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>> florida governor ron desantis talked about his leadership and how his accomplishments can serve as a blueprint for the country. the ronald reagan foundation and institute in simi valley, california, hosted the discussion. it's just under one hour. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone. my name is john heubusch, and i have the honor of being the executive director of the ronald reagan presidential foundation.

it's really has been an honor to be associate with this remarkable place named for such a remarkable man. by my count this will be my 250th time up on the stage to introduce one of our nation's finest. [applause] it is no secret to a few people here that it will also be my last introduction as executive director of the library. but as fate would have it, because of who our special guest is this morning, it could also probably one of my most consequential introductions. but first -- [applause] -- 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, with liberty and justice for all. thank you. please be seated. before we get started there are a few people in the audience i would like to make sure i recognize, and i will start with a terrific member of the board of trustees, former california governor pete wilson with his wife gail. welcome. [applause] former congressman elton grant and his wife janet. [applause]

former ambassador to the european union, gordon sondland. gordon. [applause] best-selling musical and grammy nominated artist john on draw . [applause] academy award nominee and grateful american who millions of veterans and first responders in our nation are grateful for mr. , gary sinise. last but not least, just as special, governor desantis' wife, and their children. [applause]

ok. so there has 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 it. president reagan was once the oldest first-term president at age 69. that is until donald trump was elected at age 70, only to be outdone by joe biden at the tender age of 78. now, reagan had a view on the subject. he quit. thomas jefferson once said we should never judge the president by his age, only by his works. ever since he told me that, i stopped worrying about it.

a little reagan humor is 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 his prime nor can they say he's inexperienced. and with this 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 drafted and successfully implemented that blueprint in the sunshine state. judging by the size of this enthusiastic crowd here on a sunday afternoon, and i have quickly this event sold out, i would say most of you have already become familiar with

governor desantis florida blueprint, and you like what you see. you know that he has accomplished a great deal in his first term in one reelection and a landslide. 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 2022, well, it showed up off the state of florida, grew to a 20-point tsunami and reelected a governor by the name of ron desantis. [applause] 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 was captain of his baseball team? you know he went to harvard law, but did you know he earned a commission in the united states navy as jag officer and deployed to iraq as an advisor to the navy seals in the fight to retake fallujah? [applause] you know he was a congressman but did you know he's also a federal prosecutor who targeted and convicted child predators? [applause] we all know he's been driven governor with the courage to take on woke educators, woke corporate elitists, 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 a premier it then here at the reagan library. so ladies and gentlemen, please help me in welcoming the 46 46 th governor of the state of florida, ron desantis. [applause] >> thank you. hello, california.

i think you guys have problems out here but your governor is , very concerned about what we are doing in florida so i figured i had to come by. well, thank you so much. leon are 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 are facing now. and, of course, president reagan had a great sense of humor. i thought about the story that there was a debate between three of our founding fathers, dr. benjamin rush, thomas jefferson, and ben franklin. in the debate was about what was the world's oldest profession. dr. roche said, as a physician, the world's oldest profession is of 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. after all it was the architect who brought order out of all the chaos in the universe. ben franklin said no, you're both wrong. the world's oldest profession is the politician. who would you think created the chaos in the first place? and president reagan understood this. his famous quote that are the most terrifying words in english language or i'm here from the government and i'm here to help. 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, 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 that you guys have out here. much differently in florida than they have done in your and in illinois and many of these other states. and what is the result of that didn't? 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 have witnessed a great american exit this from states governed by leftist politicians and posing 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 the 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 outmigration. new york is right up there with you on that. it's one thing with new york because there was a little bit of a rhythm of life where you can work and maybe you retire to florida, get a condo in boca raton, fine. maybe you get out of minnesota winters in the naples pier . we have a lot of that. that's always happened but the extent to which people are moving and the reason for which they are moving has been unique over these last four years. i just think about california. when i was in the navy i was in coronado for time before i went to iraq. it was beautiful. and i just thought to myself, man, i understand why people try to get to california. and from the beginning of this state's history all the way into 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 going up in florida i never remember seeing a california license plate. a result of governance in the left-wing states. that's why people are moving. -- 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 the 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. think about fiscal management. the state of florida we have

millions of more people than the state of new york. yet new york state they have twice the size of the state budget than the state of florida. but yet we have better infrastructure, better services and higher performing k-12 schools. so where is all this money going? not only does new york state have twice the budget that florida does, new york city budget was 8 million people is basically the same size as florida state budget for the 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 united states. we have no income tax. we are not taxing people like they are. they tax the dickens out of you and they are still deep in debt . in terms of taxes no income tax,

florida is the second lowest per capita tax burden in the united states. new york and california rank among the top ten most tax ed states. i don't have to remind you not only do you have stiff income tax but the highest sales tax in all of the united states and in terms of business tax climate , florida has the fourth best 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 formation even though we are roughly half the size of california we have new business formation. unemployment in the state of florida, december numbers, we were 2.7%. new york and california were 4.1%. we have significantly more people employed then we did prior to covid. states like new york still not

recovered. for the first time in recorded history the state of florida has more total people and played in -- employed down the state of new york. that tells you something because we have a lot of retired people in the state of florida. we've always had lower taxes in florida. nothing new. we've never had an income tax and always worked to keep government small. while it contributes, that is not the only reason why people 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 would handle that. were u.s. the governor going to look at everything, consume the dater yourself, be mindful of your states economic well-being, the education of your kids? yes health in terms of covid, but also in terms of every other thing, or were you going to

subcontract out your leadership to help your craft like dr. fauci? in florida we were mindful of eisenhower warning of the dangers of allowing the technological elites to get a hold of public policy because eisenhower observed they don't see the full picture. they are focused on one narrow aspect. so you consult with that but the statesman has to harmonize competing interests in society. fauci doesn't know anything about the economy. he doesn't know anything about education. he doesn't know anything about your rights and he doesn't care about your rights. and so when the world went mad and common sense suddenly became an uncommon virtue, it was a

refuge of sanity, a citadel for freedom in the united states and the world. we refused to let our state to descend into dystopia where people's rights were curtailed and 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 every school in the state of florida in 2020 was open because people needed to be in school. i can tell you we had families move from the pacific coast just for the fact that we had schools open in florida when you did not have them in many other states. we understood the elite, the medical elite, this devolved

into something that became political and they wanted to use government to control your behavior so we rejected the imposition of a biomedical security state in florida. we empowered people to make their own choices. so 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 have to cough up your vaccine papers on the mrna shots. we said it's a personal choice you make whether to take that are not. and we are not going to let you be excluded. what ended up happening because we did that, one of the things that happened was 2021 florida set a record for domestic tourism. compare the change of tourism 2019 through 2021, california

tourism declined by 22 percent. comparing 2019 through 2021 for new york city, it declined 43 percent. in 2021 all the united states as a whole florida accounted for almost 45 percent of our nation's total tourism for foreign countries. people know if you spend your hard-earned money and want to go on vacation and be on vacation and not hit up for medical papers or told you have to wear a mask, they knew they could come to florida and they would be free. and this isn't just about because i more free but the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people who work and tourism and hospitality industry. it boomed like never before and people were better off as a result of the decisions that we made. we also understood this being a personal decision with respect

to the shots nobody in the state of florida would have to choose between a job they needed and a shot they did not want to take. we protected all of our employees from the mandate. and to cite statistics of how we performed during covid with all that economic education every state sees and increase of excess mortality. florida had less increase in both new york and california. all the mandates, all the other things florida had less of an increase. do you know how i know florida i did it right? because lockdown 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 would end up down in florida just living the dream. but that was a huge factor causing people to make those decisions. another important factor has been our approach to education. we had families move into florida with school-aged kids in numbers like we've never seen before. i was born and raised in florida and as a kid, if anyone would have said florida could compete much less to do better in k-12 education than new york or california, people would have laughed at you. fact is you have some of the best public education in california as well as new york. no longer true. the nation's report card for fourth grade reading and math, post-covid assessment, florida

fourth graders ranked number three in reading and number four in the nation in math. we are very likely number one in both if you control for demographics. in the most recent quality counts survey, 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. there was a survey, as 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 and whatnot. nine months into covid, 10 months into covid, a survey was done. state of florida, 100% open in person. california and illinois, less

than 20% open and in person for all students. that is a disgrace for this state and illinois and other states that did it. and the consequences of that will live for a long time. we are proud of being the top state in the country for education choice. part of that means private scholarship, particularly for low-income families. we have a quarter of a million students in florida on private scholarships. we also have hundreds of thousands of schools and charter schools that are public schools but not controlled by school districts and not influenced by teachers unions. what happens is school districts, they have to compete for bodies. the dollars follow the student. if enrollment declines, you get less money. so school districts have had to offer choice programs within the school district. we have one -- over 1.3 million

students total private scholarship total and intra-district choice throughout florida. miami-dade county, the most populous county, 70% of the students in miami-dade county attend a school other than whatever their local neighborhood public school would be. sometimes private scholarship or charter or another place in the district, but what that has done is that has driven our increase in student achievement because there is a healthy competition. lift the privates are offering a program, charters have to and if charters have to, school districts have to do it. one of the things we've seen with the pandemic is the pernicious influence with school unions. they are very partisan and pursuing a partisan agenda in k-12 schools. we think that is wrong in florida.

they sued me in the summer of 2020 and they were trying to get schools closed in the state of florida. we beat the unions on that and beat them on expanding choice programs. i have also understood as somebody who has done more school choice expansion and anybody in the country, i graduated from public high school, and we need to have good public education. since i have been governor, we have increased teacher salaries by over $2 million but we do not let the money go to the union. it has to be spent on teacher salaries. you're also proud and it is sad that we have to take the stand but in the state of florida we are proud to stand for education, not indoctrination in

our schools. what is the purpose of having a school system? 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 advanced quote social justice. in florida, we reject that. we believe the purpose of education is the pursuit of truth, academic rigor, and to give students the foundation so they can think for themselves and be citizens of our republic. [applause] left believes that regardless of the outcomes of elections, that they should still be able to use these institutions to advance their agenda. in lorna, we are contesting that notion.

our view is that schools need to be accountable to the taxpayers that fund them. they need to serve the mission that is in the best interest of the state of florida and the best interests of parents and students. to do that, our school system needs to respect the rights of parents to be involved in the education and upbringing 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 his age and developmentally appropriate. we are empowering parents to be involved. if there is something inappropriate, unfortunately, we see students 10 years old maybe and there will be pornographic books. how did this happen? now we have empowered parents with the ability to object and get the inappropriate material out of schools. should be focusing on math and reading and the core subjects, not worrying about this other

stuff. [applause] we are proud to have robust standards for american history, and that means teaching all aspects of american history. we have great stories. have had pitfalls and it students need to learn all those, but we reject ideas like critical race area in our k-12 schools. [applause] 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 is important is whether they are working hard and doing the right. [applause] thing we also believe that parents in florida, and my wife is here who

is a great spouse and i think the best first lady in all 50 states, and we have our six and or-year-old with us. [applause] has been a big weekend for them. we started in houston on friday and they went to the houston rodeo. yesterday in dallas they got to go to cowboy stadium and check that out. they had monster trucks. now they get to learn about president reagan so they are having a good time. they may get a little tired. when i'm looking at these education issues, i am looking at them through the lens not just of a governor but i am looking at them through the lens of a dad. i believe parents in the state of florida should be able to send their children 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. [applause]

and i know you have a company down the road in burbank that has different ideas about that, but i can tell you this, disney may have gotten everything they wanted in florida for the last 60 years, but there is a new sheriff in town now, and we are not backing down to that. [applause] he are also working to reorient higher education towards those goals that i had mentioned, and to do that, we have enacted reforms so that all tenured professors in the state of florida must undergo review every five years and can be let go for poor performance. [applause] you will also be signing legislation -- we will also be signing legislation to ensure that our universities operate in a colorblind fashion and

accordingly, we will be eliminating all dia bureaucracies and programs. -- dia bureaucracies and programs. no more discrimination. we are going to promote merit. 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 it based on merit. i want the best people in these additions, and that's what we have to stand for. [applause] i have also appointed six conservative trustees to a small publicly funded liberal arts school in florida sarasota called new college. has basically been left of the left almost like a commune, no grades, bad test scores, but it was funded by our tax dollars. i said if this is going to

continue a needs to serve and important mission. it is supposed to under statute be our top honors college of florida but not fulfilling that mission. those trustees got in and fired the president. they installed a conservative president, eliminated all dei programs and made a new mission to make new college the top classical liberal arts school in america along the lines of hillsdale college. we are going to have one in the state of florida. [applause] parents are concerned about using the schools to impose ideology, and florida is standing against that. the result is we have 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 would talk to realtors because they love me in florida because

they have done better than they've ever done. they are always thinking me. they knew my election if it had gone the other way in 2018 it would've been different. i asked them why are people coming, and one of the top reasons why they are coming is because they don't feel safe in certain parts of the country anymore. and why would they? we sought destructive riots in the summer of 2020 that were aided and abetted by feckless leftist politicians at the local level. we saw businesses trashed, billions in damages, dozens of people killed all without standing up for law & order. when this was going on in minnesota and other places i immediate leak called out the national guard in florida. we dispatched state law enforcement to any potential area and our cities did not burn down important because we let it be known that would not be tolerated in the sunshine state. [applause]

he also rejected the delusional idea that we should be defunding law enforcement agencies. you saw these cities/the budget -- budgets. the 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 street to protect our citizens. [applause] we also reject some of the terrible legislative reforms that have been enacted in various states across the country. some have released violent people from prison prematurely. so -- others have done things like new york abolishing cash bail. you will have a police officer risk their lives to apprehend somebody, bring them in.

the judge releases them and then two weeks later, that person has committed another offense, and the cop has 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 experiment in abolishing cash bail fail throughout this country, and in florida we are not tolerating it and not going to allow it to happen. what has made even worse as we have seen in city after city including l.a. and symphysis go, prussic -- san francisco, prosecutors, progressive so-called prosecutors elected usually with large campaign contributions from people like george soros. they get elected saying they are going to pursue not the public safety but what they consider to be social justice. what they do is identify laws that they disagree with, and they will simply refuse to enforce those laws. i had a fellow from san francisco tell me he had someone

break into his home, cops come out and say you are not going to file a report on this are you? he said of course i am they broke into my home. the cop said they are never going to bring charges on this. someone can break into your home and they won't prosecute? no wonder the city has been hollowed out. if you are a prosecutor, and you think you don't like certain laws, the appropriate recourse is to resign your position, run for the legislature, and then try to change the laws. but you are not a law unto yourself as a prosecutor. [applause] i've put the word out in florida that we would not tolerate prosecutors picking and choosing which laws that they enforce. we had a fella in tampa that was elected backed by george soros who said there were certain laws

he just wasn't going to enforce. i promptly removed him from his post. [applause] i think the crime, education, covid, economic climate are all very important. we have seen the migration. it is 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 .5%. had to make the decision going into office and a lot of people counseled me to trim my sales and not rock the boat. it is a closely divided state for the decade leading into my election, all the major races for governor and president were 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. [applause] he did that without consulting polls. i never looked at a single pole my entire time as governor. a leader is not captive to polls. a leader will help shape and lead the public's opinion. if they see put out a vision and they see you execute on that vision and produce good results, the people will follow. i made that bet that those 32,000 votes if i was bold, i would not get fewer votes. i would end up expanding my base of support. but to do that, we understood that we had to have good personnel working in the administration. i lay down the law very clearly. if you have any other agenda but the best interests of the people in florida and supporting what we were elected to do, pack your

bags and leave because we are not going to tolerate that. we had to do some stuff early on but i can tell you in four years, you did not see our administration leaking like a sieve. he did not see a lot of drama or -- what you saw was surgical precision, execution day after day after day. because we did that, we beat the left day after day after day. [applause] part of that was i said i am going on offense on all of these issues. i'm not just going to sit around and hope things happen for me, hope i'm able to do good. a lot of elected officials don't like to make decisions. they don't want to get their hands dirty. if they could just stay out of it -- because anytime you make a decision some people like and some people don't. they would rather just float above. i sat down on my desk the first day as governor over four

years ago and looked around the office and said i don't know who is going to succeed me here but they are not going to have very much to do because i am not leaving any meat on that bone. i am going to take care of all the business that i possibly can. and so that is what we did and the result was we went from winning by 30,000 voids -- votes and 2018 the winning by at 1.5 million votes in 2022. [applause] we earned the largest percentage of the vote that any republican governor candidate received in florida history. at the 1.5 million vote margin was by far the largest vote margin in any governor's race implored history. we won independents 18% and hispanics by over 60%. we won the women's vote. [applause] one hispanics partially because

we did not do any pandering. we treated everybody as an individual and as a fellow american. that is what they responded to, not being put into a box. [applause] we won 62 of 67 counties including flipping democrat stronghold counties like miami-dade to read and we won it by double digits. for the first time in 40 years we flipped palm beach county red, which nobody thought was possible. [applause] what it shows is two things. one, the migration that we had, people were worried about the 32,000 vote margin being overwhelmed with people coming from liberal estates and then voting the way the liberal governments operated. think it was just the opposite. we were drawing people who were very sensitive to state governments that they lived under, and they were coming

because they believed that we were the free state of florida and they wanted to be a part of the free state of florida. the other lesson is boldness is something that voters reward. if they see you out there willing to lead, if they see you and no where you stand -- know where you stand, people in florida even my toughest critics would acknowledge if i tell you i am going to do something, i do it. i don't waffle. i get it done. [applause] the lesson is swing for the fences. you will be rewarded. don't worry about the poll in the daily news cycle. don't worry about the media and what they say. do what is right, and the voters will reward you. [applause] i am proud of what we have done. i think we have gotten it right

on all the key issues, and i think he's liberal states have gotten it wrong. why are they getting it wrong? think it all goes back to ideology. i think it goes back to this woke mind virus that has infected the left and all these other institutions. think about the way they have governed these states. they put things like woke ideology over the tried and true principles that president reagan stands for and that where most americans believe in. they do coddle the criminals and put the rights of the criminals over the safety of the public and at the rights of victims. they impose unreasonable burdens on their own taxpayers to finance wasteful programs and wasteful levels of spending. and they subordinate in terms of education the best interest of parents and students to partisan interest groups like school unions and of course, they still in many respects, claim two

medical authoritarianism where some universities here are still forcing these booster shots on these college students. that is wrong and there is no justification for it. [applause] it is ideology run amok. that is why the quality of life has declined in places like san francisco and new york city and philadelphia and chicago. it is all rooted in that. that awoke ideology rejects the core foundational principles that have made this country great. in florida, we say very clearly, we will never ever surrender to the woke mob. our state is where woke goes to die. [applause] now, i wish i could say that our problems 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 poor and our nation weaker. it still clings to pandemic restrictions. they won't let know that djokovic come to the united states even though he has had covid because of the shot mandate. these researchers are based on ideology, not based on science. they have recklessly facilitated open borders. we have record of drug overdoses, record amount of fentanyl coming in, criminal aliens coming in including people on the terror watch list. the sheer number, the millions and millions of people that have been released in our society have imposed significant burdens on taxpayers in communities all across the country including briefly for one night in martha's vineyard. but it was only one night.

[laughter] [applause] the federal government has enacted in energy policy that is crippling our domestic production. this weekend our economy and national security and also the federal government wields its authority through a sprawling, unaccountable, 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 1970's were eight 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 sub optimal

results. they said soviet communism was here tuesday and there was nothing we could do about it -- here to stay and there was nothing we could do about it. ronald reagan rejected that. he believed in what america was founded on very deeply. he understood they could get the government out of the way and let people, free people innovate and invest, and 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. [applause] president reagan showed us that decline is a choice and success is attainable and freedom is worth fighting for. one of his famous quote was that

freedom is only one generation away from extinction. it is not passed along in the bloodstream. it is something that needs to be fought for, and i admit if you go back 10 or 15 years when i would read that quote, i thought it was a little bit of hyperbole. isn't freedom just in the american dna? could we really just lose it? the experience of the last five or six years shows us just how fragile our freedoms are. there are places in the country that forcibly shuttered churches while allowing liquor stores and churches -- strip clubs to operate. we must embrace the founding creed of our country that our rights come not from the courtesy of the state but from the hand of the almighty. [applause] you must reject as president reagan did the idea that self-government can be contracted out to a technocratic

elite in a far distant capital or even a place like devils, 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 calls to people like us in florida and the freedom loving people of california and all throughout our country to preserve what the founder of our country called the sacred fire of liberty. it is a fire that earns -- burned in independence hall when men sacrificed their lives and fortunes and sacred honor to establish a new nation conceived in liberty. it burned at a cemetery in gettysburg when the nation's first republican president pledged this nation to a new birth of freedom. it is a fire that burned when a merry band of brothers stormed the beaches of normandy, defeated the nazis and saved the world. it is a fire that burned wind --

when president reagan stood at the berlin wall and said, mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. [applause] but understand this is not easy. this is a responsibility. it is not a responsibility that we in florida shy away from though. it is a responsibly that we welcome. we have no other choice but to do it. we owe it to people he 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 president reagan. i also think we owe it to all the people who have sacrificed so much on half of our country. one of the things that i would do as was mentioned in the introduction, i did a brief stint as a member of congress. i have recovered from that experience. don't worry and don't hold it against me. [laughter] one of the things you would do

flying from florida to reagan airport is one of the routes took you flush parallel to the national mall. you are flying next to it, pretty low, and you look at the left side of the plane windows and you see the lincoln memorial smack dab right there. the beautiful reflecting pool, the washington monument, all the other monuments, and the beautiful u.s. capital perched on the top of the hill. you think to yourself, man, this really inspires you as an american. those are important symbols about our ideals and the people that really helped establish those. what i found out after doing that trip a few times was the best monument that we had was not out the left side of the plane. if you looked out the right side of the plane looked over the potomac river and see very nondescript monuments, very orderly arranged over rolling hills in a place called

arlington national cemetery. and you can have the best declaration of independence in the world, the best constitution in the world, even 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 wall, risked their lives, and indeed gave their lives, then none of those ideals amount very much. i am motivated to fight these fights. it is not easy to fight the fight. when you are standing up for what is right and the things that resident reagan stood for and so many other great leaders, there is a cost that in this day and age. the left is not going to let you advance the agenda without contesting it. they will smear you, attack you, do all that. it is a sacrifice, but the sacrifice we make now in fighting these fights pales in comparison to the sacrifices that so many have made through so many period in history. we need to honor their sacrifice and do justice to their memory,

and yes, we need to win the fight for freedom. if we do, we will be winning one more for the gipper. thank you all. [applause] thank you so much. thank you for coming. god bless. thanks so much. so good to see you. thank you. thanks so much. it's an honor to be with you. god bless you all. take care. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated as our special guest leaves the building. thank you again for coming and we hope to see you at our next event. [background chatter]

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