Rush Limbaugh, a conservative radio talk show host, has said that one of the things that conservatives need is a good dose of self-confidence and I agree with him. I think we have to be encouraged, in one sense, because we're made to feel like we're all alone and we're the idiots who can't get it straight. We're made to feel like we're the bad guys and troublemakers because we're trying to hang on to some vestige of public morality and moral clarity and ethical common sense. We are trying to hang on to those kinds of things that really have built this country for the last two hundred years. Because of that we are called reactionary, like we want to go back to the horse and buggy days. Or in the area of family values, we want to go back to the Ozzie and Harriet days.

Listen, we do not have to feel bad about clinging to those things, those values, those ethical concerns, the public morality that has served us so well for so many years. The language of the culture wars, especially as it appears in the media, is an example of the kind of thing that I'm talking about where you get a type of rhetoric and a type of conversation that is geared to beating anyone down who wants to cling to a conventional concept of morality and a conventional concept of the public good. A perfect example of that is this language about the culture wars.

What's ironic to me is the finger is being pointed at those who hold more conservative, conventional values, as if we were the troublemakers. You watch the Republican National Convention and you hear Buchanan give his speech in defense of a conventional concept of morality and the public good. You read in the paper that Buchanan has declared a religious war. This is nonsense, friends. Buchanan is not declaring a religious war and I want to make this point very clear. The war was already declared and it was not declared by Buchanan or by Bush or by Dan Quayle or by any other conservative concern.

The conservative view of the moral good has been the status quo. In order to change the status quo in any radical way somebody has got to challenge that and, in a sense if you can put it this way, those who invoke change have to fire the first shot. My simple point is that war was declared quite a long time ago on conventional morality and conventional concepts of the common good and it was not declared by the conservatives. It was declared by a whole raft of liberal private interests who have been assaulting the conventional concept of morality and ethical good in this country for quite a while now.

What's happening with the Buchanans of this country is that conservatives are willing to stand up and say, "We are not going to be pushed around at the end of your relativistic bayonets any longer. We're going to stand our ground and fight back." This they call declaring religious war. War was declared already. We are just responding. We are the defenders in this culture war. We are not the antagonist. We are not the instigators. We didn't start this. Those that want to change the common notion, the prevailing notion of what's good and what is morally sound, they are the ones who started it. Now I'm not saying that they don't have a right to do so. Certainly they do. What I object to is the caricaturizing of those who want to stand firm and maintain the values that have served us well.

Let me give you some examples. A couple of months ago I talked about homosexuality and I was deeply bothered by the declaration of the Los Angeles School District that one whole month would be set aside permanently as so-called "Gay Pride Month." I actually used the words, and I look back now and think they were not well chosen, of declaring war on this political activist movement. They weren't well chosen because the real point and the real issue was that the war had already been declared and I was simply enjoining the battle. I was rising to the task.

You do not have to feel bad because you're standing for a conventional morality. The burden of proof is upon those who would change...

My point in regard to that issue is simply that the war was already started and it was started by homosexual activists that seek to promote and impose a particular moral agenda on our lives and they're in the schools now. We are merely responding. The first shots have already been fired and we are responding to the challenge. We are not starting the war.

The Boy Scouts are a good example. The Boy Scouts have been doing fine up until now standing for a particular morality and all of a sudden this morality is under attack. The Boy Scouts didn't start the trouble. They didn't start the culture war. They have been making a very positive contribution to our culture as it stands with their particular morality in the lives of the young people of this country. It has been outside interests and other viewpoints, other moralities that have impinged and assaulted, that have fired the first shot and initiated this culture war.

Murphy Brown is the same thing. Quayle didn't start this. He was responding to a war in the media that is completely polluted with violence, attacks on anything traditional, the F- word everywhere except on TV. This year is supposed to be a hallmark for the kinds of things that they're going to allow on TV. We're just crossing another threshold in terms of flesh and language, attacks on traditional morality, attacks on religion of any sort. And what happened? Dan Quayle got up and said, "This makes me sick. I'm not going to stand for it." And what happened? The media establishment came unglued. It's basically like they said, "How dare you object! And if you do react, if you try to have your ideas have an impact in the marketplace of ideas, if you try to play the pluralism game and play the pluralism card on us, we're going to scream bloody murder." And that's exactly what has happened. Now the accusation is being dumped on the conservative element which is simply defending what has always been more or less productive and effective and sound morality.

The family. Governor Clinton says that nobody has a right to tell you what the family is. Well wait a minute. It strikes me that a Rhodes Scholar should understand that words have meanings and a family has meant a particular thing for a long time. It does us no good at all to take a word that means something particular and then make it mean anything whatsoever, because if words means anything whatsoever they cease to mean anything at all.

Family has been those related by blood, marriage or adoption--period. That's it. Families have been those related by blood, marriage or adoption. If you want to throw out that definition that's up to you, but don't call it a family because this is what a family is unless you're willing to accept polygamous relationships as family relationships or if it's okay for parents who don't love their children anymore to toss them out because it's not a loving group of people who want to live together under one roof. They are no longer members of a family. The traditional definition has provided some cultural stability for us and that has been very important.

What's at stake here is a way of life. It's a way of doing business, morally and ethically. It's a way of understanding what is in the best interest of the common good. There are two different ideologies. It's appropriate for those ideologies to battle it out in the marketplace of ideas. What isn't appropriate is this characterization by those who really have the edge, the lever of power in the media, that it is the conservatives who are really causing all the trouble. By very definition supporting the status quo is necessarily defensive. They don't have to fire a shot for things to stay the way they are. Somebody has got to start the trouble to cause the change and to move that change down the road in another direction, a different concept of the common good, another morality.

So I'm simply saying that you do not have to be bullied or beat up. You do not have to feel bad because you're standing for a conventional morality. The burden of proof is upon those who would change all the definitions to show that changing is sound, good and appropriate. The burden of proof is on them. The burden of proof is on the troublemakers, if I can put it that way. I am not given to using those kinds of words, but the finger has been pointed at us. The responsibility for creating this kind of turmoil belongs on the shoulders of those who would make the change. And there are many of them. And it frustrates me to death that they continue to attempt to take the high moral ground in this and it just isn't happening. It isn't true. It's a lie. It's a distortion and I think we should all be emboldened to speak out on that and demonstrate that that's the case.

Don't be afraid. Have self-confidence. We have hundreds of years behind us demonstrating the efficacy of the particular concept of the moral good and the common good that we've defended up until now. It doesn't mean that there haven't been problems and I think we should address problems. But it also doesn't mean that we have to have a complete renaissance in our system of values and the way we view what is right and wrong because that will be more destructive in the long run.

At least that's the way I see it.