The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report.
In just a few moments, we’ll get an update from Curtis Houck. Curtis Houck is the managing editor of Newsbusters.org, a website that sort of takes a look at where the fake news is going and what they’re doing, and we will see what he has to say.
We’ll also talk later on in the program. I’m going to do a whole segment on a friend of mine and how he, if there is a Republican majority in the U.S. House, he, a Congressman from Missouri, has a chance to make a huge difference for our country and for each of the citizens of our country, especially Missouri, where he’s from, but also for everybody. And I’ll talk to you more about him. His name is Congressman Jason Smith of Missouri. You’ve heard me talk about him, and I want you to know the backstory of why I think he could be one of the more important political leaders in the country over the next few years. We’ll talk about that, but first, what do you need to know?
What do you need to know today? I want to talk about the reality of the phrases that have been in the press for a couple of days. So Giorgia Meloni of Italy, who will likely be the Prime Minister, there is some sort of convoluted process where she has to be appointed by the president after the sort of coalition of the elections are done and the coalition is clear. I think that will happen.
But she gave a speech that went viral in which she talked about how she didn’t want to have to give up who she was. She didn’t want to be identified as person one. She wanted to be mother. She didn’t want to be identified as citizen 1. She wanted to be Italian. It’s really a wonderful short speech that went viral.
But what I want to talk about and what you need to know is, that speech comes in a tradition of using language to show priorities. And she got attacked for it, the phrase she used was God, country, and family. And by the way, one of the most famous versions of this is lost to our younger people. But General MacArthur, Douglas MacArthur, when he was giving his famous speech, Old soldiers never die, he referred to duty, country and God. Let me make sure. Let me make sure on that.
But what I want to point you to is the prioritization of the phrases. And one of the things that I have argued for many, many years now, probably six or seven, was that the recovery of the phrase America First is really important because America First was used in the1950s and 1960s, it was used to some effect by the late Phyllis Schlafly, my boss. She would talk about the America First people and the American Lasters is what she did.
But certainly it went out of use for a couple of decades, and Donald Trump and his era brought it back.
But first, let me pause and remind you on the Eagle Awards that Phyllis Schlafly gives out. She gave out Eagle Awards during her life to people that were doing a great thing. She had this inscription on this beautiful framed print that had an eagle on it, and she used this inscription. She said, With appreciation for your dedicated work for God, family, and country.
Now, I think better than Meloni. Giorgia Meloni. Better than MacArthur, better than anybody. Phyllis captures it.
And I don’t think she would say it was original. Others talked about God, family and country.
But if you notice the priorities, the priorities of God, Family, and country are completely consistent with the Declaration of Independence, with our notion of the rule of law, the Constitution, the rule of law in America, that there’s a God, a Creator, there is then families, the family unit, and then country, and that it is in that order, and that is a priority order.
One goes before the other. One is prior to the other. And that, again, God, Family, and country seems to me to be at the heart of what will be, what is the recovery in this country, of a sense of America’s special place in the world, of America’s role in the world of what our nation means.
We’re not just a state, we’re a nation. We’re not just a government. We’re a nation.
We’re ethno-religious people living together, sharing values and a vision for the future. And so what you need to know is Giorgia Meloni tapped into something extraordinary. I mean, she truly did.
The people listening to her, first of all, they related to her idea that she just wanted to be able to be who she was, a mother, a sister, a wife, an Italian. She didn’t want to have to play all these gender naming games.
But also, they recognize the priorities. They recognize no matter whether you agree with her or not, because, again, hers was God, Nation, and family, at least the way it was reported in that speech. But it was close, right? It’s close. It’s close to the ordering is there.
And here’s what I want to say about America First. I’ve talked about this before, but I want to come back to it because I want to underscore how important it is. Because if you understand this set of priorities, again, God, Family, and country, you then have a foreign policy, a domestic policy, a policy of federal versus state versus local. It’s all informed by that. And when we had America First, I would tell people it was a little bit like the old sort of a joke I used to hear and tell.
If you’re told love your neighbor as yourselves, and every night you pulled into your driveway and you gave your money, your work money, your salary to your neighbor, you handed it to them out the window. After a couple of weeks or months, your own family would be saying, wait a second. You can’t love your neighbor as yourself and ignore your family because part of yourself is your family.
And so my argument would be, when you listen to the word of God, when you hear what God calls us to, love your neighbor as yourself, there are other prescriptions and restrictions, but that to me, is one that captures a lot of it. The first part is love yourself.
And you can only love yourself by loving yourself and your spouse. That’s my opinion.
Some people disagree, but certainly family. So if you love God and you love your neighbor as yourself, you got to start with yourself, which is your family, and then you love your neighbor, which is your neighbor. Not the strangers, not everyone. Before you love the strangers, you have to love your neighbor. Love your neighbor as yourself. It’s not love everybody, although we do love everybody. We’re called to love all people created in the image and likeness of God.
My point here is America First. It’s a revitalization of America after a period of about 40 years, 50 years post World War II, where we drifted further and further away from a sense of God, family, and country and towards a sense of pure self.
Love yourself, and from there, you can figure out what else you love.
The self referential point of view informed by psycho babble, informed by consumerism. That’s a big part of it. That’s a huge part of it, consumerism, because it’s me that consumes itself, referential. So we drifted for 40 or 50 years, and we’re seeing a revitalization now.
Now It’s not easy because the forces that prefer to have us stay away from family, away from nation, away from God are strong. Mostly they’re demonic. But that’s another part of this.
And so when you think, think America first, when you hear Giorgia Meloni, when you go back and listen to MacArthur, you should return to a question of how do we set the priorities for we the people?
And here’s where what you need to know is we have our framework.
So, for those that believe in God’s, family and country, you start with God and God’s Word. And from there, God’s Word informs how the family is. And you know what the family is. You’re not confused by changing the definitions of a pregnant person from a mother, a woman, a wife. You’re not confused by the changing of the definition of marriage into throubles and whatever.
But further, when you get to the definition of country, definition of nation, you have this requirement that you look towards each other in a nation before you look to the world, before you look to other priorities. It’s God, family and country.
And what you need to know is that’s a revival. It’s happening as a revival all around us. It is. It is truly happening all around us.
And you’re seeing it in the assertion of parents’ role in their kid’s education and the changing of our broken education system to allow vouchers Arizona’s charging ahead.
You’re seeing it in terms of the intensity of people caring about how local governments are working and candidates running for office based on principles of, Hold on. Let’s not fund or fight foreign entanglements when we have a lot to do here with our neighbors. Let’s not allow an open border that changes the definitions of who we are both in terms of law breaking and an ethno-religious community. We can’t control it if we can’t control it. If you get my point.
You can’t decide how you want to be. You can’t control the border. And those questions of sovereignty, those questions of we’re seeing a revitalization of them.
And my challenge and what you need to know is we have to continue to inform ourselves on the right priorities. On the right, it’s not ranking, because just because you choose God’s, family and country doesn’t mean one is better than the other.
It does mean that one is prior to the other. You can’t have a good family if you don’t have God. You can’t have a good country if you don’t have good families and a closeness with God. That’s the truth.
It doesn’t mean they’re better than the other. It means that they’re prior. They are a requirement.
You can love God, be close to God, be in a faith, know God and not have a family. It happens. People don’t have families or they lose their families or they’re gone. I don’t know that you still have a mother and a father. But my point is, in time you can be living in a place where your family is gone and you’re single, you don’t have kids or something. I mean, there’s lots of ways that can be likewise, you can be from a place, a national place and be living in other places, right? You can be a migrant. That’s true. But the ranking what you need to know is God, family, and country.
That is what America First is challenging us to do. And we’ve got to figure it out by going back to our founding documents, by going forward with faith and courage and commitment and a sense of fearlessness because we know the truth. There you have that’s what Giorgia Meloni tapped into.
That’s what America first taps into.
That’s what you’re seeing. And it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. All right, we got to take a break.
We’ll come back, we’ll talk with Curtis Houck and a lot more.
It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Don’t forget to visit Proamericreport.com.
Sign up there for the daily email. And also you can go there and see segments of the show interviews and all that right there. ProAmericaReport.com. We’ll be back in a moment. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro American Report. Talk to you soon.
