what more can i do to get your attention? [ applause ] now i thought of that story because i thought when the people of massachusetts took teddy kennedy's seat to elect scott brown in a race in which obama care was the issue, that any reasonably rational person would have said, oh, i'll bet there's a signal. i thought when they lost the 2010 election by historic margins, remember, it wasn't the republicans wins the house that was amazing. the republicans won 680 state legislative seats and had 25 democrats switch. and now have more republican state legislatures than any time in 1925. i would have thought that might

have been the signal. you would have thought that wisconsin, san jose, and san diego, would be sort of a signal. this is -- this is a man who is sufficiently confident of the uniqueness of his gift to the planet. that he is impervious to incoming information. you know, he campaigned in 2008 on the slogan, yes we can. he's running this fall on the slogan, why we couldn't. [ laughter ] [ applause ] >> so irk i think there are profound historic reasons to

believe that this may be the most important elections since 1860. i said that night in georgia we had a great rally for mitt romney and many of my friends from over the years and i of course was very grateful to georgia. i carried 156 out of 159 counties. we've decided by the way we're still going to visit the other three counties. we don't hold a grudge. but milt and i were there together and we had a great evening. and i said at the time, people ask me the difference between romney and obama in terms of the future. i said if you think of the nightmare of an obama second term, romney's first term would be a dream by comparison. and i really mean this. just take the question of federal judges. the gap between a mitt romney choice resembling i think somebody like the current chief

justice or scalia or thomas and an obama choice is the difference between somebody who believes in the american constitution and as one left wing justice said somebody who believes the constitution is obsolete and south africa has a much better model. you talk about being out of touch with reality. you know how far you have to go to believe that the american constitution is inferior to the south african constitution. that was a direct quote from a supreme court justice. i start with the idea this is a big deal. but it's a big deal of more than just the presidency. one of the lessons of the last few years if you don't have the house and the senate under our constitution it is very, very hard to get things done. those of you who live in states with senate races or friends in

states with senate races this year, those senate races are very, very important. weal have to keep control of the house. if we could win the presidency of the house and senate in a campaign based on principles so the country understood the day after the election much of this is what happened, calista's from wisconsin originally and she and i were at the first major fundraiser for scott walker in 2009. i came back and campaigned with him about a week before the election in 2010. scott walker was very direct. he'd been the county executive of milwaukee county, which is the biggest local government of the state. he'd been very direct with the people of wisconsin. he said, we live in a time when the government employee unions have become the haves and the taxpayers have become the have notes and it's not sustainable. the people of wisconsin at the end of that campaign elected walker governor and increased the republican juvenile court many the house and senate.

so they had sent a principled message exactly the way a free society is supposed to work. that's the election we need this fall. that's why what you're doing is so important. you have two key words in the title of your organization. faith and freedom. we're up against a president who's trying to destroy faith by emposing secular government and arguing that secular bureaucrats have greater moral authority than religious leaders. and we're up against a president who believes that a european model of government is better than the american model of freedom. on both those counts every member of your organization should reach out to everybody you go to church with, even you know locally. all of your family members and for the next few months you should hammer away day after day this is the most important election of our lifetime and for

the future of america. if freedom is to survive, we must defeat barack obama. [ applause ] if you're in a congressional district or a senate race and you get a chance, you should ask of the democrats, can you tell us with a straight face that in your judgment barack obama is better for our state. and i think that will force them to define who they really are. because that's how serious this is. i have two simple phrases that i think can define the whole rest of this campaign. i campaigned in 1980 with reagan and in 1979 after margaret thatcher won in great britain in an extraordinary historic

victory, we actually met with the people who had run her ad campaign. we looked at what they had done and how they did it. we applied many of these ideas in 1980 in the united states. one of the reasons the reagan victory was so big is it was based on a fundamental conversation about reality on a basic choice. do you want to appease communism or defeat the soviet empire? do you want to balance the federal budget with reagan or continue to have huge deficits? do you want to continue inflation under carter with 21% interest rates, 13% inflation in the economy collapsing or do you want to go to stable money where if you save $1 it's worth $1. these were big choices that reagan offered, but they are very simple and very clear choices. i want to suggest to you that we have two simple statements. one statement and one question.

which i believe would define this election decisively. the first is to ask people can you afford four more years? can you afford four more years of the worst economy since the great depression? can you afford four more years of trillion dollar deficits? can you afford four more years of washing the federal reserve pile money into the system building up future inflation? can you afford four more years of left wing bureaucrats issuing regulations that kill the economy? very straight forward. i think we can go into every flabd in america of every ethnic background look people in the eye in a nonpartisan, nonidealogical way and ask a simple question, can your family afford the president with the highest gasoline prices in history? a president who has failed every community in terms of teenage unemployment. a president who has failed everybody in the middle class. we've had the steepest drop in middle class wealth since the great depression.

and it's true. a large part of it began under george w. bush. let's be clear. but it's also true when ronald reagan ran for re-election we didn't mention jimmy carter because we were succeeding. we talked about what's it like to be winning. we talked about morning in america. we talked about creating jobs. the reagan slogan was leadership that is working. can uh-huh imagine the laughter that would emerge if obama tried to campaign as leadership that is working? what we have today is leadership that is making excuses. leadership that is seeking someone to blame. leadership that is avoiding reality. so the first question's very fundamental about life. can you afford four more years. and i think we can win that decisively if we have the courage to look people in the eye and make them think about it. the second is something that should affect us at every level, in our own life as citizens, as

volunteers in our churches, should affect us in terms of what we do in our local government, our state government and the federal government. a simple phrase, we can do better. just think about it. how many of you have an iphone or blackberry or some hand held device that can take pictures? raise your hand if you can take pictures? so you can be here take a picture, accepted it off to your friends, the other week we were out golfing having gotten off the campaign trail, and i was visiting the beach at the bottom of a very large sand trap. and calista being the charitable and loving picture that she is took my picture at the bottom of the sand trap and sent it to her mother and said i'm resting up.

newt seems to be lost here. that's how instantaneous the world is. and then you look at the government. why can't we have in many of the large city school systems they cannot tell you today how many students are in class. why couldn't you have every teach we are a blackberry take roll every morning and report in realtime all the attendance and you'd know by 9:05 every morning exactly the number of state of the unions showing up. that would mean a number of schools that wouldn't collect as much money. they're not eager to have an accurate attendance report. that would mean you have to confront how big the problem is in some of these cities. go down the whole list. look at the level of speed and efficiency you demand today and then look at the slowness of government at every level. look at the degree to which you expect it to be personal. when you send an email you

actually think out of all the seven billion people available your email is going to go to the person you're sending it to. and then think about how much the government can't do things. you think about when we lose children in various childrens services programs around the country, why do we tolerate that? so i think we have become a movement that says basically three simple things. one, america as a model really matters. and america as a model is based on faith and freedom. something that calista and i have written about and made movies about. i cannot tell you how passionately we believe that america is exceptional and that america is a model worth fighting for and worth arguing for and worth protecting. [ applause ] second, we have to be a movement

that says we're going to take advantage of every innovation, every science and technology breakthrough, every sbrupship, we can do better at achieving the american goal of making sure that every american is endowed by their creator with the right pursue happiness and we can do so much better than the welfare state bureaucrats and so much better than the centralized government and we want to reliberate america to go out and be the effective country it can be in which every american has a right to dream big dreams to work hard and create those dreams. [ applause ] finally, we want to make it clear in a calm, pleasant and direct way, barack obama and the values he represents, and the amateurish incompetence he has proven are a direct threat to the survival of america as we know it and defeating him is a

national patriotic duty and every conservative and every part of america must do everything they can from now to election day to ensure that our children and our grandchildren live in a country in which working with governor romney, working with a republican senate. working with the republican house, not abdicating to them. working with them, we as citizens can create a dramatically better future and we're here today to tell you that we're committed to working with you and with faith and freedom to make that happen. thank you, good luck and god bless you. [ applause ]

♪ lake, please welcome back to the stage the executive director of the faith and freedom coalition mr. gary marks. i don't know if you have all noticed we have the arrival in the room of a certain something. [ applause ] it looks like a black board. there's somebody that's known for using a black board. we have an exciting program that's still left. newt gingrich was just absolutely amazing. [ applause ] we have a speaker coming up. got a new book called "cowards." a guy named glenn beck. i hope you're getting excited.

a couple of housekeeping items before we get further into the program, though. i wanted to make sure everybody remembered that at 2:00 we will start our break out sessions. we'll be in the breakout rooms, amazing life changing speakers with important topics that you don't want to miss. we have break out sessions that are then followed by our state caucus meetings. and that's a chance for all of you to get to know all of your state leaders. spend some time with them. talk about how you can make an impact in your state. just as you've had an impact here in washington, d.c. today, we want to make sure that when you go back to your state, you can have just as powerful ap impact as now a newly equipped and newly trained grassroots activist. so state caucuses take a break and we'll be back for an amazing evening session tonight that you don't want to miss. for instance, we're going to have one of my favorite parts of

the program tonight, dick morris will be speaking and then you will have dick morris unplugged. that means the program actually never ends tonight. so please get a little nap in and you'll join us tonight until the wee hours of the morning with our favorite friend dick morris. now there's book signings still. check out those in your program. all of those details are there. and last but not least remember to join us for a great celebration at the end of the conference. we still have a few more tickets available for our gala dinner. so make sure you go to the registration and get those tickets in hand for the gala dinner event. and with that, i'll continue the program with others. [ applause ] i'm just kidding. i've got a book to give out. it's going to go over here on stage right whoever wants to get

this one first. ♪. language, please welcome the chairman of the faith and freedom coalition, dr. ralph reed. >> i'm not going to be using the chalkboard, by the way. i wouldn't dare touch glenn beck's change board. our next speaker is one of the nation's leading multimedia personalities. and he has played an indispensable and vital role in developing effective counterweight to the dinosaur liberal media. but the truth is, and you understand this, that glenn beck is much more than a media figure. he is a modern day patriot who

is calling america back to its founding principals of faith in god, limited government, individual liberty and personal responsibility. he is the author of seven number one "the new york times" best sellers. his latest book is "cowards" and he will be signing it after his appearance today. he is the man who turned 5:00 p.m. into must see tv on fox news. [ applause ] with ratings that he got at 5:00 in the afternoon larger than cnn, headline news and msnbc combined. [ applause ] he's if founder and ceo of gbtv one of the largest streaming video networks in the world. he is the founder of blaze, one of the most visited news sites

in the nation. in 2010 i'm guessing that a number of you were at the restoring honor rally that he organized here in washington, d.c. he brought 400,000 people to the mall to call for a restoration of america's time honored values. there's good news this week. he just signed a new five-year contract to continue the glenn beck radio show heard on 400 radio stations nationwide. this is a than that i've gotten to know on a personal level. he's a friend. he's a patriot. he's having a huge impact for good for america. please welcome, ladies and gentlemen, glenn beck to the faith and freedom conference. [ applause ]

>> well, hello. thank you. thank you. i'm pleased to be here. thank you so much. thank you very much. thank you. i have a few things to go over with you today. i brought -- i've learned a lot from david. we're starting to have a book off. where he'll come into my office and say -- the noouchlt of

freedom is a global movement. it is happening now at a record pace and people are waking up. this group up in toronto last night was truly amazing at their -- their excited attitude of people of faith coming together. not to combine our faiths, not to lose our faiths. not to have one world religion or anything like that, but to stand with people. the country and the world has been divided over and over and over again. and i truly believe what you're about to see in the next, in the next election and in the copping years is something that will truly be historic and something that will be so blessed by god. and that is people of faith uniting on the things that they can unite on.

the things that we have in common. we have so much in common. and yet we're letting these obstacles, the things that we disagree on, separate us. you have the left all over the world uniting with people. the they will -- the people they're uniting with should they win, they'll end up killing each other. they disagree so much they'll kill each other over it. yet they somehow or another find their way together. yet we can't stand together because i don't go to your church, you don't go to my church. that's insane. that's insane. [ applause ] i have to tell you one of the leaders on this, the reason why washington really happened, one of the reasons why is ralph reed. not a a lot of people know this. but i went to ralph three years ago and i said, look, i know i am a member of the lds faith and i don't know an evangelical and

i need your help because i just know what i'm supposed to do and i'm supposed to ask people of faith to stand together. and he said, all right. he called a meeting with me and people came mainly because of him. and i sat in a room 30 people, 30 pastors. the biggest names were invited. 29 came, one didn't because he was out of the country and just couldn't change his schedule. but 29 came and sat there. ralph said i don't know how long they're going to listen to you, but they're all in one room. and i bore my testimony of the saving power of jesus christ and i will tell you now -- [ applause ] i will tell you now that it can bring us together. and it has brought us together. people from all over the world

are standing together. now what do we have to stand together on? well, one is not losing ourselves. not -- we can't be against something. i am not against barack obama. i am for something much, much bigger. we have to be for something. so what is it? the other side will always do, you have to learn from history. the jewish people are always the canary in the coal mine. always. it's not the holocaust. it's happened 19 times in the past. it's always the canary in the coal mine. but it didn't start with the poem. the poem that first came for the jews. at first they came for the jews and i didn't say anything. that's not how it starts. the first line is first they came for the communists. in other words, first they came

for my political opponent. before they went for the communists, the reason why the nazi flag is red is because the national socialist tried to make the case, we have so much in common. again, unite with people they'll end up killing you, but unite with them. they got as many as they could, and then they came from the communists. we have to learn from history and we have to see that man's inhumanity to man is the natural state. the natural man is an enemy to god. if we're not based in a society, in a culture that looks beyond man and looks to something in the celestial heavens. if we're not looking to god, we'll never make it because our natural state is not good. and we never progress from that.

you don't conquer evil and then say, oh, well, we're never going to do that again because we conquered it. it comes back because we're all individuals. there's no such thing as collective salvation. it's our individual choices. it's the way we live our life that makes the difference. it's the choice we make as an individual and then that choice compounds itself as a collective. if we are collectively good to paraphrase de tocqueville, we will be collectively great. but if we are collectively lazy, if we are collectively spiritually lazy, morally lazy, ethically lazy, we will not be great. it will compound and it will be a disaster. people tell me i love the fact that people say all the time, i

mean, last year i was crazy, i'm crazy for something every year. and then they always forget that, oh, wow, that turned out. lst year i was crazy because i said, hey, this thing in egypt's not going to work out and the muslim brotherhood that's not good. they're not largely secular. largely peaceful. and they do have intent to run for parliament and for the presidency. and here they are. and now we're at another point of another revolution in egypt yesterday the military ceased power. that's not going to work out. that's not going to work out. you could have known that from history. you could have known that from american history. you know what this was a repeat of in egypt? it was a repeat of this. this is an original copy of -- woops. original copy of thomas payne's common sense.

this is common sense. this guy was a patriot. this guy eventually said there is no god. he was scold by benjamin grank lin, but thomas payne took all of the benefits of a religious society and then moved on from it. i'm not really sure. i'm not really sure if that's all that important. i'm not sure if god exists. well what happened? what did that lead to? that led to his blindness of the french revolution. he couldn't see that that wasn't the same. and so thomas payne went to george washington along with thomas jefferson and said we've got to help france and washington said you're crazy. that's not a good revolution. yes, but the king is bad. it's oppression over there. yes, but the people are not the same as the american citizens. that will end horribly. thomas payne rejected george washington. now,