Our options oftentimes on foreign policy are not a choice between a good one and a bad one. It's a choice between two less-than-ideal options. And you're trying to figure out which is the least harmful of the two. And I think that's something we should be encouraged by, not something that we should be critical of.
I think when you're running for president, especially someone that's never held elected office, there's one set of things that you may view the world through - a lens that you may view the world through. Then, you get elected and you get good people. And those good people bring you the facts. And they bring you, "Here's what's going on. Here are our options. Here's what happens if you do this. Here's what happens when you do that." And that reality begins to assert itself. And you have to react to that. You're now the president. You're no longer a candidate.
I don't measure success by how many buildings have my name on it.
I'm more than happy to share with you my opinion on Donald Trump but I'm running for president because I think this country needs to reembrace the Constitution. This country needs to reembrace free enterprise and it needs to a reembrace the strong national defense.
I don't want us to have a president that we constantly have to be explaining to our kids, I know that's what the president did but you shouldn't do that. I don't want that. We actually had a president like that not long ago. It was really bad.
Why are there so many young conservatives now serving our country? I'll tell you why? Because we grew up in an era of Reagan. And Ronald Reagan looked and acted nothing like Donald Trump and look at the Democrats.
The American dream is about achieving happiness. When you become a fire fighter, a police officer or a teacher or a nurse, you know you're not going to become a billionaire. And what my parents achieved working as a bartender and a maid at a hotel after arriving here with nothing, no education, no money. The first words my dad learned in English where I'm looking for a job.You know what my parents achieved? They owned a home in a safe and stable neighborhood. They retired with dignity and they left all four of their children better off than themselves.
The American dream is not about how much money you make or how many buildings have your name on it.
After eight years of Barack Obama and one crazy election, we almost got it wrong. We came this close. But then we remembered who we were. Then we remembered what America was. Then we confronted our challenges and embraced our opportunities. And because we did what needed to be done in 2016, our children became the freest and most prosperous Americans that ever lived.
America is not a special country by accident. It did not happen on its own. It happened because for over 200 years, each generation before us did what needed to be done.
For over two centuries, each generation of Americans before us confronted and solved problems. They embraced opportunities and Americans have never had it easy. This was a nation founded by declaring independence for the most powerful empire in the world. This was a nation that faced a divisive and bloody civil war, two great world wars, a long cold war.
I think there's a growing amount of confusion about what conservatism is. And it is time for us to understand that conservatism is not built on personalities. Conservatism is not simply built on how angry you might seem from time to time. Conservatism is built on a set of principles and ideas that our nation desperately needs.
We believe in traditional values because without them, without the belief in an all-powerful God, then the very founding of our country was meaningless. It was founded on the principles that our rights come from God. If there is no God, then where do your rights come from other than what your leaders decide they are?
Conservatives believe in traditional values. Not because we want to impose our views on anyone, but because to abandon those values would be to ignore our history. Americans are not the most generous people on earth because our laws make us generous. People do not contribute to charity in this country in record amounts because we have a tax break from it. We do so because this nation has been shaped by Judeo-Christian principles that teach us that we have an obligation to care for one another.
Conservatives believe that we need to defeat radical Islam not because we want war but because ISIS and other radical Islamist are enemies of peace and that's why we need a president, who in which under whom the best intelligence agencies in the world will find terrorists and the best military in the world will destroy them. And if we capture them alive, a president that will bring them to the United States. A president that will grant them a court-appointed lawyer, a president that will send these terrorists where they belong, to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Conservatism means believing in a strong national defense. Not because we want war, but because we love peace. Because history has taught us a painful lesson, that weakness is the enemy of peace. That weakness invites violence, that weakness invites war.
Free enterprise is the best economic system in the history of the world, because it is the only system where you can make poor people richer and you don't have to make rich people poor.
Conservatism means re-embracing true free enterprise. True free enterprise, which I believe and not because my parents were wealthy, not because I inherited millions of dollars because I did not, but because as I walked on to the stage here today, I walked through the kitchen of this hotel and I met people and shook the hands of people who are doing the jobs my parents once did.
Our government does not exist to decide the rights, nor to grant them. Our government exists to protect them. And that is why we have a constitution that limits the power of the federal government to a few specific, but important things and we have abandoned that. We have abandoned it in both political parties.
We have reached a moment in our history where we think that every problem in America has to have a federal government solution. Every problem in America does not have a federal government solution. In fact, most problems in America do not have a federal government solution and many of them are created by the federal government to begin with.
What will solve our problems is a specific set of ideas built on bedrock principles that made America the greatest nation to begin with and applying those principles to the unique challenges of this new century. And those principles are not complicated. It begins with a notion that this nation was founded on a powerful spiritual principle, that our rights do not come from government. Our rights do not come from our laws. Our rights do not come from our leaders. Our rights come from God.
Conservatism has never been about fear or about anger. Not at its best. Do people have a right to be fearful of the future right now? Yes, because for over two decades, leaders in neither party have solved the problems before us.
Do people have a right to be angry about, not just the political class, but every institution in society? Absolutely. But neither anger nor fear will solve our problems. They can serve to motivate us, but it will not solve our problems.
Being a conservative can never be about simply an attitude. Being a conservative cannot simply be about how long you're willing to scream, how angry you're willing to be or how many names you're willing to call people. That is not conservative.
The politics of resentment against other people will not just leave the Republican Party a fractured party. They're going to leave us a fractured nation. They're going to leave us as a nation where people literally hate each other because they have different political opinions.
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