United States Sen. Tim Scott (South Carolina) provided a passionate defense of America during Saturday’s Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition Spring Supper.
He opened by noting that a liberal reporter over the weekend had said the era of values voters was over.
“How ridiculous is that,” he asked. “They have never been to the great state of Iowa. They’ve never been in a room with 1,000 values voters who have faith on their sleeves and Jesus in their hearts.”
Scott declared that when one looks across the United States today, it appears Joe Biden and the “radical Left” have created a blueprint on how to ruin the country.
“I gotta tell you — not on my watch,” he said. “We’re gonna save our great country. And if you believe like I do, that America should celebrate our Founding Fathers and not cancel them, let me hear you say amen. If you believe that we should educate our children and not indoctrinate our kids, let me hear you say (amen). If you believe we need a little more ABCs and a little less CRT, let me hear you scream.”
Scott said he believes in America because he has lived the American Dream.
“America can do for anyone what she has done for me,” he said. “We should celebrate our Founding Fathers and not cancel them. We are indeed the land of opportunity and not the land of oppression. We should celebrate that we have the seed of greatness and not the seed of grievance in our hearts. You see, the radical Left is selling a drug of victimhood and the narcotic of despair. We know that individual responsibility is the path to the American Dream. I know it because my life disproves the lies of the radical Left and I will tell you that we must restore hope, create opportunities and protect America.”
Scott discussed the absurdity of the Waters of the US.
“We should use common sense and simply cancel the concept of the Waters of the US based on both President Obama and President Biden’s approach to WOTUS,” he said.
Both have declared that any navigatable water — which can be a pond or a bathtub according to their definition — should be controlled by the federal government.
“We know that that is as far away from common sense as you can be,” Scott said. “The easiest way to do that is to reverse the Waters of the US and allow farmers and private landowners to determine their future by their productivity.”
Scott said Republicans must tell the story of the First Amendment and point out that it was written to protect the church from the state, and not the state from the church.
“We should encourage and motivate value voters to be engaged in every facet of our absolute lives and frankly we need to make sure that we protect our religious liberties,” he said. “They will be under assault.”
He finished by sharing a story about his grandfather. Scott said after his parents divorced, they moved into his grandparents’ small house.
“Me, my brother and my mother shared a bedroom and a bed,” he said. “Every breakfast we had in that house, my grandfather would come to the kitchen table and he would read the newspaper. He read it from cover to cover. And we sat there learning very quickly that readers are leaders.”
Fifteen years later, Scott said he learned his grandfather never learned to read. In the Deep South, in the 1930s, there was no reason to have an educated black man, Scott said.
“But he knew then, and believed whole heartily, that somehow, some way, the day and the future of America would allow his kids and grandkids to live in a world that he could never imagine. And I’m so thankful that that man that dropped out of school in the third grade to pick cotton lived long enough to watch his grandson pick out a seat in Congress. That’s why I say from cotton to Congress because in America all things are possible.”
