Next we hear a short speech by Gary Bauer President of the family research Council in Washington DC power spoke at a recent Forum sponsored by the Berean leg in crystal in the Twin Cities in the Reagan Administration. Gary Bauer was under Secretary of Education while at the Department of Education. He was chairman of the administration working group which issued a report called the family preserving America's future. He later worked in the White House domestic policy office or being as an advisor to former President Reagan, Gary Bauer is now president of focus on the family is newly established family research Council hears Gary Bauer. It's a great pleasure for me to to be here tonight in the be with all you folks, but I have to be completely honest with you and and tell you that while it's a pleasure to be here. It's even a greater pleasure to be out of Washington DC even if for a day or so number of years ago, I came across something that the Harry Truman once saidWashington DC and it just seems to me that it's sums it up. So well Harry said that Washington was the kind of city where if you wanted a friend you should buy a dog. I am I left my dog back in Washington because I I assumed I'd be among friends tonight. And that's a very good feeling Andy. I will Begin by reassuring you that I will be relatively brief because brevity I think is always a good thing for public officials or X public officials. Some of the greatest speeches in American history have been known for their brevity Lincoln at Gettysburg Washington's first inaugural and contrast William Henry Harrison spoke for 3 hours at his own inaugural when the rain caught pneumonia was dead in 3 months. It it seems to me there's a lesson somewhere for politicians and props for ministers and others butts. More seriously, let me Begin by saying that I believe that we are in a civil war in our country. It's it's not a Civil War fought with bullets and guns but nonetheless just like the other civil war many years ago. It is extremely important because it's about the kind of nation. We are the kind of people we are what it is. We will teach our children in the years I had and it is a fact a war over our children and what we will teach them about love and sex about life and death about the freedom and slavery that the community of adults are mightily confused about those issues and it should not be surprising then that our children are also confused. You're 50 years ago or even 25 years ago. There was not that much disagreement about what our goals were as a nation. For example, not too many years ago. We knew that it was a good thing to try to help the traditional family. We might argue about the best way to do that, but we didn't disagree on the goal today in Washington. You will get a good debate on your hands even over the very idea of whether the traditional family should be helped over any other family form and I think that's a a very bad sign under a bad sign and D. Now it being a civil war that means that there will be both victories and defeats. There will be good days and bad days. But I think it's worth pointing out as we begin talking about this subject that we must not no matter how bad things may seem forget the source of our strength nor the promised outcome. You're one of the really nice things about working in the White House is that you get to walk through the halls and be in the rooms where historical things took place were great men had and made important decisions about our country. And I remember one day being there and looking out a window at the White House and being told by one of the in-house historian sat in that very window Abraham Lincoln used to stand and on a clear day. He could gaze across the Potomac River and they're on the other side. He would say the Confederate flag flying. If the Confederate soldiers stationed on the other side of the river would have known they could have literally marched into Washington taking the White House captive and taking the president because there were in the beginning weeks of the Civil War. No Union troops Bev. Whacked in Washington. Everyday Lincoln would meet with his advisors and would ask them when reinforcements were going to arrive and every day they would promise him this unitard that unit would soon be there, but they wouldn't show up. And then finally one day after bloody fighting in Baltimore the 6th, Massachusetts arrived and they camped down on the Potomac River. And it's recorded in the history books that that night a grateful president walked among the campfires and was heard to say you were the only real thing everything else is but an illusion. Well, I think that even Lincoln who was a wise man can be forgiven if in his emotion, he might have lost sight of a basic fact because the six Massachusetts really wasn't real either. They were after all only flesh and blood The only real thing was the god who gave Lincoln strength who held a divided nation in his hands who holds us still today and who has promised us with the life of his son that the Gates of Hell will not prevail. I think that even on the bad days we must not forget that promise. However, even though we have that promise it is no excuse for us not to join the battle. We are required to fight the good fight. And as I said, it really is a Civil War. I can tell you that in Washington arrayed against my organization and a few others that are struggling in Washington are a list of opponents that seem to have unending resources on ending amounts of money available to them. And I think you know who many of those groups are other radical feminist organizations Planned Parenthood. The gay rights organizations are American civil liberties Union the National Education Association all of them with multimillion-dollar budgets. And we should not forget the militant secularists who will not be satisfied until they removed every Vestige of religion from American public life. I take some solace in knowing that if they are to succeed they will have to sandblast half the walls of official Washington because they are from the Supreme Court to the Lincoln Memorial at Stinson Stone are the living words that make it clear that our liberties come from no man, no government. But from God and I take great comfort in remembering that fact. For the last eight years and I have labored in government and a number of positions and the trench warfare of the Washington bureaucracy. It's been an exciting experience of frustrating experience deal with a lot of ups and downs a few years ago. Ronald Reagan called me to the Oval Office and asked me to do for him a report on the American family in on America's children and to give him some ideas to testiclea of what was happening to our families and our children. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about that report because I think some of the things that I found might be of interest to you as you fight the good fight here in Minnesota. I took a picture of look for the president at the years between 1960 and 1980 to find out what we had done as a nation and what the results have been and what I found was a between 1960 and 1980. We had made a major effort in this country to improve the economic and social well-being of American children in those 20 years education spending more than doubled in real terms after you adjusted for inflation. We were spending twice as much on the education of each child in 1980. Then we were in 1960. And that's one of year. Federal welfare spending much of it aimed at women and children went up by over 400% By 1976 there were over 260 separate programs in Washington DC that had is it as their main purpose to improve the social well-being of our children? That we made this great commitment of resources. So I think it's only reasonable to ask ourselves. What happened to our kids during the same 20 year. When we were focusing on their social and economic well-being but forgetting a lot of common sense about issues like values about reliable standards of right and wrong and I'm afraid that when you look at what happened to our children that 20-year. There's nothing to be very happy about in fact during that time. SAT scores the way we measure student achievement fell by over 85 points the largest drop in the history of our country. Unwed teenage births one up over 200% We now have the highest rate of any industrialized nation in the world. England is a poor second. This year in Washington DC the nation's capital 55% of all the children born will be illegitimate. I'm not aware of whether there's ever been an example in history of a breakdown of the family of those proportions. But if there has been I would suspect that at this point it is but an archaeological curiosity because no Society. I submit can withstand that kind of family disintegration and exist for very long. The delinquency rate double School dropouts doubled drug abuse doubled alcoholism among the young doubled. And in that same 20-year. The mortality rate for all age groups of Americans improved except for one group American teenagers in American teenagers actually had a worse mortality rate in 1980 than they did in 1960 not because they were getting poor Healthcare. They were getting some of the best Healthcare the world had to offer but because our children were killing themselves. If not directly through youth suicide and indirectly from drunk driving deaths use homicide drug overdoses all of the things that shout at us in each morning's headlines. Several weeks ago at DC General Hospital, they had to close the trauma Ward because all 28 beds had been filled in about a five-hour. 15 stabbings 12 gunshot wounds and all of the victims under the age of 18. Again, I would say I sorry commentary about where the drift of the last 20 or 30 years has brought us. I am not suggesting that the federal money cause these things to happen. I'm not even suggesting that we shouldn't have spent the federal money. What I am saying is that we did spend it and we did not get the results the experts promised us nor the results we hoped for. I suspect that the answers as to why these things happen probably could be better answered in a church on Sunday morning because these are after all problems of the heart and of the Soul. But when I go into a congressional office the lobby on these issues, I can't go in and talk about problems of the Soul or start quit quoting Biblical verses because most congressmen are going to tune me out and show me to the door. And so I try to find secular explanations that can make the same point and one of the things that I have come up with a few years ago. That was a quote by a professor at Cornell University that I think really summarizes the issue professor's name Urie bronfenbrenner and he was asked during a press conference a few years ago. What was the key ingredient? In the successful development of a human being and he responded someone has to be crazy about the kids. Some adult has got to make each child the most important thing in their life before a job before the prospect of a new spouse before anything else. And I think it's painfully evident that for too many of our children both born and unborn there is no such a dolt. All too often we treat our children as if they were split infinitives or dangling participles not Central to what we do and what we think. When I was at the Department of Education, we did studies that show that the average American father spends 2 minutes a day educating his children. What do we say to a child when by the age of six he will have spent more time watching TV, then he will spend his entire life talking to his father. And of course mentioning TV is to mention another Battleground in the Civil War that were waging. I admit that there is a decent show here are there in each of us can cite perhaps our favorites but they stand out because they are exceptions. They are mere patches of green and what is otherwise a great Wasteland and contrast how many times a day does television teach our children that Fidelity is old-fashioned that adultery is the norm or that abortion is just another choice in the lifestyle cafeteria. The other day I saw in the paper that the major TV networks are considering whether to begin condom ever tizing at Lake non during late night TV and I can guarantee you where that debate will go they'll debate it briefly and then they'll do it and then the next year the debate will be whether the ads are to be moved from 11 to 10 and then from 10 to 9 and I can guarantee you that a couple years down the road. We will be shaking our heads as we try to figure out how to explain to our children What that particular add just meant Wouldn't it be wonderful if the TV Executives debated doing a few other things? How about public service ads that explain to our children? Why promiscuity is wrong? How about some TV situation comedies and soap operas were the heroes and heroines don't hop in the bed at a moment's notice. But rather make a principle stand for virtue. Are the critics say that changes like that would hurt the ratings. I say that the American people would applaud and breathe a sigh of relief that they are no longer pushing against the culture and undercuts and undermines everything they try to teach their children. in our schools to in our schools to as you well know better than I the Civil War wages rages over what we're going to teach our children. I remember when I was at the White House and I was going through a number of newspapers. I came across an article in the New York Times. It's still sticks in my mind. Karely, a New York Times Reporter decided to go to a local public school to find out how values were being taught and they're at the public school. He came across a group of students in a counseling session and the students were debating whether one student had done the right thing to return a purse with $100 in it to its rightful owner of the students decided the weather was right or wrong that she had done the dumb thing and then they turn to the counselor for advice and the counselor was quoted in the New York Times the same. Well, I think she did the right thing, but I'm not going to try to push my views on the kids after all if I did that he said I wouldn't be there counselor. But once upon a time counselors counseled and among other things they counseled about right and wrong that this counselor felt compelled to assure the readers of the New York Times that he did. No such thing I think is a poor example of the sorry situation that exists still in too many American classrooms. A second front in our schools that the battle is being waged over is on the question of whether or not birth control clinics ought to be put in the schools. You'll feel better than I spent a lot of time on this issue. There are certain types of surrender. That adults must never make in the presence of the young and one such form of surrender is the surrender of moral Authority and yet that is exactly what we do when we put in such a clinic when we put in such a clinic. We are throwing up our hands and saying to our children we give up we give up trying to tell you what the right thing to do is Take these things these implements and try to control the inevitable consequences of your Acts. I believe that those clinics are a slap in the face of every 15 year old girl who is ever found the courage to say no. We can. We can and we must do better than this. We must teach reliable standards of right and wrong to our children teacher should be able to do that and parents should be able to help we also should be able to teach our children something about our heritage. We should be able to teach them what the great lady in New York Harbor stands for and why there is a Berlin Wall. We should teach them who said Give me liberty or give me death and who said I have a dream. We should talk to them about what Constitution Hall looks like and even with good music sounds like and if I should be so bold, I would also say that our children ought to know about Ruth and Naomi and Jonathan and David and short we ought to teach them to love the things we love and honor the things we honor because nothing short of that will do. I was recently reminded doing some reading of Another War many many hundreds of years ago, and it seems to me that it has perhaps a lesson for us. It seems that in ancient Rome. There was a despotic king and the people finally tiring of his tyranny expelled him in this King went off and raised an army of Etruscans of Barbarians and they proceeded to march on the city of Rome to try to take it back. They laid waste of everything in front of them. When the Roman Legions were set out to try to stop them the Barbarian Army prevailed over them until finally this Army arrived on the outskirts of Rome separated from it only by the Tiber River and a small narrow bridge that went over the river. The Roman citizens grown fat and lazy because of their lives lifestyle Howard before this Army but one Brave man step forward and said if only a couple of other stout-hearted men will join me. I will go to the far side of that bridge and hold off the Barbarian Army until you cut back cut down on the bridge behind me. And in fact that man did go with two others and fought on the far end of the bridge while the others cut the bridge down and the bridge fell. The Relic men were killed but Rome was saved the poet Makela captured this moment in a poem that many of you may remember from your own schooldays called the Lays of ancient Rome and the verse sent it that I think its most significant goes as follows. to every man upon this Earth death cometh soon or late But what better way to die than facing fearful odds for the ashes of his fathers and the Temple of his God. ladies and gentlemen, we Face barbarians today some unfortunately are already inside the city. They walk among us and they whisper. To the women they whisper aboard it. It's not really a baby. To the men they say forget your vows your wife will never know. To our children. They say try it it'll feel good to our politicians. They say spend and elect spend and elect. We must fight them in the halls of Congress and the state legislatures. We must oppose them in the courts. We must debate them in the schools and universities and counter them in the medium. We must and will do these things until this great experiment in Liberty under God is restored. Thank you very much.