ladies and gentlemen, please welcome governor of florida, ron desantis, first lady of florida, casey desantis and madison and mason. desantis.

good afternoon, everyone. my name is john bush and i have the honor of being the executive director of the ronald reagan presidential foundation. and as can. you know, it truly has been an honor to be associated with this remarkable place named for such a remarkable man. by my count, this will be my 250th time up on this stage to introduce one of our nation's

finest. it is no secret to a few people here that it will also be my last introduction as executive director of the library. no, but as fate would have it, because of who our special guest is this morning, it could also probably be one of my most consequential and productions. but first. as always, in honor of our men and women in uniform who defend our freedom around the world, if you would, please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands. one nation under god, indivisible and liberty and

justice for all. thank you. please be seated. before we get started, there are a few people in the audience. i'd like to make sure i recognize. and i'll start with the terrific member of our board of trustees, former california governor pete wilson, with his wife, gail. governor. former congressman elton gallegly, and his wife janice. former ambassador to the european union, gordon sondland. gordon. best selling musical and grammy nominated artist john andre's

young microphone. academy award nominee and grateful american who miller is a veterans and first responder in our nation are grateful for mr. gary sinise. last night, mr. and this is just a special governor two sentences his wife katie and joined by their children madison and mason. okay so there's been a lot of talk in the news lately about the basis on which we should judge our political leaders. one of them involves age, how

old they are when they make a run for president. reagan was once the oldest first term president at age 69. that is until donald trump was elected at age 17. only to be outdone by joe biden. now back to at the tender age of 78. now reagan had a view on this subject. he quipped, thomas jefferson once said, we should never judge a president by his age, only by his works. ever since he told me that, i stopped worrying about it. little reagan here was always a good way to get things started. our speaker today is at no risk of being judged by his age. no one can say his past as prime, nor can they say his index appearance.

and with his new book, it's clear he's asking all americans to simply judge him by his works just as president jefferson advised the courage to be free is florida's blueprint for america's revival. and governor ron desantis is the leader who draft it and successfully implement it. that blueprint in the sunshine state, judging by the size of this enthusiastic crowd here on a sunday afternoon. and by how quickly this event sold out. i'd say most of you have already become familiar with governor desantis as florida blueprint and you like what you see. you know that he has accomplished a great deal in his first term and one really auction in a land slide. there is no consensus on what

percentage makes for a landslide. politico says it's when you beat your opponent by at least ten percentage points. if you were wondering what happened to that landslide, that big red wave predicted for november 20, 22? well, it showed up half the state of florida grew to a 20 points tsunami and reelect a governor by the name of ron desantis. but i'm willing to bet there are a few things you still don't know about the governor. maybe you knew he went to yale, but did you know he captained the baseball team? you know, he went to harvard law. but did you know he earned a commission in the united states navy as a jag officer and deployed to iraq as an advisor to the navy seals. in the fight to retake fallujah.

you know, he was a congressman, but did you know he was also a federal prosecutor who targeted and convicted child predators. we all know he's been a driven governor with the courage to take on woke educators, woke corporate leaders, woke big tech and woke social justice warriors. thank you, ron desantis. but only he knows for sure what he plans to do next. and regardless of what he decides, i have a feeling america is about to learn a lot more about ron desantis and a

lot more about his successful track record in florida. his new book is a great place to start, and there's no better place for him to help. premiere it than here at the reagan library. so, ladies and gentlemen, please help me in welcoming the 40th governor of the state of florida, ron desantis. thank you. hello, california. i know you guys got a lot of problems out here, but your governor is very concern about what we're doing in florida. so i figured i had to come by.

well, thank you so much. it's really an honor to be at the ronald reagan library. and as i was coming here, i started to think a little bit about president reagan and about some of the issues that we're facing now. and, of course, you know, president reagan had a great sense of humor. and i thought about a story that there was a debate between three of our founding fathers, dr. benjamin rush, thomas jefferson and ben franklin. and the debate was about what was the world's oldest profession. and dr. rush said as a physician, he said, the world's oldest professions, the doctor, because eve was cut out of adam's rib. so it has to be the physician. thomas jefferson, who, you know, design monticello said no. the world's oldest profession is the architect act after all. was the architect who brought order out of all the chaos in the universe. and ben franklin said, no, you're both wrong. the world's oldest profession is

the politician. who do you think created the chaos in the first place? and president reagan understood this. his famous quote that the most terrifying words in the english language from here, from the governor government. and i'm here to help. he he understood the vital role that government had to play. he didn't say no government. and he understood that there was a core functions of government. but he also understood how government could be a negative force if not applied properly. and i think if you look over the last four or five years and you look at the performances of individual states and you compare florida versus california and new york, illinois, some of those other states, we have had a great experiment, a great test in governing philosophies because, of course, you know, we approach things much differently in florida. then you guys have out here much differently in florida than they've done in new york and in

illinois and many of these other states. and what is the result of that been? you know, you have an elections in your state and that's fine. but the american people as a whole, in some ways have voted about this experiment because they voted with their feet. and if you look over the last four years, we've witnessed a great american exodus from states governed by leftist politicians imposing leftist ideology and delivering poor results. and you've seen massive gains in states like florida who are governing, according to the tried and true principles that president reagan held dear. florida has led the nation in net in-migration. i think three or four years in a row, california has either been number one or number two in net out migration. new york is right up there with you on that. and it's one thing with new york because there is a little bit of a rhythm of life where you can

work and maybe you're retired of florida, get a condo in boca raton. fine, maybe you get out of the minnesota winters and live in naples. we've got a lot of that and that's always happen. but the extent to which people are moving and the reason for which they're moving has been unique over these last four years. i just think about california and when i was in the navy, i was in coronado for a time before we went to iraq. it was beautiful. and i just thought to myself, you know, man, i understand why people try to get to california. and from the beginning of this state's history, all the way until like the last four or five years, people beat a path to california. you didn't beat a path away from california. and yet now you see the state hemorrhaging population. i can tell you growing up in florida, i never remember seeing a california license plate. why would you why would you leave right. and then all of a sudden, over these last few years, we start

to see california and show up these license plates. and i can tell you that's spooked a lot of people in my state because they didn't know how those californians we're going to vote when they got to the state of florida. but we saw that. and we've seen people move from the west coast, not just california, but oregon and washington state in numbers like we've never seen. this is a result of better governance in states like florida. it is a result of poor governance in these left wing states. that's why people are moving. just think about fiscal fiscal management. the state of florida. we have millions of more people now than the state of new york does. and yet new york state, they have twice the size of the state budget than the state of florida does. and yet we have better infrastructure, better services and higher performing k through

12 schools. so where is all this money going? but not only does new york state have twice the budget that florida does. new york city's budget with 8 million people is basically the same size as florida state budget, with a state of over 22 million people. our per capita debt in florida is the second lowest in the united states. new york's per capita debt is the fifth highest in the nation in the united states. we have no income tax. we're not taxing people like they are. they taxed the dickens out of you and they're still deep in debt. yes. in terms of taxes, of course. no income tax. florida's the second lowest per capita tax burden in the united states. in new york and california rank among the top ten most tax states. and i don't have to remind you, not only do you have stiff income tax, you've got the highest sales tax in all of the united states in terms of business tax, climate.

florida has the fourth best business class. business. tax. climate. new york is second worst, followed by california with the third worst business tax climate. is it any wonder that the state of florida ranks number one in new business formations, even though we're roughly half the size of california? we have more new business formations. and unemployment in the state of florida. the december numbers, we were 2.7%. new york and california were 4.1%. we have significantly more people employed than we did prior to covid. and states like new york still haven't recovered. and for the first time in recorded history, the state of florida has more total people employed than the state in new york. and that's saying something because we got a lot of retired people in the state of florida. so those results speak for themselves. but, you know, we've always had lower taxes in florida.

that's nothing new. we've never had an income tax and we've always worked to keep government small. so that in and of itself, while it contribute cuts, that is not the only reason why people have moved. i think the pandemic caused people to reevaluate who was in charge of their state governments more than any other event in my lifetime. and you had to make a decision about how you were going to handle that. were you as the governor, going to look at everything or consume the data yourself, be mindful of your state's economic well-being, the education of your kids? yes, health in terms of covid, but also health in terms of every other thing. or were you going to basically subcontract out your leadership to health bureaucrats like dr. fauci? well, in florida, we were mindful of president eisenhower warning in his farewell address about the dangers of allowing a scientific technology vehicle elite to get a hold of public

policy. because eisenhower observed, they don't see the full picture. they are focused on one narrow aspect. and so you consult with that. but a statesman's got to harmonize all the different competing interests in society. t ford she doesn't know anything about the economy. he doesn't know anything about education nation. he doesn't know anything about your rights. indeed, he doesn't care about your rights. and so. and so when the world went mad, when common sense suddenly became an uncommon virtue, florida stood as a refuge of sanity, a citadel of freedom for people throughout the united states and indeed throughout the world. we refused to let our state descend into some type of faustian dystopia where people's rights were curtailed and their livelihoods were destroyed.

we made sure people had a right to work, and we got people back to work and businesses back open. we made sure that every school in the state of florida and that 2020 school year was open because people needed to be in school. and i can tell you, we had families moved from the pacific coast just for the fact that we had schools open in florida when you didn't have them, and many other many other states, we understood that the elite, the medical elite, whatever their intentions were originally, i don't know. but this devolved into something that became very political, and they wanted to use government to control your behavior. so we rejected the imposition of a biomedical security state in the state of florida. we empowered people to make their own choices. and so we did things.

we did things like ban vaccine, passports in the state of florida. some states said, you want to go stay in a hotel, go to a restaurant, you got to cough up your vax papers on these mirror shots. and we said, that's none of their business. everyone has a right to participate in society. that's a personal choice that you make, whether to take that or not. and we're not going to let you be excluded. now, what ended up happening because we did that. one of the things that ended up happening was 2021 florida set a record for domestic tourism. if you compare the change in tourism in california from 2019 to 2021, california tourism declined by 22%. if you. compare 2019 to 2021 for new york city, new york city's tourism declined 43% in the year 2021. if you look at all foreign tourism to the united states as

a whole, florida accounted for almost 45% of our nation's total tourism come from foreign countries. so people knew if you're going to spend your hard earned money and you want to go on vacation, you actually want to be on vacation. you don't want to get hit up for medical papers or told you have to wear a mask or do all these other things. they knew they could come to florida and they knew they'd be free. and this is not just something that we beat our chest about because we're more free. this had a direct impact on the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people who work in our tourism and hospitality industry. it boom like never before and people were better off as a result of the decisions that we made. we also understood that this being a personal decision with respect to the shots, nobody in the state of florida was going to be put to have to choose between a job they needed and a shot they didn't want to take. we protected all of our employees from the mandates.

and i can cite statistics about how we performed during covid. one of the ones i think is most significant because clearly the economic and all that education. you know, we did so much better. but you look sense covid in every state saw an increase in excess mortality. unfortunately, that's what happens in a pandemic. florida had less increase in excess mortality than both new york and california. so all the mandates, all those other things. florida had less of an increase. and you know how i know that that florida did it right? because a lot of these locked down politicians and people that would go on cable news and criticize florida, the first chance they got to escape the policies they were advocating, they'd end up down in florida just living the dream. but that was a huge factor in causing people to make those

decisions. another important factor has been our approach to education. as i mentioned, we've had families move into florida with kids, school age kids in numbers like we've never seen before. and i was born and raised in florida. and as a kid, if anyone would have said florida could compete much less do better in k-12 education than new york or california, people would have laughed at you. fact is, you had some of the best public education in california as well as new york. that's no longer true. the 2022 nations report card for fourth grade reading and math. a first post-covid assessment. florida's fourth graders ranked number three in reading and number four in the nation in math. and if you control for demographics, we're very likely number one in both. we're ranked number three in k-12 achievement. in education week's most recent quality counts survey 2021, we are ranked number one for

parental involvement in education. and we are ranked number one for education choice in all of the united states. now, there was a survey, so as the covid was going on, there would be surveys about what states had schools open in person, and sometimes it was by school, district or city or whatnot. so nine months into covid, ten months in october, january 2021, bocom did the survey state of florida 100% open in person. california and illinois less than 20% on their survey. open and in-person for all students. i am sorry. that is a disgrace for this state and illinois and other states that did it and the consequences of that are going to live for a long, long time. now we're proud of being the top state in the country for

education choice. and yes, part of that means private scholarship, particularly for low income families. we have about a quarter of a million students in the state of florida on private scholarship. we also have 363,000 students in florida in charter schools, which are public schools, but they're not controlled by the school districts and hence not influenced by the teachers unions. and we have because we've done these programs. what happens is our school districts, they have to compete for bodies because the dollars follow the student. if your enrollment declines, you get less money. if it goes up, you get more. so our school districts have had to offer choice programs within the school district. so we have over 1.3 million students total private scholarship charter and intra district choice throughout the state of florida. a place like miami-dade county, our most populous county, 2.8 million people. 70% of the students in miami-dade county attend a school other than whatever their

local neighborhood, public school would be. sometimes it's private scholarship. sometimes it's charter. sometimes they're going other place within the district. but what that has done is that has driven our increases in student achievement because there's a healthy competition and if the privates are offering a program, then the charters have to offer it. if the charters are doing it, then the school districts have to do it. one of the things that we've seen with the pandemic is the pernicious influence that you have with the school unions. they're very partizan and they're pursuing a partizan agenda. through our k through 12 schools. we think that's wrong in florida. i can tell you, they sued me in the summer of 2020 and they were trying to get the schools closed in the state of florida. we beat the unions on that. and we also beat them on expanding our choice program. but i've also understood as

somebody that's done more school choice expansion than just about anybody in the country. i graduated from public high school and we need to have good public education. so since i've been governor, we've increased teacher salaries by over $2 billion. but we do not let the money go to the union. it has to be spent on teacher sally ruiz. we're also proud and it's sad that we even have to take this stand. but in the state of florida, we're proud to stand for education, not indoctrination in our schools. what is the purpose of having a school system? you know, the left thinks the purpose is to use your tax dollars and use public

institutions to impose an ideological agenda to foment political activism and advance, quote unquote, social justice. in florida, we reject that. we believe the purpose of education is the pursuit of truth, academic rigor, and gives students the foundation so they can think for themselves and be citizens of our republic. the left believes that regardless of the outcomes elections that they should still be able to use these institutions advance their agenda. and in florida, we are contesting that notion. our view is that schools need to be accountable to the taxpayer, those that fund them. they need to serve the mission. that's in the best interests of the state of florida and the best interests of parents and the best interests of students. and to do that, our school system needs to respect the

rights of parents to be involved in the education and upbringing of their student, of their kids, particularly understanding what curriculum is being used in the classroom and making sure, that curriculum is consistent with our state standards and is age and developmentally appropriate. so we are empowering parents to be involved. if there's something that is inappropriate. unfortunately, we see students ten years old maybe and there will be books. how did this happen? and so now we've empowered parents with the ability to object and to get the inappropriate material out of schools. we should be focusing math and reading and the core subject. not worrying about this other stuff. we're proud to have robust for american history. and that means teaching all aspects of american history. we've got great stories while

we've had pitfalls and students need to learn all those. but we reject ideas like critical race theory and our k-through-12 schools. we are not going to teach our students to hate this country or to hate each other. we are not going to divide our students on the basis of their skin color. we are going to teach them that what is important is the content of their character. what's important is whether they're working hard and doing the right thing. we also believe that parents in florida and my wife sears, who's a great spouse, and i think the best first lady in all 50 states and we have our six and four year old with us. it's been a big weekend for them. we started in houston on friday. they went to the houston rodeo. then yesterday in dallas, they

got to go to cowboys stadium and check that out. they had monster trucks and now they get to learn about president reagan. so they're having a good time. i think they may get a little tired, but when i'm looking at these education issues, i'm looking at them through the lens, not just as of a governor, but i'm looking at them through the lens of a dad. and i believe parents in the state of florida should be able to send their kids to elementary school without having an agenda jammed down their throats. they should not be teaching a second grader that they can choose their gender. that is wrong. and that is not going to happen in the state of florida. and i know you have a company down the road, burbank, that had different ideas about that. but i can tell you this disney may have gotten they wanted in florida for the last 60 years, but there's a new sheriff in

town now and we are not backing down to that. we are also working to reorient higher education towards those goals that i had mentioned. and to do that, we've already enacted reforms. so that all tenured professors, the state of florida, must undergo review every five years and can be let go for poor performance. we will also be signing legislation during our legislative session to ensure that our universities operate in a colorblind fashion and accordingly, we will be eliminating all dti bureaucracy, fees and programs. no more discrimination. we're going to promote merit. you look at some of the stuff that's going on. do you want your neurosurgeon to

have been gone through medical school without taking a standardized test or being given that based on some type of ethnic consideration? i want that based on merit. i want the best people in these positions. and that's what we have to stand for. i've also appointed six conservative trustees to a small, publicly funded liberal arts in florida, sarasota, called new college. it had basically left of the left almost like a commune. no grades, bad test scores, but it was funded by our tax dollars. and so i said, look, if this is going to continue, it needs to serve an important mission. it's supposed to, under statute, be our top honors in florida was not fulfilling that mission. so those trustees got in. they fired the president. they installed the conservative president, eliminated all d-i programs and created a new

mission to make new college the top classical liberal arts school in america. along the lines of hillsdale college, we're going to have one in the state of florida. so parents are concerned about using the schools to impose ideology. and florida standing against that. and the result is we have more more parents that want to raise their kids in the state of florida and that has been an important factor in this migration. another important factor is law and order. i talk to realtors, i'd say, because they i mean, the realtors in florida love me because, you know, they've done better than they've ever done. and they're always thanking me. they knew my election at 18 and that gone the other way. they may have gone a little bit different form, but they're always thanking me. and i was like, well, let me ask you, why are people coming? and one of the top reasons why they're coming is because they don't feel safe in certain parts

of the country anymore. and why would they? we saw destructive riots in the summer of 2020 that were aided and abetted by feckless leftist politicians at the local level. we saw businesses trashed. we saw billions in damages. we saw dozens of people killed, all without standing up for law and order. i could tell you when this was going on in minnesota, these other places. i immediately called out the national guard in florida. we dispatch state law enforcement to any potential and our cities did not down in florida because we let it be known that would not be tolerated in the sunshine state. we also rejected the delusional idea that we should be defunding law enforcement agencies and you saw the city slash the budgets. we said that doesn't work. and so we actually enacted

legislation in the state of florida that prohibits all local governments from being able to defund the police if they do it. we put the money back in and we keep the police on the streets to protect our citizens. we also reject that some of the terrible legislation of reforms that have been enacted in various states across this country. some have released violent people from prison prematurely. others have done things like new york abolish cash, bail. so you'll have a police officer risk their lives to apprehend somebody, bring them in. the judge releases them and then two weeks later, that person's committed another offense and the cop's got to risk his life again to apprehend the same person that should have never been on the street to begin with. you have seen that experience rent and abolishing cash, bail, fail all throughout this

country. and in florida. we're not tolerating it and not going allow it to happen. and what's made it even worse is we've seen in city after city, including l.a. and san francisco prosecutors, progressive, so-called prosecutors, elected, usually with large campaign contribute actions from people like george soros. and they get elected saying they are going to pursue not the public safety, but what they consider to be social justice. and so what they do is they will identify laws that they disagree with and they will simply refuse to enforce those laws. i had a fellow from san francisco tell me i had he had someone break into his home. cops come out, they say, you're not going to file a report on this. i was like, of course i am. they broke into my home and they're like, well, they're never going to bring charges this. and i'm thinking to myself, someone can break into your home. and they prosecute. no wonder the city has been

hollowed out. and so if you are a prosecutor and you think you don't like certain laws, the appropriate recourse is to resign. in your position, run for the legislature, and then try to change the laws. but you are not a law unto yourself as a prosecutor. i put the word out in florida that we would not tolerate prosser commuters picking and choosing which laws that they enforce. and we had a fellow in tampa that was elected backed by george soros who said there were certain laws he just wasn't going to enforce. and so i promptly removed him from his post. now, i think the crime education

cover, the economic climate, all those very, very important we have seen the migration. it has been unmistakable. but the question that a lot of floridians are asking is, what is that going to mean in terms of the election? because i got elected in 2018 by 32,000 votes, about a half a percentage point. and i had to make the decision going into office. a lot of people counseled me to trim my sails. they counseled me to not rock the boat. it's a closely divided state for decade leading into my election, all the major races governor, president or decided by one percentage point. be careful. people would say i rejected that advice. my view was that i may have earned 50% of the vote, but i earned 100% of the executive power. and i intended to use it to advance the best interests of florida and to advance our common agenda. we did that without consulting polls. i never looked at a single poll.

my entire time as governor, a is not captive to polls. a leader will help shape and lead the public's opinion if they see you put out a vision and they see you execute on that vision and produce good results, the people will follow. and i made that bet that those 32,000 votes, if i was bold, i wouldn't fewer votes i'd end up expose ending my base of support. but to do that, we understood that we had to have good personnel working in the administration. i laid down law very clearly. if you have any other agenda but the best interests of the people of florida and supporting what we were elected to do. pack your bags and leave because we're not going to tolerate that. and we had to do some stuff early on. but i can tell you, in four years you didn't see our administration leaking like a. you didn't see a lot of drama or palace intrigue. what you saw was surgical

precision execution day after day after day. and because we did that, we beat the left day after day after day. and and part of that was i said, i'm going on offense on all these issues. i am not just going to sit around and let hope things happen for me. i hope i'm able to do good. you know, a lot of elected officials don't like to make decisions. they don't want to get their hands dirty if they can just stay out of it. because any time you make a decision, some people like it, some people don't. so they'd rather just float above. i sat at my desk the first day as governor. over four years ago. i looked around the office and i said, i don't know who's going to succeed me here, but they are not going to have very much to do because i'm not leaving any meat on that bone. i am going to take care of all the business that i possibly can. and so that was what we did. and the result was we went from winning by 32,000 votes in 2018

to winning by over 1.5 million votes in 2022. it was we earned the largest percentage the vote that any republican governor candidate received in florida history. our 1.5 million vote margin was by far the largest raw vote margin in any governor's race in florida history. we won independents by 8%. we won hispanic by we won over 60% of the hispanic vote. we won the women's vote. and we won hispanics partially because we didn't do any pandering. we treated everybody as an individual and as a fellow american. and that is what they responded to, not being put into a box.

we won 62 of 67 counties, including flipping democrats stronghold counties like miami dade to red and we won miami-dade by double digits. we also, for the first time in almost 40 years, flipped palm beach county red, which nobody thought was possible. and so what it shows is two things. one, the migration that we had, people were worried about a 32,000 vote margin being overwhelmed with people coming from liberal states and then voting the way the liberal government's operated, i think was just the opposite. i think we were drawing people who were very to the state governments. they lived under and they were coming because they that we were the free state of florida and they wanted to be a part of the free state of florida. but the other lesson is boldness is that voters reward if they see you out there willing to lead, if they see you and they

know that they know where you stand. and people in florida, even my my toughest critics would acknowledge me. if i tell you i'm going to do something, i do it. i don't waffle. i get it done. and so. and so the lesson is swing for the fences. you will be rewarded. don't worry about the polls. don't worry about the daily news cycle. and for pete's sake, don't worry about the media or what they say. do what is right and the voters will reward you. so i'm proud of what we've done. i think i think we've gotten it right on all the key issues. and i think these liberal states have gotten it wrong. and why are they getting it wrong? i think it all goes back to ideology. i think it goes back to this woke mind that's infected the left and all these other

institutions. i mean, think about the way they have governed the states. they put things like woke ideology over the tried and true principles that president reagan stand for. and that were most americans believe in. they do coddle the criminals and put the rights of the criminals over the safety, the public and the rights of victims. they impose unreasonable burdens on their own taxpayers to finance wasteful programs and wasteful levels of spending. and they subordinated it in terms of education. the best interests parents and students to partizan interest groups like school unions. and of course, they still and many respects cling to authoritarianism where. some of these universities here are still forcing these booster shots on these college students. that is wrong. and there's no justification for it.

and so it's ideology run amok. that's why the quality of life has declined. and in places like san francisco and new york city and philadelphia and chicago, it's all rooted in that. and that woke ideology rejects the core foundational principles that have made this country great. so in florida, we say very clearly, we will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. our state is where woke goes to die. now, i wish i could say that our problem is are limited to just a handful of leftist state governments, but i think, as most people know, we have a big problem with the federal establishment in washington. it has engaged in an inflationary spending binge that has left our citizens poorer and our nation weaker. it still clings to pandemic restrictions.

they won't let novak djokovic come to the united states even though he's had covid because of the shot mandate and these restrictions are based on ideology, not based on science. they have recklessly facilitated open borders. we have record drug overdoses, record amount of fentanyl coming in. criminal aliens coming in, including people on the terror watch list. and the sheer number, millions and millions of people that have been released in our society have imposed significant burdens on taxpayers and communities all across the country, including briefly for one night in martha's vineyard. but it was only one night. the federal government has enacted an energy policy that is our domestic production. this weakens our economy and our national security.

and maybe most ominous of all the federal government wields its authority through a sprawling, unaccountable all and out-of-touch bureaucracy that does not act on behalf of us, but instead looms over us and imposes its will upon us. this has led to poor results across the board. this has increased pessimism throughout our country. many people think america's best days are behind us. but i think ronald reagan provides a great example of this. the 1970s were a period where people were saying much of the same thing. they said we were in an age of limits and we just had to be satisfied with suboptimal results. they said. soviet communism was here to stay and there was nothing we could do about it. well, ronald reagan rejected that. he believed in what america was founded on very deeply. he understood if they could just

get the government out of the way and let people free, people innovate and and invest, that the economy would get better. and it did. he also rejected the idea that soviet communism was something we just had to coexist with. no, his policy was very simple. we win and. they lose. president reagan showed us that decline is a choice. he showed us that success is attainable. and he showed us that freedom is worth fighting for. one of his famous quotes was that freedom is only one generation away from extinction, not passed along in the bloodstream, something that needs to be fought for. and i admit, you go back ten, 15 years when i would read that quote, i thought it was a little bit little bit of hype. i mean, isn't freedom just in

american's dna? could we really just lose it? but the experience of the last five or six years shows us just how fragile our freedoms are. you had places this country that forcibly shuttered churches while allowing liquor stores and strip clubs to operate. so fight. we must to preserve this freedom. we must embrace the founding creed of our country that our rights not from the courtesy of the state, but from the hand of the almighty. we reject. we must reject, as president reagan did, the idea that self-government can be subconscious acted out to a technic cratic elite and a far distant capital, or even a place like davos, switzerland. we must insist on the restoration of time tested constitutional principles so that government of, by and for the people shall not perish from the earth. it falls close to people like us

in florida and the freedom loving people in california and all throughout our country to preserve what the founder of our country called the sacred fire of liberty. it's a fire that burned and independence hall when 56 men pledged their lives, their fortune and their sacred honor to establish a new nation conceived in liberty. it's a fire that burned at a cemetery in gettysburg when the nation's first republican president pledged this nation to a new birth of freedom. it's a fire that burned when a merry band of brothers stormed the beaches of normandy, defeated the nazis and save the world. and it's a fire that burned when president reagan stood at the berlin wall and said. mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. but understand, this isn't easy.

this is a responsibility. it's not a responsibility. we in florida shy away from, though. it's a responsibility that we welcome and we have no other choice but to do it. we owe it to people like president reagan, who fought so hard to keep this country free. i would not be standing at this podium today if it was not for reagan. i also think we owe it to all the people that have sacrificed so much on behalf of our country. one of the things that i would do, i, as was mentioned in the introduction, i did a brief stint as a member of congress. i've recovered from that experience. don't worry and don't hold it against me. but one of the things you would do flying from florida up to reagan airport is you would you'd fly and there'd be different routes to take. one of the routes took you flush parallel to the national mall. and so you're flying next to this pretty low and you look out that left side of the plane and the windows and you see the

lincoln memorial smack dab right there, the beautiful reflecting pool, the washington monument, all the other monuments, and then the beautiful u.s. capitol, all perched on the top of the hill. and you think to yourself, man, this really inspires you, an american. those are important symbols about our ideals and about the people that really helped establish those. but what i found out after doing that trip a few times was the best monuments that we had were not out the left side of the plane, because if you looked out the right side of the plane, you'd look over the potomac river. you'd see very nondescript monument. it's very orderly, arranged over rolling hills and a place called arlington national cemetery. and you can have the best declaration of independence in the world. you can have the best constitution in the world. you can even have great people from george washington through ronald reagan. but if you don't have people that are willing to put on that uniform, stand on that, risk their lives and indeed give

their lives, then none those ideals amount to very much. and so i'm motivated to fight this fight. it's not easy to fight the fights when you stand up and you're standing for what's right, when you're standing for the things that president reagan stood for and so many other great leaders, there's a cost to that in this day and age. the left is not going to let you do the this agenda without contesting it. they'll smear. they'll attack you. they'll do all that. and so it's a sacrifice. but the sacrifice we make now in fighting these fights pale in comparison to the sacrifices that so many have made through so many periods in american history. so we need to honor their sacrifice, and we need to do justice to their memory. and yes, we need to win the fight for freedom. and if we do, we will be winning. one more for the gipper. thank you all. thank you so much. thank you for coming. god bless. thanks so much.

so good to see you. thank you. thanks so much. honor to be with you. god bless you all. take