Condi on King

Everyone's talking about Condi's defense of the second amendment on Larry King live the other night. Heck, even Drudge mentioned it.

However, everyone seemed to link to the same Yahoo article. I thought it might be worthwhile to throw the actual transcript up, ya know.

Only problem is, I can't see where she discussed it in this interview. Perhaps one of my readers can point it out.

UPDATE Joe Zwers has sent me a complete transcript, taken from the State Department's web page. Dontcha just love the blogsphere!!

Here's the relevant part of the discussion.

MR. KING: Does public opinion affect you?

SECRETARY RICE: The President is determined to lead from values and from principle. He was elected by the American people not to read the polls on any given day, but to lead in the way that American presidents have led when they are at their best, and that is to speak out for America's role in the spread of democratic values and freedom and liberty understanding that when the world is freer we are more secure and when the world is less free we are more vulnerable. When you listen and we talk about the real threats out there today, you talk about a North Korea. Why do we worry so much about North Korea, this closed, non-transparent society with potentially a nuclear weapon?

When you look at the Middle East, the absence of democracy there that has led people to economies that are -- where 22 of them have a gross domestic product less than that of Spain and where anger and hatred is being fueled, so that we experience something like September 11th. If you contrast that with Europe now, where 60 years ago nobody would have said that Europe was going to peaceful, but now where you have democracies throughout Europe, do we fear somehow war in Europe any longer? No. Do we fear Europe attacking us or using military force? No.

There is a clear link between the spread of democracy and our own security. And so that's what we have to keep our eyes on. And I know it's hard and I know that this is a generational struggle. But Americans have never gotten tired and quit early. That's not who we are. It took us a long time to get to a Europe in which the Soviet Union collapsed peacefully, in which we now can go and celebrate democracy in Georgia or Latvia. But the sacrifice was worth it because our people are much more secure and much freer.

MR. KING: What do you make, Madame Secretary, of violence as an answer? Well, we were born in violence, right? We had a --

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

MR. KING: That fellow: "When in the course of human events."

SECRETARY RICE: Right, yes.

MR. KING: We have a Second Amendment. People can own guns.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

MR. KING: By the way, what do you think about gun control?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, Larry, I come out of a -- my own personal experiences in which in Birmingham, Alabama, my father and his friends defended our community in 1962 and 1963 against white nightriders by going to the head of the community, the head of the cul-de-sac, and sitting there armed. And so I'm very concerned about any abridgement of the Second Amendment. I'll tell you that I know that if Bull Connor had had lists of registered weapons, I don't think my father and his friends would have been sitting at the head of the community defending the community.

MR. KING: So you would not change the Second Amendment? You would not --

SECRETARY RICE: I also don't think we get to pick and choose in the Constitution. The Second Amendment is as important as the First Amendment of the --

MR. KING: But doesn't having the guns, while it's protection, also leads to people killing people?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, obviously, the sources of violence are many and we need to get at the sources of violence. Obviously, I'm very much in favor of things like background checks and, you know, and controlling at gun shows. And there are lots of things we can do. But we have to be very careful when we start abridging rights that our Founding Fathers thought very important. And on this one, I think that they understood that there might be circumstances that people like my father experienced in Birmingham, Alabama, when, in fact, the police weren't going to protect you.

MR. KING: Did you see him take the guns?

SECRETARY RICE: Oh, absolutely. Every night, he and his friends kind of organized a little brigade.

MR. KING: How old were you?

SECRETARY RICE: I was eight -- eight years old.

MR. KING: You remember that?

SECRETARY RICE: I remember it very, very well.

MR. KING: Did you understand it, as an eight-year-old why --

SECRETARY RICE: I understood that something was deeply wrong in Birmingham, Alabama, when I didn't have a white classmate until we moved to Denver, Colorado. I knew that these were separate societies. Our parents -- I grew up in a very nice, sheltered little middle-class community in Birmingham. My mother was a schoolteacher. My father was a minister and a high school guidance counselor. And I'm still friends with a lot of the kids from that community. And we recognize that we had very special circumstances.

Our parents told us, "All right, it may be that you can't have a hamburger a the Woolworth's lunch counter, and it may be that you can't go to this amusement park, Kiddieland, but don't worry, you can do anything you want. Your horizons should be limitless in America."

MR. KING: Did you believe that?

SECRETARY RICE: And we believed it.

MR. KING: Or as Dick Gregory once said, "Why would you want to eat a hamburger at the Woolworth counter?" (Laughter.) We'll be right back with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Don't go away.

(Commercial break.)

WOW! All I can say is that I am more convinced than ever that Paul L. Whiteley, Sr., of Louisville, Ky and all his ilk are really nothing but reprehensible bigoted racists. Outdated my ass.

INSTALANCHE: Hello Instapundit readers. I truly am not worthy of yet another Instalanche (but yet, I still haven't managed a spot on the elusive instablogroll). Anyway, welcome to the Countertop Chronicles. Feel free to look around, and if your hungry, check out my submission for this weeks Carnival of the Recipies. Oh, and please forgive my horrible spelling. We'll just chalk that up to the lack of a copy editor around here. At work, I am lucky to be graced by one of the better copy editors.