The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the Pro America Report. This is Ryan Hite, guest hosting today for Mr. Ed Martin, who will be with us at least in part. But I am happy to be here, spend some time with you, talk about a few very important things today. And I’m glad that you’re with us too. Go to ProAmericaReport.com you can pick up Ed’s substack there. What he’s writing on and subscribe to it. PhyllisSchlafly.com is where you will find the archives of the Pro America Report program. You can get the podcasts, the standalone of each guests, different links, and all of the show notes and resources that we’ve put together. And also there you can sign up for the very famous, very helpful, very regular WYNK e-mail every weekday morning at 8:00 AM Eastern Time and all the other time zones concurrent you will get the WYNK e-mail into your inbox. It will be very short very helpful give you a few things that you need to know to start your days. Promise. That’ll be a good thing that you’ll want to do. So head over to PhyllisSchlafly.com for that again. Proamericareport.com, you’ll get to Ed’s substack and see what he’s writing about longer form, which often lines up with what we are talking about here on the first segment of the Pro America Report. The WYNK. What You need to know.
We’ve got a great show in store for you today, actually a couple of interviews that Ed was able to do. So we’re going to have those live ready to rock’n’roll Sergeant Betsy Smith, Betsy Brantner Smith. She has been with us before, spokesperson for the National Police Association. She’s got something to she’s going to talk about. We’ve got a lot of different things happening around America. The state of policing in America, some updates that she’s going to give us. Also Mark Biltz is going to join us, the founder and senior pastor of El Shaddai Ministries. He has an upcoming book, America at War 2024 to 2026, a very, very fascinating topic. I’m looking forward to hearing from him on so Ed will be with us for those interviews. Don’t miss them. They’ll be here after the break.
But before we get there, we got to do the WYNK. This first segment. What you need to know, that happens every single day. You shouldn’t be surprised. Here we are. I know you’re not surprised. Neither am I. But there is something I wanted to talk about today. Actually, Ed has mentioned this a couple of times already. He’s spoken of it, but tomorrow is a very famous and important day. We celebrated something this past Monday. Although we got into a little bit of that on Monday. I’ll go ahead and reiterate. Monday was not I’ll have you know. Presidents day. Now, I didn’t make no mistake. We see the Presidents Day sales everywhere. Your kids may have been out of school for Presidents Day, but it’s not Presidents day. It is on the books as George Washington’s Birthday. That is what we celebrate. That is what we observed on Monday. George Washington was born February 22 Of 1732 February 22, 1732. So that’s coming up tomorrow, Thursday the 22nd. Whenever it is that you’re listening to this and it is an incredible day to celebrate. This is a really awesome opportunity to remind ourselves not just about George Washington and who he was. The man, the the father of our country, the man who founded America. It’s one of my favorite prints I’ve seen this year. Or actually the last couple of years. Someone’s got one of the famous portraits of George Washington. He has the red Make America Great Again hat on. Except it just says make America. That’s true. Make America.
The founding father, the father of our nation, George Washington. There is an incredible history and legacy to look at here and what an incredible opportunity we have to use his birthday. This celebration here on February 22nd to look into his history, to read about him, to read from him, to read what George Washington wrote. This is absolutely incredible to have a window in to the thoughts and the lives, the values, the decision making, the policies, the beliefs of our constitutional framers, of the founding fathers of the United States of America. We have that awesome opportunity. And that’s what you need to know is that source material is still out there, you and I still need to go and look for it. We still need to go and research from it. We still need to go and read it to understand who these men were and what they believed.
Because you and I, dear listener, are tasked with Maintaining with keeping this Republic as Ben Franklin so aptly said, if we can keep it, you and I are tasked with keeping the Republic.
And if we’re going to keep it we need to know. Where it came from, why it came about, the long history lessons that have to do with really very incredibly human and compelling stories as people came here, people searched for this new world, this new place of freedom and liberty, and then established it and had to throw off tyrannical rule from Parliament and King George. This is an incredible history that you and I have inherited, that that you and I are responsible for maintaining and for marching forward in this representative Republic and making sure that we enshrine that liberty for all to see and maintain and preserve it as we have the opportunity to legislatively work that direction. So this this is the Clarion call on days like George Washington’s Birthday. To realize that their writing, his writing, the source materials of our founding fathers are there. They’re available, they’re accessible, and there are such wisdom to glean from them.
I look at the shelves here, behind me in my office, I see so many of these writings, notes from the constitutional conventions, from the debates, The Federalist Papers, the anti federalist papers, different of the autobiographies of and writings Of letters from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams. There are incredible Pieces of wisdom to glean there. There’s some incredible context to look at when you read what these men wrote, what they wrote to their wives, what they wrote to each other, to different individuals as they were founding, crafting, framing, and hanging upon the foundation the structure of this American government that we continue today.
There is an awesome opportunity and a fearsome responsibility that you and I have. That source documentation should be our guide, our Go to, the first thing that we reach for and it’s not inaccessible. It’s not hard to read. It’s not hard to find. In fact, most of it’s on the Internet. You can buy it in hard copy form. There’s some great great resources out there. One of them, Liberty Fund, is a great one that we could talk about.
Liberty Fund does some incredible reprinting. Of a lot of public domain things, a lot of the writings of the founding fathers, they have an incredible wealth, a huge library there, and so many of these things like here I’m. Looking at the authors: George Washington they have George Washington: a collection. This is available right now. You can get it as a PDF, as an e-book. You can even buy a nice copy of the book if you’d like. They have the writings of George Washington, 14 volumes of writing that span 1748 through 1799 these were published by GP Putnam Sons. Originally, they’re now in the public domain. You can go and download them right now. You can comb through and read through the words of George Washington himself to understand the man who was so consequential in our history, so consequence, so consequential the world over.
We have the opportunity, it’s accessible, and it’s that is an Absolutely incredible privilege and and an incredible legacy. That we have inherited and every time we come Around to a Wonderful celebration. Like this Birthday of George Washington. Was this the the the 292nd birthday? I think I forget. I think it’s the 292nd birthday. Maybe it’s 291st. I’ll have to double check my numbers on that 1732 to now. It is an awesome privilege and an awesome responsibility we’ve inherited and those materials are right there. There is some great stuff I actually would like to talk about one of those things, and I want to take this opportunity.
You know, we talk about George Washington’s Birthday as Presidents Day, even though it’s not, there are incredible other men to celebrate. They’re incredible other men to consider. And I want to talk about that, actually want to pull out two things, one from the more modern era from the 20th century. And then I’d like to pull out something from George Washington. We’ll talk about that in the wrap up. So you’re going to want to come on back for that. A very specific thing, but you look across the spectrum of what’s available going through the Internet archives, through places like Liberty Fund going to the Mount Vernon Association, they do an incredible amount of work to preserve what These men did, what they wrote, what they meant, and there is no room for doubt. If you want to know about an issue about religious liberty, about free speech, about private property rights, about due process, if you want to see what it is that they meant. We have the Constitution to consult, but we also have their writings. We have the surrounding news reports, the surrounding letters that they wrote, the correspondence, the notes on their meetings. We can go and look at all of these things and collect the context for what they mean and the extent of them and then in turn we can take them and defend these principles even better. It is an awesome opportunity. There’s so many things you look at it, you know, one of the things that struck me when you listened to this interview with Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin, this, this nation that Putin leads as a, as an autocrat, this is 1000 plus years of history. It’s huge. It’s mammoth. My American mind can’t hardly fathom 1000 years of history as a state. We are so young here in America, only 250 years. Almost. But if you realize only 250 years, we can reach back so easily and touch the context and the surrounding situations. Of the men and women who started this nation, what they meant, why it mattered to them. It’s reachable, it’s accessible. And on this George Washington’s Birthday, on this anniversary of his birth, the father of America, let’s take that opportunity to reach back. Will you join me? Go out and get some of these things again. They’re available online for free. You can order. Pretty inexpensive. Paperbacks and hardbacks, and there is such a wealth of information there.
If you and I are going to take this incredible responsibility and march forward, we ought to know what the men who started this thought. That is what you need to know. Go and find the source documents. They’re still there. They are accessible today. That’s it, go take a look.
Thanks for being here. Come on right back. We’re going to dive into a couple of great interviews and then also, you don’t want to miss the wrap up. I’m going to come back and get a couple of quick things to talk about. Thanks for being here on the Pro America Report. Go to proamericareport.com phyllisschlafly.com. Get all the goodies and we’ll see you back here on the break on the Pro America Report.
