Most speeches go off of some sort of replicable template. For years, most Republican candidates used some watered-down version of Reagan’s A Time for Choosing speech. I’m sure candidates of other political persuasions have their own “speech templates.” Recently, I’ve seen a few passes at one for the national populist movement, such as Rob Dreher’s A Speech for an American Zemmour, and I thought I might try to write one of my own.
The Speech
My friends,
For too long now, we’ve failed to face an obvious truth: our country is dying.
It was easy to ignore at first. People will accept anything as long as it comes gradually, and we Americans pride ourselves on our ability to make adjustments as the need arises.
As our towns disappeared, our leaders told us that we would just have to move. As our factories closed, our leaders told us that we should celebrate all the jobs they had created in China. As the cost of living rose, our leaders told us that two-income families represented social progress. As real progress stalled, our leaders told us that software and the internet would solve all our problems. As prosperity vanished, our leaders told us that our economy was changing in ways that were inevitable and ultimately good.
In short, our leaders lied, over and over again. It’s not that they hated America. It’s just that they were incapable of doing anything about our decline, or unwilling to try. Instead of achieving anything real or meaningful, they hid behind symbolism and buzzwords. And they weaponized our best impulses against us.
America’s proud history of accepting and assimilating immigrants - in reasonable numbers - became an excuse to import cheap labor and to dissolve our borders. America’s indispensable role in the world became an excuse to invade foreign lands and to enrich defense contractors. America’s boundless optimism helped them con us into believing that targeted advertising and algorithmic trading were anywhere near as impressive as the car, the assembly line, or the moon landing.
They bastardized our institutions. The corporations that had once driven American development and increased standards of living became vehicles for extracting, rather than creating, wealth. The universities, which had once produced and disseminated scientific knowledge, instead became outlets for left-wing propaganda, and usurously expensive tollbooths to the middle class. Our government - the invention of our genius founders, the legacy of Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt - became something hostile to the interests of the American people.
When we started to notice - when we elected a president who seemed to notice too - that’s when their indifference turned to hatred.
Anyone who questioned their wisdom, anyone who tried to hold them accountable for their failures, was “canceled” or branded with some ugly term like “racist.” The Fake News media, controlled mostly by a handful of powerful corporations, dropped even the semblance of objectivity. The Big Tech companies, which had long been heralded as vehicles for free expression, put their thumbs on the scale at every turn. The oligarchs who controlled them sought to overrule the people. Perhaps they succeeded.
Not all of us woke up to these facts at the same time. For some, America’s decline has been clear for years. For others, the 2016 election was our wake-up call. Some ten million more Americans voted for Trump in 2020 because they saw his successes, and they saw how our ruling class stifled him and attacked his voters at every turn. In the year and a half since the pandemic hit, the state of our country has become impossible to ignore.
In the decades leading up to the pandemic, we had been so thoroughly stripped of our industrial capacity that we could no longer make basic medical supplies. Even today, supply chain issues make it harder for you to find your favorite products on the shelves. Even something as simple as Christmas shopping has become difficult and more uncertain than it was two years ago.
The Evil Empire that sickened the world has gone unchallenged. No one other than President Trump and Senator Hawley has called for China to pay reparations for the pandemic. The sitting president has denied that China is a threat, and at least one member of his immediate family has made vast sums of money in China.
At home, millions of people - entire states - have given up on returning to the world we knew before the pandemic. Permanent masking has been accepted as a fact of life. Corporations routinely tell their employees that if they don’t take a particular shot, they’re out of a job.
This is not the nation that launched the Apollo rockets, completed the Manhatten Project in just three years, laid the interstate highways, or planned the D-Day Invasion. If the ObamaCare rollout taught us anything, it’s that our government can’t even launch a simple website. They can’t - or won’t - do anything other than make the lives of the American people worse. Whether it’s malice or simple incompetence, no one can say with any certainty.
The political class that destroyed this nation will not fix it. That’s why I’m running for Congress.
I won’t tell you that “I alone can fix it.” For all his courage, President Trump’s greatest mistake was believing that he could. But no one person has to fix it alone. Many good candidates are running in the midterms - good people, competent people, people who get it.
So far, the movement to make America great again has been driven by lone voices, people who spoke up while their peers remained silent. But we’re finding each other, and in the next few elections, our voices will form a mighty chorus. And that’s something the D.C. establishment won’t be able to ignore.
Together, we will restore America’s industrial might. We’ll close the border and crush the drug cartel. We’ll reinvent healthcare and education, and get the cost of living in check. We’ll demand that China pay trillions of dollars in pandemic reparations, and if they refuse to pay, we’ll make them pay. We’ll make it possible again for families to make it on a single income. We’ll strip the Big Tech monopolies of their power and redirect American innovation towards great national ends. We’ll launch a war on cancer and someday find a cure. And yes, we will plant an American flag on Mars.
There are some who call for a Great Reset. What we offer instead is a Great Renewal. I hope you’ll join us.
Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.
You have my support.
I'd endorse!