Morton White’s pragmatic approach to evaluating normative principles through factual scrutiny shaped C-SPAN’s bipartisan coverage, including Rahm Emanuel’s cautious reconciliation with John Curtis post-2006 and Robert George’s respected but divisive truths. The 2025 History Teacher of the Year Award honored Valencia Abbott at Boston’s Bunker Hill 250th anniversary, while C-SPAN’s non-profit model relied on public donations to broadcast Reagan’s 1983 and Clinton’s 2000 speeches. Dick Cheney’s 2000 RNC speech praised Ford and Reagan but condemned the Clinton-Gore administration for stagnation, advocating George W. Bush’s reform agenda—schools, taxes, Social Security—before his death in November 2025, leaving a legacy of partisan conviction and governance ideals. [Automatically generated summary]
Demonstration of which I attributed to Morton White a little while ago about the pragmatic, ultimate pragmatic verifiability or disprovability of our normative principles and worries first about the case and the factual details of the case before deciding just how grand a principle is necessary to decide it.
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This Friday, on a special edition of Ceasefire, host Dasha Burns features key moments from Ceasefire's inaugural season, highlighting moments of friendship and humor, respectful disagreement.
The thing that I appreciated about Rahm is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006, I always felt like...
We ought to just commit ourselves to love and justice, not hatred and revenge.
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One of the wonderful things that I've been able to experience with my very dear brother, Robert George, is that I love the brother when he's right.
I love him when he's wrong.
I love him when he's wrestling in his quest for truth.
Watch our special bipartisan moments from this season of Ceasefire, this Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, only on C-SPAN.
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
This weekend, as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for our series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story.
This week at 11 a.m. Eastern, a ceremony in Boston marking the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill held by the National Park Service and other groups.
And then at 2 p.m. Eastern, North Carolina high school teacher Valencia Abbott receives the 2025 History Teacher of the Year Award from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Historian Stacey Schiff headlines the award ceremony.
And at 5 p.m. Eastern, prepare to ring in the new year with addresses from Presidents Ronald Reagan in 1983 and Bill Clinton in 2000.
Exploring the American story, watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find the full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
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And now we take a look at the career of Dick Cheney, who served as Vice President under George W. Bush from 2001 until 2009.
Vice President Cheney died in November of this year at the age of 84.
To remember the life of former Vice President Cheney, we bring you his remarks from the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
Mr. Chairman, delegates and fellow citizens, I am honored by your nomination and I accept it.
Before proceeding, I want to say a special word to President Ford.
I wouldn't be here tonight if it wasn't for him and the trust and confidence he placed in me 25 years ago.
And I know all of you want to join me in wishing him a very quick and speedy recovery.
I want to thank you for giving such a warm welcome to Lynn and me and to our family and to my friends in the Wyoming delegation.
I especially want to thank you for your support.
The first campaign stop that Lynn and I were privileged to make with Governor and Laura Bush was in our hometown of Casper, Wyoming, where Lynn and I graduated from high school some 41 years ago.
The love and support and enthusiasm of the people of our home state have buoyed our spirits and strengthened our resolve.
we are going to win this election.
We will prevail.
I have to tell you that I never expected to be in this position.
Eight years ago, when I completed my service as Secretary of Defense, I loaded a U-Haul truck and drove home to Wyoming.
I did not plan to return to public office.
Lynn and I settled into a new private life.
There was time for fishing and grandchildren, and we were very content.
But now I'm glad to be back in the arena, and I want to tell you why.
I have been given an opportunity to serve beside a man who has the courage and the vision and the goodness to be a great president.
Governor George W. Bush.
I have been in the company of leaders.
I was there on August 9th, 1974, when Gerald Ford assumed the presidency during the gravest constitutional crisis since the Civil War.
I saw how character and decency can dignify a great office and unite a great nation.
I was a congressman when another man of integrity lived in the White House.
I saw a president restore America's confidence and prepare the foundation for victory in the Cold War.
I saw how one man's will can set a nation on a new course.
and I learned the meaning of leadership from President Ronald Reagan.
I left Congress to join the cabinet of President Reagan's successor.
And I'm proud to say that I'm not the only man on this ticket who has learned from the example of President George Bush.
I saw resolve in times of crisis, the steady hand that shaped an alliance and threw back a tyrant.
He earned the respect and confidence of the men and women of America's armed forces.
I have been in the company of leaders.
I know what it takes, and I see in our nominee the qualities of mind and spirit our nation needs and our history demands.
Big changes are coming to Washington.
To serve with this man in this cause is a chance I would not miss.
This country has given us so much opportunity.
When Len and I were growing up, we had so many blessings.
We went to good public schools.
We had fine, dedicated teachers.
Our mothers, like our fathers, worked outside the home so we could go to college.
We lived in a caring community where parents were confident that their children's lives could be even better than their own.
and that is as it should be and as it can be again.
We can make our public schools better.
We can reform the tax code so that families can keep more of what they earn, more dollars that they can spend on what they value than on what the government thinks is important.
We can restore the ideals of honesty and honor that must be a part of our national life if our children are to thrive.
When I look at the administration now in Washington, I am dismayed by the opportunities squandered, saddened by what might have been but never was.
These have been years of prosperity in our land, but little purpose in the White House.
Bill Clinton vowed not long ago to hold on to power until the last hour of the last day.
That is his right.
And my friends, that last hour is coming.
That last day is near.
The wheel has turned, and it is time.
It is time for them to go.
George W. Bush will repair what has been damaged.
He's a man without pretense, without cynicism, a man of principle, a man of honor.
On the first hour of the first day, he will restore decency and integrity to the Oval Office.
us that national leaders can be true to their word and that they can get things done by reaching across the aisle and working with political opponents in good faith and common purpose.
I know he will do these things because for the last five years I've watched him do them in Texas.
George W. Bush came to the governor's office with a clear view of what he wanted to achieve.
He said he would bring higher standards to public schools, and he has.
Walk into those schools today and you will see children with better scores, classrooms with better discipline, teachers with better pay.
He pledged to reduce taxes, and he has.
He did it twice, with the biggest tax reduction in state history.
And not only is the budget in balance, it's running a surplus of more than a billion dollars.
He promised to reform the legal system, to get rid of junk lawsuits, and he has.
Today, the legal system serves all the people, not just the trial lawyers.
None of these reforms came easily.
When he took office, both houses of the legislature were controlled by Democrats, and the House of Representatives still is.
But Governor Bush does not accept old lines of argument and division.
He brings people together, reaching across party lines to do the people's business.
He leads by conviction, not calculation.
You will never see him pointing the finger of blame for failure.
will only see him sharing the credit for success.
That is exactly the spirit that is missing from Washington today.
In the last eight years, that city has often become a scene of bitterness and ill will and partisan strife.
American politics has always been a tough business, even in 1787 here in Philadelphia, when George Washington himself wondered if delegates could ever agree on a Constitution.
They did agree, as Americans always have when it mattered most, guided by the public interest and a decent regard for one another.
But in Washington today, politics has become war by other means, an endless onslaught of accusation, a constant setting of groups one against another.
This is what Bill Bradley was up against and others before him.
The Gore campaign, Senator Bradley said, is a thousand promises, a thousand attacks.
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We're all a little weary of the Clinton-Gore routine, but the
In this election, they will speak endlessly of risk.
We will speak of progress.
They will make accusations.
We will make proposals.
They will feed fear and we will appeal to hope.
They will offer more lectures and legalisms and carefully worded denials.
We offer another way, a better way, and a stiff dose of truth.
For eight years, the achievement gap in our schools has grown worse.
Poor and disadvantaged children falling further and further behind.
For all of their sentimental talk about children, Clinton and Gore have done nothing to help children oppressed by bureaucracy, monopoly, and mediocrity.
But those days are ending.
When George W. Bush is president and I am vice president, tests will be taken, results will be measured, schools will answer to parents, and no child will be left behind.
Clinton and Gore have talked about social reform, social security reform, never acting, never once offering a serious plan to save the system.
In the time left to them, I have every confidence they'll go right on talking about it.
those days are passing too.
There will be no more spreading of fear and panic, no more dividing of generations against one another, nor more delaying and excuse-making and shirking of our duties to the elderly.
George W. Bush and I, with the United Congress, will save Social Security.
For eight years, Clinton and Gore have extended our military commitments while depleting our military power.
Rarely has so much been demanded of our armed forces, and so little given to them in return.
George W. Bush and I are going to change that too.
I have seen our military, I have seen our military at its finest with the best equipment, the best training, and the best leadership.
I am proud of them.
I have had the responsibility for their well-being, and I can promise them now, help is on the way.
we'll once again have a Commander-in-Chief they can respect.
A commander-in-chief who understands their mission and restores their morale.
And now, as the man from Hope goes home to New York, Mr. Gore
will try to separate himself from his leader's shadow.
But somehow, we will never see one without thinking of the other.
Does anyone, Republican or Democrat, seriously believe that under Mr. Gore, the next four years would be any different from the last eight?
If the goal is to unite our country, to make a fresh start in Washington, to change the tone of our politics, can anyone with conviction say that the man for that job is Al Gore?
We know the territory, we know the opposition, and we know what's at stake.
We will give all we have to this cause.
And in the end, in the end, with your help, George W. Bush will defeat this Vice President and I will replace him.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are so privileged to be citizens of this great republic.
I was reminded of that time and again when I was in my former job as Secretary of Defense.
I traveled a lot, and when I came home, my plane would land at Andrews Air Force Base, and I'd return to the Pentagon by helicopter.
When you make that trip from Andrews to the Pentagon and you look down on the city of Washington, one of the first things you see is the Capitol, where all the great debates that have shaped 200 years of American history have taken place.
You fly down along the mall and see the monument to George Washington, a structure as grand as the man himself.
To the north is the White House where John Adams once prayed that none but honest and wise men may ever rule under this roof.
Next you see the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, our third president and the author of our Declaration of Independence.
Then you fly over the memorial to Abraham Lincoln, this greatest of presidents, the man who saved the Union.
And then you cross the Potomac on approach to the Pentagon.
But just before you settle down on the landing pad, you look out upon Arlington National Cemetery, its gentle slopes and crosses row on row.
I never once made that trip without being reminded how enormously fortunate we all are to be Americans.
And what a...
I never made that trip without being reminded of how enormously fortunate we are to be Americans.
And what a terrible price thousands have paid.
so that all of us and millions more around the world might live in freedom.
This is a great country, ladies and gentlemen, and it deserves great leadership.
Let us go forth from this hall in confidence and courage, committed to restoring decency and honor to our republic.
Let us go forth, knowing that our cause is just, and elect George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States.
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On November 20, 2025, a funeral service was held for former Vice President Dick Cheney at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
He died at age 84 from complications of pneumonia and cardiac and vascular disease.