Former Vice President Mike Pence delivered a message at the University of Iowa on Monday night. He was hosted by Young America’s Foundation to speak about how to save America from the Woke Left.
Pence opened with his usual Christian, Conservative, Republican in that order phrase before telling those in attendance he started in politics as a Democrat.
“In fact, I was the youth Democrat Party coordinator in Bartholomew County, Indiana,” he said. “We went door to door campaigning for candidates and that’s where my political career really began. But over my high school years, I began to study the Constitution and the American founding. I went off to a small college in Southern Indiana, I took a degree in American History focusing on the same and it was in that time — also a time that I came to a personal faith in Christ — that my politics and my thinking about America began to shift.”
Pence said much of the shift was impacted by the “voice of the values and optimism” of President Ronald Reagan.
Prior to his career as a politician, Pence hosted a talk radio show, which he described as “Rush Limbaugh on decaf.”
He went from Congress, to Governor of Indiana and then obviously to the Vice Presidency.
After briefly discussing his family, Pence returned to Reagan.
“He’s nearly universally admired today,” Pence said. “Those of us that are old enough to remember it know that it wasn’t always that way. Truth of the matter is, before he was the great communicator, Ronald Reagan was the great disrupter, conservative outsider who vigorously opposed the moderate Republican establishment in his day. Reagan’s victory in 1980 breathed new life into our party and into conservatism. He changed the course of the nation and as history records, he literally changed the course of the world. I think today we actually find ourselves in a very similar position because President Donald Trump was also one of a kind.”
Trump “disrupted the status quo,” Pence said. This pivot led to a rundown of the accomplishments of the Trump-Pence White House. And then, Pence talked about the undoing of the agenda by President Joe Biden and the Democrats.
“Frankly, Democrats have moved so fast on their agenda that sometimes I feel like the left hand doesn’t know what the far-left hand is doing,” Pence said. “All kidding aside, it’s heartbreaking to see.”
The current administration, Pence said, has wholeheartedly embraced the radical left’s “all-encompassing assault” on American culture and values.
“Woekism is the assault on the freedom of speech that’s taking place in institutions of higher education,” Pence said.
Pence called Critical Race Theory “nothing less than state-sponsored racism.”
“It should be rejected by every parent in every school of every race and creed and color,” he added. “Despite what the Left would have us believe, I want to say from my heart we are not yet a perfect union, but we are a more perfect union and we are unique among the nations who strive throughout our history to be a more perfect union.
“And I could say, having traveled to big cities and small towns all across this nation, with great conviction, that America is not a racist country. America is the most just, noble and inclusive nation ever to exist on the face of the Earth.”
Pence said despite what the Left and the media make it seem, this is the “freedom-loving generation.”
“Be willing to stand up and be counted on behalf of liberty,” he said.
Pence told the crowd the country needs them to be the freedom generation.
“First and foremost, it means to wrap your mind and your heart around the founding documents of this country,” he said. “You need to study them and you need to know them.”
School choice was also emphasized near the end of Pence’s prepared remarks.
“We need your generation to work with us,” he said. “Let’s put parents back in charge of our local schools and their child’s education and let’s work to give every parent the right to choose where their child goes to school — whether it’s public, private, parochial, charter or even homeschool. And when it comes to our schools, let’s recognize that patriotic education is essential to the survival of liberty. We have to be a generation that cherishes our history, our heritage and teaches it to our children.”
Ultimately, Pence stressed the importance to the crowd of being men and women of integrity.
He said the idea that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is a misperception.
“I think whatever didn’t kill you, it just didn’t kill you,” he said. “Adversity doesn’t create character, adversity reveals character. When the hard times come, when the pressure comes, you will be in that moment the man or woman that you’ve been preparing to be every quiet day since.
“Remember that the foundation of America is freedom. But the foundation of freedom is faith. Take time in your life, search your heart and I would say find a way to look into that Creator and see what they have for you.”
