Text of Newt Gingrich’s Speech in Wheeling

Thank you. Thank you for that very warm welcome. I have to confess to all of you I am really amazed by how this afternoon has come together. I don't know how many of you are aware of this, but my being here is entirely an accident.

My wife sings at the Basilica in Washington, the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. And many years ago, when she began singing there, then Monsignor Bransfield was the rector of the Basilica. And when I first began going there, he was director. He was very supportive and very encouraging to both Callista and me. And when he became bishop here, we instantly recognized that it was a great moment for him, but that the Basilica would miss him. So when she had an opportunity to come out and sing tonight at the cathedral in a series of songs which are dedicated to the Bishop on behalf of Mary. I am a choir groupie in my job as a spouse. I show up when I am allowed to. I am instructed not to sing, if possible, but I am allowed to hang out.

So when we discovered I would be here, we had to get here early enough for the choir to practice. She is actually at the cathedral right now rehearsing. And so we let it be known to the economics club that we were interested in doing something this afternoon. It sort of grew in all proportions. And then we learned that this theater had been renovated recently and was now available. And so it's a great honor for me to be part of the history of this theater, and it is more than oddly amazing to me to have so many friends and so many interested people here, a number of whom walked up to me, and this is sort of sobering in terms of getting older, and said, "Remember in 1986 when you were here giving a talk?" And other folks who have heard me other places I have been over the years in Morgantown and elsewhere. I am delighted to be here. I really want to thank the Public Policy Foundation of West Virginia for helping organize this. I want to thank the Government Policy Research Center at West Liberty University, and I want to thank BB&T bank. It is terrific to have this opportunity.

I am going to talk for a little bit, and then we have some microphones so we will take questions and let you direct where we are. I do want to attest, with the lights down where they are - I don't know if there is any way to turn up the house lights a little bit. But as a former teacher, I get really nervous when I can't see the audience because my experience in the old days was that the students may or may not still be there. I will ask that whoever is in charge of the lights, if they could do a little bit to raise the house lights, that would be great.

Let me - I want to talk about three things. And prior to this, I was talking to folks when I got here today, and I realize how challenging the economy is here in the Ohio Valley, and how challenging the economy is here in the Panhandle section and in Wheeling. And so part of what I want to talk about is how to think about challenging times. But I want to start in a very basic way. My daughter - he joined me earlier this year in writing a book called "Five Principles for a Successful Life." And we wrote the book because years ago when I was a member of Congress, and I would go around and see seventh and eighth graders or ninthth graders, I realized one day that they are going to learn a little bit from me about the legislative process, but they really wanted to know how to be successful and what they should do in life, and what it was that I had learned that they could learn from me instead of having to learn it the hard way. And so I began developing a way of thinking about living your life.

I came up with five principles which I want to share with you because I think, as we look at the future of Wheeling, and the Panhandle and the future of the Ohio Valley. These principles actually are relevant and apply to everybody in almost every circumstance. The first principle - I am going to give you the five. The first is to "dream big." Second is to "work hard." Third is to "learn every day." Fourth is to "enjoy life." And fifth is to "be true to yourself." Let me just tell you a little bit about all of them.

I started with dream big because if you don't have the courage to dream big, and I say this again, you know, if you can't dream big when you are 13 or 17 or 21, you sure not going to learn to do it when you are 50. And this is a country in which we were founded with our Declaration of Independence which said that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now, Jefferson took that phrase "The pursuit of happiness" from a Scottish Enlightenment writer, and it actually means, wisdom and virtue. It doesn't mean getting drunk - it doesn't mean what a lot of different people sometimes confuse with happiness. It meant long-term, positive life placement, wisdom and virtue. So every one of us here is uniquely endowed by God. We want to have a world that says that your personal rights come from God to each one of you. You are personally sovereign. And then you loan power to the government. But the center of sovereignty is always viewed personally. And the result is that our Constitution begins "We the People of the United States." It doesn't say, "we the lawyers, we the judges, we the politicians, we the Congress, we the bureaucrats." It says "We the People." But know that we the people are not guaranteed happiness - we are guaranteed the right to pursue happiness. So there is no legal standing to sue because you have not been happy. There is no federal department of happiness. We don't use happiness stamps. There is no ability to redistribute happiness. And this points directly to a conversation we have to have to the American people which is, "How does the world really work?" "And what is it that we can accomplish?"And so what I am suggesting to you that it is precisely because we find ourselves in the middle of hard times; precisely because the power structure is changing. Dream big. Think in a positive way over the next 20 or 30 years in this region. And I will give you a couple of examples of this.

And be prepared to do the second thing which is to work hard. My world experience is that every successful person have ever met works hard. If you watch Tiger Woods, he goes out and practices all the time. And it amazes me the discipline he has. I know Brett Farve a little bit - and I am big Green Bay Packers fan, so I am deeply conflicted now. But I know that Brett focuses and he practices in a disciplined way all the time in order to be in good enough shape to continue to have the longest record of consecutive starts in the history of the NFL. Everybody in life who is really successful works hard. That is particularly important. You have to put in many hours to be successful.

The third part I want to relate to you is that it is not enough just to work - you also have to learn every day. The world is constantly changing. The world is bigger than we are. I find myself learning new things all day, every day. Coming into town today, I was getting briefed by your vice mayor. He was pointing out to me that Fort Henry here was the last place to have a skirmish in the American Revolutionary War because word had not gotten this far west that they had signed a peace treaty. And I've taught history for years - I didn't know that. I wasn't so sure if I knew my history or not. The fact that you were temporarily the capital of the state of during the maneuvering over secession - I didn't know that. And so you continue to go down this list where every time we turn around, we learn knew things. And so I would say to you, as you try to think through the history of your region, one of the books I would recommend to you strongly is a book called, "Regional Advantage" by Saxenian, who is a sociologist at Berkeley - much more liberal than I am. But a very smart book because in "Regional Advantage," she looks at what worked in Silicon Valley, and why didn't it happen in Boston. And it is a fascinating study about the power of community. And the fact that everybody in Silicon Valley pulled together. That, there was one particular business professor at Stanford who had two students who happened to be named Hewlett and Packard. And he actually loaned them $500 to found Hewlett-Packard. And they have stayed in close touch. And they began over the years to then help other people form businesses. And it was a cumulative effort. So if you start with the two universities you have here, and you start thinking about what you have. What I think your greatest advantage is you have two universities on a river in an area that has right now beautiful foliage. I mean you could put together a picture book about this area that is just magnificent. And you are very close to the Pittsburgh airport. You are very close to an international airport. You are closer in travel time than northern Pittsburgh. And that means, sooner or later, when you figure out the right marketing, the Panhandle is going to be where smart people live who don't want to waste their life finding their way through Pittsburgh.

If you talk together about the intellectual capabilities you have in these two universities, the capabilities of all the medical staff you have in these two hospitals, the potential you have being this close to the Pittsburgh airport - you suddenly get a whole new story about quality of life, economic opportunity, raising your kids in a safe area with good people and strong values. And you might be shocked 10 years from now how many folks have decided to come here, rather than live in more expensive, more heavily populated and ultimately not as morally strong, places.

But to get that to work, you've all got to have the dream and the work ethic. ... If something doesn't work, you have to say why doesn't that work, what can we do differently. Give me an example.

I ran for Congress three times. I was born in Harrisburg, Pa. My dad was a career soldier. I ended up in ... Georgia as an Army brat my junior year in high school. So, like I said, I ran for Congress. And I'm a college professor with a strange voice and a Yankee accent and I'm in Georgia running as a Republican ... and I got 48 and a half percent. People say you couldn't win ... and I woke one morning in April and learned Jimmy Carter had just won the Wisconsin primary by coming from behind and carrying the dairy farmers who identified with a peanut farmer. And I remember standing there thinking, we're going to have Georgia's favorite son Democrat on the head of the ticket. ... I couldn't imagine a Georgia Republican winning. ... I ran the best campaign of my career, but on election day ... it felt so good, I really thought I had a chance to win. I went down to the ... library ... and I was standing there thinking about quitting and I started to figure out four people immediately ahead of me were all in their 80s and 90s and they had come to the nursing home in order to get revenge for Sherman's march through Georgia.

And I thought to myself, what are the odds that they're going to split their ticket and vote for a Democrat for president and a Republican for Congress? And I thought, this is going to be a long night. Well, I went from 48.5 percent to 48.3. ... I came back to run the third time, the incumbent retired and the Democrats had a primary and a runoff and finally nominated a millionaire woman state senator who was trying to steal all of my issues and pretending she was very conservative. ... In mid-September, having been running for five years, my consultant came in and said I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that with six weeks to go you're down 51-37. The good news is that we have two issues, welfare and taxes, which if we use them we should be able to win. But you have to be prepared to gamble everything because we only have enough money to buy two ads, we cannot afford to have six ideas. ... We ran the ads, we beat her 54-46.

I get to Congress ... and in December 1978 I go to see the chairman of the Congressional Campaign Committee. I said you know, we've been in the minority for 24 years, maybe we ought to have a plan to get to the majority. He said that's a great idea, why don't you chair the planning committee. I'm not even sworn in and I've become chairman of the planning committee to become the majority, I'm a freshman and I'm getting this tremendous education because in 1979 Magaret Thatcher became prime minister in Britain and I got to work with her people, and in 1980 Reagan is running and I get to work with his people. So as a freshman I'm gaining this wonderful exposure, we gain 33 House seats, we gain control of the Senate, Reagan gets a huge victory, but we didn't get the majority. Then 82 was a bad year ... we end up losing 29 seats. And so I'd tried to create a majority in '80, '82, '84, '86, '88, '90 and '92. That's seven consecutive failures. Finally in 1994 we learned (from our failures) - what we did wrong, what we could change, how we could do it different. In 1994 it all lined up and we won the majority. It was a ... great time.

The point is, as you think about economic development, as you think about the future of the region, you have to understand ... that you you begin to have the big dream you have to work every day just to figure out how to get it to happen.

The fourth thing I'll say to you is that each of you ought to do things you enjoy. People ask what should I do for a living, what should I do for a career. I always ask what do you enjoy. The reason is that you cannot work hard every day unless you like it. ... That doesn't mean you have to have a deep sense of satisfaction about what you're doing ... but that you have to get up in the morning and enjoy it. America is a very unusual country. America allows you to find a hobby where you can convince someone to pay you for 40 hours to do. ... Look at Tiger Woods ... he likes playing golf. I like giving speeches. You've got to find the things you like and then do them.

If everyone in this room decides to work as a team, you'll have an enormous range of talents. And you need to try and find what each talent is good at, what they like to do, and match them up.

Finally, you have to be true to yourself. And let me say this: you can't please others. In the end, life is between you and God. And you've got to find a way to live the life you have, to be the person you need to be, to grow into the community you need to be. You can't be somebody else's community, you can't live somebody else's life.

I think this concept of the five principles is very important. Part of the genius of America is that we make it OK for life to be difficult. Unlike almost any other country in the world, you can fail in the U.S. and get back up and start over. You can go bankrupt and get right back up and try to do it again. You can create opportunities in ways that people never dreamed of. It's a very important part of who we are. We are a country that offers you an opportunity, not a guarantee. ... Let me say that part of what we've tried to do recently is we just had a new book come out today, some of you got a copy. ''To Try Men's Souls.'' Over a year ago we sat down and said the economy's going to get worse, the American people are going to be very deeply worried, and we need to have a message that will help them understand that it's OK, that we've been here before. And so we took December 1776, Christmas day, Gen. Washington has had a very bad fall. In September the Americans were defeated in Brooklyn, they only survived by sneaking across the East River. They were then defeated in Manhattan, they were defeated in White Plains, they were driven across New Jersey. By mid-December the 30,000-man army has disappeared and Washington is down to 2,500 troops ... one-third of which do not have boots. They're marching with their feet wrapped in burlap. In fact, in the Trenton campaign, in the ice and snow, they were leaving a trail of blood as the marched. And Washington says, ''This is the crisis of the Revolution. We have to win the victory." And he proposes to have three columns cross the Delaware River, which is frozen, we will cross at night, we will converge on Trenton, we will surprise the 800 German professional soldiers, capture them, capture their weapons and come back across the river and then victory will spark from there. These generals are all saying to him, ''We can't do this.'' It's too complicated, it's too dangerous, it's too hard. Finally Washington says ''Look, if we don't get victory this army will disappear. ... The Revolution will be over. We will have lost. And when that happens, the British will hang all of us. So we've got nothing to lose. We're going to be hung anyway. This way we have a fighting chance.'' ...

For several months (Washington) had been encouraging Thomas Paine, who had written ''Common Sense'' during the Declaration of Independence, which convinced people that they needed freedom. He'd been saying to Paine for several months that he didn't need him as a common soldier, he needed him as a writer to produce a new pamphlet. And Paine produced the first chapter of a pamphlet called ''The Crisis,'' which described that ''These are the times that try men's souls.'' ... Washington that night, as the troops are boarding the boats to cross the river, has an opportunity to remind the men why they fight, what this is about, that this is the great cause of freedom and they are going to risk their lives to see if they can create America. The password for that night is ''victory, or death.'' And they meant it.

So they cross the river, which took longer than they thought it would, and then they find that they have two ravines to cross instead of one. So they have to take horse and cannon and men down one icy slope, across a raging stream, up an icy slope, go down a mile then go down another icy slope, cross another stream, up again. The result of this is exhausted men, one-third of them with burlap sacks on their feet, they are four hours late. The other two columns have not even made it across the river. But, and this is why it was such a miracle, the storm was so intense ... that the Germans had pulled all their guards inside, because no rational person would be out in weather this bad. And so even though they arrived after dawn there's no guard standing sentry. They should have been slaughtered. The Germans don't realize they're there until they are on top of them. And the Germans are so paralyzed, it's so sudden, that they collapse and surrender. Within two weeks there are 15,000 volunteers because victory creates momentum.

I tell you this ... because American is about your right to dream, to dream about the valley, to dream about the panhandle, to dream about Wheeling, to dream about your own future, to dream about your children's future. ...

I think the most important symbol ... or political slogan of the next 20 years is very simple: two plus two equals four. I know it's bold. It's out on the edge. But I want you to think about it. ... (Gingrich then told of how the Polish people used this as a sign to post in their communities, as a way to oppose the dictatorship.) What it said to the Polish people was if the government tells you that two plus two equals five, they're lying to you. If they tell you two plus two equals three, they're lying to you.

In the George Orwell novel ''1984,'' Orwell has the state torturer say to the innocent citizen he's torturing that if we tell you that two plus two equals five, you better believe us or we'll continue torturing you. And the citizen eventually gets tired of being tortured and says that yes, two plus two equals whatever you say, but in the back of his head he's thinking what if two plus two equals four? ... And it goes back to a play (in which it is said) that you can be executed for saying two plus two equals four because the establishment can't afford to have the truth spoken.

Now let me give you an example of what we're living through. I'm going to give you the American equation that's in the same tradition as two plus two equals four. Now let me see how many of you can complete the equation, the first half of the equation is the following: If you can't afford to buy a house ...

So, what do you think the second half is? So how many of you would agree, much like two plus two equals four, how many of you would agree that if you can't afford to buy a house, don't buy it. The reason I'm telling you this - and this is a very radical proposition - is that for 25 years we've been lying. For 25 years we've had government policies that say look, if you can't afford to buy a house, what if I got you into a house for no down payment, no payment on principal for three years, I gave you a low market interest rate, what do you think would happen? Oh, by the way, when you own a house, if anything goes wrong with the plumbing, you've got to get it fixed. If anything goes wrong with the electricity, you've got to get it fixed. The roof leaks, you've got to get it fixed. Oh, you mean you can't afford to do any of the repairs. Oh, and by the way, eventually we're going to start making you pay principal. Oh, you can't do that. Eventually, we'll give you a real interest rate. Oh, you can't do that. And eventually it's a problem.

Now if that happens to one person, it's a personal tragedy. If it happens to a million people, it's a national crisis. And yet no politician in either party has had the nerve to go on national television and say, 'this is a cultural crisis with a financial implication because we have lied to ourselves for generations.

Everytime anywhere in America we promote a child who has not learned we are cheating that child. Everytime we have a first, second or third grader who can't read and we promote them, we cripple them for the rest of their lives. And it's not a function of money. I was in a school in Philadelphia, Pa., two weeks ago where I found myself in the amazing circumstance - which I never would have predicted - that I have now gone around the country with the Rev. Al Sharpton. If you would have told me that two years ago, I would have thought you were crazy. But Al started by saying that, "Education is the number one civil right of the 21st century," and I have been with Rev. Sharpton when he has looked educators in the eye and said, "Don't tell me that your union is going to protect a mediocre teacher who is destroying children because I don't think it is morally defensible."

If you can only imagine a prosperous, successful Panhandle 10 or 20 years from now, education will be one of the themes. And it's not about money. It's about leadership; it's about standards; it's about learning what works. So Sharpton and the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and I were in Philadelphia two weeks ago. We were in a school called the Mastery School, named for the Mastery Charter School System. This school, inner-city, African-American, very poor children. This school, three years ago, scored in the 25th percentile. It was so bad that the city of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania took it over and gave it to the charter school. They took over in exactly the same building with exactly the same students. In three years, they changed it so dramatically, that they tested this year in the 86th percentile. Better than many suburban schools. They jumped 61 percentile points in three years, with the same kids. So we are interviewing kids. They would say to us - well the old school was like this, but the new school is like this. They are talking about the same building. But in their minds, it's vividly clear- there was an old school that failed and there is a new school that is successful. In the 11th grade 100 percent of the students plan to go to college. One of the techniques that they use is that every teacher hangs outside his or room the flag of the college they graduated from. So if you walk through the hall, you are vividly reminded: here is Penn State, here is the University of Pennsylvania, here is MIT. It is amazing the number of people they are attracting because it is suddenly an exciting place to be.

Last week, we were in Arizona at what has been described as the finest school in America. It is called the Basic School; it is a charter school. It is less expensive than the bureaucratic schools. Eighty-five percent of the teachers do not have a teaching certificate. The only thing they have is substance. They have a Ph.D in biology, they have a master's in chemistry, they have a professor from Johns Hopkins who uses the same notes in her 10th grade English class that she used to use to teach college at Johns Hopkins. She teaches a Johns Hopkins English class to 10th graders. The students start in the 5th grade, which is the .... they are able to finance, and every year they are creating a product for the next year. And by the time they graduate from high school, they've had two years of calculus and a year beyond calculus, so they have three years of advanced math - every single student. It's astonishing. And I recommend to you, if at some point you want to get into an education project here, I would start with two movies by Bob Fountain who is a health entrepreneur who made a ton of money in order to hire people. Two movies, you can find these at 2mminutes.com. The first movie is called "2 Million Minutes," that's what 2mminutes stands for. Two million minutes is four years of high school. And in the first movie, he shows you Chinese, Indian and American high school students, and at the end of the movie, he realized that we were a country that was aggressively preparing for the 1956 Olympics. Nobody is going to win any prizes. The second movie just came out. It's called "2 Million Minutes: The 21st Century Solution," and it is a film about the basic school experience.

Now, you have the potential here, you have the intellectual capability, you have the community. You could go ... But you have to decide that you want to do it. I am not arguing that you should or shouldn't. I am just saying to you that it is a question of leadership, it is a question of innovation. It is not a question of money. These places are less expensive, they are not more expensive. But they recruit real talent, they reward real talent, they have really high demands of the students. Which leads to a lot of difficulty in the communities because all of a sudden, the parents are expected to make sure their kids do the homework. They actually expect discipline in the classrooms. It is a fundamentally different model, but it is the only model that is going to allow us to survive in the 21st century.

I want to close with two big ideas, and then take questions. First, we are going to get four to seven times in the next 25 years as we had in the last 25 years, and 65 percent of that is going to come from outside the U.S. There are more scientists alive today than at any previous point in history. They are better connected with e-mail and cell phones. Every year, they get better computers and better lab equipment. They increasingly tied to the marketplace through venture capital and licensing. One of the things I would urge you to think about is to build, almost, a science study group that just looks around, sits on the Internet and just scans for ideas and starts looking for entrepreneurs, and tries to figure out how to take some of these old buildings and tries to turn them into entrepreneurial spaces. And I come back to this again - you are not far from an international airport. You have the potential to become very attractive and very intriguing to entrepreneurs from all over the world.

The second thing I would urge you to think about is the very reality of China and India. China and India are not problems, they are facts. There are billions of Chinese - there are a billion Indians. They have every right to pursue happiness. And they will roll up their sleeves, and they are going to work hard to pursue it. For us the question is, "Do we want to roll up our sleeves and compete, or do we want to relax and decay?" If we want to compete with them, I believe we are the most unique country in history. We attract more people, from more places, and integrate them into a dynamic feature better than any society based in the world. And if we are prepared to re-think what we are doing, we will be remarkable in the next 50 years.

I have two grandchildren, Maggie, who is 10, and Robert, who is 8. I want them to be in their 40s and 50s when we are the most creative and most prosperous country in the world because that is the necessity if we are going to be the strongest and freest country. For that to happen, we have to re-think litigation, regulation, taxation, education, health, energy and infrastructure. And that's a lot. You can see what we are doing about it at Americansolutions.com and healthtransformation.net. You can get both of those, or go to my first name, Newt.org.

But I will close with this example. I wrote a novel about Pearl Harbor. From Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked us, to August 1945 when the Japanese surrendered. That's three years and eight months. In 44 months, we mobilized 15-and-a-half million Americans in uniform; we built the B-17, B-24 and B-29; we built a two-ocean navy; we launched across North Africa, Sicily, Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Holland, and conquered Germany. At the same time, we fought a war across the Pacific, and defeated Japan. Forty-four months. ...

We have become a country whose litigation, regulation and taxation is crippling us. So when you leave today, as you dream big and start developing the Panhandle of the future and the Wheeling of the future, every time you come across something, ... make a note of it. ... We are only going to change the rest of America if we can have everyone of you to have the moral courage to apply two plus two equals four. And insist on telling the truth about our challenges, and insist on finding solutions.

I am thrilled to be here.

Member Comments

View Comments: | 1-2 | Post a comment

USMCDeathPimp
10-17-09 1:37 PM »Report Abuse	"Im here totally by accident" (but I keep forgetting that the GOP funded grassroot boys and the BBT bank sent me a check to actually show up)
lizadittoe
10-17-09 1:33 PM »Report Abuse	Thanks for posting this. A great read. Just a couple points of clarification. The creator of the film is Bob Compton, not Bob Fountain. ***********2mminutes****/ The name of the Charter school is BASIS, not basic. ***********basistucson****/ I'm sure these were just transcription errors. Thanks!

You must first login before you can comment.

Existing Member Login
Not a Member?	Create a Member Account
*Your email address:		<--Email REQUIRED!
*Password:	Forgot Password?	<--Password REQUIRED!
	Remember my email address.