CPAC 2021- Remarks at the Reagan Dinner from Ben Carson

Thank you very much and thank you Matt for that kind introduction. You know isn't it a blessing that we can come together here in Orlando where our tremendous governor has determined that nobody's livelihood can be deemed non-essential at the whims of the government. Isn't that wonderful? And I'm proud that my home state of Florida is leading the way on this issue and setting an example for the rest of the country in returning to normalcy. Today we understand this virus far better than we did when it first came to our shores and our task now is to make sure that the cure is not worse than the disease. You know as conservatives we must also grapple with the fact that the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have laid bare some of the difficult realities of America's political position today. There was a time when Americans in both parties agreed on the goals of what we wanted to achieve they just had different methods of getting there. Now it's a different situation. We have one group who believes in America, who believes in our Constitution, who believes in the American dream and another group who thinks we're terrible and that we need to be fundamentally changed and that's why it's very difficult for them to agree. We have to understand that. We have to understand those who are trying to change this place. America. Do you realize there's an American dream but does anybody else have a dream? Is there a French dream? Is there a Canadian dream or a Nigerian dream? No there's only an American dream that means there's something very very special about America. We need to remember that. It's worth fighting for and it's true that we are choosing to address this virus issue in very different ways. Some of us use logic and common sense and some of us just use fear. The left rejects the ideal most cogently put up by Thomas Sewell that there are no solutions that are only trade-offs. Instead the left has a religious belief that it can pursue safety at all costs without any negative consequences at all and that's why they're so quick to insist that small businesses be closed all across the country even though it's causing enormous damage to those people who work so hard but the Amazons and the Walmarts and the big giants can stay open and they can thrive. Now I don't have anything against the big giants but I want everybody to thrive the big and the small. Isn't that what America is about? But because the left believes differently that's why churches are shuttered but abortion mills and liquor stores stay open. That's why we're told we can't gather with our families to celebrate our most sacred holidays but a summer of violent rioting was greeted with applause and some of our leaders actually raised money to bail those people out of jail. That's why America's children are still not back in school full-time wasting some of their most formative years behind a screen. As most of you know I spent a lot of time working on the brains of young people and if anyone thinks that kids can learn effectively over a zoom call well let's just say I have some oceanfront property in Oklahoma to sell you. Now of course the left wing will say he thinks the ocean isn't in Oklahoma. They are so clueless but anyway all the while Americans are forced to depend on the state more and more and our freedoms continue to shrink and government continues to grow and grow. The namesake of tonight's dinner Ronald Reagan once quipped that nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program. Now if anyone needs any proof of that join me in wishing a happy one-year anniversary to the quote 15 days to flatten the As conservatives we of course value health and safety too because we know that all life is precious. Every single person is made in the image of God but as conservatives we also know that there are trade-offs with every decision. We also know that the ties of family, tradition, faith run deep in the human heart. We believe that to gather like we are doing today and to join in fellowship and discussion is a fundamentally human endeavor. We also believe that small businesses make America great and they are the backbone of our country and our economy and they must be protected. We believe in the dignity of hard work that Americans have a fundamental right to work for their living, to labor for their bread, to provide for their families without being forced to rely on government assistance and we believe in the good books maxim if you don't work you don't eat. Now some people say but that's being cruel, that's being hard. I'll tell you what's being cruel and hard it's patting people on the head and saying there there you poor little thing I'm gonna take care of you. That paternalistic attitude keeps people mired in dependency and real compassion is to give people an avenue to escape poverty and dependence and that's what we believe in as conservatives. Now cutting out these realities of human life takes a terrible toll on the health of the nation. We know the risk of this virus, we know the cost, but we also know what's at stake, what we as a country have to lose and as I join you here tonight I'm reminded of another Ronald Reagan quote we've all heard before. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream, it must be fought for and protected and handed on for them to do the same. That's what we're doing here and I'd like to extend my gratitude to the Schlapp family, the American Conservative Union, all those who invited me here so we can do just that, fight to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. And you know I've mentioned Ronald Reagan a couple of times. Ronald Reagan was very important to me because when he was elected president I was a Democrat. I was a raving Democrat in fact, but then I did something that Democrats aren't supposed to do. I listened to a Republican. I listened to Ronald Reagan and I said he sounds just like my mother. The very same wisdom, the very same advice, but you know we have to join in that fight and just a month ago we launched a new think tank and a do tank called the American Cornerstone Institute. We get our namesake from the four cornerstones of American life which are faith and liberty, community and life. These are the cornerstones of the greatest experiment in self-government that the world has ever seen. They are the cornerstones of the American dream. Unfortunately all four of these cornerstones are under attack in the name of progress. If the attackers succeed, our people run the risk of forgetting our roots, the very source of what made us the greatest nation on the planet, but drawing on our faith we believe that the stone that the builders have rejected can become the cornerstone once again. Our mission is simple. It's restoring these four cornerstones to American life. We will work to promote and preserve individual religious liberty, help our nation's most vulnerable find new hope, decrease the federal government's role in society, and improve efficiency best to serve all of our nation's citizens. Now the first of these cornerstones, faith, is perhaps the most significant because it lays the groundwork for all the others. In fact faith has been a cornerstone of America since her inception and indeed even before she was a unified country. It was faith and a quest for religious liberty that led the pilgrims to board the Mayflower and brave the treacherous journey across the Atlantic. It was faith that led those early citizens to build that shiny city up on the hill for all the world to see. It was faith that grounded our cause of independence so that someday we could secure for all those certain inalienable rights endowed to us by our Creator. It was faith that guided us through the revolution. It was faith that gave us the courage to end slavery at the cost of a civil war. And it was faith that gave us the moral fortitude necessary to defeat communism and fascism in the 20th century. Today we often hear about the supposed wall of separation between church and state, but this phrase would have been foreign to the men who actually built this country. This phrase appears nowhere in our Constitution. It actually comes from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist when he wrote to assure them that the state would not meddle in their affairs. This phrase simply means that the state will not interfere with the church, the church will not interfere with the state. It was never meant to mean that faith should be driven out of the public square. In fact, our modern usage of the phrase separation of church and state would have confused the very man who authored it. Jefferson enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that our inalienable rights come from God. And in his notes on the state of Virginia, he wrote that the God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis? A conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift from God. This is something our founding fathers understood well. Without faith in God, our liberties can never be secure. Our founders knew that all of our country's claims about justice, human rights, equality, and liberty stem from the laws of nature and of nature's God. Which brings us to our next cornerstone of American greatness, and that is liberty. As Abraham Lincoln rightly noted, our nation was conceived in liberty on that hot day in July 1776, and every day since Americans have cherished the liberty given to them by God. We have fought wars both foreign and domestic in order to retain it. Liberty, as Reagan said, does not defend itself, and our forefathers have made great sacrifices and paid heavy costs in its defense. And liberty and faith are closely linked. As Reagan noted, freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged. With that in mind, American cornerstone understands that as Americans, we are a free people with a noble inheritance. We have a right to live according to our faith and the dictates of our conscience, and all power that the government has comes from we, the people. The government works for us, we don't work for them. And we must fight, we must fight against government encroachment on that liberty. As Reagan recognized, when government expands, our liberties contract. Individuals and groups always work better when they are free to pursue their own interests, and we will always oppose the modern-day forces that seek to infringe on our God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The third cornerstone of Americans' exceptionalism is community. You'll notice the word itself sounds like a combination of two other words we commonly use, common and unity, meaning that we as Americans are unified by the things we have in common. In the Federalist Papers, founder John Jay put it this way, he was pleased to observe that Providence has given the United States a people speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts fight side by side through a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence. Notice what Jay mentions here, he says that our shared history, values, faith, culture, and principles are the source of our unity, and therefore our strength. It's no coincidence that every single one of these things is under attack in America today. Before our very eyes, our national story is being rewritten, denigrated as irredeemably flawed. Every sin from our past is highlighted. Every triumph is buried. This revisionism amounts to nothing more than a coordinated attack on our heroes, our history, and our very inheritance. A united populace is difficult to oppress. A divided one, when absent of faith, is ripe for tyranny. Erasing the things we have in common for our history, to our culture, to our faith, the erasers create a blank slate for themselves to begin anew, and the foundations of our sense of community are shaken. Just bear in mind, our history is what gives us our identity, and our identity is that thing on which our beliefs are based. We must keep that always in mind. This sense of community, as we understand it, is cultivated through what Alexis de Tocqueville called mediating institutions, or organizations that stand in the middle of the people and the government. At the American Cornerstone Institute, we are committed to the work of rebuilding these institutions and restoring our sense of community. To do so, we realize that we must return to what we have in common, our shared values. We turn to the wisdom of the past to guide us in the present, and we continually draw upon the great figures of our history to elevate our minds, ennoble our souls, and inspire our deeds. You know, they want to tear down those great figures. They say, we have no great figures. Washington, and Lincoln, and even Martin Luther King, everybody, they want to tear them down. Who are they going to replace them with? Who is perfect? Only Jesus was perfect. Are they going to name everything after him? That'd be fine with me, but think about it. So silly, but Americans seem to have forgotten that there is much more that brings us together than tears us apart, and we will work to bring everyone, regardless of their beliefs, together to find common sense solutions to the problems we face as a nation. And our final cornerstone is life. As conservatives, we know that all life is sacred because we are all made by the same hand of our creator in his own image and likeness. That means that we believe all life is precious, from the unborn child inside the mother's womb to the homeless individual struggling with addiction on the street. But we also mean life in a more comprehensive sense. At the American Cornerstone Institute, we will always advocate for the policies that uplift each and every individual to a full life of dignity as God intended. This means that we will advocate for policies that promote self-sufficiency over government dependence. And we reject any policy that keeps people mired in vicious cycles of poverty that have plagued our nation ever since the Great Society in the 1960s, because we believe that every life matters. The American Cornerstone Institute will always advocate for life and solutions to help everyone reach a place of dignity as a child of God, from the moment of conception all the way till natural death. With these four tenets as our guiding principles, the American Cornerstone Institute will champion conservative solutions to the real problems that our nation faces. Through faith, wisdom, and compassion, we will never be afraid to challenge group think on key public policy issues. We will never, never back down in the face of lies and smears. With independent research, grassroots outreach, and collaboration with states and local entities, faith-based organizations and private organizations, American Cornerstone will work to heal the divisiveness that plagues our nation's politics. Now of course we realize this is not going to be easy, but we welcome this mission with open arms. Our divisions run deep, but this is a mission that we must embark upon. We firmly believe that what we have in common as America still far outweighs our differences. We believe that through reason and dialogue, cooler heads will prevail. And we believe that when these four words, faith, liberty, community, and life fill our hearts and minds like they did for the generations before us, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish together. And I want to thank you for joining us here tonight. Thank you for your dedication to preserving the very best in the American dream. And if you feel so compelled, please join our cause. Visit AmericanCornerstone.org, sign up for updates. We can do this together, and we must remember this very important thing. Several decades ago, Nikita Khrushchev said that, speaking of America, your grandchildren's children will live under communism and we will never have to fire a shot. What was he talking about? He knew that all they had to do is gain control of our educational system so they could indoctrinate the kids, gain control of the media so you can indoctrinate the adults, gain control of health care, the most important thing people have, get rid of God and replace him with government dependents, raise the national debt to astronomical levels so you could justify excessive taxation so you could redistribute the wealth. Does it seem like all of those things are happening right now? We, the people, are the only ones who can stop it. Not the politicians, the people. They derived their power from us. We must hold their feet to the fire. We must not let the freedom and liberty of America escape. We cannot quietly sit in a corner and hope that no one calls us a name. It's time for us once again to manifest courage and godly principles of loving your fellow man, not socialist principles of canceling your fellow man. We are the ones who can do this and we make the choice of what kind of nation we want to have and in the past, in the present, and in the future, let us make that choice to be one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much.