Speaking at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, on Wednesday evening, Shapiro discussed the importance of Trump’s election and its implications for the nation’s future.
“For the first time in a long time, I really feel like we are entering the best days of America,” Shapiro began his speech. “It does feel like we are entering a new golden age for the country for three specific reasons, because there are three things that make a golden age for a country or a civilization or even an individual in their life: liberty, strength, virtue.”
Though it may seem surprising that Trump is the one leading the U.S. into its golden age, Shapiro noted that the American people have chosen to pursue this era through principles of liberty, strength, and virtue.
“I don’t think the election so much was about President Trump – obviously, he’s a singular figure in American history – as much as it was about the American people who were just done,” Shapiro said. “We were just done. We were done with the age of stagnation. We were done with the age of moral confusion. We were done with an age that suggested that weakness was a substitute for strength, and that foolishness was a substitute for virtue, or that regulation was a substitute for liberty.”
Shapiro explained that the golden age will bring an expansion of liberty that can be tracked through economic growth. He argued that freedom combined with property rights drives innovation, and with Trump’s administration reducing regulations, the U.S. will experience a rise in investment and economic development. Trump’s agenda, he said, will foster an environment where the nation’s top innovators can succeed and flourish.
“Liberty means we have to let geniuses be geniuses. In fact, we should help geniuses achieve their very best,” Shapiro said.
“The world only has freedom and prosperity because of the United States of America. Only. Okay, it is the threat of military force, or the use of military force by the United States of America that keeps the world free safe and prosperous. It is simply that. That’s all. There is no one else. Okay, if the United States were to disappear tomorrow, the world would decay into darkness almost overnight.”
Regarding American strength, Shapiro remarked that Trump’s first four years in office delivered the strongest foreign policy he had witnessed “in my lifetime.” The Daily Wire host attributed this success to what he described as the four pillars of the “Trump doctrine.”
The first pillar asserts that “America is governed by her interests.” Building on this, the second pillar acknowledges that resources are limited, requiring the United States to carefully assess and respond to global events in order to safeguard its most essential interests.
The third pillar concerns military conflict: “If you are going to go [to war], you use every means at your disposal to achieve your interests.”
In Trump’s first term, the United States avoided entering any new foreign conflicts, a result Shapiro attributed to the fourth principle of the Trump doctrine: “The final principle is to make sure everyone understands the first three principles.”
“The credible threat of use of force is the basis for all solid foreign policy, and if you express all of that, then you barely ever have to use military force,” Shapiro said.
Lastly, Shapiro noted that a third element of a U.S. golden age will be a revival of virtue, which he described as “individuals behaving as responsible human beings with genuine roles and obligations in the world.” He argued that virtue grounded in religion is essential for any society that aims to promote strong families.
“If you’re not building a civilization around successful families, the civilization falls down,” Shapiro said.
“These three things – liberty, strength, and virtue – these are what’s going to save Western civilization,” Shapiro concluded.
