Senator Zell Miller at the RNC

I am going to share some very personal information. I do
not cry very often. In fact, I really do not get very emotional about anything.
I cried for about an hour, sitting in my car, after hearing Zell Miller speak.
Not because I was angry or upset about anything. I cried because I have never
really heard a political speech that gave me hope.  Zell Miller I tip my
hat to words that simply mattered. History will remember this speech.

The following is the Republican National Convention speech
delivered by Senator Zell Miller on September 1, 2004.

Since I last stood in this spot, a whole new generation
of the Miller Family has been born: Four great grandchildren. Along with all the
other members of our close-knit family — they are my and Shirley’s most
precious possessions. And I know that’s how you feel about your family also.
Like you, I think of their future, the promises and the perils they will face.
Like you, I believe that the next four years will determine what kind of world
they will grow up in. And like you, I ask which leader is it today that has the
vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?

The clear answer to that question has placed me in this
hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party. There is
but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man’s name is
George Bush.

In the summer of 1940, I was an eight-year-old boy
living in a remote little Appalachian valley. Our country was not yet at war but
even we children knew that there were some crazy men across the ocean who would
kill us if they could. President Roosevelt, in his speech that summer, told
America "all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by
an overriding public danger."

In 1940 Wendell Wilkie was the Republican nominee. And
there is no better example of someone repealing their "private plans" than this
good man. He gave Roosevelt the critical support he needed for a peacetime
draft, an unpopular idea at the time. And he made it clear that he would rather
lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue. Shortly
before Wilkie died he told a friend, that if he could write his own epitaph and
had to choose between "here lies a president" or "here lies one who contributed
to saving freedom", he would prefer the latter.

Where are such statesmen today? Where is the
bi-partisanship in this country when we need it most? Now, while young Americans
are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is
being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrat’s manic obsession to
bring down our Commander-in-Chief.

What has happened to the party I’ve spent my life
working in? I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of
America to fight for freedom over tyranny. It was Democratic President Harry
Truman who pushed the Red Army out of Iran, who came to the aid of Greece when
Communists threatened to overthrow it, who stared down the Soviet blockade of
West Berlin by flying in supplies and saving the city.

Time after time in our history, in the face of great
danger, Democrats and Republicans worked together to ensure that freedom would
not falter. But not today. Motivated more by partisan politics than by national
security, today’s Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a
liberator. And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American
troops occupiers rather than liberators.

Tell that to the one-half of Europe that was freed
because Franklin Roosevelt led an army of liberators, not occupiers. Tell that
to the lower half of the Korean Peninsula that is free because Dwight Eisenhower
commanded an army of liberators, not occupiers. Tell that to the half a billion
men, women and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from
Poland to Siberia, because Ronald Reagan rebuilt a military of liberators, not
occupiers. Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for
the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier. And, our
soldiers don’t just give freedom abroad, they preserve it for us here at home.

For it has been said so truthfully that it is the
soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the
soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier,
not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. It is the soldier who
salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag
who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag. No one should
dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he
doesn’t believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and
defenders of freedom at home.

But don’t waste your breath telling that to the leaders
of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not
the solution. They don’t believe there is any real danger in the world except
that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign
policy. It is not their patriotism – it is their judgment that has been so
sorely lacking. They claimed Carter’s pacifism would lead to peace.

They were wrong. They claimed Reagan’s defense buildup
would lead to war. They were wrong. And, no pair has been more wrong, more
loudly, more often than the two Senators from Massachusetts, Ted Kennedy and
John Kerry. Together, Kennedy/Kerry have opposed the very weapons system that
won the Cold War and that is now winning the War on Terror.

Listing all the weapon systems that Senator Kerry tried
his best to shut down sounds like an auctioneer selling off our national
security but Americans need to know the facts. The B-1 bomber, that Senator
Kerry opposed, dropped 40% of the bombs in the first six months of Operation
Enduring Freedom. The B-2 bomber, that Senator Kerry opposed, delivered air
strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hussein’s command post in Iraq.
The F-14A Tomcats, that Senator Kerry opposed, shot down Khadifi’s Libyan MIGs
over the Gulf of Sidra. The modernized F-14D, that Senator Kerry opposed,
delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora. The Apache helicopter, that Senator
Kerry opposed, took out those Republican Guard tanks in Kuwait in the Gulf War.
The F-15 Eagles, that Senator Kerry opposed, flew cover over our Nation’s
Capital and this very city after 9/11.

I could go on and on and on: Against the Patriot Missile
that shot down Saddam Hussein’s scud missiles over Israel, Against the Aegis
air-defense cruiser, Against the Strategic Defense Initiative, Against the
Trident missile, against, against, against.

This is the man who wants to be the Commander in Chief
of our U.S. Armed Forces? U.S. forces armed with what? Spitballs? Twenty years
of votes can tell you much more about a man than twenty weeks of campaign
rhetoric. Campaign talk tells people who you want them to think you are. How you
vote tells people who you really are deep inside. Senator Kerry has made it
clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.
Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to
decide. John Kerry, who says he doesn’t like outsourcing, wants to outsource our
national security. That’s the most dangerous outsourcing of all. This politician
wants to be leader of the free world. Free for how long?

For more than twenty years, on every one of the great
issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and
more wobbly than any other national figure. As a war protestor, Kerry blamed our
military. As a Senator, he voted to weaken our military. And nothing shows that
more sadly and more clearly than his vote this year to deny protective armor for
our troops in harms way, far-away.

George Bush understands that we need new strategies to
meet new threats. John Kerry wants to re-fight yesterday’s war. George Bush
believes we have to fight today’s war and be ready for tomorrow’s challenges.
George Bush is committed to providing the kind of forces it takes to root out
terrorists. No matter what spider hole they may hide in or what rock they crawl
under. George Bush wants to grab terrorists by the throat and not let them go to
get a better grip. From John Kerry, they get a "yes-no-maybe" bowl of mush that
can only encourage our enemies and confuse our friends.

I first got to know George Bush when we served as
governors together. I admire this man. I am moved by the respect he shows the
First Lady, his unabashed love for his parents and his daughters, and the fact
that he is unashamed of his belief that God is not indifferent to America. I can
identify with someone who has lived that line in "Amazing Grace," "Was blind,
but now I see," and I like the fact that he’s the same man on Saturday night
that he is on Sunday morning. He is not a slick talker but he is a straight
shooter and, where I come from, deeds mean a lot more than words.

I have knocked on the door of this man’s soul and found
someone home, a God-fearing man with a good heart and a spine of tempered steel.
The man I trust to protect my most precious possession: my family. This election
will change forever the course of history, and that’s not any history. It’s our
family’s history. The only question is how. The answer lies with each of us.
And, like many generations before us, we’ve got some hard choosing to do. Right
now the world just cannot afford an indecisive America. Fainthearted,
self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.

In this hour of danger our President has had the courage
to stand up. And this Democrat is proud to stand up with him. Thank you. God
Bless this great country and God Bless George W. Bush.

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