CPAC 2007, Day 1: Tom Tancredo!

March 1, 2007. Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo addresses crowd of young folks at an evening which was not on the agenda and appeared to be hosted by the Leadership Institute.

After having heard Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush in person during recent weeks, I will suggest that anyone saying Tancredo is "not presidential" either has not listened to Tancredo or has not listened to the other people often spoken of as having the right stuff.

Listen here:

Here's an excerpt:

This is so much more important than the argument over jobs, the argument over the costs of education, of helath care - all the rest of it. All those things are true and real problems we have with massive illegal immigration in the country. But beyond that, I'm telling you, there's something much more dangerous that we have to deal with, and it is an assault on the culture itself.

And it has nothing to do with race, ethnicity - that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about an assault on the idea of America. We are losing connection to that. And we are doing so for a lot of reasons. There is this cult of multiculturalism for one thing, that permeates our society.

It pushes us in directions that I think are dangerous. It separates us. It does nothing but continually draw us apart and divide us into camps and hyphenated Americans, and camps that are ethnically or linguistically separated - and we say, yeah that's good. We'll teach you in a language other than English. Yes, absolutely, keep your connections, your philosphical, your ethnic, your linguistic, your cultural - keep all your connections to the places you came from. Do not connect with America, after all what good is it to connect with America? Why would you want to do that? What do we offer you

This is the problem; this is the cult of multiculturalism, and that's what's happening here. It's not driven necessarily by immigration: It's exacerbated by it. It's exacerbated by millions of people coming here who do not want to be Americans. They come for the purpose of a variety of things, and certainly the economic opportunities that America affords them, and that is wonderful. That's why my grandparents came; that's what most people's parents or grandparents or great grandparents came for. Most of them came for that economic opportunity.

I do not fault them for that. But is it too much to ask, that along with that economic opportunity that this country affords you, that you accept something else: And that is the idea of being an American. That's it: American.

This is the battle we're fighting. As I said, it's more important than some of the other peripheral issues that we seem to get involved with and get in arguments about when we talk about immigration.

These are big issues; they are controversial. They're worthy, however, of your involvement; they're worthy of your commitment; because the country is worthy of it. What we're trying to say is worthy of it. It is western civilization that is at stake.

We are not simply a lot of people who happen to reside on the North American continent - which is what a lot of people want us to think of when we think about ourselves: It's just one big happy family that extends from Canada to Teira del Fuego.

No, it's not. Sandwiched in there is this place called America. And it's not the continent I'm talking about. It's the country. And there's something good, and unique, and different, and admirable, and worthy of saving. And it takes more than just the force of arms to do it. It takes the force of ideas.

By the way, there is a group of people coming over from Virginia for Tom's address this afternoon at 1:00 pm. IIf you are in the area, drop by the Omni Shoreham Hotel.