The new National Security Strategy is something we can all get behind (12-31-2025--Hour3)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive. Content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, I daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So I'm trying to, you know, to give you a reason for optimism, right, No need to take the black pill people, Okay, don't don't go down the path of nihilism no matter. You know, are all the bad things going on in the world, and all the frustrations and all that stuff. But you know, by and large, we are like the luckiest people to have been born in this country at this time. We really are. Of all the people that have walked the face of this planet since the beginning of time, we are pretty lucky. We live pretty long, we have pretty healthy lives. We have the highest standard of living and creature comforts that human beings have ever seen ever, Like the poor people in America have a standard of living that's higher than kings of you know, one hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago, kings, I tell you kings. So here's another bit of reason for optimism. The Trump administration a couple of weeks ago, I guess it was. Now. This is one of the things I did in between my doses of niquill over the Christmas break while I was sick, they put out their National security strategy. And this is a pretty normal occurrence, right The administrations put these things out during their terms to tell you know, the country and the world, like, this is our strategy. And I read through it. It's thirty three pages and I read it, so you don't have to. I'm gonna give you the highlights here. And I got to tell you there's a lot to like if you like America. Okay, so, and I do. I like America. I like the concept upon which it was founded. I'm proud to be American again. I am glad that I live in this country right now. I recognize the blessings of liberty that have been bestowed upon us by generations that came before. So I try to always kind of keep that in mind, that gratitude. See, I feel like gratitude is the antidote to nihilism. If you recognize in real time the things in your life that are good. It is a guard against the black pill, which is very easy to take. You just swallow it. Basically, it's like and then it's and and then you're like, oh, it's law. It's just burn it all down. Who cares and all that, And that's no way to live there. You're gonna be miserable, okay. And we all know people like this that they're not happy unless they're miserable. And I don't want to be that. I'm not because I'm not a miserable person. So I mean, I don't think I am. I'm sure people will tell me if I am, but I don't think I am. So I read through the National Security Strategy and I'm gonna give you some of the highlights here because I think it's important that you know, we know sort of what is the framework within which the administration is operating, and I think it's a framework that we really like, we should all be able to get behind as Americans. This I know, I know it's coming from the Orange Man, and so it must be you know, Hitler esque, but it's not if you just listen to what they're outlining here. I feel like this is stuff that not too long ago, like in my lifetime, most people would have agreed with this stuff. So it says, first and foremost, what should the US want? What do we want? Overall? They say, we want the continued survival and safety of the United States as an independent, sovereign republic whose government secures the God given natural rights of its citizens and prioritizes their well being and interests. What's objectionable about that? Nothing? Is it God given natural rights? Is that going to be the trigger word for lefties? But they are. That's the foundational premise upon which our country was founded, is that these are inalienable rights. They are not bestowed upon us by the government by humans, because if it is, if these rights are bestowed upon us by government or human beings, then those same people can take it away. No, our rights come from our creator. That's the premise, natural law, natural rights. We want to protect this country, its people, its territory, its economy, and its way of life from military attack and hostile foreign influence, whether espionage, predatory trade practices, drug and human trafficking, destructive propaganda and influence operations, cultural subversion, or any other threat to our nation. We want full control over our borders, over our immigration system, and over transportation networks through which people come into our country legally and illegally. We want a world in which migration is not merely orderly, but one in which sovereign countries work together to stop, rather than facilitate, destabilizing population flows. And these nations have full control over whom they do and do not admit. A country without borders, I will add this, A country without borders is not a country, right. And this you may hear. There is a line that people, a lot of a lot of people will say this. Usually they're on the right. They're like, we are not an economic zone, right, Stop treating America like it's an economic zone. We are not. We are a nation. We have a history, we have customs, we have law. In fact, we were the first ones to write it all down in a constitution, which was a pretty big deal at the time. I learned. I was watching a podcast the other day and I learned apparently Israel does not have a constitution, which is crazy to me. I thought they did, but apparently they don't. And The beauty of what our founders was able to were able to do was that they did not have or they were They were constructing a constitution before there were entrenched powers that were protective of very industry, industries or government power. Right, so they were behind I think the guy he called it the veil of ignorance, I think is what he called it. In other words, you don't know what's on the other side. So you're just trying to construct the parameters of this constitution of the rules, right, You're trying to write out all of these laws, and you're not doing it from a position of well, I need to protect this particular government agency. And that's the problem that Israel has because they' attempted to do a constitution a couple of times, but because they're already a functioning government, you have all of these interests that compete and they're like, no, no, no, you can't get rid of that, or what about our power over here? And so you have all these roadblocks all over the place to create a constitution, whereas our founders did not have that. He goes the strategy paper goes on to say that we want a resilient national infrastructure, a strong military, a nuclear deterrent, the world's strongest economy, robust industrial base, innovative energy sector. I'm just kind of going through again. It's thirty some up pages. I'm not going to read the whole thing obviously, I'm just going over the highlights here. You can find it too. They've got to post it at the White House website. They go on to say, we want to remain the world's most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country, and to build on these strengths, and we want to protect our intellectual property from foreign theft. Again, so far, I have not found anything in here that should be objectionable to anybody on the well, to any let me just say Democrats or Republicans, because like people who are on the left, that's a very large group of people. And you got people that are way on the left and they're just leftists. They're like, I'm not talking about the destabilizing crowd, Okay, the folks that want to tear down the Western society. They obviously would oppose all of this because this would make us more stable. So like just cut them out of the picture. And there are de stabilizers on the far right, as well just cut them out. But most Americans, I think would agree with these concepts, with these goals. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com have a couple of messages here. Off of the text line. This is from Danny Pete. If you keep talking about this racist American privilege, we all bathe in. I'm going to stop listening to you for the rest of the year. I will not tune my radio station to you until next year. Keep it up. I'm warning you. I mean that's fair. Dan. Look, I'm going to keep I'm staying on this topic for the hour or so. If I don't, if I don't see it until next year, I guess, so be it. I said, so be it, not so Vie, It's okay, Shannon says, Amen, Pete, we are blessed. Don't let the government ruin our happiness. Have the best new year. Thank you for another year of news delivered only the way you can. Charlotte is lucky to have you, and I am lucky to be here. Shannon, I do shate the kind words. Thank you. And keep up the good work. Dan and says, thank you, appreciate that. Jordan says, twenty twenty five was a tough year, one of my worst, but I had three goals, break ninety on the golf course again, lose weight, and get a better job. I achieved all three, which included sixty pounds that I desperately needed to lose twenty twenty six. Ain't looking too bad. Good job, Jordan, that's awesome. I'm glad to hear that, sir. Good for you got all three of the I mean, the golf scorer, the weight loss, the better. Jobs it so okay. I know this is a little off topic, but I will whenever I get the opportunity to impart this, I try to do so. Which is, have a goal if you want, have a couple goals. Don't have too many. You get too many goals, then it's you know, you kind of lose focus. But you want to have a goal. Make it like a five year goal or a five year plan or something. But have a goal. Write it down someplace, and then here's the most important part, tell other people what the goal is, okay, because you would be amazed how many people can help you achieve your goal much more rapidly than you thought you could achieve it. If you just tell people. Most people want to help you achieve your goal, So tell them what the goal is, and they'll help you achieve it. They want to do it. A lot of particularly successful people They love to impart their wisdom and knowledge, the things that they have learned that made them successful. And this is one of the things that they tell people. I mean even in the was it not how to win friends? Maybe it was how to win friends and influence people. Was that Carnegie No, what was Carnegies book? I'm trying to remember what that book was. Anyway, it was about visualization, that was what they kept saying. Visualization and all that means is to visualize your success, to conjure up a mental image of what it means to be successful, what that looks like. And when you start thinking in those terms, people call it, you know, manifesting your goals or dreams. That's what they're talking about. This one of the things too, Like when you like, you're shooting hoops, right, if you visualize the ball going in the basket, chances are the balls going in the basket. Now, you're not guiding the ball into the basket with your brain or your eyes, but the visualizing you making the shot more often makes the shot. I cannot explain it, but just apply that to your life. Have a goal, write it down, tell other people what it is. Okay, next from this, Nash security strategy. We want to maintain the United States's unrivaled soft power, through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests. In doing so, we will be unapologetic about our countries past and present, while respectful of other countries differing religions, cultures, and governing systems. So, in other words, what is what they're saying is like you do you, We're going to do us. We respect you, are right, you're your own sovereign nation. You do what you're going to do. We're going to do what we want to do. And if our interests align, then we could be friends. We could be peaceful. That's that's great, and we would prefer that to be the case. And we're not going to come in and tell you how to do things, because you know, we're going to exert our influence over you and we're going to you know, spread democracy and all of this. We're not doing that. Soft power that serves America's true national interest is effective only if we believe in our countries inherent greatness and decency. And this, my friends, is a threat to those who seek to destroy the West, which is why there is a contingent in the West that is blackpilled, and they keep telling us that we suck and we're terrible. We always have been terrible, systemic, this institutional that the whole point is to demoralize, to destabilize, so they can swap us out with something else, some other form of government. Because this is I mean, it's really classic Marxism, which is it's parasitic, that whole philosophy. It's just I would argue, it's rooted in evil. It's rooted in envy, one of the sins, right, it's envy. It relies on the production of a wealthy society first, and then it moves in and takes everything, and then eventually everything crumbles to pieces. Finally, they say, we want the restoration and reinvigoration of American spiritual and cultural health, without which long term security is impossible. We want an America that cherishes its past glories and its heroes, and that looks forward to a new golden age. We want a people who are proud, happy, and optimistic that they will leave their country to the next generation better than they found it. We want a gainfully employed citizenry with no one sitting on the sidelines. Who take satisfaction from knowing that their work is essential to the prosperity of our nation and to the well being of individuals and families. This cannot be accomplished without growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children. I've said this before. Too many people talk about out their particular community, right. You hear this all the time, And this is just a form of identity politics. It's separating ourselves out into essentially clans, and that is not conducive to a to a healthy nation that is comprised of a lot of different quote unquote clans, right, a lot of different communities. Which is why I have suggested, why don't we just view ourselves in addition to however else you want to identify yourself whatever, but identify predominantly mainly as part of the American community. You're part of the American community. Why can't we call it that? Why can't we think in those terms that we are part of this grand experiment, this historical, unique, exceptional experiment, exceptional in that not that we're better than everybody else simply because we're Americans, but that this is a unique thing, that this is the exception to the rule This experiment was predicated on an exceptional idea, an unusual idea, a unique idea that people could govern themselves, because that wasn't the case, right, for most of human history that was not the case. So what do we want in the world and from the world? Okay, so they talked in this paper about what we want for ourselves. Now what do we want from the world? What do we want in the world? All right? Holiday football has arrived. Right With Draft Kings sportsbook and official sports betting partner of the NFL, the unexpected can turn game day into payday and don't forget Draft Kings as your back with early exit. Pretty neat function here. 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For additional terms and responsible gaming resources see DKNG dot co slash audio limited time offer. All right, I got a bunch of messages here regarding gratitude. Michael Scarns not prison Mike, but Michael Scarns says, always be appreciative, but never be complacent. Wise words there. Michael Russ says. The book that I was trying to think of. The name of the title is Think and Grow Rich. That is it. Thank you. You guys are so smart. See if I don't know something, I just throw it out there, like what is this thing? And usually people answer it like somebody else told me it's Blues Blues North Carolina. I was from Rotten Roger who said no one says blues Creek. I lived and worked in the area for years and had lots of fun boating and camping at blues Creek Lake. Forget the spelling, just say blues or where the label. Out of towner? Well, that's just hurtful out of towner. I mean, yes, I am an out of towner to blues Greek because it's spelled b e l l e ws. So I do know how to say meban though I do know that I thought I saw hang on a second, there was another message. Maybe well I'll tell you I will do this because this is just hilarious. Spencer Claven all right, so Spiked News, Spiked Online did a story. I'm not going to go into the story, but it relates to the National Security Strategy document that Trump put out because they talk a little bit about, you know, being proud of your nation, your nation's history, your culture. In Europe. They specific he's the paper specifically goes after Europe. It doesn't go after the moment. It's just like, come on, guys, stand up for yourselves. That's the kind of tone. And Spiked Online has this story, gay voter in Europe are moving sharply towards the populist right. Why do you think that is would Why would gay voters in Europe be aligning themselves with the quote populist right. Now, remember, over in Europe the right is still like if they were in America, they would probably still be on the left in America. Okay, so just keep that in mind. But the reason mass migration from parts of the world that are hostile to gay rights has shattered old political allegiances. And according to some of the people who are doing this, the the term that they have dubbed and this is over is not my term. I'm just giving you. I'm relaying the information the term they are associating with this with this movement of gay voters to the quote populist right. They're calling it because you've heard of ethno nationalism or Christian nationalism or just nationalism, right, they're calling it. They're calling it homo nationalism. And Spencer Claven, who I will point out, is gay, so he can say this, he says, who the hell went with homo nationalism when gayism. Was right there? That's gases. So to this point, according to the national security strategy, we want to ensure the Western hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the US. We want a hemisphere whose governments cooperate with US against narco terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations. We want a hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains. And we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. We want to halt and reverse the ongoing damage that foreign actors inflict on the American economy while keeping the Indo Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials. So all of this should be universally acceptable. I would like to think if you take Trump out of the equation, which I know some people are just completely incapable of doing, but take him out of the equation and just read the words. Listen to the words. You know, we want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe while restoring Europe's civilizational self confidence and Western identity that got the Europeans all upset by the way civilizational self confidence. Like I watch a lot of podcasts from Europe, from Britain, and this is a common theme in the podcasts. This is a common thing being discussed, particularly in the UK right, this. Loss of. Self confidence and respect for your own history, your culture, Like we ended slavery, Like why are we Like why are we the bad people here? Like yeah, our empire did bad things spoiler alert. Every single civilization on the face of the planet, and every non civilization on the face of the planet has done terrible things too. Everybody has done terrible things. Everybody, every group, every plan, every tribe, every nation, everyone. We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies and the choke points through which they pass, while avoiding the forever wars that bogged us down in that region at great cost. And we want to ensure US technology and US standards, particularly in AI, biotech and quantum computing, drive the world forward. These are the United States's core vital national interests. And they made a point earlier in the document to say, like, look, we cannot cover everything as a top priority, Like when you have so many priorities and everything else it just becomes a jumble and you can't focus on the top order priorities. Right, So like, if you're not in this document, it doesn't mean we don't care. It means these are our top focuses. They then go on to talk about focused definition of national interest. They say, since at least the end of the Cold War, administrations have often published these strategies that seek to expand the definition of America's national interest such that almost no issue or endeavor is considered outside its scope. But to focus on everything is to focus on nothing. America's core national security trysts shall be our focus. Strength is the best deterrent peace Through strength, countries won't mess with us. You know. If we're strong, we. Have a predisposition to non interventionism. In the Declaration of Independence, America's founders laid down a clear preference for non interventionism in the affairs of other nations and made clear the basis, just as all human beings possess God given equal natural rights, all nations are entitled by quote the laws of nature and Nature's God to a separate and equal station with respect. To one another. For a country whose interests are as numerous and diverse as ours, rigid adherence to non interventionism is not possible. So in other words, they are rejecting isolationism. But they say this predisposition should set a high bar for what constitutes a justified intervention, so we will intervene. It's just it's a high bar. We seek relations and peaceful commercial relations with countries of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories. And then they talk about the primacy of nations, and this is something this is where I departed from the Capital l Libertarian Party a long time ago. There seems to be a rejection of the concept of nations, and I'm not on board with that. So they rejected in this paper as well, that the world's fundamental political unit is and will remain, the nation state, and I agree with them on that. All right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground news News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. So the primacy of nations, it is natural and just that all nations put their interests first and that they guard their own sovereignty. I expect no other country to do nothing less. Every country should be looking out for their own national interest and their own people. That's what I expect. The world works best when nations prioritize their interests. The United States will put our own interests first, and in our relations with other nations, encourage them to prioritize their own interests as well. We stand for the sovereign rights of nations. This is, in my view, this is a shot across the bow to the EU right, because the EU is corrupting the governance of all of the member nations. It says, we stand against the sovereignty sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations and stand for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests. They go on to say later, here attempts by foreign powers or entities to censor our discourse or curtail our citizens' free speech rights, we will unapologetically protect our own sovereignty against that. This is another shot across the bout to the EU that just did their Digital Security Act thing, where they're going to know they're going to start fining tech companies that don't censor Americans. So the Europeans are going to find American companies because like Twitter, for example, if Twitter doesn't censor Americans based on European guidelines, then European officials are going to find the American based Twitter, and the Trump administration just levied sanctions against European officials for doing this, as they should. You don't get to control our free speech. You can shut down Twitter over in your countries. If you want to do that, then that's what you need to do. If you want to go to talitarian, you do that, but you don't get to You don't get to shut down free speech for Americans. The US cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests. We will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries. Right, So, if you are a hostile nation and you are seeking to dominate an entire region of the world, Iran, then we're going to work against you. Let me see, he don't have a whole lot of time left in twenty twenty five. So I want to get to this part, which was promoting European greatness. Officials have become used to thinking about American problems in terms of insufficient military spending and economic stagnation, and there is truth to this, but Europe's real problems are even deeper. Content and by the way, this is the portion that got the Europeans big mad. Oh my gosh, they are so mad about this. I've been reading different articles about like they are just super angry. How dare the administration, the Trump administration say this sort of stuff. So from the document, Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP, down from twenty five percent to nineteen ninety to fourteen percent today, partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness. Once again, another shot across the bow of the EU. But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure civilizational erasure or erasure depending on your preferred pronunciation. There, the erasing of your civilization. That's the bigger problem. I mean, yes, the GDP, the economic stuff like that's really important, that's pretty bad, sure, but that pales in comparison to what you're doing to yourselves, your civilizational erasure. That's what set everybody off. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition during birth rates, and loss of national identities and self confidence. Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in twenty years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. This has gotten the Europeans very concerned as well. It should, because the whole reason why we are allies is because we have a shared sense of right and wrong, rule of law, governance, freedom, right, all of these things that have united particularly like the NATO countries. These ideals are the things that unite us. And if your country abandons those ideals and either through the welcoming in of millions of people that don't share those ideals, to the point where now your country is changed at a national level, that national policy now changes those ideals, the way you live your lives in your society no longer aligns with ours, then we have to then we are going to question whether or not we should still be your ally. Of course, we would. Why wouldn't we Hello. It's like if your next door neighbor is a great friend, and then some other neighbor moves in, Like, I don't owe allegiance to your house. It was to the people and the values of the people that were next door to me. And if somebody else comes in and they have the complete opposite values for me, then no, I don't owe any allegiance to that house. It's just a house. They go on. The paper goes on to say, many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation. Later, it goes on to say, over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non European. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world or their alliance with the United States in the same way as those who signed the NATO Charter. Again, this is the truth, friends, tell friends, the truth. That's what the administration is telling Europe. You guys better figure it out. You better. Reclaim you know, your self confidence, your pride in your history and your people and what you have been able to accomplish. Right like these countries over in Europe, like these were empires of the world. And what are you doing now? What are you doing? Friends? Tell friends the truth and this is the truth. If you, guys, change your entire composition of your population to the point where we are no longer aligned, you know, ethically, then we don't need to be aligned militarily either. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.