We welcome those who join us on heritage. Org. For all the guests inhouse, we that yourtesy check cell phones and other noisemaking devices have been muted as a courtesy to our speaker. Is a graduate of west point and serves as an adjunct or foster an adjunct professor at georgetown university. He serves on the board of trustees at the Marine Corps University foundation and the Advisory Board for the west point center of oil history, the of oral history. Help me in welcoming jim c arafano. James thank you. Pete is not only a great friend, but the definition of a great american. He graduated from princeton and harvard. Stars. Nze having put his life on the line, im not sure what possessed him to write this, but i think in dangerous and politically incorrect in the world in which we live, he deemed to write a book about who are we in who we should be, that seems quite oldfashioned and distasteful to address anymore, but those of us who have walked around the island of the potomac and walked by the roosevelt statue and seen some of the quotes, and remember not just his legacy, but the legacy of people who thought deciding who we are this can to central is quintessential to being a republican democracy a republic and a democracy. Talk, and theno we will take you a day take q a. Woulde get to q a, if you raise your hand and wait for pete to recognize you, and then wait for the microphone so folks listening online can hear the question as well. Just state your name and affiliation. We will do that. Sometimes we start late here at heritage, but we always end on time. Help me in welcoming the author of in the arena. [applause] pete jim, thank you very much. The heritage foundation, im grateful for this opportunity. You got the book early. You read it, you engaged with it. This feels like a family reunion, and i thank all of you for being here. So many wonderful places, people ive known and worked with, and folks online, thanks for sticking with us. I want to thank a bunch of people i want to thank, but my ,colleagues and vets im grateful you are here. I wrote this book from 4 00 to 8 00 a. M. In many mornings while running cba. Thats what we did at cba was an inspiration to me. It is a call to action that is the organization, so it was always a pleasure to work with you. I appreciate the work you continue to do, from jay and bill and caroline and sarah and will and shawn, amber and emily, kevin and fred, and even my brother phil, who is in the front row here. I want to thank all of you. And of course, kate pomeroy. Kate was also an inspiration for me to write this book. She told me, you need to write it, and i took her advice, and im glad i did. I also want to thank my very good College Buddy nat, who is here, and is it knowledged as well in the book. This book would not have happened without nat. Without him teaching me how to think and write and argue in college, and pulling me back from the brink of some absurd things i put in publications. He was the editor of the princeton tory. Thank you for your help on this project. Some of the others that are not here. My wife come our boys my wife, our boys, who i dedicate the book to. Yes, they are good southern names up in the north. I brother nate, who is a man in the arena himself. I also want to recognize a very good friend of mine who is a fellow traveler and author himself, and also encouraged to this project from the beginning. To the book itself, when i was in iraq and afghanistan and guantanamo bay, a carried around a quote in a black frame. It was Teddy Roosevelts man in the arena quote. If you open up the first page of , you will see it. It is not the critic who counts , not the man who points out how strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives s, who comesho err short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do those deeds, who knows read enthusiasm , who knows great enthusiasm the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who knows the end of the triumph of high achievement, and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. This is not a book about Teddy Roosevelt. You dont have to carry a rifle to be in the arena. It is our job to instill in every generation the principal to perpetuate what is, as you all know, an experiment in human freedom. The 21st century isnt an American Century, than the 21st century will not be a free century. Its just a fact. You look around in the world today. There are threats and ideologies around the world that are quite different than ours. Something i put in the book throughout is the phrase history is not over. History is never over. All we have to do is look to western europe today to realize that when you decide to got your military two gut your military to pay for your welfare state, you tend to wind up riding the wave of history instead of shaping it. If getting off to a good start is important, no one is more response of over the 20th century being an American Century than Teddy Roosevelt, the guy who charged up San Juan Hill in 1898, who sent the great white fleet around the world in 1907, and who was the chief agitator for american involvement in world war i. If you are number, Woodrow Wilson declared he wanted peace without victory, which i think would be quite difficult, and would be a very different looking peace than what we have today. In many ways, the 20th century was an American Century on the back of Teddy Roosevelt. As i think about it, when i read the entire roosevelt speech, that is when i woke up to the power of the quote. The quote itself is powerful. The quote is motivating. Ways theresome is no value assertion in the quote. It is being in the arena, but what is the arena . What does it mean . As i write in the book, it is not your arena or my arena. There is the arena for this exceptional american experiment that was gifted to us 240 years ago and has to be per roy jointed and has to be perpetuated in every single generation. We all know the reagan quote, we are never more than one generation away from extinction. Of a moreminder difficult reality on a daily basis. The quote is just one quote of the larger speech called citizenship in a republic. Insevelt gave it in 1910 front of the thousand french elites at the university of paris, this are bone the sorbonne. Speech, iked at the was blown away. U in many, if yo ways, it was unpc before there was pc. Why should i stand up and declare what i think the direction of america should be when instead i could channel a fantastic speech, a historic speech that has timeless residence today . It reminds us of the very ingredients of republics required in every generation, no matter what. No matter whether we have twitter or facebook or any number of modern develop its, the ingredients, the basic seeds of a republic, are the same. He posits a very simple thesis. He says, the average citizen must be a good citizen if Great Republics are to succeed. Think about that. Not great rulers or even great citizens. On a dailyns, that basis, in a personal way, understand what it takes to keep and make america the greatest country in the world. Good citizens are the only antidote to big government. The smaller and more selfish the citizens, the larger and more unchecked government becomes. As history shows us, good citizens who understand why america is exceptional and special already thin line between tyranny and freedom. They understand our american experiment is exceptional, not because we are proud or boastful, but because we understand this american experiment, when it was first started, was just that. An experiment. Europe laughed at us and said, ips of paper is a piece of paper is what is going to stand between you and a tyrant . You are going to hand over power peacefully . There was a sense that it wasnt possible. Our founders reminded us that our rights come from a creator and not from government. They understood a balance of shower which checked the nature of humans. They understood freedom of religion as opposed to freedom from religion. The understood amendments like the first and the second are indispensable to free peoples. The validity to articulate speech and ideas across the spectrum, which roosevelt talks about powerfully in the speech. True tolerance is tolerating very different and dissenting opinions. In the second amendment, the right to bear arms and protect yourself. They also understand we are a country of laws, not men. If men were angels, we wouldnt need these types of arrangements. He talks about good citizens and good patriots in the speech. Good citizens at home and good patriots in the world. That is really the breakdown of the book. It is intentionally in that order. Talk a lot about what i talk about on fox and elsewhere, Foreign Policy. You look at the world today, and theres a lot to talk about, but you cant talk about American Leadership until you talk about restoring and maintaining citizenship. If you dont understand who you are and what you believe, you can forget about attempting to be the leader in the world or attempting to project power and controversial and difficult places. You need to shore up the home front first. What is a good citizen . It is not just voting or jury duty. It is not protesting. Those are all ingredients of what we do in republics. Of course, voting and all of those things are good, but roosevelt points out that it is the civic virtues he uses the word deficient, which is usually what we think of when we think of light bulbs and starting pitchers. You dont think of it when we think of citizens. Who are you as an individual, and what do you do before deciding how others ought live . He uses difference he uses the first principle of work. The second is fight. A strong and vero people. A masculine spirit for men and women. Strength, vigor, and power. We are a bike helmet culture when we should be thinking about the barbarism of female subjugation in the middle east. We teach our kids to be wimps. We turn our men into women and our women into men, and we need to be willing to stand up and fight for the things we believe in, whether it is on a battlefield were here at home. He talks about large, patriotic families. Demographics. He talked a lot about them a in this speech. The anecdote i use often is of an afghan interpreter i spent time with in afghanistan. A young kid. Hes in the United States today. He would risk his life for me, and i would for him. We were talking about faith, religion, christianity, islam. He said is it heat he said it is inevitable that islam will rule the world. The prophet foretold it. We are having 10 kids, and you are having one. There was powerful poignancy and that phrase. I mentioned they are gutting their militaries to pay for their welfare states. When you forget who you are and you dont demand, at some level, allegiance and assimilation from populations that separate themselves, and then have 10 kids while you are having one, that is how london becomes the most popular name mohammed for newborn boys. For us to think that things like that just go away is willful blindness. So western europe, whether it is 25, 50, 75 years from now, is going to looked very different. That is not an antimuslim phrase or statement. It is a reality that because they havent done that well in western europe, they are not the melting pot that america has been, they are going to have massive cultural clashes, as we have already seen in things like the migrant crisis that only accelerates problems we see. As many of you know, europe is a preview, or could be a preview, of america. The Second Chapter of the book is about france and what we can learn from france that was a, frankly, formerly Great Republic that decided to give away its status by making very intentional decisions at home, and america can learn from that. We have messaging we have massive advantages in that our revolution was very different from theirs, but we still have a lot to learn. The fourth aspect you could put forward his character. Whether it is faith or believing in some greater than yourself. George washington said religion and morality are indispensable supports of a republic. You rip out face, and you wonder you are about faith, and you wonder why we are getting what we get in our altar. I am not talking in our culture. I am not talking about social conservative. You go to war, you learn some things, you see some things, and you realize theres other things in my mind that are a more important priority. I am not talking about prolife issues. I think that is a fight that conservatives should continue every day of the week, but we obsess over things like samesex marriage, and it inhibits our ability to talk about the real challenges facing families. The real challenges facing parents and kids in. Our culture in our culture. About equalhe talks opportunity, which should be the lodestar of conservatives and republicans. If we dont strive to be the party of equal opportunity, we will miss the mark. I think it is fair to say republicans and conservatives have missed the mark on that for a long time, talking about things like marginal tax rates when peoples mindsets are very different, and we see massive shifts in our economy and the way their lives are lived. We have to have clear eyes about attacking that and approaching that. That means not just unburdening regulations and problems, and pushing back against the dependency for those at the bottom, but also making sure those at the top play by the same rules. The taxe regulations, code, the lobbyists that rigged the system so that those at the top are able to game it to their advantage, and in many ways block out those who would otherwise have social mobility. The left talks about income inequality all the time. What we should talk about his social mobility, the validity to rise. The ability in this country to have every opportunity that your parents or others had in previous generations. You have to start with citizenship. He also talked about what undercuts good citizens. It is a citizenry focused on rights instead of duties, that believes man is perfected or perfectible, and therefore you lunge for utopia and utopian ideas. Citizenship that is invested in moral relativism, that there is no right and wrong. We see that on the battlefield today. Take Something Like the apple grabe prisons gamble the abu ghraib prison scandal, which was terrible, but there was no reason the New York Times had to put it on the front page 32 days in a row. There is no home team in the American Press today because it is passe to say america is good or to say that im an american, and therefore i support the causes we undertake, even if they are difficult ones. In many ways, often controversial and open to dissent. The fourth is class warfare. Roosevelt says the end of the republic is at hand when class warfare commences. It is what we have seen in many ways, left, right, black, white, male, female, young, old. We have been pitted against each other, which is toxic to the body politic and to citizenship. So you start with citizenship because without citizenship, you cannot create or be th good patriots on the world stage that you need to be. You have all seen the i dont know if you have seen the bumper sticker, think globally, act locally. It is a popular environmental bumper sticker. I think roosevelt would rip that often say think locally, act globally. Meaning, remember who you are and be willing to act globally in defense of those principles, which are indispensable. That america is good. America is worth fighting for. America is truly exceptional, and america has been a forces good in the world. And by the way, winning the wars we fight is a good thing. Roosevelt talks about that in the speech. Are we a people willing and able to prevail . It sounds like a simple question, but there are critical moments. I write in the book about iraq in 2005 and 2006, and in 2007 and 2008. I see some people here who were part of that. The line of freedom and tyranny is often decided in those really difficult moments, when half the country or a lot of people want to take a political expedient route and say lets set a timeline for the war. It has been difficult and controversial and costly. Lets pop smoke and leave this difficult battlefield. Is other half says no, this the exact moment when you need to be willing to double down. You need to be willing to take the fight to the enemy. Ive never been more proud, as i write in the book, then on january 10, 2007, when george bush announced the surge in iraq, and did the right thing in the face of Massive Public pressure. Doubled down to defeat a vicious enemy. Ask yourself today if he was right. Unfortunately, he was. The surge did work, and it was successful, and al qaeda in iraq was largely defeated. Political progress was happening. Bidenruary of 2010, joe was declaring iraq a great achievement of the obama administration. Such a great achievement that he just happened to visit again for five does ago with political chaos unfolding. They took for granted the gains that were made through decisions in a dark moment and assumed they would perpetuate themselves, without understanding how central defeating islamists in iraq was to their narrative and our narrative. Are we the paper tiger that Osama Bin Laden said we were . Will we retreat from every difficult conflict if we are scuffed up, or are we able to show the resolve of our forefathers and win the wars that we fight . That is not a call for endless nationbuilding were fighting every bogeyman on the horizon. It is a recognition that the lesson we should learn from the last 15 years, from iraq, is that resolve works. Not that all these middle eastern wars are terrible and we should not get messed up there. Lets nationbuilding home, and thats it. The narrative in the republican and Democrat Party in many ways is moving in the wrong direction , to unlearn everything we learned in those conflicts. What i do over a couple of chapters in the book is make the case that the iraq war is a war we should learn from about what to do in the right moments as opposed to run from. I think republicans and conservatives should stand confidently in every forum they can and poi