Where Are the Smart Leaders Like Ronald Reagan?

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Where are the smart people at?  We have a deficiency of smart people.  I don’t mean people who can divine or devise a new electronic gadget for you to carry around and fritter away the hours.  Where are the real smart people?  Where are the Jeffersons, the Taylors, the Madisons?  Where are the Davises or the Calhouns?  Where are the Coolidges?  Where are the Carnegies?  Where are the Melons?  Where are the geniuses that we need, desperately need, to chart a course out of this and then preach the good word and actually have it make sense to people?  Where are those people at?  We have a competition it seems for American Idol status quo. Check out the rest in today’s transcript…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Where are the smart people at?  We have a deficiency of smart people.  I don’t mean people who can divine or devise a new electronic gadget for you to carry around and fritter away the hours.  Where are the real smart people?  Where are the Jeffersons, the Taylors, the Madisons?  Where are the Davises or the Calhouns?  Where are the Coolidges?  Where are the Carnegies?  Where are the Melons?  Where are the geniuses that we need, desperately need, to chart a course out of this and then preach the good word and actually have it make sense to people?  Where are those people at?  We have a competition it seems for American Idol status quo.

Here’s our contest right now.  It’s not to figure out a new and better way forward or a way to solvency or anything like that.  That’s not even on the table.  What our alleged smart people are debating and publicly arguing over is how best to maintain what it is that we currently have, how best to maintain the transfer of over $3 trillion of wealth every year, how best to maintain a currency system that is doomed.  Every indication from the history of mankind tells us that the currency, the fiat currency, paper currency system we have is doomed to fail, and it will.  I’m enjoying the paper currency system right now and I enjoy racking up debt.  You need to make sure it stays.  We have a population basically that is demanding that no hard choice be made.  This is why I just have to chuckle at some people.  [mocking] “In America, people are going to have to make hard choices.”  No they’re not.  Andrew, you bring this up all the time.  What is your mantra about when hard choices will actually be made?

AG:  When there are actual repercussions.

Mike:  That’s right.  Do you see any repercussions yet?  You haven’t seen any, have you?

AG:  Not one bit.

Mike:  When it actually begins to hit, that’s when people will finally say, [mocking] “Hey, you, do something about that.”  Why not plan to do it now?  This is what I don’t understand.  That’s why I say where are the smart people?  There’s a famous line — as a matter of fact, I’ll play it for you.  I say it’s a famous line because it’s one of my favorite Ronald Regan clips.  It is from Reagan’s farewell address in January 1989, I want to say.  Reagan is saying goodbye.  He’s talking about what has happened over the course of the last eight years, the good things he’s done, things he wished he could have done, and what he sees as the way forward.  He says [mocking Reagan] “People ask why I got into politics.  Why did I do it?”  The Gipper famously says — again I say famously because it’s famous to me — he says he saw what was going on around him and he just wanted to hold his hand up and say stop.

Mike:  There’s so much goodness in that and in that man.  The part that I really wanted to remind you of, if you haven’t heard it lately, is the part where he says “I just wanted to throw my hand up and say stop.”  Where are the people out there today saying stop?  You know what they say?  They say slow down.  Don’t stop, slow down.  Just slow down a little bit.  We’ve got to pretend like we actually care about this stuff.  Slow down, dude.  At the end of that speech, which by the way I will repost today, he also talks about American history and about how we seem to have forgotten that we’re supposed to teach, live and celebrate the good parts of our history and learn from the bad parts and we stopped doing that.  He tells the kids: If you’re around the dinner table and your parents aren’t talking about this or doing it, nail them on it.  I love the part about stop, I just wanted to hold my hand up and say stop.  How many of you listening right now are waiting for someone to emerge that’s going to hold their hand up and say stop, not slow down?  What I’m hearing now is a bunch of insincere [mocking] “We’re going to slow the train down a little bit so we don’t go so fast over the fiscal cliff.”  Is that what the smartest, best and brightest amongst us can come up with?

End Mike Church Show Transcript

ClintStroman

See Full Bio