what makes america great speech

'Make America Great Again'—Who Said It First?

Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump has been consistent about one thing: His promise that he is going to "Make America Great Again."

The Republican nominee claims he coined the slogan at some point in 2014. He once even accused Ted Cruz of ripping him off when the Texas senator used the phrase in his own presidential campaign announcement. But Trump is not the first politician to use the phrase.

Ronald Reagan repeatedly promised to “make America great again” during his 1980 presidential campaign. He, too, used it as slogan on campaign merchandise.

Today in presidential primary front pages, 1980: Reagan's smash victory in New Hampshire... ( @latimes , 2/27/1980) pic.twitter.com/UHEqXKYZ60 — Jack Bohrer (@JRBoh) February 27, 2016

“This country needs a new administration with a renewed dedication to the dream of America, an administration that will give that dream new life, and make America great again,” Reagan said in a Labor Day speech in 1980.

He also used the line in his convention address that year. “For those who’ve abandoned hope. We’ll restore hope, and we’ll welcome them into a great national crusade to make America great again,” said Reagan.

Related: Analysis: Donald Trump's Teleprompter Gap Is Becoming a Problem

Former President Bill Clinton has been suggesting on the campaign trail that the phrase is actually a racist dog whistle , one “white Southerners” would surely understand. But the phrase could regularly be found in the 42nd president’s own campaign speeches.

“I believe that together we can make America great again,” said Clinton is his 1991 presidential announcement speech . In a campaign stop almost a year later, he called on voters “to make America great again economically, educationally, and socially."

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"The line of 'Make America great again,' the phrase, that was mine, I came up with it about a year ago, and I kept using it, and everybody's now using it, they are all loving it," Trump said in a 2015 interview with MyFox New York . "I don't know, I guess I should copyright it, maybe I have copyrighted it."

Perhaps the world will never know who first came up with the phrase, “Make America great again.” But one thing’s for sure: Whoever it was definitely should have copyrighted it.

Emma Margolin is a reporter at MSNBC.com.

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Jeff daniels says iconic ‘newsroom’ speech saved his career.

The film, stage and TV actor shares the fascinating tale behind the epic Aaron Sorkin-penned monologue that kicked off the HBO series.

By Ryan Parker

Ryan Parker

Former Senior Reporter

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The success of The Newsroom was placed squarely on the shoulders of Jeff Daniels , who had two weeks to learn a last-minute  Aaron Sorkin monologue placed at the beginning of the HBO pilot.

In a recent career retrospective with GQ , the award-winning actor revealed that the “America is not the greatest country in the world” diatribe Will McAvoy delivers to kick off the series was not initially in Sorkin’s script.

“That speech came later,” he told GQ. “Two weeks before we start shooting, Aaron said, ‘We need to see what happened at Northwestern [University] when Will went to speak. We can’t just talk about what happened in the past.’ So he wrote that speech and I had two weeks to learn it.”

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In the three-minute speech, Daniels’ McAvoy, anchor and managing editor within the fictional Atlantis Cable News, bluntly explains the country’s vast shortcomings, thus why America is not the greatest nation in the world anymore.

That speech saved the show — and the show saved Daniels’ career, the actor reminisced.

“That was the speech I had been waiting 35 years to do,” he said. “You have to hit a home run with it. It was shot on day three of an 18-day shoot for the pilot. There was no guarantee we had a series. People bigger than Aaron Sorkin had gotten turned down by HBO. This was a key day because not only are we going to find out do we have a Will McAvoy, but do we have a show. Because this is placed in the first five minutes of the first episode when America is still sitting there with the remote deciding whether they want to stay with this or not. So we have to throw a knockout punch to them in the first five to 10 minutes.”

Top network executives came to the taping that day, Daniels recalled, along with a number of the cast. “Sam [Waterston, who played Charlie Skinner] later said, ‘I just wanted to see if I was going to have a job or not.’ It was all on me,” Daniels said. “I worked my ass off on it. First take, I hit it out of the park. I know that because Aaron walked over to me after take one and he goes, ‘OK, you’re pitching a no-hitter. I’m not going to talk to you.’ And he walked away. That was great. Then I knew I had a role, I pretty much — with Aaron’s help — saved my career and that everyone had a job.”

The Newsroom premiered on HBO June 24, 2012, and ran three seasons for a total of 25 episodes.

Check out Daniels’ full career retrospective below.

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'It Was Said' Podcast Breaks Down Iconic American Speeches

NPR's Scott Simon talks with historian Jon Meacham about his new podcast, It Was Said, which examines impactful speeches from modern American history.

Copyright © 2020 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

Correction Sept. 12, 2020

In a previous version of this story, we incorrectly said Barbara Jordan was the first black woman in Congress. She was the first black woman representing Texas in Congress.

Transcript: Donald Trump inauguration speech in full

US President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech, delivered to the nation outside Capitol in Washington, DC.

Here is Donald Trump’s inauguration speech in full:

“Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans, and people of the world: thank you.

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We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and to restore its promise for all of our people.

READ MORE: Donald Trump sworn in as 45th US president

Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for years to come.

We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done.

Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent. Thank you.

Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another – but we are transferring power from Washington, DC and giving it back to you, the American people.

For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.

Washington flourished – but the people did not share in its wealth.

Politicians prospered – but the jobs left, and the factories closed.

The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.

Their victories have not been your victories; their triumphs have not been your triumphs; and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

That all changes – starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America.

This is your day. This is your celebration.

And this, the United States of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.

The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Everyone is listening to you now.

You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.

OPINION: Native Americans expect nothing good from Trump …

At the centre of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.

Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves.

These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealised potential.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny.

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry;

Subsidised the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military;

We’ve defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own;

And spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has disappeared over the horizon.

One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions upon millions of American workers left behind.

The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.

But that is the past. And now we are looking only to the future.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

From this moment on, it’s going to be only America First. America First.

Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.

We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs. Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.

I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down.

America will start winning again, winning like never before.

We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.

We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation.

We will get our people off of welfare and back to work – rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.

We will follow two simple rules: Buy American and Hire American.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world – but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.

We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow.

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones – and unite the civilised world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.

When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

The Bible tells us, “how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity.”

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones - and unite the civilised world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth. by  President Donald Trump

We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity.

When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.

There should be no fear – we are protected, and we will always be protected.

We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we will be protected by God.

Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger.

In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving.

We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action – constantly complaining, but never doing anything about it.

The time for empty talk is over.

Now arrives the hour of action.

Do not let anyone tell you it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America.

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We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.

We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow.

A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.

It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag.

And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator.

So to all Americans, in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, and from ocean to ocean, hear these words:

You will never be ignored again.

Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.

Together, we will make America strong again.

We will make America wealthy again.

We will make America proud again.

We will make America safe again.

And, yes, together, we will make America great again. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.”

Who Was the First Politician to Use "Make America Great Again" Anyway?

President Trump has filed a trademark application for his campaign slogan, but he's not even the first presidential candidate to use it. Here's how Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton employed the phrase.

The story of its history is fascinating—and more ambiguous than our president would have us believe.

"The line of ‘Make America Great Again,’ the phrase, that was mine, I came up with it about a year ago, and I kept using it, and everybody’s now using it, they are all loving it,” Trump reportedly said in March of 2015 . "I don't know, I guess I should copyright it, maybe I have copyrighted it," he added .

In fact, Trump had applied for a trademark for the phrase in 2012 . His application asked for exclusive rights to use it for " political action committee services, namely, promoting public awareness of political issues and fundraising in the field of politics ," the Washington Post reported.

Trouble is, Trump was not the first politician to use in. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush used "Let’s Make America Great Again" in their 1980 campaign and at the Republican National Convention that year , which Trump claimed he didn't know until 2016. "He didn’t trademark it," Trump said of Reagan. "I think I’m somebody that understands marketing," he said.

And while former President Bill Clinton criticized the phrase as racist—telling a crowd at a Florida rally in 2016, " I’m actually old enough to remember the good old days, and they weren’t all that good in many ways ”—he has used it himself.

"I believe that together we can make America great again," Clinton said in his 1991 presidential announcement speech. The video below, a trailer for The Clinton Affair , an A&E special that premieres this Sunday, November 18 at 9 p.m., includes part of the speech starting at the 18-second mark.

As NBC previously reported , Clinton also used it at a campaign stop about a year later, when he asked voters " to make America great again economically, educationally, and socially ."

Perhaps it's all a question of context.

Sam Dangremond is a Contributing Digital Editor at Town & Country, where he covers men's style, cocktails, travel, and the social scene.

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• Donald Trump

Read Donald Trump’s Full Inauguration Speech

Donald Trump delivered his first speech as President of the United States on Friday morning.

Trump was joined at the inauguration by members of his family, including his wife Melania Trump , and his children Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump , Tiffany Trump and Barron Trump. Outgoing President Barack Obama, along with former Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were also in attendance.

Ahead of his speech, Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said the American people could expect Trump’s address to be a message to “unify the country.” “You’re going to hear a man of action, a man of resolve in what we all know to be a divided country,” Conway said Friday morning on CBS .

Read the full transcript of his remarks below:

[*] TRUMP: Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans and people of the world, thank you.

(APPLAUSE) We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people.

Together, we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come. We will face challenges, we will confront hardships, but we will get the job done.

Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power, and we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent. Thank you.

Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning because today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people.

For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.

That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment, it belongs to you.

TRUMP: It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration. And this, the United States of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.

The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction, that a nation exists to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge; and the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

(APPLAUSE) We are one nation and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams. And their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny. The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry; subsidized the armies of other countries, while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military. We’ve defended other nations’ borders while refusing to defend our own.

And spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. We’ve made other countries rich, while the wealth, strength and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon.

One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores, with not even a thought about the millions and millions of American workers that were left behind. The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world.

But that is the past. And now, we are looking only to the future.

TRUMP: We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first.

Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.

Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body and I will never ever let you down.

America will start winning again, winning like never before.

We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth. And we will bring back our dreams.

We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation. We will get our people off of welfare and back to work, rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.

We will follow two simple rules; buy American and hire American.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow.

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

The bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity. We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.

There should be no fear. We are protected and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God.

TRUMP: Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining, but never doing anything about it.

The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action.

Do not allow anyone to tell you that it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again.

We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries and technologies of tomorrow. A new national pride will stir ourselves, lift our sights and heal our divisions.

It’s time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots.

We all enjoy the same glorious freedoms and we all salute the same great American flag.

And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the wind-swept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams, and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator.

So to all Americans in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words. You will never be ignored again.

(APPLAUSE) Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.

Together, we will make America strong again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And yes, together we will make America great again.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America.

God bless America.

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Politics dictionary

Make america great again.

or MAGA [meyk uh -mer-i-k uh greyt uh -gen] or [ mah -g uh ]

What does Make America Great Again mean?

Make America Great Again , commonly abbreviated as MAGA , is Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign slogan.

Related terms:

• Pepe the Frog

Where does Make America Great Again come from?

Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again closely   echoes Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign slogan, Let’s Make American Great Again .  Reagan used the phrase as a rallying cry during a period of American economic distress.  

gstatic.com

The first time the slogan was used in reference to Donald Trump was by his political advisor Roger Stone. Stone, who worked on Reagan’s campaign, tweeted in September, 2011: “Make America Great Again — TRUMP HUCKABEE 2012 #nomormons,” the hashtag knocking Mitt Romney, who became the Republican nominee for that election.

Trump used the slogan himself in December, 2011 when he made a statement about his presidential own bid: “ I must leave all of my options open because, above all else, we must make America great again.”  That month Trump also published a book,  Time to Get Tough:  Making America #1 Again , arguing why he is the one to lead the US back from its perceived declined. 

On November 7, 2012, the day after Barack Obama won reelection, Trump decided he wanted to play a bigger role in the Republican Party.  Brainstorming slogans, he first considered We Will Make America Great before deciding upon  Make America Great Again , which he was able to trademark just ahead of his 2016 presidential campaign. 

During the campaign, the Trump campaign sold bright red hats emblazoned with Make American Great Again in white letters. At rallies, his supporters chanted the slogan. On Twitter, his supporters took to the hashtag “#MAGA,” which has become so widespread that people will refer to  Make American Great Again in its shorthand  MAGA in speech and writing. 

The MAGA hat and hashtag became,  and remain,  symbols  of support for Trump —and very divisive ones. His opponent, Hilary Clinton, and Barack Obama denounced it for implying that the US wasn’t already great, devaluing hard-working Americans and its self-sacrificing soldiers.

“America is already great. America is already strong & I promise you, our strength, our greatness, does not depend on Donald Trump.” — @POTUS — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 28, 2016

Other political critics have noted that Trump’s vision for “great again” harkens back to the 1950s, when the US economy may have been booming but women and minorities were more marginalized. For their part, many Trump supporters hear in “great again” a return to an America brimming with blue-collar manufacturing jobs and being unconcerned about political correctness, among other things.

The slogan only continued to be controversial. In May, 2018, for instance, in the immediate wake of the deadly school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, a gun- and flag-carrying Trump supporter  walked past the school, telling reporters he was there to “Get to the school. Make America great again.”

The website www.greatagain.gov redirects to the Trump administration’s www.whitehouse.gov. In early 2017, Trump trademarked the phrase Keep America Great  for his 2020 reelection campaign.

Examples of Make America Great Again

Who uses make america great again.

Outside of its use to support, criticize, or discuss Donald Trump in political speech and writing,  Make America Great Again  has become a kind of verbal formula called a snowclone  (i.e., Make X Great Again or Make American Y Again ).

Individuals, brands, and organizations take advantage of the buzz of the phrase, often for allusive humor:  Make America Crip Again (a Snoop Dogg record), Make Dublin Great Again (an Irish political candidate), Make American Rock Again  (a concert promo), and May American Gay Again (a slogan used by the LGBTQ community targeting Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, known for homophobic stances).  

The abbreviation MAGA  has also inspired jokes and spin-offs, such as Morons Are Governing America , a commentary on the Trump administration.

On social media, “#MAGA” is both an icon for support of Trump and lightning rod for his criticism. 

I just received my first paycheck since the tax cut. I took home nearly FIFTY DOLLARS more!!! That’s a hundred a month! Crumbs to Pelosi, but I’m pretty damn excited #MAGA 🇺🇸 — Trump-loving Barbara (@Barbara75939296) January 24, 2018

#March4OurLives #MarchForOurLivesLA #NeverAgain #Enough #TheResistance #MAGA #Trump #FoxNews #Resist #ImpeachTrump Change is coming! pic.twitter.com/CDNARZ4B4A — Fredon Moniteau (@FMoniteau) March 24, 2018

This is not meant to be a formal definition of Make America Great Again like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of Make America Great Again that will help our users expand their word mastery.

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Did Ronald Reagan say immigrants made America great?

A conservative group in favor of legislation that benefits immigrants has a new ad claiming President Ronald Reagan said immigrants made America great — a jab to President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan and his hard-line immigration policies.

"Today, the Becoming American Initiative launched its first ad featuring a video of President Ronald Reagan talking about how immigrants have always made America great," the group said July 3. "The message is especially important for conservatives and all Americans to hear on July 4th as President Trump pushes to limit immigration."

The ad shows footage of Reagan talking about immigrants who "brought with them courage and the values of family, work and freedom. Let us pledge to each other that we can make America great again."

Reagan used the " Let’s Make America Great Again " slogan in his 1980 presidential campaign. Did he say what the ad shows? 

We found that Reagan in a 1980 campaign speech spoke about immigrants’ journey to America and of their contributions to society. The ad patched together what Reagan said about immigrants with his closing call for everyone to "make America great again." The full speech wasn’t just about immigrants, it narrated Reagan’s grievances with Carter and the economy and Reagan’s own vision for America.

We reached out to Becoming American Initiative, a conservative a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization , via Twitter but did not hear back.

The 30-second ad features Reagan’s voice over video of him delivering a speech with the Statue of Liberty in the background. It includes black and white video of a crowd of people walking and of men doing construction work, as well as video in color of a man picking fruit, of a child at the border, and a photograph of people waving American flags at what looks like a naturalization ceremony.

Here’s a transcript of Reagan’s words:

"Through this Golden Door has come millions of men and women. These families came here to work. Others came to America and often harrowing conditions. They didn’t ask what this country could do for them but what they could do to make this refuge the greatest home of freedom in history. They brought with them courage and the values of family, work, and freedom. Let us pledge to each other that we can make America great again."

A slide at the end of the video said: "Immigrants Have Always Made America Great."

The Becoming American Initiative ad is based on a Labor Day, Sept. 1, 1980 campaign speech Reagan delivered at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J. Reagan went on to beat Democrat Jimmy Carter in the November election.

With the Statue of Liberty in the background, Reagan paid tribute to immigrants, starting his speech by saying they came to America to work and helped build cities and "incredibly productive farms."

Reagan twice said "make America great again": around the middle of the speech, when he spoke about what his administration will do; and toward the end of the speech, when he called on everyone to also "make America great again."

The ad from Becoming American Initiative cut and patched together sentences. Below is a partial transcript of Reagan’s speech, in bold are the words the ad highlighted.

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" Through this Golden Door , under the gaze of that Mother of Exiles, has come millions of men and women , who first stepped foot on American soil right there, on Ellis Island, so close to the Statue of Liberty.

These families came here to work . They came to build. Others came to America in different ways, from other lands, under different, and often harrowing conditions , but this place symbolizes what they all managed to build, no matter where they came from or how they came or how much they suffered.

They helped to build that magnificent city across the river. They spread across the land building other cities and towns and incredibly productive farms.

They came to make America work. They didn’t ask what this country could do for them but what they could do to make this, this refuge the greatest home of freedom in history .

They brought with them courage , ambition and the values of family , neighborhood, work , peace and freedom . We all came from different lands but we shared the same values, the same dream.

Today a President of the United States would have us believe that dream is over or at least in need of change.

Jimmy Carter’s Administration tells us that the descendants of those who sacrificed to start again in this land of freedom may have to abandon the dream that drew their ancestors to a new life in a new land.

The Carter record is a litany of despair, of broken promises, of sacred trusts abandoned and forgotten. ...

This country needs a new administration, with a renewed dedication to the dream of an America -- an administration that will give that dream new life and make America great again! Restoring and revitalizing that dream will take bold action. ...

 I want more than anything I've ever wanted, to have an administration that will, through its actions, at home and in the international arena, let millions of people know that Miss Liberty still "lifts her lamp beside the golden door."

Through our international broadcasting stations -- the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and the others -- let us send, loud and clear, the message that this generation of Americans intends to keep that lamp shining; that this dream, that this dream the last best hope of man on earth, this nation under God, shall not perish from the earth.

We will instead carry on the building of an American economy that once again holds forth real opportunity for all, we shall continue to be a symbol of freedom and guardian of the eternal values that so inspired those who came to this port of entry.

Let us pledge to each other , with this Great Lady looking on, that we can , and so help us God, we will make America great again ."

Several years later, Reagan signed into law the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), also known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. The law allowed about 2.7 million people to get green cards — including people who had been in the United States since 1982 and special agricultural workers.

A Becoming American Initiative ad claimed Ronald Reagan said immigrants "brought with them courage and the values of family, work, and freedom. Let us pledge to each other that we can make America great again."

The ad is based on a 1980 Labor Day campaign speech in New Jersey, where Reagan lauded immigrants’ contributions, while also listing his grievances with Carter and his own vision for America.

Reagan didn’t say immigrants "made America great" verbatim, but he did imply it. The ad cuts out some of Reagan’s words to make the comments appear adjacent. We rate Becoming American Initiative’s statement Mostly True.

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Our Sources

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Labor Day Speech at Liberty State Park, Jersey City, New Jersey , Sept. 1, 1980

Becoming American Initiative, Immigrants Have Always Made America Great , July 3, 2018

The New York Times, Trump’s Campaign Hat Becomes an Ironic Summer Accessory , Sept. 11, 2015

IRS.gov, Types of Organizations Exempt under Section 501(c)(4) , Page Last Reviewed or Updated: April 2, 2018

YouTube, Ronald Reagan's Remarks at Liberty State Park on September 1, 1980 , Ronald Reagan - Liberty State Park Address (Audio Enhanced)

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Jul 3, 2017

What Makes America Great?

Though the idea of American exceptionalism isn’t a recent invention, we’ve heard a lot lately from President Trump and his supporters about “making America great again.” But what, exactly, do people believe makes America great? It depends who you ask—and, in light of Independence Day, a brand new study from Barna did just that. Here’s what U.S. adults say about why they take pride in being an American.

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The main thing Americans love most about their homeland is the opportunity to live the “American Dream.” Almost one quarter (24%) chose “the opportunity to become who you want to be / ‘the American dream,'” followed by four pillars of the American political apparatus: the Constitution (21%), free speech and a free press (21%), freedom of religion (20%) and democracy (20%).

1 in 4 say “the American dream” is what makes the country great.

Generationally, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are more revered among  Boomers (29% and 22% respectively) and Elders (34% and 16%) than Millennials (16% and 8%) or Gen-Xers (16% and 12%).  Freedom of religion is almost twice as likely to be a source of pride among Elders than any other generation (33% compared to 19%-20%) , while a “melting pot society” is almost four times less valuable for Elders (3% compared to 12%-16%) . Millennials see the greatness of U.S. technology and innovation at a percentage almost three times higher than any of the other groups (12% compared to 4%-7%) , and the younger generations (Millennials: 8% and Gen-Xers: 6%)  are also more likely to take pride in arts and culture than older citizens  (Boomers: 1% and Elders: 0%).

Ethnically, white Americans are almost twice as likely as any other ethnic group to say the Constitution is foundational to the nation’s greatness (25% compared to around 16%), but are less likely than any other ethnic group to feel this way about diversity (11% compared to 15%-21%), freedom of religion (19% compared to 23%-25%), and American arts and culture (3% compared to 7%-9%).

Evangelicals have a low view of the Bill of Rights (2%) and freedom of speech / freedom of the press (6%), but they do esteem freedom of religion (53% compared to 20% average) and America’s Christian roots (40% compared to 11% average) at a significantly higher rate than any other group. Practicing Christians similarly value religious freedom (34%) and Christian heritage (23%), but share more in the rest of the country’s level of pride about the Bill of Rights (10%) and freedom of speech / free press (13%).

Finally, notable divides exist between political ideologies. Conservatives value the Constitution (30% compared to 15% of liberals), military strength (12% compared to 3%) and the Christian values of America (21% compared to 3%) more than liberals, who are more inclined to value free speech / free press (27% compared to 15% of conservatives) and diversity (22% compared to 4%).

Evangelicals esteem freedom of religion and America’s Christian roots more than any other group.

Comment on this research and follow our work: Twitter:  @davidkinnaman  |  @roxyleestone  |  @barnagroup Facebook:  Barna Group

About the Research Interviews with U.S. adults included 1015 web-based surveys conducted among a representative sample of adults over the age of 18 in each of the 50 United States. The survey was conducted between June 5-9 of 2017. The sampling error for this study is plus or minus 3 percentage points, at the 95% confidence level. Minimal statistical weighting was used to calibrate the sample to known population percentages in relation to demographic variables.

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Since 1984, Barna Group has conducted more than two million interviews over the course of thousands of studies and has become a go-to source for insights about faith, culture, leadership, vocation and generations. Barna is a private, non-partisan, for-profit organization.

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12 of The Greatest Things to Love About America

America is a great country for many reasons, big and small. I asked our Facebook fans to list the things they love about the USA and received some heartfelt responses, some of which are included below in my list of Top 12 things to love about America.

1) The Founding Fathers – The first men (and women) in the modern world to wrestle with the meaning of freedom and natural-born rights, and how these should be the foundation of any government. Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Adams and Madison were outstanding for both their convictions and courage — and their compromise, which was necessary to get anything of importance accomplished and should be relearned by Congress members today.

2) The First Amendment to the US Constitution – Freedom of speech — and religion — is guaranteed in the US under amendment I of the United States Constitution, as part of the Bill of Rights. Anastasia Wayne named these rights as two things she loved most.

2) American Music – Rock and Roll greats always attribute their success to the soulful Blues music that grew up the south and migrated to Chicago. Jazz also was an American original, flourishing in New Orleans and Harlem.

“All that shoreline!” – Barbara Henderson

5) Business Innovation like Apple, Inc – Co-founded by college drop-out Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak 35 years ago, Apple this year became the most valuable technology company in the world and was named by Fortune magazine as the most admired one on the planet. The drive and imagination it took to create one of the world’s first personal computers, and to transform the music industry with its iPod and iTunes — and mobile phones, with the beloved iPhone — exemplifies the American spirit of innovation. Also noteworthy is the company’s perseverance in lean times, not giving up when market share and stock prices plummeted in the early 1990’s.

“I love birthright citizenship,” wrote Candace Moore Hill. “Born in America, you are an American. This is NOT true most places around the world.

8) Citizenship – One of the things that is unique about America is how you can become an American just because you believe in its ideals. By signifying your assent, you are ‘in’. Citizenship ceremonies all over the nation show the multi-colored hue of the nation.

10) Election Day – Parents bring children to the polls to witness the inspiring spectacle of Americans choosing their leaders. “I love that we have peaceful transitions of government at every level,” commented Susan Landreth. “Regardless of affiliation, we all get to go the polls and — without fear — cast our ballots.”

“I could go on and on with what I love about America,” commented Bill Jones. “Mostly, it’s the people: as bad as it can look if you get all your information from the TV, most of the people of the US are reasonable, freedom loving, fun loving, and open-minded.”

One of the greatest traits of the American people, which has constantly been heralded in the Good News Network in story after story, is their generosity. (And, that includes the generosity of those who serve in the military.)

“The United States of America? Spectacular generosity and kindness of heart to nations in need,” concluded Ngaire Wadman. “Happy 235th birthday, USA.”

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Published on: July 3rd, 2020

15 Great Speeches to Remind America what Independence Day is About

This year we will celebrate the 244 th anniversary of American independence. This day does not only represent the creation of a new nation, but the creation of a new civilization, one founded on the principles of freedom, self-government, and equality. Here are 15 speeches to inspire new vigor for our founding principles. Looking at who and what we were will help us remember who and what we ought to be.

1. Patrick Henry, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” 1775

Patrick Henry gave this speech in 1775 at the Virginia Convention. It took place only a few months after the assembly of the first Continental Congress had sent King George III a petition for the redress of grievances. Boston Harbor was also blockaded by the British in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party. Tensions were high, revolution seemed inevitable, but still many political leaders in Virginia held out hope that the relationship with Great Britain could be restored. Patrick Henry sought to dispel them of that notion.

Patrick Henry was a lawyer and had a reputation as one of the greatest opponents of British taxation. In this speech he argues passionately for independence. He made his case clear in the opening of his speech stating, “For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery…” He chides the assembly for indulging in “illusions of hope” for passively waiting “to be betrayed with a kiss” and for falling prey to the siren songs of the British.

He reminds the assembly of the lengths the colonists have gone to in order to plead their case to the British, “We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament.” He then states how the British have received such outreach, “Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne.”

Next is Henry’s powerful call to action, a call that would galvanize the colonies into declaring independence from Great Britain:

In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us! … Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave… There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Read Patrick’s entire speech . Watch Patrick’s speech on YouTube .

2. Samuel Adams, “On American Independence” 1776

Samuel Adams was a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774, was a Signer of the Declaration of Independence, helped get the Constitution ratified in the Massachusetts Convention, and became Governor of Massachusetts in 1794.

In this speech Adams recognizes that this was not simply a battle that would determine the fate of two nations, but the fate of the world at large. He declared, “Courage, then, my countrymen; our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”

Adams notes the ability of men to “deliberately and voluntarily” form for themselves a political society. He cites John Hampden, John Locke, and Algernon Sidney whose ideas and actions paved the way for such a feat. Of this new founding he states:

Other nations have received their laws from conquerors; some are indebted for a constitution to the suffering of their ancestors through revolving centuries. The people of this country, alone, have formally and deliberately chosen a government for themselves, and with open and uninfluenced consent bound themselves into a social compact. Here no man proclaims his birth or wealth as a title to honorable distinction, or to sanctify ignorance and vice with the name of hereditary authority. He who has most zeal and ability to promote public felicity, let him be the servant of the public. This is the only line of distinction drawn by nature. Leave the bird of night to the obscurity for which nature intended him, and expect only from the eagle to brush the clouds with his wings and look boldly in the face of the sun.

He like Patrick Henry then gives a call to action:

We have no other alternative than independence, or the most ignominious and galling servitude. The legions of our enemies thicken on our plains; desolation and death mark their bloody career, while the mangled corpses of our countrymen seem to cry out to us as a voice from heaven.

Lastly, Adams ends his address declaring the people of America the guardians of their own liberty. Then with an ode to the ancient Roman republic he ends stating, “Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent. Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.”

You can read Samuel Adams' full speech .

3. John Quincy Adams, “An Address Celebrating the Declaration of Independence” 1821

Adams begins the speech recounting the first settlers of the Plymouth colony and how they entered into a written covenant with one another on the eve of their landing. Of this event he states,

Thus was a social compact formed upon the elementary principles of civil society, in which conquest and servitude had no part. The slough of brutal force was entirely cast off; all was voluntary; all was unbiased consent; all was the agreement of soul with soul.

Adams continues to trace America’s historical and political development throughout the speech. He recalls how the British mistreated the colonists from the beginning, citing how Britain went against its own ideas and principles in denying the colonists representation and consent. He states, “For the independence of North America, there were ample and sufficient causes in the laws of moral and physical nature.”

Adams’ ode to the Declaration of Independence is most worth reading:

It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the corner stone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished at a stroke the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. It announced in practical form to the world the transcendent truth of the unalienable sovereignty of the people. It proved that the social compact was no figment of the imagination; but a real, solid, and sacred bond of the social union. From the day of this declaration, the people of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master in another hemisphere. They were no longer children appealing in vain to the sympathies of a heartless mother; no longer subjects leaning upon the shattered columns of royal promises, and invoking the faith of parchment to secure their rights. They were a nation, asserting as of right, and maintaining by war, its own existence. A nation was born in a day. […] [T]hat a new civilization had come, a new spirit had arisen on this side of the Atlantic more advanced and more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual than that which characterized the Old World. Life in a new and open country had aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position. A separate establishment was ultimately inevitable. It had been decreed by the very laws of human nature. Man everywhere has an unconquerable desire to be the master of his own destiny.

Adams goes on to pronounce that the Declaration was more than the “mere secession of territory” and the “establishment of a nation.” No, these things have occurred before, but the Declaration of Independence not only liberated America but ennobled all of humanity, he stated. 

You can read John Quincy Adams' entire speech here .

  4. Daniel Webster “Speech at the laying of the cornerstone of the capitol,” July 4, 1851.

Daniel Webster was one of the most prominent lawyers in the 19 th century, arguing over 200 cases before the Supreme Court. He also represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in Congress and was Secretary of State under three presidents. Webster is also known for his speech in Congress, called the Second Reply to Hayne, which derided the theory of nullification espoused by John C. Calhoun.

Webster’s speech on the occasion of laying the Capital building’s cornerstone had a patriotic tone, He begins with the celebratory declaration, “This is America! This is Washington! And this the Capitol of the United States!”

Of the Founding generation Webster stated,

The Muse inspiring our Fathers was the Genius of Liberty, all on fire with a sense of oppression, and a resolution to throw it off; the whole world was the stage and higher characters than princes trod it… how well the characters were cast, and how well each acted his part…

He went on to speak about the tremendous sacrifice the men who signed the Declaration paid. “It was sealed in blood,” he stated. Of the liberty that the Founding generation bestowed upon successive generations Webster said,

Every man’s heart swells within him; every man’s port and bearing becomes somewhat more proud and lofty, as he remembers that seventy-five years have rolled away, and that the great inheritance of liberty is still his; his undiminished and unimpaired; his in all its original glory’ his to enjoy’ his to protect; and his to transmit to future generations.

Finally, Webster made clear that American liberty is unique among nations,

I have said, gentlemen, that our inheritance is an inheritance of American liberty. That liberty is characteristic, peculiar, and altogether our own. Nothing like it existed in former times, nor was known in the most enlightened States of antiquity; while with us its principles have become interwoven into the minds of individual men… […] And, finally another most important part of the great fabric of American liberty is, that there shall be written constitutions, founded on the immediate authority of the people themselves, and regulating and restraining all the powers conferred upon Government, whether legislative, executive, or judicial.

You can read Daniel Webster's entire speech here .

5. Frederick Douglass, “What to the slave is the 4 th of July?”  July 5, 1852

He spoke about the Founding Fathers as men of courage who “preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage.” Of the “fathers of this republic” he said, “They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.”

Drawing a contrast between the Founders and the men of his generation advocating the positive good of slavery Douglass stated,

They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was “settled” that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were “final;” not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

Douglass encouraged Americans to celebrate the Declaration as the ring-bolt to the chains of the United Sates’ destiny. “The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost,” he stated.

Douglass then rightly points out that America was not living up to its own ideals as laid out in the Declaration when it came to the millions of black men and women still enslaved. He stated,

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Of Slavery’s effects on the American union he declared, “It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it…”

He goes on to explain that this anniversary does not yet include black men and women. He stated, “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me.” Yet Douglass was optimistic that this would soon change. He called the Constitution a “GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” He exhorted the assembly to consider the Constitution’s preamble and ask themselves if slavery was listed as one of its purposes.

He finished his momentous speech by saying, 

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age.

You can read Frederick Douglass' entire speech here .

6. Abraham Lincoln, Electric Cord Speech, 1858

In this speech often titled, “Speech at Chicago, Illinois” Abraham Lincoln replies to Senator Stephen Douglas’ conception of popular sovereignty. This was a theory that argued that each new territory should be able to decide whether or not to have slavery within their borders instead of allowing the federal government to decide. Lincoln saw this as a repeal of the Missouri Compromise which kept slavery relegated to the South.

To make his case against popular sovereignty and the expansion of slavery Lincoln argues that the adopters of the Constitution decreed that slavery should not go into the new territory and that the slave trade should be cut off within twenty years by an act of Congress. “What were [these provisions] but a clear indication that the framers of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of that institution,” Lincoln asked the crowd.

After expounding upon the evils of slavery and recent actions to preserve the institution Lincoln turns to the Declaration of Independence for support. He stated,

We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, (loud and long continued applause) and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.

You can read the entire Electric Cord speech here .

7. Abraham Lincoln, Address in Independence Hall, February 22, 1861

On Abraham Lincoln's inaugural journey to Washington as president-elect, he stopped in Philadelphia at the site where the Declaration of Independence had been signed. There he said,

I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men. This is a sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

You can read the entire address in Independence Hall here .

8. Abraham Lincoln, Fragments on the Constitution and Union, January 1, 1861

This short selection is not part of Lincoln’s tome of public speeches. One theory is that Lincoln wrote it while composing his first inaugural address. It is noteworthy because of Lincoln’s argument that what is most important about America are the principles and ideals it was founded upon. That principle, he states, is “Liberty to all.”

The  expression  of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate.  Without  this, as well as  with  it, we could have declared our independence of Great Britain; but  without  it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government, and consequent prosperity. No oppressed, people will  fight,  and  endure,  as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters. The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, “fitly spoken” which has proved an “apple of gold” to us. The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple–not the apple for the picture.

Read the entire Fragments on the Constitution and Union selection here .

9. Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

Aside from our original founding documents the Gettysburg address is perhaps the most important American creed ever written. It signifies America’s second founding or the moment our first founding more fully aligned with its own ideals. Since its decree America has begun to live in what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom.” Here are selections from the address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. […] It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

You can read the full Gettysburg Address here .

10. Winston Churchill, “The Third Great Title-Deed of Anglo-American Liberties” July 4, 1918

A great harmony exists between the spirit and language of the Declaration of Independence and all we are fighting for now. A similar harmony exists between the principles of that Declaration and all that the British people have wished to stand for, and have in fact achieved at last both here at home and in the self-governing Dominions of the Crown. The Declaration of Independence is not only an American document. It follows on Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights as the third great title-deed on which the liberties of the English-speaking people are founded.

Read Churchill's entire speech here .

11. Calvin Coolidge, “Speech on the 150 th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5 1926

 Calvin Coolidge, the 30 th president of the United States, was sworn in after President Harding’s unexpected death. Harding’s administration was steeped in scandal. Coolidge is known for restoring integrity to the executive branch by rooting out corruption and being a model of integrity.

Coolidge gave his Fourth of July Speech in Philadelphia, the birthplace of our nation. There he pointed to the Liberty Bell as a great American symbol,

It is little wonder that people at home and abroad consider Independence Hall as hallowed ground and revere the Liberty Bell as a sacred relic. That pile of bricks and mortar, that mass of metal, might appear to the uninstructed as only the outgrown meeting place and the shattered bell of a former time, useless now because of more modern conveniences, but to those who know they have become consecrated by the use which men have made of them. They have long been identified with a great cause. They are the framework of a spiritual event.

Of the Declaration Coolidge stated,

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

Of his trust in our Founding documents he said,

It is not so much, then, for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.

Read Coolidge's full speech here .

12. John F. Kennedy, “Some Elements of the American Character” July 4, 1946

John F. Kennedy gave this speech as a candidate for Congress. In it he offers a robust defense of America’s founding. He lauds America’s religious character and derides the theory that America’s founders were concerned purely with economic interests. He explicitly states,

In recent years, the existence of this element in the American character has been challenged by those who seek to give an economic interpretation to American history. They seek to destroy our faith in our past so that they may guide our future. These cynics are wrong…

 Kennedy instead argues,

In Revolutionary times, the cry "No taxation without representation" was not an economic complaint. Rather, it was directly traceable to the eminently fair and just principle that no sovereign power has the right to govern without the consent of the governed. Anything short of that was tyranny. It was against this tyranny that the colonists "fired the shot heard 'round the world."

Kennedy then espouses a political theory of the American founding that relies on natural rights, 

The American Constitution has set down for all men to see the essentially Christian and American principle that there are certain rights held by every man which no government and no majority, however powerful, can deny. Conceived in Grecian thought, strengthened by Christian morality, and stamped indelibly into American political philosophy, the right of the individual against the State is the keystone of our Constitution. Each man is free.

You can read John F. Kennedy's full speech here .

13. Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream” 1963

Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech” is another great cry from another great man declaring that America was not living up to its founding principles.

King begins his speech by harkening back to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. He states, “This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.” Yet, he argues, 100 years later black men and women are still not free. To right this wrong, he points to the Declaration,

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

King refused to believe that there was no hope. He said,

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

King’s dream inspired a nation to live up to its ideals. His beautiful words have become iconic,

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

 You can read and listen to "I Have a Dream" in full here .

14. Martin Luther King Jr. “The American Dream” Sermon Delivered at Ebenezar Baptist Church” July 4, 1965

In this sermon delivered on July 4, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. locates the substance of the American dream within the Declaration of Independence. About the statement, “All men are created equal,” King states, “The first saying we notice in this dream is an amazing universalism. It doesn’t say “some men,” it says “all men.”

King goes on to explain to the congregation what separates the United States from other nations around the world.

 Then that dream goes on to say another thing that ultimately distinguishes our nation and our form of government from any totalitarian system in the world. It says that each of us has certain basic rights that are neither derived from or conferred by the state.

As the source of these inalienable rights King points to the fact that they are God-given. “Never before in the history of the world has a sociopolitical document expressed in such profound, eloquent, and unequivocal language the dignity and the worth of human personality,” he said.

King goes on to point out that America has not lived up to this dream. He describes America as being “divided against herself.” He argues that America cannot afford an “anemic democracy.”

He however professed hope that this dream will challenge America to remember her “noble capacity for justice and love and brotherhood.” He further challenged America to respect the “dignity and worth of all human personality” and to live up to the ideal that “all men are created equal.”

King clarifies that equality does not mean that every musician is a Mozart or every philosopher an Aristotle, but that all men are “equal in intrinsic worth.” He points to the Biblical concept of imago dei . He states, “[T]are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God. He ends his sermon with these powerful words,

We have a dream. It started way back in 1776, and God grant that America will be true to her dream. I still have a dream this morning that truth will reign supreme and all of God’s children will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. And when this day comes the morning stars will sing together and the sons of God will shout for joy.

Read Martin Luther King Jr.'s full sermon here .

15. Ronald Reagan, “Address to the Nation on Independence Day” July 4, 1986

In this speech Reagan recalls the moment of the signing of the Declaration,

Fifty-six men came forward to sign the parchment. It was noted at the time that they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors. And that was more than rhetoric; each of those men knew the penalty for high treason to the Crown. ``We must all hang together,'' Benjamin Franklin said, ``or, assuredly, we will all hang separately.'' And John Hancock, it is said, wrote his signature in large script so King George could see it without his spectacles. They were brave. They stayed brave through all the bloodshed of the coming years. Their courage created a nation built on a universal claim to human dignity, on the proposition that every man, woman, and child had a right to a future of freedom.

Reagan also talked about the beautiful friendship between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. He noted how they died on the same day, July 4 th , exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was their first gift to us, Reagan said.

My fellow Americans, it falls to us to keep faith with them and all the great Americans of our past. Believe me, if there's one impression I carry with me after the privilege of holding for 5 ½ years the office held by Adams and Jefferson and Lincoln, it is this: that the things that unite us -- America's past of which we're so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much-loved country -- these things far outweigh what little divides us. And so tonight we reaffirm that Jew and gentile, we are one nation under God; that black and white, we are one nation indivisible; that Republican and Democrat, we are all Americans. Tonight, with heart and hand, through whatever trial and travail, we pledge ourselves to each other and to the cause of human freedom, the cause that has given light to this land and hope to the world.

You can watch Ronald Reagan's speech here or read Reagan's speech here .

About Hillsdale in D.C.

Hillsdale in D.C. is an extension of the teaching mission of Hillsdale College to Washington, D.C. Its purpose is to teach the Constitution and the principles that give it meaning. Through the study of original source documents from American history—and of older books that formed the education of America’s founders—it seeks to inspire students, teachers, citizens, and policymakers to return the America’s principles to their central place in the political life of the nation.

About Hillsdale College

Hillsdale College is an independent liberal arts college located in southern Michigan. Founded in 1844, the College has built a national reputation through its classical liberal arts core curriculum and its principled refusal to accept federal or state taxpayer subsidies, even indirectly in the form of student grants or loans. It also conducts an outreach effort promoting civil and religious liberty, including a free monthly speech digest, Imprimis , with a circulation of more than 5.7 million. For more information, visit hillsdale.edu .

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Out of control: College activists or limiting free speech?

What Makes America Great?

In light of my recent series, “ Why I believe the US is the Beast (empire),” some of you may suspect that I am anti-American. This is not true.

I believe that power and money influence those in power most often align with the Beast of Revelation 13 and that the US, and most governments, embody said power.

But that doesn’t make the US or any other government inherently evil. It merely makes them something of which we should be wary. Nor does it mean that all major corporations and those with exceptional wealth that influence government policy are inherently evil. It just means that we should be more than weary of them.

What I also argued in previous posts is that the primary weapon of the Beast (empire) is deception (aka “propaganda”).

NB: I realize this post is long as it is (there is much to say and I exhort you to devote the time needed): but I also believe this issue is critically important. I recommend you take one day each to review the following posts:

Who/What is the Beast #1 Rev 13/Dan 7

Beast: Satan as the deceiver #2

Beast as Empire #3

The Beast: Empire, Deception, and the Church #4

Beast: empire and power #5

So, what makes America great? The American constitution (the Bill of Rights) provides one of the most significant means of countering propaganda: the right to free speech.

What makes America great is the right to free speech! The right to free speech is critical to the survival of a democracy.

College campus activism:

The recent protests on college campuses across the US have been condemned by the mainstream media and politicians across the US (and foreign Prime Ministers; I’ll address this below).

Well, the claim is that the college protests have been motivated by antisemitism and threats against Jewish students and faculty.

In my post last week , I stated, “Unfortunately, because we have conflated ‘Israel’ with ‘Israel’ it has become unacceptable to criticize the state of Israel. Inside the Western Church, criticizing Israel is viewed as a sort of abandonment of our God-given responsibility to ‘bless’ Israel. Outside the church, criticizing Israel is labeled ‘antisemitism.’”

Is “From the River to the Sea” antisemitic?

The media and a host of politicians have expressly condemned the college protestants on the basis that the expression “From the river to the sea” is antisemitic and potentially genocidal.

The assertion rests on the premise that the slogan delineates exclusive Palestinian ownership of all territory stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Implicitly, such a declaration denies the legitimacy of Jewish presence on the land and challenges the right of Israel to exist within its current borders.

Now, if this is what the phrase means, then it is unequivocally antisemitic.

The argument is raised that the phrase becomes especially problematic when “Palestine will be free” is added to it (which rhymes both in English and in Arabic).

But is this the meaning of the phrase?

So, is the expression antisemitic? Well, it depends on who is using it and who is listening to it.

For example, is the expression “From the river to the sea” antisemitic when it is used as part of The Likud party (Netanyahu’s party) platform ?, which states, “The right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is eternal and indisputable and is linked with the right to security and peace; therefore, Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”

And is it antisemitic when it is used by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu ? Netanyahu not only used the expression in Jan ’24, but at a meeting of the UN in Sept ’23 he displayed a map of the River to the Sea at a meeting of the UN which did not include the West Bank or Gaza. In other words, Netanyahu’s use of the expression clearly entailed an exclusive control of the land for the state of Israel and the absence of any Palestinian-controlled areas.

And is it antisemitic when used by Jewish participants in the college campus protests?

What if pro-Palestinian activists use the slogan as a means of expressing solidarity with the Palestinians in the midst of their oppression? For example, Marc Lamont Hill used the expression at a meeting of the UN , for which he was subsequently fired by CNN, and he indicated that he used the phrase to affirm that Palestinians should be free wherever they reside from the River to the Sea (i.e, for Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza, and for Palestinian citizens of Israel).

This is not to say that there are some who may well use the slogan with violent, antisemitic overtones.

NB: I have no reservations about condemning hate speech. I have no doubt that some of the activists/protestors on college campuses may well be using this expression in an antisemitic fashion. And if this is so, then we should indeed condemn it. 

I do believe that it is important to listen to the oppressed. This includes Jewish individuals who have been and continue to be the target of antisemitism. For many of them, this slogan is understood as anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.

For this reason alone, I think we must discern whether or not to use this expression. As I noted above, I would not use it.

After all, even if I intended the phrase as an exhortation to free the Palestinians in Gaza from the oppressive war, to stop the violence in the West Bank, and to provide Arab-Israelis equal rights within the state of Israel, I recognize that this is not what others believe I am saying.

Omer Bartov, who is an Israeli-born historian who specializes in the Holocaust and genocide studies and currently teaches at Brown University, writes , “From one side we hear extremist Jewish calls to establish a halachic state from the Jordan to the sea—a religious version of secular Zionism’s goal of Jewish rule over all historic (i.e., mandatory) Palestine. From the other side come demands by pro-Palestinian protestors to free Palestine from the Jordan to the sea—echoing the extremist platform of Hamas, which seeks the establishment of an Islamic state in that very same territory. In other words, allegations of genocidal intent by one side appear to legitimize genocidal intent by the other, all in the name of liberation, self-determination, justice and dignity”

With that being said, I am not sure that in this situation these are the truly oppressed. I suspect, as I will argue below, that the peaceful activists (which by and large constitutes the overwhelming amount of the activists), who are opposing the genocidal actions against the people of Gaza, are the oppressed.

The Beast and Propaganda

I would like to ask: “Is it possible that those in power are waging a war of the mind by setting forth a narrative that demonizes the student activists in order to overlook their own complicity in gross violations of justice?” The answer to this question is “Yes”; even if you don’t believe that this is what is happening, the answer is “Yes.” After all, my question was, “ is it possible that this is happening?”’

NB: The Determinetruth Podcast is completing a year-long study of the book of Revelation. It is my conviction that understanding the book of Revelation and its message to the church, then and now, is as vital for the church today as it was in John’s day. One of the messages in the book of Revelation is that this is precisely what the Beast does. The Beast allows rhetoric that facilitates its narrative and silences opposing narratives with brutal force.

Now, I tend to believe that this is happening and that it explains some of the rhetoric denouncing the student activists.

If this is part of the explanation, it raises another question: Have those in power changed the narrative to cover their own sins?

I find it intriguing that the International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel is on a probable path to genocide and yet the conversation has become whether or not college students throughout the US are guilty of antisemitism.

The equation has become: Israel, with the full support of the US government, is killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, bringing to rubble every college and university campus in Gaza, cutting off food, water, and medicine, and destroying most of the hospitals—which are vitally needed to care for the survivors—and yet the conversation has centered on college students who are gathering to protest their own government’s gross violations of international law and human rights.

Could it be that the negative portrayal of the events on American college campuses has been accentuated by the universities’ major donors? We know that most major donors to some of the leading US universities largely side with Israel and therefore they likely do not want the universities they fund to allow protests of Israel.

Could it be that officials in the US government are encouraging the silencing of college students, even those who are exercising their First Amendment rights, rights which elected officials are sworn to protect, in order to hide their own complicity with regard to the war against the people of Gaza?

NB: the speaker of the House, when asked about the protestors, claimed that the protestors are defending Hamas who beheaded babies and cooked them in ovens—allegations that have been disproved by a large number of sources. This sounds like a polemical attempt to justify the war on Gaza. 

Here is a documentary on the events of Oct 7 that debunks the beheaded babies and microwaving of babies, as well as the rape allegations.

The fact that the Prime Minister of a foreign country decided to weigh in on the issue of free speech by American college students suggests that something funny is going on.

For some reason, Benjamin Netanyahu, the PM of Israel, felt compelled to denounce Americans’ exercising their right of free speech.

Netanyahu declared, “What’s happening on America’s college campuses is horrific antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities.”

In one fell swoop, he not only denounced American students, but he has effectively silenced them by labeling them as “antisemitic.”

Netanyahu didn’t stop there. He suggested that the protestors, “Call for the annihilation of Israel. . . .  They attack Jewish students; they attack Jewish faculty.”

Then he went one step further, “This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s.”

What is troubling about Netanyahu’s speech is that he is not an American. Yet, he is endeavoring to undermine our First Amendment rights in order to silence criticism of Israel—and himself in particular.

Let me be clear. I do not believe that people should be allowed to advocate hate that threatens the well-being of others. But from what I have seen it is the protestors and innocent professors who are trying to aid the activists who are being beaten and harrassed by the police and authorities.

“. . . it has to be condemned.”  Netanyahu added, “The response of several university presidents was shameful.”

This statement suggests that something else is going on. And I believe that it is an appeal to major donors to put pressure on the universities’ administrations to silence the criticism of Israel.

Why? Because what makes the American democracy great and a vehicle for change is it empowerment of the people by means of their freedom of speech.

And Netanyahu knows it. He knows that these students have the power to change the tide among the American people.

The fact that Netanyahu was compelled to add, “There is a rise of antisemitism throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself against genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians yet it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide. . . . Israel that is falsely accused of starvation and all sundry of war crimes. . . .”

Why go there? Why issue a polemic in defense of Israel’s assault on Gaza? If the issue is that the student activists are guilty of hate speech and attacks on Jewish students and professors, should that not be enough to silence them?

If I were in a classroom right now, I would repeat the previous two questions and then follow them with silence. We need to stop and think.

It is my suspicion that the reason why Netanyahu, a foreign PM, felt compelled to speak up and condemn American students from exercising the right to free speech, and the reason why he slipped and included a polemic defending Israel’s assault on Gaza, is because he is threatened by them.

This is not to say that the students are pious. It is merely to say that the hands of power are steeped in blood and they need to aim the cameras elsewhere.

What makes America great? Our freedom of speech. And when those in power are guilty of trying to silence those who are actively calling them out, we should ardently defend their rights. Sure, we cannot support hate speech.

But we must defend and applaud the right of students to call out our government for its complicity in crimes against humanity. Without such freedoms American democracy crumbles and we are left with tyranny at best and a dictatorship at worst.

And we should be appalled that a foreign PM wants to take away our freedom to speak. And we should be even more appalled that our own government is complicit in an effort to silence these students.

Have we been lied to?

So this raises the question: Is it possible that those in power are using their power to silence what is happening on college campuses to hide their own crimes?

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What Makes a Great Speech?

Simon sebag montefiore considers the qualities of great oratory throughout history.

Friends! Brothers and sisters! Comrades! Fellow citizens! Your majesties and highnesses! My countrymen! My children! Fellow soldiers! Ladies and gentlemen!

You can tell much by the opening of a speech. Elizabeth I begins hers majestically, “My loving people.” Mandela says, “Comrades and friends.” Lincoln starts: “Fellow countrymen.” Toussaint Louverture combines “Brothers and friends!.” For Robespierre: “Citizen-representatives of the people.” Michelle Obama calls her audience of schoolgirls “future leaders of the world.” Stalin changes his entire relationship with the Soviet peoples when, after the Nazi invasion, he addresses them on July 3, 1941 not just as Communist “comrades” but as “brothers and sisters, I am addressing you, dear friends.” Eleazar, Jewish rebel leader, calls his people “generous friends” when he asks them to commit mass suicide with him. Calling an audience “friends” is often a good start, though Cromwell, talking to English Parliamentarians, takes a different approach: “Ye pack of mercenary wretches . . . Ye sordid prostitutes.”

Donald Trump does not address his audience directly but just says: “Wow! Whoa! That’s some group of people. Thousands!” The opening is all about defining the relationship—the terms of the contract, contact and compact—between speaker and audience. Invite them in, make them comfortable, but not necessarily too comfortable, because even the most egalitarian speaker must hold the helm and set the course.

It is easy to make rules on the best oratory. It must be short without glibness; substantial without ennui; powerful without haughtiness; dramatic without contrivance; confident without bombast; intimate without condescension; emotional without melodrama; courageous without bravado; beautiful without artifice; passionate without posturing; poignant without plangency; honest without vanity; world-historical without grandiloquence. “In an orator, the acuteness of the logicians, the wisdom of the philosophers, the language almost of poetry, the memory of lawyers, the voice of tragedians, the gesture almost of the best actors, is required,” wrote Cicero, one of the Rome’s best speakers, in his essay On Oratory. “Nothing therefore is more rarely found among mankind than a consummate orator.” It was written in 55 BC but is just as true today.

The most revealing speeches are those that are the most personal: in Alexander the Great’s speeches, we can hear across two millennia his pride in his own divine greatness—and fury at the ingratitude and impertinence of his mutinous men. Nixon’s farewell to his staff must be the most awkward speech of his life. In Stalin’s secret last speech, we are witnessing the real tyrant as vicious old man.

Authenticity and brevity. The essence of a great speech is always the ability to communicate a simple message crafted to suit the chosen audience, not only through words but through the fusion of the character of the speaker and the message itself. The authenticity of that matching of speaker and message decides its success or failure. It’s this that makes Elizabeth II’s COVID-19 speech so effective.

Oratory is theatrical. It requires some of the gifts of the thespian and the tricks of the showman but it is very different. At the theatre, the audience knows the actor is playing an imaginary part and wishes to enter into the fantasy. In oratory, it is the opposite. There is indeed a stage, a show, a drama, but while knowing this is a performance, the audience must trust that the “actor” is not acting at all, must believe in his or her sincerity and recognize their total self-belief. “The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker but who is desperately drunk with a certain belief,” noted Ralph Waldo Emerson. That self-belief, abnormal in most mortals, essential in leaders, can be both virtue and sickness: the asset of confidence can so easily degenerate into psychopathic narcissism.

“All great speakers were bad speakers at first,” argued Emerson. This is not always true: Danton was a born speaker—you can hear his passionate energy. Compare Hitler and Churchill. Both worked exceedingly hard on their speeches. Photographs of Hitler by his court photographer show him posing like a camp actor as he worked on his stage show. His henchman Goebbels recalled that he rewrote each speech about five times, dictating changes to three secretaries simultaneously. Churchill, who started with a slight stammer and a lisp, proves Emerson’s point. He wrote his speeches by hand, over and over again, correcting and polishing. Hitler’s performances were theatrical spectaculars of physical athleticism, sometimes lasting hours, delivered to crowds first in sweaty beer halls then in illuminated stadiums.

Yet on paper, his phrases seem mediocre. Churchill’s were the opposite, delivered stolidly in House of Commons or BBC studio, but the phrases are golden and timeless. Both worked well on radio: Would either have worked on television? Certainly not Churchill. Yet the melodrama of the movie Triumph of the Will shows that Hitler might have shone if CNN had existed to broadcast his long rallies.

In some ways, the speaker is extraordinarily exposed but the payoff is the ability to communicate directly to the audience. The speeches of the French Revolution often ended with the arrest and beheading of the speaker—a spontaneity that Robespierre and Danton both encouraged, both fell victim to. It was the same in the assembly of democratic Athens. Alexander the Great could have been cut down by his mutinous soldiers when he addressed them so rudely. The speaker is taking a risk, and that very gamble can win the love of the audience: Napoleon’s speech to his Old Guard appeals to the intimacy of general and soldier. When he returned to seize power for the Hundred Days, he only had to speak to them and they defected to him.

In 1989, the Romanian dictator Nikolai Ceauşescu lost control of his country in a speech that culminated in booing then revolution. He fled by helicopter and was then arrested and executed. In 21st-century Venezuela, the brutal, bungling dictator Nicolás Maduro regularly revealed his coarseness with comical mispronunciations: during a speech on education, he meant to quote Jesus multiplying the “loaves and the fishes,” but instead said, “to multiply ourselves like Christ multiplied the penises—sorry the fish and the bread,” to national guffaws. The Spanish words for fish and penis are similar—but not identical.

The length of a speech is often proportional to its vainglory. “Brevity is the great charm of eloquence,” decreed Cicero, who believed “the best orator is to the point and impassioned.” While Lincoln’s masterpiece at Gettysburg is just 278 words long, Fidel Castro, Communist dictator of Cuba, once spoke for seven hours: the image he was seeking was machismo personified; virile, almost priapic, endurance coupled with dictatorial omnipotence. The wartime speeches of Hitler and Italian dictator Mussolini were also preposterously long. “Speeches measured by the hour,” said Jefferson, “die with the hour.” Pitt the Younger’s speech lasted a few seconds but is sublime. The power to bore an audience is a classic manifestation of tyranny. The freer an audience the less it will tolerate.

Yet fairground hucksterism not only works—it is often mesmerizing. As Hitler, Eva Perón and others show, audiences revel in the brazenness of charisma, bombast and melodrama: bold theatricality and the excitement of crowd behavior can combine to enchant and intoxicate, audiences embracing a sort of frenzied madness.

There is a difference between demagoguery and oratory: “Eloquence cannot exist under a despotic form of government,” wrote Tacitus in his essay The Corruption of Eloquence. “It can only exist in lands where free institutions flourish. There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.” But the difference between vulgarity and eloquence is in the eye of the beholder.

Worthy virtue can bore its listeners to death: “In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right,” comments Edmund Burke. “But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.” The Devil often has the best lines. Robespierre’s call for Terror is powerful, elegant and bloodthirsty. But not always. Himmler is no orator.

Speeches are tools of power as essential as artillery or gold: “instruments that a president uses to govern,” in the words of JFK’s speechwriter Ted Sorenson. Even without the poetry of a Martin Luther King Jr., there are methods to make them work. “If you have an important point to make,” said Churchill, “don’t try to be subtle and clever, use a piledriver. Make that point one time, hit it again. A third time. A tremendous whack!”

Each speech tells a story in which hindsight can be heartbreaking. Egyptian president Sadat and Israeli prime minister Rabin both had made their careers as warlords—and when they made peace, their speeches were powerful, not just because they were superbly written (Rabin’s especially touching since he was in person shy, rough and reticent). They are even more poignant now that we know that both of them paid for their courage with their lives. It is impossible to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I’ve seen the Promised Land” without feeling that he understood that he was doomed.

Then we have the ritual of the last goodbye. The dying Evita’s adieu from the Casa Rosada is every bit as emotional as the song from the musical she inspired. Napoleon’s tearful departure verges on cheap melodrama—very different from the sad elegiac haughtiness of Charles I before his execution. It is hard to grieve for the merciless secret police killer Yezhov who appeals to his master Stalin before he is shot.

The best speakers have the ability to make ideas and aspirations come alive—“thoughts on fire,” as William Jenning Bryan, the American populist, put it—so that their audiences feel they are part of something greater than themselves, part of a dream that may come true. JFK’s inaugural speech and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” both achieve this.

Wartime speeches have special functions: they depend on the management of expectations. Elizabeth I made a virtue of the perceived weakness of femininity. Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle” (in the words of CBS reporter Edward Murrow and reused by JFK) by offering only blood and tears. The Jewish commander Eleazar at Masada persuaded nine hundred men, women and children that they should commit suicide en masse rather than face execution, slavery and rape at the hands of the Roman victors.

Speeches that begin wars offer easy prizes in return for little blood spilled—and that blood hopefully foreign. Pope Urban II invented Christian holy war as the equivalent of Islamic jihad and inspired the first crusaders to take Jerusalem, offering a mix of faith, penance and plunder. Hitler’s speech opening the Second World War with his invasion of Poland is full of militaristic bravado. His audience believed victory was assured since he had outwitted all the great world powers and annexed two countries without a shot fired. Similarly, when he declared war on America in December 1941, he believed he was losing nothing and intimidating America to keep out of Europe. The consequences were the opposite of those intended.

Elizabeth, Hitler, Churchill, Lincoln wrote their own speeches, but JFK worked on his with Sorenson; Reagan’s were brilliantly written by Peggy Noonan. The best speech writers are literary ventriloquists. They are molded to the speaker, but they can also invent a new persona. Noonan’s cowboy’s lament for Reagan’s retirement evokes the myth of an old cowboy of the American West:

There’s still a lot of brush to clear out at the ranch, fences that need repair and horses to ride. But I want you to know that if the fires ever dim, I’ll leave my phone and address behind just in case you need a foot soldier. Just let me know and I’ll be there, as long as words don’t leave me and as long as this sweet country strives to be special during its shining moment on Earth.

But it must be plausible to maintain authenticity. Slickness can be suspicious; loquacity so quickly becomes verbosity. Trotsky was the wizard of oratory during the Russian Revolution, but ultimately the rough Bolsheviks distrusted his showmanship, preferring a speaker who made a virtue out of his own lack of magic which he presented as plain-speaking: Stalin. Gladstone’s performances to huge audiences were astonishing for their sanctimonious energy but they were also displays of grandiloquent vanity pricked by his witty rival Disraeli, who called Gladstone “a sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.”

The nature of speeches has changed over history thanks to technology. Some of the speeches from the ancient world were recorded by historians who wholly or partly invented speeches they had not heard—but it is likely that Josephus, Tacitus and others quoted here did talk to those who were present. Some of these speeches were the regular table talk of a monarch given to tiny groups of courtiers, such as Genghis Khan’s reflections on conquest and Muawiyah’s on the art of ruling. Cleopatra’s line about her fate was probably repeated by Octavian and recorded by the well-connected historian Livy—I count it as a speech because she was aware they were perhaps her last words on history’s stage.

Nero’s entire life as emperor was a self-conscious theatrical performance—as if he was living on a Roman reality TV show. If he had been alive today, he would certainly have starred in one. Of all the tyrants of the ancient world, he is strangely the most modern. He would have fitted well into the brutal buffoonery of 21st-century politics.

For most of human history, speeches could only be heard by a small number of people, thousands, not more. Those given in the Roman Senate, the Athenian Ecclesia or the English Parliament were initially heard only by those present. It was the same with the battlefield speeches of Alexander the Great before Issus or Henry V before Agincourt. The problem was solved on battlefields by the officers repeating the speeches to their regiments. In the age of printing, the public could read an official version—Elizabeth I’s Tilbury speech was published. Before TV or radio, political speeches were a form of entertainment, almost as much as theatre or musical recital. Thousands turned up to hear Gladstone’s Midlothian Campaign.

The invention of the microphone in 1877 meant that by the early years of the 20th century, speakers could address much larger crowds, leading to stadium spectaculars: “I know that men are won over less by the written than by the spoken word, that every great movement on this Earth owes its growth to great orators and not to great writers,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf. But live harangues to large crowds lacked the intimacy that the new technologies of TV delivered in the 1950s.

Television favored some, undermined others. Kennedy looked glamorous, Nixon furtive. Speakers could reach an even larger audience yet attention spans grew shorter. Some speeches were reduced to just the phrases—“the soundbite.” Tape recordings and video also meant that speeches could be given in private then copied and broadcast. The Iranian Revolution was won not on the streets or the minbars but in cassettes smuggled into the country bearing the speeches of Khomeini; Osama bin Laden spread his jihadism through smuggled videotapes.

The Internet and the podcast restored interest in listening to words, yet one might have expected twenty-four-hour news, multi-channel radio and TV, and the epidemic of smartphone distraction to shorten the patience of audiences. The laconic Lincoln would have found no problem with this, even if his lanky simian looks and clumsy, jerky movements would not have worked on screen. Yet the merging of news and entertainment has worked for some. The elegant Obama gave speeches—beautiful, almost Classical phrases, exquisite delivery (touches of Dr. King), inspirational themes (echoes of Lincoln)—that carried him to the presidency. Yet his polar opposite, the bombastic Trump, is an unconventional but very successful communicator and orator, improvising long meandering speeches that delighted rallies of his supporters. They were often broadcast in full, and proved compelling even to his critics. One does not recall the phrases but the impression is authentic and unforgettable.

Trump’s speechmaking highlights something bigger: today, oratory is flourishing in a way that is more visceral and popular than it ever was, even in Cicero’s Rome or Pericles’s Athens. Young speakers like Greta Thunberg and Malala can become instantly world-famous in one televised speech fighting for climate change reform or education. A brilliant novelist like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie can talk about feminism as a podcast and reach millions. Speeches—or often visionbites or extracts of speeches—are viewed many millions of times on the Internet. The speech has never been more powerful because television and Internet have never been more dominant, while the “old”-style media—newspapers, mainly, and trustworthy news TV—has withered dangerously. So far it is autocrats and populists who have exploited this best by appealing over the heads of traditional media directly to “the people.” But if they can do so, others can, too.

______________________________________________

Adapted from Voices of History: Speeches That Changed the World by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Copyright © 2021 by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Excerpted by permission of Vintage, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Simon Sebag Montefiore

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The Crackdown on Student Protesters

Columbia university is at the center of a growing showdown over the war in gaza and the limits of free speech..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

[TRAIN SCREECHING]

Well, you can hear the helicopter circling. This is Asthaa Chaturvedi. I’m a producer with “The Daily.” Just walked out of the 116 Street Station. It’s the main station for Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. And it’s day seven of the Gaza solidarity encampment, where a hundred students were arrested last Thursday.

So on one side of Broadway, you see camera crews. You see NYPD officers all lined up. There’s barricades, steel barricades, caution tape. This is normally a completely open campus. And I’m able to — all members of the public, you’re able to walk through.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Looks like international media is here.

Have your IDs out. Have your IDs out.

Students lining up to swipe in to get access to the University. ID required for entry.

Swipe your ID, please.

Hi, how are you, officer? We’re journalists with “The New York Times.”

You’re not going to get in, all right? I’m sorry.

Hi. Can I help please?

Yeah, it’s total lockdown here at Columbia.

Please have your IDs out ready to swipe.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today, the story of how Columbia University has become the epicenter of a growing showdown between student protesters, college administrators, and Congress over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech. I spoke with my colleague, Nick Fandos.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

It’s Thursday, April 25.

Nick, if we rewind the clock a few months, we end up at a moment where students at several of the country’s best known universities are protesting Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks, its approach to a war in Gaza. At times, those protests are happening peacefully, at times with rhetoric that is inflammatory. And the result is that the leaders of those universities land before Congress. But the president of Columbia University, which is the subject we’re going to be talking about today, is not one of the leaders who shows up for that testimony.

That’s right. So the House Education Committee has been watching all these protests on campus. And the Republican Chairwoman decides, I’m going to open an investigation, look at how these administrations are handling it, because it doesn’t look good from where I sit. And the House last winter invites the leaders of several of these elite schools, Harvard, Penn, MIT, and Columbia, to come and testify in Washington on Capitol Hill before Congress.

Now, the President of Columbia has what turns out to be a very well-timed, pre-planned trip to go overseas and speak at an international climate conference. So Minouche Shafik isn’t going to be there. So instead, the presidents of Harvard, and Penn, and MIT show up. And it turned out to be a disaster for these universities.

They were asked very pointed questions about the kind of speech taking place on their campuses, and they gave really convoluted academic answers back that just baffled the committee. But there was one question that really embodied the kind of disconnect between the Committee — And it wasn’t just Republicans, Republicans and Democrats on the Committee — and these college presidents. And that’s when they were asked a hypothetical.

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?

If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.

And two of the presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, they’re unwilling to say in this really kind of intense back and forth that this speech would constitute a violation of their rules.

It can be, depending on the context.

What’s the context?

Targeted at an individual. Is it pervasive?

It’s targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them?

And it sets off a firestorm.

It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes. And this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.

Members of Congress start calling for their resignations. Alumni are really, really ticked off. Trustees of the University start to wonder, I don’t know that these leaders really have got this under control. And eventually, both of them lose their jobs in a really high profile way.

Right. And as you’ve hinted at, for somewhat peculiar scheduling reasons, Columbia’s President escapes this disaster of a hearing in what has to be regarded as the best timing in the history of the American Academy.

Yeah, exactly. And Columbia is watching all this play out. And I think their first response was relief that she was not in that chair, but also a recognition that, sooner or later, their turn was going to come back around and they were going to have to sit before Congress.

Why were they so certain that they would probably end up before Congress and that this wasn’t a case of completely dodging a bullet?

Well, they remain under investigation by the committee. But also, as the winter wears on, all the same intense protests just continue unabated. So in many ways, Columbia’s like these other campuses. But in some ways, it’s even more intense. This is a university that has both one of the largest Jewish student populations of any of its peers. But it also has a large Arab and Muslim student population, a big Middle Eastern studies program. It has a dual degree program in Tel Aviv.

And it’s a university on top of all that that has a real history of activism dating back to the 1960s. So when students are recruited or choose to come to Columbia, they’re actively opting into a campus that prides itself on being an activist community. It’s in the middle of New York City. It’s a global place. They consider the city and the world, really, like a classroom to Columbia.

In other words, if any campus was going to be a hotbed of protest and debate over this conflict, it was going to be Columbia University.

Exactly. And when this spring rolls around, the stars finally align. And the same congressional committee issues another invitation to Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s President, to come and testify. And this time, she has no excuse to say no.

But presumably, she is well aware of exactly what testifying before this committee entails and is highly prepared.

Columbia knew this moment was coming. They spent months preparing for this hearing. They brought in outside consultants, crisis communicators, experts on anti-Semitism. The weekend before the hearing, she actually travels down to Washington to hole up in a war room, where she starts preparing her testimony with mock questioners and testy exchanges to prep her for this. And she’s very clear on what she wants to try to do.

Where her counterparts had gone before the committee a few months before and looked aloof, she wanted to project humility and competence, to say, I know that there’s an issue on my campus right now with some of these protests veering off into anti-Semitic incidents. But I’m getting that under control. I’m taking steps in good faith to make sure that we restore order to this campus, while allowing people to express themselves freely as well.

So then the day of her actual testimony arrives. And just walk us through how it goes.

The Committee on Education and Workforce will come to order. I note that —

So Wednesday morning rolls around. And President Shafik sits at the witness stand with two of her trustees and the head of Columbia’s new anti-Semitism task force.

Columbia stands guilty of gross negligence at best and at worst has become a platform for those supporting terrorism and violence against the Jewish people.

And right off the bat, they’re put through a pretty humbling litany of some of the worst hits of what’s been happening on campus.

For example, just four days after the harrowing October 7 attack, a former Columbia undergraduate beat an Israeli student with a stick.

The Republican Chairwoman of the Committee, Virginia Foxx, starts reminding her that there was a student who was actually hit with a stick on campus. There was another gathering more recently glorifying Hamas and other terrorist organizations, and the kind of chants that have become an everyday chorus on campus, which many Jewish students see as threatening. But when the questioning starts, President Shafik is ready. One of the first ones she gets is the one that tripped up her colleagues.

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Columbia’s code of conduct, Mr. Greenwald?

And she answers unequivocally.

Dr. Shafik?

Yes, it does.

And, Professor —

That would be a violation of Columbia’s rules. They would be punished.

As President of Columbia, what is it like when you hear chants like, by any means necessary or Intifada Revolution?

I find those chants incredibly distressing. And I wish profoundly that people would not use them on our campus.

And in some of the most interesting exchanges of the hearing, President Shafik actually opens Columbia’s disciplinary books.

We have already suspended 15 students from Columbia. We have six on disciplinary probation. These are more disciplinary actions that have been taken probably in the last decade at Columbia. And —

She talks about the number of students that have been suspended, but also the number of faculty that she’s had removed from the classroom that are being investigated for comments that either violate some of Columbia’s rules or make students uncomfortable. One case in particular really underscores this.

And that’s of a Middle Eastern studies professor named Joseph Massad. He wrote an essay not long after Hamas invaded Israel and killed 1,200 people, according to the Israeli government, where he described that attack with adjectives like awesome. Now, he said they’ve been misinterpreted, but a lot of people have taken offense to those comments.

Ms. Stefanik, you’re recognized for five minutes.

Thank you, Chairwoman. I want to follow up on my colleague, Rep Walberg’s question regarding Professor Joseph Massad. So let me be clear, President —

And so Representative Elise Stefanik, the same Republican who had tripped up Claudine Gay of Harvard and others in the last hearing, really starts digging in to President Shafik about these things at Columbia.

He is still Chair on the website. So has he been terminated as Chair?

Congresswoman, I —

And Shafik’s answers are maybe a little surprising.

— before getting back to you. I can confirm —

I know you confirmed that he was under investigation.

Yes, I can confirm that. But I —

Did you confirm he was still the Chair?

He says that Columbia is taking his case seriously. In fact, he’s under investigation right now.

Well, let me ask you this.

I need to check.

Will you make the commitment to remove him as Chair?

And when Stefanik presses her to commit to removing him from a campus leadership position —

I think that would be — I think — I would — yes. Let me come back with yes. But I think I — I just want to confirm his current status before I write —

We’ll take that as a yes, that you will confirm that he will no longer be chair.

Shafik seems to pause and think and then agree to it on the spot, almost like she is making administrative decisions with or in front of Congress.

Now, we did some reporting after the fact. And it turns out the Professor didn’t even realize he was under investigation. So he’s learning about this from the hearing too. So what this all adds up to, I think, is a performance so in line with what the lawmakers themselves wanted to hear, that at certain points, these Republicans didn’t quite know what to do with it. They were like the dog that caught the car.

Columbia beats Harvard and UPenn.

One of them, a Republican from Florida, I think at one point even marvelled, well, you beat Harvard and Penn.

Y’all all have done something that they weren’t able to do. You’ve been able to condemn anti-Semitism without using the phrase, it depends on the context. But the —

So Columbia’s president has passed this test before this committee.

Yeah, this big moment that tripped up her predecessors and cost them their jobs, it seems like she has cleared that hurdle and dispatched with the Congressional committee that could have been one of the biggest threats to her presidency.

Without objection, there being no further business, the committee stands adjourned. [BANGS GAVEL]

But back on campus, some of the students and faculty who had been watching the hearing came away with a very different set of conclusions. They saw a president who was so eager to please Republicans in Congress that she was willing to sell out some of the University’s students and faculty and trample on cherished ideas like academic freedom and freedom of expression that have been a bedrock of American higher education for a really long time.

And there was no clearer embodiment of that than what had happened that morning just as President Shafik was going to testify before Congress. A group of students before dawn set up tents in the middle of Columbia’s campus and declared themselves a pro-Palestinian encampment in open defiance of the very rules that Dr. Shafik had put in place to try and get these protests under control.

So these students in real-time are beginning to test some of the things that Columbia’s president has just said before Congress.

Exactly. And so instead of going to celebrate her successful appearance before Congress, Shafik walks out of the hearing room and gets in a black SUV to go right back to that war room, where she’s immediately confronted with a major dilemma. It basically boils down to this, she had just gone before Congress and told them, I’m going to get tough on these protests. And here they were. So either she gets tough and risks inflaming tension on campus or she holds back and does nothing and her words before Congress immediately look hollow.

And what does she decide?

So for the next 24 hours, she tries to negotiate off ramps. She consults with her Deans and the New York Police Department. And it all builds towards an incredibly consequential decision. And that is, for the first time in decades, to call the New York City Police Department onto campus in riot gear and break this thing up, suspend the students involved, and then arrest them.

To essentially eliminate this encampment.

Eliminate the encampment and send a message, this is not going to be tolerated. But in trying to quell the unrest, Shafik actually feeds it. She ends up leaving student protesters and the faculty who support them feeling betrayed and pushes a campus that was already on edge into a full blown crisis.

[SLOW TEMPO MUSIC]

After the break, what all of this has looked like to a student on Columbia’s campus. We’ll be right back.

[PHONE RINGS]

Is this Isabella?

Yes, this is she.

Hi, Isabella. It’s Michael Barbaro from “The Daily.”

Hi. Nice to meet you.

Earlier this week, we called Isabella Ramírez, the Editor in Chief of Columbia’s undergraduate newspaper, “The Columbia Daily Spectator,” which has been closely tracking both the protests and the University’s response to them since October 7.

So, I mean, in your mind, how do we get to this point? I wonder if you can just briefly describe the key moments that bring us to where we are right now.

Sure. Since October 7, there has certainly been constant escalation in terms of tension on campus. And there have been a variety of moves that I believe have distanced the student body, the faculty, from the University and its administration, specifically the suspension of Columbia’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. And that became a huge moment in what was characterized as suppression of pro-Palestinian activism on campus, effectively rendering those groups, quote, unquote, unauthorized.

What was the college’s explanation for that?

They had cited in that suspension a policy which states that a demonstration must be approved within a certain window, and that there must be an advance notice, and that there’s a process for getting an authorized demonstration. But the primary point was this policy that they were referring to, which we later reported, was changed before the suspension.

So it felt a little ad hoc to people?

Yes, it certainly came as a surprise, especially at “Spectator.” We’re nerds of the University in the sense that we are familiar with faculty and University governance. But even to us, we had no idea where this policy was coming from. And this suspension was really the first time that it entered most students’ sphere.

Columbia’s campus is so known for its activism. And so in my time of being a reporter, of being an editor, I’ve overseen several protests. And I’ve never seen Columbia penalize a group for, quote, unquote, not authorizing a protest. So that was certainly, in our minds, unprecedented.

And I believe part of the justification there was, well, this is a different time. And I think that is a reasonable thing to say. But I think a lot of students, they felt it was particularly one-sided, that it was targeting a specific type of speech or a specific type of viewpoint. Although, the University, of course, in its explicit policies, did not outline, and was actually very explicit about not targeting specific viewpoints —

So just to be super clear, it felt to students — and it sounds like, journalistically, it felt to you — that the University was coming down in a uniquely one-sided way against students who were supporting Palestinian rights and may have expressed some frustrations with Israel in that moment.

Yes. Certainly —

Isabella says that this was just the beginning of a really tense period between student protesters and the University. After those two student groups were suspended, campus protests continued. Students made a variety of demands. They asked that the University divest from businesses that profit from Israel’s military operations in Gaza. But instead of making any progress, the protests are met with further crackdown by the University.

And so as Isabella and her colleagues at the college newspaper see it, there’s this overall chilling effect that occurs. Some students become fearful that if they participate in any demonstrations, they’re going to face disciplinary action. So fast forward now to April, when these student protesters learned that President Shafik is headed to Washington for her congressional testimony. It’s at this moment that they set out to build their encampment.

I think there was obviously a lot of intention in timing those two things. I think it’s inherently a critique on a political pressure and this congressional pressure that we saw build up against, of course, Claudine Gay at Harvard and Magill at UPenn. So I think a lot of students and faculty have been frustrated at this idea that there are not only powers at the University that are dictating what’s happening, but there are perhaps external powers that are also guiding the way here in terms of what the University feels like it must do or has to do.

And I think that timing was super crucial. Having the encampment happen on the Wednesday morning of the hearing was an incredible, in some senses, interesting strategy to direct eyes to different places.

All eyes were going to be on Shafik in DC. But now a lot of eyes are on New York. The encampment is set up in the middle of the night slash morning, prior to the hearing. And so what effectively happens is they caught Shafik when she wasn’t on campus, when a lot of senior administration had their resources dedicated to supporting Shafik in DC.

And you have all of those people not necessarily out of commission, but with their focus elsewhere. So the encampment is met with very little resistance at the beginning. There were public safety officers floating around and watching. But at the very beginning hours, I think there was a sense of, we did it.

[CHANTING]: Disclose! Divest! We will not stop! We will not rest. Disclose! Divest! We will not stop!

It would be quite surprising to anybody and an administrator to now suddenly see dozens of tents on this lawn in a way that I think very purposely puts an imagery of, we’re here to stay. As the morning evolved and congressional hearings continued —

Minouche Shafik, open your eyes! Use of force, genocide!

Then we started seeing University delegates that were coming to the encampment saying, you may face disciplinary action for continuing to be here. I think that started around almost — like 9:00 or 10:00 AM, they started handing out these code of conduct violation notices.

Hell no! Hell no! Hell no!

Then there started to be more public safety action and presence. So they started barricading the entrances. The day progressed, there was more threat of discipline. The students became informed that if they continue to stay, they will face potential academic sanctions, potential suspension.

The more they try to silence us, the louder we will be! The more they —

I think a lot of people were like, OK, you’re threatening us with suspension. But so what?

This is about these systems that Minouche Shafik, that the Board of Trustees, that Columbia University is complicit in.

What are you going to do to try to get us out of here? And that was, obviously, promptly answered.

This is the New York State Police Department.

We will not stop!

You are attempting participate in an unauthorized encampment. You will be arrested and charged with trespassing.

My phone blew up, obviously, from the reporters, from the editors, of saying, oh my god, the NYPD is on our campus. And as soon as I saw that, I came out. And I saw a huge crowd of students and affiliates on campus watching the lawns. And as I circled around that crowd, I saw the last end of the New York Police Department pulling away protesters and clearing out the last of the encampment.

[CHANTING]: We love you! We will get justice for you! We see you! We love you! We will get justice for you! We see you! We love you! We will get justice for you! We see you! We love you! We will get justice for you!

It was something truly unimaginable, over 100 students slash other individuals are arrested from our campus, forcefully removed. And although they were suspended, there was a feeling of traumatic event that has just happened to these students, but also this sense of like, OK, the worst of the worst that could have happened to us just happened.

And for those students who maybe couldn’t go back to — into campus, now all of their peers, who were supporters or are in solidarity, are — in some sense, it’s further emboldened. They’re now not just sitting on the lawns for a pro-Palestinian cause, but also for the students, who have endured quite a lot.

So the crackdown, sought by the president and enforced by the NYPD, ends up, you’re saying, becoming a galvanizing force for a broader group of Columbia students than were originally drawn to the idea of ever showing up on the center of campus and protesting?

Yeah, I can certainly speak to the fact that I’ve seen my own peers, friends, or even acquaintances, who weren’t necessarily previously very involved in activism and organizing efforts, suddenly finding themselves involved.

Can I — I just have a question for you, which is all journalism, student journalism or not student journalism, is a first draft of history. And I wonder if we think of this as a historic moment for Columbia, how you imagine it’s going to be remembered.

Yeah, there is no doubt in my mind that this will be a historic moment for Colombia.

I think that this will be remembered as a moment in which the fractures were laid bare. Really, we got to see some of the disunity of the community in ways that I have never really seen it before. And what we’ll be looking to is, where do we go from here? How does Colombia repair? How do we heal from all of this? so That is the big question in terms of what will happen.

Nick, Isabella Ramírez just walked us through what this has all looked like from the perspective of a Columbia student. And from what she could tell, the crackdown ordered by President Shafik did not quell much of anything. It seemed, instead, to really intensify everything on campus. I’m curious what this has looked like for Shafik.

It’s not just the students who are upset. You have faculty, including professors, who are not necessarily sympathetic to the protesters’ view of the war, who are really outraged about what Shafik has done here. They feel that she’s crossed a boundary that hasn’t been crossed on Columbia’s campus in a really long time.

And so you start to hear things by the end of last week like censure, no confidence votes, questions from her own professors about whether or not she can stay in power. So this creates a whole new front for her. And on top of it all, as this is going on, the encampment itself starts to reform tent-by-tent —

— almost in the same place that it was. And Shafik decides that the most important thing she could do is to try and take the temperature down, which means letting the encampment stand. Or in other words, leaning in the other direction. This time, we’re going to let the protesters have their say for a little while longer.

The problem with that is that, over the weekend, a series of images start to emerge from on campus and just off of it of some really troubling anti-Semitic episodes. In one case, a guy holds up a poster in the middle of campus and points it towards a group of Jewish students who are counter protesting. And it says, I’m paraphrasing here, Hamas’ next targets.

I saw an image of that. What it seemed to evoke was the message that Hamas should murder those Jewish students. That’s the way the Jewish students interpreted it.

It’s a pretty straightforward and jarring statement. At the same time, just outside of Columbia’s closed gates —

Stop killing children!

— protestors are showing up from across New York City. It’s hard to tell who’s affiliated with Columbia, who’s not.

Go back to Poland! Go back to Poland!

There’s a video that goes viral of one of them shouting at Jewish students, go back to Poland, go back to Europe.

In other words, a clear message, you’re not welcome here.

Right. In fact, go back to the places where the Holocaust was committed.

Exactly. And this is not representative of the vast majority of the protesters in the encampment, who mostly had been peaceful. They would later hold a Seder, actually, with some of the pro-Palestinian Jewish protesters in their ranks. But those videos are reaching members of Congress, the very same Republicans that Shafik had testified in front of just a few days before. And now they’re looking and saying, you have lost control of your campus, you’ve turned back on your word to us, and you need to resign.

They call for her outright resignation over this.

That’s right. Republicans in New York and across the country began to call for her to step down from her position as president of Columbia.

So Shafik’s dilemma here is pretty extraordinary. She has set up this dynamic where pleasing these members of Congress would probably mean calling in the NYPD all over again to sweep out this encampment, which would mean further alienating and inflaming students and faculty, who are still very upset over the first crackdown. And now both ends of this spectrum, lawmakers in Washington, folks on the Columbia campus, are saying she can’t lead the University over this situation before she’s even made any fateful decision about what to do with this second encampment. Not a good situation.

No. She’s besieged on all sides. For a while, the only thing that she can come up with to offer is for classes to go hybrid for the remainder of the semester.

So students who aren’t feeling safe in this protest environment don’t necessarily have to go to class.

Right. And I think if we zoom out for a second, it’s worth bearing in mind that she tried to choose a different path here than her counterparts at Harvard or Penn. And after all of this, she’s kind of ended up in the exact same thicket, with people calling for her job with the White House, the Mayor of New York City, and others. These are Democrats. Maybe not calling on her to resign quite yet, but saying, I don’t know what’s going on your campus. This does not look good.

That reality, that taking a different tack that was supposed to be full of learnings and lessons from the stumbles of her peers, the fact that didn’t really work suggests that there’s something really intractable going on here. And I wonder how you’re thinking about this intractable situation that’s now arrived on these college campuses.

Well, I don’t think it’s just limited to college campuses. We have seen intense feelings about this conflict play out in Hollywood. We’ve seen them in our politics in all kinds of interesting ways.

In our media.

We’ve seen it in the media. But college campuses, at least in their most idealized form, are something special. They’re a place where students get to go for four years to think in big ways about moral questions, and political questions, and ideas that help shape the world they’re going to spend the rest of their lives in.

And so when you have a question that feels as urgent as this war does for a lot of people, I think it reverberates in an incredibly intense way on those campuses. And there’s something like — I don’t know if it’s quite a contradiction of terms, but there’s a collision of different values at stake. So universities thrive on the ability of students to follow their minds and their voices where they go, to maybe even experiment a little bit and find those things.

But there are also communities that rely on people being able to trust each other and being able to carry out their classes and their academic endeavors as a collective so they can learn from one another. So in this case, that’s all getting scrambled. Students who feel strongly about the Palestinian cause feel like the point is disruption, that something so big, and immediate, and urgent is happening that they need to get in the faces of their professors, and their administrators, and their fellow students.

Right. And set up an encampment in the middle of campus, no matter what the rules say.

Right. And from the administration’s perspective, they say, well, yeah, you can say that and you can think that. And that’s an important process. But maybe there’s some bad apples in your ranks. Or though you may have good intentions, you’re saying things that you don’t realize the implications of. And they’re making this environment unsafe for others. Or they’re grinding our classes to a halt and we’re not able to function as a University.

So the only way we’re going to be able to move forward is if you will respect our rules and we’ll respect your point of view. The problem is that’s just not happening. Something is not connecting with those two points of view. And as if that’s not hard enough, you then have Congress and the political system with its own agenda coming in and putting its thumb on a scale of an already very difficult situation.

Right. And at this very moment, what we know is that the forces that you just outlined have created a dilemma, an uncertainty of how to proceed, not just for President Shafik and the students and faculty at Columbia, but for a growing number of colleges and universities across the country. And by that, I mean, this thing that seemed to start at Columbia is literally spreading.

Absolutely. We’re talking on a Wednesday afternoon. And these encampments have now started cropping up at universities from coast-to-coast, at Harvard and Yale, but also at University of California, at the University of Texas, at smaller campuses in between. And at each of these institutions, there’s presidents and deans, just like President Shafik at Columbia, who are facing a really difficult set of choices. Do they call in the police? The University of Texas in Austin this afternoon, we saw protesters physically clashing with police.

Do they hold back, like at Harvard, where there were dramatic videos of students literally running into Harvard yard with tents. They were popping up in real-time. And so Columbia, really, I think, at the end of the day, may have kicked off some of this. But they are now in league with a whole bunch of other universities that are struggling with the same set of questions. And it’s a set of questions that they’ve had since this war broke out.

And now these schools only have a week or two left of classes. But we don’t know when these standoffs are going to end. We don’t know if students are going to leave campus for the summer. We don’t know if they’re going to come back in the fall and start protesting right away, or if this year is going to turn out to have been an aberration that was a response to a really awful, bloody war, or if we’re at the beginning of a bigger shift on college campuses that will long outlast this war in the Middle East.

Well, Nick, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, Michael.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. The United Nations is calling for an independent investigation into two mass graves found after Israeli forces withdrew from hospitals in Gaza. Officials in Gaza said that some of the bodies found in the graves were Palestinians who had been handcuffed or shot in the head and accused Israel of killing and burying them. In response, Israel said that its soldiers had exhumed bodies in one of the graves as part of an effort to locate Israeli hostages.

And on Wednesday, Hamas released a video of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American dual citizen, whom Hamas has held hostage since October 7. It was the first time that he has been shown alive since his captivity began. His kidnapping was the subject of a “Daily” episode in October that featured his mother, Rachel. In response to Hamas’s video, Rachel issued a video of her own, in which she spoke directly to her son.

And, Hersh, if you can hear this, we heard your voice today for the first time in 201 days. And if you can hear us, I am telling you, we are telling you, we love you. Stay strong. Survive.

Today’s episode was produced by Sydney Harper, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Olivia Natt, Nina Feldman, and Summer Thomad, with help from Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Devon Taylor and Lisa Chow, contains research help by Susan Lee, original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

• May 3, 2024   •   25:33 The Protesters and the President
• May 2, 2024   •   29:13 Biden Loosens Up on Weed
• May 1, 2024   •   35:16 The New Abortion Fight Before the Supreme Court
• April 30, 2024   •   27:40 The Secret Push That Could Ban TikTok
• April 29, 2024   •   47:53 Trump 2.0: What a Second Trump Presidency Would Bring
• April 26, 2024   •   21:50 Harvey Weinstein Conviction Thrown Out
• April 25, 2024   •   40:33 The Crackdown on Student Protesters
• April 24, 2024   •   32:18 Is $60 Billion Enough to Save Ukraine?
• April 23, 2024   •   30:30 A Salacious Conspiracy or Just 34 Pieces of Paper?
• April 22, 2024   •   24:30 The Evolving Danger of the New Bird Flu
• April 19, 2024   •   30:42 The Supreme Court Takes Up Homelessness
• April 18, 2024   •   30:07 The Opening Days of Trump’s First Criminal Trial

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Nicholas Fandos

Produced by Sydney Harper ,  Asthaa Chaturvedi ,  Olivia Natt ,  Nina Feldman and Summer Thomad

With Michael Simon Johnson

Edited by Devon Taylor and Lisa Chow

Original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Columbia University has become the epicenter of a growing showdown between student protesters, college administrators and Congress over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech.

Nicholas Fandos, who covers New York politics and government for The Times, walks us through the intense week at the university. And Isabella Ramírez, the editor in chief of Columbia’s undergraduate newspaper, explains what it has all looked like to a student on campus.

On today’s episode

Nicholas Fandos , who covers New York politics and government for The New York Times

Isabella Ramírez , editor in chief of The Columbia Daily Spectator

Background reading

Inside the week that shook Columbia University .

The protests at the university continued after more than 100 arrests.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Research help by Susan Lee .

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government. More about Nicholas Fandos

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Joseph Stiglitz on why America's appetite for Trump endures

A few hours after Donald Trump left a courtroom in lower Manhattan on April 22 for his hush-money trial, Joseph Stiglitz sat in a conference room uptown at Columbia Business School and talked about what a second term for the former president could mean for the country.

Trump's flame-throwing method of governing is a world away from Stiglitz's preference for a more temperate approach, and he warns this could adversely affect the global economy. If Trump is elected again, Stiglitz said, he could well pull support for Ukraine, sending grain prices soaring. Russia would also be clear to continue its expansionary efforts. Tensions with China could heat up further at a time when Beijing is threatening military action in Taiwan.

In addition to all of that, Stiglitz fears that if he's elected, Trump will do his best to stay in power by whatever means necessary. "He's shown every sense of being an authoritarian," Stiglitz told Business Insider. "I see no example of restraint."

Trump hasn't shied away from his strongman tendencies — which were abundantly clear in his effort to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, a challenge that was shot down in more than 60 court cases and culminated in the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Despite Trump's deviation from historical presidential norms, recent polls show that he has a slight lead over Biden in the upcoming November election. For Stiglitz, the 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, America's appetite for Trump can be traced back a little more than four decades ago to the election of Ronald Reagan. During Reagan's eight years as president, between 1981 and 1989, he ushered in an era of lower taxes and deregulation that's continued to this day— and Stiglitz argues that's had disastrous consequences.

That's the topic of Stiglitz's new book, "The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society," in which he argues it's time to issue a verdict on whether the free-market policies of Reagan and subsequent presidents have been successful.

"We've had 40 years of a neoliberal experiment: Strip away the regulations and lower the taxes — taxes are much lower than they used to be. And the whole theory was that was going to increase economic growth, and because of trickle-down economics, everyone would benefit," Stiglitz said.

"If you try something and it doesn't work for a little while, you say, 'Well, maybe we haven't given it enough time.' Forty years is long enough to say, 'Well, you have to make a judgment,'" he continued.

The legacy of trickle-down economics

As Stiglitz details in his book, Reagan, drawing on the ideology of the economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, applied the principle of negative freedom to economic policy, arguing that corporations, individuals, and markets should be free from government interference.

Reagan successfully turned his economic philosophy into policy with his 1981 and 1986 tax cuts. By the time Reagan left office, corporate tax rates had dropped from 50% to 35%, and top marginal income-tax rates for the country's highest earners had fallen from 70% to 38.5%. He also relaxed regulations for banks and a number of industries.

Slashing regulations and taxes came with a promise that the rising tide would lift all boats — business investment and spending by the rich would boost the fortunes of middle- and lower-income workers. That reality hasn't come to pass, and wealth inequality has grown.

In 1989, America's richest 1% held 22.8% of the total net worth of individuals, according to Federal Reserve data. Today, that number is 30.3%.

The chart below, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank, shows that income gains for the lower and middle classes have largely stagnated since 1980, while the income of the top 5% of earners has continued to grow.

In addition to income growth, wealth growth has risen most for the richest 10% of Americans, while it's been stagnant for the 51st through 90th percentile and the bottom 50% of earners.

GDP growth has also generally been on a downward trend since 1984, according to World Bank data .

Stiglitz argues that Reagan's free-market policies have led to these conditions, and stagnating economic growth for the lower and middle classes is why so many Americans are drawn to a populist candidate with strongman leanings like Trump, who offers a different approach to governing.

"This kind of failure has provided fertile field for demagogues — populists — and has paved the road to the risk of authoritarianism," Stiglitz said.

That's despite the fact that Trump's policies very much resemble Reagan's. Trump touted his disdain for regulation during his first term and rolled back taxes — most significantly for the top 5% of earners — in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Stiglitz doesn't believe, however, that it would be as feasible for Trump to cut taxes again in a second term given that market forces are different — inflation is higher and the government's budget deficit has grown.

John Komlos, a professor emeritus at the University of Munich who has taught at Duke University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, draws a similar line from Reaganomics — and the 1981 tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthy — to Americans' populist leanings now.

"Trickle-down economics doesn't have a basis in economic theory. It was a political statement, basically," Komlos told Business Insider. "The way it was supposed to work is that you give this money to the superrich, they will build businesses that will hire people, and the money will trickle down to plumber Joe. But of course, that's not a law, that's wishful thinking."

But Komlos and Stiglitz don't place blame solely on Reagan for the growing economic inequality. Every president since has played a role in instituting neoliberal policies, Komlos said, including Democratic ones. Bill Clinton, for whom Stiglitz was an economic advisor, continued deregulating banks (a move which Stiglitz says he was against) and oversaw an outflow of US jobs to other countries when he signed the North American Free Trade Agreement and let China into the World Trade Organization.

The continued banking deregulation from Reagan to Clinton also helped to bring about the global financial crisis, Komlos said. And then Barack Obama, in the wake of the crisis, bailed out Wall Street banks while small businesses generally suffered.

In a recent paper, Komlos attempted to quantitatively connect wealth inequality and populism by looking at the income statistics of the ZIP codes where the January 6, 2021, insurrectionists lived. Ninety-five percent of the 933 people arrested in connection with the riots came from ZIP codes where the average income was under $62,400. Fifty-one percent of those arrested came from ZIP codes with average incomes between $25,609 and $41,287. Only about 2% of them lived in areas with an average income of $75,000 or more. Meanwhile, 32% of the country lives in ZIP codes with average incomes of at least that much, meaning upper-middle-class and high earners were largely underrepresented.

Is 'Reaganomics' fully to blame for growing inequality?

Plenty of economists disagree with Stiglitz's views.

Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank, said rising inequality has complicated causes. In addition to allowing China into the World Trade Organization, there was a boom in "labor-replacing technology" like computers.

Lachman does not deny that deregulation has gone too far in some cases, but he pushed back on the notion that the US has to significantly change its regulatory structure.

"I do not think that we want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and go back to the overregulated economy that we had before we moved to a more deregulated economy first under Carter and then under Reagan," he said.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was the chief economist for President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and the chief economic advisor to John McCain's 2008 campaign, also rejected the idea that bigger government can solve wealth inequality.

"You can go look at the alternatives. Spain has had a wealth tax its entire existence; it hasn't solved inequality," Holtz-Eakin said. "So the notion that somehow the progressive-wealth-tax approach is going to solve things is at odds with the data. Every European country that's had a wealth tax has walked away from it, by and large."

He also said that the populism he saw growing on the 2008 campaign trail wasn't a result of wealth inequality and tax cuts but of disparity in economic opportunity in different parts of the country. Populist sentiment, he said, was also concentrated among those with lower education levels.

Stiglitz argues that higher taxes could create funding for education that could expand economic opportunities for lower-income people.

"Progressive taxation, with the proceeds redistributed to the less-well-off through social programs or education, expands the opportunity set of the poor, their freedom, even while it may simultaneously constrain the opportunity set of the rich," he writes in his book. "As in all things, there are trade-offs."

Stiglitz's new America

Stiglitz thinks about freedom differently than Reagan, Hayek, and Friedman. More government regulation, he says, creates freer market conditions.

"'Unfettered markets' — markets without rules and regulations — is an oxymoron, because without rules and regulations enforced by government there could and would be little trade," he writes in the book. "Cheating would be rampant, trust low. A world without any restraints would be a jungle in which only power mattered, determining who got what and who did what. It wouldn't be a market at all."

Stiglitz argues that tighter regulation and higher taxes could also free the lower class from exploitation by private firms and give them the freedom to pursue an education and obtain quality healthcare.

In his book, Stiglitz offers a number of solutions to what he views as the failures of neoliberalism. Together, they make up what he calls his vision of "progressive capitalism." They include:

More antitrust regulation and restrictions on mergers to prevent the lack of competition that arises from monopolies and results in price fixing.

A higher minimum wage and higher taxes to fund public programs like education and healthcare.

Policies that would trigger economic stabilization when macroeconomic shocks hit. (For example, the economist Claudia Sahm advocates for stimulus checks to automatically be sent out when the three-month moving average of the unemployment rate rises by 0.5%).

Policies to make credit more accessible for small businesses.

"Things aren't working very well," Stiglitz said. "And so when things aren't working very well, you've got to ask what's gone wrong and what can you do."

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Immigrants and America

“Transformational gift” | April 11

The issue of immigration in America is usually focused upon the chaotic situation on our southern border regarding people entering without proper documentation. What gets missed in all the rhetoric about immigration is the immense benefits that first- or second-generation immigrants to our country have given society. In the Tampa Bay area, I couldn’t help but be struck by the amazing philanthropy being given to us recently by three families for the benefit of medical care and education. These families have given tens of millions of dollars in gratitude for all of the blessings that they have received as relatively recent citizens of the United States. Throughout our country’s history we mustn’t forget that immigration was the cornerstone of our creation and is still a powerful engine of our continued strength. The problem of illegal immigration at the Texas border is a minor sideshow that will be solved in due time and shouldn’t overshadow the wonderful benefits that immigrants provide.

Scott Wagman, St. Petersburg

The hang-up

Pinellas schools’ sensible policy on cellphones in the classroom | Editorial, April 24

Pinellas County is implementing a cellphone policy for all grades as to who can use their phone and when. I taught in a Pinellas County high school several years ago when the policy was no phones at all. The school I was at did not enforce the policy. Students walked past the principal with their phone on, and she did nothing. A student pulled out her phone in my class during a test and refused to put her phone away or to take her call out in the hallway. The student was transferred to a different class. My son went to Palm Harbor University High School. Their policy was to take the phone and hold it until the end of the school year! So who decides the consequences? Will they be uniform at all schools, or will individual principals make their own decisions? A countywide standard policy should also have countywide consequences, which are the same at each school. They have the whole summer to figure it out since there may be fewer book challenges to work through.

Dave Hinz, Clearwater

Flexible founders

Electoral College | Perspective, April 21

All the discussion about the Electoral College and virtually none about what are arguably the two most important factors. First, the founders had no thoughts that their ideas were sacrosanct. They were practical men. They came up with what they hoped were good solutions, but if those solutions didn’t work or weren’t the best they had no issue changing course, for example, the Articles of Confederation, the way the vice president is elected, allowing for amendments to the Constitution, which was done multiple times in their lifetimes, and throughout American history as things changed: ending slavery, allowing women the vote. Second, the electoral process works today nothing like they envisioned. Then, there was no two-party system (many founders were very negative about political parties) and electors were not tied to any bloc, either political party or state majority. The founders set up electors to be a hedge against an uneducated populace becoming enthralled by a populist demagogue. They envisioned electors coming from the more educated and wealthier, the elite, who would reject unqualified candidates, no matter how popular, and would vote in the best interests of the country, not their personal power or wealth or party. They saw the electors as an extension of the men who pledged to each other “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” This is clearly not how the electoral system works today, and if the founders were around now, they would be among the first saying it needs to be abolished or changed.

Todd Tanney, Clearwater

The long and short of it

St. Petersburg, Pinellas County look to rein in short-term rentals | April 21

This article provides important context. That Pinellas County has 18,000 short-term rentals underscores its effect on housing shortages. Not only are those properties no longer available for long-term rental to residents, they are also driving up prices. Investors are buying properties based on return on investment rather than market value. This has dramatically inflated prices. My neighbor paid an exorbitant price for the house next door, thinking they could rent it weekly. The neighbors explained, and the city confirmed, that they could not, so they changed to monthly rentals. It was a costly error, but still this house is no longer available to long-term renters. We can’t fix our lack of affordable housing with one hand, while turning affordable housing into motels with the other. I’m glad the county and hopefully the city is beginning to address this.

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Diane Love, St. Petersburg

A better strategy

America needs a true maritime strategy, maybe a SpaceX for ships | Perspective, April 14

I read with interest this essay by retired Rear Adm. William McQuilkin. It was a tremendously insightful piece that promotes filling an important gap in our overall national defense strategy. We are ill-prepared for what we are experiencing today in the world, as evidenced by a small terrorist group armed with technologically advanced weaponry by Iran easily able to impact the global economy — cutting off maritime choke points such as the Houthis have done concerning Red Sea transit by commercial vessels. McQuilkin hits the nail on the head with his call for increasing our merchant marine fleet, investing more capital in our maritime industrial base and building ships in the United States — all coordinated via a coherent national maritime strategy mandated as a priority while simultaneously creating a national will to so do. With the emergence of multiple maritime threats posed by unfriendly countries like China and terrorist groups clandestinely armed with high-tech weaponry, we have discovered the hard way there are difficulties in maintaining unfettered global marine transit. A national maritime strategy is absolutely necessary in empowering us to better cope with such threats.

James Zumwalt, Lakewood Ranch

The writer is a retired Marine Corps officer and author.

Ground rules

The upside of the Tampa Bay Rays stadium project | Column, April 21

The point of Graham Brink’s column is that the Rays and the powers that be in St. Petersburg have assembled a team of experienced, competent developers that will get the job done no matter how many obstacles they have to overcome. I’m old school, and I believe that baseball teams are successful for two reasons: accessibility and fan attendance. No matter how outstanding the stadium is or how many homes are built around it, it will not change fan attendance because its location is inaccessible for most of the Tampa Bay region. We moved here in 1994. Ever since then, we have been hearing talk about a plan for mass transit. Well that hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen anytime in the near future for the Rays to benefit from it. We love to attend Rays games, but we live in Wesley Chapel. On a good day, it’s an hour and 20 minutes. On a bad day, it’s two hours plus. The obvious solution is to build the stadium at the intersection of I-4 and I-75. This will draw fans from as far east as Orlando, as far north as Brooksville and as far south as Venice. More fans translates to more revenue. With more revenue, the Rays could keep good players like Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow and entice free agents like Aron Nolan.

Mark Khan, Tampa Bay

What ‘no’ means

Trump trial gets underway | April 23

I find it remarkable that in the New York criminal trial of Donald J. Trump, the former president has to sit there, listen, then abide by a judge’s order, which amounts to telling the former president “No!” The former president must respect the gag order issued by the presiding judge, Juan Merchan, or risk penalties. When was the last time Trump was firmly told “No!”? I think those who worked with him in the White House would “advise” the president, but would risk their job if they issued a firm command. I think former Attorney General William Barr would strongly advise the president, but when he told the president there was no fraud in the 2020 election, essentially saying “no” to the president, he was shown the door. Bigger picture: I worry about anyone wielding absolute authority.

Paul Foks, St. Petersburg

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House passes antisemitism bill over complaints from First Amendment advocates

Critics argue the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which gained overwhelming GOP and Democratic support, is an effort to silence criticism of Israel

House Republicans are seeking to unite their unruly majority around an evergreen conservative cause, devising a strict response to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that have roiled college campuses across the country in recent weeks.

GOP leaders this week announced plans for new oversight investigations of elite universities where — in the words of House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) — “pro-terrorist anti-Semites [are] taking over.” And on Wednesday, they passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which its advocates said would empower the federal government to crack down on anti-Israel protests on campuses by codifying a definition of antisemitism that encompasses not just threats against Jews, but also certain criticisms of Israel itself.

“We must give the Department of Education the tools to … hold college administrators accountable for refusing to address antisemitism on their campuses,” said Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), the bill’s lead sponsor.

The bill was approved by a vote of 320-91, with a majority of Democrats — 133 — joining Republicans.

College protests over Gaza war

Lawler’s bill — with 61 co-sponsors, including 15 Democrats — would create “a clear definition of antisemitism” in U.S. law that the Education Department could then use to cut off funding to academic institutions found to tolerate such behaviors. The definition, however, has drawn fierce opposition from First Amendment advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union and liberal Democrats, who say it veers sharply into the realm of restricting political views.

It’s unclear what the bill’s prospects are in the Democratic-controlled Senate or how the White House views it. Previous iterations failed to muster sufficient support in Congress, but both its supporters and opponents say the ongoing protests and a rise in antisemitism since Hamas ’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel have injected fresh momentum.

If it does become law, the federal definition of antisemitism, adopted from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance , would include such speech as “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”; “applying double standards” to Israel that are “not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”; and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

The idea is that student-held signs, for example, like those displayed at Columbia University in New York this week, calling for “revolution” or “intifada” — which means “uprising” — would amount to antisemitism under the law. The Education Department, in turn, could then revoke federal research grants and other funding to a university that fails to take punitive action toward students who express such views, the bill’s proponents say.

Several Republicans said opposing Zionism — the political movement to create, and now to preserve, a state for Jews in their biblical homeland — would qualify as antisemitism under the law. Some suggested that even holding a prolonged protest would constitute antisemitism. “The erection of encampments on college campuses isn’t an expression of speech,” Rep. Marcus J. Molinaro (R-N.Y.) said on the House floor Wednesday. “It is a direct threat to Jewish students on college campuses.”

But the “double standards” example and the notion that Nazi comparisons are off-limits in the case of Israel, among other aspects of the definition, are deeply problematic because they’re too broad and present “viewpoint discrimination,” said Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment advocacy organization.

“Nowhere else in First Amendment law does it say that you can criticize a certain country up to a certain limit, or else you might risk violating federal anti-discrimination law,” he said.

“The First Amendment allows individuals to criticize every country in the world, including our own” — and that includes comparing other governments to the Nazis, however disturbing many Americans may find that comparison to be, Coward said.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), a Jewish lawmaker who has co-sponsored other bills aimed at combating antisemitism and described himself Wednesday as a “deeply committed Zionist,” urged colleagues to reject Lawler’s bill, which he characterized as “misguided” because it “threatens to chill constitutionally protected speech.”

“If this legislation were to become law,” he said, universities wanting to avoid federal investigation “could end up suppressing protected speech criticizing Israel or supporting Palestinians,” and students and faculty might be driven to self-censor.

Debate on the House floor grew heated at times, as both sides accused the other of neglecting American values in favor of politics. Pro-Palestinian campus protests have included Jewish participants, and some Democrats noted that several liberal Jewish groups oppose the bill, in addition to the man who authored the antisemitism definition for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Republicans pointed to incidents of violence and destruction, exaggerating some — such as a report by a Jewish student at Yale who said she was “ jabbed ” in the eye by a pro-Palestinian protester bearing a Palestinian flag. According to irate lawmakers on the House floor this week, the student, who appeared uninjured when she spoke to CBS News, had been “stabbed in the eye.”

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.), a centrist Democrat who co-sponsored the legislation with Lawler, pushed back on his colleagues’ free speech concerns, saying he “ensured” the bill “protects the First Amendment” because that is important to him. “It allows criticism of Israel,” he said. “It doesn’t allow calls for the destruction or elimination of the Jewish state.”

Opposing elite, often left-leaning universities has for years been a popular rallying cry for Republicans, and it could prove even more so in an election year in which intraparty tension over how to handle the war in Ukraine and other national security policy questions has slowed congressional action in other areas. The antisemitism bill and college oversight efforts allow conservatives to demonstrate moral clarity in support of Israel while spotlighting divisions among Democrats.

“What Republicans seem to be doing is bringing forward things that they hope will divide us,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters this week, noting that several liberal Jewish groups oppose the measure because the definition of antisemitism is so broad. “So why would you do that, except if you want to weaponize antisemitism and you want to use it as a political ploy?”

Polls have shown the American public has grown uncomfortable and divided over U.S.-Israel policy in the six-plus months since Hamas waged a devastating cross-border terrorist attack on Israel and Israel began its punishing campaign of retaliation, destroying most of the Gaza Strip’s infrastructure and displacing most of its 2.2 million Palestinian residents.

The ongoing Israeli offensive, which has so far killed more than 34,000 people, according to local health authorities, and given rise to famine , has unleashed a furor among liberal college students in particular, who have disrupted classes and shut down campuses in protest, calling for their institutions to divest from funding, investments and partnerships with the state of Israel.

Police in New York arrested some 300 people overnight Wednesday, after officers in riot gear breached a campus building that had been occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters. A separate pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA meanwhile came under attack from counterprotesters, who unleashed fireworks and chemical sprays at the student activists, igniting clashes and a fierce rebuke from the campus newspaper’s editorial board.

Many liberals have called for police restraint and for university administrators to respect a long-standing tradition of campus activism, including antiwar movements. Democrats who oppose Lawler’s bill also called the Republican effort to crack down on antisemitism disingenuous and hypocritical, pointing to Republicans’ frequent defense of free speech — and condemnation of liberals’ “cancel culture” — in other contexts.

“How dare the party of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene come down here and lecture Democrats about antisemitism,” Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.) said on the House floor Tuesday. “Remember, the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, dines with Holocaust deniers , and said there were ‘ fine people on both sides ’ at a rally where white supremacists chanted ‘Jews will not replace us.’”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she opposed the bill because she was concerned it could be used to persecute Christians who claim the Jews killed Jesus — a belief that is regarded by many Jews as an antisemitic trope. “Antisemitism is wrong,” she wrote on X on Wednesday, adding that she would not vote for the law because it “could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) urged Democrats to back an alternative, also bipartisan antisemitism measure introduced in the House by Rep. Kathy Manning (D-N.C.) that would establish new positions focused on antisemitism at the White House and the Education Department and require federal law enforcement to conduct an annual threat analysis of antisemitism in America.

Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.

Israel-Gaza war

The Israel-Gaza war has gone on for six months, and tensions have spilled into the surrounding region .

The war: On Oct. 7, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel that included the taking of civilian hostages at a music festival . (See photos and videos of how the deadly assault unfolded ). Israel declared war on Hamas in response, launching a ground invasion that fueled the biggest displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948 .

Gaza crisis: In the Gaza Strip, Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars , killing tens of thousands and plunging at least half of the population into “ famine-like conditions. ” For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Western allies to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave .

U.S. involvement: Despite tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some U.S. politicians , including President Biden, the United States supports Israel with weapons , funds aid packages , and has vetoed or abstained from the United Nations’ cease-fire resolutions.

History: The roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mistrust are deep and complex, predating the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 . Read more on the history of the Gaza Strip .

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