FULL SPEECH: Tucker Carlson’s Last Address Before Leaving Fox News : with Transcript

Bloggers note : With Transcript 

#QUESTIONofThePeople

.... 

I love the music thank you you're really nice I feel a little underdressed

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looking out in this crowd of handsome well-dressed people I just came from work and if you wear a tuxedo in the air they

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think it's the March of Dimes so I didn't want to make any you know I think it was a Telethon so pardon my

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appearance it's amazing to be in a room this is far more people than live in the town that I

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live in um I've been in an elevator in three years that's how remote my life has

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become so it's very cool or worn socks for that matter uh to be in a room full of nice people

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um and I want to thank you Father Scalia wherever you are that invocation for some reason that that really got me

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um yeah it did and actually I'll just tell you since it's just us and no one's

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watching um that it it reminded me that I don't pray enough for the country and I should and

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I'm I'm upset but the answer is is to include the country in your prayer so thank you for reminding us of that

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um anyway thank you I just want to start by saying that I'm grateful to be here and I want to tell you why I am here there are two specific reasons um the

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first and most immediate is that during this Fall's midterm elections I

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got almost every single call wrong I typically don't weigh in on Races because you know what do I know I don't

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actually cover politics I'm not that interested but this time I got so spun up and so emotional

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that I convinced myself there was this wave coming this political Liberation that was going

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to happen and I told our viewers that in some great detail and introduced a series of candidates who subsequently

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lost as you know the new governor of New Yorker fill in the blank and it was so humiliating to be that wrong in public often wrong

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not usually in front of other people that I thought I've just got to take some time off and think about why I was so unbelievably wrong so I went pheasant

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hunting not that it was the pheasants fault but that is kind of a way to clear your head and I um

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and I wound up because bird hunting really is again not good for the birds but very good for you and I wound up uh

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in South Dakota with Kevin among other people including a couple of my college roommates and I was just I was so

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impressed by him as a person and really that having spent my life in Washington I can tell you if you're not from here

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the key question about anybody who runs any institution in Washington is how false is this person

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God sent some messages we can't immediately translate all of them so I I

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can't tell you what that meant there clearly is meaning the point is uh the man who runs

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Heritage is not false at all in fact my assessment of him was he's completely real he's a complete he's an honest

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person he means it he's not playing a role and that was so thrilling

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to me to see that and by the way it was confirmed by one of Heritage security people who was standing backstage with

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me and I asked him because the security guys always know they're all former cops you know they've seen everything they

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have seen Humanity in various states of drunken undressed like you can't shock them and they know who's real and who's

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not and I asked you know what do you what do you think and one of them said to me to my face I

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would go to war for him and I thought and and these are the kind

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of people who will tell you the truth I mean like why would he lie to me I don't even know his name but he meant it

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um and so to see a leader a real leader at the helm of an institution that

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matters that has the kind of throw weight that Heritage does was thrilling was absolutely thrilling for me because

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the story of the last decade is the collapse of leadership not of the population the people remain Noble and

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decent so far as I can tell I still live here I'm never leaving we have good people we have terrible people in charge

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and not just of our government but of the institutions that I grew up in the

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Episcopal Church my high school you know I could just go on and on and on they're all run by weak people

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and you know it's the same in marriage you know weak husband causes angry wife weak leaders cause an angry country

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that's true and to see someone who's not a weak leader at the helm of Heritage just

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thrilled me um so I wanted to come for that reason just being totally blunt with you and the second reason is to pay

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homage and to give some measure of thanks to Ed fulner for giving me my first job

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which changed my life and I was to say I was not a promising hire would

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be an understatement it's not false modesty in fact if anything I'm underplaying it

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um but I was leaving College without a degree or a job and attempting to marry my girlfriend which I subsequently did

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and ran into this giant roadblock in the form of Episcopal priest father who said no you know job first

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um and not only did I not have a job I had like no idea what I wanted to do and so I applied to a couple of different

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places the CIA if you can even imagine um some boarding school in robot because

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I thought you know Morocco lower standards maybe they'll hire me no and I went I wound up at Heritage as you heard

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uh as a fact Checker copy editor um at policy review the quarterly

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magazine of the Heritage Foundation and it that job absolutely changed my life I

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was paid 14 000 a year plus a hundred dollar bill for Christmas which Dr fulner gave out personally to the entire

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staff at least half of whom went downstairs and bought liquor with it at the liquor store which I think is now part of the intern

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housing um but it was a long time ago it was so long ago I smoked in my office that's

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how long ago it was that's like that's like riding a mule to work just to put it in the context of American History

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spoke in your office yeah it did um in fact Matt Spalding told me to stop

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one day and I thought wow uh this modernization program is moving too

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fast for me I can't deal with it I've always been conservative in the truest sense but Matt you were right and I quit and anyway

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um but yes it was a long a long long time ago and in the course of that job though

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I didn't get rich to be honest with you um I did learn what I wanted to do with the rest of my life which was become a

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journalist and that was really under the guidance of a man called Adam Meyerson who ran it who was

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that was 32 years ago and to this day he really is the kindest

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person I've ever worked for just kind and patient and exactly he thought I was

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completely Nazi thought I was a lunatic and um and I could tell he thought that

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uh but he was patient with me through my entire year and a half there helped me get my next job at a newspaper in

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Arkansas because no one else would hire me but he set me up with this job he walked into my cubicle and said do you

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want to move to Arkansas and so I called my bride who was a religion teacher at the local episcopal

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school and I said do you want to move to Arkansas and what a wonderful woman she's turned out to be and she said of course is that near Colorado quote quote

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very well she was willing to go there um very much in northeastern or at heart but uh and we did and we loved it but I

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got there because Adam Meyerson felt that it was his job to help me get my next job because his job was to train up

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reasonable people and put them in journalism even if it meant sending them to Arkansas

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um and and I was thinking about Heritage this morning in the shower not a place I think about it but I did today and what

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makes it great and one of the best things about Heritage over time longitudinally 50 years say is that

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Heritage has always hired a lot of people and that is an underrated thing it

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really is giving people a job even if it's 14 Grand a year plus a hundred dollar bill for liquor

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you change someone's life you put them on a trajectory at least that's true for

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me I mean I had not succeeded in school to put it mildly and I did not feel I was I always felt

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like I was smart not one other person felt that way until I got to Heritage I'm not sure

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they were super impressed but they treat him like an adult because they had Heist they had high

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intellectual standards they were standards of honesty and you know the idea at Heritage when I worked there wasn't just that you know

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we're fighting this war against the other side of course but it did not logically fall from that at Heritage

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that you could say whatever you wanted the other side was rotten didn't mean you could be rotten

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they really hued to the highest standards of factual accuracy intellectual honesty they really meant

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it they did and even if you didn't agree with them they were very serious about they were intellectually serious people every single person I worked with

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the receptionist in the office at policy review was going to school at night to

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learn Russian and then the week I started at policy review the Soviet Union collapsed

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which was an amazing thing the coup against Gorbachev in the third week of August 1991 was the week I started at

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Heritage and in retrospect of course you never appreciate the significance of things as they happen to you

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can't really know what the movie's about until it ends but at the time we didn't really appreciate how well two things

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one our entire political orientation was based on this war

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between the United States and the Soviet Union this cold war but very much a war and every part of our politics as you

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well remember those of you my age and older remember every part of our politics revolved around that central conflict we were in conflict with a

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country that was both anti-markets and anti-christian and that put in Stark relief our own

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beliefs and what would happen when that ended when there wasn't that clear contrast

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that's the first thing and of course the second thing is we could never have known the third week of

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August 1991 as we saw totalitarianism die that it would ever come here we just couldn't imagine that you know

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we believe that victories were permanent they're not of course that's the first lesson of History you know nothing is permanent except our

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own demise and God but we didn't kind of get that you know if you told me then

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that this week the Department of Justice would have indicted a group of people people I don't agree with by the way on

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a lot of different issues black nationalist socialists from Florida okay kind of not my demographic

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but would have indicted them for criticizing the U.S position the bite

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administration's position on the war in Ukraine and charged them with felonies for which they're each facing 10 years in prison if you told me that could

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happen here I would have laughed at you no we have a First Amendment that can't happen here but it has that and a lot of

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other things which are gravely unsettling actually in people who who were rooted in the the

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Cold War story in the reality of the Cold War again my age 53 kind of know where that goes so the

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purpose of my talk which I by the way I will keep brief I'm an inveterate talker I can literally talk forever

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you can't even imagine my capacity for loquaciousness I mean it just it has no and it's a bottomless well

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you know if you dropped a quarter off the observation deck

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of the Empire State Building how long would it take to hit the sidewalk that was always what we talked about when we

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were kids you would never hear it in my case I can literally go on first so I will stop and Kevin and I are going to

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have a conversation so they'll be much more edified but I would just say two things about the present moment because

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I I think about them all the time and I brewed on this constantly and then I take every afternoon because

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fundamentally I'm Swedish I take a sauna every day as a rest I do I'm not kidding every

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single day never miss it and my whole family does as a it's like our one cultural contribution oh we're Swedish

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ooh it's a very deep ethnicity oh yes a lot of Swedish traditions

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you should hear our comedy it's hilarious um but the one thing I do is take a sauna

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to kind of get out of my head and get away from all this stuff and I never can and I just use my time Dishonored to brood more

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but here are two conclusions I've come to which I think are slightly less depressing than the most obvious which is the country's really going at high

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speed in the wrong direction yeah no kidding like in ways that are just unfathomable and

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and for people my father's age for example who's 82 and such a decent man and

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like you're going Forever by my dad who I saw this morning um you know born in an orphanage called the home for

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little Wanderers in Boston and became a success in the head of a federal agency and served to the Marine Corps and sort

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of lived the America that you imagine is possible for people who are smart and try hard and all that for for people of

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that age it's it's too much actually the change is too abrupt it can't metabolize

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it really it's too horrifying but for those of us who are still engaged in trying to figure out what this means and

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not just repelled by it I would say two things that are I think we're thinking about the first is is you look around

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and you see so many people break Under The Strain under the downward pressure

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of whatever this is that we're going through and you look with

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disdain and sadness as you see people you know become quizlings you see them

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revealed as cowards you see them going along with a new new thing which is clearly a poisonous thing a silly thing

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you know saying things you know they don't believe because they want to keep their jobs if there's a single person in this room who hasn't seen that through

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George Floyd and kovid and the Ukraine war raise your hand oh nobody right you all know what I'm talking about

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and you're so disappointed in people you know you are and you realize that the hurt instinct is maybe the strongest

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Instinct I mean it may be stronger than the hunger and sex instincts actually the instinct which again is inherent to

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be like everybody else and not to be cast out of the group not to be shunned that's a very strong impulse in all of

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us from birth and it takes over unfortunately in moments like this and it's harnessed in fact by bad people in

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moments like this to produce uniformity and you see people going along with this and you lose respect for them and that certainly

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happened to me at scale over the past three years I'm not mad at people I'm just sad I'm disappointed how could you

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go along with this you know it's not true but you're saying it anyway really you're putting your pronouns in your email you're ridiculous

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you know but no one else thinks it's ridiculous who knows the pronouns in the email what does that even mean

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what does it even mean you're saying you're saying lbgtqia Plus

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Plus the plus is invited to my show anytime find a plus and I'll interview them

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what's it like to be a plus am I a plus I'm serious I feel like I'm an addition does that make me a plus

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no one even knows what it is and the whole society lgbtqia Plus

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all right what's the plus oh shut up racist okay

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so you you reach that place and you feel and this is one of the reasons father Scalia I was actually overcome a little

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bit with emotion as you prayed because I realized that I was so upset by the

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behavior of some people I love frankly in a country I Revere and always have

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um that I wasn't praying for the country you know that's on me and we all should be but back to my point so you see the

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sadness happening but there is as there always is this is a fact of Nature and

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Theology and of observable reality there is a countervailing force at work always there's a counterbalance to the Badness

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it's called goodness and you see it in people so for every 10 people who are putting

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he and him him in their electronic JP Morgan email signatures

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there's one person who's like now I'm not doing that sorry I don't want to fight but like I'm

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not doing that it's a betrayal of what I think is true it's a betrayal of my conscience of my faith

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of my sense of myself of my dignity as a human being of my autonomy I am not a

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slave I am a free Citizen and I'm not doing that and there's nothing you can do to me to make me do it and I hope it won't come

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to that but if it does come to that here I am

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here I am it's Paul on trout here I am

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and you see that in people and it's a completely unexpected assortment of people

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I'm really interested in cause and effect and as I noted at the outset of my remarks and my ability to predict the

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future working on that but because I'm sort of paid to predict

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things I try and think a lot about you know what connects certain outcomes that

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I should have seen before they occurred and in this case there is no thread that

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I can find that connects all of the people who've popped up in my life to be that lone Brave person in the crowd who

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says no thank you you could not have known who these people are they don't fit a common

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profile some are people like me some of them don't look like me at all some of them are people I despised on

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political grounds just a few years ago I could name their names but you may not even know about their Transformations I don't want to wreck your dinner by

17:20

telling you who they are but there's in one case someone who I made fun of on television and certainly

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in my private life in vulgar ways who was really the embodiment of everything I found repulsive to the middle of covid

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decided no I'm not going along with this and once you say one true thing and stick with it all kinds of other true

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things occur to you the truth is contagious lying is but the

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truth is as well and the second you decide to tell the truth about something you are filled with this I don't get Supernatural on

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you but you are filled with this power from somewhere else try it tell the truth

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about something you feel it every day the more you tell the truth the stronger you become

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that's completely real it's measurable in the way that you feel

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[Applause] and of course the opposite is also true the more you lie the weaker and more

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terrified you become we all know that feeling you lie about something and all of a sudden you're a prisoner of that

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lie you are diminished by it you are weak and Afraid drug and alcohol use is the same way it

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makes you weak and Afraid but you look around and you see these people and some of them really have paid

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a heavy price for telling the truth and they are cast out of their groups whatever those groups are but they do it

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anyway and I look on at those people with the deepest possible admiration I am paid to

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do that I face no penalty someone come up to me you're so brave

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really I'm a talk show host it's like I can have any opinion I want that's my job that's why they pay me it's not

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brave to tell the truth on a cable news show and if you're not doing that you're really an idiot you're

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that you're literally making a living to say what you think and you can't even do

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that please but how about if you're a senior vice president at Citibank

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I'm serious it's Citibank and you're making you know four million a year and you've got three kids in

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Bedford and two are in boarding school and one starting at Wesleyan next year and like you need this job honestly and

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your whole sector is kind of collapsing and you know that there is no incentive whatsoever for you

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to tell the truth about anything you just go into little re-education meetings and you're like yeah diversity

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is our strength that's exactly right we need equity in the capital markets okay all right

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so if you're the one guy who refuses to say that you are a hero in my opinion

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and I know some of them in fact my job is to interview them and I sit back and I look at these people and I give them

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more credit than I do people who display physical courage which is often impulsive by the way and I'm not denigrating physical courage

20:08

which I deeply admire but you interview people who do amazing things you know who rush into the proverbial burning

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building and like every man is kind of trained from birth to fantasize about what he would do and the building catches fire

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and you're a baby crying and so you run inside no one is trained to stand up in the

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middle of a Dei meeting at Citibank and say this is nonsense and the people who do that oh

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they have my deepest admiration and so their example really gives me hope it

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Thrills me I talk to them all day long people like that that's the first thing we should in this sad moment

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of profound and widespread destruction of the institutions that people who

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share our views built by the way earlier Generations that would agree substance substantially with every

20:56

person in this room they built those and now they're being destroyed and oh that's so depressing but we can also see rising in the distance

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new things new institutions led by new people who are every bit as Brave as the people who came before us amen here's

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the second thing I'd like to say before I get to the conversation with Dr Roberts which is that it might be time to start to reassess

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the terms we use to to describe what we're watching so when I started at Heritage the presumption was and this is

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a very anglo-american assumption that the debates we're having are kind of rational debates about the way to get to

21:30

mutually agreed upon outcomes right so like we all want the country to be more prosperous and free and people

21:36

to be less oppressed or whatever and so we're going to argue about tax rates and I think higher tax gets gets us there on

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the Keynesian and you disagree you're in Austrian or whatever but the objective is the same

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and so we write our papers and they write their papers and made the best papers when I I don't think that's what we're

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watching now at all I don't think we're watching a debate over how to get to the best outcome I think that's completely wrong

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and I've come to this conclusion not and I should say at the outside of an Episcopalian so don't take any theological advice from me because I

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don't have any I grew up in the shallowest Faith tradition that's ever been invented

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it's not even a Christian religion at this point um I say with shame but

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I'm just saying this is an observer of what's going on there is no way to assess say the transgenderous movement

22:25

with that mindset policy papers don't account for it at all

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if you have people who are saying I have an idea let's castrate the Next Generation what's sexually mutilate children I'm sorry that's not a

22:36

political debate what there's nothing to do with politics what's the outcome we're Desiring here

22:42

an androgynous population is that really what we are we arguing for that no I I don't think anyone could like

22:48

defend that as a positive outcome but the weight of the government and you

22:54

know a lot of corporate interests are behind that well what is that well it's irrational

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if you say well you know I think abortion is always bad well I think sometimes it's necessary that's the

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debate I'm familiar with but if you're telling me that abortion is a positive good

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what are you saying well you're arguing for child sacrifice obviously it's not

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about like oh a team you know a teen girl gets pregnant and what do we do about that and victims of rape I you

23:22

know I get it I of course I understand that and I have compassion for everyone involved but when the treasury secretary

23:29

stands up and says you know what you can do to help the economy get an abortion well that's like an Aztec principle

23:35

actually there's not a society in the history that didn't practice human sacrifice not

23:42

one I checked even the Scandinavians I'm ashamed to say it wasn't just the

23:47

mesoamericans it was everybody so like that's what that is what's the point of child sacrifice well

23:53

there's no policy goal entwined with that no that's a theological phenomenon

23:59

and that's kind of the point I'm making none of this makes sense in conventional political terms

24:06

when people or crowds of people or the largest crowd of people at all which is

24:11

the federal government the largest human organization in human history decide that the goal is to destroy

24:19

things Destruction for its own sake hey let's tear it down what you're watching is not a political

24:25

movement it's evil so if you want to assess and I'll put it

24:31

in non and I'll stop with this I'll put it in non pull it I'll put it in non-political or

24:36

not rather non -specific theological terms and just say if you want to know what's evil and

24:43

what's good what are the characteristics of those and by the way you know I I think the Athenians would have agreed

24:48

with this this is not necessarily just a Christian notion this is kind of a I would say widely agreed upon

24:54

understanding of Good and Evil what are its products what are these

24:59

two conditions produce well I mean good is characterized by

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order calmness Tranquility peace whatever you want to call it lack of conflict

25:13

cleanliness cleanliness is Next to Godliness

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it's true it is and evil is characterized by their opposites

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violence hate disorder division disorganization and filth

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so if you are all in on the things that produce the latter basket of outcomes

25:38

what you're really advocating for is evil that's just true I'm not calling for a religious War far from it I'm

25:45

merely calling for an acknowledgment of what we're watching which is not what and I'm not certainly not backing the

25:51

Republican party I mean look I'm not making a partisan point at all

25:56

[Applause] I'm I'm just noting what's super obvious like those of us who are in our mid 50s

26:03

are caught in the past in the way that we think about this one side's like no you know I've got this idea

26:10

and we've got this idea and let's have a debate about our ideas they don't want a debate those ideas won't produce outcomes that

26:18

any rational person would want under any circumstances those are manifestations of some larger

26:25

force acting upon us it's just so obvious it's completely obvious

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and I think two things one we should say that

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and stop engaging in these totally fraudulent debates

26:43

where we are using the terms that we used in 1991 when I started at Heritage as if maybe you know I could just win

26:49

the debate if I marshaled more facts I've tried that doesn't work and two maybe we should all take just

26:57

like 10 minutes a day to say a prayer about it I'm serious like why not

27:02

and I'm saying that to you not as some kind of event s I'm literally saying that to you as an

27:08

Episcopalian the Samaritans of our time coming to you

27:18

I'm literally an Episcopalian okay and even I have concluded it might be

27:26

worth taking just 10 minutes out of your busy schedule to say a prayer for the future and I hope you will

27:36

good job thank you [Music] [Applause]

27:41

[Music] [Applause] [Music]

27:53

oh man the chance to interview Tucker Carlson do I have some questions

27:59

but uh because you made your first point seven times we only have a few minutes

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that's the elitist in you well there's a lot of that still we've got time for two questions great

28:15

but all seriousness Tucker thank you what a great message oh thank you yep that was heartfelt

28:25

things go south at Fox News there's always a job for you here

28:31

well we we do that for a lot of people very happily we're not called America's Outpost for nothing

28:38

yeah think about that first question all all kidding and sarcasm aside

28:44

what do you think over the last 10 or 20 years whatever timeline you think is appropriate has changed the most

28:51

that is and I mean that's socially and culturally I don't mean that politically although you can go there if you want

28:57

that has affected everyday Americans lives the lack of information

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I I oh this is so name dropping but I I can't resist because it's the elitist in

29:09

you no I know it must be no I was actually interviewed Elon Musk this week there you go I know I was talking to

29:15

Elon Musk Elon and I thank you smoking a cigar on his G4 and he turns to me he says you know Tucky calls me

29:21

tuck um no no I hear I hit him for work obviously and he had a great he had such

29:27

Wonder said the most likely outcome is the most ironic outcome

29:32

and I thought boy is that that is just that's actually a I I would I would argue that's a Christian precept actually you know it's kind of the

29:40

Beatitudes you know the first shall be last and the opposite of what you think is going to happen happens and so often

29:45

and so the internet the core promised the internet was as much information as we've ever had at your fingertips and

29:52

the result has been a centralization of information this is deliberate needless to say but unnoticed by most people that

29:58

results in more controlled information than we could even have imagined 20

30:04

years ago so a lot of information just is not available I mean because it's

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digital and it's controlled by a small number of companies the polling suggests

30:15

that a lot of Americans I don't mean like hundreds I mean hundreds of millions of Americans have no idea

30:21

what's going they don't know the facts about certain things that it's not just because they're dumb or they're distracted on their iPhones the whole

30:28

point of the iPhone was to inform you and the net effect has been to make

30:33

people completely ignorant of the court or the actual facts like the non-disputed facts about a lot of

30:39

different things and you saw this certainly during covid so that challenges the idea of democracy which

30:45

you know rests on the notion of an informed voting public of a citizenry and we don't have that and um and that

30:53

really I never would have expected that at all the last thing I'll say is don't throw away your hard copy books

30:58

because they are the Repository the enduring repository that cannot be and I'm dead serious and I don't mean to

31:05

I'm not going to tell you to buy gold and ammo though obviously you should think about it but definitely don't

31:10

throw away your books because they can't be disappeared because they exist physically and I would say a car later that is

31:16

don't throw away your relationships with other people because they can't be disappeared either the the material the physical

31:22

things that you can smell those are the things that you can trust your spouse your dogs your children especially your

31:29

dogs but you know your your actual friendships your college roommates people in person as the world becomes

31:35

more digitized and people live in this kind of this realm that's disconnected from

31:42

physical reality I think the only way to stay sane is to cling more tightly to

31:47

the things that you can smell and I've really gotten to the point where if I can't smell it I'm not dealing with it and I mean that

31:53

um and that includes books anyway that's what's changed books relationships and ammo Tucker

31:59

girls Guide to the universe yes that is awesome well we've got 46 seconds okay

32:05

and it's tight because we have two real treats even after you I talk too much in

32:11

my apologies no don't don't apologize oh great I knew you were going to talk more than you said you would

32:18

every time ask my wife and now we're down to 28 seconds so

32:23

everyone what tomorrow whether they're staying here or they're able to go home what should be top of mind for them to

32:30

do in their local community oh well the very first thing you should

32:35

do every single day is tell all the people you love that you love them for two reasons because you do

32:43

and affirming things out loud makes them real words are the most important and most

32:49

powerful thing that we have and of course I have an interest in saying that if I sold Chryslers I'd be like cars are the most important thing but but words

32:57

are in the beginning was the word and so articulate it

33:04

and that is also simultaneously an acknowledgment of a truth that we don't face which is we don't know what's going to happen today and we could die that's

33:11

the one thing that unites every person is the certainty of death and reminding yourself of that every single day will

33:17

bring you paradoxically Joy I love you that's the most important

33:22

thing what a wonderful response

33:30

in a lot of ways that's a fitting way not for just you and me to conclude our

33:36

brief Consciousness sorry you're never going to live that one yeah

33:42

well but in a lot of ways also a good way for us to conclude this gathering

33:48

before some additional entertainment and so I will ask all of you to join me in thanking Tucker Carlson for being here

33:54

tonight and for what you do thank you God bless you thank you thank you

34:07

[Applause] [Music] laughs

34:15

but we're not done yet thanks again Tucker so in a few moments just a few

34:22

moments my friend and colleague Genevieve wood will be at here and tell you a little bit more about what we're

34:27

going to do but I wanted to leave you with one thought of course I've told you sort of two thoughts I'll be abusive like Tucker was

34:34

thank you for being here tonight thank you for those of you who've been here for the last few days but I'll cut to

34:40

the chase in the interest of time because we have so much in store for you for the next little while

34:46

and that is every single time that Americans backs have been at the wall

34:51

1763 French and Indian War 1776 you know that one

34:58

1781 the first few hours of the Battle of Yorktown if you know weren't really a given

35:04

the War of 1812 I mean right where we're sitting basically the British were here

35:10

and the future of this young country was undetermined Civil War obviously both World Wars the

35:18

wars of more recent times plus the the political cataclysms that happen in a

35:23

republic every single time every single time no exceptions

35:30

people thought it could never be worse people despaired people were despondent

35:35

because of human nature and yet there's something about the American Spirit represented best by that flag that ought

35:42

to tonight and every night every night instill in us a hopefulness about the

35:49

future not just a perseverance not just the great cardinal virtue of fortitude

35:55

which is kind of quintessentially American but a hopefulness that as we fight as we

36:03

charge Hills as we bear the burdens we have that we always know for the United

36:08

States of America bestowed with so many virtues as a society by our creator there's always

36:15

more thank you for celebrating 50 years with the Heritage Foundation and don't you

36:22

ever doubt that when the chips are down we're going to be there charging the hill with you God bless you