We're still in this thing. Here's the picture, here's the guy who was there, this is happening now. We're a nation at war.
And it's not just our war on terror, it's the global war on terror, equivalent to the war against the Nazis and the Cold War, which is why the speakers invoked Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan. Our freedom is at stake. Freedom, freedom, freedom. Nothing is more important, no sacrifice is too great.

Therefore the leader we need must not only be strong and tough, but resolute, unyielding, unchanging, with no taste for "appeasement, accommodation and compromise." Bush, not the "flip-flopper" Kerry.

McCain's speech framed the Iraq War as an inseparable part of the Great War on Terror, a battle of Right versus Wrong, of Good versus Evil — a war of necessity, not choice. "We must fight; we must," he said, calling the Iraq war a "rendezvous with destiny" (quoting FDR on World War II) and arguing "there was no status quo to be left alone." The argument is that, although apparently Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction, he would have had them sooner or later. Exactly when isn't important, because as Giuliani said, Saddam "was a weapon of mass destruction himself." When the literal isn't there, the metaphorical will do.

Effective framing is equally about what's excluded from the frame. Frames, once established, are hermetically sealed. You can only think within the frame, only reason with what the frame allows.

When you focus tightly on something like the events of September 11 and a war between good and evil, you are choosing to omit other details and issues. For example, neither speaker once mentioned the name Osama bin Laden; al Qaeda was only mentioned a few times. The fact that both are still at large and functioning cannot be part of the frame celebrating our incremental victories in the "global war on terror" and the triumph of George W. Bush. Neither McCain nor Giuliani mentioned the thousand American soldiers killed in Iraq except in the most abstract terms, as heroes or sacrifices. The tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed are also omitted, as are the new terrorists recruited as a result of the Iraq War. Halliburton is not mentioned, nor Abu Ghraib. Oil is not mentioned. There's no oil in the fight-for-freedom frame.

In the frame, people like us are good, and terrorists are just evil. There's no attempt to understand the causes of terrorism, why ordinary kids grow up to become terrorists. Although both McCain and Giuliani took pains to spell out that the bad guys were Islamic fundamentalists, those who had "hijacked a great religion," not ordinary Muslims, they excluded from the frame other kinds of terrorists, such as the Irish Republican Army or Timothy McVeigh.

McCain and Giuliani spoke of the terrorists as a faceless "they": "They fight to express a hatred for all that is good in humanity" (McCain). It's as if he and Giuliani were referring to a fixed, finite group, "'they' will hear from us," meaning we'll bomb them and then there will be fewer of them. Whether bombing may make it easier for terrorists to recruit new terrorists is not part of the frame. Giuliani invoked Yassir Arafat getting the Peace Prize as a joke, but the larger picture of the Israel-Palestinian experience has to be excluded: the Israelis have been going after the Palestinian terrorists militarily for years and they're just ending up with more and more terrorists, including women and children.

Interestingly, Giuliani's speech used September 11 to justify attacking failed states. Although terrorists are not a state phenomenon — they exist separate from governments and national boundaries — conservatives are trying to use the notion of the failed state to justify the only kind of war they know how to wage, which is against countries.

It is "critical to remove the pillars of support for the global terrorist movement," Giuliani said, and that support can take a very intangible form, such as "the lack of accountable governments. Rather than trying to grant more freedom, create more income, improve education and basic health care, these governments deflect their own failures by pointing to America and Israel and other external scapegoats." So, any government that cannot control its terrorists is evil. That's bad news for the countries Giuliani named — Iran, Syria, and the Sudan — but notice he didn't mention Saudi Arabia, a failed government from which Osama Bin Laden has drawn his wealth, whose businessmen support radical Islamic schools, and the country of origin of most of the September 11 terrorists.

There are many other things that are excluded from the official framing of the "global war on terror," such as oil, the economy, the deficit, health care, jobs, education, taxes, and the effects of global trade. The implication is that none of these things matter if every American is in mortal danger, even those in the swing states where there's little to no chance of a terrorist strike.

But rationality is not at issue here. People think in terms of frames. If this frame is accepted, all such "rational" arguments will be beside the point. Negating the frame would just reinforce it. The facts alone won't do the job.

If you don't want this frame accepted, you have to puncture it effectively by using what the public already believes (for example, that Iraq is a disaster area), and you have to offer a strong, positive alternative frame.

And fast.

Michael Steele, Maryland lieutenant governor: "You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and incentive. And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they should do for themselves."

The first four sentences are code for lower taxes. They invoke the old stereotype of liberals as socialists out to redistribute wealth through class warfare. The implication is that liberals want to rescue the weak (the poor) by sabotaging the hard work of the strong (the rich). "You cannot" says that this is in vain; the wealth hierarchy is a product of a law of nature. The rich are at the top because they deserve it. The second sentence's wording is interesting because it spotlights the wage, not the work, as the significant part of the transaction: the "wage payer" is the person who has the money to give to the "wage earner." What’s hidden is that it is the worker whose toil provides money to the "wage payer." As we did yesterday, we also have to look at what's not in the frame. The rich are in no danger of being destroyed; in the last couple of decades the richest Americans have doubled their assets.

The Steele quotation's last two sentences are basically a strict-father lecture about the importance of doing it yourself. It's immoral to accept help or to help people because then (as Frist declared), they might get dependent. What about people who work hard and play by the rules, but simply because of the structure of the economy, can’t make it? They’re not in the frame. The 40 million Americans who work hard but still have no health care and can thus be bankrupted by a major illness are not in the frame. In this economy, an enormous amount of work doesn’t pay enough to live on. For this economy to function, somebody has to do such work and get paid too little. A quarter of the American work force is outside the Republican frame.

To summarize: The basic assumption of conservatism is that there is a hierarchy of merit, and that merit is based on whether you are disciplined enough to succeed. So, social programs are immoral because they give people things that they haven’t earned and therefore make them dependent. If you don’t make it, it’s your own fault; the idea of cycles of poverty does not exist. Only people who can make it are in the frame — people like Arnold Schwarzenegger .

Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California: If you believe that government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government, then you are a Republican! If you believe a person should be treated as an individual, not as a member of an interest group, then you are a Republican! If you believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does, then you are a Republican! If you believe our educational system should be held accountable for the progress of our children, then you are a Republican! If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope of democracy in the world, then you are a Republican! And, ladies and gentlemen, if you believe we must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism, then you are a Republican!

There is another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people, and faith in the U.S. economy. To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: "Don't be economic girlie men!"

These principles hold only for cases that fit the conservative frame that is being built up here. Let's parse this Republican rallying cry sentence by sentence.

Government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government: Now, he doesn't really mean that Dick Cheney should be accountable to the people, say, by revealing the notes of his secret conferences about energy policy. What Schwarzenegger is invoking is the traditional conservative preference for smaller government, less regulation … except, that is, when the strict-father worldview requires bigger government, as in a larger military and a new Department of Homeland Security, and more regulation, like the Patriot Act. The principle holds for the cases that fit conservative values.

A person should be treated as an individual, not as a member of an interest group: "Interest group" has become code for groups that have traditionally been disempowered and now want more rights, such as women, gays, the disabled, and minorities. Of course there are all sorts of interest groups that conservatives don't mind, including the military establishment, conservative Christians, seniors, agribusiness, pharmaceutical companies, and investors in oil companies. But they are outside the frame.

You believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does: Code for lower taxes. Outside the frame is that your family doesn't know how to build its own army, highways, and Internet, not to mention things that your family business might depend on, such as a trustworthy banking system, court systems to adjudicate corporate disputes, and skilled employees trained at public universities paid for by taxes. The idea of taxation as wise public investment that only government can carry out doesn’t fit the conservative frame and so is not mentioned.

That our educational system should be held accountable for the progress of our children: Essentially says that if schools are inadequate we should cut off their funds as punishment. Notice that he is not saying that the community or the country should be held accountable for the money being given to the education system. The Bush administration cut off the funding for the "No Child Left Behind" program, which has disastrously weakened public schools. But only the schools, not the funders of the schools, are in the frame.

This country, not the United Nations, is the best hope of democracy in the world: Notice the contrast — it's either us or the United Nations; nothing about working together. The sentence is about maintaining US sovereignty and the idea that the US is the pre-eminent moral authority in the world. We know what’s right and wrong, and the developing and underdeveloped "children" countries that largely make up the U.N. should go along with what we say.

We must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism: That’s invoking his Terminator image, saying that we have to go after the terrorists with weapons and kill them. What is left out of the frame is the fact, corroborated by the 9/11 Commission, that such an approach does not address the root causes of terrorism and thus only recruits more terrorists.

You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people, and faith in the US economy: So, now it's time to abandon government accountability in favor of a faith-based economy, with nothing about what the economic policies are going to be. The implication is that free enterprise just works by itself as long as you trust the market. But there’s no such thing as a purely free market. It’s a myth. It's constructed in certain people’s favor with tax loopholes, incentives and subsidies, and it’s regulated by government bodies such as the SEC and the Fed. But that's outside the frame.

To those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: "Don't be economic girlie men!": Liberals are wimps. Conservatives are the real men — the real strict fathers. The critics he's referring to are indeed pessimistic, but about Bush’s handling of the economy, his tax policy and his deficit, not about the US economy itself.

There is little that is "moderate" about Arnold. He is a conservative through and through. But Arnold is great theater, a master of great frame construction. All most people see is what is in his frame, not what is outside it.

When we get to Laura Bush's speech, the last of the night, it's time to bring the story back around from compassionate conservatism to the "global war on terrorism" and how our safety is what's most at stake.

Laura Bush, First Lady: All of these issues [education, health care, etc.] are important. But we are living in the midst of the most historic struggle my generation has ever known. The stakes are so high. So I want to talk about the issue that I believe is most important for my own daughters, for all our families, and for our future: George's work to protect our country and defeat terror so that all children can grow up in a more peaceful world.

The most important word here is that "but." The First Lady's speech is about being the wife on the home front. When she invokes "some very quiet nights at the dinner table… weighing grim scenarios and ominous intelligence about potentially even more devastating attacks," you can practically see Ma and Pa sitting there in the firelight, deciding whether to attack the Indians before the Indians attack them. She talks about the sacrifices of being on the home front, like the man trying to raise three daughters while his military wife is away but who turned all the laundry pink. (Ineptitude at household chores shows it’s not his usual job. He’s not one of those effeminate "househusbands." He’s making a sacrifice.)

Laura Bush: Many of my generation remember growing up at the height of the Cold War, hiding under desks during civil defense drills in case the communists attacked us. And now, when parents ask me, what should we tell our children — I think about those desks. We need to reassure our children that our police and firemen, and military and intelligence workers are doing everything possible to keep them safe. We need to remind them that most people in the world are good. And we need to explain that because of strong American leadership in the past we don't hide under our desks anymore. Because of President Bush's leadership and the bravery of our men and women in uniform, I believe our children will grow up in a world where today's terror alerts have also become a thing of the past.

This is a very interesting frame: she brings in the universal desire to keep one's children safe by referencing the Cold War and the fear of nuclear attack, and then says that now we don’t have to cower like children because we have a president who strikes back. She is uniting conservative moral strength on the home front — the discipline needed to be moral and prosperous — with the global show of strength in war. Laura Bush is spelling out, as John McCain and Rudy Giuliani implied last night, that the Democrats’ issues (education, health, etc.) all pale before safety at home. And that safety can be preserved only by the Bush pre-emptive war policy.

But — stepping back and again looking outside the frame — the Cold War had no preemptive attacks; it was about détente. We just spent a lot of money and forced our foes to spend a lot of money as well, preserving the status quo until communism crumbled from the inside. That was apparently a less dangerous status quo than the one that McCain said could not be tolerated with Saddam Hussein.

Overall, the evening was an artful and very effective effort at frame construction, and of tying together the framings of the first two nights into a coherent whole. So far, the framing — and what lies outside the frame — has gone largely uncommented on by the press.
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Last night was red-meat night. Tear up the opposition and throw them to the dogs. This is traditionally a vice-presidential task so that the president can keep his hands clean. But this time Vice President Dick Cheney had the help of Zell Miller, a nominal Democrat who almost always votes with Republicans.

It is important to distinguish between honest framing on the one hand, and framing by distortion and spin on the other. Arnold Schwarzenegger may actually believe that everyone and anyone can make it in this American economy, even though a quarter of the jobs pay very little money. But the frame that Miller and Dick Cheney were constructing last night was one that they could not have believed. This was framing by deception.

Their job was to frame John Kerry. And frame him they did. Here are the techniques they used. First, Zell Miller's:

* Frame the Iraq War as indistinguishable from the Sept. 11 attacks, as part of the Global War on Terror

* Frame the global war on terror as monumental and a defense of freedom itself, as defining the highest duty of our generation – akin to World War II and the Cold War. Evoke Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan over and over

* Call opposition to the president's policies opposition to the defense of freedom*

* Call a vote against one appropriations bill as multiple votes against individual weapons systems. Represent votes against the weapons systems as votes against national security and hence as weakening America

* Represent Bush as strong ("a spine of tempered steel") and Kerry as weak ("fainthearted," "indecisive," "self-indulgent"), wanting to turn America into a helpless child

The first three have been consistent throughout the convention, so there's no need to go over them again. Let's concentrate on the deliberate distortions

.Zell Miller: 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.

Miller claims that Senator Kerry opposed the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the F-14A Tomcat and F-14D fighter jets by voting against them.

Miller: 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?

The Facts?

This list was mostly taken from a single Kerry vote in 1991 against a spending bill that was also opposed by five Republican senators. Outside the frame is the fact that Cheney, then Secretary of Defense and the overseer of the department's budget, around that same time killed a number of major weapons systems, including the Navy's $30 billion to $60 billion A-12 Stealth fighter. Cheney tried but failed to kill the F14D jet – the one that Miller proudly proclaims "delivered missile strikes against Tora Bora" – and restricted the B-2 Stealth bomber program to 20 planes, when the Air Force wanted more than 80.

Over and over in this convention, speakers have used the phrase "voted against X" to condemn Kerry. But a bill is a collection of many, many items, and a vote to pass it or not can be characterized as a vote for or against any of those items.

Let's examine the most ridiculed Kerry quote about the $87 billion appropriations bill for the Iraq war, "I voted for it before I voted against it."

Bush's bill contained a $20 billion blank check to provide no-bid contracts to Halliburton and other firms for Iraq reconstruction, and none of the $87 billion price tag would be paid using Bush's tax cuts. As the Washington Post has reported, Kerry voted for a different version of the bill that would have funded some of the spending by raising taxes on incomes greater than $312,000, while Bush vowed to veto a version that would have converted half of the Iraq rebuilding plan into a loan. Kerry's alternate version was defeated and Bush's original bill came up for a vote. Most Democrats decided to support it, as it would be sure to pass. Knowing this, Kerry on principle voted "against" it – that is, he voted against the $20 billion blank check and the no-repealing-the-tax-cut provisions. Cheney, as president pro-tem of the Senate, knows this.

Dick Cheney: Although he voted to authorize force against Saddam Hussein, he then decided he was opposed to the war, and voted against funding for our men and women in the field. He voted against body armor, ammunition, fuel, spare parts, armored vehicles, extra pay for hardship duty, and support for military families. Senator Kerry is campaigning for the position of commander in chief. Yet he does not seem to understand the first obligation of a commander in chief – and that is to support American troops in combat.

Cheney also knows that the president had previously sent soldiers into battle in Iraq without sufficient flak jackets, and that one of the many provisions in this bill was to provide them at last. Kerry knew that, when the bill passed, the flak jackets would be provided. Cheney represents this situation as Kerry voting against providing flak jackets to soldiers, as if Kerry didn't care whether the soldiers were protected, when Kerry has criticized the president for not providing them in the first place.

More distortion: Consider what Cheney does with a portion of a speech by Kerry at the UNITY 2004 Conference in Washington, D.C. Here is Kerry's actual statement:

John Kerry: I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history. I lay out a strategy to strengthen our military, to build and lead strong alliances and reform our intelligence system. I set out a path to win the peace in Iraq and to get the terrorists, wherever they may be, before they get us.

In context, the word "sensitive" means "sensitive to the concerns of other nations we should be trying to recruit as allies." The whole context is about waging a strong and effective war on terrorism. Here is Cheney's rendition:

Cheney: Even in this post-9/11 period, Senator Kerry doesn't appear to understand how the world has changed. He talks about leading a "more sensitive war on terror," as though al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side.

At the Democratic Convention, Kerry said he would not only use force against terrorists, but if necessary, preemptive force. Cheney distorts the real position:

Cheney: He declared at the Democratic Convention that he will forcefully defend America – after we have been attacked. My fellow Americans, we have already been attacked, and faced with an enemy who seeks the deadliest of weapons to use against us, we cannot wait for the next attack. We must do everything we can to prevent it – and that includes the use of military force.

There we have the anti-Kerry frame: We are in a historic war to defend freedom itself. The war absolutely requires every possible advanced-weapons system. Kerry, by voting against a single 1991 appropriations bills, has shown that he is against national defense and the defense of freedom. He doesn't even want our soldiers to be protected. A president in such a war must be strong and unchanging. Bush has "a spine of tempered steel," Miller tells us. Kerry is a flip-flopper – he changes his mind and is therefore undependable and weak. He would turn America into a weak child throwing "spitballs" (Miller) and "asking for a permission slip" (Cheney). He thinks we can carry on a soft-hearted "sensitive" war against a ruthless enemy. He is weak, deluded and would not protect our country.

Framing can be an honest expression of what you really believe. It has been for a number of speakers at this convention. But last night's speeches by Miller and Cheney are filled with classic examples of framing by willful distortion.
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George Lakoff is the author of "Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think," University of Chicago Press, Second edition, 2002. He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.
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Conservatives have long sought to destroy Social Security and Medicare, for two reasons: First, from their moral perspective, all social programs take away the need for discipline and create dependency. Since discipline is seen as the basis of all morality, all such programs are immoral. Second, there is a business motive. Businesses can make more money if they can get their hands on all the Medicare and Social Security money as investments in them, not in the people whose health and future are insured. The conservative solution is to privatize both programs, creating "personal accounts." More freedom.

The motivation for government-run Social Security was that each generation would pay for the next. In Medicare, as in any insurance program, the lucky (those not injured or diseased) would pay for those less lucky. In addition, there were the twin motivations of economy of scale and of protection, from stock market declines, bad judgment, and from an individual's squandering. But in conservatism, those not sufficiently disciplined deserve what happens to them. If you're undisciplined enough to squander your personal savings account or not shrewd enough to invest wisely, then you deserve to lose your health and retirement money.

After all, conservatism posits a natural moral hierarchy of winners and losers. Conservatism gives you motivation (a pathway) to win. If you lose, your loss is a motivation to win in the future. If you're not disciplined enough to take advantage of the opportunities, too bad for you. You just won't make it in the opportunity society. And you don't deserve to.

This frame hides the 25 percent of our work force who are stuck in low-paying jobs, jobs that 25 percent of our people will always have to do and that may never pay much more. Not having spare money to invest, they can't take advantage of the tax credits to set up these accounts. Well, the losers will always be with us.

The "opportunity society" rhetoric is crafted to sound like it will remedy the same ills that the Democrats are talking about. But it is virtually the opposite in real content. Take "dependence on foreign oil." The Democrats point out that the U.S. uses about 60 percent of the world's oil, but has only 3 percent of world reserves. Kerry's argument for going to a massive alternative fuel program is that, given these numbers, "you cannot drill your way to oil independence." The Bush program is to drill everywhere. More freedom.

George Bush: To create more jobs in America, America must be the best place in the world to do business. To create jobs, my plan will encourage investment and expansion by restraining federal spending, reducing regulation, and making tax relief permanent.

This ideologically-based conservative program seems to ignore the long-term benefits to business of government investment of tax money — as in the highway system, the Internet, the development of semiconductors, medical and scientific advancement and scientist training through government grants, and tax-funded institutions that support business, such as the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and Commerce Departments, and the court system, which is used 90 percent for corporate law. Or maybe it doesn't ignore them, but just wants ordinary taxpayers to pay for them.

George Bush: As I have traveled our country, I have met too many good doctors, especially OB-GYNS, who are being forced out of practice because of the high cost of lawsuits. To make health care more affordable and accessible, we must pass medical liability reform now.

In fact, legal settlements account for a relatively small amount of the increased cost of medical malpractice insurance. But such lawsuits are in fact the last resort that the public has against unscrupulous or negligent corporations that produce products and services that harm the public. Without them, corporate accountability would fade away, and unscrupulous corporations would become free to poison the public and destroy the environment for profit. More freedom.

George Bush: The story of America is the story of expanding liberty: an ever-widening circle, constantly growing to reach further and include more. Our Nation's founding commitment is still our deepest commitment: In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom.

That was 40 percent of the speech. The rest was on the War on Terror, though he never once used the phrase. The frame inspiring terror had been well established on previous nights, leaving Bush to talk about spreading freedom.
Significantly, he did not once use the phrase "war on terror," but did use the word "liberty" 11 times and "free" or "freedom" 23 times. Here are a few instances of them:

George Bush: And we are working to advance liberty in the broader Middle East, because freedom will bring a future of hope, and the peace we all want. And we will prevail.

…Free societies in the Middle East will be hopeful societies, which no longer feed resentments and breed violence for export. Free governments in the Middle East will fight terrorists instead of harboring them, and that helps us keep the peace.

…The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

The claim was that both Iraqi and Afghan societies had become free – or inevitably would soon. This, of course, has been seriously questioned. The further claim is that we have made great progress toward making the world terror-free.

George Bush: Our strategy is succeeding. Four years ago, Afghanistan was the home base of al Qaeda, Pakistan was a transit point for terrorist groups, Saudi Arabia was fertile ground for terrorist fundraising, Libya was secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, Iraq was a gathering threat, and al Qaeda was largely unchallenged as it planned attacks. Today, the government of a free Afghanistan is fighting terror, Pakistan is capturing terrorist leaders, Saudi Arabia is making raids and arrests, Libya is dismantling its weapons programs, the army of a free Iraq is fighting for freedom, and more than three-quarters of al Qaeda's key members and associates have been detained or killed. We have led, many have joined, and America and the world are safer.

This ignores the news during the convention of terrorist strikes in Russia, Israel, Sudan, and elsewhere. It also ignores the news that the Taliban and al Qaeda are gradually regaining their hold in Afghanistan, and that "insurgents" now control a significant portion of Sunni Iraq. But saying makes it so.

How does the president know that victory is inevitable? Because God is on our side.

…I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century. I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in silence for their liberty. I believe that given the chance, they will embrace the most honorable form of government ever devised by man. I believe all these things because freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world.

And why is God on our side? Because we have the main conservative virtue: inner strength and discipline and the conservative compassion to promote opportunity for other disciplined people; in other words, George Bush's "heart of gold and spine of tempered steel," as Zell Miller put it.

George Bush: …in those military families, I have seen the character of a great nation: decent, and idealistic, and strong.

The world saw that spirit three miles from here, when the people of this city faced peril together, and lifted a flag over the ruins, and defied the enemy with their courage. My fellow Americans, for as long as our country stands, people will look to the resurrection of New York City and they will say: Here buildings fell, and here a nation rose.

And all of this has confirmed one belief beyond doubt: Having come this far, our tested and confident Nation can achieve anything. This young century will be liberty's century. By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world. By encouraging liberty at home, we will build a more hopeful America. Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom.

The code words from conservative Christianity are easy to decipher: 911 was God's test of our mettle. Did we have enough inner strength? The response in New York (led by Mayor Giuliani) and the courage of our military shows that we have so far. Our Nation is like every good person, every disciplined individual: it too can pull itself up by its bootstraps, "can achieve anything." The Resurrection of New York City signals the Resurrection of America in this election. God is calling to us "from beyond the stars to stand for freedom." To meet God's call, we must show our inner strength and resoluteness by voting for a leader with that character —not the flip-flopper, but George W. Bush!
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