July 4, 2022 - Bannon's War Room
48:42
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unidentified
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Lift up your hands, ye heroes, and swear with proud disdain, The wretch that a wooden snare you shall spread his net in vain. | |
| Should Europe empty, all her force will meet them in a rain, And fight and shout and shout and fight for free America. | ||
| We let fair freedom hither and lo, the desert smiled. | ||
| A paradise of pleasure was opened in the wild. | ||
| Your harvest, bold Americans, no power shall snatch away. | ||
| Preserve, preserve, preserve your rights in a free America. | ||
| Torn from a world of tyrants beneath this western sky, we've formed a new dominion, a land of liberty. | ||
| The world shall own we're free, been here and such we'll ever be. | ||
| Huzzah! | ||
| Huzzah! | ||
| For free America! | ||
| Some future day shall crown us the masters of the main. | ||
| Our fleet shall speak in thunder to England, France, and Spain. | ||
| Nations o'er the ocean's spread shall tremble and obey the prince who rules by freedom's laws in North America. | ||
| Okay, welcome back. | ||
| It is 4 July, the year of our Lord, 2022. | ||
| You're in the War Room. | ||
| This is our annual July 4th celebration, commemoration. | ||
| I'm honored to have Dave Brat as my wingman for the entire two hours from Liberty University. | ||
| That is Diane Taraz. | ||
| You can get that online. | ||
| Her songs of the American Revolution. | ||
| That is Free America. | ||
| As you notice, that's where we played the British Grenadier. | ||
| They take the British Grenadier music And, of course, they've reset it to a song about American freedom. | ||
| That was one of the Revolutionary War songs, one of the most popular songs during the Revolution. | ||
| I want to bring in now Steve Stern from the flagship company. | ||
| Steve, your whole company is built around patriotism. | ||
| Today is really where we celebrate and commemorate the birth of the United States of America, the signing of the Declaration. | ||
| I guess it actually signed, technically, on the 2nd, but announced today. | ||
| And it was always, you know, Adams, Brett, always had a problem with that. | ||
| Remember Adams turned down a bunch of speaking, Adams being Adams, turned down a bunch of speaking engagements in the first years after the Revolution. | ||
| He says, no, it's really the 2nd. | ||
| You invite me on the 2nd, I'm there. | ||
| The 4th is just... But Adams lost that fight. | ||
| Steve Stern, tell us about the flagship company. | ||
| You had a huge run-up. | ||
| And the War Room Posse was just a stack, our huge run-up to July 4th. | ||
| Tell us, what does July 4th mean to you, the company, and about the founding of it? | ||
| Why are you guys, 24, 7, 365 days a year, all about the American flag and American patriotism? | ||
| So, my dad founded this 68 years ago, this month, and we're living the American dream. | ||
| I mean, this is it. | ||
| You know, my dad told me about What happened prior and how they had a fight for a job during the depression for $22 for a week. | ||
| And today people spend $22 like it's nothing. | ||
| And he would tell me you know that we got to just fight and fight. | ||
| And so we ran our company without ever borrowing a dime from the bank. | ||
| We built our company from the ground floor. | ||
| We started with a lot of different items and about 30 years ago we bought a company in Cincinnati that was doing the flag shirt that I'm wearing called Benji. | ||
| And from there and then 9-11 happened and then it just went crazy. | ||
| So, we realize that, you know, mostly Republicans buy our shirt because they love our country. | ||
| And today we celebrate the 4th of July, and Brett's going to tell you a few things about the company and what we do. | ||
| And as I turned over most of the company to him a number of years ago because I'm trying to retire, so I'm working harder than I ever did before. | ||
| As you know, reachingstrategy.com, we're working around the clock to get people involved. | ||
| So here's Brett, my son, who's been with me for 25 years. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thanks. | |
| Independence Day is a good day to look back to and appreciate everything that happened. | ||
| I'm so thankful for my dad and all the War Room people who are out there who purchased stuff for the 4th of July. | ||
| You know, yeah, like you said, Steve, the Independence Day was a day, not the day exactly that the Declaration of Independence was signed, but it's a day that's recognized as our birth of independence. | ||
| We like to celebrate that on a year-round basis and we think people should be patriotic all year round and we're excited that so many people are wearing our shirts today and are going to continue wearing them throughout the year. | ||
| We love America and are so proud of our company and our history. | ||
| And it's just been a great season this year and we look forward to continuing it. | ||
| And we want to thank everybody who bought our shirts. | ||
| This is the greatest thing that we ever had because we almost doubled our business from last year, which is unbelievable and it wouldn't happen. | ||
| But you and The War Room and John Fredericks and a few other people that helped us. | ||
| And we've also expanded Our goods. | ||
| In other words, you know, we have so many customers that they look for something new every year. | ||
| So Brett's wearing one of our newest styles. | ||
| And if you look behind us, we got a lot of variety of styles. | ||
| So we try to keep the country going and you know, we want to thank everybody and you know, we want everybody to get to www.theflagshirt.com. | ||
| I'm going to put my name up and an information in case you still want to call us and you know, People buy shirts after the Fourth of July. | ||
| If anybody needs to call us, we did call everybody back. | ||
| We made sure everybody got their shirts the best that we could. | ||
| And, you know, we're going to continue to do that for the rest of the year. | ||
| Give your number, because I think particularly this summer, every day is Independence Day, right? | ||
| This is a fight. | ||
| That's going to take us through, not just November, but every day. | ||
| I think this is what, you know, you don't have to, it just doesn't have to be the 4th of July to commemorate this. | ||
| One of the things Dave and I are talking about. | ||
| We started off, really, with clips of Lexington and Concord, and our point there was how afraid, how definitely afraid you would be as a human being to see the British Army, as squared away as they were, and rough characters, right? | ||
| Bad hombres, tough hombres. | ||
| Show up on Lexington Common with this group of thrown-together militiamen. | ||
| And then at Concord, where it was really, that was a good old gunfight right there. | ||
| And the fear, but to understand that that's what it means to be an American. | ||
| You've got to be able to look that in the eye and back it down. | ||
| It's one of the things I think about the precinct strategy and everything is people get engaged. | ||
| But every day is Independence Day. | ||
| If we're going to take this country back and turn it around, every day is Independence Day. | ||
| So give the number. | ||
| I want to make sure people, this becomes part of The culture and the society. | ||
| Not just that we have to on Memorial Day or Fourth of July that we do it, but every day is Independence Day. | ||
| Particularly parents handing it down to their kids and grandkids. | ||
| So give the numbers, Steve. | ||
| 9-5-4-3-1-8-6-9-0-2. | ||
| Listen, I want to get everybody involved in precinct strategy, and that makes us independent. | ||
| Because, you know, the Democrats are trying to steal the country. | ||
| They're trying to take it away from us, take away our independence. | ||
| So by getting involved in your local Republican Party, voting, getting people elected, makes us independent. | ||
| If we just sit back and let them take away the country, you know, everybody complains a lot, we're going to be in serious trouble. | ||
| I mean, you see every country going down one at a time, but the United States is free and everybody wants to come here. | ||
| So we're going to get tons and tons of people coming. | ||
| So we want to wear our shirts. | ||
| And, you know, when I wear my shirt and go to lunch or breakfast on non-holidays, people come up to me and ask me where I get my shirts. | ||
| I flash my card and say, hey, you must be a Republican. | ||
| You want to join us and get involved. | ||
| So, action, action, action. | ||
| Let's get everybody involved. | ||
| Keep everybody working. | ||
| I want to thank everybody who's helped us all year. | ||
| And, you know, we have a lot of people on our success stories. | ||
| Once a week, on a Tuesday night, we get together with the 40 people or 50 people from each state, and we discuss what's happening around the country so that we can take back our country. | ||
| We can't pay $5, $6 gas prices, double food prices, Rents are going crazy. | ||
| And we got to take back the country. | ||
| And we got to work with Tom Homan, who's trying to close the border. | ||
| And you know, he's the most patriotic guy we have known. | ||
| He's worked for five presidents. | ||
| Tom Trento, who also is working with him to take back the country. | ||
| We're going to do videos to show the people what's happening on the border. | ||
| And again, we want to just put everybody across the border wearing our shirt, letting them know what the USA stands for. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yep. | |
| and what our company and country stands for. | ||
| So keep up the good fight. | ||
| We want to double the size of your audience so people really know what's going on because you're one of the few people in the country to tell the people what's happening. | ||
| So again, action, action, action. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| We're talking about history and ideas and some of this is hard to capture, the intangible part of the greatness of this country. | ||
| But when I see you, a father and a son, together like that, expressing what you're doing, that's part of that intangible greatness in this country. | ||
| So we're thankful for both of you, and we can hear you speaking from the heart. | ||
| God bless you both. | ||
| Thanks very much. | ||
| Let me ask you, you said something about, you know, Republicans generally buy the shirts now. | ||
| I come from a Democrat, you know, Irish Catholic Democratic family that was, we were Democrats all the way to, you know, I guess the Vietnam War, but really Reagan was the breaking point. | ||
| We were huge Reagan supporters. | ||
| But it was, you know, John Kennedy was an idol in our house. | ||
| Lyndon Johnson, not so much. | ||
| But, Steve, when did you notice, it hasn't always been like that. | ||
| I take it when your dad started the company, or when you guys bought the company in Ohio with the flag shirts back in, what, the 80s or the 90s. | ||
| It had to be, it wasn't always that it was weighted towards the MAGA movement, or Donald Trump, or Republicans buying things that celebrated the flag, celebrated the symbols of American greatness. | ||
| Was it, or was it from the very beginning? | ||
| No, I mean, people were like that. | ||
| You know, when I went to school, you know, we had Democrats, Republicans, we were civil. | ||
| Today, it's gotten out of hand because they want to control the country. | ||
| And, you know, back then, you know, I was in a fraternity at the University of Miami. | ||
| You know, we were very civil. | ||
| You know, there were Republicans, there were Democrats. | ||
| We all discussed our views, and nobody was antagonistic to anybody else. | ||
| Today, it's crazy. | ||
| If you go out and you have a dinner and you talk to somebody who's Democratic, they just rip you a new you know what. | ||
| And you know, back then, you know, when my dad was there, and again, back then, you know, they were working their butts off to supply a living for my family, and everybody else was that. | ||
| They didn't have this spare time to go out. | ||
| And then what happened was, the left started teaching this stuff in the school. | ||
| And thank God, you know, maybe this, you know, the pandemic that we had, mothers started to watch what the kids were learning. | ||
| And they started seeing all this junk that they were teaching them about the left. | ||
| And you know, they got upset, and they finally got off their behinds, and they started to deut up, and they went to their local school boards, and they got shouted down and bashed on. | ||
| They said, wait a minute, this is our kids. | ||
| This is what you're teaching. | ||
| We got to change this. | ||
| So what happened was they got together with all the other women. | ||
| And that's that's a great thing for us right now because a million people have turned from the Democratic Party to Republican. | ||
| We need 10 million people to change because they see what's going on. | ||
| They're trying to give away this country to the leftists. | ||
| And you know they want this crazy Green, new green, and they're killing our oil people. | ||
| I mean, let's face it, Biden doesn't know what's going on. | ||
| I don't know who's running the country. | ||
| Maybe Obama's running the country. | ||
| And we got, you know, all these people who are saying, hey, Just let everybody in the country. | ||
| Who's paying for it? | ||
| We're paying for it. | ||
| Now, as you raise the interest rates, we all know that. | ||
| How are we going to pay this debt? | ||
| You know, when I was in business, I never wanted to borrow money from the bank because I knew that someday what happens if business gets bad? | ||
| How do I pay it back? | ||
| So I work instead of 13 hours a day. | ||
| I work that extra hour to make sure that we stayed in business. | ||
| And that's one of the things that I'm proud of. | ||
| You know, when you're in business 68 years and After the 4th of July, we're going to let you know about a product that we have that we're the number one in the world. | ||
| And when you're the number one in the world, that's sensational. | ||
| One more time, for people that want to make every day Independence Day, they want to get shirts, they want to get the hats, they want to see the other product offerings. | ||
| One more time, give us the website and then give us the phone number. | ||
| Action, action, action. | ||
| I want everybody to start to wear more shirts. | ||
| Let those Democrats know that the Republicans care about the country. | ||
| Maybe they'll turn, and every person that turns from Democrat to Republican, hopefully they'll buy a shirt. | ||
| And if you see in the background right here, there's a little bit, Get Involved, Save America, The War Room Meets Business, precinctstrategy.com. | ||
| Action, action, action. | ||
| Steve Stern, Brett Stern, thank you. | ||
| By the way, Brett, it doesn't feel like he's retired. | ||
| I'll just throw that out there. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| It doesn't feel like he's retired. | ||
| Doing great. | ||
| Doing great. | ||
|
unidentified
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Maybe it was 25 years ago, J.C. | |
| Penney's gave him an award. | ||
| They were so happy that he was retiring 25 years ago. | ||
| Sell, sell, sell. | ||
| You got it. | ||
| Steve and Brett Stern, happy 4th of July. | ||
| Thank you guys for being there for everybody. | ||
| Watch those fireworks. | ||
| Watch those fireworks tonight. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| Amen. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Okay, we're going to take a short break. | ||
| Dave Brat and I are going to get back to talking about... Dave Brat's going to walk through the Declaration of Independence and the philosophical underpinnings of it. | ||
| The power of it. | ||
| The power of the Judeo-Christian West. | ||
| That underpins our civilization, our society, our culture, everything that underpins these magnificent documents and the bravery and courage on the battlefield. | ||
| This had to be fought for. | ||
| They signed the deal, then they had to win the deal, had to close the deal. | ||
| All next in The War Room. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm going to be doing a lot of walking. | |
| by name. | ||
| Mounting guns 44, from New York she came. | ||
| Put a cruise in the channel of old England's fame. | ||
| With a noble commander, Paul Jones was his name. | ||
| Hurrah! | ||
| We had not sailed far before two sails we spied, a stout 44 and a 20 likewise, and 40-bolt shipping all laden with store as the convoy stood in for the old Yorkshire shore. | ||
| Hurrah! Our country forever! Hurrah! | ||
| Our brave Captain Jones to his men he did say, Let every man fight a good battle today. | ||
| We'll take that bold convoy in the height of her pride, or the recharge shall found her and sink in the tide. | ||
| Hurrah! | ||
| Our country forever! | ||
| Hurrah! | ||
| The battle rolled on until Bold Pearson cried, Have you struck your colors? | ||
| Then come alongside. | ||
| But so far from thinking the battle was won, John Paul Jones replied, I have not yet begun. | ||
| Hurrah! | ||
| Our country forever! | ||
| Hurrah! | ||
| We fought them for glasses, for glasses so hot, till fifty bold sailors lay dead on the spot, and fifty-five others lay stretched in their gore, while the thundering cannons most fiercely did roar, hurrah! | ||
| Our country forever, hurrah! | ||
| The Alliance bore down and the Rishar did rake, which caused the bold hearts of our seamen to ache. | ||
| But our shot flew so hot that they couldn't stand long, and the brave British colors came finally down. | ||
| Hurrah! Our country forever! Hurrah! | ||
| Hurrah! | ||
| Okay, that is the great battle of John Paul Jones. | ||
| I have not yet begun to fight. | ||
| Nailed his colors to the mast and shot away. | ||
| Our independents had to be fought for this. | ||
| Diane Turaj can get her album. | ||
| I recommend everybody get it. | ||
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| Songs of the American Revolution. | ||
| Dave Brat, this document signed today, there was a lot of fighting that took place beforehand, and of course there was many, many years of fighting that went afterwards. | ||
| In fact, we'll talk a little bit later, within 90 days, a British fleet, the largest expeditionary force that the British had ever put forward, had already left, I think, London when this was signed, heading towards the United States that would land in Long Island, I think in August. | ||
| The British had already had a belly full of this, right? | ||
| The monarchy had had a belly full of this, and certain members of Parliament. | ||
| People should remember, though, it was like the Vietnam War, the revolution. | ||
| There was a huge amount of consternation and fight in the British Parliament about all this. | ||
| But walk through, how did guys like Jefferson at that age, Given that you went to a university here, you didn't really have a lot of contact with London or Paris. | ||
| That would all come later. | ||
| How did they actually be able to create something as powerful as the Declaration, and particularly how succinct it is? | ||
| Yeah, I think a lot of it's tied to belief. | ||
| And they had a list of grievances against the king and against the crown based on core beliefs. | ||
| And today we take these for granted. | ||
| We can't comprehend That this generation of young people, 30-year-olds we're talking about, some 20, some 40, but these folks actually believed, right? | ||
| That's why we're weaving in the Judeo-Christian tradition. | ||
| It's real, right? | ||
| It's the history from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the whole Western tradition in history is what we're talking about through Jesus. | ||
| The calendar turns zero for the Son of God, right? | ||
| That doesn't happen Every other week, right? | ||
| And then you get Augustine and Aquinas, and then the universities we've been talking about, Cambridge and Harvard, all Christian. | ||
| The whole thing. | ||
| It's not a God of the gaps. | ||
| And there is reality there. | ||
| And then as education came on the scene in Europe, and as you started educating the masses in the U.S., we were blessed again with providence, right? | ||
| With these elites that just were part of this providential hand of God in this country. | ||
| That saw further than we see today, maybe, and we need to see further. | ||
| But they believed in these core rights of human beings made in the image of God. | ||
| And we just say these phrases, they don't have any meaning. | ||
| You're made in the image of God. | ||
| Take that in for a minute. | ||
| The infinite, the incomprehensible, that than which nothing is greater, right? | ||
| That's kind of the secular definition of God, right? | ||
| That than which nothing is greater. | ||
| You're made in the image of that person, God. | ||
| And at the same time, the infinite God of all power, creator of the entire universe that goes on forever now, is that right? | ||
| He cares about you as a person. | ||
| And these people actually believe this stuff to the core of their being. | ||
| And they wanted to give people that liberty and that sensibility and that sense of empowerment And when you give people that power, right, in the metaphor of the churches, everybody's a different part of the body. | ||
| Some people are loud, like you and me. | ||
| Other people are quiet. | ||
| Some are gifted in science. | ||
| Some are philosophers, poets, etc. | ||
| Some are moms and dads. | ||
| Every part of that body has a talent, and that's what I love about the War Room. | ||
| It calls on everybody to do your part. | ||
| The only person who knows your part, really, is you and God. | ||
| And that's between you and God, right? | ||
| And that's why the Framers knew that, and they wanted to give you that liberty, that freedom of conscience, to behave the way you're called to act. | ||
| And I think they knew that. | ||
| And they certainly acted that way. | ||
| They gave everything. | ||
| They knew they were going to die. | ||
| It's like, if you're going to kill the king, you better kill the king. | ||
| Let's talk about that. | ||
| I want to tie that, I want to get to the sacred honor, and they put everything in line. | ||
| The Unalienable Rights, and you see in the John Adams speech we had earlier, they broke it up to have the little girl say that and stumble over the word, as people do, and have the mother kind of, not define it, but explain to her how you pronounce it. | ||
| Why is that? | ||
| And that played out in what we saw last week in the whole Roe v. Wade. | ||
| And how did they come up with that concept that was quite radical that your rights come from God, not through a king? | ||
| Because the whole Judeo-Christian civilization, as you talk about these great universities, They're all built on monarchies, with almost theocracies, where in France and in England and in Italy, maybe not so much broken up, but these great powers, Spain, it is through a monarch. | ||
| Your rights come through that monarch. | ||
| How did Jefferson and these guys come up with this? | ||
| Quite frankly, startlingly original idea that even today, in 2022, is having a massive impact, and you see the debate on MSNBC, and as you say, most of it misses the point. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Well, I think it goes back to what, you know, this is the conservative tendency. | ||
| Some of it in history is what is within the realm of the possible. | ||
| The Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, right? | ||
| They weren't as dark as people think. | ||
| Go read Rodney Stark on all that stuff. | ||
| But Hobbes' Leviathan, right? | ||
| I mean, that's the title. | ||
| Life is short, brutal, and, you know, terrible. | ||
| Nasty, brutish, and short. | ||
| Very good, very good. | ||
| Liberal art, there's the canon. | ||
| The Oxford Don comes through. | ||
| And so, for a lot of history, we couldn't dream that big, right? | ||
| And so, but as the Renaissance comes on, for its vision and its weaknesses, and then the Reformation comes on and cracks up England, Henry VIII for, you know, Crazy reasons, dealing with marriage. | ||
| The stripping of the altars. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then the Enlightenment. | ||
| And so, if you just follow that trajectory, and then, you know, the stain on America was slavery. | ||
| But these founders were pretty clear in the language, right? | ||
| It's everyone endowed by your Creator, and it's a matter of working out what's possible in history. | ||
| And like I said earlier, when you go out and do the science, which you can do on this, The human rights indices, the freedom indices, guess who's number uno or in the top few? | ||
| And it's all the Judeo-Christian lands, to put it in brief, and the U.S. | ||
| is at the top of the stack, not at the bottom. | ||
| And so that they're not teaching in the university anymore. | ||
| The U.S., for some reason, is being pilloried when we're the shining light, we are the New Jerusalem to the rest of the world. | ||
| You think even today? | ||
| Even as divided as we are. | ||
| It's what you go off on all the time, right? | ||
| The post-World War II Bretton Woods liberal order, right? | ||
| Post-war international rules-based order. | ||
| You don't sign on to that? | ||
| Oh, it's an example of what we did for the world. | ||
| China went from making $500 a year per capita to $10,000, $15,000, $20,000. | ||
| Same with India. | ||
| So that order provided for the uplift of two and a half billion people made in the image of God. | ||
| Now the problem is they're not thankful to us for setting up this order. | ||
| They're attacking us. | ||
| Not India, but China. | ||
| That's the natural progression. | ||
| So now we're in a new space where we need the next enlightened leaders in this country to step up to the plate and look over the horizon and see how do you formulate this order when some people are not playing by the rules at all? | ||
| Was it providential that the revolutionary generation are these giants? | ||
| When you have people like Hamilton, who came from, let's say, indeterminate, and it was tough to determine what really his origin story is. | ||
| You have Madison, who's this little guy who's kind of a nerd. | ||
| These are all giants, titans of thought. | ||
| And not just that courage. | ||
| I mean, Hamilton was the aide-de-camp to General Washington during the entire Revolution, a guy of incredible bravery. | ||
| At Yorktown, finally got a shot to perform in open combat. | ||
| Is it unique in time? | ||
| Was that divine providence that gave us that revolutionary generation? | ||
| Yeah, and there's always divine providence, but this certainly was special. | ||
| I mean, a man like George Washington, could have been king, wants to go back to the farm, for real. | ||
| Cincinnati's. | ||
| Could have run the entire world, right? | ||
| And says, no, I just want to go home to Martha and the farm and hang out, you know? | ||
| And it's miraculous. | ||
| The Miraculous Day today, July 4th, 2022. | ||
| It's Independence Day here in the War Room. | ||
| We're going to continue. | ||
| Dave Bratman, Wingman. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
|
unidentified
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We'll be back in a moment. | |
| Men, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. | ||
| A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. | ||
| We hold these truths to be self-evident, and that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain un... | ||
| What's that word there? | ||
| Unalienable. | ||
| With certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. | ||
| That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is in the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government. | ||
| The history of the present King of Great Britain This is a history of repeated injuries, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. | ||
| In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. | ||
| Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. | ||
| A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. | ||
| We Therefore, the representatives of the United States of America solemnly publish and declare that these united colonies are... | ||
| And of right ought to be free and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown. | ||
| And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. | ||
| God save our American states! | ||
| God save our American states! | ||
| our lives, our fortune, our sacred honor. | ||
| That was a pretty big bet made by some pretty smart folks because the odds were long that you were going to win here. | ||
| Already the largest expeditionary force in history at that time had been launched or was in the process of being launched from England to come over here and settle and sort out with the British Army and the Royal Navy, the greatest Navy in man's history, the Royal Navy, to sort out what was going to happen. | ||
| But let me go back. | ||
| You've talked the philosophy, and it's the Enlightenment, and you've got this magnificent document that talks about the pursuit of happiness. | ||
| First time in man's history I've ever seen pursuit of happiness put into a document talking about Everybody, right? | ||
| Essentially. | ||
| Of course, at the time, the slavery issue was obviously even burning later when they did the Declaration and all that they worked through in South Carolina. | ||
| They already had the original Sin of America. | ||
| You could already see the fissures even in that room as they negotiated. | ||
| But wasn't this... Americans are ornery. | ||
| I mean, Franklin said, hey, we're a new kind of race because it's something this wilderness has done that we're not really Englishmen. | ||
| Something's happening here. | ||
| Isn't it, at the end of the day, that Americans don't like paying taxes, and particularly if they can get free money printed by the Federal Reserve? | ||
| The British, they were part of an empire, and Dickinson argued this, as part of that empire you had certain responsibilities. | ||
| They fought, really, the French and Indian War, which is an aspect of what the Seven Years' War was, the Western, or the North American Front. | ||
| We won the great battle up in Quebec on the Plains of Abraham, where General Wolfe, what at 28 or 29 years old, beat Montcalm and really took, essentially crushed New France. | ||
| And it had to be paid for! | ||
| They leveraged up. | ||
| They had to borrow a lot of money. | ||
| The Crown is, you know, and the Crown's always pretty cheap. | ||
| They had to borrow a lot of money. | ||
| And those bills came due. | ||
| And you had big interest rates on it. | ||
| And they said, look, you got to throw a little something into the hat here. | ||
| And our response was no. | ||
| And for years, really smart guys worked through, OK, we'll put a tariff here. | ||
| We'll charge you for some stamps here. | ||
| We'll charge your postage. | ||
| We'll do anything. | ||
| Finally, the British East India Company, who's upside down, Says, we've got to start charging surtax on tea. | ||
| They tried to accommodate the colonists in every way possible, and Hancock and Sam Adams, the two biggest smugglers, right, at the time, nefarious characters, right, said, no, we don't want to do that, because Americans don't want to pay taxes, and we're not going to pay any taxes. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| We don't get any representation, and people said, well, maybe we do a parliament here. | ||
| Maybe we give you a piece of the action there. | ||
| And then they came up with, no, no, no, no, no, we don't like this whole thing of a king. | ||
| Our rights come from God, not from you. | ||
| So can you look at it in a cynical way and say just a bunch of smart lawyers that didn't want to pay taxes and figured out a way, although the bet was pretty big, because you're right. | ||
| They said that we either hang together or we're going to hang separately, daybreak. | ||
| You know, it's always both. | ||
| I get a kick when historians go after the, you know, Christianity is the root of all wars, right? | ||
| Very few wars. | ||
| If you go back, they weren't fighting over the Nicene Creed. | ||
| It's usually land, money, power as the source of war. | ||
| It's just in this... You don't believe the 30 years of war and all those wars in Europe, all religious-based? | ||
| Right, no, I don't think so. | ||
| They teach church history. | ||
|
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What is the church history class at Liberty? | |
| We've got Bible, Bible, worldview, theology. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| You can't get enough Bible. | ||
| Church history in the Divinity School you get more. | ||
| Isn't the New Testament just one war after the next? | ||
| But they're not fighting over religion? | ||
| You're just telling me the Christianity. | ||
|
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I'm playing devil's advocate here. | |
| I don't have many philosophies. | ||
| The War Room doesn't have a lot of philosophy. | ||
| And I mean war. | ||
| They're brawls over every line in every creed. | ||
| In-house discussions. | ||
| Why did these smart lawyers, brilliant lawyers, obviously this document is so moving and so powerful, why did they bet it all on the 4th of July when they came forward and announced it and read it out loud? | ||
| They meant it. | ||
| Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. | ||
| And honor meant something then that doesn't mean today. | ||
| More powerful. | ||
| They put it all on the line. | ||
| There was no going back. | ||
| Those guys would have all been hung as traitors, correct? | ||
| No doubt in your mind? | ||
| No, and so, I mean, it is what you said. | ||
| It's all of that at the same time. | ||
| It's economic forces. | ||
| It's power play. | ||
| It's going up against the greatest empire in the world with improbable odds and fog Clearing the way for Washington and battles and stuff like that happening. | ||
| And then you've got a bunch of brilliant people who know how to set up a new order of things. | ||
| And so some of it's accident, some of it's providence, some of it's power politics. | ||
| There's always evil people scheming, right? | ||
| Human nature is never good. | ||
| And so there's schemers around the corner, just like in this city every day. | ||
| But then you've got a few good folks, and the genius of the American system is the system they set up. | ||
| They separated power at every turn and every way they could, because they knew what human nature was. | ||
| And that's the great split with the French Revolution. | ||
| They were cynical about human nature. | ||
| Oh, terrible cynical, right? | ||
| Because they're reading a history. | ||
| Yeah, and the Bible. | ||
| It takes three chapters, right, to do a belly flop, right? | ||
| Genesis 3 is the fall, right? | ||
| And then a long stretch of redemption. | ||
| How did the French look at it very differently? | ||
| They saw man as perfectible? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Rousseau, in particular, and, you know, Hegel had a love affair with Napoleon. | ||
| He wanted to see this dialectic of ideas fighting its way out. | ||
| And the way you see ideas fight their way is to see nations fight their way out. | ||
| So, I mean, he just loved the brawl of nation against nation to see the conflict and something new emerge. Rousseau, he was a romantic, he did really care about individual liberty, but he didn't set it up right like our geniuses did. Well our geniuses, if Jefferson, if the three that really hammered it out, Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams came back today, and see America, the modern America, at his 246th | ||
| birthday, what would those, the guys that thought it through what would they say today? | ||
| I think the first thing they would identify is a complete breakdown of virtue. | ||
| They expected the truth, intellect, intellectual honesty. | ||
| Civility amongst ideas, the challenge back and forth. | ||
| And the Romans had an idea of virtue, public virtue, sitting virtue. | ||
| What would that be? | ||
| For the Romans? | ||
| Yeah, but how would it translate to the day? | ||
| We don't have it? | ||
| You know, the greatest Romans, the Stoics in Rome, the great Stoic leaders. | ||
| You know, once they've gotten in the way of one of the philosophies, is there anything I can do to get out of my way? | ||
| You're blocking the sunlight. | ||
| But the Stoic, just very practical, highly rational. | ||
| Adam Smith was a Stoic, for example, probably more so than a Christian. | ||
| And so they lived by virtue alone, and they meant it. | ||
| Now, that's not to say Rome was virtuous, right? | ||
| Because it was criminal. | ||
| But there were great leaders, Cicero and Seneca, that come out of that tradition. | ||
| The Greeks were even greater, and they've had a profound influence. | ||
| They discovered reason itself, right? | ||
| Socrates and all the kids out there. | ||
| Make sure you go get your Socrates, Plato, Aristotle lined up. | ||
| That's the beginning of the Western legal tradition. | ||
| And democracy for real. | ||
| But yeah, and then the founders, when they come back, they'd see oligarchs all about. | ||
| Indistinguishable, almost, from the crown. | ||
| The amount of power, right? | ||
| Our big five tech firms, our market cap worth what all of Europe is worth. | ||
| They were very anti that concentration of wealth, land and gentry, aristocracy. | ||
| These guys were Republicans, anti-monarchists. | ||
| And I hate to go off on economics in the middle of this thing, but I'll just give one little example. | ||
| Some of our friends, some of my free market friends the other day on these oligarch remarks, they said, well, some of these oligarchs aren't monopolies because they're making life better for the consumer. | ||
| Oh my word, if that's what we're left to, right? | ||
| Markets mean you have markets. | ||
| And Adam Smith is perfectly lined with James Madison, right? | ||
| Their enlightenment logic is identical on the economic and on the political. | ||
| In economic theory, pure competition gets you the best outcomes. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because you got a lot of demanders, people on the demand curve, and a lot of suppliers, a lot of businesses on the supply curve. | ||
| When you have a lot of both, things work out really well. | ||
| Individual agents working in their own self-interest, Adam Smith and James Madison. | ||
| Individual agents protected under the law without favoritism, right? | ||
| And Banana Republic's, if the average Joe six-pack is getting the same rights and privileges as the nephew of the finance minister, You've got a good thing going. | ||
| If someone up the hierarchy is getting special advantages, you've got a problem on your hands. | ||
| We've got a problem on our hands in this country. | ||
| And the Founders would be all over it. | ||
| They would be shocked. | ||
| Shocked. | ||
| Would they think that America today is the new Jerusalem that they thought they were crafting out of this primordial forest? | ||
| No, no, yeah, and there's a hair of a split there between the Founders that came over originally and then the Enlightenment folks, which had a little bit less of the New Jerusalem, but still that hope of that vibrancy. | ||
| The Pilgrims and the Founding and the religious freedom sorts. | ||
| Versus the more practical Jeffersons. | ||
| And this is not a critique of capitalism, right? | ||
| Capitalism involves free markets, and today capitalism is giving a pejorative because of the oligarchs. | ||
| We're confusing capitalism and free markets with the oligarchs. | ||
| That is a false... The founders would see us as totally corrupt today. | ||
| What's going on with the rule of law, with my political party going after each other, that should not be happening in the United States. | ||
| We're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| Dave Bratz is going to stick with me. | ||
| We're going to come back. | ||
| We'll be back in a moment. | ||
| This is our 4th of July celebration, commemoration here in the War Room. | ||
| Short commercial break. | ||
| breakdown back in a moment. | ||
|
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I'm going to be doing a little bit of a walkthrough of the game. | |
| I'm going to be playing it on the Xbox 360. | ||
| Should Europe empty, all her force will meet them in array, and fight and shout and shout and fight for free America. | ||
| We let fair freedom hither and lo, the desert smiled. | ||
| A paradise of pleasure was opened in the wild. | ||
| Your harvest, bold Americans, no power shall snatch away. | ||
| Preserve, preserve, preserve your rights in a free America. | ||
| Torn from a world of tyrants beneath this western sky, we've formed a new dominion, a land of liberty. | ||
| The world shall own with freedom here and such will ever be. | ||
| Huzzah! | ||
| Huzzah! | ||
| For free America! | ||
| Some future day shall crown us the masters of the main. | ||
| Our fleet shall speak in thunder to England, France, and Spain. | ||
| Nations o'er the ocean spread shall tremble and obey the prince who rules by freedom's laws in North America. | ||
| Diane Taraz. | ||
| Make sure you get her album. | ||
| It is the Songs of the American Revolution. | ||
| Just Google it or go on YouTube. | ||
| You'll see it. | ||
| Go ahead and purchase it. | ||
| Really amazing. | ||
| And she's got a bunch of other music of the early American period. | ||
| And of course, I think she also does European songs. | ||
| They're quite amazing. | ||
| Incredible talent. | ||
| That is Free America, which they take the song, they take the melody from the British Grenadiers and put it to an American verse. | ||
| MyPillow.com, Promo Code War. | ||
| Remember, Mike Lindell got bounced out of Walmart. | ||
| Now it's your time. | ||
| It's Independence Day. | ||
| Declare your independence from Walmart. | ||
| Go to MyPillow.com, Promo Code War, and get the pillow in 1988. | ||
| The basic, classic, standard pillow. | ||
| Get it today. | ||
| Dave Brat, I get all the time that people love when you come on and talk about economics and everything like that. | ||
| We got into more of your philosophical side today and your understanding of what led to this great document that was the Declaration of Independence. | ||
| You know, for folks that haven't had the opportunity in college, or maybe haven't gone to college, and don't have a ton of time on their hands, but they want to learn more, they want to get to see, particularly as we go through these fights we have today, where people are getting back to talking about core values and core principles. | ||
| It really kind of started in the Tea Party movement back in 2010, but I think it's as active today, and you saw this with We've got 105,000 students all over the world. | ||
|
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105,000? | |
| 105,000 right now. | ||
| going, wow, let me, why, why is MSNBC saying they're taking a right that was granted 50 years ago? | ||
| And you're saying, well, hey, you can't, the state can't grant rights, right? | ||
| They're inalienable. | ||
| How do people learn more? | ||
| Are there, does Liberty have opportunities that you can do things online? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| You guys put on conferences? | ||
| Tell me what you're working on. | ||
| Yeah, we got 105,000 students all over the world. | ||
| 105,000. | ||
| 105,000 right now. | ||
| We got 16,000 on campus and then the rest are online. | ||
| And so check out any of the courses we've been talking about. | ||
| The Bible, of course, is, I think, where everyone ought to start. | ||
| The Founders, by the way, spoke and used Biblical metaphors everywhere. | ||
| It wasn't a hit-and-miss thing. | ||
| They were steeped in the Word of God, right? | ||
| The Bible is the Word of God. | ||
| And just for example, I mean, if you think you've got a hard time with the Bible, go exegete any text. | ||
| Find the toughest text, the one you think you can agree with, and go study that one. | ||
| Do exegesis, go to whoever your favorite. | ||
| Go to St. | ||
| Augustine, see what he's got to say. | ||
| Go to St. | ||
| Thomas Aquinas, go see what he says. | ||
| Go see Luther or Calvin. | ||
| You're going to find amazing agreement over the patristics the Church Fathers threw. | ||
| There's disagreements and brawls, but the interpretation of the biblical texts, go dive in a little bit. | ||
| And once you start unpacking the Hebrew or the Greek a little bit, you're going to be fascinated. | ||
| And then you're going to see how it wove its way into history and the creeds and Nicaea and how Western civilization was formed. | ||
| And then as we get To some of the issues we're talking about today, Alan Bloom, that book, The Closing of the American Mind, philosophically gets at the issues we were going at today. | ||
| He summarizes at the highest level the best minds in Western Civ, shows how they all fit together, and he takes all comers. | ||
| He takes the ones he disagrees with and says, Rousseau's a genius. | ||
| I think he doesn't have it right, but he shows the strong points and the weak points. | ||
| And then for folks who just want to start dabbing, like you said, who don't have all the time, I always tell students, go get a dictionary of philosophy. | ||
| And go to someone you've heard of that you like, read them, and then they're going to reference somebody else. | ||
| And then bounce into them. | ||
| And you want to get a little deeper? | ||
| Instead of going to the dictionary of philosophy, go to the encyclopedia of philosophy. | ||
| You've got three or four pages on each person. | ||
|
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Right? | |
| And then if you get a passion about something, that's great. | ||
| That's, you know, we call that your calling or whatever. | ||
| And that passion will lead you to keep building and building and building that knowledge. | ||
| And God is Spirit, but God also created you in history to make an impact. | ||
| God doesn't make mistakes, right? | ||
| He puts you here for a reason. | ||
| And so getting that knowledge built up by God's built up the university systems, He's built up the K-12 system, He's given you mothers and dads to give you the moral education along with it. | ||
| Is that the day when people are having a hot dog and a hamburger and waiting for the fireworks, is that what you wanted to think about? | ||
| That they are here for a reason? | ||
| That they're here for this place and time with this country? | ||
| It's really in the balance. | ||
| What we are, it's a 10 or 20 year war. | ||
| We're going to be something on the other side of this, right? | ||
| We're either going to be the republic that was bequeathed to us from these geniuses back in 1770, brave, courageous in 1776, or we're going to be something totally different. | ||
| Is that your takeaway? | ||
| That people have to understand they're here for a purpose? | ||
| Yeah, and as you say on the show, politics is downstream from culture. | ||
| Culture is philosophy and religion. | ||
| It's the first principle. | ||
| God is the first mover, right? | ||
| It's not TikTok. | ||
| No, I know! | ||
| And so, that's what I want people to focus on. | ||
| Get back to the basics. | ||
| Get back to God, and God's creation, and why you're here. | ||
| And that's a personal relationship, right? | ||
| Only you can experience that. | ||
| And so when you're celebrating this country, don't go halfway. | ||
| Don't just go into the founders. | ||
| Look at what made the founders great. | ||
| And that's first principles. | ||
| Happy 4th of July. | ||
| Happy 4th of July, everybody. | ||
| God bless. | ||
| The 246th birthday of the greatest country in mankind's history. | ||
| The greatest country this planet has ever known. | ||
| With the greatest people. | ||
| The Deplorables. | ||
| Okay, thanks. | ||
| Have a great time today. | ||
| Enjoy the rest of your 4th of July. | ||
| I want to thank the team in Denver, Real America's Voice. | ||
| Thank you so much for helping put this on. | ||
| Of course, our crack production team here, led by young master Cameron. | ||
| Alright, Cameron. | ||
| Dave, Brad, thank you. | ||
| Thank you for taking the time. | ||
|
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Thank you. |
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