Vice President Mike Pence charged thousands gathered at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Friday to take the pro-freedom, anti-socialism message throughout America as we head into 2020.
“Under the guise of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, Democrats are embracing the same tired economic theories that have impoverished nations and stifled the liberties of millions over the past century,” said Pence. “That system is socialism”:
Democrat 2020 candidates are offering “just the same old, same old: more taxes, more spending, more government, less freedom,” the vice president explained.
“The moment America becomes a socialist country is the moment America ceases to be America,” said Pence. “As President Trump said 24 days ago, so we must say with one voice, ‘America will never be a socialist country.’”
The crowd broke out in chants of “USA! USA!”
“We know where socialism leads. You want socialism, just look at Venezuela,” said Pence. “Venezuela was once one of the richest and most vibrant democracies in the Western Hemisphere, but under Maduro’s socialist rule, it has become one of the poorest and most despotic.”
Pence described the deep dive Venezuela’s people have seen from prosperity to poverty:
Today, more than nine out of ten people live in poverty in that once-rich country. More than three million Venezuelans have abandoned their homes and fled the brutality of the Maduro regime.
But the struggle in Venezuela is between dictatorship and democracy. The struggle in Venezuela is between socialism and freedom.
He recalled his trip this week to Colombia, where he brought affirmation of President Donald Trump’s strong stand for the people of Venezuela and against the Maduro regime as he stood alongside leaders of several South American nations. He reiterated on the CPAC stage the message he took to Colombia: “Nicolas Maduro must go.”
“Freedom is about enabling people to live their lives as they see fit, not government control,” the vice president attested.
He further declared:
Freedom produces more and better goods than any system in any other place and time in any other place. Freedom produces more and better goods than any other system at any other time in any other place.
Freedom is more generous, more helpful, and more humane than any other social or economic model ever attempted because it is the only philosophy that respects the dignity and worth of every single life and sees every man, woman, and child as made in the image of God. That’s freedom. That’s our heritage.
Freedom works. This is what we believe. This is who we are. But this is the choice we face in the next 20 months.
Pence then charged CPAC participants, “We’ve got work to do … just as we did in 2016. Twenty months from now, the American people are going to face a choice once again.”
He espoused faith that if the American people “speak freedom to the people of this nation” and lay out “a choice between freedom and socialism, the American people will choose freedom every single time.”
Pence cited words inscribed on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.” He assured them that if they do, “the American people will rally to our cause once again. We will keep on winning. We will keep on growing. And we will preserve freedom for this generation and the next.”
The vice president called on the group to go out with confidence that President Trump is “fighting every day for the ideals and values that are at the heart of American greatness” and assured in the rightness of their cause “and confidence that if we ask for the blessings of Him who established this miracle of democracy on these wilderness shores so long ago … that we cannot fail – for where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. So freedom always wins.”
Michelle Moons is a White House Correspondent for Breitbart News — follow on Twitter @MichelleDiana and Facebook.
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