republican party chairman i found that fascinating the encouragement that sometimes ladies needed. when we realize and when we understand that there's a need for us to step up in order to preserve our very way of life, we'll do it. we step up every time there is a challenge. sarah palin again is an excellent example of that. she was a busy wife and mother, pta mother, co-owner of a small business. it wasn't like she was sitting around twiddling her thumbs just wanting some attention. she realized some things weren't working in her local government so she decided nobody else is going to do it. she stepped up to take responsibility to make her community a better place for her family. to her, there's no point in being involved if she weren't going for it with her whole heart, her whole being standing firmly upon what she believed everyday. the demand for conservative women speakers on college campuses and for the programs of clare boothe luce have only

confirmed that there is a need and a demand for leadership training opportunities for women. i know because of the efforts of clare boothe luce that conservative women will play a significant role in shaping our movement in the future. now, at every event at which i speak, young women come up to me afterwards and they ask, how i got involved in the conservative movement but what they really want to know is how i got involved, why i got involved but how i was able to do it and still be a mom. i have four children of my own. but these women, in fact, just on friday there's a young america's foundation event, i see a lot of familiar faces here with folks that are there. women came up to me afterwards and asked that question again. it was the first question i got asked. how do you do it and still be a mom? so i want to try to answer that guy and you guys will have to sit here and listening to it and you will guys will be impact and it has impact on you just just

listened. i'm here because my father inspired me. when i was very young he inspired me to believe with something with my whole heart and whole being and then work for it without ceasing. for him that was freedom. it was in the mountains of southwest virginia that my father learned the value of hard work and an honest day's work. there he was taught my grandparents a man is only as good as his word and you don't hear that anymore and god calls us to compassion to help one another through the toughest of times. he learned to love his creator and he knew he was blessed to grow up in one of the most beautiful places in the world. but he would say it was there that he learned most importantly the value of freedom and the need to be courageous and unrelenti unrelenting. as i was growing up we would go to blacksburg and they were rock solid kind honest people but, boy, they could knock heads they

would square off every evening at the supper table. at the family reunions there was a kids table and i was at the kids table i'd hear them gear up, i would leap in my father's lap. my grandparents raised all of hir children to be strong-willed and not all of them to be conservatives. raise your children to be conservatives, okay? that you just have to do. we need more conservatives in the world. their battles around the table were good-natured but they were always passionate. they raged on fiercely. the weak among them usually the new in-laws who weren't broken in were reduced to tears about every time leaving the table the next night but reappearing with this new brit -- grit and determinations written on their faces. they were not for the faint of heart to be sure. we learned to stand solidly for our beliefs and to be

passionately committed to bringing others to our philosophy and by all means to know what we were talking about or at least sound like we did. i learned that for fox news, too. and even if you don't know what you're talking about, sound like it. oh, great, we're on c-span. [laughter] >> but as i watched and eventually participated in these evening rituals, they never failed to amaze me. at the moment of greatest conflict and intensity, someone would launch into some tale and it would end as the room just exploded into gales of laughter. then somehow we would all end up in the living room, next to the fire. this is in the good old days. i hope you guys have some experiences and memories like this. we'd end up in the living room around the fireplace eating popcorn, telling stories, maybe watching tv. watching football, college football, we were a family. full of love and tenderness for one another and compassion despite our fiercely opposing philosophical views. the same can be said of our

country, of the american people. just as knowing i'm an obenshain has given me tremendous strength and courage through the years and so does knowing that we're americans give us that understanding that we're part of something special, something very, very unique. we know that we're part of the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. and we know that we use our power for good and that we are the most compassionate and generous country in the world. regardless of what some people are running around the world saying these days. our founders were men who believed in the promise of america. with care, wisdom, and thoughtfulness and through fiery debate, they crafted a government that would assign authority and power not to itself but to its people. and therein lies the strength of the nation. our inheritance is not ours to be taken lightly at all. we are responsible to be stewards of this land, protectors of the philosophy of limited government and individual freedom upon which our nation was born.

my dad inspired me early on to believe in freedom with my whole being. and then to work for it without ceasing to see that it was not diminished in our country, something that unfortunately we're seeing happening today. because as government grows, it must follow the individual liberty sharippings. my dad wrote a mission statement for his life which states the most important goal in my life is to have some significant impact on expanding and preserving the realm of personal freedom in the life of this country. that was a pretty lofty mission statement. well, he succeeded. by having this laser-like determination he led to the realignment of the republican party in virginia and it became the majority party in virginia for the first time ever that it led the groundwork for the reagan. i was 9 when my dad died in a plane crash while campaigning for the united states senate. he had won the republican nomination in the largest

political convention ever held to that point. were you there? yes, you were there. that's right. i was, too. 9 years old. greatest moment of my life when he went over the top. he had won the nomination and when he died, of course, the course of my life changed forever. but my determination to make a difference took root. i am not, however, quite a single-minded in my determination as my father. part of that comes from the fact that i am a mother. when we cleaned out my mom's attic a few years ago, my processor and sister and i found lists that my father had written. he was a big to do person -- a to-do list person but his to-do lists weren't go to the dry cleaners, change the oil that most of us put on our to-do list, make virginia a conservative state, they were lofty, lofty to-do's.

but we were struck at the top of every single one of those to-do lists we found the words "spend more time with the children." i'll tell you, that had a profound life altering impact on each one of us. my brother had been considering a run for the state senate he put that off until his children were a little bit older, he eventually ran and you now serves there. my sister as soon as she was able, she quit her job. she was a higher education administration and was upwardly mobile and now home-schools her two daughters. the list impacted me. very much so -- and continues to do so as i struggle with the competing demands of motherhood and work. i love both. while my children were small, i was able to be a stay-at-home mom. but i remained very involved in the conservative movement. i'll never regret the decision to be at home. now that i'm working full time for a cause which i believe in all my heart, i hope that my children look at my involvement with appreciation knowing that

while they are still the center of my world i make time for other things that are important to me but important to them as well. my advice to you here, to you young ladies is very simple, involved. you should be active and making a difference. you cannot abdicate the responsibility to fight for what you believe in to others. we women know that we might as well do it ourselves because nobody can do it as well as we can so just go ahead and do it. you can and should stay involved when you have a family. it might not be complete involvement. it probably won't be. don't get your work and your drive make -- to make a difference take you away from more than necessary from your family. your family, your little babies, they are a precious gift from the almighty and one that he expects you to nurture and care for and to prepare for the worlds. -- world. is that me? oh, great. if you guys choose motherhood,

you girls choose motherhood and i'm so thankful that i did and i hope you all will as well, your children are going to take off -- take you off in demanding directions from the realm far from the realm of public policy. but we moms never forget it. we hold the future in our arms when we're mothers. we have responsibility to teach our children about the blessings of this wondrous land that we live in and in order to be prepared to do that, each one of you needs to learn first. you need to learn from our founding fathers and from other great conservative thinkers. do not think around watch oprah and do some of the other things that your liberal friends or your apathetic friends do. don't do it. you all have a great responsibility to learn to become educated, to carry on our vision and our way of life. you're here today so i have a feeling that you're already doing that. just a word about politics, public policy and government which are all areas which i used to be intimately involved in. i just want -- if that's where you young ladies in particular are headed.

it can be really mean and nasty out there. and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. one minute you're going to be loved and lifted up, the next minute you'll be disparaged and despised. you have to be involved because you believe in something much bigger than yourselves. i believe in limited government and i believe that we have to have that in order for our god-given liberty to flourish. freedom is my passion. and it's my much bigger than i am. it's imperative that you have this vision because you absolutely will be attacked. and if you are more focused on what people think but, whether they like you, whatever, then your vision -- then you'll be run out of the arena. i don't want that to happen to any of you. i want you to stay. you have to grow the skin of an ar

armadillo. that is not to say you lose those beautiful sensitivities and graciousness that we have as women. you have to keep those. that's a gift that makes us more effective in politics but more importantly in our lives and in public policy. what i'm saying is that you can't leave your heart out there. or you're going to end up being massively depressed or you'll be getting out of politics and not just politics for those of you who want to run for public office but public policy, government and the conservative movement. and our country is going to be the worse for it if you get run out of arena. i want to encourage and urge each one of you to stay involved. both in the conservative movement and public policy but to also heighten your involvement dramatically. i want to encourage you to know what you believe, know why you believe it, why you're willing to make the sacrifices to the conservative movement, the government and the public office demands of individuals and never lose sight of those core values that make you who you are.

the arena is different for women. it just is. don't believe the feminists who tell you that it's the same for everybody. as is any profession, particularly, if you have a family, the demands are different but our participation as women is essential. never forget that. stay involved. educate yourself. be courageous and that way we can rest assured that under your leadership as the rest of us move on, freedom will continue to flourish in our great country. thank you guys so much. god bless you. [applause] >> you want me to take questions? would like to me to take questions? okay. i think -- do you want them to line up? come up to the mic and state your name -- your name and your school. come on, you guys. somebody has to have a question. state your name and your school and your question.

and if nobody has questions, how about an intern? does an intern have a question to get things moving >> i'm eva and i go to amherst college. what kind of advice would you give us us college students to do on campus? what kind of activities should we put on? >> amherst college is a great example because y'all pretty liberal up there. >> very liberal. >> you poor thing. you deserve a lot of credit because you've had -- haven't you had events before? >> we've had a few but funding is hard to get. >> funding is a huge issue for conservatives on campus because they give it all to the liberals. in fact, what you need to do is start bringing in conservative speakers and what we encourage students to do is if you go to your student government and you ask them for money for a conservative and they shut you down, get a list of all the

liberals that they've had over the past couple of years and how much money they've given to each one of those liberals. that's easy information to get. and go back and i thought this school was intellectual diversity, open mindedness and all the political correct stuff. get somebody whom you can afford. ann coulter is awesome and if you can afford her, great, bring her in 'cause, you know, that'll change everything on your campus for quite some time. but if you can't bring in ann coulter, bring in somebody else. it will be effective and fun to have in and make sure the topic will be a little bit dramatic if your goal is to round that enthusiasm. the goal to have a conservative speaker is generate discussion and excitement and enthusiasm and open up the discourse because right now on a lot of your campuses it's shut down and because most of your professors and your administrators are coming from the left, there's not a lot of intellectual diversity so it's really up to you guys to shake things up a little bit.

so the first thing i would suggest is that you try to bring in a conservative speaker and alyssa walks you through it every step of the way. so if you've never brought anyone in, i'm not going to say it's no work because it is. but it's awesome. you get to spend a lot of time with this person and you get to learn a lot but she will walk you through the whole thing step-by-step. it's not like you call her up and it's all up to you. there are a lot of great -- you should go to conferences. young america's foundation for whom i work we have a -- we have not a political. we have a student activist handbook and you should get that because it has all sorts of great ideas for what you should do. we have freedom week. my favorite activity of the year is on 9/11 -- we had 180 campuses participate last year. students will purchase 3,000 american flags and they did these are flags or they did these flags. it was awesome at pepperdine university overlooking the ocean. 3,000 flags that were this tall.

oh, my gosh. because the universities do nothing to commemorate the event except maybe to have a political correctness seminar about how america's insensitivities led to the tragedy of 9/11. they do this all over the place. some of the schools that have tried to have the 9/11 never forget projects, the schools have actually tried to shut them down saying -- one of the administrators said i feel uncomfortable having the american flags on our campus. can you believe that? we just plow through that. there's a great controversy to open up discourse on your campus. we're not for controversy for controversy's sake. what you're trying to do is make a difference and pass along to your fellow students there's another way of thinking. and, hey, maybe america is the greatest country on the face of the earth and maybe our values and principles lead the way for freedom and opportunity for other peoples around the world as well. so those are just a couple of examples but clare boothe luce folks and america's foundation folks are happy to have you come up with other ideas.

thank you, eva. >> great, thanks. >> hi, thank you for being here today. my name is carolyn rushing and i'm a rising third year at the university of virginia. one of my biggest struggles at the university is having the confidence to speak out in the classroom with so many liberal professors and i was wondering how would you suggest as students we build up our confidence to be able to speak up when we don't agree with what our teachers are teaching our classes and have the confidence to go talk to them or talk to the front of the case. >> bay buchanan is speaking next, right, michelle. and she does this better than i do it. the most important thing for you is to actually do it. to actually raise your hand and stand up and you will have maybe the first couple of times you do it people will shout you down or try to glare you town. just ignore that. just say what you believe. try to sound reasonable. personally, i think that instead of taking the most -- i don't

want to say extreme because that's what the left does to us. have some common ground. sound reasonable so that folks can identify with what you're talking about but stand -- be very clear about what you believe and why you believe it. because what you are doing is suggesting to them something that they've never considered before. so it's not in my mind -- it's not really an option and bay gives a great example on abortion. i don't know what different people's views are but i'll remind her to be sure to do that. it may be that when a young woman faces that choice, which we have as americans now, she will remember that student who stood up and had a different perspective and very graciously and eloquently without judgment suggested that maybe it is the taking of a life. and it might never have occurred to her before because she might have never taken that side seriously but she will remember you and your lovely face and

your graciousness about it and, you know, what? it's imperative that we stand up for these things. so my -- become educated. know what you're talking about but don't wait to become completely eloquent about the subject before you have the guts to stand up. so what if you don't have all the answers. at least you're giving it a shot and at least you start off with a general argument. somebody is going to know more than you but you'll come back and you'll know next time to time. stand up and do it and you'll get more courageous as you go. >> thanks. >> hi there. i'm alexander lopez. i go to gettysburg college. i'm entering my senior year there. i'm just wondering like when you're in a debate with a more liberal person, what would you suggest to bring them more over to your side in the argument. >> well, it depends on what argument? do you have one in particular you'd throw out. >> one that me and my friend have all the time is about the war. >> about whether it's --

>> he's totally against all the reasons that we went into afghanistan. >> totally against going to afghanistan. well, i mean, you have to say at some point america has to stand up for itself and when there is the direct link between the government of afghanistan and the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, not to stand up for us means we just encourage others to attack us. what does he say when you've said that because i'm sure you said that. he usually goes off about how -- like we supplied stuff. >> yeah, do that. that's called a diversionary tactic. you say no, no, what about my point. what about -- 'cause they love doing that. they love just talking about peace and love and isn't it beautiful. yes, it is beautiful. and that's what we're all striving for. but there's a practical impact here and you talk -- fine, if they want a diversionary tactic, you talk about peace through strength through ronald reagan. you talk about what went on that

iran mocked us and made fools of us. the name of america was spat upon all over the country. then reagan came in and he just rose -- raised up the dignity of america by number one increasing our defense budget. and saying, don't mess with us anymore. they know that we're not imperialistic and that we're not trying to take over the world. that we're interested in preserving our own ability to exist as a country. that's why we don't believe that iran should probably have nuclear weapons although somehow now we're saying that it's okay for them to have nuclear energy. that's blowing my mind to suggest that when our chiefyy - ally that they want to obliterate off the face of the

earth. as you hear she's tactics or you hear arguments oh, there were no nuclear weapons in iraq and that sort of thing, go home, google somebody like charles crowdhammer or somebody you respect on the subject the arguments are all out there. they are written that in black and white. you all should be real clear politics, politico.com, all of these great websites that have the arguments right there. you should be on there. i know it's hard when you've got so much work but still you should be up on the general arguments so go look up and fight your fight and stand your ground. thanks for the great question. >> i'm molly o'connor and i'm a junior at the university of dallas. i have an interesting situation in a i'm on a kind of conservative campus already. we have a lot of people who are ideologically conservative but they have -- we have trouble motivating them to action and to get involved. so how would you suggest that you get people involved? >> i would find a topic or a subject that interests them.

university of dallas, i don't know. but i would think the 9/11 project would be something that could really touch people's hearts. and get them interest and involved. it just depends on what the real -- i mean, you can't -- you bring somebody to speak on healthcare, it isn't going to work probably. as big a deal as it is in our country and as much i wish that it got college students enthusiastic so far we haven't found that it does. find that issue that is really the hot topic. maybe it's multiculturism. maybe it's political correctness. i would bring in somebody -- do you all have a women's studies center or something along those lines? >> no. >> you don't. >> you're doing super. you're like the one school in the country. i would look at something that your school is doing that's just a little bit off and make a big deal on out of it. and for those of you who do have women study centers bring in somebody to talk about starting up a male study center. that really gets things geared

up and there are groups -- there are groups that have started -- there are kids who have started those up around the country. google it because these kids crack me up but they are serious about it. well, you know, we're just as deserving as an area of focuses on our accomplishments as, you know, these goofy little women studies courses. maybe there are a few that are worthy but for the most part they are completely political and they are so liberal in their bias that it's not funny. at uva i could not find a class on jane austin that did not teach is from a radically left perspective and that was the influence of the women's studies center so i say they are goofy i'm not disparaging the accomplishment of women over the years i want to learn the literary techniques of jane austin. the first day of class i was told jane austen was a we'll have more radical feminist than gloria steinam. try to find something that's -- talk to students and see what

they're interested in. i urge you all to go to young america's foundation's website and see -- i talked to you guys to you who are there on sunday. alyssa was the star of the video by the way. this video where we're trying to explain to college students the importance of redistribution of wealth. how it impacts you and how unjust it is. there's this tendency of college students to think oh, you know, we want everybody to be happy and everything needs to be fair and we should all have equal chances. we do have equal chances. we should all end up with equal stuff and isn't that nice? well, we did this challenge to college students, conservative students, to go and take a petition for the dean. you take it for redistribution of gpa and we would go up to college students and she said what do you think barack obama's redistribution of wealth? love it. love it, love it. these liberals would be all over it.

it's not fair. some people have this and it's not fair. and then she'd say, great, okay, how about if we sign this petition and we go to the dean and ask for a redistribution of gpa because you have a 4.0 and that poor kid who goes to the party that's not fair and give one point to kid and everybody will be happy. what, that's not fair. i can't believe you would even think about doing that and i can't believe it. and she'd go okay, look at the two. you can't compare but it's a great way to show college students, hey, there are implications for what happens in the real world to hear. and if it doesn't make sense here, it might not make sense out here. >> hi, kate. dan, recent graduate of dickenson college and i attend george mason for my master a recent debate that's been coming up recently has been the issue of assisted reproductive issues

how would you tackle those issues from a conservative standpoint. >> tackle them saying in vitro fertilization -- >> it's a more feminine issue but i want to be sensitive but politically correct also. >> that's a tough one because conservatives disagree on that. we all have many friends who particularly women -- we have many friends who can't have babies and have tried in vitro fertilization or surrogate moms. you can look at modern cases, you know, the mom who had eight kids or whatever, you know that's a tough issue, too. i don't have a firm position on it either because i don't particularly like the idea of the government coming in and telling her how many kids she

should have. it's irresponsible. i have four kids i can't tell you how many people in the grocery store would like at me and say, are you kidding? you're having another one? you know, it's like it was so irresponsible to have four so where does the line get drawn. we conservatives need to be having lots of babies by the way so y'all go out and be fruitful and multiply. i don't know about, you know, 17 or how many that lady has. [laughter] >> it's her business, you know? is it wrong, yeah, okay. so i think that that more of a religious argument. that it is generally along religious lines that we come up with our perspective. catholics have a very different perspective on it than other denominations, other religions. so i'm not sure that on the reproductive -- those reproductive issues i would say there's a clear line. there's certainly is a clear line on the abortion debate. and you can us