Detroit, MI – “Never seen anything like it in my life!,” sung by Richard Attenborough in “Dr. Doolittle” (1967), when he sees a “Push Me-Pull You” – does not say it! A 1980s WHO concert does not say it, nor does a Taylor Swift concert. To watch Donald Trump turn a crowd of high school kids, ringed by grateful seniors, to pandemonium … is a sight to behold. I just saw it, what freedom feels like. The train is rolling!
If the energy expended at Detroit’s “Turning Point” and AMAC-sponsored “People’s Convention,” held last week, could have been captured, it would light 100 cities for a year!
Hard to convey is the combined effect of younger people exhilarated to talk freedom, faith, and family, with older Americans, veterans and warriors of the working world, truckers and teachers, dreams and doers and never-say-die believers all together in one place, pulling in one direction.
If you hear that the willingness to fight, restore freedom, respect faith, and reaffirm rights is lagging, or that the nation’s young are all disoriented, ready to be dependent, know not what to believe, are lost, and care nothing for the past or future, want entitlement not dreams, think again.
Listening to young speakers and old, Charlie Kirk, Candice Owens, Vivek Ramaswamy, Ben Carson, AMAC’s Rebecca Weber, followed shortly by Donald J. Trump, a man of endless mirth, hope, optimism, and energy, delivered to thousands, your heart would have leaped, then quieted.
I write now in the “quieted” phase of this day, that time when the chairs are being folded, the Secret Service has done its job, thousands are streamed out, and reflectivity settles in.
What does this day, and such massive crowds on their feet for 12 hours, endless and heartfelt ovations, so much clapping that hands ache, voices are hoarse, and smile muscles hurt … mean?
What was happening here, where the talk was all real, filled with can-do, will-do, must-do, a kind of revolutionary urgency, all focused in one direction?
This was like watching the rebirth of a nation, spiritual light gathering for a great mission, more than a revival – filled with faith, yes, but also Constitutional learning, phrases, principles, history, and application of those principles to life. In places like this, on days like this, America thrives.
Here, too, you hear a kind of anticipated follow-through, not like a movie or rock concert, not like here and gone, but more like the last quarter huddles of a Superbowl, from talented, focused, determined players emerge to run game-winning plays, stunning the opposition.
Even now, I am absorbing it – trying to place it in a historical perspective, as I strive to do with so much of modern politics these days, and so often fail.
This event, emblematic of countless others occurring across the nation and led by Trump, or by conservative candidates, Turning Point and AMAC, harkens to Patrick Henry’s shocking moment in that Virginia church, where so many Founders sat in 1775, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
It harkens to Henry V, man and Shakespeare, Battle of Agincourt, when an outnumbered king – persecuted by the French Army, told he was doomed, spoke to his men with the confidence of God’s purpose, victory, courage, and fighting for the right. He won, down five to one. Before the battle, he promised, those not with us “shall think themselves accursed they were not here.” And they did.
This is the spirit of today. It brings us to tipping points in our history when all is to be restored or all lost. We faced that in pre-Revolutionary America, big choices needed to be made. Speak the truth and pay the consequences, or let fear rule you, roll over and regret your cowardice, and die under tyranny.
Then as now, people had to pick sides – freedom or its end. Oddly, in this country, that has happened over and over, choices –1812, 1863, 1898, 1917, 1941, and the Cold War, hot wars before, during, and after. Put life on the line, understand and commit, or punt and leave it to others.
Reagan gave a gripping speech on this point, “A Time for Choosing,” in 1964. It resonates. Speeches of similar messages have defined us – all of us. We are a people, a special people, who value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – and will sometimes rise and die for it.
From the Bill of Rights to Civil Rights, citizen engagement to signing up to fight against fascism, communism, and lawlessness, we are a people who elevate freedom, never weaken, and are a beacon.
And that timeless spirit, commitment to restoring freedom to this land, and preserving America, is what I witnessed today. That passion lives, perhaps, in all of us. We must tap it. It was there in that arena, eyes of the young, and in speeches by Kirk, Weber, Carson, and Trump. If we pause – take a quiet moment to think about what we believe, whether it matters, we know. This is what freedom feels like. And my friends, mark my words … The train is rolling.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
