And I remember my first year of college as the Cold War came to an end. But the other thing that emerged was an adversary in the Soviet Union that wanted to impose communism, which runs counter to everything that we talked about. And we wanted a world that respected things like individual rights and the dignity of all people. We never wanted to be threatened by totalitarianism. One, America, the preeminent power, the leading nation in a coalition of nations that believed we never wanted to have a war like that again. And we helped save the world from Nazism and Imperial Japan, from a return to those dark ages. America was reluctant, and there was a pretty substantial segment of our population and prominent leaders who were traveling the country arguing against getting involved. If Japan had not attacked us, and Germany had not declared war, it's not clear how long it would have taken for America to get involved in. And it led us to two European wars that America was very reluctant to get into. We were also blessed with natural resources, and we industrialized and to help build our economy. People from all over the world came here to start a better life because they believed they were created for a better purpose than what they were able to achieve in their native land. In addition, we continued to progress economically. And they ended it because a country founded on the belief that every human being had God-given rights and slavery could not coexist. It ended in America not because we were invaded by the French or the British, and they imposed the end of slavery, but because Americans ended it. Virtually every society in human history had elements of it. Slavery has existed for thousands of years. That's why slavery and America could not coexist. In each generation, it got closer to living and fulfilling the ideals of its founding. And it didn't just survive, it continued to move forward and develop. It advanced from that point.Īmerica was a nation born in a world full of empires who had the power to crush this infant republic in the crib. In fact, while it borrowed from the Greeks, it wasn't entirely identical to. This country was founded on the belief that every human being had rights, that those rights were not the rights granted to you by the government, but that they were the rights that were provided to you by your Creator, and that the job of the government was to protect them. That really started changing about 200 years ago in the West, and particularly in America. There was in most civilizations, even the greatest of empires of antiquity, very little reason to be optimistic or to be creative, because creativity was not rewarded. Largely, the rights were whatever those who governed you said they were. It's a totally foreign concept, the notion of individual rights. If you think about the history of mankind on the earth, with probably the exception of the 100 years or so of Greece, every society was basically a place that said there's no such thing as individual rights. I think that requires us to go back not just 20 years, 50 years, but really throughout the course of human history, at least parts of it that have been recorded. I think the best way to do that is to start talking about how we got to this point where we are now. Why does it matter? So that you can do it in a way that's smart and intelligent and actually serves the national interest. And what I mean by that is that it's really easy to stand in front of cameras and say, “I'm going to be tough on China,” but I think it has to tie in to why. But I still think this needs a lot more framework. And there's a growing bipartisan consensus that something needs to happen about it. I think China has obviously gotten more aggressive, more transparent about what they're trying to do in the world. Click here for video and read a lightly edited transcript below:Ī lot has changed in the last year, in two ways.
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