Newt Gingrich |
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – GOP presidential hopeful and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told an audience at Harvard's JFK School of Government that the answers for America's problems should come from Americans themselves.
The 10-term Georgia congressman made a joint appearance with his wife Callista as the couple previewed their new film, "A City on a Hill: A Study of American Exceptionalism."
He said showing a documentary at a campaign stop is unique, but the format was intentional because the nation's problems are cultural. He says Americans have forgotten who they are.
"The largest choice facing the United States is largely a cultural choice. I began getting involved in this (film making) back in 2002 when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that 'One nation, under God,' in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional," Gingrich said.
TRENDING: America's most dangerous demographic
"Interestingly, we're at the time of the anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. In 1863, Lincoln sits on a platform looking out over the first national military cemetery, the graves of thousands of young men, and he adds to his address, 'Under God,'" Gingrich said.
"Those of you who think that was just a random notation, go to the Lincoln Memorial, where on one side you'll see, 'Under God,'" Gingrich said. "On the other side of that memorial is the Second Inaugural Address," Gingrich said.
"There had been four years of war and 620,000 American dead. Lincoln took the war as a personal responsibility. He knew at any point, if he would accept the South leaving, the war would end. So in a sense, he willed, the president of the United States, the preservation of the Union, at the cost of 620,000 dead," Gingrich said.
Gingrich says that decision reshaped Lincoln as a person.
"You see his Cooper Union speech in 1860, 7,200 words in February of 1860. Then there's 1865. In 720 words, Abraham Lincoln refers to God 14 times and quotes the Bible twice," Gingrich said.
Gingrich says the realization that the country has changed forced him to take a stand on the Pledge of Allegiance decision.
Gingrich:
"I responded to the 9th Circuit's decision much like Abraham Lincoln responded to the Dred Scott decision in the 1850s, where slavery was automatically extended across the whole country," Gingrich said.
"I honestly believe that we are either an exceptional nation, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, in which case, each one of you is personally sovereign and you loan power to the state," Gingrich said.
"The state does not loan power to you. I believe that's the heart of America. I believe the Founding Fathers wrote it very deliberately. It represented the very essence of their understanding of life. That's why they start out by saying 'We hold these truths to be self-evident,'" Gingrich said.
Gingrich added that the nation is in a great cultural struggle and that Harvard is one of the centerpieces of that major cultural battle.
Gingrich added that the battle is between two very radical world views.
"We're in a battle between those who believe we believe that's (the view of a Creator) all nonsense that we're essentially randomly gathered protoplasm who happened to have lucked out," Gingrich said.
"Those people believe that we randomly ended up geographically in some place that has reasonably good government that has not yet been totally destroyed by power-hungry politicians, but there's no inherent underlying structure of exceptionalism," Gingrich said.
"This notion of exceptionalism is at the very core of being an American.
"It's why the Wright Brothers, you know the Wright Brothers and the Smithsonian were engaged in a competition. The Smithsonian got $50,000 from Congress and failed," Gingrich said.
"The Wright Brothers got nothing and invented the airplane. This spirit of entrepreneurial pioneering, this spirit of creating things, this spirit that any one of us in this room can be virtually anything, is a peculiarly American experience," Gingrich said.
Gingrich pointed to the social atmosphere in the United States that allows people to succeed where they may not have the same opportunities in other countries.
"We are engaged in a cultural struggle. Callista and I have now done seven movies, all of them documentaries as part of the cultural struggle. I've written a series of books, she's just written a children's book, 'The Land of Liberty,' for four-to-eight-year olds," Gingrich said.
"But this is the cultural component of the political campaign."
In a townhall-like question and answer period following the film, Gingrich said in answer to a question on economic policy that Obama's deficit spending is endangering any economic recovery. The best way to jump start the economy is to create jobs.
"When you create jobs, you get people off of Medicaid, off of public housing, off of unemployment, off of welfare. So, you're reducing government spending without pain," Gingrich said.
In discussing the budget crisis that the country faces, Gingrich was less than complementary about the supercommittee, calling the group "stupid," and added that a major fault of that panel is that none of the members have consulted anyone who has balanced a budget.
In response to a question on President Obama's foreign policy, Gingrich said he believes Obama's gesture of pledging Marines to Australia is largely symbolic.
"We're going to send 2,500 Marines to Australia. That's irritating the Chinese, but I doubt if it's impressing them. They have the largest army in the world and the idea of 2,500 Marines. I'm an Army brat, I express a certain bias. Those of you who were Marines, Semper-Fi, but I'm telling you, 2,500 Marines aren't enough," Gingrich said.
"If we want to worry about China, ironically, we have to worry about the United States. What are the key factors. We build our industrial base. We build our science and technology base. We build our education system," Gingrich said.
"If we get America straight, the Chinese won't catch up with us in a hundred years. If we don't get America straight, the Chinese are going to pass us because we're stupid," Gingrich said.
Gingrich was also open about his conversion to Catholicism.
"Callista sings in the choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immmaculate Conception, the largest Roman Catholic Church in the United States, I would go to be supportive," Gingrich said.
"I found myself over time, becoming more and more comfortable, and more and more intrigued by the Catholic approach to the Eucharist," Gingrich said.
"I got involved in long conversations with Monsignor Rossi, the rector of the Basilica and it just struck me that the combination of the intellectual background over 2,000 years of Catholic scholarship and the power of the representation of Christ every time you go to Mass is an extraordinary experience," Gingrich said.
Gingrich concluded by saying that Congress did the right thing by rejecting the Kyoto Accords and the United States is right in withholding funding for UNESCO because of that UN agency's recognition of the Palestinian Authority as a separate nation.