This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I'm John Batchel. I welcome my colleague and friend,

Thaddeus McCotter, writing an American greatness, quoting from Edmund Burke, the 18th century philosopher

and member of parliament, and someone who warned his king very carefully what the American Republic represented

during the war and afterwards.

Edmund Burke, these are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not the still

calm of life or the repose of a Pacific station that great characters are formed. The habits of a

vigorous mind are formed in contending with

difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes

that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life,

and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

That's a brilliant quotation, and you're looking right now at the events of these days.

How do you see this in terms of where we are, which is a transition between presidents?

Good evening to you.

Good evening to you, John. I think that when we look back at the last campaign

after the Sturm and Drung is over, when you see it, the Democrats basically have continued

to offer, especially in the end of the 20th century into the 21st, a rather dark picture of the United States,

that we are in decline, that we are systemically racist, that scarcity is a virtue, that abundance

is bad, that everything in the United States was built upon the exploitation of others,

and that somehow our economy is based

upon gamesmanship and is almost like a lottery for the privileged few. In short, John, what you're

looking at are people who believe that there is an elite that should govern the United States,

the administrative state, and that the voters are

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