In the latest video from PragerU, former Governor of South Carolina (2011 to 2017) and United States Ambassador to the United Nations (2017 to 2018) Nikki Haley encourages young Americans to “be brave” and push back against leftist efforts to denigrate the country.
Referencing her time as US Ambassador to the UN, Haley discusses the common problem in which “plain truth seems like a foreign concept,” where “speaking your mind can feel daunting,” and where “the founding principles of The United States of America are openly ridiculed.”
Haley begins by pointing out just “how strange things can get at the UN.” For example, the UN Human Rights Council “is dominated by some of the world’s worst human rights offenders,” while “true democracies, like Israel, are routinely abused,” and America, “the nation that has protected the God-given rights of hundreds of millions of people all over the globe,” is “openly criticized.”
“Most college campuses,” Haley continues, “have become as anti-American as the UN,” and “the only person who can set it right side up is you.”
Haley asks viewers to “be brave,” “defend your right to speak out” and to “defend America.” Such actions should never involve rudeness or violence, but do require “having the facts and saying the truth with clarity and purpose,” while refusing to back down “even if your classmates or professor — or, in [Haley’s] case, the representatives of 193 governments — try to make you look foolish.”
To effectively defend America requires knowing American history, she states, starting with our country’s primary sources: “The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, George Washington’s farewell speech, the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s second inaugural.”
While exploring America’s history, Haley reminds us to compare “America to reality, not to utopia,” being careful to “judge people in the context of their time, not by the standards of our time.”
“If you do that,” Haley says, “I have every confidence you’ll find yourself loving this country as much as I do.”
Haley then adds weight and context as we work to “have the courage to tell” America’s great story. “What the fight for racial equality was to prior generations,” Haley explains, “the fight for free speech and intellectual freedom is to your generation. You are on the front line. You are the rebel.”
With this in mind, Haley brings us back to the challenges we face today. “Never before, in my lifetime,” Haley warns, “can I remember when more Americans were as stifled or as constantly told what they’re allowed to think and what they’re allowed to say.”
The issue is that the same “fashionable ideas” pushed and promoted at home are often “the very same ones espoused by the thugs on the Human Rights Council: That America is racist, that capitalism — the only economic system to lift billions of people out of poverty — is the source of our problems, that socialism is bliss, that freedom of speech is not that important.”
In no uncertain terms, Haley rebukes these “dead wrong” ideas. “There is no question that America can and should improve,” Haley agrees. “But the constant slandering of American democracy and the opportunity it offers to everyone is a one-way street to a much worse future.” While also agreeing that “America isn’t perfect,” Haley states that “it’s also not an accident that we are the most generous, most prosperous, and most free country — for people of every race, ethnicity, and religion — in world history.”
The former US Ambassador to the UN concludes her message by saying that while “everything of value comes with a price,” that “price will be worth it because America is worth it.”
“Speaking the truth is often difficult. So, it takes courage to do so. Many have died to preserve America and liberty. No one is asking you to risk your life. But it is now your generation’s turn to step up. Or you will lose both your country and your freedom.”
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