00:01:17.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:55.000And instead of kind of doing a typical boring policy talk, I want to talk about stuff that every single one of our student leaders can resonate with, Mr. Speaker, as we were talking about.
00:02:05.000These are student body presidents, vice presidents, and prospective ones running kind of mini campaigns all across the country.
00:02:11.000And so, Mr. Speaker, I think it would be helpful if you tell your story from the chip on your shoulder you probably had from getting denied that congressional internship to now being Speaker of the House of the United States Representatives.
00:02:23.000All right, first of all, thank you for very much for being here.
00:02:26.000Thank you for what you're doing on campus and don't give up.
00:02:29.000So I'm going to tell you a story that's a little different.
00:02:43.000It's the shantytown in the Grape Seraph, if you ever read the book.
00:02:47.000I was born into a family of Democrats, but I've never been a Democrat.
00:02:52.000So anyone ever challenges me on my conservative beliefs, I'm more conservative than you because I rejected what I heard at home to seek something else out.
00:03:37.000But the guy who owns the liquor store has a car dealer's license.
00:03:40.000So I tell him one day, I'll give you $100 if you will take me to LA, which is two hours away, to get me into the car dealership where it's with the fairgrounds where all the car dealers would bring their trade-ins.
00:03:51.000But you have to be a dealer to come in.
00:03:53.000So I would go there and I would buy and sell cars and I would flip them to pay my way through college.
00:03:58.000Now, it was illegal, but I didn't know it why I was doing it, okay?
00:07:03.000And I just have continued that model as I've gone through.
00:07:07.000Now, Mr. Speaker, I've seen that throughout the years.
00:07:10.000I got to tell you, he earned that speakership.
00:07:13.000I mean, every event to every part of the country, Congressman McCarthy has been working, serving his constituents, and outworking the competition.
00:07:22.000And so let's define these terms: grit, stamina, hustle.
00:07:26.000For a lot of these students here, when they're involved in student government politics, it's not dissimilar, it's just on a smaller scale.
00:07:35.000You know, I'm sure many of you have stories of complaints being filed against you when you're running for student president, all sorts of stupid, silly stuff.
00:07:42.000I got to tell you, Mr. Speaker, if you think those battleground districts like with Mayo Flores are tough, try becoming student body president of Texas AM.
00:07:57.000And so there's some similarity to what you're dealing with here.
00:08:00.000Speak to some of the daily disciplines, the mentality, how you train your mind, your entire being to be able to have that kind of attitude of grit and hustle.
00:08:08.000First, you're proven you can do it right now because you run for office on campus, you're at a disadvantage to start out with, right?
00:09:33.000And so I go to the floor and I say, I'm all for this bill, but this bill doesn't go far enough.
00:09:37.000You need to change the name of your party.
00:09:40.000Because if you don't like the statue, if you don't like the person what they stood for, that was your party.
00:09:46.000You should change your name at the same time.
00:09:48.000We had to remove four portraits of speakers, all four Democrats.
00:09:52.000We had to remove statues here based upon their beliefs that were sent to us by a Democrat-majority state legislature, accepted by a majority of Democrats in Congress.
00:10:02.000Abraham Lincoln and the basis of our party of why it was created that were conceived in liberty and that we're all equal.
00:10:10.000If Abraham Lincoln was never assassinated, we never would have had Jim Crow laws.
00:10:14.000Those were Democrats that created that.
00:10:17.000Think of Abraham Lincoln when you want to think of grit.
00:10:20.000At 23, he loses a race for the legislature.
00:11:48.000You follow forward on your principles, and the outcome will be different if you stick to your principles.
00:11:56.000If you're happy, people want to associate with you.
00:12:00.000If you think being angry means you're more conservative, it just means people don't want to hang out with you or come to Thanksgiving dinner.
00:12:06.000Be true to your beliefs and you will succeed.
00:12:10.000If Lincoln was here, Lincoln would tell us this one thing, believe in the exceptionalism of America.
00:12:17.000And I watch too often the liberals, even in Congress, they are quick to criticize America and praise some other country.
00:12:28.000We're not perfect, but we strive to be a more perfect unit.
00:12:30.000But this is what Lincoln would tell you.
00:12:32.000Believe in the exceptionalism of America.
00:12:34.000You know why I think he would say that?
00:12:37.000Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated the proposition that we're all equal.
00:12:47.000He goes on to say, but if we fail, government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from earth.
00:13:06.000We're not the strongest nation in the world.
00:13:08.000We're divided together, but he knows we will be the most powerful and sustain ourselves because government is of the people, by the people, for the people.
00:13:17.000But name me one other nation that's conceived in liberty and dedicated the proposition that we're all equal.
00:13:24.000There is not another nation in the world.
00:14:25.000Because you'll be freer, we'll be economically stronger, and the world will be safer.
00:14:32.000Because we're not going to pick and choose.
00:14:35.000We're going to allow you to unharness these government regulations and let you capture something greater.
00:14:42.000There's a reason why people crave to come to America.
00:14:45.000And I can't quite understand from the Democrat point of view where they want to control everything about our lives, why that thing that brings people more freedom.
00:17:04.000However, he was a man of great grit, and that's kind of the theme here, right?
00:17:07.000He saw the vision, knew what was right, persevered.
00:17:11.000He died a very unceremonious death, right?
00:17:13.000I mean, not far from here in Ford's Theater.
00:17:17.000And yet we remember him as a man who was willing to cast the vision and as a leader that everybody thought lowly of.
00:17:26.000Personally, I love he didn't go to college.
00:17:28.000He was a railroad lawyer, educated on the Bible and Shakespeare.
00:17:31.000So I have that in common with him, I guess.
00:17:33.000But, Mr. Speaker, I love that you're highlighting Lincoln because if there would have been the mainstream media and the equivalent of the time, they were nothing but negative.
00:17:42.000Nothing but this guy is never going to succeed.
00:17:45.000You know, you read the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which really is a question of justice, right?
00:18:53.000And we watched Lincoln down here in the auditorium.
00:18:56.000If you watch the movie Lincoln, it's great, right?
00:18:58.000It's kind of a political one, too, because it's all about getting the 13th Amendment.
00:19:04.000You know where that 13th Amendment was debated?
00:19:06.000On the floor we serve every day today.
00:19:10.000As a policymaker, as a member of Congress, to be able to see what transpired on the floor that day, to be able to walk on that every day, to know the challenge of what they went through and the push that Lincoln gave.
00:19:24.000I mean, it inspires you at the same time.
00:19:27.000We don't have that same challenge today, but we do have big challenges.
00:19:41.000But if you're moving it forward, what you're going to have challenges in your elected position, you move it forward, but then you take the grit to come back the next day for the next piece you didn't get.
00:20:29.000That's a great segue to something I want to highlight.
00:20:31.000So many of these leaders are going to have power, influence, but they're going to be surrounded sometimes by other student senators administration that don't see the world the way they do.
00:20:48.000What can you share from being an effective leader of negotiation, but also I'm not going, there's certain lines or certain principles I will not violate.
00:20:59.000You always keep your principles, but your principles never say that you vote no every single time.
00:23:37.000And he knew that he drove them to a certain point.
00:23:39.000So you'll know in a negotiation where you're driving people to a certain point, but it's just like if you're negotiating, negotiating buying a car, what's the right price?
00:25:45.000But then I put them into another negotiation where I was able to get $20 billion into the future that they're going to spend on IRS because I cut so low.
00:26:17.000Well, it's pretty hard when they have the Senate and the presidency and they already have all the money, just give it back to me.
00:26:23.000Well, I just got everything they're going to do this year, expand the majority, win the Senate, then the presidency, and take it all back next year, and take $20 billion of the future already.
00:26:33.000I got a pretty good chunk of it right now, and they can't start.
00:26:36.000And I set myself up to fight them in the next fight.
00:26:39.000And I think I put ourselves in a pretty good place to have that fight on our philosophy and where the American public is with them and make them lose another argument.
00:26:48.000So it's the timing of the debate and set yourself up for the next debate.
00:26:53.000And the grit is whatever you don't get, if you feel you've got enough, you start the next day for the next fight.
00:27:00.000And you set yourself up coming out of that to win again.
00:27:05.000Listen, as students begin heading back to school, do you think they'll be learning about the founding principles that made America the freest, most prosperous nation in history?
00:27:13.000Will they learn that our unalienable rights are God-given and not granted by government?
00:27:17.000Will they be given a full and honest account of our nation's history?
00:27:20.000The answer to all these questions is yes for students at Hillsdale College.
00:27:24.000And these days, in addition to teaching college students, Hillsdale has extended its teaching to K-12 students and lifelong learners like you and me.
00:27:31.000If you're not doing so already, one of the best ways to start learning from my friends at Hillsdale is through Enprimus, Hillsdale's Free Digest of Liberty.
00:27:40.000My listeners can sign up for free at this special website, which is available for a limited time.
00:28:34.000But I was wondering if you could end with a story of some variety of a time where you might have been at a low point or you felt like the world was caving.
00:28:44.000And I only say this because half of what we've dealt with with this project, Mr. Speaker, over seven years is dealing with students when in their own version of crisis, my world is falling apart.
00:28:55.000I'm on the front page of the student newspaper.
00:30:50.000When you want to fight for something, what will happen is, at the end of the day, when it comes to politics, there's no other occupation in the world on a given day, you know how many people are for you and how many people are against you.
00:31:04.000The only thing that equates this and on the same scale is a professional sport.
00:31:17.000But if you stick with it and you win, those people who are all criticizing you, remember this, when you win, the first people who call you are the people who are guilty who are against you.
00:31:27.000Your friends don't have to call you right away because they were always with you.
00:32:31.000You phase out the rest and you follow through and you remember this one thing.
00:32:37.000Why did you get in the fight to start out with?
00:32:40.000If you quit in the middle of the fight, you never really wanted to get in the fight to start with.
00:32:46.000So also remember that before you start the fight.
00:32:50.000If you're starting the fight for press, you're probably going to get crushed and not stay in it because there's no real principle behind it.
00:32:58.000But when you make that decision to start to go, though in your gut, another good book is it starts with why by Simon Sinek.
00:33:08.000People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
00:33:12.000Your opposition, if you stay with it, will respect you in the end.
00:33:16.000Think for one moment to people who have a different belief than you, but really fight for their own principles.
00:33:24.000Those are normally the people if you have to make an agreement with, you can, because they're not going to change their principles, but they know their principles so they can make an agreement and you can trust them.
00:33:37.000I've always, if somebody's hardcore on the other side, you make an agreement, and in today's world, we think one side has to win and the other side not just lose, but get crumbled.
00:33:48.000Both sides can win in an agreement, and you can both keep your principles and you can both go forward.
00:33:53.000Don't get it in your mindset that they have to have nothing.
00:34:56.000So going through the battle, when you get through it, it'll make you a better person.
00:35:00.000It'll make you a stronger person in your beliefs.
00:35:03.000And even if you don't win 100%, you know what you can do.
00:35:08.000And otherwise, the opposition will be less likely to fight you again.
00:35:12.000Mr. Speaker, I can guarantee you this: in the next couple of years, you'll be swearing in somebody in this room as a member of Congress because this is a room of game changers.
00:35:19.000Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for being here.