The Washington Times
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How Democrats lost the South
THE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished November 3, 2003
First of three parts:
Once upon a time, the most successful Democratic leader of them all, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, looked south and said, "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished."
Today our national Democratic leaders look south and say, "I see one-third of a nation and it can go to hell."
Too harsh? I don't think so. Consider these facts.
In 1960, the state of Georgia gave Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy a higher percentage of its vote than did JFK's home state of Massachusetts. "You can look it up," as Casey Stengel used to say. Only the percentage in Rhode Island was greater.
And Georgians were not disappointed in Kennedy's performance as president. He stared down the Russians over Cuba and cut taxes in a significant way that stimulated the economy. Had he not been assassinated, he could have carried Georgia a second time.
In the last nine presidential elections, except for 1976 when regional pride was a huge factor and native son Jimmy Carter lost only Virginia among the 11 states of the old Confederacy, the scoreboard read like this:
Hubert Humphrey carried Texas in 1968 because of Lyndon Johnson, but no other state of the 11. Carter carried only Georgia in 1980; the others left the incumbent. In 1992, another native son of the South, Bill Clinton, carried Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee. In 1996, Clinton lost Georgia but picked up Florida and kept Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee.
So, four times — 1972, 1984, 1988 and 2000 — the Democratic candidate couldn't carry a single Southern state. Not one. Zero. Zilch. And two times, 1968 and 1980, only one Southern state favored the Democrat.
Either the Democratic Party is not a national party or the candidates were not national candidates. Take your pick.
But there is more to this sorry tale. In the mid-term elections of 2002, not a single national Democratic leader could come to the South to campaign without doing more harm than good.
Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe couldn't come. He was too liberal. Bill Clinton couldn't come. He was too liberal. The party's titular head, Al Gore of Tennessee, who two years earlier had put up a big fat zero in the region, couldn't come. Too liberal. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle couldn't come, nor House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. Too liberal.
Little has changed, except that Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California has taken the place of Gephardt, which makes it even worse when it comes to romancing the South.
If this is a national party, sushi is our national dish. If this is a national party, surfing has become our national pastime. The people leading our party and those asking to lead our country are like a bunch of naive fraternity boys who don't know what they don't know.
A foreign land
National Democratic leaders know nothing about the modern South. They still see it as a land of magnolias and mint juleps, with the pointy-headed KKK lurking in the background, waiting to burn a cross or lynch blacks and Jews.
They are like Shreve McCannon, the Canadian in William Faulkner's "Absalom, Absalom!" who asks the Southerner Quentin Compson: "Tell me about the South. What's it like there? What do they do there? Why do they live there? Why do they live at all?"
The modern South and rural America are as foreign to our Democratic leaders as some place in Asia or Africa. In fact, more so. I'm sure each could explain the culture and economy of Pakistan, Taiwan or Kenya better than that of the American South.
Average Americans, especially those who follow the job market, know a lot more. They know the South has become a land of great promise with an unlimited future. It isn't rusting and rotting away like a lot of places up North. Recent census statistics on the 100 fastest-growing counties show two-thirds are in the South. Many arrivals are immigrants from the "blue" states.
If you were to separate 15 Southeastern states from the rest of the Union (I'm not advocating that; 11 tried once), their joint economy alone would rank as the third-largest in the world, behind only the United States as a whole and Japan. The population would be far greater than New England. Georgia alone has the 17th-largest economy in the world, larger than Singapore, Hong Kong or Saudi Arabia.
Fiber-optic cable was develooped in the Suth. Atlanta has three times more fiber-optic lines than New York City and is at the most significant fiber-optic intersection in North America. This is the region where the modem was developed and the first mobile satellite uplink was produced. Nearly a third of the Fortune 500 companies have headquarters in the region.
Georgia was the first state to deliver insurance-reimbursable medical care by telecommunication. The New York Times even called it "sophisticated." I was so shocked by the Times calling anything down South sophisticated, I cut out the article and saved it.
We're further along in racial politics than the national Democrats ever could imagine or choose to believe.
Minority Southerners complete high school at the same rate as whites. The percentage of minority Southerners with college degrees tripled in the past 25 years. When Newsweek recently named "the cream of the crop" of high schools, seven of the top 10 were in the South, as were 22 of the top 50.
In 1990, a total of 565 African-Americans held elective office in the 11 states of the old Confederacy. You know what the number was in 2000? Almost 10 times that: 5,579.
In Georgia, which is 70 percent white, seven blacks have been elected statewide. Three have been elected twice. While Sen. Max Cleland and Gov. Roy Barnes, both Democrats, were losing in 2002 with about 47 percent of the vote, state Attorney General Thurbert Baker and Commissioner of Labor Michael Thurmond were getting about 57 percent. They carried predominately white counties overwhelmingly, as they had four years before.
Reprobate uncle
I could continue citing facts like these for pages. As Dizzy Dean once said, "If you've done it, it ain't bragging." The South that Democratic Party leaders have stuck in their minds is gone with the wind.
Democrats in Washington also believe in purity. Like that old Ivory Soap commercial, 99.44 percent pure is all that will do. You cannot agree on just seven of their 10 issues, or even nine. All 10 must be embraced and ostentatiously hugged to your bosom with slobbering kisses.
Remember how Democrats wouldn't even let Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey speak at their national convention because he was pro-life? That was keeping the convention "pure."
Democratic leaders are as nervous as a long-tailed cat around a rocking chair when they travel south or get out in rural America. They have no idea what to say or how to act. I once saw one try to eat a boiled shrimp without peeling it. Another one loudly gagged on the salty taste of country ham.
Democrats have never seen a snail darter they didn't want to protect, but sometimes I think the one endangered species they don't want to save is the Southern conservative Democrat.
We're like the alcoholic uncle that families try to hide in a room up in the attic: After the primaries are over and the general election nears, national Democrats trot out the South and show us off — at arm's length — as if to say, "Look how tolerant we are; see how caring? Why, we even allow people 'like this' in our party of the big tent. We still love that strange old reprobate uncle."
As soon as the election is over, the old boy is banished to the attic and ignored for another two years.
Al Gore became only the third Democrat since the Civil War to lose every state in the old Confederacy, plus two border states. George McGovern and Walter Mondale were the others. But they had an excuse: They were crushed in national landslides.
Gore's loss was different. Had he won any state in the old Confederacy or one more border state, he would be president today. Gore lost his home state of Tennessee, Clinton's home state of Arkansas and the Democratic bastion of West Virginia. Even Michael Dukakis — hardly a son of the South — didn't manage to lose there.
The campaign in the South was a mess, and it didn't have to happen. The region had more Democratic governors than Republican governors, and the Democrats held a majority of state legislative chambers. Largely because of the debacle, three Democratic governors also bit the dust in 2002.
In 2004, if we have the same popular-vote split between the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, and if these candidates win the same states, the Electoral College margin for the Republican will be bigger. How much bigger? The Republican would have a majority not by four electors, as George W. Bush did in 2000, but by 18.
A matter of trust
If Southern voters think you don't understand them — or much worse, if they think you look down on them — they will never vote for you. Folks in the South have a simple way of saying this: "He's not one of us." When a politician hears those words, he's already dead.
For Southern voters, the issues you choose to talk about are as important as the positions you take on those issues. Voters may say they're for gun control, and they may well be for gun control, but they simply don't trust anybody who spends too much time talking about it. Clinton understood that. Gore did not.
There was a time when the leaders of my party understood both the policy and political value of cutting taxes. The Kennedy-Johnson tax bill in 1964 cut all brackets. It was passed by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress as part of an aggressive agenda that included the creation of Medicare.
And how did opponents attack the Kennedy-Johnson proposal? As fiscally irresponsible, because it didn't pay off the debt and was nothing more than a quick fix.
Who was attacking these tax cuts? Why, lo and behold, it was Republicans. It was a political fiasco. Republicans would not regain control of the House or the Senate for a generation, and not until they had reversed their party's position on cutting taxes.
I know from personal experience that you can be a Democrat and have a solid Democratic agenda while cutting taxes and holding the line on spending. When I was governor of Georgia, we cut taxes by almost a billion dollars, reduced spending and cut personnel by 5,000 positions.
That was why I was able to raise the salaries of university professors and public school teachers to the highest in the South and get a lottery passed by the voters in my Bible Belt state. We provided pre-kindergarten education for every 4-year-old; technical training for every high school graduate; and the HOPE Scholarship, which gives a tuition-free college education to every student who maintains a B average.
We Democrats need to remember that talking about an aggressive agenda for America is quite different from getting it done. For us to get it done, the people we serve have to trust us.
Britain's Conservative Party, with towering figures like Margaret Thatcher, dominated that country's politics for 18 years until the Labor Party led by Tony Blair was able to reclaim power. It happened because Blair took his party kicking and screaming toward the middle. The extreme left wing was obliterated and the influence of the trade unions was greatly diminished.
If Clinton had followed through and governed as he campaigned, it would have happened here for the Democrats.
A waiting grave
For many years in the South, the magic formula for the Democratic nominee to win against a Republican has been to get 40 percent of the white vote and 90 percent of the black vote. Increasingly, it has been easier to get the latter.
But the margin of black votes for the Democrats is going to change soon. It has to change only a fraction to make a huge difference. Ralph Reed, the brilliant strategist and former Republican chairman of Georgia, understands this. So do Bush strategist Karl Rove and many other Republicans.
It will be similar to what happened in a couple of governor's races in Virginia in the 1990s. Virginia Republicans figured out that they were not going to get many more white votes. They started quietly going after black support.
George Allen and then James Gilmore each received nearly 20 percent of the black vote, just by reaching out and working for it. Going after this constituency directly cost the Democrats core votes. And, by moderating the look of the Republican Party, it indirectly cost the Democrats swing votes.
Allen and Gilmore crushed Democratic opponents in 1993 and 1997. To his credit, Democrat Mark Warner made sure that didn't happen to him in 2001.
Only time will tell the effect of seeing President Bush surround himself with black Americans like Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson.
I own a fiddle that supposedly belonged to Zeb Vance, the great North Carolina mountaineer elected governor in 1862. Vance opposed much of what Confederate President Jefferson Davis was doing in Richmond. He was too young to be involved in the Whig Party at the height of its popularity, but he had been "born a Whig."
And many thought this moderate, independent-minded, vigorous young leader might be the one to keep the party alive in the South. When Vance was approached to do so in 1865, he was typically direct: "The party is dead and buried and the tombstone placed over it and I don't care to spend the rest of my days mourning at its grave."
Like the Whig Party of the late 1850s, the Democratic Party has become dangerously fragmented. And, considering the present leadership, it can only get worse.
The special-interest groups have come between the Democratic Party and the people. The party is no longer a link to most Americans. Each advocacy group has become more important than the sum of the whole.
It is a rational party no more. It is a national party no more. So, bang the drum slowly and play the fife lowly, for the sun is setting over a waiting grave.
'Able Democrats, but left-wing all the way'
THE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished November 4, 2003
This is the second of three exclusive excerpts from Sen. Zell Miller's new book, "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat" (Stroud & Hall, Atlanta).The Georgia Democrat, governor from 1991 to 1999, won a special election after the death of Sen. Paul Coverdell, a Republican, in 2000.
Lord, those current presidential candidates in my party.
They are good, smart and able folks, but if I decided to follow any one of them down their road, I'd have to keep my left-turn signal blinking and burning brightly all the way.
All left turns may work on the racetrack, but it is pulling our Democratic Party in a dangerous direction.
Whenever the Democratic candidates encounter a political action committee, they preen and flex their six-pack abs for these special-interest groups, which I call "the Groups," like bodybuilders in a Mr. Universe contest.
Or perhaps more appropriately I should compare them to streetwalkers in skimpy halters and hot pants, plying their age-old trade for the fat wallets on K Street.
Just look at them. They are convinced most Americans will like what they see:
John Edwards, shooting brightly through the skies like Halley's Comet.
Joe Lieberman, steadily and surely plodding along, one labored step at a time, like Aesop's tortoise.
John Kerry, the new century's Abraham Lincoln, posing for Vogue in an electric-blue wet suit with a surfboard tucked up under his arm like a rail just split. It made me wonder, are there more surfboards or shotguns in America?
There's also Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont. Clever and glib, but deep this Vermont pond is not. ... He likes to say he belongs to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, but I say he belongs to the whining wing of the Democratic Party.
My fellow Senate Democrats are decent, hardworking and smart. They have been friendly and more than fair to me since I arrived in July 2000, even with my rough edges and strong opinions. Let that be underlined: They have been much nicer to me than I have either deserved or expected.
But let this also be clear: I will not be bland in what I write, for I am not blind to what I see. What I saw gradually drew back the curtain on Washington's political stage, and over time my awe turned to shock.
A partisan prism
I began to refer to the Tuesday luncheon meetings of the Senate's Democratic caucus as the "Tums-days" lunches, because the ideology moved further and further to the left and the oratory was turned up to a decibel level that got so shrill for my old ears that I needed Tylenol to go along with my antacid.
"The Groups" and money. Money and "the Groups." It was like a bad song you can't get out of your mind. Once we were urged over and over to attend a fund-raising breakfast because a big labor union was going to give the party $20,000 for every senator in attendance. All 50 of us answering "present" could mean a million dollars. Of course, I attended.
But I began to think that the Democratic caucus sees the entire nation through the partisan prism of liberal states like California, New York, Maryland and Massachusetts, and believes that what is good Democratic politics there just has to be good Democratic politics from sea to shining sea.
I naturally see the nation through the conservative prism of Georgia and the South, but I would never suggest that what was good Democratic politics in my neck of the woods would play well in Malibu and Manhattan.
When "the Groups" say "frog," each party jumps. It really doesn't seem to matter how it affects the people or the nation as a whole. My yardstick says the Democrats clearly win the vertical leap when "frog" is yelled by NARAL Pro-Choice America or by AFSCME (the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) with their 7.4 million members.
If you are organized and have an acronym, an address inside the Beltway and a PAC, you are in like Flynn. Just name your wish, and one of the caucuses will bust a gut to romance you.
If you are only an individual with some rural route address, then forget it, Bubba. The politicians won't even blow you a kiss, much less romance you.
I was sitting at my beautiful old mahogany desk in the Senate chamber not long after I arrived — a desk that has the names Russell, Talmadge and Nunn carved in it — when Joe Biden of Delaware, a senator for 30 years, came over and sat down.
"I've watched a lot of you former governors come up here and invariably you go through three phases," Biden said. "The first phase is disbelief. You just can't believe how legislation and decisions are made."
He was right. I arrived in the middle of the appropriations process, and I could not believe the feeding frenzy.
"The next phase," he said, "is anger. You stay mad most of the time, and you want to change the system and make it more orderly."
The third phase, he said, is "acceptance."
I have not reached that third phase yet. Not even close. I'm still angry because of the petty partisanship on both sides of the aisle. Angry that one single senator representing less than one-fifth of 1 percent of the American people can stop any president — even during wartime — from making a crucial appointment to his own team.
Angry because of the thoughtless, needless waste of taxpayers' hard-earned money. Angry because soft money — big money — from special interests to both parties controls things in a way that is nothing short of bribery. Angry that this money pays for cynical consultants who sneeringly brag, "We do campaigns; we don't do government."
I'm angry at a process in which 59 votes out of 100 cannot pass a bill because 41 votes out of 100 can defeat it. Explain that to Joe Six Pack at the Kmart.
Supporting the president
The process has become so politicized and so polarized and so ingrained that we cannot even put it aside in time of war. It is a system that "Cuisinarts" individual thought into a mushy party pudding, that expects one to go along with the team even if the quarterback is calling the wrong signals.
On the day in July 2000 when Gov. Roy Barnes appointed me to try to fill the big shoes left behind by our friend, Sen. Paul Coverdell, a Republican, I pledged to serve all Georgians and no single party. I took the first step in December, after being elected to the seat.
President-elect George W. Bush invited me and 15 others, including about five other Democrats, to Austin to talk about his education-reform bill. I had already studied the Bush proposal and decided I was for it. I had watched what Bush had done for Texas schools when he and I were both governors. So I stood up at that small luncheon and told him that I would support his bill enthusiastically.
As I was leaving and he was thanking me, I told him: "Mr. President, I'm with you on a lot of things. I'm with you on your tax-cut proposal." I saw in his eyes that my comment had registered.
A couple of weeks later, Sen. Phil Gramm, Texas Republican, mentioned that the president had told him of my comments about the tax cut and asked would I like to join him in co-sponsoring it. I told Gramm I would be honored.
President Bush called me that night in my apartment and thanked me. That was in January 2001. In May, Congress passed a $1.35 trillion tax cut, the largest since the one Ronald Reagan pushed through in 1981. Although I was the only Democrat supporting it for a long time, in the end 12 Democrats voted for it.
Unfortunately, the tax cut was compromised on its way to final passage. What started out as a broad, immediate and permanent cut became one where some relief is delayed by several years. To add insult to injury, the whole thing is set to be repealed in 2010. How can anyone make long-range plans for a business or a family with a tax policy that has a perishable date on it like a quart of milk?
Perhaps because of my experience as a chief executive, I went to Washington believing that a president should be able to select his own team and make out his own batting order. He is the leader and the one who ultimately should and will be held accountable.
My first test came with John Ashcroft, a man I know well. I was the first, and, for a while, the only Democrat publicly supporting his confirmation as attorney general.
A short time later, I was the only Democrat to vote to confirm Ted Olsen as solicitor general. My vote made the difference, 51-49, and the president finally got his own man representing the government before the Supreme Court.
I took that opportunity to tell my colleagues that "this never-ending, back-and-forth, partisan ping-pong game of revenge needs to end — for the good of the country."
The last straw
With all the support I was giving President Bush, it was only natural that the Senate Republican leadership would make an overture to me to switch parties or become an independent.
As politely as I could, I expressed my long and active history as a Democratic officeholder and how, with me, it didn't have anything to do with ideology; I was "born a Democrat." This caused them to take a step back with a strange and puzzled look. No one can understand it except those older folks who live in Appalachia.
When Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party in May 2001 and became an independent, it turned the Senate upside down and gave the Democrats a one-vote majority. Again the Republicans came, and the ante had gone up.
I have no intention now or ever to disclose any details. Suffice it to say that, for a freshman senator, it would have been historic. Again, I politely declined, Tom Daschle became majority leader, and the rest is history.
In fall 2002, in the heat of a campaign season, the Democratic leadership laid on the straw that broke this old camel's back: the caucus position on homeland security.
The main point of contention was whether any of the 170,000 employees of the new Department of Homeland Security could be moved around by the president in time of national emergency without all the hidebound restrictions of the civil-service system.
Every president before Bush had that kind of authority, but because this was an election year, the labor union wanted to flex its muscle. They found a willing chairman in presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, whose Government Operations Committee had written the homeland-security bill.
The bill was driven by the American Federation of Government Employees and the union's cock-of-the-walk president, Bobby Harnage, who is always spoiling for a fight. Whether he wins the fight or not, it helps to increase the 37.5 percent of government workers who are unionized.
"We must give the president the flexibility to respond to terrorism on a moment's notice," I said in a floor speech Sept. 18, seven weeks before the general election. "He's got to be able to shift resources, including personnel, at the blink of an eye. So why do we hold so dear a personnel system that was created in 1883 and is as outdated as an ox-cart on an expressway?
"I'll tell you why: Because by keeping the status quo, there's votes to be had and soft money to be pocketed. That's the dirty little secret. ...
"Hiring a new federal employee can take five months. Firing a bad worker takes more than a year — if it's even allowable at all — because of the mountains of paperwork, hearings and appeals. ...
"Productivity should be the name of the game. And we lose productivity when bad folks hold on to jobs forever or when jobs go unfilled for months.
"I've tried to imagine myself in these workers' places at this particular time in history," I concluded. "I'm an old believer in that line by that wonderful Georgia songwriter, Joe South: 'Before you abuse, criticize or accuse, walk a mile in my shoes.'
"But perhaps it's because I've worked for three dollars a day and was glad to have a job that I find their union bosses' refusal to budge for the greater good of this country so surprising. Union politics may be important, but it should never come before national security."
Too far left
A week later I tried again.
"Have we lost our minds?" I asked fellow Democratic senators. "Do you really want to face the voters with this position, this vote writ large on your forehead, like a scarlet letter? ... It will be one of our sorriest chapters ... where special interests so brazenly trumped national interests."
On Nov. 5, Sen. Max Cleland, a triple amputee and decorated Vietnam hero, was defeated in Georgia after dropping eight points in a few weeks. Weeks during which, time and time again — 11 to be exact — the Democratic leadership urged him to vote with those special interests.
In Missouri, Jean Carnahan, a fine senator and widow of my friend, Sen. Mel Carnahan, met the same fate.
Immediately after the election, the homeland-security bill passed with the Democrats not saying the first word about protectionism for employees. It had all been just politics by and for "the Groups."
Then and there, I decided I would never attend another Democratic caucus lunch on Tums-days. I had seen and heard enough. With the exception of a handful, these Democrats went too far to the left for me.
I could not help remembering John F. Kennedy's prophetic words about party unity and "what sins have been committed in its name."
Kennedy warned: "The party which, in its drive for unity, discipline and success, ever decides to exclude new ideas, independent conduct or insurgent members, is in danger."
In pursuit of an American Churchill
THE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished November 5, 2003
Sen. Zell Miller, Georgia Democrat, faults his party's leadership in time of war in the last of three exclusive excerpts from his new book, "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat" (Stroud & Hall, Atlanta).
British statesman Winston Churchill warned against the dangers of appeasement as German dictator Adolf Hitler's clouds of war threatened to rain down on England. He pleaded that this evildoer must be stopped and destroyed.
Finally, in desperation, Great Britain turned to Churchill as prime minister. With stirring oratory and unflinching courage, he led his nation out from under the heel of Hitler.
I came to believe that unless America found its own version of Churchill, the same spirit of appeasement, the same kind of softness and self-indulgence, would turn my country into a land cowering before the world's mad bullies.
I thought the signs evident in the American people and our leaders. I thought our will as a country was vanishing.
I was disgusted when we did nothing in 1993 after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, killing six and injuring more than 1,000. I was amazed in 1996 when 16 U.S. servicemen were killed in the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and we still did nothing.
When our embassies in Tanzania and Nairobi were bombed in 1998, killing 263, our only response was to fire a few missiles on an empty terrorist camp. It was a wimpy response so totally inadequate that, as an American, I was ashamed.
Then came September 11, 2001, "the worst day in our history," as historian David McCullough has called it. The next day, after a sleepless night, I went to the floor of the Senate and said:
"The victims and their loved ones of this horrible act of war should be in our prayers. The perpetrators and those who give them safe haven should be in our bombsights.
"After Pearl Harbor, a Japanese remarked that the 'sleeping giant has been awakened.' I pray that the sleeping giant has again been awakened. ... For too long, when terrorist attacks have happened it seems America's first interest has been to please our friends, and then, if permitted, punish our enemies.
"We must strike the viper's nest," I concluded, "even if he's not there. We know that the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan nurtured Osama bin Laden for years. This diabolical plot was probably hatched there. Certainly similar plots have been — and it's time for us to respond.
"I say, bomb the hell out of them. If there's collateral damage, so be it. They certainly found our civilians to be expendable."
I got a lot of criticism for that statement, especially from some liberal press folks. But months afterward, that's exactly what our military did in Afghanistan and, two years later, in Iraq.
Fortunately, President Bush moved ahead with plans for a regime change in Iraq. I immediately gave him my full support and told a true story to my colleagues on the Senate floor:
"A few weeks ago," I said, "we were doing some work on my back porch back home, tearing out a section of old stacked rocks, when all of a sudden I uncovered a nest of copperhead snakes.
"I know the difference between those snakes that are harmless and those that will kill you. A copperhead will kill you. It could kill one of my dogs. It could kill one of my grandchildren. It could kill any one of my four great-grandchildren.
"And you know, when I discovered these copperheads, I didn't call my wife Shirley for advice, like I do on most things. I didn't go before the city council. I didn't yell for help from my neighbors. I just took a hoe and knocked them in the head and killed them — dead as a doorknob.
"I guess you could call it a unilateral action," I said. "Or pre-emptive. Perhaps if you had been watching me, you could have even called it bellicose and reactive. I took their poisonous heads off because they were a threat to me. And they were a threat to my home and my family. They were a threat to all I hold dear. And isn't that what this is all about?"
Of all the speeches I've made over the years, I think I received more positive reaction from this one. I think it was because I expressed the frustration caused by the time-consuming debate in the United Nations and how France and Germany, after all we had done for them, turned their backs on us.
What war means
Few of freedom's soldiers have understood the lessons of history as well as Winston Churchill. He not only was a brave and daring soldier and a great political leader, but also a Nobel Prize-winning historian.
Perhaps, then, in these times we should remember the question Churchill framed to the world when he made his famous Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, at Westminster College in 1946.
Churchill reminded his audience that war and tyranny remain the great enemies of mankind. Then he asked: "Do we not understand what war means to the ordinary person? Can you not grasp its horror?"
The bluntness with which Churchill spoke about the looming threat of the Soviet Union did not go over well in many quarters. The American media did not want to hear that kind of talk. They called him a "war monger." Even the usually gutsy President Truman denied knowing in advance what was in the speech and suggested Churchill should not have given it.
But Abraham Lincoln had been just as realistic as Churchill. "You don't fight war by blowing rose water through corn stalks," he said.
These two men, each the greatest of his century, knew the horrors of war. But they also knew wars are sometimes necessary, that there is more to civilization than just comfortable self-preservation.
Soft-belly peaceniks believe war is politically pointless and foreign policy like so much fuzzy-feeling social work. I reject that. Sometimes a short war must be fought to prevent a longer war. Sometimes hundreds may die to save thousands. Sometimes the long view of history must be taken.
In my Senate office in the Dirksen Building, I have a 3-foot-by-5-foot painting of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. I had it behind my desk at the State Capitol in Atlanta when I was governor of Georgia.
To me, that image of six men raising an American flag on Mount Suribachi in one of the bloodiest battles ever fought is one of the world's most vivid symbols of the price of freedom. The photograph from which it was painted is the most reproduced in the history of photography.
Those flag raisers were young men, just boys really, six of America's best from all corners of our country. A coal miner's son from Pennsylvania, a farmer's son from Kentucky, a mill worker's son from New England. Another farmer's son from Wisconsin. One came out of the oil fields of Texas, and one was a Pima Indian from the Gila Reservation in Arizona.
Three of those boys would never leave the island and would be buried in that black volcanic ash. One would leave on a stretcher. The other two would come home to live miserable lives of drunkenness and despair.
Only one would somehow be able to overcome that island and the event with any degree of peace of mind. He was the one who left on a stretcher, a Navy corpsman assigned to the Marines to help with their wounded and dying.
His name was John Bradley. In 2000, his son, James Bradley, wrote a memorable book, "Flags of Our Fathers." The great historian Stephen Ambrose called it the best battle book he ever read. I recommend it highly.
Not just a word
It is easy to miss one of the most important things about this image of courage and sacrifice at Iwo Jima six decades ago.
James Bradley points this out: There are six in the group, but unless you look closely you see only five. Only the helping hand of one is visible. Most significantly, they are virtually faceless. Only a somewhat vague profile of one can be seen.
Isn't that the way it has always been with most of freedom's soldiers — unknown and, all too often, unappreciated? They are those faceless, nameless "grunts" who fight our wars to keep us free.
One does not have to wear a uniform or hold a public office to be one of freedom's soldiers. One does not have to carry a gun or brandish a sword. One only has to be armed with courage and love of liberty.
Rosa Parks was a soldier of freedom when she refused to move to the back of the bus in Birmingham. That young minister named King up at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church took up the cause and, with words sharper than any bayonet and deadlier than any bullet, slayed the evil of segregation and brought freedom to millions. Young John Lewis risked his life at Edmund Pettis Bridge as he marched for liberty, just the same as those farmers had at Concord Bridge.
Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cody Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Mary Wollstonecraft were all freedom's soldiers, fighting for women's liberty.
Some of freedom's soldiers used the pen instead of the sword. John Stuart Mill with his essay "On Liberty" and Thomas Paine in "Common Sense" provided inspiration to freedom lovers who read their words.
But there are times when the only solution is war, when, as that great hymn goes, we must "rise up and put our armor on."
I admire the songwriter Kris Kristofferson. His words and music elevated country music to a new, inspiring level. But that line in "Me and Bobby McGee" about "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" has always disturbed me.
I do not believe it. I reject it. It is not true. Kristofferson wrote it in the late 1960s, about the same time I recall seeing a news photograph of a protesting student in the days of the Vietnam War. He was carrying a sign with the words "Nothing is worth dying for."
I remember thinking then, as I do today, that if there is nothing worth dying for in our America, then there is truly nothing here worth living for, either.
Outrageous arrogance
I watched the war with Iraq with pride, but could not help marveling: "Where do we keep getting these young men and women?"
Consider how many young people on our college campuses and in our workplaces do not have this love of country and willingness to die for it. Either amnesia has set in or there is total apathy about our history and the huge price paid for freedom.
Hubris is best defined as "outrageous arrogance." And if you study the lessons of history, which we don't anymore, you would find that hubris has time and time again brought down powerful civilizations.
We are in grave danger of that happening today. There is no greater example of outrageous arrogance than in Hollywood, from those who live in a make-believe world and think they carry more influence than they do.
I am fed up with Hollywood weenies like Martin Sheen and Sean Penn making millions of dollars playing soldiers in films like "Apocalypse Now" and "Casualties of War" and then, in real life, giving the finger to those who really wear the uniform. To me, they are lower than a snake's belly, hypocrites at best, all gurgle and no guts.
Rapper Ice-T is just as bad. This hypocrite got rich with "Cop Killer," his hit in the early 1990s, and its refrain "Die, die, die, pig, die! [Expletive] the police." And then he portrays a pony-tailed detective on the popular TV show, "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit."
That's hubris. That's hypocrisy. That's a disgrace.
It's time these so-called public figures wake up.
It's also time for a wake-up call in the House of Representatives. A few elected members there, sworn to preserve and protect, visited the enemy in Iraq and became unwitting toadies and tools for dictators and wanna-be Hitlers through their reluctance to make tough decisions.
I also saw hubris in the Senate where, almost casually, a few union jobs were put above the security of a nation in wrangling over homeland security.
But where you would not see it was in the Bush White House and at 10 Downing Street in London. For President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, like Lincoln and Churchill before them, understood there is always the ongoing struggle between good and evil — and one must have steel in one's spine to take a stand.
History will be especially kind to these two 21st-century soldiers of freedom.
Overheated rhetoric
I fear that some of the Democratic presidential candidates are treading on very dangerous ground for the party and, more importantly, for the country.
I do not question their patriotism; I question their judgment. They are doing what politicians often do, playing to the loudest, most active and most emotional group of supporters, feeding off frustration while clawing to find some advantage. I've done it myself and lived to regret it. My concern is that, without meaning to, they are exacerbating the difficulties of a nation at war.
Some of the liberal media excuse these actions by calling them "populism." Populism, my butt. It's demagogy, pure and simple. They should stop this, or at least modify it into a more civil discourse.
Howard Dean, while not alone, is the worst offender, and it says a lot about the current Democratic base that he has emerged as front-runner for the nomination. Angry and red-faced, these doom-and-gloomers need to take some "calm-me-down" pills. They should realize their overheated rhetoric is dividing the country when they should be helping unite it.
Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie didn't stoop to this demagogy in 1940 when he ran against President Roosevelt during those dangerous times on the eve of World War II. And Neville Chamberlain didn't do it to Winston Churchill, who had replaced him as British prime minister. They understood there are some things more important than making political points when a nation is in peril.
Frankly, I cannot understand the candidates' shrill, manufactured opposition. We've freed a nation from a cruel and oppressive dictator. A free Iraq, most everyone agrees, can transform the Middle East.
Isn't that what presidents have wanted to do for many years? Give it time. Of course, it's going to be difficult. Of course, it's going to be costly. Regrettably, more of our American sons and daughters will die.
There will be times when it looks like it's not worth it. But in the long stretch of history, it will be worth it.
• Copyright Zell Miller, 2003. All rights reserved. For information, visit zellmillerbook.com.
Copyright © 2003 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright Zell Miller, 2003. All rights reserved. For information, visit zellmillerbook.com.