceremonies. And then that ridiculous
decision by the Ninth Circuit in 2002 with regard to the Pledge of
Allegiance.
Now listen folks, every one of those decisions that I just quoted to
you, every one of 'em, is opposed today by more than seventy percent
of the American people. Every one of 'em.
Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg,this is a government of the
people, by the people, and for the people. We're the government. In
what sense are we the government when what we care about has no
impact, has no influence? How does that happen? And the reason is
because the Court is not accountable to the people.
Now what's the connection with the filibuster? Listen carefully
folks. The ballot box is our only means of affecting the Court. It's
the only way that we can influence the makeup of the Court. If this is
a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, we have
to have a way to let our concerns be known. And that is done through
the people that we elect, and we did that on November the second of
last year, and we sent a message to Washington that there was a
concern over the judicary, it was talked about often during the
campaign.
And yet now a minority of members of the Senate, the Democrats
essentially and about six or eight very squishy Republicans are
determined to prevent that influence to be felt on the Court.
Now what Chuck Colson said is true, we're not trying to force our
views on anybody. Folks, you can't even make somebody else's dog do
what you want 'em to do. You can't force anybody to do anything. But
we do have a right to participate in this great representative form of
government.
Thank you. I have to stop, but where is this leading, where does it
go? It goes directly to the redefinition of marriage, the Court's
already made that clear that's what they plan to do. It goes to
further assaults on the sanctity of life, bless her heart, Terri
Schiavo, a mentally disabled, woman, unable to speak for herself, with
circumstances that are not clear around her, her illness or difficulty
was turned down four times by this Supreme Court, they would not even
review her case.
Do they care about the sanctity of life? I think not, and they've made
that very clear. Euthanasia is on their list of things to deal with,
and pornography, unchecked and unlimited, on and on it goes, plus this
matter of judicial tyranny to people of faith. And that has to stop.
I leave you with this. Please do call your Senator, both of them, call
them, let them know that you won't take no for an answer. Let 'em know
that you don't want them to delay and you don't want them to postpone
and you don't want them to tremble. Republicans are real good at
trembling. Get a hold of them and tell them that you care and that you
will remember how they vote.
It's all on the line and it's time to stop filibuster and speaking of
time, I'm out of it and out of breath, I'm gone.
PERKINS: Thank you Dr. Dobson. The history is quite clear and the
history is they have been filibustering in an unprecedented way these
judicial nominees to the important appellate court level, and you'll
see across your screen tonight there are names and phone numbers...
PERKINS: At this time we are so thankful to have joining us tonight
for this special program, Dr. Bill Donohue, who is the president of
the Catholic League. He is going to come tonight, he's been a strong
advocate for those that have been in this process because of their
faith who have been filibustered, and he has been a staunch advocate
of their right to participate in this process. Please welcome Dr. Bill
Donohue.
DONOHUE: What a pleasure to be here, I feel like I'm really at
home. If I had a choice between a room of Ted Kennedy Irish-Catholics
like myself and people like you I'll take you any day.
The Bishop is right, white or black, Protestant or Catholic, orthodox
Jew, we're fed up, we're on the same side and if the secular left is
worried they should be worried.
You know we got involved with this issue with Judge Pryor a few years
ago, and one of my Senators, Senator Schumer, was talking about, as Al
Mohler said here, y'know, we're wondering about your deeply held
beliefs. Well Pryor, unlike Kennedy, happens to be a believer in the
church's teachings on abortion. Deeply held belief is code, people,
we all know what it means, it's deeply held religious beliefs. And so
they, Kennedy says, well, I can't be anti-Catholic, and Leahy says the
same thing and Durbin says the same thing because I'm Catholic, oh
yes you can if you reject the teachings of the Catholic Church on
abortion, and you raise the bar so high that nobody can jump over it,
except for Catholics like you, Kennedy, then we do have a problem with
it, alright, and so they do discriminate.
We have never said that there are Senators who are anti-Christian or
anti-Catholic bigots per se. What we've said is this: there isn't a de
jure discrimination but there is de facto, in other words you've
raised the bar so high that you made it impossible for us to get on
the Federal bench, that's a veiled, very cute way of saying that
there's no place for you.
And y'know what I'd like to see, I studied under Sidney Hook, not a
member of the religious right, he was a Jewish atheist and he had
a tremendous impact on me in many different ways, a great
philosopher. And Sidney Hook noticed this back in 1961. He said if you
want to do something about judicial activism, you better take a look
at the way the courts have evolved. And he said, even beginning
with the first justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, it was
understood that this branch was supposed to be a co-equal, it wasn't
supposed to have veto-proof position the way its evolved.
What he recommended, and I'd like to recommend a national discussion
on this issue right now. We need a discussion, do we need a
Constitutional amendment which would say this: no act of Congress can
be overturned by the Supreme Court unless it's a unanimous
decision. That'll stop judicial activism right in its track.
You know that may be the micro-issue, this whole business of
filibustering, but at the macro level you know what's at stake. They
basically have the attitude, least with regard to Catholics, their
attitude is, tend to the little old ladies in the church, let them
worry about their rosaries, don't get involved with the public. No, we
will get involved, we will be disobedient altar boys, we will get
involved in our society. And we won't be told to shut up and give it
over to the secular left. Who are they to say that I don't have a
right to freedom of speech? That's mentioned in the first amendment of
the Constitution.
See it's your free speech too, everybody's free speech.
And let me tell you something, I resent the remarks, this cacophany of
catcalls, they can't deal with us in a democratic way. Senator Frist
is absolutely right, keep it civil. And what do they do, they say
we're going to have a theocracy. They said the same thing when Bush
got elected, we're going to have a theocratic state. What are we, the
Taliban? I mean, this is - these people, they claim to be the high
priest of tolerance, and yet they practiced intolerance against us,
they want to set us up as if we're the radicals -
Let me tell ya, and it's not just Catholics and Protestants, some
orthodox Jews the other day have set up an organization last Thursday,
Don Feder and others, to fight against anti-Christian sentiment in
this country. And I asked them, why as Jews are you concerned about
this issue? They said well you know what, to the extent that
Christianity is disparaged, that voice, that pro-life voice and this
opposition to the most insane idea I've heard in my whole life, of two
men getting married, I mean - that's something that you expect in the
asylum, quite frankly.
Look, they - they - well they're not going to stop us from speaking on
this and these orthodox Jews have said we have to fight anti-Christian
bigotry in this country because if Christians can't get that voice out
there in favor of marriage, family and life, the life of a child to be
born, and the life of Terri Schiavo, to have feeding tubes, then we're
all finished, and so they understand it, alright?
In other words, in other words, we've got traditional Catholics, we
have evangelical Protestants, we have orthodox Jews, and those people
on the secular left they say well we think you're a threat. You know
what? You're right. Thank you.
PERKINS: Thank you Bill. I hope you got that. That's right, we are a
threat, because we're going to do the right thing, and again I
encourage you to make those phone calls. Promise - How many of you
will make a phone call tomorrow, raise your hand.
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