Despite so much media drivel about President Trump giving a “dystopian” or “dark and divisive” or out-and-out racist speech at Mount Rushmore, his Friday speech, as written, was the single finest of Trump’s presidency.
It featured realistic, entirely justified pushback against civilization’s despoilers. And it married that with an appropriate, much-needed celebration of the essential goodness of the United States and its history, along with plenty of unifying thoughts and proposals.
My colleague Byron York already did a well-merited takedown of establishment-media distortions of Trump’s remarks. What remains is to parse out and then amplify what made the speech itself (as written, without regard to Trump’s style of delivery) not just appropriate but magnificent.
First, let’s be clear on who is waging the “culture war” for which the media blames Trump. Trump did indeed blast the “cancel culture” that is “driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees” so that “in our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished.”
Trump here is just speaking the truth. There has long been an established, deeply admirable civic culture in this nation; it is the radical left who now wages war against it. All over the country, people are being fired for the mere utterance of inconvenient or unwanted thoughts, even anodyne thoughts. People are being physically (and dangerously) hounded from public forums. And it is an utter assault on the rule of law itself to deface or destroy public art, as opposed to removing it through legitimate representative processes. To defend the civic culture against such assaults is not an affront, but a duty.
Moreover, as Trump said, it is a duty rooted not in suppression but in a commitment to continued expression of the values and virtues that have “rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”
Since when is a rejection of such destruction, married to concrete achievements and aspirational themes, somehow “dystopian?” Only an establishment media and corporate culture that are morally twisted, themselves committed to the destruction, could somehow treat a defense of decency as if it were an affront.
Even so, Trump spent less than one-fourth of his speech defending the U.S. honor against the “web of lies” wherein “our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that were villains, [while] all perspective is removed, every virtue is obscured … and every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition.”
The other 75% of Trump’s speech was a stirring asseveration of civic virtue.
“We believe in equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion, and creed,” said the president. “Every child, of every color — born and unborn — is made in the holy image of God. We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture. We embrace tolerance, not prejudice.”
And: “We must demand that our children are taught once again to see America as did Reverend Martin Luther King when he said that the founders had signed ‘a promissory note’ to every future generation. Dr. King saw that the mission of justice required us to fully embrace our founding ideals.”
Trump paid homage to Frederick Douglass, the Tuskegee Airmen, Harriet Tubman, Jesse Owens, and Louis Armstrong. And: “We gave the world the poetry of Walt Whitman, the stories of Mark Twain, the songs of Irving Berlin, the voice of Ella Fitzgerald, the style of Frank Sinatra, the comedy of Bob Hope, the power of the Saturn V rocket, the toughness of the Ford F-150, and the awesome might of the American aircraft carriers.”
Finally, from pride in the past to future, common aspirations: “Uplifted by the titans of Mount Rushmore, we will find unity that no one expected; we will make strides that no one thought possible. This country will be everything that our citizens have hoped for, for so many years, and that our enemies fear — because we will never forget that American freedom exists for American greatness. And that’s what we have: American greatness. Centuries from now, our legacy will be the cities we built, the champions we forged, the good we did, and the monuments we created to inspire us all.”
That’s not dystopian, it’s quintessentially American. And, lest the media misunderstand, to be quintessentially American is the ultimate compliment.
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