What to Do About the DOJ | Newt Gingrich

in the tradition of Larry making you work for your living uh I said what what's the topic for tonight you know I mean I do lots of speeches as many of you know and I thought you know I can do almost a need General thing he said well the topic is what to do about the justice department well in order to be able to be competent about that uh on literally on the way here here I was talking with former Attorney General Ed me getting his advice so I would sound semi- smart but before I get to that uh during the reception so many of you came up to me and said that you were concerned that you were worried that you needed some sense of optimism and you felt that normally when I was on TV I was op optimistic and that that encouraged you so I wanted to share with you probably the greatest single lesson I learned about optimism it was 1981 I was a sophomore Congressman Ronald Wilson Reagan had just won an election in which he had the highest electoral vote victory over an incumbent president in American history we were all in awe and a number of us were invited down to the White House to get to KN better so there we are drinking coffee out of the White House china and he comes in about 90 of us he comes in and he says look I really want you to understand me we're all of course leaning forward expecting some highly sophisticated explanation he says you know now there were these parents and they had twins and the one twin was permanently optimistic no matter what happened and the other twin was permanently pessimistic no matter what happened and the parents felt really concerned how how do we get them to come to grips with reality so they came up with a strategy for Christmas the pessimist would get a room filled with the finest toys that were available The Optimist we get a room filled with horse manure they sent him to their two rooms and they waited one hour they walked into the pessimist he's sitting in the middle of this great collection of toys and he's crying and they said what what are you are you doing he said well that toy is going to break and that Toy's battery is going to run out and that toy is going to be stolen and he went around the room and explained every toy in a negative way they looked at each other and what do we do now they walked out they go to the next room now remember this is the room filled with Horsemen order this is Ronald Reagan telling the story and the little kid in the room is running back and forth throwing Horsemen in the air yelling we we and they said what are you doing he said I'm looking for the [Applause] pony r looked out at us and he said guys I just want to understand I'm the guy who's always looking for the pony so if you wonder why I'm an optimist it's because I am a Ronald Reagan Republican and I'm looking for the pony now the question which Hillsdale College asked me to talk about what to do about the justice department is actually part of a much bigger question how do we decisively take power from a deeply entrenched radical Elite that controls the commanding Heights to use Lenin's term Scott rasmason who I recommend highly if you haven't looked at it has done a brilliant study he figured out that there's a 1% of the elite Harvard Princeton Yale Etc and he he has three things you have to grab graduate from those schools with a graduate degree not just go to school graduate degree earn 150,000 or more as a family and live in a big city and if you're in that group you are so radically different from the rest of us that it's astounding in fact Scott makes the point that for example when asked the question would you be willing to steal an election rather than lose it 7% of the American people say yes 67% of the elit say yes which he found he said in his entire career of polling is the most frightening single figure he ever saw and when you go through all of their values they are so far to the rest left of the rest of us and so willing to use their power to impose it remember these are the people who run the government the people who run the news media the people who run the universities and increasingly the people who run the largest corporations it was captured Beyond rasmon by Charles Murray in a remarkable book called coming apart in which Murray simply went and looked at uh ZIP codes and reported that if you went to Harvard Princeton Yale Etc you married people who went to Harvard Princeton Yale Etc you lived in a zip code with people who are from Harvard Princeton Yale Etc During the period of the rise of of trump I kept saying to the elite reporters none of you get it because the Apprentice which was a very successful show for 13 years was not on PBS right after d Abby and therefore no one in your social social Social Circle ever saw it and you had no idea how Trump would be effective on television but this is who they are these are the people who want to run the rest of us and it's very clear both in the rasmason study and in Charles Murray's book these people believe they are our superiors that it is their Duty and their moral right to dictate to the rest of us and let me say in that context one of the reasons I was thrilled to be here tonight in Star Wars the Galactic Empire is trying to establish totalitarian control over the entire universe and there is a resistance and ultimately of course as you know the resistance wins well I have to tell you when I'm here tonight with Larry AR and the rest of you I feel like I'm at the heart of the resistance and I am confident we will win however real Victory is not one election Anthony Jay was a senior adviser to Margaret Thatcher and based on the things that they encountered in the government he created a brilliant series which I recommend to all of you which became a series of books and TV shows called Yes Minister and yes prime minister it is the best study of the depth of the Civil Service undermining blocking diverting the elected officials ever written and it's true I was struck by Paul wolfowitz the deputy secretary of defense said to me one day the attitude in the Pentagon is that the president itial appointees are the summer help and all they have to do is wait and the summer help leaves I was reminded when I was a freshman uh I was Pro defense and back in 1979 under Jimmy Carter if you were Pro defense the defense department loved you so the CNO chief of Naval operations invited me over one afternoon for coffee or I maybe invited myself but he said yes uh and we're chatting and he says to me you realize that Jimmy Carter wanted to turn the US Navy into an ambulance service for the North Atlantic and on behalf of a 200-year tradition I by God Blocked him I remember I happen to agree with him on the policy but I remember standing there thinking uh let me get this straight the chief of Naval operations just told me that he deliberately Al blocked the commanderin-chief who had been elected by the American people and I think that is at its core the attitude of the entire Federal bureaucracy Mike Pompeo said to me one day that one of his top staff people said to him you realize boss that there are about 25 of us and 27,000 of them in the state department and it's kind of like Fort Apache the Bronx we're just trying to hold on Lincoln to give you a sense of scale Abraham Lincoln comes into office replaces 34s of the federal employees three4 every postmaster every Customs officer and puts into those places people loyal to him it's probably the key to how he sustains the union through four years of bitter painful Civil War today because of the growth of the civil service system the civil service is permanent and unless we're prepared to go into office and fundamentally change that fact and return the government to the people we don't currently have government of the People by the people and for the people to quote Lincoln we have government of the elites by the elites and for the elites and the rest of us are allowed to complain now if you want to change that you have to be prepared for very dramatic and very deep changes and that means that if the election of 24 works out you're going to have conflict in 25 26 27 28 and maybe another eight or 10 years remember this system began to grow up under Franklin Delano Roosevelt 89 years years ago so this thing has been growing for almost nine decades by the way that's longer than Lincoln's described 4 score plus 7 in the gettsburg address now think about that and what kind of folks are they're it's not that they're evil although a few of them have evil intent but it is that they are totally sincerely committed to the belief that you and I are stupid and that they have an obligation to govern us and to change Us in ways that are appropriate now to change that I think is an enormous problem and I would just say to you that Lincoln understood if you truly believe in government by the people then you have to believe in government by the people and the rise starting with many ways with woodro Wilson's works in the late uh 19th century Wilson was an academic who was absolutely committed to the progressive idea that there are a small select group of experts who should govern the country because they could do it so much smarter than the rest of us a point which Scott rasmon told me one of the most stunning conversations he had in doing his interviews was with a Harvard Professor who said to him why won't they let just why won't they just let us make the decisions it's what we are trained to do they have to understand the depth the sincerity these are not hypocritical people these are totally sincere totalitarians who believe that if only you would relax your life would become better because they are so much smarter and better trained than you are now in that context you also have to understand that government from Roosevelt on has attracted people to the bureaucracies who come in part because they believe they can make your life better if only you will get out of the way and so they would like to dictate to you on virtually every aspect of your life from whether or not you can have a gas stove to whether or not your child actually should be transgender to whether or not in fact you should learn that George Washington was a racist who kept slaves and therefore should not be studied just go down the list and this has been growing I I've done a whole series at the American spectator starting in 1960 on the growth of where we have how have how have we gotten this far off track and the reason is that there is a core group of beliefs assimilated by more and more people largely in the in the academy and then transmitted through the new news media through politicians through the bureaucracy that are just insane so if you go back and think about it in the 1960s the Department of Justice became a centerpiece for left-wing liberal lawyers who were going to break segregation in the South now I happen to believe as a guy born in Pennsylvania who grew up in an integrated US Army and who experienced segregation as a young person who my dad was stationed in Geor I happen to believe ending segregation was morally and historically totally correct on the other hand those people who had decided how smart they were and how dumb we were then just shifted gears

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 1,077,266

Keywords: hillsdale, politics, constitution, equality, liberty, freedom, free speech, lecture, learn, america, education, learning

Id: T4X4mE9Ta9k

Length: 15min 56sec (956 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2024