It is the busiest travel day of the year. Tens of millions of Americans are on the move on this Thanksgiving Eve twenty twenty four, fifty four days before a change in presidential power, Donald Trump has been handed something called immunity by the Supreme Court. In simple language, it means functionally, he is above the law. For the first time America has a king or a caesar, we have elevated someone who is one of us above us. It's a dangerous precedent and one that should be reset at
the first opportunity. This is the warning. What is our national purpose? Has there ever been one? Should there even be one? Is it possible to even have one in a country so geographically large, so populated, so diverse, made up of all of the people from all over the world,
where every language is commonly spoke every day. One of the things that was talked about in this campaign over and over again as a plea, not really a statement of fact anymore by Kamala Harris, though I believe it to be true, is that, in fact, even in these divided times, we share much more in common than we do in disagreement. This boiling question if we should separate
or be together has long royaled the American conversation. It is not possible to comprehend America without appreciating that one hundred and fifty eight years ago there was a civil war in a nation of thirty four million people that almost killed one million people. The question that has always hung in the air during America's darkest days and nights is a combination of will we make it through and what comes next? There's an adjacent question when times call
for immense sacrifice on the altar of freedom. When Americans, through our history, mostly young men, have been called forward to cross the river in service of their nation, to lay down their lives. And when you ask people to make a sacrifice to lay down their lives, it must have purpose and meaning, or what the country is taking will produce a cynicism, in a rage and in anger, because the living will have stolen meaning from the death of those who offered their lives as a measure of
their devotion to the country. John Lewis is an example of an American born in the twentieth century who is every bit as much a founding father of the America we live in today as is Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, and so is in this construct the man who redeemed the union and saved it Lincoln and his general who became a president after him. Grant what is the common
link the purpose of all of these people's lives. In the end, what they shared in common was a commitment to justice and freedom, and they were ready to fight for it and to take a stand for it. We live in a moment where we point fingers and recriminate
each other at the drop of a hat. When someone expresses a fear and anxiety or worry, it has become normal on the left the point a finger and accuse somebody who expresses worry about World War Three, like Joe Rogan and say they were a Russian asset, as opposed to appreciating that Joe Rogan, like my twenty one year old daughter and her sorority friends, is simply afraid.
What I don't feel safer is right now they're launching missiles into Russia. Yeah, how are you allowed to do that when you're on the way out? Like the people don't want you to be there anymore. This should be like some sort of like a pause for like significant actions that could potentially start World War three. Maybe that would be a good thing that we would like to avoid from a dying former president. The whole thing is nuts.
They fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time ever, so the first time one of those has ever been used. That sanity fucking insanity, because those intercontinental ballistic missiles can have nukes on them. This wouldn't didn't, but if it does, the whole world changes. That's what's scary about life. Is like, you don't want to pay attention to that shit. You just want to live your life. You want to just be care free and have fun and do the thing
that you're passionate about. And meanwhile the world is burning.
They're terrified of war, and they should be. Joe Rogan observed that for the first time in history, the Russians launched ain't combat one of their intercontinental ballistic missiles. He came after the United States government and the Biden administration gave permission for Ukraine to fire American made long range weapons into Russia. That came after North Korean troops arrived
on Russian soil. What are we to do soon? Maybe Pete Hegsath will be the Secretary of Defense and when I look at the turmoil of the world, what frightens me is not a lack of American power, but a lack of American judgment, not by ordinary people, but by the people around Trump who have been brought to power. And the choice we have made is to place the most unfit man in American history back into power atop
the world's most powerful armed forces. It's interesting when you have an appreciation for what is going to happen next. I love these old Life magazines. They're time capsules. Open up on and see in vivid and graphic detail, the stress, the worry, the advertisements, the culture of America in a moment in time. This was the addition of Life magazine,
printed on September eleventh, nineteen thirty nine. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini is on the cover, and within this magazine are the first images of a German soldier in Poland. It's incredible to see eleven days after the start of the war, the photo from September first. There's no question about how the war started. When you look at these pictures, you know everything that happened in the war, but then also for the next eighty years. But then in that moment.
Those people who opened up that magazine with dread and fear and worry in America were no different than any American today watching this with a deep sense of worry about what's next. If you look at Life magazine covers across our many July fourths, they paint a portrait of a country in turmoil, in peace and prosperity, and in war. This is the first edition that has a dead American on the cover. And in this moment July fifth of nineteen forty three, across twenty seven pages are the names
of America is Dead. There are more than twelve thousand by nineteen forty three when the magazine is laid out. There are fifteen thousand dead by the time it is published. And I know how it ends in this magazine though it's just beginning. And there is a question that is posed that's necessary in this moment. Why did they die? And for what? The magazine publishes a brilliant editorial, and it posits that we have a national purpose and that their lives and their deaths had great meaning in the
fulfillment of that purpose. The magazine makes the point at the moment of their death they were not thinking about great causes. They were not thinking about abstractions. They did not voluntarily, in the moment, choose to die for their country. What Life Magazine makes the point about is that it is the living who decide the legacy of the dead,
because the living must give meaning to their life. There is great purpose in the life of a John Lewis, and there is great meaning in his life unless that purpose is eradicated by a future generation of Americans who stripped the meaning of his bravery by turning against the purpose of his life, which was the expansion of freedom, which is precisely what these men died for going over
the hill, crossing the river. Freedom is sublime, tophemeral, and in the American tradition, we've appreciated that there is purpose and worth in every human life, that the individual is more important and more powerful, more righteous than all the pronouncements of the state. We know in America that the genius of our founders has protected us from the jackboot
of the state on our neck. And we know that over and over again we've sent our young men and now our young women forward into difficult situations in hard places, with their lives on the line, and then it came to be that a compact was broken, and young people who had purpose in their lives and died for meaning, had it stripped away by a politics who devalued it, who entered into transactions for the self interest of the people at the top, against the interests of all of
the beautiful mosaic that makes the country strong and powerful. And the disgust that has flowed from that has written the Trump chapter. And so now, on this Thanksgiving we can choose bitterness and anger or a rededication to core
principles into a deeper purpose. What is the purpose of involvement in politics, in civics in our country to defeat Donald Trump or to look out twenty five years from now and be able to play the smallest of parts in the greatest of construction projects, the building of the shining city on the hill. The only king that matters in America was named Martin, and he had a vision, a prophecy like the Viennese artist. But it wasn't of death. It was a promise in justice, and he said we
would get there, and we will, but not tomorrow. In the Life magazine, when there were fifteen thousand American War dead on the Way to four hundred and five thousand, and the question was posed about why about the sacrifice. The author was skeptical if the country would have the endurance, the grit, the stamina of the fortitude. He questioned the resolve of that generation. He was unable to see forward to this day, just as we will be unable to
see forward to where America will be. But if I could talk to him, what I would say to him is those people you doubted, we remember them in twenty twenty four. Singularly we call them the greatest generation, but they're not the greatest generation, because the greatest generation of Americans has not yet been born. What I would tell my children is that maybe it's their generation, or maybe
their children's, or maybe their great grandchildren's. The greatest generation will be the one that summits Kings Mountaintop and builds the shining city on the hill seen so very long ago by John Winthrow and rededicated by John Kennedy. It's an American city that shines for all the world was built by great sacrifice. The purpose of America is not defeating Donald Trump. He's among our smallest and lowest and
most malice men. But He will give us an opportunity to find our way back to our purpose in this country, the vigorous expansion of freedom. It is our faith, It is the meaning of our lives as Americans. Happy Thanksgiving, Do not be afraid keep the faith. Our best days are ahead of us, even though it will all get worse before it gets better. Fortitude is very much part
of the American character. It will be needed. There will be tough moments, there will be terrible days caused by what's coming, but we will get through it as we always have. This is the morning. I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the morning, and I invite you to join. Subscribe on our substack on our YouTube channel, follow us. Welcome to the community.