Prague, Czech Republic, June 18 -- I'm in Europe to join the Reagan Legacy Foundation in observing the 21st anniversary of my dad Ronald Reagan's immortal words spoken at the Berlin Wall on June 12, 1987, when he demanded that Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev demolish the wall, a grim symbol of Soviet oppression of the East German people.
Against the advice of his weak-willed, namby-pamby State Department advisers, my dad looked at the wall and electrified Berliners when he said, "General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Just over two years after the speech, the wall did come down; the brutal East German Communist government and the Soviet Union came down with it, and the Brandenburg Gate was opened.
Today there is another wall, one that stands between energy independence for the United States and continued reliance on foreign oil at a time when skyrocketing prices at the gas pump threaten to wreck our economy, bankrupt millions of American businesses and reduce countless numbers of Americans to poverty and hunger.
That wall must come down, and come down now.
And, God willing, should Republicans shrug off the rotting carcass of the global warming hoax on their shoulders now weighing many of them down, and summon up the courage to tell the Democrats who built that wall that they must tear it down, they will drive the huge numbers of Democrats off Capitol Hill in the November elections.
The American people are enraged over the gas-price crisis and ready to respond to any party that will step up, lay the blame where it belongs, and do whatever is necessary to open the gates of domestic oil drilling and production -- a gesture that will tell the sheiks and the rest of OPEC that their days of gouging the American people are numbered and that they had better increase production now.
Finding the cause of the crisis is a simple matter -- for decades we have deprived ourselves of the plentiful domestic supplies of petroleum in the continental U.S., in ANWR and offshore. Had we availed ourselves of this bonanza, gasoline would be in plentiful supply and cheap. And we would not be beholden to filthy rich Arab sheikdoms and the likes of Hugo Chavez.
Today we are denied the huge benefits of out own oil riches because the Democrats, in the grip of wealthy environmental groups that enrich their party coffers, and wedded to the false belief in global warming at a time when the planet is rapidly cooling, obdurately refuse to allow the American people to avail themselves of our own copious supplies of oil.
This is a scandal. This is a tragedy. And this is criminal.
If John McCain and the rest of his party's spokesmen fail to understand that they have been handed the very weapon that will not only save them from a humiliating defeat in November, but actually revive their chance to regain control of Capitol Hill, they will deserve to fail.
As one, Republicans must stand up and echo my dad in saying to the Harry Reids and Nancy Pelosis and all their fellow Democrats now standing in the way of energy independence: "Tear down this wall and open the gates to our domestic oil supplies, and do it now."
The American people are ready to heed a call to arms to fight for energy independence and exploitation of the abundance of our God-given natural resources. Show them where the real blame for our present predicament lies and they will react in fury -- and it will be a frightening time to be a Democrat member of Congress or presidential candidate.
Shout the battle cry to the Heavens: Drill Here! Drill Now!
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