Did You Just Save Western Civilization?
Last night I was the keynote speaker at the Sullivan County Lincoln-Reagan Dinner. Michelle and I had a great time. Everyone was wonderful, and it was good to finally meet some people I'd only ever known online.
After my remarks, someone asked me if I would post the speech so they could have a copy. I naturally said yes, so here it is.
I’d like you to picture July 4, 1776. Fifty-six men in Philadelphia, sweat on their brows, signing a document that changed the world. They pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to a daring idea—that a people could be free, equal, and self-governing.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that their Creator endows them with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
A challenge to the divine right of tyrants and the political will of distant governments. That God did not give them the right to rule; he gave it to each of us because we are all born into this world with the same rights—natural rights without regard to any demographic characteristic or social construct.
It is true that it took some time to overcome centuries of tradition regarding race, and sex, and rights, and we could argue that across Western civilization and even here in America, we still have or always will have work to do on both fronts. But the heart of the matter is that these rights are ours at birth.
And that governments exist to protect those rights.
It was a revolutionary idea, and 250 years ago, they had a revolution so that a handful of colonies could try this latest thing.
Tonight, at this Lincoln-Reagan Dinner, we honor that memory and two giants credited with carrying that covenant forward: Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. Like many of us, these men believe American exceptionalism is real, alive, and worth saving.
And it is. You know it is!
On November 5, 2024, the people in this room and those like you across Sullivan County, all over New Hampshire, and across the nation … may have saved not only America, but Western Civilization.
IS IT hard to imagine?
In Thomas Cahill’s “How the Irish Saved Civilization,” he tells a story about how St. Patrick not only brought Christianity to Ireland but instilled a sense of literacy and learning that created the conditions for Ireland to become "the isle of saints and scholars" and thus preserve Western culture - while barbarians were overrunning Europe.
Cahill credits Irish monks and scribes with maintaining the record of Western civilization. They copied manuscripts of Greek and Latin writers, both pagan and Christian, while the libraries and learning on the continent were forever lost.
There are skeptics when it comes to Chahill’s thesis, as there well should be with mine. Did we save America on Nov 5th, and with it, Western Civilization?
The jury is still out. Tyranny never rests, and so much work is yet to be done. Work that will take more years than Donald Trump has as president,
And the world appears to be against it. Against us.
There are midterm elections to survive and more than one subsequent presidential campaign to weather.
It could take more than a decade to fix what is broken, with some lengthy discussion about what “broken” means and what “fixed” actually looks like -
But November 5th, 2024, was – in my opinion – its own shot heard round the world.
Progressives and pundits dismiss it as populism. A peasants' revolt that will, in time, discover how much it needs those psychopathic narcissists who think they know what’s best for us.
They are in denial. We cannot be.
In the years leading up to November 5th, 2024, we were staring down the barrel of the elites ' cancel-culture gun.
Our government was the beating heart of the censorship industrial complex, and not just to silence the sorts of people who would show up at a Lincoln-Reagan Dinner. Everyone who dared to step foot off their carefully curated narrative plantation could be a target.
I like to think of it as Equity in its true cultural Marxist glory. Nothing could protect you from their wrath, not money, not gender, not race, nor even party affiliation.
But thanks to this systemic overreaction to any query about the approved response to the Chinese Virus, millions of Americans discovered how little their government cared for not just their opinions, but also for them. Their interests. Their desires.
The bodily autonomy narrative evaporated with a long list of things Americans realized they could no longer take for granted.
Ordinary, everyday citizens were arrested and frog-marched out of meetings and events for crimes as heinous as
-being by yourself
- dozens of feet from another living soul,
- outdoors, without your face covered.
There are plenty of examples like this, and while the number of crimes during COVID may never be known, many people who never wanted to pay attention were forced to do exactly that.
They saw what we’d been preaching for themselves.
It was something of its own enlightenment, but where Americans chose a different path, most of the rest of the Western world continues down the tyrannical rabbit hole.
Anti-speech laws. Medical tyranny. ESG and DEI. The abandonment of individual rights and free markets.
Many so-called Western states, particularly ones that share the tradition of English law that birthed our Constitution and the American Republic, were already sliding toward a bureaucratic tyranny of the elite.
What’s worse, here in the US, certainly here in New Hampshire, we may still only be one election away from another all-out assault on our rights.
There is no guarantee that the Trump Administration will succeed in fundamentally transforming America.
The roots of corruption run deep, and the political class wants to water them with our blood and treasure.
So, as hard as we worked to win last November, we will need to work harder to stick the landing – not just in 2026 or 2028 – but every day.
That’s what we’ve tried to do with GraniteGrok.
Whatever you may think, The ‘Grok has embodied two simple ideas for nearly two decades: Defend Core Republican values and founding principles before people or political parties --- and try to bring the heat every. Single. Day.
I’m not saying we always get it right or never point the broadsides in the wrong direction, but we show up—every day.
Since he came down the escalator, Donald Trump shows up every day. Even when he wasn’t in office, he was at it every day – partly because his enemies wouldn’t leave him alone, but he fought the fight every day.
And he doesn’t always get it right, and neither will the rest of us. We are all human, but in politics, showing up matters.
The American Republic may well be the last bastion of Western Civilization, and while we may not have wanted or asked for the fight, it is ours and it is not one with which we here, in this room, are not unfamiliar.
New Hampshire is a life raft of sanity in a sea of left-wing-nuttery. We are surrounded by states run by Hypocrats and Proglodytes.
Net zero nimrods, tax and spenders, groomers, gun grabbers and Marxists, many of whom have no idea how much Lenin, Stalin, and Mao revered the concept of Democracy as the necessary vehicle without which communism was impossible.
But democracy is no less a necessary evil of our Constitutional Republic than human beings are a necessary evil of government itself.
And every two years, we scrabble to keep the political left from letting the air out of the New Hampshire life raft, for they will sink us at the first opportunity
and by any means necessary.
The fight for America and Western civilization on the world stage looks like that.
We are the island of sanity on the political sea.
Canada could have turned a corner this week, but did not. In France and Germany, the opposition candidate or party has been sanctioned or banned from running for office. In England, people get arrested because their neighbors were triggered by posts on social media.
New Zealand and Australia have been on the same slippery slope for years.
And on Nov. 5th , 2024, you showed up to save more than America.
Donald Trump and the MAGA movement may not be any more or less perfect than the rest of us, but I believe it is the banner under which Western Civilization will be saved.
Having said that, if things continue as they have in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, not long from now, we may be looking for a way to include President Trump’s name in the title of this dinner.
Maybe we’ll call it the Trump dinner?
Much will depend on how the next 1360 (ish) days go and what follows the Trump Presidency, but things look good, and you have yourselves to thank.
I touched on free speech as a pillar of Western Civilization, one of the Principle or core values we stand on when hawking our brand. That’s obviously important because without it, we can’t talk up any other values—liberty, free markets, individual responsibility, and self-governance. The obligation to use our freedom wisely so that all can enjoy both the risks and benefits, including the potential of true liberty.
Today, as Republicans, we echo Reagan’s words inspired by those founders: “Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”
We are the party of individual responsibility because the founders knew liberty without virtue was chaos.
We defend the Constitution's checks on power because we expect and trust citizens to govern themselves.
New Hampshire’s Daniel Webster captured this idea when he said, “The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.”
And like the founders, we accept that individual responsibility is the price of self-governance.
We need to keep the government in its lane. To protect our right to property, be it the reasonable and necessary use of our incomes for shared interests or to keep from being taxed out of our homes.
New Hampshire farmers and merchants stood up to British tyranny, so we must fight to preserve those freedoms, not just at election time or when the legislature is in session, but at every opportunity.
To push back against the petty tyrannies that diminish all of us because they limit what we might accomplish
Ronald Reagan said, “America is too great for small dreams.”
Your dreams.
In a nation where everyone can dream big and live free.
A nation that, whatever its faults, real or imagined, has lifted more people out of poverty than any other nation. Ever.
What higher moral purpose could there be than to stand across the history of Western civilization to protect the rights of individuals and the exceptional gift that is America?
A place where you can find not only your own path out of poverty but the freedom to decide what that means and when you’ve arrived.
It started 250 years ago. A culture of unity of purpose founded on the rights of individuals. A government whose purpose is not to rule each of us but to protect our natural right to decide how to govern ourselves
“A foundation on such principles and organizing in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.”
Ronald Reagan’s optimism reminded us that America’s strength lies in its people, rooted in faith and family.
Families that worked the land, raised children, and passed down values. Values that didn’t just shape individuals; In the colonies, grassroots communities were the backbone of the Revolution. New Hampshire’s town halls buzzed with debate as citizens organized against British taxes.
Committees of Correspondence linked towns, spreading the call for liberty—people coming together, not because a king ordered it, but because they believed in freedom.
Today, New Hampshire Republicans keep that spirit alive —knocking on doors, hosting meet-and-greets, shaping the First-in-the-Nation Primary.
On a national level, the American Revolution forged a shared community. At Valley Forge, soldiers from New Hampshire to Georgia shivered together, starved together, and fought together for one cause.
And they didn’t have to agree on everything, but they needed to agree on the defense of individual liberty and self-governance.
That unity turned the 13 colonies into one nation.
Abraham Lincoln’s resolve preserved the Union, ensuring the founders’ vision endured.
As Republicans, we should draw on that unity, rallying around principles like liberty and responsibility.
It does not mean we can’t disagree, even enthusiastically. Demanding conformity of policy or opinion would be counterproductive to the idea of natural rights, responsibility, and individualism. So, our job is not to tell people what to think but to agree that we must all defend what allows us to disagree.
That we are the ideological heirs of those early patriots, building coalitions one handshake at a time.
And that we honor and defend the preconditions for a civil and free society.
Dr. Jordan Peterson likes to discuss how culture is the union of people around a story, and that if chaos is the goal, you must undermine any opportunity to discover or share that story. You rewrite it, smear it.
DEI, CRT, the 1619 project, BLM, Antifa, these all exist as Marxist ideas or militant factions – meant to reimagine American Exceptionalism - to undermine a story that had until recently allowed people from all over the globe to coexist on our shores without any talk about diversity or inclusion.
But it begs the question.
How’d we do that? Why did people give up their culture to embrace ours? How did we bring our different baggage to the same land and find a path to imperfect but lasting unity?
People from all walks of life and corners of the globe who didn’t abandon their culture so much as find a way to make it part of the success of the American story.
To come to a place where anyone from anywhere, with hard work, perseverance, and even some luck, can become more than anyone in their family has ever been.
It’s not perfect.
Here in New Hampshire, while we are repeatedly lauded as the freest state on the continent, we have work to do and not just the political grind of keeping the Democrats from getting their hands on the levers of power.
Our courts need to be better, and the Family Court system is an unnecessary disgrace.
We are trapped on a regional power grid surrounded by states that have adopted economically debilitating energy policies.
Health Care Freedom has improved, but there is much work yet to be done.
Our elections are not secure, and their integrity is still in question.
You might need a village to raise a child, but all you need to bankrupt a town is a School budget, as rising property taxes threaten to drive people from their homes.
Keeping the air in that life raft gets increasingly difficult.
What do we do?
Defend our values before all else and use them as our guide in all things.
Support efforts to cut overreach and regulations that choke free markets and stifle opportunity.
Promote responsible policies that reward work, and support tax cuts and deregulation, so that every Granite Stater can choose freely how to thrive.
Protect our elections with voter ID laws that do not permit out-of-state tuition-paying students to use campus IDs as proof of eligibility to vote.
And most importantly,
Give thanks that you live in New Hampshire and America, and think about what you can do each day to support those values, your president, and be prepared to bring the heat every day.
Freedom isn’t just “one generation away from extinction,” as President Reagan said. It could be one or two elections away, and the people who need to understand this most … have jobs and families and are not focused on it.
Many vote in federal elections but rarely in town elections. And yet these are the people who turned out for Donald Trump last November.
And too many likely think their work is done. Pray that it is. At least a few of us, knowing better, likely had the same hope. But we can’t let them go back to sleep. We need them to be inspired.
To continue to nudge them and each other awake. Not with the histrionics of the left but the promise of the American founding.
Invite them to learn more about how your local and county GOP committees represent and defend those values.
The promise of free coffee and donuts doesn’t hurt either.
Join local discussions online and be the calm, sensible voice of reason. Continue to volunteer for candidates who share your ideas and values, accepting that we may have different ideas about how to get there from here, and that’s fine, as long as that destination further secures our natural rights for ourselves and our posterity.
Lincoln called America “the last best hope of earth.”
Given how the rest of the Western world has declined, he was more right than perhaps he could possibly know.
In Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, he observed that “we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
… “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Prior to November 5th, 2024, America seemed well on our way to becoming little more than another failed experiment. A blip across history, lost to the overwhelming weight of human nature and its tendency toward tyranny—a land embroiled in an increasingly uncivil civil war.
But America stood up. You stood up. And we made a choice. We chose a nation with borders, a smaller, more transparent federal government, and equal justice before the law for everyone.
We won’t get those things we lost back overnight. We may have to settle for half-measures to move the ball forward. But we need to make sure we can explain that to people, and that while we have taken our first steps back toward the path of liberty, it is up to all of us to remain vigilant.
As Thomas Paine reminds us,
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.
And tyranny never rests, so neither shall we.
Thank you.
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You did excellently, Steve!🙌