Speaker 1: It is the busiest travel day of the year. Tens
Speaker 1: of millions of Americans are on the move on this
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving Eve twenty twenty four, fifty four days before a
Speaker 1: change in presidential power, Donald Trump has been handed something
Speaker 1: called immunity by the Supreme Court. In simple language, it
Speaker 1: means functionally, he is above the law. For the first
Speaker 1: time America has a king or a caesar, we have
Speaker 1: elevated someone who is one of us above us. It's
Speaker 1: a dangerous precedent and one that should be reset at
Speaker 1: the first opportunity. This is the warning. What is our
Speaker 1: national purpose? Has there ever been one? Should there even
Speaker 1: be one? Is it possible to even have one in
Speaker 1: a country so geographically large, so populated, so diverse, made
Speaker 1: up of all of the people from all over the world,
Speaker 1: where every language is commonly spoke every day. One of
Speaker 1: the things that was talked about in this campaign over
Speaker 1: and over again as a plea, not really a statement
Speaker 1: of fact anymore by Kamala Harris, though I believe it
Speaker 1: to be true, is that, in fact, even in these
Speaker 1: divided times, we share much more in common than we
Speaker 1: do in disagreement. This boiling question if we should separate
Speaker 1: or be together has long royaled the American conversation. It
Speaker 1: is not possible to comprehend America without appreciating that one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty eight years ago there was a civil
Speaker 1: war in a nation of thirty four million people that
Speaker 1: almost killed one million people. The question that has always
Speaker 1: hung in the air during America's darkest days and nights
Speaker 1: is a combination of will we make it through and
Speaker 1: what comes next? There's an adjacent question when times call
Speaker 1: for immense sacrifice on the altar of freedom. When Americans,
Speaker 1: through our history, mostly young men, have been called forward
Speaker 1: to cross the river in service of their nation, to
Speaker 1: lay down their lives. And when you ask people to
Speaker 1: make a sacrifice to lay down their lives, it must
Speaker 1: have purpose and meaning, or what the country is taking
Speaker 1: will produce a cynicism, in a rage and in anger,
Speaker 1: because the living will have stolen meaning from the death
Speaker 1: of those who offered their lives as a measure of
Speaker 1: their devotion to the country. John Lewis is an example
Speaker 1: of an American born in the twentieth century who is
Speaker 1: every bit as much a founding father of the America
Speaker 1: we live in today as is Thomas Jefferson or George Washington,
Speaker 1: and so is in this construct the man who redeemed
Speaker 1: the union and saved it Lincoln and his general who
Speaker 1: became a president after him. Grant what is the common
Speaker 1: link the purpose of all of these people's lives. In
Speaker 1: the end, what they shared in common was a commitment
Speaker 1: to justice and freedom, and they were ready to fight
Speaker 1: for it and to take a stand for it. We
Speaker 1: live in a moment where we point fingers and recriminate
Speaker 1: each other at the drop of a hat. When someone
Speaker 1: expresses a fear and anxiety or worry, it has become
Speaker 1: normal on the left the point a finger and accuse
Speaker 1: somebody who expresses worry about World War Three, like Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan and say they were a Russian asset, as opposed
Speaker 1: to appreciating that Joe Rogan, like my twenty one year
Speaker 1: old daughter and her sorority friends, is simply afraid.
Speaker 2: What I don't feel safer is right now they're launching
Speaker 2: missiles into Russia. Yeah, how are you allowed to do
Speaker 2: that when you're on the way out? Like the people
Speaker 2: don't want you to be there anymore. This should be
Speaker 2: like some sort of like a pause for like significant
Speaker 2: actions that could potentially start World War three. Maybe that
Speaker 2: would be a good thing that we would like to
Speaker 2: avoid from a dying former president. The whole thing is nuts.
Speaker 2: They fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time ever,
Speaker 2: so the first time one of those has ever been used.
Speaker 2: That sanity fucking insanity, because those intercontinental ballistic missiles can
Speaker 2: have nukes on them. This wouldn't didn't, but if it does,
Speaker 2: the whole world changes. That's what's scary about life. Is like,
Speaker 2: you don't want to pay attention to that shit. You
Speaker 2: just want to live your life. You want to just
Speaker 2: be care free and have fun and do the thing
Speaker 2: that you're passionate about. And meanwhile the world is burning.
Speaker 1: They're terrified of war, and they should be. Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: observed that for the first time in history, the Russians
Speaker 1: launched ain't combat one of their intercontinental ballistic missiles. He
Speaker 1: came after the United States government and the Biden administration
Speaker 1: gave permission for Ukraine to fire American made long range
Speaker 1: weapons into Russia. That came after North Korean troops arrived
Speaker 1: on Russian soil. What are we to do soon? Maybe
Speaker 1: Pete Hegsath will be the Secretary of Defense and when
Speaker 1: I look at the turmoil of the world, what frightens
Speaker 1: me is not a lack of American power, but a
Speaker 1: lack of American judgment, not by ordinary people, but by
Speaker 1: the people around Trump who have been brought to power.
Speaker 1: And the choice we have made is to place the
Speaker 1: most unfit man in American history back into power atop
Speaker 1: the world's most powerful armed forces. It's interesting when you
Speaker 1: have an appreciation for what is going to happen next.
Speaker 1: I love these old Life magazines. They're time capsules. Open
Speaker 1: up on and see in vivid and graphic detail, the stress,
Speaker 1: the worry, the advertisements, the culture of America in a
Speaker 1: moment in time. This was the addition of Life magazine,
Speaker 1: printed on September eleventh, nineteen thirty nine. The Italian dictator
Speaker 1: Benito Mussolini is on the cover, and within this magazine
Speaker 1: are the first images of a German soldier in Poland.
Speaker 1: It's incredible to see eleven days after the start of
Speaker 1: the war, the photo from September first. There's no question
Speaker 1: about how the war started. When you look at these pictures,
Speaker 1: you know everything that happened in the war, but then
Speaker 1: also for the next eighty years. But then in that moment.
Speaker 1: Those people who opened up that magazine with dread and
Speaker 1: fear and worry in America were no different than any
Speaker 1: American today watching this with a deep sense of worry
Speaker 1: about what's next. If you look at Life magazine covers
Speaker 1: across our many July fourths, they paint a portrait of
Speaker 1: a country in turmoil, in peace and prosperity, and in war.
Speaker 1: This is the first edition that has a dead American
Speaker 1: on the cover. And in this moment July fifth of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, across twenty seven pages are the names
Speaker 1: of America is Dead. There are more than twelve thousand
Speaker 1: by nineteen forty three when the magazine is laid out.
Speaker 1: There are fifteen thousand dead by the time it is published.
Speaker 1: And I know how it ends in this magazine though
Speaker 1: it's just beginning. And there is a question that is
Speaker 1: posed that's necessary in this moment. Why did they die?
Speaker 1: And for what? The magazine publishes a brilliant editorial, and
Speaker 1: it posits that we have a national purpose and that
Speaker 1: their lives and their deaths had great meaning in the
Speaker 1: fulfillment of that purpose. The magazine makes the point at
Speaker 1: the moment of their death they were not thinking about
Speaker 1: great causes. They were not thinking about abstractions. They did
Speaker 1: not voluntarily, in the moment, choose to die for their country.
Speaker 1: What Life Magazine makes the point about is that it
Speaker 1: is the living who decide the legacy of the dead,
Speaker 1: because the living must give meaning to their life. There
Speaker 1: is great purpose in the life of a John Lewis,
Speaker 1: and there is great meaning in his life unless that
Speaker 1: purpose is eradicated by a future generation of Americans who
Speaker 1: stripped the meaning of his bravery by turning against the
Speaker 1: purpose of his life, which was the expansion of freedom,
Speaker 1: which is precisely what these men died for going over
Speaker 1: the hill, crossing the river. Freedom is sublime, tophemeral, and
Speaker 1: in the American tradition, we've appreciated that there is purpose
Speaker 1: and worth in every human life, that the individual is
Speaker 1: more important and more powerful, more righteous than all the
Speaker 1: pronouncements of the state. We know in America that the
Speaker 1: genius of our founders has protected us from the jackboot
Speaker 1: of the state on our neck. And we know that
Speaker 1: over and over again we've sent our young men and
Speaker 1: now our young women forward into difficult situations in hard places,
Speaker 1: with their lives on the line, and then it came
Speaker 1: to be that a compact was broken, and young people
Speaker 1: who had purpose in their lives and died for meaning,
Speaker 1: had it stripped away by a politics who devalued it,
Speaker 1: who entered into transactions for the self interest of the
Speaker 1: people at the top, against the interests of all of
Speaker 1: the beautiful mosaic that makes the country strong and powerful.
Speaker 1: And the disgust that has flowed from that has written
Speaker 1: the Trump chapter. And so now, on this Thanksgiving we
Speaker 1: can choose bitterness and anger or a rededication to core
Speaker 1: principles into a deeper purpose. What is the purpose of
Speaker 1: involvement in politics, in civics in our country to defeat
Speaker 1: Donald Trump or to look out twenty five years from
Speaker 1: now and be able to play the smallest of parts
Speaker 1: in the greatest of construction projects, the building of the
Speaker 1: shining city on the hill. The only king that matters
Speaker 1: in America was named Martin, and he had a vision,
Speaker 1: a prophecy like the Viennese artist. But it wasn't of death.
Speaker 1: It was a promise in justice, and he said we
Speaker 1: would get there, and we will, but not tomorrow. In
Speaker 1: the Life magazine, when there were fifteen thousand American War
Speaker 1: dead on the Way to four hundred and five thousand,
Speaker 1: and the question was posed about why about the sacrifice.
Speaker 1: The author was skeptical if the country would have the endurance,
Speaker 1: the grit, the stamina of the fortitude. He questioned the
Speaker 1: resolve of that generation. He was unable to see forward
Speaker 1: to this day, just as we will be unable to
Speaker 1: see forward to where America will be. But if I
Speaker 1: could talk to him, what I would say to him
Speaker 1: is those people you doubted, we remember them in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Singularly we call them the greatest generation, but
Speaker 1: they're not the greatest generation, because the greatest generation of
Speaker 1: Americans has not yet been born. What I would tell
Speaker 1: my children is that maybe it's their generation, or maybe
Speaker 1: their children's, or maybe their great grandchildren's. The greatest generation
Speaker 1: will be the one that summits Kings Mountaintop and builds
Speaker 1: the shining city on the hill seen so very long
Speaker 1: ago by John Winthrow and rededicated by John Kennedy. It's
Speaker 1: an American city that shines for all the world was
Speaker 1: built by great sacrifice. The purpose of America is not
Speaker 1: defeating Donald Trump. He's among our smallest and lowest and
Speaker 1: most malice men. But He will give us an opportunity
Speaker 1: to find our way back to our purpose in this country,
Speaker 1: the vigorous expansion of freedom. It is our faith, It
Speaker 1: is the meaning of our lives as Americans. Happy Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: Do not be afraid keep the faith. Our best days
Speaker 1: are ahead of us, even though it will all get
Speaker 1: worse before it gets better. Fortitude is very much part
Speaker 1: of the American character. It will be needed. There will
Speaker 1: be tough moments, there will be terrible days caused by
Speaker 1: what's coming, but we will get through it as we
Speaker 1: always have. This is the morning. I'm Steve Schmidt. This
Speaker 1: is the morning, and I invite you to join. Subscribe
Speaker 1: on our substack on our YouTube channel, follow us. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the community.