HOMEPAGE for this issue: March 2, 2011 Download PDF Version

Hugh Hewitt draws record crowd with talk on leadership

By John Gleason

The doors opened at 6 p.m.  By 6:30 every seat had been claimed and at 7 p.m. when the Archbishop’s Lecture Series talk began, an overflow crowd of 500 people had squeezed themselves into the refectory at the John Paul II Center in south Denver to hear Hugh Hewitt speak. 

Hewitt—attorney, law professor, commentator and nationally syndicated radio host—was in town Feb. 22 to speak on the topic: “Who is Going to Lead Our Nation? Moral Character and the Future of American Life.”

Lino Baca drove all the way from Cheyenne, Wyo., to attend the lecture, which was co-sponsored by the Augustine Institute.  He was happy he had arrived early.

“I’ve been an admirer of Mr. Hewitt for a long time,” Baca told the Denver Catholic Register, “and I wasn’t surprised at this turnout.  He speaks to the heart of a matter without having to over-explain things—very different from most of what we get on television.”

Hewitt began by speaking about mottos; both Denver bishops have mottos he told the audience and perhaps he should have one too.

“I think my motto would be, ‘Ask the right questions,’” he said.  “It’s a lot easier to ask a difficult question than it is to answer it.  This question we ask tonight, ‘Who’s Going to Lead?’ is one of the most important we can ask and I don’t pretend to have the answer to it.”

If you check Gallup Poll’s most admired lists, Hewitt said you find four people whose names always show up.

“In the last 60 years of polls, Billy Graham has appeared on the list 54 times, Pope John Paul II was mentioned 27 times and in recent years Oprah always appears. Until her death in 1996, Mother Teresa was a perennial member of that list as well.”

Some commonalities, Hewitt said, are that all four address moral issues and speak for the dispossessed.  They also have all led lives that were blameless in public life.

“We’re now used to the crashing down of very public people,” he said.  “It’s rare for anyone to live their entire life in the public eye in a way that the public can admire.”

Hewitt said that a lack of moral leadership today has seen a world where nothing is forbidden that isn’t expressly prohibited by law, adding that a society cannot be held up by law exclusively.

“But that which is not prohibited by the law or moral society, will flourish,” he said.  “If you have a hand-held device you can access the worst sort of pornography that the world didn’t even know existed 40 years ago.  You can find any kind of vice you desire that is not explicitly outlawed.”

The solution, Hewitt said, is moral leadership—vibrant, confident, talented moral leadership of which many examples can be found in the country today such as Congressman Mike Pence R-Ind., who recently stood up on the floor of the House of Representatives and gave a five-minute speech as to why Planned Parenthood should be defunded every one of their $360 million.

“The shell game that is the funding of Planned Parenthood is now under more peril than it’s been in 40 years,” Hewitt said. “It goes to show when people like Mike Pence stand up and make speeches for principles and morals they can win.”

After the lecture Mary Wolff of Boulder told the Register she was impressed with what she heard.

“I like hearing about those leaders who don’t back down when the going gets tough,” she said.  “Not everyone can do that.”