The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. And I will start with this from March 23rd, 1775:
“The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”
That’s from the Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech of Patrick Henry. And I am reminded of that because we are having this incredible Collegian Summit, the 29th annual Collegian Summit, Phyllis Schlafly Eagles gathering in Washington, DC, a handful, more than a handful, a bunch of College students in person. But most of it’s virtual. And our theme has been focused on vigilant, active, brave, taking those three adjectives from this great iconic line.
The battlefield is not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active and the brave. And so, as we’ve been talking tonight, we’ve been talking to Congressman Thomas Massey, Congressman Matt Gaetz, Joe Flynn, the leader of the America Project. We talked to Bridget VanMeans, one of the iconic pro-life leaders. We’ve had a chance to see Jack Posobiec, all these different folks gathered for the Collegians, some of it virtual. Go to PhyllisSchlafly.com/collegians. You can see it will post all of these 20 minutes conversations. Fascinating.
Armstrong Williams, the kind of media guru communicator of such renown. We have actually had Hans von Spakovsky, who has written the book literally on election fraud.
I was interested Saurabh Sharma, who is the President of the American Moment, sort of an America First Group, phenomenal guy. And we had a conversation with him. So lots happening, lots of exciting stuff.
The question is, the vigilant, the active and the brave, as we’ve talked about when these three adjectives were proposed to all these different leaders, they had different responses for Collegians.
And I remember distinctly from earlier, Joe Flynn saying, you just have to stand up. I don’t know if he said the phrase, but he sort of implied, you don’t have to gain ground. You just have to not stand down. And I’m reminded so often, you watch what the woke culture is doing. You watch what the government, the narrative machine is doing. It is punishing the people that stand up. You’re not even punished for making progress. In fact, Congressman Matt Gaetz was here. Congressman Matt Gaetz has been the subject of literally thousands of articles, thousands of broadcast segments over allegations, nothing’s ever proven. In fact, a bribery scheme against him, a blackmail scheme against him was proven. And so he was here.
But Joe Flynn’s point, if you’re going to be vigilant, active, and brave, first you have to stand up. And what I would add to that is when you hear these different leaders, when you hear all these different folks, Alex Newman, who was at the Collegians, the common denominator, if I can say, is not the vigilance, activity or brave, it’s not even the standing up. It’s the understanding of solidarity that you and me and Collegians and adults and seniors and left wing, right wing, Democrat, Republican who believe in American exceptionalism and see what’s happening with our government and our media and big tech.
We need to stand up and we need solidarity with each other.
I interviewed last week for 18 minutes on this radio program, Naomi Wolf.
Naomi Wolf. I think she’s the feminists’ feminist. There are some of the other women that are more famous, Gloria Steinem and such, but they’re not really serious. That’s not fair. They led the movement or the pieces of the movement when they were in the game. But Naomi Wolf, for the last 20 years, has been intellectually, writing books, giving speeches.
I think I disagree with her on almost every fundamental issue, except she’s decided at this moment in history that she’s afraid of the size and scope and power of government and the wokeness, and especially when it came to individual health and control of your body.
She’s just been devastated. If you read her book and I have I bought a copy of it because I was having her on the show, and I thought, oh, man, I don’t want to give Naomi Wolf the profits of a book. And then I interviewed her and I went out and bought the book, and it came yesterday. It’s called The Body of Other Authoritarians. Excuse me. Let me get it fully right. Excuse me. The Body of Others. It’s by Naomi Wolf. And the full title is The New Authoritarians, Covid 19 and the War Against the Human. And I was reading it last night. I haven’t read the whole thing, but I read a lot of it.
And my listeners, you know, my trick read the first and last and last chapter and you get a sense of where the book is.
Well, she’s got this interesting way. She wrote it. She wrote the chapters where there’s some sort of how to say factual arguments. And then there’s a sort of reflection piece where she’s writing in italics on the page and in sort of her own voice, you can hear it. It’s really Interestingly done.
Anyway, I think she and I agree on the fundamental moment we’re in.
And so when you listen to, again, to Joe Flynn, Bear Woznik, the world class surfer who now has started a Ministry and appears on a reality TV show, a bunch of Christian men riding around on motorcycles. And he’s done this. That’s called The Long Ride Home. He’s written a book called The Deep Adventure, The Way of Heroic Virtue. His website, Bearschoolofmanliness.com, bearschoolofmanliness.com is fascinating, all these people.
The point I’m saying is this. Remember what I’ve told you.
In order to not waver, in order to not hide, in order to not sit down, fall down, break down, in order to stand up, you have to have roots in the basics, scripture, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution.
You got to sink roots into real stuff.
But then you can’t do it alone. You can’t be buffeted by the winds and the waters and the rages alone. You’ve got to have solidarity. You’ve got to band together.
You don’t need 1000 people. The famous John Wesley quote, give me 100 men. You need 100. You need ten. You certainly need one. If you’re married, you need one. Who’s with you?
But we need to build the solidarity.
And so the call from Patrick Henry in March 1775 to give me Liberty or give me death speech where he says, “the battle, sir, is not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”
And what I’d add to that is, as Joe Flynn called to, stand up.
But I would add to that and build around you solidarity and be solidarity for each other in this environment, in this moment, in this battle, because you can’t do it alone.
You don’t need the majority. You don’t need 80%, but you can’t do it alone.
And whether it’s Naomi Wolf’s book, The Bodies of Others, or it’s Joe Flynn’s speech at Collegians, or it’s the leadership of Congressman Burgess Owens in the Congress. Super Bowl champion, father, I think of seven, business owner, won a Super Bowl. How many people won the Super Bowl? I forgot. I always forget which team. He gets mad at me. I think it was the Raiders. I think he won with the Raiders. And I think they beat the Eagles, which I got to remember because I got to tease my friend who’s an Eagles fan.
But my point here is build.
Sink your roots. Sink your roots.
Yeah. He won with the Raiders, beat the Jets.
Sorry, but sink your roots. And then be, in search of solidarity and be solidarity for other people.
That’s the key, seems to me at this moment.
And that does mean party structures. It does mean participating in politics. That’s true. Does mean participating in your Church. That’s true. It does mean participating in your community. It’s true.
But it’s not the only thing.
And you shouldn’t look only to the usual spaces and places and groups where you get solidarity, because Lord knows I would not have picked Naomi Wolf as somebody who I would listen to and think, how can I understand what she’s saying? How can I utilize what she’s saying? You got another guy like that, Glenn Greenwald. I don’t really agree with Glenn Greenwald on a bunch of politics or a bunch of policies say, but listening to him and watching him talk about the denigration, the breakdown of the media, Matt Taibi, same thing these guys, I don’t agree with, but they’re solidarity. They’re in solidarity with those of us that are saying something’s wrong in this country.
What can we do to change the course? How do we stand up? How do we build solidarity? How do we go forward?
If you want to, please visit PhyllisSchlafly.com/collegians. You will be able to see this whole program that we had earlier today. It streamed live. We’ll be putting it up on YouTube in snippets I think we had 18 speakers in for 20 minutes conversations with questions from Collegians with answers from the guests. A good time, joy, but real bolstering, real sinking of roots, real solidifying who we are and what we know and great solidarity. It was a very important event and I hope you will go and get fortified by it there. All right.
We’re going to take a break. When we come back we’ve got a lot a lot on the show, a lot to cover and we will move right through it.
The one thing I want to tell you is visit proamericareport.com ProAmericaReport.com and you will see all these different great interviews we’re doing and others. We’ll get a breakdown from Ted Malloch about ESG, what a failure it is in terms of the value for our businesses to turn to this ESG thing and we’ll also have, I’m very excited about this. We’ll have an interview with Jeff Stevens about his book Fool’s Errand which has a lot to do with fatherhood and his father and it’s a novel but he’s got a great interview. It’s a great book. Father’s day is coming and I just encourage people to find the great periodical, excuse me, the great books, novels that deal with fathers. Jeffrey Stevens has written one I like a lot so we’ll talk with him in a few moments and a lot more.
Again visit ProAmericaReport.com. Signup for the daily email the daily WYNK there and we’ll be right back.
Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Back in a moment.