*Author’s Note:* As requested by many readers, below is a copy of my speech I delivered to the North American Elk Breeders Association Annual Convention in Waterloo, Iowa on August 6, 2011 at the Ramada Hotel and Convention Center.
Please note that when I give speeches I generally work from an outline and notes. I do not “read” my speeches. So the content of what is below is similar to the remarks delivered during the speech but is not an exact replication of what was said.
For readers of this blog, I also took the time to add hyperlinks to references whenever possible and also at the end included notes, comments and quotes that I may not have used during the speech due to time constraints.
Keynote Address to the North American Elk Breeders Association Annual Convention
Ramada Hotel and Convention Center, Waterloo, Iowa
August 6, 2011
I would like to take a moment to thank all the members of the North American Elk Breeders Association for providing me with the opportunity to come to Waterloo, Iowa, to the annual North American Elk Breeders Association Convention to speak to you today. In particular, I want to thank Brenda Hartkopf for working with me and figuring out all the logistics to get here and exactly what I was going to do when I did. Thank you!
I thought I would begin this evening with an old humor story that is quite fitting with the theme for which I am going to speak. It’s the story of my Uncle Virgil and Aunt Florena. They were country folks. As a matter of fact they lived very far out in the country and ran a small farm raising a few cattle, some pigs, chickens and the like. Where they lived wasn’t the end of the world but you certainly could see it from there.
One day, it was midday when most farmers were inside, out of the hot summer sun, a knock came on the front door, an indication it must not be someone of familiarity because nobody they knew used the front door. Florena answered the door. She opened the fairly large inside door and through the screen door observed a weasily-looking man with thick glasses and messy hair.
“I am from the Department of Agriculture. Here’s my card. I am inspector 356124987920475443. I am here to inspect your farm,” he said.
“We ain’t buying nothin you’re selling so git out!” exclaimed Florena and as she was shutting the door in his face he yelled, “My card says I can inspect your farm!”
Florena yelled to Virgil and told him he had a visitor. Virgil went to the front door and opened it and still standing there was the same man.
Before Virgil could speak, the man says, “I am from the Department of Agriculture. Here’s my card. I am inspector 356124987920475443 and I am here to inspect your farm!”
Virgil examined the card and then told the man to get off his property. The inspector, not taking no for an answer says, “You can see on my card that I have a right to come on your property anytime I want to perform random inspections.”
Virgil once again examined the card and said, “You go do what it is you have a right to do and then get the hell off my property!” and with that slammed the door ever so deliberately in his face.
Virgil returned to the living room where he was trying to watch a little television and catch an afternoon nap. After about an hour, Florena woke up Virgil asking him if he could hear something peculiar. Both heard noises coming from what appeared the side of the house. Virgil went to the back door, opened it and listened. He could hear hollering.
“Hello! You, up at the house! Come and get your bull!” cried the inspector.
Virgil assessed the situation to discover his prized bull had the inspector pinned up a tree with no intention of letting him down anytime soon.
The inspector yells again, “Come and get your bull!”
Virgil called back, “Why don’t you show him your card?”
I grew up in the country poor. Poor meaning I had little in the way of material things. We had electricity, no indoor plumbing and not until later as a kid growing up did we enjoy the convenience of running water in the house. But I had it all. I thank God everyday for parents who instilled in me the importance of being fiercely independent. One cannot fully enjoy the God-given, unalienable right to liberty unless they have been taught to live independently. As a boy I was taught that you work to solve your own problems and the last thing ever mentioned was a need to ask government for something.
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From the moment we are born we are free. We are individuals gifted from God with rights, none of which are bestowed upon us by man. It is only man, since our birth that has striven to deny us of our rights. Why is that?
It’s all about control. For any individual or group of individuals to force their will upon the rest they must first gain control over the people they wish to control. This is being done in many ways. I will talk about a few of them tonight.
The biggest threat against those who desire dictatorial powers over you, is an independent person. They hate us because they can’t control us. We must become independent in both our actions and our thoughts.
(*Demonstration* – At this juncture, I will do a demonstration using a rope and a jackknife. I present the rope. It’s about 6 feet long. I will ask the audience to picture this rope as big and as long as they wish and to imagine how many important and powerful uses such a rope could have.
I then will take the jackknife and cut the rope in half and then ask the audience if the rope still has the same powerful possibilities and uses.
I keep repeating the cutting of each piece of rope in half until I am left with a tiny piece. At some point I will ask the audience if there are any issues going on in our country today that are dividing us as citizens (the long piece of rope) that will eventually render us useless.)
I would like to read a quote to you tonight from Thomas Jefferson:
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add, ‘with the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
I was asked to come to Iowa tonight to speak to you about H.R. 2210, the “Sportsmanship in Hunting Act of 2011”. H.R. 2011 has had several identities over the years. Among them, H.R. 1688, H.R. 3829, H.R. 2308 and several Senate versions of a very despicable and useless piece of legislation geared at one more step toward the annihilation of our property rights.
Fortunately none of the versions of this bill have ever made it to the House floor but we cannot rest on any comforting feeling that this bill is dead. We know for a fact that Congress adds bills such as this to other pieces of legislation in order to get them passed. It isn’t until later that we discover what had happened. We must fight this legislation.
Jefferson understood that true liberty cannot be recognized and appreciated without the respect of others’ rights and he blamed the law or laws as often a projection of the will of tyrants. It is the tyrant that seeks to destroy you and me. They hate our independence.
The most pitiful and hypocritical part of H.R. 2210 is that it is worded in such a way as to promote good ethics and sportsmanship. Imagine if you will our Congress imposing on us its will of something moral or ethical. Talk about hypocrisy! Talk about tyrannical!
Our Congress is probably the most corrupt organization in this country. They consider themselves above the law. They talk down to “we the people”. They are out of touch. It seems everyday we hear of another scandal coming out of Congress, enough to make a grown man vomit. We hear of congressmen taking photos of their private parts and plastering them on the Internet and these idiots want to legislate to us something concerning ethics, fair chase and sportsmanship? They wouldn’t know decency if it bit them.
And for you holier-than-thou “hunters” who subscribe to such nonsense, get down off your high and unethical horses and let he that is without sin cast the first stone.
What is “fair chase”? Who decides? And why do you think it should be you? Can you realistically sit in your well-equipped tree stand, in which you have driven to in your lavishly expensive ATV, over land you paid thousands of dollars for a lease to hunt, park near to the food plot you planted in order to “bait” deer or other game to come to, so that you may take your pick of the litter and then call high-fence hunting unethical, lacking in fair chase?
Another important quote that I would like to share comes from Abraham Lincoln.
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
And here we find ourselves in this convention better than 150 years later wondering why the people have been subdued. The people have been overthrown! And thus we are sitting here looking at legislation that is clearly an overthrowing of the U.S. Constitution if not our God-given rights to freedom, property and the use of it. We must overthrow the men who are perverting our laws.
I’ll remind you again, H.R. 2210 has nothing whatsoever to do with sportsmanship, ethical hunting, fair chase or any of the rhetorical garbage we are having forced into our brains. It’s about control – pure and simple.
Those wishing to control us have several agendas and many tools in which to accomplish their goals. We must learn them. It’s the only chance we have to fight back. H.R. 2210 is only a small tool. There are wolves, Canada lynx, tiny little fish, global warming, etc., the lists are endless. Learn what they are.
How many people sitting here tonight are aware of President Obama’s Executive Order #13575? If you are not, you MUST learn about it. I do not have time this evening to give you details. President Obama understands that the last stronghold or frontier in America that generates independent thinkers and those aimed at living independently (the biggest threat remember?) is rural America. EO#13575 aims to destroy rural America as we know it today.
Read about it. It’s vitally important that you know. I will however ask you this: If President Obama’s goal of EO # 13575 is to “help” rural America, then why did he appoint members from his cabinet, such as Defense Secretary, Homeland Security, Federal Communications Commission, etc., to his board of directors? Think about it.
It’s about control ladies and gentlemen!
Gary Allen, in a book he wrote called, “None Dare Call it Conspiracy”, wrote:
“Control necessitates a static society……So, legislation is promoted to restrict entrepreneurial effort”.
Everyone sitting in this audience tonight exemplifies “entrepreneurial effort”, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. You are independent thinkers. You want to live independently. You want government to butt out of your life and your ranches. People cannot control you if you are not static. Attending this convention is one means of being in action, working to improve what you do. This is all contrary to what government wants in you. Therefore, the attempt once again at an H.R. 2210-type of legislation – promoted legislation to “restrict entrepreneurial effort”.
There have been many attempts over the years to ban high-fence hunting. The most recent resulted in a victory for the citizens when a citizen’s initiative was voted down that would have ended high-fence hunting in North Dakota. Idaho had a similar outcome and Montana did not. There are others. We must fight these together.
Efforts like this will never end. There are enough useful idiots in this country eager and willing to carry out the agendas of those entities wishing to subdue the independent and freedom loving people.
What kind of people knowingly work to destroy their country or their constitutions? If I had the answer to that question, I wouldn’t be here tonight now would I? But let me try to explain using examples from people who have asked the same questions.
Most people are not even aware of the fact that during and shortly after the Revolution, the United States rounded up no fewer than three esteemed gentlemen and sent them to Europe for the purpose of making treaties and finding trade partners. The U.S., after all, had lost all of their business dealings and partners with England when it declared its independence.
The three me were John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Quite the trio.
Thomas Jefferson visited many towns about Europe and he had a bit of a ritual he would undertake as a way to gain a sense of what kind of people he might be dealing with before actually sitting down to talk business.
His first action was to find the tallest building in the village – often this was a church steeple. He would climb it and gaze about the landscape hoping for a sense of the surroundings.
This was soon followed by walks about the village simply meeting people and talking to them. Yet, this was another attempt at gaining a better understanding of the people before expending time and energy hoping to find good character people he wished for his new country to do business with.
This action was described in a book titled, “The Young Jefferson” by Claude G. Bowers. Bowers wrote that in Jefferson’s travels, anytime he arrived at a village were he witnessed that people placed the importance of dogs or other animals above that of man, he packed up his belongings and left town immediately. Jefferson understood that people who think like this are untrustworthy and certainly someone he would not consider a viable trade partner. This is a difficult concept in America today. Just look around you.
Eric Hoffer, in his book, “The True Believer” spends a great deal of time giving us clues as to what makes people eager and willing to follow “mass movements” tick. Hoffer’s book, although written in the mid 1940s and dealt with a subject he called mass movements, really can apply to any large or small group. We today, tend to call them special interest groups.
It must be pointed out here that some of us don’t understand that there are a lot of people in this country today who want to live in a communist or socialistic country, where government decides everything for us. This begins very early on in the “education” process, so that today, regardless of the truth of historic outcomes of all attempts at socialism/communism, still we are able to lead people to believe this time will be different.
Hoffer says that those who are willing to work to destroy their own way of life, are obviously very unhappy with the life they have. For that I am saddened. I had nothing and yet I had everything, among the most important a strong foundation in God as my creator and a firm belief that I am, like the Bible says, created in God’s image. I do not see God as a weak person and someone who has to depend on government to survive or to even enjoy life. No, I am of His image, therefore, I am independent, free, respectful, caring of others and not wishing to impose my values on those of other people because I respect their rights as mine. If what I have to offer is good, people will be drawn to it.
I’ll remind you yet again, you become a threat to those wanting to control you when you are independent and seek to protect liberty, not just for yourself but for everyone.
Recall what Gary Allen said, “Control necessitates a static society…..So, legislation is promoted to restrict entrepreneurial effort.” H.R. 2210 is but another tool in which it’s design is to render you elk ranchers static and ineffective. They want you to go away. They know they can’t convince you to give it up all at once, but they sure know one small step at a time will surely get the job done.
Elk are your property. You have rights to your property, none of which came from man or our and any other government. Ending high-fence hunting is a destruction of your property and your property rights. You, the person sitting next to you, your neighbor or the U.S. Government does not have the right to take your property away simply because they don’t like what you do with it.
Ayn Rand, a Russian immigrant, who some believe possessed idealistic views on rights while other find her writings spot on, once wrote about property rights this way:
“The right to life is the source of all rights – and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product is a slave.” Ayn Rand from “The Virtue of Selfishness”.
Is it then for this reason that countries that are run by dictators ensure that the people never own property? What say you then of those in this country who openly admit that man should never own property, that all things are owned collectively for the good of all?
Once again, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
“Property is the foundation of all civilized society.”
As people in this country work vehemently to give our country away, they want to give your property away as well. According to Jefferson, such a move would lead to an uncivilized society. Is that the goal here?
One step at a time, those wishing to control the masses will take what is yours if we do nothing about it.
A few months ago, I wrote a multi-part piece called, “The Crippling and Destructive Power of the Endangered Species Act”. I want to invite everyone here tonight to go to my blog and read it. It will begin to give you insight into how complex and deep reaching the efforts are to end your independence and entrepreneurial effort. It’s not a simple H.R. 2210 bill. It’s about control and the powers seeking that control are much bigger than you might imagine but that shouldn’t discourage us from fighting.
As I close tonight, I want to leave all of you with a challenge. I want you to leave here tonight not taking what I told you as necessarily the truth. I challenge you to go find out for yourself. This will further strengthen you as an independent thinker, someone who is not going to be controlled so easily.
Please take what I have shared tonight and consider if anything I have said makes sense. Hopefully, enough of what I said will at least get you thinking and finding hope that with a stronger you, we can become a stronger nation.
I’ll leave you tonight with a quote. This is actually something my brother sent me a short while ago. With his permission, I added a word or two for effect.
“The dog, the owl, the whale, the seal, the elk, the wolf, the smelt, are all tools, lies and deceit used against property rights, to include what is yours in your mind and to see who is still paying attention in America. Those paying attention threaten the tyrannical dictators of the planet.” – Al Remington
Thank you!
Included below are names with links that didn’t get mentioned due to time constraints. Please feel free to take the time to read these and go to the sites linked to and learn more about the powers seeking your destruction.
The United States Constitution reads in Article II, Section 2, Line 2; “2: He [president] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;
United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
Quotes:
The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written. – Franklin Roosevelt
