TrulySignificant.com, the center for honoring people that lift others up, presents our July 4th celebration with Robert "Bobby" Charles, Gubernatorial candidate in Maine.
Hear this fascinating historical perspective on our Independence Day. You will be surprised what bill of rights were eliminated to eliminated by the original founders to help pass into law.
Support Bobby in his campaign for Governor of Maine. Donate $25 or whatever you can to www.BobbyforMaine.com TODAY.
Maine has unique opportunities that Bobby Charles addresses. He is the best option to bring Maine out of their valley and into a positive light. Trust in Bobby to fight the battle for the citizens of Maine. Freedom is under fire in Maine. Shocking drug traffic, property tax, low medium income, and ranked 50th in education amongst all states. Maine has issues. Bobby has a plan to rebuild Maine.
Have courage and boldly vote for change that preserves freedom. Cherish Maine, cherish the next generation, and remember to re-commit yourself to defend freedom.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
Hear this fascinating historical perspective on our Independence Day. You will be surprised what bill of rights were eliminated to eliminated by the original founders to help pass into law.
Support Bobby in his campaign for Governor of Maine. Donate $25 or whatever you can to www.BobbyforMaine.com TODAY.
Maine has unique opportunities that Bobby Charles addresses. He is the best option to bring Maine out of their valley and into a positive light. Trust in Bobby to fight the battle for the citizens of Maine. Freedom is under fire in Maine. Shocking drug traffic, property tax, low medium income, and ranked 50th in education amongst all states. Maine has issues. Bobby has a plan to rebuild Maine.
Have courage and boldly vote for change that preserves freedom. Cherish Maine, cherish the next generation, and remember to re-commit yourself to defend freedom.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/success-made-to-last-legends--4302039/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey, welcome back to Truly Significant dot Com Presents, and
this is our July fourth conversation that is with the
gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles out of the great state of Maine.
I hope that you can support Bobby by going to
(00:29):
Bobbyfomaine dot com and contribute what you candidate. Wonderful candidate.
We've had Bobby on our show before. He wrote the
book Cherish America Stories of Courage, Character and Kindness. It
was selected these success made the last book of the
year nonfiction last year. And you're going to hear this
(00:54):
gentleman who volunteered for active duty on nine eleven of
two thousand and one. In two thousand and three, he
was unanimously confirmed by the US Senate to become the
Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell. In that capacity,
he managed a two billion dollar billion dollar budget and
(01:18):
set up the Iraqi and Afghan police training programs, managed
global security programs in seventy countries. And wonderful patriot and
a friend of Barbara Bush, one of my mentors in life,
and friends of the Reagans. And you know how I
(01:38):
feel about the Reagans. If you've been listening to my
sixteen year series here. I hope that you enjoyed today's program.
I hope that on this July fourth, our two hundred
and forty ninth, that you paused to be thankful for
all the freedom that we enjoy here in this truly
(02:01):
significant country we call America. Hey, welcome back to our
truly significant July fourth program. And our special returning guest
is Robert Bobby Charles. And you probably remember him from
a previous show we had on He wrote Cherish America,
Stories of Courage, character and Kindness. It was awarded the
(02:23):
success made the last book of the year nonfiction, and
I don't think there's anybody better to talk about Independence
Day and what it means to him. Considering you, Bobby Charles,
are a great student of history.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
How you doing, Bobby, I'm doing great, Rick, And I
always appreciate being on your show and your patriotic temperament
and your convictions, so appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Well. Happy July fourth. I appreciate hearing that, and let's
hear it from you. Tell us about the importance of
July fourth, especially given everything that's going on.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
So let me do this. It's a great, great opening.
Let me divide this conversation into two parts. One is history,
a little bit about what really happened that we call
Independence day, and second the meaning of that day even
as it applies to us here now so historically. And
I am a student of history. I love history. In
that book, by the way, Cherish America, there is a
(03:22):
chapter on Thomas Jefferson things people didn't know about him,
and one on Adams as well. So interesting that those
two men, those two men played a pivotal role in
creating what we now call the Declaration of Independence, and
in the days before July fourth, getting us in a
position where we would we I say we they would
would undertake enormous risk to try to bring this country
(03:45):
to its independence. The declaration itself, and just to remind people,
was actually drafted by five people. We give Jefferson credit
because he really was the one that put pen to
paper or feather, pen to paper to parchment, but he
he was one of five. He Benjamin Franklin, John Adams,
Roger Sherman, and I think Robert Livingston were what they
(04:09):
called the Committee of five. And Sherman was from Connecticut,
Livingston was from New York, and of course Jefferson and
Franklin and Adams are well known. So what they did
is they sat down and they tried to articulate what
it meant to get out from underneath a tyrant. And
George the third interestingly, before they brought that to a
(04:32):
vote and signed it on July fourth, and the preliminary
was done on July second, they actually knocked out two
paragraphs from the Declaration of Independence. Just interesting to know
that one of the paragraphs they knocked out would have
freed the slaves. And of course they the southern members
of the Constitutional Convention, didn't want to do that, but
(04:54):
they did write it in and it was eventually taken
out that day. The second one was they, and I
think this is fascinating in the content of our modern
world today, they actually took out a paragraph condemning the
people of Great Britain. And part of that reasoning was
that they had friends that were in that group. But
the second part of the reasoning was that they very
carefully distinguished between the government which was tyrannical and the
(05:18):
people who they understood were under the thumb of that
tyrannical government. So if you wind the clock ahead for
a moment First of all, we would never be sitting
here today. And it's such a strange and wonderful thing
to think back through time that everything we experience around
us today, the books behind me, the studio you have there,
everything here is a product of the freedoms that they
(05:40):
first put in the form of a representative democracy or
republic in the Articles, but also in the Bill of Rights,
which of course guaranteed to us, freedoms that that we
easily could have lost and that we have to fight
for every day to day because people still want to
take them away. The funny part is that people like
George Mason were the one that insisted that they put
(06:01):
this Bill of Rights in and not because they thought
that those individual rights were going to be taken away
by the current government at that time, the very representative
government of the thirteen Colonies which were going to become
the United States. But rather they looked over horizon after
horizon after horizon and imagined that the federal power might
grow so large that they would want to take away,
(06:23):
as George the Third had, that they might want to
take away the right to worship, or the right to
free speech, or the right to self defense. In the
second Amendment, and they therefore wanted never mind the fourth, fifth, sixth,
tenth amendments. They wanted to preserve for all time. And
how wise is that, I mean extraordinarily wise to think
(06:43):
that power always concentrates itself, and that no matter what
you put on a sheet of paper, the people who
own the sovereignty of their own lives are going to
be challenged by a government that's going to try to
take their power away. So incredible courage on the part
of those original founders. I'll step off the reservation for
(07:04):
a moment here and say, one of the things that
I think is amazing is they had no air conditioning
back then, in the middle of a very hot, overwhelmed
you know, Philadelphia summer drafting and drafting, of course the
later the entire Constitution, they had no They had no
special you know, they didn't have advil to reach for
(07:24):
when they got a headache. They didn't have they didn't
have inoculations, they didn't have antibiotics, they didn't have any
of these things. And in fact, if you go back
and look, and this is one of the most stark realities,
almost all of the Founding Fathers, at some point in
their lives early on lost children. I mean Jefferson lost children,
Adams lost children, and you know, they went through extraordinary
(07:47):
physical and emotional stress and pain, putting them in a
position where their spiritual strength was probably the only thing
at times that they had. And that was certainly true
of Adams in Washington. And and instead of becoming discouraged,
i mean, remember the Revolutionary War ends up being seven years,
instead of being discouraged, they would reach back to their faith.
(08:08):
They would, they would, they would seek strength, and from
that strength they would continue their battle for freedom. So
let's wind the clock ahead for a moment to right now,
right now, in the world, there is yet another reminder
to us. We just had this situation in Iran. We
have constant battles around the world on a on a
lower level, and the reality is that freedom is always
(08:31):
under attack. It wasn't just under attack on Independence Day
and they had to step up and do what they
did and risk their fortunes in their lives, as they
so well articulated, But it's always under attack. It's like
it's like anything else in life. Every generation has to
learn that there are things that will be taken away
from you if you don't stand up for them. And
(08:51):
you know we are learning it right now. We've come
through i would say, a wind tunnel in the last
four eight, you know, ten years in which the freedoms
that we thought were always sacrisanct, the freedoms that got
taken away from us during this COVID epidemic, often by
governors and by the federal government. Really it should have
shaken us to our roots of the liberty tree, if
(09:13):
you will, to say that, to realize that these freedoms
are always under attack. Free speech is never liked by
concentrated power. The ability to worship and hold a god
higher than government is never liked by concentrated power. Look
at the communist governments around the world, the idea that
guns will be allowed to be held by individuals who
in turn, yes, of course, they use them for their
(09:35):
own purposes, but they're always able to rally in order
to hold back the government because they have guns. Even
Mahatma Gandhi, of all people, that man of nonviolence and peace,
argued that one of the most tragic things that happened
to India under the rule of the British was that
they took away their firearms because that left them naked
to the power assertion of at times a dictatorial government.
(10:00):
So one of the things we have to remember today
is that this is, like many things in life, a
recurring and real fight. This is not about respecting the
history books, which we should do and imagining that they
took care of that dragon for us. No, they didn't
take care of that dragon for us. And the Saint
George in us still has to be prepared every day
of the week to battle back and to preserve these freedoms.
(10:23):
So I'll leave you with one last thought. As you know,
I grow up here in Wayne, in Maine, right here
in the middle of a very rural state. I live
in the middle of a rural state. I always thought
freedom was just something that you know, we grew up
with World War two vettes. We thought this was just
something that they'd won for us, and we needed to
just be grateful for what they'd done for us and
(10:44):
leave it at that. Turns out that having moved back
here some years ago, I discovered that freedom is under
fire right here in the state of Maine. That the
inability of this governor, or unwillingness of the Democrat governor
to assert and Attorney general, any real authority against these
drug traffickers which have overwhelmed the state. Led me to
(11:07):
just a moment of real sadness. Last year we had
more than ten thousand overdoses in this wonderful state of
one point four million people. And I having spent all
my life as a crime fighter and defending freedom around
the world and defending it here and in uniform, I
really was aghast at that. And then I saw that
the taxes are so high in this state were number
(11:27):
one in the country for property taxes despite having an
average income of forty two thousand dollars. How can that be?
We can't afford The seniors are getting pushed out of
their homes even though they spent their whole lives paying
for those homes. That the younger people, they are unable
to have the freedom that comes with I guess I'll
call it the American dream having a home the median
(11:48):
income in this state. And I know I'm a little
off topic with you on the independent state, but it
all relates back, frankly, Rick, because those young people don't
get the idea to defend a little patch of earth
that they call their own because they cannot afford that
little patch of earth. And the last big thing is education.
We're number fifty of fifty in the country, and that's
a horrifying recognition. Or given that I grew up in
(12:09):
an unaccredited high school in Wayne, Maine, in Readfield, Maine,
and well both the elementary school and the high school,
I was able to survive and get a good education
and have a productive Almost all of my peers, some
of them are main guides, some of them are running
their own businesses, some of them are like me. Others
are doing other things in life. But they learned how
to do math and reading. Freedom and John Adams was
(12:31):
very clear about this, So is Washington, so is Jefferson,
so is Hamilton. Freedom will only be preserved if the
people are educated and morally educated to defend it. So
I guess my message for today is that you have
to remember freedom is something that can go right through
your fingers, and it can be taken away by inches
or all in one fell swoop. And what we have
(12:53):
to do is remember to have the same level of courage,
the same level of personal courage in interacting with people
that our founders had. They sacrificed everything. You know, Ben
Franklin only had one son, and his son ended up
being a Tory and he never spoke with him again.
It was a sad thing. Ben Franklin went to his
son and said, please be part of this movement that
(13:14):
preserves our freedom. His son said no and ended up
up in Canada and they never talked again. So the
sad part is a lot of risk is involved in
defending freedom. But if we don't defend it, then our children,
our grandchildren, and our great great great great great grandchildren
will not have it. And we have to acculturate people
to realize that the fourth of July, the Independence Day,
(13:35):
is a wonderful day for family and for remembering the
greatness of our country and remembering the sacrifice that got
us here, that America is not an accident, that it
is a product of enormous sacrifice. But it is also
a day to recommit ourselves to the idea that the
torch is now in our hand. Whether you wanted it
handed to you or not, it has been handed to you,
(13:55):
and you need to defend those freedoms yourself every day
of the week.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Absolutely, And Bobby, that is the reason why you are
answering a higher calling to run for governor of Maine.
And I reread Cherish America yesterday preparing for this program
with you. It should be called Cherish Maine because there's
(14:21):
some things that need to be handled led through in
your own state. You just mentioned those. I was going
to ask you what's the most dangerous threat to freedom
in Maine today? You just riled off three big ones, and.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
You know, Rick, I would pick and run with that
torch for a moment with you. I think the biggest
threat to freedom in Maine and in a few other
states is the notion that we can be wilfully ignorant
or willingly helpless, and that we can allow the government
to make decisions for us. You know, when I was
(14:59):
very much younger than I am now, and I had
my two kids were young, and I was in a
grocery store with my son, and he was about five
or six years old, and he'd heard Dad talking about
this and that about freedom, and he finally said to me, Dad,
what is the difference? So this is a kid, maybe
he was seven, what is the difference between Democrats and Republicans?
(15:20):
And of course every shopping cart in the aisle stopped
to hear what was Dad going to say to his
son about that, And I said to him, well, let
me put it to you this way, Nicholas. There are
some very good people in the world who call themselves democrats,
and they where they get into power when they are
(15:43):
elected into their office here in the state in the
United States. They believe they make good decisions, and they
want to make as many good decisions as they can
for you, rather than having you make those decisions, because
they believe that they won't make the mistakes that you'll make,
or that they're collective wisdom is going to put them
in a position where they make all kinds of good
decisions for you, how you can live your life, what
(16:05):
the limits are on your life, how much you pay
the government to keep you safe or to keep giving
you things. In any event, the bottom line is there
are people who are of good heart, but they want
to control the way that we make our decisions, and
those are democrats. And on the other side, there are
some people who recognize that humanity is failed, that we
(16:27):
invariably make mistakes, but that the best way to learn
how to make better decisions is not to give that
decision making power to someone else that makes them for you.
But rather to make those decisions one by one by yourself,
and sometimes be wrong, sometimes fall down and skin up
your knees and have to get back up again, and
then take with you the wisdom that comes from knowing
(16:47):
how to get back up again, recognizing what it means
to learn from your errors. And we believe that it's okay. Actually,
in fact, it's far superior to let individuals make their
own decisions and just allow them to make their mistakes
and correct them. And that that I didn't use all
this wording with him, but that the invisible hand of
(17:08):
Adam Smith and others will essentially lead us in the direction.
If you have free markets, and you have freedoms of
political freedoms, you will end up in a society in
which good decisions are ultimately aggregated, and you, as an
individual will have the dignity and the confidence and the
self awareness, the self resilience to the self enterprise to
(17:31):
be able to recognize that you, yourself are becoming a
better person by making better and better decisions. And in
a very short way, I said all that to him.
Democrats really want to make decisions for you, and Republicans
tend to think you make mistakes when you make them
as an individual. But we're going to let you make
those mistakes and learn from them. And I just never
forget that. The shopping carts sort of moved away and
(17:52):
due time, and my son ended up saying, you know, Dad,
I want to be one of those people that makes
his own decisions. And I said, I think that's a
good I think that's a good way to think about it.
So we are in the state of Maine overwhelmed by
a monopoly, i e. A monopoly of the Democratic Party.
They control the House, the Senate, the governorship, the US Well,
they Democrats had appointed the US Attorney in Maine. That
(18:15):
was a federal decision and that was a Democrat. And
our attorney general, a Secretary of State who tried to
throw Trump off the ballot and is also running for
governor now, and the treasurer are all Democrats. The sad
thing is there is not a sense of committee, a
sense of collegiality, a sense that you want to listen
to the minority, which is incidentally what they did back
(18:37):
at the founding in the Constitutional Convention. One of the
most remarkable things is they were all seeking truth. And
because they were seeking truth. They were unafraid to change
their minds when convinced by another member of the Constitutional
Convention that they should change their minds. And so you
never saw in the notes that Madison took. You never
saw a criticism of one member or another member for
(18:59):
having changed their mind That was viewed as a recognition
that Bill of Rights in particular was extremely important that
we had to get it right. And so I wind
the clock forward here to Maine. We have a monopoly
controlled by Democrats. It is literally suffocating a lot of
people financially. It's causing this terrible upsurge of indifference to
(19:22):
drug addiction. They give away needles all over the place.
If you're walking a dog in Bangor or Portland, Maine,
you got to watch out that you kick the needles. Aside,
you have these drug traffickers everywhere. With the flow down
crime meaning burglaries and robberies and assaults, domestic violence is
very highly tied to drug abuse in this state. We
have so and what we have is a full recognition
(19:42):
I think on the part of the government that this
is happening, but no recognition that the pain at the
individual level is almost unendurable. And Rick I meet with
and sit with parents. You know, a couple of parents
in that book are people who lost their kids to drugs.
I sit with these parents and it has changed there
lives forever in a way that will create a dark
(20:03):
spot and emptiness that is inconsolable. And the same thing
is true of grandparents and siblings. And when you can
have we lose up to seventy kids, between forty and
seventy kids a month in this state, and a governor
who doesn't seem to care about this, barely addresses it,
underfunds the police. We have only three hundred and fifteen
treatment beds in a state of one point four million.
(20:24):
That's absurd. We are in a position now where essentially
we've hit the bottom. And the reason I'm stepping up
isn't because I ever wanted to be the governor. It's
because I spent my whole life fixing these exact problems.
I was a crime fighter. I helped put the Cali
cartel out of business. I know exactly how to get
rid of these traffickers. And at the same time, I've
(20:44):
managed billions of dollars. I know how to fix the budget,
and I've been a teacher. I understand what it means
to get kids back on track. And I'm going to
spend between you and me, I'm going to be in
every high school in this state trying to bring the
inspiration and the understanding that you find in books like
Charity America and Eagles and Evergreens. You help them to
understand that the American dream is within their reach. And
(21:06):
I have to we have to as adults in our generation,
we have to put it back within their reach and
then encourage them to work hard and essentially carry forward
the founding the founding values, because those values taught to
us by the World War two generation, because they lived them,
are the values that keep America America. So I love
this country. I love the current I think Trump is
(21:27):
doing a great job. I do believe that you have
to keep educating. And I again as a person, as
a young person who worked for Ronald Reagan and you
know that from the book, I think that there's an
incredible burden on our shoulders, all of our shoulders, no
matter whether you're in public office, or you're in the media,
or you're anywhere else in life. Maybe you're just a parent,
(21:47):
which I don't say just that's probably the most powerful
thing you can be in life, as a parent or
you're a teacher. You have to continue to pass forward
the appreciation for those rights that we sort of collapse
down together into this celebration on July fourth and say, gosh,
what an amazing country we have.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Bobby, just an observation on that, and on the book.
You don't have to be running for governor. You don't
have to be doing anything at this stage of your life.
This isn't about some pursuit of some title. This is
about what a man wants to do, needs to do,
(22:29):
and cares about the people of Maine. And you've got
this alchemy of voices that are driving you forward, including
Barbara Bush, former resident of Kinney Bunk. And those voices
are so powerful and in the case of Barbara Bush,
so common sensical. There's a bit of motherhood, fatherhood, but
(22:54):
just downright responsibility that just bleeds from you. That says, main,
let's give our state a chance to come from the
bottom of a valley and go north again.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Such a such a great metaphor too. I appreciate that.
I appreciate all the words you just said, Rick. I
you know, it does remind me of the psalm that
we walk through the valley of death. You know He's
with us, and I think we we have to remember
that when you're down on your lucky individually or a
state is down, you really have two choices. One is
(23:32):
to acquiesce and to believe you're powerless, and the other
is to say no, I have it in my power
to step up and help. And it may be that
the helping you do is to knock on some doors.
It may be talking to your neighbor. It may be
explaining to people that as a small business you're really
under the gun and you you need you need to
have some relief. It may be that you're a teacher
(23:53):
and you help. I mean, one of the most tragic
things in this state, Rick, is that roughly seventy percent
of our fourth grade even either cannot read or cannot
read to level, and almost that percentage of eighth graders
cannot do basic math. So, as I say to people,
you don't get two or three childhoods. You can't start
to learn to read at thirty seven. You can, but
(24:14):
the reality is you really ought to be learning that
in the schools. So I think of this as a calling.
I will tell you. You're absolutely right. I do not
need another certificate on my wall. I do not need
any of that. I just I will tell you that.
You know, it took two years to get to this decision,
a lot of people pressuring me to step up because
(24:35):
I have the tools, the skills, I guess to fix
all these problems, and I know I do. I mean,
each of these categories of problems are things that I've
wrestled with at one form, at one time or another,
and I've learned. I've made my own mistakes and figured out.
You know, you can't trust bureaucrats all the time to
do the thing they said they would do. You have
to go in and be not just a manager, but
a leader. You have to inspire people, and there are
(24:58):
days in which inspiration is very very thin. I'll never
forget when we were trying to resuscitate I guess a Raq,
and I was over there a fair amount of time,
and we were rebuilding over there. We had a two
billion dollar operational budget for Iraq and Afghanistan and the
air Wing and a bunch of other things, and people
would bring frustrations to me every day, and I would
(25:20):
look at them and say, Okay, so what are we
going to do to fix that problem? Not that they
weren't already thinking along those lines, but they needed a
little bucking up. And the other thing I would always
tell people is, look, life is full of challenges. Maine
ahead under my governorship will be filled with challenges, And
there are days. I want you to stay inspired. Every
day when you get up in the morning, be grateful
for the dawn, be grateful for the authority, the chance
(25:42):
to actually fix this right now, and then give that
power and that money back to the people of the
state of Maine so that they can run their own lives.
But at the same time, there are days when inspiration
is almost impossible, And I would always tell them, on
days when you can't be inspired, at least be amused,
because human nature is amusing. It is you know, it
repeats itself over and over again, and at a certain
(26:03):
point in time, we have to recognize that we're not
just admiring the leaders that we've been influenced by, but
we are the leaders somehow. My brain still tells me
at times I'm twenty five, but my body and the
rest of me tells me I'm almost sixty five. And
and you know, what at sixty five, I'm now one
of those elders that ought to be stepping up and
(26:24):
making a difference. So that's really the motivation inside me.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Thank you, Bobby. We wish you the best. Happy fourth
of July America, and happy fourth of July to are
the great citizens of the state of Maine. You got
a choice coming up, folks. You should choose the person
who's bringing a problem solving attitude to your state and
(26:53):
someone who's got your heart as a local citizen and
all the experience that you need to to lead you
as one state should be led. We appreciate everyone joining
us on today's show. Happy fourth or July, and as
we always say, we wish you success but on your
way to significance.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Have a great week you
Hey, welcome back to Truly Significant dot Com Presents, and
this is our July fourth conversation that is with the
gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles out of the great state of Maine.
I hope that you can support Bobby by going to
(00:29):
Bobbyfomaine dot com and contribute what you candidate. Wonderful candidate.
We've had Bobby on our show before. He wrote the
book Cherish America Stories of Courage, Character and Kindness. It
was selected these success made the last book of the
year nonfiction last year. And you're going to hear this
(00:54):
gentleman who volunteered for active duty on nine eleven of
two thousand and one. In two thousand and three, he
was unanimously confirmed by the US Senate to become the
Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell. In that capacity,
he managed a two billion dollar billion dollar budget and
(01:18):
set up the Iraqi and Afghan police training programs, managed
global security programs in seventy countries. And wonderful patriot and
a friend of Barbara Bush, one of my mentors in life,
and friends of the Reagans. And you know how I
(01:38):
feel about the Reagans. If you've been listening to my
sixteen year series here. I hope that you enjoyed today's program.
I hope that on this July fourth, our two hundred
and forty ninth, that you paused to be thankful for
all the freedom that we enjoy here in this truly
(02:01):
significant country we call America. Hey, welcome back to our
truly significant July fourth program. And our special returning guest
is Robert Bobby Charles. And you probably remember him from
a previous show we had on He wrote Cherish America,
Stories of Courage, character and Kindness. It was awarded the
(02:23):
success made the last book of the year nonfiction, and
I don't think there's anybody better to talk about Independence
Day and what it means to him. Considering you, Bobby Charles,
are a great student of history.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
How you doing, Bobby, I'm doing great, Rick, And I
always appreciate being on your show and your patriotic temperament
and your convictions, so appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Well. Happy July fourth. I appreciate hearing that, and let's
hear it from you. Tell us about the importance of
July fourth, especially given everything that's going on.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
So let me do this. It's a great, great opening.
Let me divide this conversation into two parts. One is history,
a little bit about what really happened that we call
Independence day, and second the meaning of that day even
as it applies to us here now so historically. And
I am a student of history. I love history. In
that book, by the way, Cherish America, there is a
(03:22):
chapter on Thomas Jefferson things people didn't know about him,
and one on Adams as well. So interesting that those
two men, those two men played a pivotal role in
creating what we now call the Declaration of Independence, and
in the days before July fourth, getting us in a
position where we would we I say we they would
would undertake enormous risk to try to bring this country
(03:45):
to its independence. The declaration itself, and just to remind people,
was actually drafted by five people. We give Jefferson credit
because he really was the one that put pen to
paper or feather, pen to paper to parchment, but he
he was one of five. He Benjamin Franklin, John Adams,
Roger Sherman, and I think Robert Livingston were what they
(04:09):
called the Committee of five. And Sherman was from Connecticut,
Livingston was from New York, and of course Jefferson and
Franklin and Adams are well known. So what they did
is they sat down and they tried to articulate what
it meant to get out from underneath a tyrant. And
George the third interestingly, before they brought that to a
(04:32):
vote and signed it on July fourth, and the preliminary
was done on July second, they actually knocked out two
paragraphs from the Declaration of Independence. Just interesting to know
that one of the paragraphs they knocked out would have
freed the slaves. And of course they the southern members
of the Constitutional Convention, didn't want to do that, but
(04:54):
they did write it in and it was eventually taken
out that day. The second one was they, and I
think this is fascinating in the content of our modern
world today, they actually took out a paragraph condemning the
people of Great Britain. And part of that reasoning was
that they had friends that were in that group. But
the second part of the reasoning was that they very
carefully distinguished between the government which was tyrannical and the
(05:18):
people who they understood were under the thumb of that
tyrannical government. So if you wind the clock ahead for
a moment First of all, we would never be sitting
here today. And it's such a strange and wonderful thing
to think back through time that everything we experience around
us today, the books behind me, the studio you have there,
everything here is a product of the freedoms that they
(05:40):
first put in the form of a representative democracy or
republic in the Articles, but also in the Bill of Rights,
which of course guaranteed to us, freedoms that that we
easily could have lost and that we have to fight
for every day to day because people still want to
take them away. The funny part is that people like
George Mason were the one that insisted that they put
(06:01):
this Bill of Rights in and not because they thought
that those individual rights were going to be taken away
by the current government at that time, the very representative
government of the thirteen Colonies which were going to become
the United States. But rather they looked over horizon after
horizon after horizon and imagined that the federal power might
grow so large that they would want to take away,
(06:23):
as George the Third had, that they might want to
take away the right to worship, or the right to
free speech, or the right to self defense. In the
second Amendment, and they therefore wanted never mind the fourth, fifth, sixth,
tenth amendments. They wanted to preserve for all time. And
how wise is that, I mean extraordinarily wise to think
(06:43):
that power always concentrates itself, and that no matter what
you put on a sheet of paper, the people who
own the sovereignty of their own lives are going to
be challenged by a government that's going to try to
take their power away. So incredible courage on the part
of those original founders. I'll step off the reservation for
(07:04):
a moment here and say, one of the things that
I think is amazing is they had no air conditioning
back then, in the middle of a very hot, overwhelmed
you know, Philadelphia summer drafting and drafting, of course the
later the entire Constitution, they had no They had no
special you know, they didn't have advil to reach for
(07:24):
when they got a headache. They didn't have they didn't
have inoculations, they didn't have antibiotics, they didn't have any
of these things. And in fact, if you go back
and look, and this is one of the most stark realities,
almost all of the Founding Fathers, at some point in
their lives early on lost children. I mean Jefferson lost children,
Adams lost children, and you know, they went through extraordinary
(07:47):
physical and emotional stress and pain, putting them in a
position where their spiritual strength was probably the only thing
at times that they had. And that was certainly true
of Adams in Washington. And and instead of becoming discouraged,
i mean, remember the Revolutionary War ends up being seven years,
instead of being discouraged, they would reach back to their faith.
(08:08):
They would, they would, they would seek strength, and from
that strength they would continue their battle for freedom. So
let's wind the clock ahead for a moment to right now,
right now, in the world, there is yet another reminder
to us. We just had this situation in Iran. We
have constant battles around the world on a on a
lower level, and the reality is that freedom is always
(08:31):
under attack. It wasn't just under attack on Independence Day
and they had to step up and do what they
did and risk their fortunes in their lives, as they
so well articulated, But it's always under attack. It's like
it's like anything else in life. Every generation has to
learn that there are things that will be taken away
from you if you don't stand up for them. And
(08:51):
you know we are learning it right now. We've come
through i would say, a wind tunnel in the last
four eight, you know, ten years in which the freedoms
that we thought were always sacrisanct, the freedoms that got
taken away from us during this COVID epidemic, often by
governors and by the federal government. Really it should have
shaken us to our roots of the liberty tree, if
(09:13):
you will, to say that, to realize that these freedoms
are always under attack. Free speech is never liked by
concentrated power. The ability to worship and hold a god
higher than government is never liked by concentrated power. Look
at the communist governments around the world, the idea that
guns will be allowed to be held by individuals who
in turn, yes, of course, they use them for their
(09:35):
own purposes, but they're always able to rally in order
to hold back the government because they have guns. Even
Mahatma Gandhi, of all people, that man of nonviolence and peace,
argued that one of the most tragic things that happened
to India under the rule of the British was that
they took away their firearms because that left them naked
to the power assertion of at times a dictatorial government.
(10:00):
So one of the things we have to remember today
is that this is, like many things in life, a
recurring and real fight. This is not about respecting the
history books, which we should do and imagining that they
took care of that dragon for us. No, they didn't
take care of that dragon for us. And the Saint
George in us still has to be prepared every day
of the week to battle back and to preserve these freedoms.
(10:23):
So I'll leave you with one last thought. As you know,
I grow up here in Wayne, in Maine, right here
in the middle of a very rural state. I live
in the middle of a rural state. I always thought
freedom was just something that you know, we grew up
with World War two vettes. We thought this was just
something that they'd won for us, and we needed to
just be grateful for what they'd done for us and
(10:44):
leave it at that. Turns out that having moved back
here some years ago, I discovered that freedom is under
fire right here in the state of Maine. That the
inability of this governor, or unwillingness of the Democrat governor
to assert and Attorney general, any real authority against these
drug traffickers which have overwhelmed the state. Led me to
(11:07):
just a moment of real sadness. Last year we had
more than ten thousand overdoses in this wonderful state of
one point four million people. And I having spent all
my life as a crime fighter and defending freedom around
the world and defending it here and in uniform, I
really was aghast at that. And then I saw that
the taxes are so high in this state were number
(11:27):
one in the country for property taxes despite having an
average income of forty two thousand dollars. How can that be?
We can't afford The seniors are getting pushed out of
their homes even though they spent their whole lives paying
for those homes. That the younger people, they are unable
to have the freedom that comes with I guess I'll
call it the American dream having a home the median
(11:48):
income in this state. And I know I'm a little
off topic with you on the independent state, but it
all relates back, frankly, Rick, because those young people don't
get the idea to defend a little patch of earth
that they call their own because they cannot afford that
little patch of earth. And the last big thing is education.
We're number fifty of fifty in the country, and that's
a horrifying recognition. Or given that I grew up in
(12:09):
an unaccredited high school in Wayne, Maine, in Readfield, Maine,
and well both the elementary school and the high school,
I was able to survive and get a good education
and have a productive Almost all of my peers, some
of them are main guides, some of them are running
their own businesses, some of them are like me. Others
are doing other things in life. But they learned how
to do math and reading. Freedom and John Adams was
(12:31):
very clear about this, So is Washington, so is Jefferson,
so is Hamilton. Freedom will only be preserved if the
people are educated and morally educated to defend it. So
I guess my message for today is that you have
to remember freedom is something that can go right through
your fingers, and it can be taken away by inches
or all in one fell swoop. And what we have
(12:53):
to do is remember to have the same level of courage,
the same level of personal courage in interacting with people
that our founders had. They sacrificed everything. You know, Ben
Franklin only had one son, and his son ended up
being a Tory and he never spoke with him again.
It was a sad thing. Ben Franklin went to his
son and said, please be part of this movement that
(13:14):
preserves our freedom. His son said no and ended up
up in Canada and they never talked again. So the
sad part is a lot of risk is involved in
defending freedom. But if we don't defend it, then our children,
our grandchildren, and our great great great great great grandchildren
will not have it. And we have to acculturate people
to realize that the fourth of July, the Independence Day,
(13:35):
is a wonderful day for family and for remembering the
greatness of our country and remembering the sacrifice that got
us here, that America is not an accident, that it
is a product of enormous sacrifice. But it is also
a day to recommit ourselves to the idea that the
torch is now in our hand. Whether you wanted it
handed to you or not, it has been handed to you,
(13:55):
and you need to defend those freedoms yourself every day
of the week.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Absolutely, And Bobby, that is the reason why you are
answering a higher calling to run for governor of Maine.
And I reread Cherish America yesterday preparing for this program
with you. It should be called Cherish Maine because there's
(14:21):
some things that need to be handled led through in
your own state. You just mentioned those. I was going
to ask you what's the most dangerous threat to freedom
in Maine today? You just riled off three big ones, and.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
You know, Rick, I would pick and run with that
torch for a moment with you. I think the biggest
threat to freedom in Maine and in a few other
states is the notion that we can be wilfully ignorant
or willingly helpless, and that we can allow the government
to make decisions for us. You know, when I was
(14:59):
very much younger than I am now, and I had
my two kids were young, and I was in a
grocery store with my son, and he was about five
or six years old, and he'd heard Dad talking about
this and that about freedom, and he finally said to me, Dad,
what is the difference? So this is a kid, maybe
he was seven, what is the difference between Democrats and Republicans?
(15:20):
And of course every shopping cart in the aisle stopped
to hear what was Dad going to say to his
son about that, And I said to him, well, let
me put it to you this way, Nicholas. There are
some very good people in the world who call themselves democrats,
and they where they get into power when they are
(15:43):
elected into their office here in the state in the
United States. They believe they make good decisions, and they
want to make as many good decisions as they can
for you, rather than having you make those decisions, because
they believe that they won't make the mistakes that you'll make,
or that they're collective wisdom is going to put them
in a position where they make all kinds of good
decisions for you, how you can live your life, what
(16:05):
the limits are on your life, how much you pay
the government to keep you safe or to keep giving
you things. In any event, the bottom line is there
are people who are of good heart, but they want
to control the way that we make our decisions, and
those are democrats. And on the other side, there are
some people who recognize that humanity is failed, that we
(16:27):
invariably make mistakes, but that the best way to learn
how to make better decisions is not to give that
decision making power to someone else that makes them for you.
But rather to make those decisions one by one by yourself,
and sometimes be wrong, sometimes fall down and skin up
your knees and have to get back up again, and
then take with you the wisdom that comes from knowing
(16:47):
how to get back up again, recognizing what it means
to learn from your errors. And we believe that it's okay. Actually,
in fact, it's far superior to let individuals make their
own decisions and just allow them to make their mistakes
and correct them. And that that I didn't use all
this wording with him, but that the invisible hand of
(17:08):
Adam Smith and others will essentially lead us in the direction.
If you have free markets, and you have freedoms of
political freedoms, you will end up in a society in
which good decisions are ultimately aggregated, and you, as an
individual will have the dignity and the confidence and the
self awareness, the self resilience to the self enterprise to
(17:31):
be able to recognize that you, yourself are becoming a
better person by making better and better decisions. And in
a very short way, I said all that to him.
Democrats really want to make decisions for you, and Republicans
tend to think you make mistakes when you make them
as an individual. But we're going to let you make
those mistakes and learn from them. And I just never
forget that. The shopping carts sort of moved away and
(17:52):
due time, and my son ended up saying, you know, Dad,
I want to be one of those people that makes
his own decisions. And I said, I think that's a
good I think that's a good way to think about it.
So we are in the state of Maine overwhelmed by
a monopoly, i e. A monopoly of the Democratic Party.
They control the House, the Senate, the governorship, the US Well,
they Democrats had appointed the US Attorney in Maine. That
(18:15):
was a federal decision and that was a Democrat. And
our attorney general, a Secretary of State who tried to
throw Trump off the ballot and is also running for
governor now, and the treasurer are all Democrats. The sad
thing is there is not a sense of committee, a
sense of collegiality, a sense that you want to listen
to the minority, which is incidentally what they did back
(18:37):
at the founding in the Constitutional Convention. One of the
most remarkable things is they were all seeking truth. And
because they were seeking truth. They were unafraid to change
their minds when convinced by another member of the Constitutional
Convention that they should change their minds. And so you
never saw in the notes that Madison took. You never
saw a criticism of one member or another member for
(18:59):
having changed their mind That was viewed as a recognition
that Bill of Rights in particular was extremely important that
we had to get it right. And so I wind
the clock forward here to Maine. We have a monopoly
controlled by Democrats. It is literally suffocating a lot of
people financially. It's causing this terrible upsurge of indifference to
(19:22):
drug addiction. They give away needles all over the place.
If you're walking a dog in Bangor or Portland, Maine,
you got to watch out that you kick the needles. Aside,
you have these drug traffickers everywhere. With the flow down
crime meaning burglaries and robberies and assaults, domestic violence is
very highly tied to drug abuse in this state. We
have so and what we have is a full recognition
(19:42):
I think on the part of the government that this
is happening, but no recognition that the pain at the
individual level is almost unendurable. And Rick I meet with
and sit with parents. You know, a couple of parents
in that book are people who lost their kids to drugs.
I sit with these parents and it has changed there
lives forever in a way that will create a dark
(20:03):
spot and emptiness that is inconsolable. And the same thing
is true of grandparents and siblings. And when you can
have we lose up to seventy kids, between forty and
seventy kids a month in this state, and a governor
who doesn't seem to care about this, barely addresses it,
underfunds the police. We have only three hundred and fifteen
treatment beds in a state of one point four million.
(20:24):
That's absurd. We are in a position now where essentially
we've hit the bottom. And the reason I'm stepping up
isn't because I ever wanted to be the governor. It's
because I spent my whole life fixing these exact problems.
I was a crime fighter. I helped put the Cali
cartel out of business. I know exactly how to get
rid of these traffickers. And at the same time, I've
(20:44):
managed billions of dollars. I know how to fix the budget,
and I've been a teacher. I understand what it means
to get kids back on track. And I'm going to
spend between you and me, I'm going to be in
every high school in this state trying to bring the
inspiration and the understanding that you find in books like
Charity America and Eagles and Evergreens. You help them to
understand that the American dream is within their reach. And
(21:06):
I have to we have to as adults in our generation,
we have to put it back within their reach and
then encourage them to work hard and essentially carry forward
the founding the founding values, because those values taught to
us by the World War two generation, because they lived them,
are the values that keep America America. So I love
this country. I love the current I think Trump is
(21:27):
doing a great job. I do believe that you have
to keep educating. And I again as a person, as
a young person who worked for Ronald Reagan and you
know that from the book, I think that there's an
incredible burden on our shoulders, all of our shoulders, no
matter whether you're in public office, or you're in the media,
or you're anywhere else in life. Maybe you're just a parent,
(21:47):
which I don't say just that's probably the most powerful
thing you can be in life, as a parent or
you're a teacher. You have to continue to pass forward
the appreciation for those rights that we sort of collapse
down together into this celebration on July fourth and say, gosh,
what an amazing country we have.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Bobby, just an observation on that, and on the book.
You don't have to be running for governor. You don't
have to be doing anything at this stage of your life.
This isn't about some pursuit of some title. This is
about what a man wants to do, needs to do,
(22:29):
and cares about the people of Maine. And you've got
this alchemy of voices that are driving you forward, including
Barbara Bush, former resident of Kinney Bunk. And those voices
are so powerful and in the case of Barbara Bush,
so common sensical. There's a bit of motherhood, fatherhood, but
(22:54):
just downright responsibility that just bleeds from you. That says, main,
let's give our state a chance to come from the
bottom of a valley and go north again.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Such a such a great metaphor too. I appreciate that.
I appreciate all the words you just said, Rick. I
you know, it does remind me of the psalm that
we walk through the valley of death. You know He's
with us, and I think we we have to remember
that when you're down on your lucky individually or a
state is down, you really have two choices. One is
(23:32):
to acquiesce and to believe you're powerless, and the other
is to say no, I have it in my power
to step up and help. And it may be that
the helping you do is to knock on some doors.
It may be talking to your neighbor. It may be
explaining to people that as a small business you're really
under the gun and you you need you need to
have some relief. It may be that you're a teacher
(23:53):
and you help. I mean, one of the most tragic
things in this state, Rick, is that roughly seventy percent
of our fourth grade even either cannot read or cannot
read to level, and almost that percentage of eighth graders
cannot do basic math. So, as I say to people,
you don't get two or three childhoods. You can't start
to learn to read at thirty seven. You can, but
(24:14):
the reality is you really ought to be learning that
in the schools. So I think of this as a calling.
I will tell you. You're absolutely right. I do not
need another certificate on my wall. I do not need
any of that. I just I will tell you that.
You know, it took two years to get to this decision,
a lot of people pressuring me to step up because
(24:35):
I have the tools, the skills, I guess to fix
all these problems, and I know I do. I mean,
each of these categories of problems are things that I've
wrestled with at one form, at one time or another,
and I've learned. I've made my own mistakes and figured out.
You know, you can't trust bureaucrats all the time to
do the thing they said they would do. You have
to go in and be not just a manager, but
a leader. You have to inspire people, and there are
(24:58):
days in which inspiration is very very thin. I'll never
forget when we were trying to resuscitate I guess a Raq,
and I was over there a fair amount of time,
and we were rebuilding over there. We had a two
billion dollar operational budget for Iraq and Afghanistan and the
air Wing and a bunch of other things, and people
would bring frustrations to me every day, and I would
(25:20):
look at them and say, Okay, so what are we
going to do to fix that problem? Not that they
weren't already thinking along those lines, but they needed a
little bucking up. And the other thing I would always
tell people is, look, life is full of challenges. Maine
ahead under my governorship will be filled with challenges, And
there are days. I want you to stay inspired. Every
day when you get up in the morning, be grateful
for the dawn, be grateful for the authority, the chance
(25:42):
to actually fix this right now, and then give that
power and that money back to the people of the
state of Maine so that they can run their own lives.
But at the same time, there are days when inspiration
is almost impossible, And I would always tell them, on
days when you can't be inspired, at least be amused,
because human nature is amusing. It is you know, it
repeats itself over and over again, and at a certain
(26:03):
point in time, we have to recognize that we're not
just admiring the leaders that we've been influenced by, but
we are the leaders somehow. My brain still tells me
at times I'm twenty five, but my body and the
rest of me tells me I'm almost sixty five. And
and you know, what at sixty five, I'm now one
of those elders that ought to be stepping up and
(26:24):
making a difference. So that's really the motivation inside me.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Thank you, Bobby. We wish you the best. Happy fourth
of July America, and happy fourth of July to are
the great citizens of the state of Maine. You got
a choice coming up, folks. You should choose the person
who's bringing a problem solving attitude to your state and
(26:53):
someone who's got your heart as a local citizen and
all the experience that you need to to lead you
as one state should be led. We appreciate everyone joining
us on today's show. Happy fourth or July, and as
we always say, we wish you success but on your
way to significance.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Have a great week you
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