Thursday, January 29, 2015
NILES
As the Mahoning Valley McKinley Club celebrated its 100th anniversary, it expected a speech for the crowd of Republican Party dignitaries gathered at its banquet.
What it got Thursday evening instead as U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Ohio of Marietta, took the podium in the auditorium at the McKinley Memorial in Niles, was a stirring pep talk on reclaiming and protecting the country.
He started by saying it’s easier to get legislation passed in Congress now that the Democrats are out of the way — or as he put it, the House has passed “a host of legislation that’s now going to go to a functional Senate.”
That got some laughs, but the crowd became quiet, even somber, as he brought up the spectre of Islamic State.
Not since the Civil War, then Pearl Harbor, has the country been at such risk, he said, going on to say that terrorist killing fields could soon include places like Pittsburgh.
“Even right here in the Mahoning Valley we could see the destruction of our values, our way of life,” he said.
“We are the guardians at the gate of freedom,” he said. “But at a time when America must be at its strongest, we’ve become weaker,” he continued. “We’ve begun to fragment. “We must reject those that seek to divide us,” Johnson said.
“We’re ready for a national conversation on how to reclaim America, to give our kids the future we so desperately want for them.”
Read more of his remarks in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.