Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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Hello, my name is Frances Watson
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and first of all let me apologize for the state of my voice.
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I have been sick for the last two weeks
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and I
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everything is settled right in my throat. So thank you so much
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for putting up with the sound of my voice and me during this presentation.
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So
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anyway
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the discussion prompt for this week basically asked
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is western civilization relevant.
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And the first thing that popped into my head when I thought about that question
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yeah,
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is
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if western civilization isn't relevant then why do so
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many people want to come to the United States,
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why is it such a desirable place to live?
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Or even some countries like England
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and
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it seems very popular over other countries. So why is that?
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Unfortunately for me,
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Daniel Hannan pretty much answered that
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in
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the reading this week
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Because he basically defines western civilization by three core principles,
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the rule of law,
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personal liberty and representative government.
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That basically is his definition of Western civilization.
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And
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on the flip side of that
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I started to think,
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well what about countries that don't adhere
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to these tenants of Western civilization?
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What do they look like? What what is common in those kinds of countries?
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And that brought me to a video I had seen recently.
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I was building in american history to course
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and I was looking for testimony about communism
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because I think a lot of people in
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today's society don't understand really what communism is
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and I ran across this video um of a man named now boom.
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And he lived in cambodia during the time when the Khmer Rouge took over the country
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And in literally 24 hours he went from being the doctor,
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in fact the head of the pediatric department of his hospital in the capital city,
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to literally living the life of a peasant
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In 24 hours
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as an american. I cannot even fathom that content
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that
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the corrupt government that had been in place that
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was just sort of unstable
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have been basically completely overrun by the Khmer Rouge
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regime
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and they basically instituted a reign of terror
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for years.
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And it all happened
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for him anyway overnight
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that just goes beyond anything my mind can
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fathom and thinking about this made me appreciate
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some of the freedoms that
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that are in the constitution
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and the fact that we have checks and balances.
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So even if let's say the executive branch decided to try and do something illegal,
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there's a process for that.
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There's the ability to impeach
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the executive branch
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and to prevent
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anything crazy like this kind of complete
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regime changes that happened in other countries.
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And then on that same note,
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I began to realize that
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current events
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that are going on right now might
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make Western civilization more relevant than ever.
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In fact, it's kind of differentiating between
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Western civilization in the US versus Western civilization in europe.
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Um for example,
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with the vaccine mandates and I don't mean to start a big fuss here.
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I'm just going to state facts,
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vaccine mandates, let's say in Germany
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Germany put into effect vaccine mandates even
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though they claim to offer personal liberty.
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But because people were dying,
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they said
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tech with personal liberty
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vaccine mandates are going into effect and they put them in place.
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Where is the United States?
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They,
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there are currently stalled.
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The executive branch trying to put in the vaccine mandate.
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But the Supreme Court has stopped it for the moment
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because there's a lot of backlash against it with private
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companies
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who do not want to put that in effect.
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And so
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it's just interesting to see how
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the same issue is being handled differently in
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countries that would might normally be considered Western civilization
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in general.
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But there is such a big difference and I think
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that's those core tenants that Hanan mentions of
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the rule of law,
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personal liberty and representative government are
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more important now than they ever were
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in the words of my mother.
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America isn't perfect but it's still the bliss place on earth to live.
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And now more than ever the tenants of Western civilization that America has upheld
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and continues to uphold in some, some way
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more so than other countries at the moment.
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Um,
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makes me very grateful
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to live in America.
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Thank you for watching this presentation