| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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Virginia's Responsive Voting Rights
00:03:23
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| Virginians who served their time, rejoined our communities, and deserved the right to participate in the most fundamental act an engaged citizen can take, the right to cast a ballot. | ||
| I thank the General Assembly for passing this constitutional amendment to automatically restore voting rights for Virginians and who have completed their sentences. | ||
| And so let me say something broader about voting in Virginia. | ||
| Virginia has not always been at the forefront of voting rights. | ||
| Our history includes poll taxes, literary tests, literacy tests, and deliberate efforts to keep citizens from the ballot box. | ||
| But look how far that we have come in the past few years. | ||
| Expanded early voting, no excuse absentee voting, automatic voter registration. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Election day is a holiday in the state. | |
| And we passed the Virginia Voting Rights Act. | ||
| I believe that our democracy is strongest when every eligible citizen can participate and when our decisions reflect the will of the people. | ||
| And in that spirit, as we protect reproductive rights, marriage rights, and voting rights, we must be ready to contend with further attacks on our democratic institutions across the country. | ||
| Now, I know the General Assembly just took a step forward in being prepared to respond to what is happening in other states. | ||
| Virginia's proposed redistricting amendment is a response to what we're seeing in other states that have taken extreme measures to undermine democratic norms. | ||
| This approach here in Virginia is short-term, highly targeted, and completely dependent on what other states decide to do themselves. | ||
| And for those who may oppose Virginia's response, I call on you to make your opposition to what is happening in other states clear. | ||
| Make no mistake, Virginia will be responsive and targeted, and only with the will of the people. | ||
| And I trust the voters to get this one right. | ||
| As you all know, trust is the most important currency that we have in public life. | ||
| And on that topic, I'd like to say a word about how I intend to work with the federal government over the next four years. | ||
| I believe the governor of Virginia and the President of the United States should have a productive relationship built on mutual trust. | ||
|
Provide Stability
00:03:04
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| We are neighbors, after all. | ||
| And let me say here today that where there are shared priorities, I will actively seek and be ready for partnership. | ||
| I want Virginia to lead the way. | ||
| But I also have a responsibility to the 8.8 million people who call Virginia home. | ||
| So when federal actions attack and threaten Virginia jobs, I will not hesitate to push back. | ||
| When federal chaos creates uncertainty for Virginia families, I will work to provide stability. | ||
| When Washington fails to lead with dignity and respect and follow the rule of law, Virginia will. | ||
| Above all else, my job as governor is to provide what the federal government too often has not: predictability, steadiness, and an unrelenting focus on the people we serve. | ||
| I want to close. | ||
| We're getting close. | ||
| I want to close by reflecting on why we are here this afternoon. | ||
| Not just in this chamber, but on this day, this day of reflection and service. | ||
| We gather on a day when Virginians and all Americans honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. | ||
| If you'll indulge me, I want to share a story about Dr. King that has stayed with me. | ||
| In January of 1957, Dr. King was just 28 years old when he was helping lead the Montgomery bus boycotts. | ||
| And one morning, 12 sticks of dynamite were found on his front porch. | ||
| The fuses had been lit and then smoldered out before they could detonate. | ||
| Authorities believe the segregationists who put them there wanted the evidence to be found. | ||
| A message of intimidation. | ||
| The next morning, Dr. King delivered a sermon, and for the first time, he publicly shared a spiritual experience he'd had a year earlier. | ||
| After a threatening late-night phone call had left him sitting alone at his kitchen table, he said an internal voice, in his words, quote, almost coming out of nowhere, told him, stand up for the truth, stand up for righteousness. | ||
| And since that epiphany, he said he can, quote, stand up without fear. | ||
| Dr. King did not demonize. | ||
| He did not dehumanize. | ||
| He fought for his cause while still seeing the humanity in everyone. | ||
|
Strive for Common Cause
00:06:19
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| That is the model of leadership we should all strive to follow. | ||
| Because our collective work, it's not just about policy, it is about our approach to governance. | ||
| If we are going to tackle the challenges before us, and there are many, we need to work together. | ||
| My fellow Virginians, I am not naive about the state of our politics in 2026. | ||
| The temperature has risen in Virginia and across the country. | ||
| And too often we have seen what happens when rhetoric turns reckless, when disagreement hardens into distrust, and when we forget that the people on the other side of an argument are still our neighbors. | ||
| So let me say this clearly to everyone in this chamber and to everyone watching at home. | ||
| Threats and intimidation have no place in Virginia. | ||
| Political violence has no place in Virginia against anyone for any reason. | ||
| Dehumanization, harassment, and the politics of cruelty have no place in our commonwealth. | ||
| We can disagree and we will disagree. | ||
| That is the nature of democracy. | ||
| But disagreement need not mean contempt. | ||
| And Virginia can model something different for the rest of the nation. | ||
| Not by pretending that our disagreements do not exist, but by proving that they can be navigated with seriousness, with respect, and with good faith. | ||
| Before anything else, we are Virginians, and we can be an example for the rest of the country and the rest of the world. | ||
| So in that spirit, let me answer the question that I was asked to address today. | ||
| What is the state of our Commonwealth? | ||
| I believe that the state of our Commonwealth depends on whether we show up for each other, not just in this chamber, but in our neighborhoods, our schools, our places of worship, and our communities. | ||
| It depends on whether we endeavor to find common cause and whether we put the communities we serve ahead of the politics that divide us. | ||
| If we put Virginia first, then I can say with confidence that the state of our Commonwealth is and will be stronger, more prosperous, and more united than ever before. | ||
| But there is work ahead. | ||
| In November, voters sent us here with a clear message. | ||
| Work together, deliver results. | ||
| I heard that message, and I hope you did too. | ||
| At a time of deep division, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reminded us to stand up for truth, to stand up for righteousness, and to do so without fear. | ||
| To every member of this General Assembly, let us rise to this moment. | ||
| Let us stand up for the families who are counting on us. | ||
| Let us stand up for the future that we can build together. | ||
| Let us stand up for the Commonwealth that we love. | ||
| Let's deliver for the people who have sent us here. | ||
| Thank you so very much, Virginia, and thank you to the members of the General Assembly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson is in London to deliver remarks to the UK Parliament. | |
| He'll be the first U.S. Speaker of the House to address Parliament. | ||
| Watch our America 250 coverage live at 4.30 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Democracy. | ||
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
|
Founding Principles Unraveled
00:15:16
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|
unidentified
|
It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | |
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| To discuss Martin Luther King Jr.'s impact on his federal holiday, honoring the civil rights leader Star Parker of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. | ||
| She serves as their founder. | ||
| Ms. Parker, welcome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And I'm glad that you said as their founder because I retired from CURE a year ago and went back home to California. | ||
| People might not know the organization. | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Okay, so CURE is a policy institute where we promote market-based solutions to fight poverty. | ||
| And about a year ago, we found a wonderful new president to lead up our three programs, our policy program, our media program, and our clergy program. | ||
| So I went home. | ||
| I went home and seven months into retirement, realized there are things I still need to do here in Washington. | ||
| So I'm running for Congress from California, coming back to Washington, D.C. We'll talk about that a little later. | ||
| You talk about poverty. | ||
| Dr. King's message largely dealt with issues of poverty. | ||
| What do you think about that message? | ||
| Where do you think it stands today? | ||
| I think it was a little bit later in his movement, if you will. | ||
| And I'm so glad that you're having me on to discuss this very, very important topic because as a society, we've gotten way off track from what he wanted and why he came to Washington, D.C. and now has his honor over there on the mall. | ||
| When you think about where Dr. King made that I Have a Dream speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and he said, you know, America, you're a little bit away from your founding principles. | ||
| The progressive movement has hijacked Dr. King and all that he was attempting to do. | ||
| When you look at why he said he came to Washington, it was for freedom. | ||
| It was remove the governmental barrier so that we can live free as African Americans. | ||
| At that point in history, they were called Negro. | ||
| And what we saw was a moral movement. | ||
| Many of the people that were early on with Dr. King were about Christianity. | ||
| They were about making things equitable for all people living up to our Declaration. | ||
| I mean, let's look at the speech, for instance. | ||
| He called these magnificent words when he look at the Declaration and the Constitution. | ||
| He talked about sacred obligation when you think about what he was addressing in the first part of his speech. | ||
| The speech, in my opinion, is broken down into three parts. | ||
| You have the one where he talked to the country. | ||
| He said, you know what? | ||
| This is not going really well for one particular people group that are citizens of this country. | ||
| Number two, he talked to the Negro at the time. | ||
| He said, look, what we want to do, I really believe that we're getting to the place where we're going to be incorporated into this society the way that we should be. | ||
| But do not build bitterness and hatred, anger, which is where we are today. | ||
| And then the third party appealed to the country. | ||
| He said, you know what, okay, here we go. | ||
| Mostly in the country, those that believed in the fundamental principles of the country, that Judeo-Christian ethic that not only secured our country, but that was brought from the European countries. | ||
| When you think about Western culture and civilization, it comes right down to scripture. | ||
| We're a long way from the biblical truths because the progressives hijacked that movement in the 60s. | ||
| When you say hijacked, then where do you get from what Dr. King initially started to what you say is hijacking and what do you think those causes are? | ||
| Well, when you think about the 60s, a whole lot of activities were going on at the same time. | ||
| While he was and the blacks were moving toward freedom, the country was moving away from those founding principles. | ||
| We had a feminist movement that decided that marriage was no longer important. | ||
| We had Johnson himself, when he started putting into place during that same time that blacks were saying, let us live free, he started putting in place the great society which said government should have a bigger role in people's lives, it started to unravel. | ||
| Five years after King's death, we saw Roe v. Wade as national law. | ||
| And while it is really a horrible opportunity for that we are now discussing even this week, because the March for Life this week, but when you think about the impact on family life, in particular in black family life. | ||
| So when we look at what's going on today in current affairs, whether it's poverty, which is what you asked about, or whether it's who should we be as a people, should we as a society now dismantle all of that structure that came in for government involvement to fix what had broken down in our country, we can point to that moment in history in the 60s that the progressive movements had a different agenda than where Dr. King was going. | ||
| Ultimately, the 60s would produce the Civil Rights Act, or at least later on. | ||
| What do you think the impact of that, even in the modern day? | ||
| Well, we did have a Civil Rights Act, and you're right. | ||
| It was rewritten, and we had it incorporated a year after Dr. King came here and made that infamous speech. | ||
| When you think about I Have a Dream, he was seeing us united as a society, not more divided. | ||
| And after his death, the progressives picked up that baton and took us in a different direction, built out hatred. | ||
| You know, there's a difference between desegregation and forced integration. | ||
| So next thing you know, we're forcing people to do things they not necessarily wanted to do. | ||
| We're forcing people to share spaces that they don't necessarily want to share. | ||
| And then we used the arm of government and big government at that to force people to pay excessive taxation to take care of other people's lives. | ||
| We really did get lost in those 60s. | ||
| And now we're correcting. | ||
| Now we're starting to see, especially with Donald Trump and his administration, say, can we get to a place where we can reset? | ||
| Can we get to a place in our 250 years to see can America work? | ||
| So they're dismantling all of that DEI, which would grow out of that whole multiculturalism movement, which grew out of affirmative action. | ||
| These were government actions that forced people to do things that they perhaps should not have done and or did not want to do. | ||
| Dr. King said it himself when he was talking about what he was trying to accomplish. | ||
| He said, you can't legislate morality. | ||
| You regulate behavior through law. | ||
| I can't make a man love me, but I can keep them from lynching me. | ||
| So what we've been doing as a society over the last 50 years is trying to force people to behave the way progressives think they should behave. | ||
| And yet we have a moral outline in our Declaration of Independence that was rooted in the scriptures to say all of us can self-govern if we want to. | ||
| Star Parker with us and if you want to ask her questions on this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday 202-748-8000 for Democrats, Republicans 202748-8001 and Independents 202748-8002, you can text us thoughts at 202-748-8003. | ||
| It was a year ago that you wrote this about the president in an op-ed. | ||
| You said, common ground between the appeal of Donald Trump in 2025 and the appeal of King in 1963 is that both were about the pressing need to be faithful to the founding principles of the country. | ||
| Trump's MAGA message in 2025 is that the nation has destructively strayed from these principles. | ||
| King's message in 1963 was that the country failed and was failing to live up to those founding principles. | ||
| What do you say about that sentiment a year later in the first year of the second term of Donald Trump? | ||
| I think that we're moving in that direction, but it's sloppy. | ||
| It is actually very noisy when you think about trying to self-correct, trying to get back on a real track. | ||
| You know, you think about when you get lost on freeway or so, you got to turn around sometimes or you have to take another exit. | ||
| So what has happened in our society? | ||
| What are those founding principles that we've so strayed from? | ||
| Well, we know biblical truths. | ||
| When you start saying that all choice is the same, there are no real absolutes, people are going to get very, very lost. | ||
| What are some of those other founding principles? | ||
| Limited government. | ||
| The government is not supposed to be picking winners and losers. | ||
| It's supposed to be protecting our interests, not plundering our interests. | ||
| And so now we have a whole lot of heat just based on government trying to get monies to give to somebody else. | ||
| And the people don't want to give up that money, nor should they. | ||
| When you think about open markets, we're having those discussions. | ||
| He's using a little bit of tariff to make us have those discussions. | ||
| But capitalism is good. | ||
| It's profit that we love because profit is what creates the jobs we say we want. | ||
| But it's also the engine to help in charity. | ||
| And so if people are really concerned about poverty, then we shouldn't have government, one size fit and all, which doesn't fit any, handling all of these areas. | ||
| This is for charity work to do. | ||
| And of course he published unimpaired. | ||
| You want to talk about how lost we are right now? | ||
| Everybody is in an ethnic corner instead of out of many, one. | ||
| These are the founding principles. | ||
| This is what King was appealing to. | ||
| And this is what Trump's administration is appealing to. | ||
| I'm supposed to hear critics saying that the president has dismantled DEI programs on the federal level. | ||
| They may even point to events in Minnesota or the use of ICE to round up certain people. | ||
| Some would say those are direct attacks on civil rights. | ||
| How would you respond to those things? | ||
| Well, we know that that's what they're saying. | ||
| That's why I want to point to the lies of the left, the progressivism, because they've hijacked this particular movement. | ||
| First of all, when you get to the ICE question, people broke into our home. | ||
| ICE is getting them out. | ||
| Now, people want to pretend that, well, we shouldn't, you know, isolate certain people. | ||
| If someone broke into your home, you would want the police to come in with a heavy hand to get them up out of that household. | ||
| It's sloppy because we all have camera. | ||
| We can see what's going on. | ||
| But law is law. | ||
| And every time you have an encounter with any law official, you're supposed to just put your hands up. | ||
| Okay, I've been arrested a couple of times. | ||
| Just put your hands up. | ||
| It's over. | ||
| The party is over. | ||
| But when it comes to DEI, we need to dismantle all these programs. | ||
| This is an opportunity for African Americans to show up with merit, to show up with integrity, to show up with their character. | ||
| This is a real reset for us as a country. | ||
| 250 years, are we going to survive it? | ||
| Of course we're going to survive it. | ||
| We've survived worse situations in our country, but it is difficult because we're so far off track. | ||
| You take away DEI. | ||
| You mentioned the DEI program. | ||
| Some would say you take away the guardrails. | ||
| You take away the potential for equality, at least the assurance of equality. | ||
| How would you argue against that? | ||
| Then we're saying that we don't trust mankind to be good. | ||
| And so the same people who keep insisting that situational ethics are a good thing are the same people that are arguing that we as a society can't self-govern. | ||
| I just, I dismiss it. | ||
| And we have an opportunity to see. | ||
| Now we have an opportunity, that third part of Dr. King's speech to say, okay, it's going to be difficult. | ||
| He said it. | ||
| It was really three parts. | ||
| He said it's going to be hard. | ||
| But he appealed to his Christian brethren. | ||
| He appealed to those that really wanted a civil society and said, let's make this happen. | ||
| So now it's up to us unique individuals to see if we can make this right. | ||
| How do you gauge success on that front then? | ||
| Well, I think that the society has already gauged success because we are multicultural and we are multi and we're very diverse in everything that we do and our friendships are wide. | ||
| It's a lie out of the left that we just can't seem to get along with each other. | ||
| We can't live near each other. | ||
| We can't go to school with each other. | ||
| We can't play with each other without government force. | ||
| That is a lie. | ||
| What was your first experience with Dr. King? | ||
| Well, I didn't have an experience with Dr. King. | ||
| In fact, my dad was in the military. | ||
| So we were stationed in Japan while he was in Philippines during the Vietnam era. | ||
| So the first time I even heard of Dr. King was when my parents were watching it on Japanese TV and they were crying and we didn't know why. | ||
| Why were they crying? | ||
| Did you ever find out? | ||
| Well, yeah, they were crying because he had gotten killed. | ||
| He had gotten killed. | ||
| They were from the Jim Crow South. | ||
| And when they left, my dad left with his bride from his high school, they never looked back and they ever mentioned it. | ||
| So I kind of grew up in an environment to get really lost. | ||
| And boy, did I get lost because when we came back the following year and every city in the country was on fire, it excited me as a 12, 13 year old. | ||
| And next thing I know, I'm in criminal activity and drug activity and sexual activity and unraveling the way that we have concentrated this type of philosophy in our urban core. | ||
| I got lost in all of that. | ||
| And it wasn't until a Christian conversion that I was able to really change my life and start living like an individual with the uniqueness that God had given me. | ||
| Because you deal with the issues of poverty, what is the approach best that the government of the United States or what the government should take towards addressing poverty? | ||
| Get out of the way. | ||
| Remove these barriers that they've put in place. | ||
| Every department here in Washington, D.C. is rooted in a philosophy that poor people can't self-govern. | ||
| We need to stop. | ||
| We need to stop pouring a trillion dollars a year into programs so people can, based on a philosophy that people can't help themselves. | ||
| Let's give opportunity. | ||
| Now, can everybody do the same thing? | ||
| We know they can't, but we should at least give people the opportunity to get out of their broken schools, get out of their broken health care, get out of their broken housing. | ||
| All of these things that government thinks that they are supposed to do for others, just get out of the way. | ||
| This is our 250th anniversary. | ||
| Let's see if we can self-govern. | ||
| Let's see if people can prosper. | ||
| Let's see if they can discover their own purposes and live. | ||
| Let's hear from Abraham, who joins us from Virginia, Republican line for Star Parker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Yes, good morning. | ||
| Ms. Parker has a very positive message. | ||
| I wish that all African Americans could understand it. | ||
| Martin Luther King also said that for every dollar that goes to the poor, the poor gets 5 cents, and the people who are giving it to the poor get 95 cents. | ||
| That's the same thing that happened up in Minnesota. | ||
| So how can, and it seems like there's a lot of white liberals that continue to push these programs on black America. | ||
| How can we stop the white liberals from pushing these programs on black America, which is destroying black America? | ||
| And I thank you for your time. | ||
| Well, you're pointing to the progressive movement, if you will. | ||
| And sitting in the House of Representatives right across from us, there's 100 members in this progressive movement, and they're multi-ethnic. | ||
| So we can't say that this is just white liberals. | ||
| And in fact, coming out of the 60s, you saw a whole lot of black leaders at the time identifying with Cuba the same way we do today, seeing them identify with Cuba and Venezuela. | ||
| There are progressives that really believe that socialism is a good idea, that really believe that we can micromanage a pure society, a utopian society. | ||
| And it's not true, but you're absolutely right. | ||
| In the investment of government to destroy people's lives, it's been a long time. | ||
| I don't know specifically that those numbers are correct, that this 95-5, but I do know that seven out of $10 that comes into Washington, D.C. goes out immediately to a person through a program, and none of them have worked. | ||
| I've said over time, we don't need to go to Cuba to see what happens when government takes over people's lives. | ||
| We can go to Camden, we can go to Compton, and now we're starting to see the unraveling because people are upset that they still don't have control of their own lives. | ||
| The reason they don't have control of their own lives is because of big government. | ||
| From Virginia as well, this is William, Democrats line. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, how are you doing? | |
| I'd like to ask you, Guess, about the, he said, we're going to leave it up to the people to do the right thing. | ||
|
Why We Legitimize Bad Hand Narratives
00:09:35
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|
unidentified
|
We can't think, we don't think people are good. | |
| Are people good when we was bonded in slavery for hundreds of years? | ||
| We left it up to the people. | ||
| That's the reason we have these programs in place because we've dealt a bad hand from the beginning. | ||
| And we're still being dealt a bad hand. | ||
| And it's people like you got your opinion. | ||
| I respect that. | ||
| But you, hello? | ||
| You're on. | ||
| Go ahead and finish your thought, please, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But When a black person come up and they legitimize this stuff, okay? | |
| And that's what you're doing, legitimizing this stuff. | ||
| I served 20 years in the Marine Corps. | ||
| My mother was a single mother. | ||
| She never got a government program. | ||
| She worked every day, seven days a week. | ||
| She came home with migraine headaches and used home real niggas. | ||
| We did not have medical care. | ||
| She raised six kids on her own. | ||
| She did not get any government. | ||
| When I got old enough to work, I worked in 500 house. | ||
| So just broad brushing, everybody, black, is wrong. | ||
| And you're a hypocrite. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll leave it there. | ||
| I agree that broad brushing is wrong. | ||
| That's why I think that we should dismantle one size fits all programs. | ||
| Everybody knows whether you're buying a car or clothing that one size does not fit all. | ||
| And I did not say that I believe people are good. | ||
| And in fact, I believe the exact opposite. | ||
| I said that progressives have rooted their philosophy in the fact that people are basically good, but because of other things, other situations, they misbehave. | ||
| And this is inconsistent with scripture. | ||
| When it comes to African Americans who decide they want to live free, I really don't have a problem with African Americans that want to decide that they want to live free. | ||
| What I do have a problem with is African Americans who think that other African Americans should not want to live free. | ||
| What we have done over the last 50 years with the legacy of Dr. King is wrong. | ||
| And we need to be able to discuss where we got off track, even as an African American people, and why it is that we keep buying this philosophy that somebody else has to fix our problems, that the country is inherently racist and can't self-correct. | ||
| No, why you have a rule of law and why it has been built out in this wonderful country of ours and how it is built out in the Constitution is a good thing for people to live free. | ||
| The government's role is to protect our interests so that we can live free. | ||
| Just like your children, you put a fence around your house. | ||
| They can now play freely because the fence is around the house. | ||
| So I just am not going to continue to buy this philosophy of African Americans that think because I think for myself, because I built my own business, because I really like freedom and I love my country, that I should feel bad about those things, that all of a sudden I'm a sellout or whatever else it was that you called me. | ||
| I've just, I've been called some of everything. | ||
| I've been in this business 30 years. | ||
| And frankly, I appreciate how many now younger African Americans are starting to get new information about freedom. | ||
| They're four generations away from the slavery that he talked about. | ||
| And that group said, maybe we should put a little bit of our equity into Donald Trump to see, can we live free? | ||
| And I don't see any of the African Americans that supported Donald Trump in that last election saying we did wrong. | ||
| What they're seeing is an opportunity to grow and develop their lives. | ||
| Is it hard? | ||
| Of course, individualism is hard. | ||
| Freedom is very difficult, but at least you get an opportunity to try. | ||
| Let's go to Kendall. | ||
| Kendall, Republican Lion, Cincinnati. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, my great-grandfather was a slave, and our people have worked hundreds of years without being paid. | |
| And Dr. King even said that America gave the black Americans a check that was marked NSF. | ||
| My question is, do you think that in order to make up for this as far as reparations would be federal tax-exempt status for descendants of slaves? | ||
| You don't give us anything, just stop taking. | ||
| There's a book called Economic Revolution on Amazon, and that was the premise of that book, that you don't give us anything, just stop taking to help us to catch up. | ||
| Well, I think the best thing you can do for that scenario as opposed to reparations is to personalize Social Security. | ||
| If everyone had a stake in America, all of a sudden we would all grow together. | ||
| When you think about Wall Street, you're not going to burn down Wall Street if you own Wall Street. | ||
| To that concept that you're talking, what do we do in tax benefit so that people can learn how to live free and get along with each other is you connect us by having our payroll taxes go into equity, go into your own private or personal account. | ||
| I don't know that we would ever sell anything like reparations in this society, nor do I think that we should. | ||
| And in fact, I joke with my nephew often. | ||
| I say, you know, if they ever get to the debates on reparations and we're having our hearings, I'm going to go in the hearing room with his little son because his little son, I mean, which line would he get in? | ||
| He looks like the mom, and yet he has some of the features of my nephew. | ||
| So we are too complex as a society to keep talking about what others should do for us. | ||
| What we ought to do is grow up into the era that we're in right now and take our talents and build on them. | ||
| But I really do think that personalizing Social Security is something we should consider. | ||
| One of the things Dr. King advocated later on in life was this idea of a universal basic income. | ||
| They're testing out that too. | ||
| And in fact, you even see now Trump has Trump accounts. | ||
| Why are we trying to micromanage other people's lives? | ||
| You know what the real challenge was going back to the 60s is when we allow for family life to collapse, when no longer were the virtues inside of a household and we had heavy emphasis on getting married and settled down and then and self-correct in a household, you begin to have to have all these other kind of programs. | ||
| No, I don't agree that we should now take from me to help somebody else who's having a child pay for their life or get a start. | ||
| We all start with nothing and then we start building with that from that. | ||
| And so if you really want to help people get ahead, then we should get the government out of our education and where that money goes to these government actually funded and then union controlled schools. | ||
| You really want to start building people's lives or helping them build their lives, then allow for school choice. | ||
| All of these things connect to a philosophy of the progressives that people can't self-govern. | ||
| So it's up to us to say, can we? | ||
| Do we really know how to manage our own lives, whatever that life looks like? | ||
| And the beauty of America is where you start is not where you end. | ||
| That's why people call us exceptional. | ||
| That's why we call ourselves exceptional. | ||
| The progressives are even offended by us saying that America exceptionalism is golden. | ||
| But what does that actually mean? | ||
| It means for the first time in the history of the world, you had a country that if you're born poor, you don't have to die poor, that we were exceptional in that we were the exception to the rule. | ||
| There was no other country that was rooted in a pluribus unum where everybody gets an opportunity to grow. | ||
| Were there challenges? | ||
| Of course there were. | ||
| I mean, 20% of the people in the country when we founded our country were slaved. | ||
| And it took them 100 years to figure out what they need to do about this question, including a civil war, to get to 100 years later, as Dr. King pointed out in his speech. | ||
| We're still having these challenges because you just keep insisting as a society that certain people don't qualify for just living here in the free country. | ||
| The one viewer, however, described all that being dealt a bad hand. | ||
| And why shouldn't the government be responsible for some of that? | ||
| Because Dr. King didn't say the government should be responsible. | ||
| He said we've been dealt a bad hand, remove these barriers. | ||
| Jim Crow were government barriers. | ||
| It wasn't everywhere in our society, and free people were able to get along with each other. | ||
| When you start looking at what happened to get us so divided, it was all rooted in government. | ||
| That's why it fascinates me today that so many blacks keep calling for more government. | ||
| This was government. | ||
| This is not the first time we've seen the National Guard from the federal level have to go into a state. | ||
| The federal government came into the states of the South because they wouldn't behave in local law. | ||
| So I, yeah, I understand what you're saying, but I don't see, and I've not studied fully Dr. King. | ||
| In fact, many of his later years, it looked like he was being convinced that there were government programs that would help us get out of our dilemma. | ||
| But I don't see that consistency in what he believed. | ||
| He was a Christian man. | ||
| And Christianity is about personal responsibility and growing with the talent that you have and the gift that you've been given. | ||
| This is the Center for Urban Renewal and Education Star Parker joining us for this conversation. | ||
| Let's hear from Antonio in Maryland, Independent Line. | ||
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unidentified
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Hi. | |
| Hey, good morning. | ||
| Hey, I just wanted to say some of the rhetoric around Dr. King's beliefs and whether or not liberals are wrong and conservatives are wrong. | ||
| I think the one irate speech that I remember him giving was about the different farm grants and all the things that was used to help white immigrants and white people sustain a quality of life in this country and how he absolutely felt that was unfair or pretty much held that as the standard for all. | ||
| And I think it's a little bit of a reverse psychology to try to continue to hit liberals over the head to say that even the things that Donald Trump is doing for white America today is somehow immoral or against the American way. | ||
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| Antonio, thank you. | ||
| I think here we are with the question again of the role of government. | ||
| When you're talking about grants and arguing over who gets a grant, you're going to have conflict. | ||
| And that conflict can break down ethnically, and it certainly did in our country. | ||