|
|
|
|
|
HowardPhillips.com [ TCC Home | Bio | Donate | Contact ] Archives: February | March | April |
There was a great article in the April 14 Washington Times headlined, "The Big Five-O, McDonald’s, After 50 Years, Sticks With Proven Formula to Satisfy Patrons, Investors". That article reminded me of my journey to the 1960 Republican National Convention in Chicago where I served on the floor of the convention as an usher. Because of my activity in the Massachusetts GOP, during the convention I had a chance to watch up close some of the activities of convention keynoter Walter Judd, Vice Presidential nominee Henry Cabot Lodge, and numerous others. Later, on the eve of election day, 1960, I was one of a small group to greet former Senator Lodge as he arrived home at Beverly Airport in a small plane, at the end of the campaign trail. Dr. Judd, who became a close friend in later years, told me that Richard Nixon had offered him the 1960 Vice Presidential nomination, an offer which he declined because his face was pokmarked with the remnants of a bout with cancer. Nixon would have probably been elected in 1960 if he had chosen Judd, who gave the greatest keynote speech ever delivered at a national party convention, bar none. During that speech, I sat in the very last row of the convention auditorium and saw the place rock with responses from virtually everyone in the hall. I have heard sound recordings of William Jennings Bryan’s orations at Democratic conventions in 1896, 1900, and 1908, and have seen great speeches by others, but none of them ever topped that of Walter Judd. Parenthetically, as a Harvard senior in 1962, I was awarded the Silver Medal in the annual Boylston Prize oratory competition in recognition of my recitation of Bryan’s "Cross of Gold" speech. I mention McDonald’s because, on the way home from the convention, where I was the "chaperone" of five young women in their twenties who had driven me to and from Massachusetts to the convention and made me their guest at Chicago’s historic Hotel Blackstone, as well as on visits to such places as Cicero, Illinois (then the gangland capital of the "Land of Lincoln), we stopped at the McDonald’s (the very first McDonald’s) in Des Plaines, Illinois where I had as good a milkshake as I have ever tasted and splurged on ten cent french fries and a fifteen cent burger.
It was my privilege to spend two hours this afternoon (April 18) with Hillard Welch and his brother, Robert Welch, Jr., two of the children of the founder of the John Birch Society (JBS), Robert Welch, with whom I was privileged to spend an informative evening in the mid-1970’s at the Acton, Massachusetts home of my friend, Scott Stanley, the then-editor of American Opinion and Review of the New, two JBS publications. Although I never joined the JBS, like many others I have benefited from the wonderful information on American history and Constitutional principles in JBS publications including currently, the New American. In 1983, following the Soviet assassination of Congressman Lawrence Patton McDonald and the other passengers on board KAL 007, I was approached by members of the JBS Council to become chairman of the JBS. I respectfully declined. Since the Welchs were from Massachusetts, we had many reminiscences to share, including stories of life on Cape Cod (where unbeknownst to any of us) they were neighbors of my late father-in-law, Dr. Walter O. Blanchard on Lake Wequaqet off Shoot Flying Hill Road. We also chatted happily about Marblehead and Rockport in Essex County, where I spent many happy hours in the 1960’s sailing in Marblehead Harbor on the Fourth of July and various other occasions. The brothers Welch are dedicated patriots possessed of good humor and insight. Their dad was active in Massachusetts politics before gaining notoriety with the JBS. In fact, in 1950 he ran for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts against Laurence Curtis, whom I would later serve in his campaign for the United States Senate when he was a member of Congress from Brookline, Massachusetts. Chuck Colson was Congressman Curtis’ campaign manager and I, in addition to being his driver as we toured 356 Massachusetts cities and towns, managed three counties (Essex, Bristol, and Suffolk — in two of which we prevailed) in a convention and primary campaign against George Cabot Lodge, the Marxist business professor son of Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge. The winner in that 1962 election was Edward Moore Kennedy — otherwise known as "Teddy". I got to watch Teddy up close in that campaign, in which he defeated for the Democratic nomination Edward J. McCormack, Jr., the Massachusetts Attorney General who was the nephew of U.S. House Speaker John W. McCormack, one of the last of the conservative Democrats. At that time, Teddy Kennedy was one of the dumbest people I ever saw run for public office. I was on track to be the Republican nominee for U.S. Senator against Teddy Kennedy in 1970, but the White House wanted the strongest possible candidate they could find against Michael Harrington who won a special election in the 6th Congressional District of Massachusetts (Essex County) in 1969, following the death of veteran GOP Congressman Bill Bates. Harrington defeated State Senator William Saltonstall, the son of U.S. Senator Leverett Saltonstall in that Special Election and Chuck Colson felt strongly that Harrington needed to be strongly opposed. At his request, I agreed to take on that task and turned over the Senate nomination to GOP State Chairman Josiah Spaulding. I think I could and would have defeated Teddy had I remained in the U.S. Senate contest, especially in the wake of Teddy’s contemptible conduct leading to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick. Had I sought it, the nomination appeared to be mine for the asking. Spaulding, the Yale roommate of future New York Mayor John V. Lindsay, was a reluctant entrant in the race. Though Si and his wife, Helen, were very much on the liberal side, we had a cordial and friendly relationship.
The April 25 edition of Pat Buchanan’s The American Conservative carries a superb article by my friend, Ralph de Toledano, concerning two men who waged war on Communist subversion in America and whom I had the privilege of knowing personally. These two were Judge Robert Morris of New Jersey with whom I spent many instructive hours and who was, at one point, Chief Counsel of the Senate Internal Security Committee. Judge Morris related to me great stories from the 1940’s and 1950’s, including the account of how he personally introduced Whittaker Chambers to Richard Nixon and had a big part in persuading Chambers to testify against Alger Hiss. Roy Cohn, much maligned by his enemies on the Left, was deeply flawed but courageous — a homosexual who was ashamed of his conduct in that regard. Cohn was a top aide to Senator Joseph McCarthy and a powerful attorney during the years of the Reagan Presidency when he and his law partner, Tom Bolan, played a significant part in the selection of Federal judges from New York State. Tom was the National Commander of Catholic War Veterans and a very kind, gentle man. One memory I have of Roy Cohn was a time in the 1970’s when Rupert Murdoch, for whom Cohn provided legal counsel, had purchased The Boston Herald, one of the top newspapers in New England. Because I had been Chairman of the Republican Party in Boston and had in 1970 been asked to serve as Chairman of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee, Roy Cohn suggested that Murdoch should debrief me about Massachusetts politics. Accompanied by Mr. Cohn, I spent the better part of two hours giving Mr. Murdoch background information on how he might best position his newspaper against the more liberal Boston Globe. (Ironically, as a Harvard freshman in 1958, my off-campus roommate was John I. Taylor, a liberal Republican whose family owned the Boston Globe.) For all of his faults, Roy Cohn was a fervent and courageous anti-Communist and American patriot. He was a very interesting man indeed. Ralph de Toledano who wrote this definitive piece on Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and Bob Morris in the American Conservative, today in his 90s, is a renaissance man in the best sense of the word. A friend and biographer of Richard Nixon, a leading expert on the cultural Communist Frankfort School, and an aficionado of great American jazz, Mr. de Toledano’s friendship and shared wealth of experiences over a lifetime is something for which I am quite thankful.
The Patriot Act must be amended. There are three sections in particular which are threats to our liberty and privacy:
Today, in behalf of The Conservative Caucus Foundation, I returned our proxy ballot for the E. I. Du Pont De Nemours and Company election of officers, protesting the inclusion of H.R. Sharp, III, Secretary of the Board of Planned Parenthood of Delaware. With my proxy, I asked "Why is Planned Parenthood (MURDER, INC.) on your board? Why Not a Pro-life group?" Other board nominees are typical establishment liberals, some of them connected to the Left-wing environmental movement. Howard Phillips
The mission of The Conservative Caucus, emblazoned on our stationery, evokes principles and policy purposes completely at variance with those of the Bush Administration: "Restore the Republic by Limiting the Federal Government to its Delegated, Enumerated Constitutional Functions and Returning American Jurisprudence to its Biblical Common Law Foundations". Sadly, the GOP’s elected and appointed officials conform themselves almost without exception to that which Mr. Bush espouses, including
and many more things, a significant proportion of which
would have been blocked by a Republican Congress had a Democrat
President proposed them.
Thanks to Norm Singleton, Legislative Director for Congressman Ron Paul, I was able to obtain a copy of my testimony before the Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives during the First Session of the Eighty-seventh Congress in 1961 when I was a junior at Harvard College, recently reelected as President of the Harvard Student Council. When I testified against H.R. 4222 (King-Anderson) which became the basis for our current system of Medicare and Medicaid, here is some of what I said:
These are by no means all the reasons for opposition to H.R. 4222. However, I hope they reflect our genuine concern for individual freedom and responsibility. At a time when freedom is being challenged throughout the world, why should we retreat at home?" I believe the principles I enunciated as a college undergraduate forty-four years ago remain valid today.
Ralph Z. Hallow reported in the April 12 Washington Times the following comment by Ed Feulner, the President of the Heritage Foundation: "[Mr. Feulner] describes himself as a conservative first and a Republican second, but is a staunch defender of the GOP and is critical of ex-Republican conservatives like columnist Pat Buchanan and former Nixon administration official Howard Phillips. ‘If you’re a conservative and want to get ahead politically, you ought to be a Republican,’ Mr. Feulner said." When I left the Republican Party in 1974, it was because I had concluded that there were some things more important than getting ahead politically. These include speaking the truth without regard to its career consequences. During my tenure in the Nixon Administration, I was told that, if I was a "good boy" and toed the Establishment line, I would be named, at age 32, to be Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and that, subsequently, I would be groomed for high elected office, including the Presidency. When I left the GOP, I did so recognizing that loyalty to a political personality or party ought never take precedence over loyalty to foundational principles and the policy objectives which arise from them. P.S. Last time I checked, my friend, Pat Buchanan, had returned to the Republican Party.
On Thursday and Friday, April 7 and April 8, I was privileged to participate as a speaker and council member in a conference focusing on the need to end judiciary tyranny. We were able to give a big boost to the Constitution Restoration Act (CRA). Speakers at the conference included former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, Mrs. Phyllis Schlafly, TCCF Trustee Dr. Edwin Vieira, Mark Sutherland of Joyce Meyer Ministries, former Congressman Bill Dannemeyer, and numerous other heroes of the movement. A copy of the Declaration adopted by the conference here follows: Link
You are cordially invited to join me and Lt. General Gordon Sumner (USA-Ret.) on a four-day, action-oriented visit to Panama, arriving May 9 and returning May 12, 2005. Our visit will include (a) an inspection tour of the Canal, (b) a visit to the Red China container ports on the Atlantic and Pacific entrances to the Canal, (c) meetings with Panamanian officials, business leaders, and media, (d) briefings concerning the impact of al Qaeda, drug dealers, and corruption in Panama, (e) a meeting with U.S. State Department personnel in Panama City, (f) discussion concerning efforts to defend the Canal against terrorism, (g) sightseeing, and (h) dinner at the home of TCC Board member, the renowned Dr. William Campbell Douglass (editor of Real Health), to discuss real estate opportunities and health issues. Howard Phillips
I told Michelle Goldberg of Salon.com that I am not a theocrat. I do not believe in a governing church establishment, but I am a theonomist, who believes, as did America’s Founding Fathers, in the laws of God as the foundation of American jurisprudence, as transmitted to us via the British Common Law. Howard Phillips
The New York Times (4/5/05) in "The Arts" section devotes considerable space to a new book by Jane Fonda entitled "My Life So Far". When I was Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), I did my best to cut off Federal funding for Jane Fonda and her then husband, Tom Hayden, who were allowed to pick your taxpaying pocket under the rubric of the so-called Great Society "War on Poverty". I had first met Jane in 1958 when she was dating a Young Republican friend of mine, Bob Toscano. I met her second husband, Tom Hayden (her first was Roger Vadim) when Hayden was editor of the University of Michigan daily newspaper and I was President of the Harvard Student Council. We debated at a Congress sponsored by the U.S. National Student Association (NSA) in Minneapolis. I was amazed by Hayden’s candid expressions of hatred for his parents and his country. Shortly after the NSA conclave, I helped found the Young Americans for Freedom at a conference in Sharon, Connecticut in September, 1960. Hayden was then busy drafting the Port Huron statement, which became the coda of Students for a Democratic Society, a far Left group which he helped organize. Jane’s most recent marriage was to Ted Turner, founder of CNN for which I served during the 1980s as a co-host on its daily "Crossfire" broadcasts. I most recently briefly visited with Mr. Turner on the set of "Gods and Generals", the great epic honoring Stonewall Jackson, of which Mr. Turner was the principal financier. Friends of mine from Georgia celebrated the fact that Jane Fonda was now characterizing herself, beginning in the mid-1990s, as a professing Christian, but her version of Christianity, nurtured by a friendship with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, was one in which abortion was deemed permissible. The good news in all this is that the American taxpayer is no longer subsidizing Jane Fonda’s activities. Howard Phillips
The murder of Terri Schiavo with the complicity of the Federal and state Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches made me ashamed today of my country. All over the world, people look at the United States and its demands that democracy be extended, but, as I have frequently pointed out, democracy is a procedure and what is truly important is justice, virtue, and righteousness. One of the mistakes being made even by people on our side is the notion that we have three separate but equal branches. In fact, the Legislative is the superior branch, the Executive secondary, and the Judiciary is in third place. We need more leaders with the courage to not only proclaim their faith, but to act on it. The murder of Terri Schiavo will be remembered as one of the darkest days in the history of these United States of America. Howard Phillips Visit HowardPhillips.com every day for the latest commentary, news and action items in support of restoring our Constitutional Republic.
|
|
[_private/navbar.htm] www.HowardPhillips.com |
