Michelle, talks about u. S. Innovation. Her book is, who built that . Young Americas Foundation hosted the event at the reagan ranch at the Reagan Ranch Center in santa barbara, california. It is my privilege to introduce to you today our future speaker and share a few reflections on my experience with Young America foundation. Welcome to those watching on cspan. Young America Foundation is committed to educating and inspiring increasing Young Americans across our nation. With individual freedom, Strong National defense, free enterprise, traditional values. For students, conferences like the one we are attending today is one of Young America foundations primary means of it inspiring the next generation of leaders. As mr. Larson mentioned, it is my first time here at the reagan ranch. About four years ago when i attended my First High School conference. That is when my passion for freedom was ignited. I heard about the miracle of america. A proud and exceptional country. Founded on the protection on human kinds and liberties. A country who offers her people the opportunity to pursue and achieve heroic dreams. I realize as per accident reagan told us, it is time for us to realize we are too great a nation to limit our self to small dreams. We are not doomed to inevitable decline. I do not believe that they will fall on no matter what we do. I do believe in a fatal fall on us if we do nothing. His call to action inspired me to take action in my own community for the future of my country. I am working closely with the foundation to found another chapter in the next school year [applause]. I wanted to share the briefly some of the things i have learned at Young America that inspire me the most. America stands proudly upon the foundation of a rich western heritage. Stretching as far back from the Roman Republic from the second and third century bc. In the roman athens and those who came after were magnificent. They lack the fundamental aspect , this critical puzzle pieces of freedom of opportunity afforded by the free market system of capitalism. No other economic arrangement in Human History has been so capable of creating so much wealth and opportunity for so many people. President Ronald Reagan understood this. The free market principles were critical components of americas greatest. He reminded us, only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding Economic Policy and benefiting from their success, only then can society remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Our speaker this afternoon certainly understands this. She is living evidence that the American Dream is alive and well. The daughter filipino immigrants, michelle is one of the foremost thinkers. She is an author, an author, a syndicated columnist, blogger, and entrepreneur. She has 20 Years Experience in political journalism. She began her career with the l. A. Daily news. In 1995, she was named warren brooks fellows at the Competitive Enterprise Institute at washington d. C. As an entrepreneur she has built three successful website, her own personal website, hot air, and twitchy. Youll know her for her numerous media appearances the from fox news and msnbc and cspan. She is a frequent speaker on College Campuses havent spoken to audiences at their coos, marquette, university of texas, and south dakota state university. She has authored five books, one of which the culture of corruption was ranked number one New York Times bestseller. Her most recent book, who built that, Inspiring Stories of americas entrepreneurs. Those whose ideas and inventions conceive here in basements, garages, backyards became corporations, and play millions of americans and people around the world. And improve the standard of living for the entire world. One of my favorite was the miracle of americans. Its a story of tony. He was a croatian immigrant from a poor island in the dramatic c. He was born close to the end of world war ii. He came to america thank invented the maglite torch. Her conviction in her belief in freedom resound in all that she does. She is a shining example of patriotism to americans everywhere. Please remain welcoming her to the stage. [applause]. Thank you so much. Thank you. Lets get started. This is amazing. I cannot tell you how at home i feel here. How perfect a set innocence. I cannot think of a better place i also much too young Americas Foundation and the reagan ranch. These are two of the finest, liberty promoting organizations we have in america. I want to thank everyone who works for that organization. Ron and michelle who have been friends for so long. Andrew, and each and every one of you who has done your part to support the work that they do. Thank you. Give yourself a hand. [applause]. I also want to give a shout out to cspan a book tv who are here, over the course of my quartercentury career as an out of the closet, conservative journalist, cspan has covered many of the events that i have done over the years. They welcomed me from washington journal last week and it is always an incredible ride to get phone calls from cspan listeners and to get that no holds bar, fully transparent discussion that so many say that they support. This book, who built that, was, with a very special journey for me. As i write in the introduction of the book, most most people know me as that angry brown lady on the tv said who is always yelling. So i vowed, when i launch this book that i was going to put on the happy, smiling face. But inevitably then of course, on cable tv they were going to put me get some meathead from the left and there i go again. Im sure some of you saw me last week on some of the shows. I think, when you are in this business and especially when you cancer in your College Campuses representing the voice of freedom, freemarket capitalism, the best found in constitutional principles that we all it here too, you have to pick and choose your battles. It also pens him a time, manner, and, and place on how you present yourself. The full picture of who we are and that is what reagan did. He was a happy or year. When he needed to reprimand the berkeley children, many of whom were 16, and 70 years old he knew how to turn it on. Yet, he remained such a beacon for people across class lines, across color lines. He gave people a reason to aspire. That overused words these days, hope. Hope rests in the principle of the promise of social nobility that we are not all delegated to one rung of the ladder. So when i heard this, you did not built this, it still feel so raw. Doesnt it . I thought, this is it. Weve one, we have clinched it, can you believe this guy getting up and openly denigrating americas makers, builders, and achievers. How did he get away with that . And then he did. And did that not feel like it would just add me in the heart. What is going on, what is going on here . What do we fail to do . To connect the dots to people so they can see that he was not merely saying that we have help along the way, thats an innocuous treatment. Of course we all do, we all we all stand on the shoulders of our Founding Fathers. Lets thank them. But no, thats thats not what he was saying. So in the book i excerpt the full context of the passage of those remarks, which the contacts was very important. Why was he saying what he was saying in this crusading force, on business owners, on selfmade, independent entrepreneurs. Before he coined that phrase you didnt build that, he had the stripping hostility for people who, rightly believed that it was their own initiative that yes, they worked harder, yes they were smarter. I was horrified when he said they think they are so smart, they think they work harder, but what was more or find was the arousing applause. So, i completely go to the fact that when i started the book, i was angry. But as i embarked on research for the book, and i took this incredible journey through american history, i ended up with the biggest, confuse grin on my face. You should have seen my entire family. Every time i discovered some new facts, new on song entrepreneur, they had to hear every last detail. So, my kids kids got to see a very different side of me. Not just angry, cable tv lady. But nerd mom. There she goes she goes again talking about a bottlecap. Stop her. But the fact is, i have always been somewhat of a breast entree frustrated tinkerer. The soda bottles submarine that sank, the marshmallow shooter that has marshmallows stuck in the pvc piping, a weber grill i tried to modify and i almost since my eyebrows off. I thought really, who better to write about the successes than someone who is such a want to be. Such a little failure. Of course that is somewhat of a cliche now that when people talk about successful entrepreneurs they always mention failure which is such a huge and radiant motivator for them to continue. There were so many statements even just in the last couple of weeks that have emphasized and underscored some of the things i talk about in the introduction to the book. It is really my personal manifesto against this mouth shaming agenda. The open open denigration that we here not only in statements like you didnt build that but other statements. For obama. At one point when he was lobbying he said, you have earned enough money. Because he is a decider. How about biden who has said that every great idea of the 19th, 20th, 21st century is the result of government division. How about mr. Bernie sanders, he handed it to me on a silver platter this week, kicking off his campaign, speaking to financial journalist john harwood and he says, one of the core problems with america is that there are 23 types of deodorants on our store shelves in 18 types of sneakers. Because consumers have so many choices it is these selfish people who are either consuming all of these innumerable products, and all of the people who are employed manufacturing that there are the cause of childhood hunger in america. So next time youre doing this, hunger is your fault. [laughter] by the way, i need someone to go to the bathroom really quickly before a forget and get me a role roll of toilet paper. Can someone do that . Just go grab a roll of toilet paper. I will get back to that in a second. So this is perfect, and everything will be safe at work. So here we have Bernie Sanders who, by the way who are some of his biggest donors in france . Ben and jerry from ben jerrys ice cream. And how many flavors of ice today sell . [laughter] i propose that Bernie Sanders first asks as theoretical presidency that ben jerrys only be allowed to sell one flavor of ice cream, venezuela vanilla. [laughter] could this be more perfect . The idea that somehow we should be punished because we have a myriad of choices. Guess what Bernie Sanders . You can buy my book at walmart, cosco, barnes noble, and other places in God Bless America for it. [applause]. There is my toilet paper. How many types of toilet paper are on the shelf at safeway . We can quilted, to plaque, three ply, foreplay, scented or unscented. Its not thanks to the federal department of innovation that we have toilet paper in venezuela and the soviet union dont. Because there could be no government executive order that created a single roll of toilet paper. Many of you, because you have parents and committed teachers, and homeschoolers who understand that education is a failure if you do not have an appreciation of basic free market, economic values. Many of you are familiar with the iconic essay by leonard reed, called i pencil. Yes . Raise your hand. I think this should be mandatory. If i had a common core curriculum, i pencil would be taught in second grade or first grade. This was the way of illustrating the miracle of millions of voluntary exchanges that go on in our country every day. Also around the world where they can. Of all the cooperation that goes on without any centralized topdown hand coordinating it. The engines, the fuel for producing something as simple as a pencil comes from allowing people to pursue their self interest. It is the same thing with toilet paper which is why one of the chapters i wrote is i toilet paper. And boy was was it fun to write in the voice of a roll of toilet paper. What i found was, it was such a joy to take a break from the dearly daily wear and taher of the tv world where there so Much Negative to just be able to breathe in this incredible legacy. The history of toilet paper can be traced back to our Founding Fathers. Many of them who were private, venture capitalists in the paper mills across pennsylvania. Benjamin franklin was one of them. Toilet paper owners never thought that we have them to thank for the comfort of this. They were just trying to put food on the table and make a living and yes make a profit. They said it with a happy smile on their face. These days, do you hear people as is with the profanity, or pixelation like a cartoon . We cant make a profit. Then of course theres a wreaking hypocrisy of obama going after private venture capitalists. Just a few weeks ago at Georgetown University at a poverty summit, im sure you all saw this, wrote a piece about this in usa today, he denigrated, he picked at random of course the top 25 Hedge Fund Managers in america to denigrate. He called them quote, societies lottery winners. As if their success, their achievement, the Creative Capital that they had, the decision decision that they made to invest another private businesses were somehow distributed like a powerball drawing. Some people get lucky and everybody else does not. Theyre stuck in relegated to those positions for life. Nonsense. Not only is this nonsense, that only is it seething class warfare, it is anti american. Because it is looking at everything this country represented in the past ny we have have been such a success for so long. This man is ignorant of history. People like him, these capitalists need to be called out. That is why i dedicated who built that to president barack obama [applause]. So this is going to be showing tell. But before i get to some of these really cool things, by the way, i i have a whole bag of these bottle caps so kids if you want to have before you leave come up to me and i will give you some of them. But i do want to talk about Ronald Reagan and how he affected my life and what he meant to my family and me. So i have told a lot of students i speak to across the country, i do not always have this big mouth, i i know you are so shocked. [laughter] it was always incredibly difficult for me as a child to get up in front of an audience, believe it or not. I feel my seventh grade speech class. Ill never forget it because it had reagan tied to it. We are told to write about anything we wanted to write about and speak for three minutes. I had always been a very indepth writer. If it was something i could commit to paper, i would get an a. But having to deliver its i wrote my speech in 1982 about a government official, a Civil Servant named lenny who dived into the potomac, there is a plane crash, i dont remember that airline. Air florida thank you. Like the geriatric memory bank, thank you. [laughter] this was an ordinary guy who did an extra and everything. He saved several passenger lives in the icy potomac. I wrote a great speech about this because what president reagan did was launch the ongoing tradition of honoring an ordinary american who did externa things during the state of the union. That tradition continues today. So i got my paper written, got up to the podium, i failed. I went home to my mom, i cried and thank god i had not just a tiger mom, but a Mountain Lion mom who is completely unsympathetic. She said words that ring true today and so many contexts, im sure many of these students had missed numbers like this. She said if if you dont speak for yourself, no one will. Thats how i felt on my college campus. I went to Overland College its like the miserably of the midwest. I went to a school where the lack of intellectual diversity on campus was not ashamed, it was something youre proud of. At some point you realize that the selfanointed progressives who claim your mind because of your chromosomal makeup, right gals . They just assume that you belong to them and a lot of the racial grievance mongers, somehow they should claim every last minority on campus and on the inner city by virtue your skin color or ethnicity. That source of entitlement that they have needs to be pushed back against by people with an alternative view. Of what constitutes hope and change. [applause]. When i wrote this book i didnt just want to write it for folks who hear me on tv, truth what i have to say and thats why im so glad book tv is here to reach out to a wider audience. In particular i wanted to make sure young people heard this message, because we have a huge problem, if only we had fulfilled reagans vision eliminated the federal department of education, we would not have as many problems as we have at the elementary and secondary level. We have the common core invitation, not just of english, math, and dont get me started on common core math, or maybe you do. Its also history. Is the progressive architects of things like common core, no child left behind, outcomebased education, whatever else there has been that came before. These monstrosities are always morphing like transformers. There are now revamping the u. S. History standards, they have even more of an overt, marxist, socialist, anti capitalist thing to them. All the more reason to make sure there are alternative curriculums. Alternative voices that we have yes representatives not only at College Campuses but reaching out to me of High School Programs here which are so vitall