Family Talk

Dr. James Dobson: Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It's a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute, supported by listeners just like you. I'm Dr. James Dobson, and I'm thrilled that you've joined us.

Roger Marsh: Well hello everyone and welcome to a very special edition of Family Talk, the broadcast ministry of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh and I'm joined in studio by Gary Bauer, our Senior Vice President of Public Policy here at the James Dobson Policy Center. Gary, it's always great to have you, and especially great to have you with us today.

Gary Bauer: Same here, Roger. I really enjoy the opportunities we have to do some of these shows and to both express how much we care about this great country and, of course, Dr. Dobson's ministry. This is a particularly important show for people to hear.

Roger Marsh: Absolutely. On today's program, we're going to turn the spotlight on the celebration of the birth of our great nation. We're going to hear a special presentation from Dr. Dobson titled "I Believe in American Patriotism." Gary, I know this is a topic that's very near and dear to your heart.

Gary Bauer: It is, Roger. I grew up in a family that economically was challenged. I remember the paycheck tended to last until Friday, but the bills went on into the next week. My parents—the expression is there was more month than money. I remember that. One thing we were rich in, though, was love of country.

My father was in the First Marine Corps Division in World War II and he saw things and had to do things that, when I finally broke him down to share them with me—and that took many years—I couldn't believe what he told me. They were things that were almost impossible to imagine. I remember distinctly in those years growing up how he taught me to respect the flag. You didn't mess around when the national anthem was being played.

His nickname was Spike, so this was not a guy who you crossed. But his entire life, when the national anthem played, he got a tear in his eye. It was so instinctive for that generation. I'm blessed that he passed that love of country on to me.

Roger Marsh: And it shows in everything that you do, Gary, in your work in the Dr. Dobson Policy Center and also with your Defending Faith, Family, and Freedom podcast, which you can find at drjamesdobson.org. On today's special edition of Family Talk, we're going to hear Dr. James Dobson read a moving and patriotic letter that he received from his friend Don Feder. It's titled "Patriot's Prayer."

For more than two decades, Don was a very well-respected columnist. He was a journalist with the Boston Herald, served as Communications Director for the World Congress of Families, and the letter that he sent to Dr. Dobson was actually written back in 2010. But as you hear Doctor read this, you're going to hear how relevant it is even today. It walks through the bedrock values that make America great and highlights the key ways that the country, unfortunately, has abandoned those ideals in many ways. So I hope you'll listen intently to today's broadcast titled "I Believe in American Patriotism" on today's edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.

Dr. James Dobson: I am an American. After God, my highest loyalty is to this country. I believe America cannot remain one nation unless it is under God. America is no accident. From the beginning, it was intended by the Author of Liberty to fulfill a special role. We couldn't have gone from thirteen disparate colonies clinging to the Atlantic coast to the world's last remaining superpower in little more than 220 years without the guiding hand of Providence.

Along with the founding fathers, I believe religion is the foundation of liberty, morality, and representative government. The First Amendment was meant to protect religion from government and not the reverse. The so-called separation of church and state, words found nowhere in the Constitution and which would have confounded its drafters, is used not to separate church and state, but effect the divorce between government and Judeo-Christian values.

I believe in the United States Constitution and the system of government it established: one of limited powers, inalienable rights, a balance of power, and ordered liberty. I believe that the Constitution can only be amended as specified therein and never by judicial whim. I believe you don't have to be dean of a law school or a Supreme Court justice to understand the Constitution, just someone who has a sense of history, is logical, and understands that words have objective meaning.

I believe in a judiciary that interprets law, not one that makes law. Judges who distort the Constitution's plain meaning to achieve their own ends have substituted their will for that of the voters and the founders. They are enemies of the Constitution and the people and should be impeached and removed from office.

I believe in the right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed in the Second Amendment, and which is based on the right to life and the right to defend one's life, family, and property. Private ownership of guns is the protector of hearth and home and the guarantor of liberty. I believe in the right to life from conception to natural death. It is the duty of the state to protect innocent human life. Legalized abortion, state-sanctioned killing, is the beginning of the unraveling of the social order, which soon leads to euthanasia, infanticide, and the rationing of medical services. It is an affront to the law of God and jeopardizes the rights of all.

I believe in the free market system as both the most efficient way to provide for human needs and the only economic system compatible with human rights and dignity. The free market is as American as the Constitution. It has brought unparalleled prosperity to this nation and opportunity to its citizens. Today, government is trying to kill that system to achieve utopian ends like spreading the wealth. Advocates of the omnistate detest capitalism for its impartiality. In place of a system which rewards hard work, ingenuity, and risk-taking, it wants rewards based on political power, payoffs, and favoritism.

I believe in limited taxation to pay for the constitutional functions of government. As government takes more and more of an individual's income through taxation and regulation and inflation, it robs him of his time, his labor, and ultimately his life, turning citizens into subjects. What we have today isn't taxation as envisioned by the founders, but plunder or serfdom.

I believe the rich have as much right to their property as the rest of us. A system that penalizes the most productive among us is a denial of equal treatment on which this nation was founded. If left unchecked, I believe the national debt and mega-deficits will demolish the economy and lead to a catastrophe on the order of the Great Depression. The national debt is like a runaway train barreling down a track, picking up speed as it goes, hurtling toward a precipice at the end of the line.

For the 60 years before 2008, federal revenue averaged 17.9% of the gross domestic product, and spending averaged 19.6%. We're now spending 25% of the gross national product and collecting about 15%. It used to be said that we owed it to ourselves. Now, we owe a large part of it to the Chinese and the Saudis, who will one day make demands that endanger our national security. Eventually, even Washington's ability to borrow will reach its limits. Then it will inflate the currency to the point where our economy built on debt comes crashing down. Say hello to Germany, 1921 to 1923.

I celebrate America's heroes, history, and heritage. I believe America has been the greatest force for good in the world for more than two centuries. Ask the penniless immigrants whose descendants achieved success in every field. Ask the Belgians, the people of Normandy, the Filipinos, the South Koreans, and even the Japanese and Germans whose cities and industry we rebuilt after World War II. Ask those liberated from Dachau and Buchenwald who shed tears on the uniforms of American soldiers who saved them.

A denial of American exceptionalism is based on ignorance, indoctrination, or malice. I believe we need to begin teaching patriotism again. For decades, Hollywood, the news media, public education, and academia have been enemy territory. Elitists have indoctrinated generations to blame America first. This needs to be countered by a concerted effort to teach the young what America really means and why love of this country is thoroughly justified.

I believe political correctness is killing our country. National security, law enforcement, and social stability are now subordinate to group sensitivity and spurious claims to equality. I believe in the America of individual liberty, patriotism, and honor. I believe in the America of George Washington and John Adams, of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, of Teddy Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan.

I honor the brave men who fought to defend America as well as those who fight today. From Concord to Yorktown, from Gettysburg to San Juan Hill, from the Argonne to the Bulge, from the Chosin Reservoir to the Tet Offensive, from Kuwait to Kabul. Politicians talk about freedom, columnists write about it, members of our armed forces bleed and die to defend it.

I stand with the pilgrims, the puritans, and the pioneers, the earliest settlers on these shores and the intrepid Americans who pushed west, settling this vast continent. With the farmers and ranchers and merchants and mechanics, the workers, entrepreneurs, and inventors. America is a monument to their perseverance and vision.

I believe a nation that cannot defend its borders has surrendered its sovereignty. Immigration issues should be decided by the American people based on the national interest, not by political elitists and activist judges based on expediency, a misguided altruism, multicultural fantasies, or a sense of guilt. The Statue of Liberty says, "Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," not give me your criminal class, your moochers, and those who refuse to assimilate, all of them here illegally. I am outraged by driver's licenses and in-state tuition for illegal aliens. This isn't compassion, but a slap in the face to hardworking, law-abiding Americans, including the immigrants who came here legally.

I believe America's language is English, along with our common ideals. It's the glue that holds together a diverse people. From the Mayflower Compact to the Declaration of Independence, from Washington's Farewell Address to Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, from the Constitution to the latest congressional enactment, America's story has been written and spoken in English. I reject anything that detracts from the primacy of our mother tongue.

I believe American identity is based on belief, not blood, heart and head, not race, religion, or ethnicity. An American is identified by what he believes, not the happenstance of birth. Everyone who believes what Americans have always believed, everyone who fights for America is an American, regardless of how he worships, where he was born, or the color of his skin. In the words of Shakespeare's Henry V, "For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother."

I believe we need to stop dividing Americans along the line of race and ethnicity and start uniting them. The more the nation is polarized as "us versus them," the less likely we are to hang together in times of trouble. Multiculturalism and racial identity politics teach minorities that they are members of a race, ethnicity, or community first, and American second, if at all. We need an electorate which will vote not as Latinos, Blacks, workers, retirees, businessmen, etc., but as Americans for America.

I believe that ultimately, American security rests on the family. Families keep America strong. The family is the incubator of civic virtue. Those who undermine the family, including marriage, subvert America. I believe Israel and America share a unique bond. In the course of human history, they are the only two nations where the vision preceded possession of the land. American values stretch to Sinai and come to the West through Jerusalem, Rome, and Geneva. Absent ancient Israel's encounter with God, there would have been no America. To turn our back on Israel would be to betray ourselves.

I believe Islam is the deadliest foe confronting America. Terrorism is almost the exclusive province of Islamists. Islam is the religion of peace the way German is the language of diplomacy. Orthodox Islam is an ideology at war with American values: religious tolerance, equality before the law, and non-aggression. September 11, 2001, was not Islam's declaration of war on America, but a milestone in a clash of civilizations that's been going on for more than 1,300 years. What fascism was during the 1930s and 40s, what communism was from 1917 through the Cold War, Islam is today.

I believe America needs patriots as never before. Defeatism and disengagement are unacceptable. Each of us owes this country far more than we can ever repay. To withdraw from the fray is a betrayal of the patriots who came before us: the Continental soldier who left bloody footprints in the snow on Washington's retreat from New York; the patriots who starved and froze at Valley Forge; the patriots who stormed Cemetery Ridge and those who held the ridge; the Lost Battalion of the Argonne; the Marines on Guadalcanal; the heroes who landed on Omaha Beach under withering fire; the Battered Bastards of Bastogne. Those who fought with the sword and those who fought with the pen. Those who first beheld this blessed land with tear-filled eyes and those who refused to give up when all seemed lost.

God bless America. If not for ourselves, then for our fathers. If this generation is less worthy of His blessing, may He remember the generations that came before us, going back to Plymouth and Jamestown. God, make us worthy of Your blessings. When we live up to our national motto, "In God We Trust," then will we truly deserve to be blessed.

Roger Marsh: Well, that concludes Dr. James Dobson’s powerful Independence Day presentation on today's edition of Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh, joined in studio by Gary Bauer, our Senior Vice President of Public Policy here at the Dobson Policy Center. Gary is also the host of the outstanding Defending Faith, Family, and Freedom podcast. Gary, what an encouraging reflection from Dr. Dobson as he shared with us that powerful letter sent to him by his friend and fellow conservative warrior, Boston Herald columnist Don Feder.

Gary Bauer: That was very emotional, and it's the kind of thing that I hope millions of people will end up hearing one way or another. You know, Roger, the 4th of July, Ronald Reagan wrote about this years ago in his goodbye speech to the country. He talked about how when he was growing up, patriotism was evident everywhere. You would hear it from the guy down the street that maybe only had one leg because he gave the other one in World War II. You would hear it in the classroom. The popular culture reinforced it.

But Reagan, all the way back in 1988, said he was worried that those things were gone today and that it was up to families at the dinner table to pass on this love of country and the facts about America to their children and grandchildren. One of the things that I think it's easy for a family to do is just pick a couple of things. I mean, one of them is Lincoln's Second Inaugural. It's just one page long, and in that one page, Lincoln refers directly or indirectly to God and the Bible 13 times in one page. It really is almost an indictment of all those out there that tell us that religion had nothing to do with America and that it's only recently that people keep molding our Christian faith with America. But no, that's not true.

Here's something that I think is really easy for parents. The central idea of America is in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. There's about 24 words right in the middle of that paragraph. And if you're an American child and you don't know those 24 words, I would question whether in any real sense you're an American child. Even if you were born here, if you don't know these 24 words and what they mean, then you don't know the central idea of America.

So let me remind the parents listening what those words are. "We hold these truths," it says. Now, see, that's a problem right there because we live in a culture where many of our elites don't believe there is such a thing as truth. It's one of the reasons they don't teach the sentence in American schools the way they used to. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men"—it means all mankind—"that all men are created equal and endowed by their government"—no, no, no. If you're a parent or a grandparent and you're listening, I hope you knew right away that's not what it says. It doesn't say endowed by their government. It says endowed by their Creator. That's the God of the Bible. "Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." That means rights that cannot be taken away. In fact, it even means more than that. It means these are rights you can't even surrender. "Unalienable rights, among them the right to life."

Now isn't that interesting? Even before sonogram machines, the founders knew that without the right to life, none of the other rights would matter. And it's another reason why a lot of our unionized teachers are not interested in teaching this important sentence. "Among these the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

By the way, Roger, not a lot of people know this. Sometimes they'll take this right to happiness and they'll just focus on that and they'll say, "Well, that means I get to do whatever I want." No, when those words were written, happiness was defined as the pursuit of virtue because only by pursuing virtue could any man be truly happy and free.

So those are some of the most powerful words ever written anywhere, and they are the founding words of the American republic. You don't have to have a doctorate in American history. Mother or father or grandmother or grandfather, if you just look at some of the basics of the American founding, you can give your children and grandchildren an estate, a legacy that will bring value to them the rest of their lives and will have the side impact of preserving this great republic for future generations.

Roger Marsh: Well, thank you, Gary. And what great wisdom and insight from our own Gary Bauer, our Senior Vice President of Public Policy here at the Dobson Policy and Culture Center, talking about American patriotism on today's edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. You know, here at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, we are committed to preserving the biblical principles that built this great nation. Our mission centers on strengthening families, defending religious freedom, and promoting the sanctity of human life.

And as we approach our nation's 250th birthday, your partnership makes an extraordinary difference in continuing this work. I'm pleased to announce that right now, your ministry gift will go twice as far. Some generous friends have helped us establish a July matching grant that will double every donation received through July 31st, up to $250,000, in honor of America's 250th birthday. That means your gift of $50 becomes $100, your $250 donation becomes $500—you get the idea. And these donations will allow us to reach even more families with biblical truth and practical guidance.

To make your secure donation, visit jdfi.org. If you prefer, call a member of our constituent care team. That number is 877-732-6825. That's 877-732-6825. Or you can write to us. Our ministry mailing address is The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949.

Gary Bauer, it's always a pleasure to spend time in studio with you and especially on today, such a special, monumental occasion here on today's edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. Thanks for being with us, Gary.

Gary Bauer: Well thank you, Roger. It's a pleasure to be on the James Dobson Family Institute team and be with a group of people that love God and love America. You can't have better work than that.

Roger Marsh: And for Dr. Dobson and all of us here at the JDFI, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk, the voice you trust for the family you love.

Guest (Male): This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.