Walter Kirn's "Rescue The Republic" Speech (With Transcript)

So this is where you all end up, when you do your own research!

My name is Walter Kirn. I’m a novelist. That’s the reason you don’t know who I am, and I’ve come here to tell you a little bedtime story.

When I was a kid in rural Minnesota, the land of the deplorables in the late sixties and early seventies, my mother had a little record player. The problem was, she only had five records, and all were protest music. Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary. I used to listen to the records, and I had a favorite song. Maybe you know it: “If I had a Hammer.”

It was very strange that my mother had these records, because she was a young Republican. Anyway, I was eight years old, and I had no idea what this song meant. It seemed to have something to do with being powerless, and dreaming or fantasizing that you had power. If I had a hammer, I’d hammer out justice. I’d hammer out freedom all over this land. I’d hammer out love between the brothers and the sisters… 

That was my favorite line, because it was so puzzling. Isn’t love between brothers and sisters incest? As I said, I found this song confusing, and the thing that confused me most about the song was: Why didn’t the singer have a hammer? What had happened? Who’d taken it away?

This morning, I was reading Twitter and I was reminded of this song in the most unlikely way. I saw a clip of a discussion at one of those big international conferences that you and I are never invited to, and on this video was John Kerry, former Secretary of State, former Skull and Bonesman, that secret society at Yale — the same secret society that George W. Bush belonged to. The guy who ran against John Kerry for president in 2004: Skull and Bones versus Skull and Bones. Talk about the illusion of choice.

Anyway, what Kerry was talking about was the First Amendment, and how it was a problem. A big, big problem. He had a peculiar complaint about it.

The First Amendment stopped people like him, he said, from trying to “build consensus.” Now, that’s how these people think about themselves, as builders of consensus. What does that make you and me? We’re construction materials!

John Kerry, master builder, had a complaint. The First Amendment, he said, was a “major block” for people like him from stopping what he now calls disinformation. It kept him from, he said, “hammering it out of existence.”

Now, I’m pretty sure that in 1949 when Pete Seeger wrote, “The Hammer Song,” or “If I Had a Hammer,” he didn’t mean if John Kerry had a hammer. He didn’t mean if they had a hammer:

That is not the song, and John Kerry has it wrong. The hammer does not belong to him.

That hammer belongs to us. It’s ours. But why don’t we have it? That’s the mystery.

That’s the question I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure out. Look at this gray hair. It’s been a lifetime. Why doesn’t the singer have a hammer? Why? Why do we have to dream to fantasize? Why do we have to wish we had one?

Well, I think I’ve finally answered it. We have it right in front of us. The question is, will we pick it up? The question is, will we use it? So, I have a request for you. When you go home tonight, when you get home, pick up your hammer. Pick up your hammer and use it. It’s time to build.

My mother had one other record. It was by Simon and Garfunkel. It also had a song I loved called El Condor Pasa. I think you remember its greatest line: “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.”

Don’t be a nail. Pick up your hammers. Go home. Let’s build a New America.