The video of this speech is listed here.

On March 30, 1961, at the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce, Ronald Reagan gave a speech called “Encroaching Control,” in which he reminded us that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” He stated:

Our Founding Fathers, here in this country, brought about the only true revolution that has ever taken place in man’s history. Every other revolution simply exchanged one set of rulers for another set of rulers. But only here did that little band of men so advanced beyond their time that the world has never seen their like since, evolve the idea that you and I have within ourselves the God-given right and the ability to determine our own destiny.

But freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it, defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime must do the same. And if you and I don’t do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.¹

Paraphrasing the Catholic professor William Kilpatrick, our question now is, “Are American freedoms one election away from extinction?”²

To begin our discussion, let’s look at freedom and the history of freedom. Without criticizing any good-hearted atheists, if there really were no God at all—no Creative Intelligence behind the formation of the universe—would freedom exist as a moral and inalienable right of every human being?

Without God (assuming that humans could exist at all), humans would have no anchor of goodness, no internal light that they could turn to, to guide them through lives of violence and emptiness in which those who killed the most would rule over those who survived. This is demonstrated by the fact that virtually every page of history is stained with the blood of innocents, blood that was spilled by those who could not love.

Yes, crimes against humanity have also been committed by religious people, sometimes in the names of various gods. However, when one considers that human beings have free will, which gives them the ability to love and create beauty, it also becomes apparent that their free will comes with the great risk that they may choose darker paths, having nothing to do with the Creator of Love. Thus humanity has suffered self-inflicted wounds during what has often been a painfully slow ascent toward civilization.

If we review history, it’s not very difficult to place various pages of history in separate piles marked “Relatively Good” or “Abominable.” It’s a safe bet that a majority of humans would agree that the pages labeled as Relatively Good would contain incidents of kindness, compassion, love, beauty, virtue, and freedom. The Abominable pages would be filled with sordid tales of violence, hatred, selfishness, murder, slavery, and totalitarianism.

History has clearly demonstrated that all human beings have the tragic capacity to be evil: to lie, to cheat, to steal, to murder, to enslave others, and then to justify their actions in a variety of ways that makes them feel better about themselves for as long as possible.

The Judeo-Christian religious tradition presented humankind with the revolutionary truth that the universe was not random, or created by malicious or capricious gods, but was instead created by one, transcendent God of love and goodness who promoted a moral code articulated in the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus to love one’s enemy. These religious beliefs gave inherent value and dignity to every human being, without regard to their race, class, or nationality. The poorest and most scorned person could be as close to the indwelling God as the wealthiest person in society.

God was presented as a color-blind Source of Love who created all human beings as sacred, incarnational individuals who were born with the inalienable rights to be free and to grow in divinity as Beings of Love, each with their unique and personal relationship of love with their Creator.

It was this view of human beings that inspired the spread of human rights in the Judeo-Christian world, culminating in the historically unprecedented creation of a country—the United States—that was deliberately formed by its people with a government that would act as a servant to its citizens. In America, the people rule.

Those same Judeo-Christian ethics motivated good-hearted, freedom-loving people to end the plague of slavery in America, less than eighty years after the founding of the country, and later to establish guarantees that have brought the United States forward to the point where, in 1991, the black professor Orlando Patterson, the John Cowles Chair in Sociology at Harvard University, stated in a New York Times op-ed titled “Race, Gender and Liberal Fallacies” that America:

. . . is now the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all those of Africa . . .³

This is not a description of a systemically racist country.

This doesn’t mean that all Americans are saints. But as a country, America has become more and more exceptional since its founding in 1776. This is why millions of people of all races eagerly desire to immigrate to America. If America were racist, non-white immigrants would not come. Common sense confirms this.

Yet, critics of America will point to the actions of some imperfect people and tar the entire country with one brush and say, “See! America is a terrible place.” They fail to remember that the Founding Fathers created a system of government with checks and balances to explicitly protect citizens of all races against the Evil that Humans Do.

Americans are not perfect. They are flawed, just like the citizens of every other country in the world. The Founders knew this. It is the constitutional structure of America that is exceptional, which has allowed the United States to mature into an exceptional nation.

Paraphrasing Jordan Peterson, when critics say that America is terrible, the correct responses are, “Compared to what? Compared to where? Compared to what time in history? Compared to a Utopia that doesn’t exist?”

We must remember that the pile of Abominable pages of history is far higher than the small stack of Relatively Good pages. Is America, with all of its flawed individuals, still a better place to live than the totalitarian countries of Communist China, North Korea, Iran, the USSR, Nazi Germany, or any other country in history? Of course, the answer is yes.

We cannot forget the horrors of Marxism; the one-hundred and fifty million dead killed by fervent Marxists who believed the words of Vladimir Lenin when he spoke to the Russian Young Communist League in 1920:

In what sense do we reject ethics, reject morality? In the sense given to it by the bourgeoisie, who based ethics on God’s commandments. On this point we, of course, say that we do not believe in God . . .

We do not believe in an eternal morality . . .

To us morality is subordinated to the interests of the proletariat’s class struggle.⁴

These Marxists believed the words of Marx, and also believed the words of Friedrich Engels that he wrote in his book Anti-Dühring in 1877:

We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever . . .⁵

This, my friends, is the Marxist and Leftist “license to kill,” a license that they have utilized from their beginnings.

The narrative about America that has been propagated by the Hard-Left is that the United States is an evil country founded on the backs of slaves by white supremacists who will never be anything other than racist and oppressive to the core. Their mantra is that the US Constitution should be thrown out; that the American system of government and free-enterprise capitalism should be burned to the ground and be replaced by socialism. Power will finally be in the hands of the people.

The Left’s narrative is racist, for it is stupid and malevolent to promote the idea that all white people, without exception, are racist. To regard any race in that fashion is the textbook definition of racism because it completely ignores the sacred uniqueness of individuals who each have their own set of values.

Leftists are also willfully deceitful when they raise their fists and chant, “Power to the people!” Since the US Constitution explicitly gives all the power in America to all of the people, we must demand that Leftists answer the most pertinent question of all:

In your socialist, totalitarian, Marxist system of government, which people exactly will have the power and make the decisions?

Note the three most important words in that question: “which people exactly?”

Will it be Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, AOC, and Ilhan Omar, or some yet-to-be-named group of power-hungry militants with guns?

The answer is, of course, quite obvious. Ninety-nine percent of the people who survive the purges and the gulags will have no power at all. This is a historical fact based on the record of communist countries everywhere.

Americans who are ignorant of the reality of totalitarianism are foolishly giving up their current status as a citizen with full and equal rights in exchange for the miserable position of a virtual slave in a totalitarian state. The historian William Federer wrote:

In America, citizens pledge allegiance to the flag ”. . . and to the republic for which it stands.” It is basically a pledge to we, the people, being in charge of ourselves. When someone protests the flag, they are effectively saying, I don’t want to be king anymore—I protest this system where people participate in ruling themselves.⁶

Too many Americans are buying into the dream of a Leftist Utopia that history has demonstrated will never arrive. These young Americans are ignorant of history because the Hard-Left has dominated the educational system, the media, and Hollywood for so many decades that people are unable to refute the accusations of the Left with accurate historical and current knowledge.

It is also for this reason that we see people apologizing to the Left and bowing to the Left in submission, because of ignorance, and sometimes because of cowardice or misplaced guilt. We must never bow to Leftist mobs who will only be encouraged to attack again.

To be clear: this does not mean that we shouldn’t “love everyone.” We should indeed love all human beings. But, we must also stand up to totalitarianism in every form, to preserve the freedoms of all people. Fighting totalitarianism and loving everyone is a dilemma that we must face with common sense and the awareness that we must protect the innocent.

Today, huge numbers of very good-hearted Americans are laboring under a “mass delusion”— a delusion that has many components. I would like to highlight three specific beliefs:

1. The American system is evil.

2. Whites are irredeemably racist.

3. There is no threat from an active and destructive Marxist Left.

This mass delusion is tragic and is, in my opinion, the most dangerous variable in America’s fight for survival.

It’s important to emphasize that those suffering under this mass delusion need not feel insulted by this assumption. No offense is meant, at all. As we will see below, many good-hearted, moral, intelligent people can unwittingly fall victim to disinformation and propaganda and form false conclusions, through no fault of their own.

For example: If a man comes to a small village and tells everyone in the town that an immoral criminal will arrive on the three-o’clock bus and describes in detail the sins and crimes of that individual, it would be normal for the villagers to view the arriving stranger with suspicion. What else can they think? The person making the allegations can make up dozens of lies, and the damage to the new arrival will be extensive and long-lasting.

In the 1956 book The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing, the Dutch/American psychoanalyst Joost Meerloo wrote, in the chapter titled “Mental Contagion and Mass Delusion”:

… mass delusion can be induced. It is simply a matter of organizing and manipulating collective feelings in the proper way. If one can isolate the mass, allow no free thinking, no free exchange, no outside corrective, and can hypnotize the group daily with noises, with press and radio and television, with fear and pseudo-enthusiasms, any delusion can be instilled. . . .

Delusions, carefully implanted, are difficult to correct. Reasoning no longer has value; for the lower, more animal type of thinking becomes deaf to any thought on a higher level. If one reasons with a totalitarian who has been impregnated with official clichés, he will sooner or later withdraw into his fortress of collective totalitarian thinking. The mass delusion that gives him his feelings of belonging, of greatness, of omnipotence, is dearer to him than his personal awareness and understanding.

Stella Morabito expands on this topic in her brilliant 2015 article written for The Federalist, titled “How To Escape The Age Of Mass Delusion.”⁷

Now, in 2020, we can see that America is deeply divided between two major groups of people, with millions of people caught in the middle wondering what they can possibly do.

The first group includes those freedom-loving Americans who still believe in the Judeo-Christian foundations of America, who still believe in the exceptional system of the US Constitution, and who still believe that America can continue to grow as a great, compassionate, and free country.

Opposing them are individuals who have adopted wholesale what may be one of the greatest lies in history: that America is so evil that it must be ripped down and rebuilt in the image of a Utopian and totalitarian world-view.

As the China virus pandemic has progressed over the months, radical Democrats and Leftists have revealed their real ambitions. Between totalitarian lockdowns and bloody riots in the streets that the mainstream media has completely ignored, the Left has clearly demonstrated that it does not support the standards of freedom articulated in the US Constitution and the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The hard-left leaders of the Democratic Party are so desperate for power that they now talk of waging a revolution in the streets if they lose the November election. Writing for the Claremont Institute’s publication The American Mind, in the September 4, 2020 essay “The Coming Coup?” Michael Anton stated:

Remember that phrase from the Dem war game: “street fight.” In other words, a repeat of this summer, only much, much bigger. Crank the propaganda to ear-drum shattering decibels and fill the streets of every major city with “protesters.” Shut down the country and allow only one message to be heard: “Trump must go.”

I.e., what’s come to be known as a “color revolution,” the exact same playbook the American deep state runs in other countries whose leadership they don’t like and is currently running in Belarus. Oust a leader—even an elected one—through agitation and call it “democracy.”

The events of the last few months may be interpreted as an attempted color revolution that failed to gain enough steam, or as a trial run for the fall. Is the Trump Administration prepared?⁸

The anti-religious, dictatorial Left would lead us down a dark path where there is no God, no love, no kindness or compassion, and no peace—unless it was the peace of the grave and the gulag.

If America falls to the Left and becomes a totalitarian state, I believe that the entire world will be covered by a totalitarian night that might last for centuries. What other country could defend freedom around the world?

It is for this reason that we must re-elect Donald J. Trump as President and elect a majority of Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives, as well as Republican majorities in state-level races across the country.

Why is Donald Trump so important? Leftists are screaming and growling and baring their sharpened teeth at Donald Trump, while good-hearted liberals are sincerely asking, “How can you support Trump? He’s a racist, a fascist, an anti-Semite. He will destroy America!”

The hatred of Trump expressed by otherwise rational individuals has been labeled by some as Trump Derangement Syndrome. It may be kinder to say that individuals who feel that way have been influenced—through no fault of their own—by the poisonous barrage of leftist lies and propaganda about Trump that started the moment he announced his candidacy.

An August 2020 study by the Media Research Center found that 95% of the coverage of Trump by ABC, CBS, and NBC was negative, and “viewers heard 150 TIMES more negative comments about Trump than Biden.”⁹

Good-hearted, honest liberals need to understand that hardcore Leftists and Marxists habitually lie about America and conservatives, because to Leftists, distorting the truth is an acceptable strategy to advance their cause. The lies coming from the Left in 2020 are ever more monstrous and diabolically clever.

We must remember that they lie because they have no moral dogma. Dennis Prager used to believe that the Left had lost its moral compass, but now he states, and I agree, that they have no moral compass at all.¹⁰

Unfortunately, many Americans get most of their news from the mainstream media, and, as a result, they are the unwitting victims of the leftist media’s campaign of disinformation. Their mass delusion that Trump is a racist, an anti-Semite, and a fascist is a media-produced opinion that is provably wrong.

Ask the large number of black conservatives who support Trump if he’s a racist. They will say, “No!”

Ask the Jews who are celebrating Trump’s support of Israel if he’s anti-Semitic. They will say, “No!”

Ask the over two-hundred constitutionalist judges whom he appointed if he’s a fascist looking to seize control of the government. They will, of course, say, “No!”

These three allegations are rancid lies from the Left that we must thoroughly dispute. Trump is not that person.

When I heard one of Trump’s earliest speeches about reviving rust belt mill towns and making America great again, I was thrilled and inspired. What a wonderful idea! You mean, America doesn’t have to slide down into doom?

Trump is brash. Sometimes he’s rude. We have to admit that. He has many faults, as we all do. But he repeatedly demonstrates that he loves America, through his words, his actions, and his policies.

He’s a patriot who fights for America and is not cowed by the constant and vicious attacks from the Left. Someone else might have been more genteel, but would they have been as strong and bold? In this situation, “tennis, anyone?” is not relevant if one cannot fight.

I, for one, am exceedingly grateful that Donald Trump has stepped up to defend the American dream.

We must vote for and support Donald Trump, and we must win in November.

But! After winning those elections, we must create a national movement to teach our young people (and the older ones too) the true historical record and value of America.

Read this next sentence and ask yourself if you think that it’s true:

If a majority of Americans lose their understanding of history and the truth and lose their love for America, America will not survive.

I believe that it is, and it is thus up to all freedom-loving Americans, both conservatives and liberals of all races, to unite together and quite literally save America and freedom.

May God bless our efforts.

“Deus est auctor amoris et decoris.”

¹  https://archive.org/details/RonaldReagan-EncroachingControl

²  “How a 2020 Democrat Victory could Pave the way for Radical Islam’s U.S. Takeover,” by William Kilpatrick, March 9, 2020. https://turningpointproject.com/how-a-2020-democrat-victory-could-pave-the-way-for-radical-islams-u-s-takeover/ The last paragraph of this article stated: “President Ronald Reagan reminded us that ‘freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.’ Now we need to contend with the possibility that the extinction of freedom is only one election away.” This gave me the idea of the title of the program that we hosted on October 6, 2020 and the title of this essay / speech.

³  “Op-ed; Race, Gender and Liberal Fallacies,” by Orlando Patterson, John Cowles Chair in Sociology at Harvard University, Oct. 20, 1991
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/20/opinion/op-ed-race-gender-and-liberal-fallacies.html

⁴  Vladimir Lenin’s “The Tasks of the Youth Leagues.” Written: October 2, 1920. Speech Delivered At The Third All-Russia Congress of The Russian Young Communist League
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/oct/02.htm

⁵  Anti-Dühring by Friedrich Engels, 1877. “Part I: Philosophy, IX. Morality and Law., Eternal Truths”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch07.htm

⁶  https://myemail.constantcontact.com/America--the-BEST-form-of-government-which-has-EVER-been-offered-to-the-WORLD--Justice-James-Wilson.html?soid=1108762609255&aid=w4OMeIgTTU8

⁷  https://thefederalist.com/2015/06/08/how-to-escape-the-age-of-mass-delusion/

⁸  https://americanmind.org/essays/the-coming-coup/

⁹  https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2020/08/17/study-150-times-more-negative-news-trump-biden

¹⁰  https://dennisprager.com/column/the-lefts-moral-compass-isnt-broken/