Will Cain Country - Remembering Why We Celebrate Memorial Day

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

On this episode, Will commemorates Navy SEAL Mike Day, an American hero who survived physical wounds from his time of service, but not those on the inside. Later, Will revisits his 'State of the Union' and what our leaders should be doing to focus on putting America first. Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy Memorial Day and welcome to the Will Kane podcast. I'm glad you decided to spend just a few hours of your day with me on this day that we remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for this country. You know, I think there's a lot you could say. You could try to define about the idea of American exceptionalism. I guess that is if you accept the existence of American exceptionalism. It's become all too popular. It's become all too accepted. That's just a reflection of jingoism.

You know, false patriotism. There's nothing special about America. You could listen to that speech from the newsroom, the famous clip from the newsroom. What's exceptional about American? Go through a ranking of stats, right? on our education system or even our individual average income and say, well, America's not number one in this or America's not number one in that. But I think for anybody who simply asked this question, hey, if they took down all national

borders across the globe and ask yourself for your country, for all countries, would there be a net inflow or net outflow of people moving in? And I think that would settle the debate pretty quickly, that there's an easily identifiable American exceptionalism. But I think that everyone could also say come with their own definitions. Oh, it's Apple. It's billionaires. It's Sunday football. It's the Dallas Cowboys.

Or at least it once was the Dallas Cowboys. But I think what I've tried to lay out today, that whether or not you pick something superficial, Or you pick something deep. We're hanging it on a Christmas tree that runs with roots much deeper than most of us acknowledge. These values, these traits that I've attempted to lay out today, I think, are not only at the core of American exceptionalism, they are the values. They are the traits that are attempting to be, and successfully, in most cases, being destroyed in America. whether or not it is that African-American history museum and the brochure they put out in 2020

or it is the progressive movement that seeks to undermine everything from the individual to the family from God to entrepreneurialism these values are under attack and that's reflected in this poll as people sit here today and say they don't care so much about patriotism or family creation or God or whatever it may be.

I think what's important there is at least to understand we're all on the same page about what America, what makes America exceptional. The only real question left then is are we going to defend it? Are we going to protect it? Are we going to allow it to be destroyed? It's there. It can be identified. It cannot be denied.

The only question is, can it be destroyed? It's going to take people like you and me to identify it and then defend what it is that makes America exceptional. I think on this Memorial Day it would be wise as well for us to take a moment to talk about, to think about, to tell the story of those who have defended that American exceptionalism. those who we've lost, those who we honor, those who've done what you and I have not, perhaps, or for many of you listening, did it one time or maybe even do today. Those who stand between us and those who would destroy America. So I may now introduce you to the story of Navy SEAL, Mike Day.

Mike and his team went out looking for a high-level al-Qaeda, on the night of April 6th, 2007. His team was going door to door through a series of small houses. They had to force their way through multiple doors. On the side of one of those doors were four members of Al Qaeda, two with AK-47s, one with an M-4, and the other with a pistol. As Mike and his team came through the door, they were beaten to the trigger. He got hit, and he lost his rifle.

But that did not stop. Mike Day. Now instead he grabbed his pistol and he killed one of the combatants. Then he started shooting at another one who now had a grenade that he was trying to throw at Mike's team. So Mike shot him causing the insurgent to drop the grenade, blowing himself up and knocking out Mike Day. Mike was now unconscious. The fighting is swirling around him and in the midst of all that the terrorists must have thought that he was dead because the focus turned to Mike's teammates.

Some of them were killed in the fighting. The rest had to leave the building, but Mike was still in it. And as he began to came to, he needed to regroup, figure out how to mount a new attack. And when he came to, Mike was alone in this building, in this room, with two terrorists. He grabbed his pistol again, and he started shooting at them, bringing their attention back to him, back into that room. now a bullet from an AK hit his pistol causing it to malfunction yet he was able to clear the malfunction and stop the attack after Mike said quote after I realized that I actually was getting shot my second thought was God get me home to my girls and then extreme anger that's a day told

Fox News in 2015 then I just went to work it was muscle memory I just did what I was trained to do Mike Day had been shot 27 times, including 16 times, directly into his body. Yet he walked out of that house afterwards. Not because he was tough, though, but in his words, I was afraid if they picked me up, I would just hurt more. Mike was in the hospital for over two weeks. It seems like a pretty amazing feat given the fact that he was shot 27 times. He ended up losing 55 pounds during that time. But the worst part was the wound that couldn't be seen.

PTSD and traumatic brain injury. After this, after Mike's service, he struggled for years with PTSD. He wrote a book, perfectly wounded. But like so many veterans who come home from war, Mike had trouble, finding his meaning, finding his purpose, finding his value after serving as a Navy SEAL. That's why we talk about these values, these values in America, that run deep, not just in us as a culture and not just in us as a society, but in each and every one of us as individuals. They give us a source of meaning. They give us purpose. Again, as individuals, and then as a country.

It's why it's so important to remember those values when you see these polls. Like the Wall Street Journal poll, it shows the young Americans no longer consider it a virtue to be patriotic. To form families, to be community active, to worship God. Because in those values, we find who we are. Like so many people, professional athletes, high level operators, when you lose that meaning, when you lose that purpose, you lose your identity, you lose your sense of self. That happened to Mike Day after he served. After writing his book, perfectly wounded. That one wound that wouldn't go away that so few could see is the wound.

the wound that ended his life. Mike Day passed away this year on March 27th from the one wound that he could not heal. Inside. On this Memorial Day, as we honor those who have fought to protect all these values, all these traits, who have fought to defend America, I think it's important for all of us as individuals. Americans to remember what it is that makes each of us and all of us in turn exceptional to protect our values, to protect our identity, to protect what it is, and to honor those who understand and fight to defend American exceptionalism. We're going to step aside here for a moment. Stay tuned.

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in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com. I thought I would give you my state of the union. It reflects the reality of the United States of America. My state of the union focuses on five points, five points of light or despair, but five points of reality for the U.S. Number one, we have to come to grips with our racial reckoning. We need to see the light morally, philosophically, and foundationally, that is the United States of America. Critical race theory is not simply being taught in law school.

Critical race theory is an ideology that forces at the forefront the human being to see himself through the prism of identity. Where once we said, I want to be seen for my character, I want to be judged for my individuality, we now require of each other to see ourselves through the most shallow of prisms, through skin color, or sexuality, or vague concepts of gender. We seem to be nothing more than our identity. No bundle of virtues, no merit, no history of action. We are simply our identity. It's a cancerous poison on the spirit of America. And it's the antithesis of our founding.

The United States of America was a unique experiment in human history, one founded through the Enlightenment and Renaissance, arriving in England with the formation of the Magna Carta and finally being enshrined with the Constitution and Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in understanding the dignity and individual rights of the human being as an individual. We have to get back to understanding that fact so that we don't regress towards the story of humanity, which is tribalism. And once again, aspiring to see each other as individuals.

Abraham Lincoln once said that a house divided cannot stand. America, like a quickly multiplying cell inside the human body, is dividing and multiplying on an exponential level. We are in an almost real time. moment in history where we can see American people dividing amongst themselves dividing upon every line and totally forgetting the one that unifies us

as individuals, the tribe of Americanism. We've also divided ourselves from reality. Second, there has to be a national reckoning now with COVID. We have been peddled. We have been manipulated into, for the better part of three to five years, a false reality, not exclusively, but primarily driven by propaganda around COVID. We've been told lies about vaccines. We've been told lies about masks. We've been told lies about lockdowns. We've been told lies about the lethality of COVID. We have actually scared people. into staying into their homes and only venturing forth with masks and gloves, wiping down what they eat with Lysol wipes. We have been created. We have been formed.

We have been shaped. We have been manipulated into a false reality. We see it. We know it. We can see the story play out in the Twitter files, which gets no coverage from the major propaganda machine. That is the vast majority of mainstream media. We see how our thoughts were regulated. who was turned down, who was turned up, what was turned off in the Twitter files.

We don't know anymore as a product of this what is a woman. We are literally in a point in history where we cannot define and people in all seriousness and earnestness. An attempt at empathy won't define something that is reality and true. what is a woman. By extension, you know what is scary? We can no longer define what is a man. We can't define what are the virtues, the embodiment, the behaviors that are expected of a man.

And if we're that divorced from reality, where we no longer morally know what is a man and no longer scientifically know what is a woman. And no longer in practicality can ascertain reality we're lost. We're not in the United States. We're in the matrix. And we won't ever take the red pill,

exit the matrix, back into reality, to save the United States of America until we have a reckoning on COVID. Number three, we can talk philosophically and we should. Because I truly think the problems that face America today

are spiritual, as much as they are. economic, practical, everyday reality. But don't let us forget that for vast majority of us, politics is your pocketbook. Politics is your day. And politics has a practical application to the lives of people. Right now, people just don't buy, can't buy, don't have as much as they once did. eggs, meat, gasoline, whatever it may be.

Inflation is sitting at six and a half percent. We're talking about, and that's come down, a slight amount. But I spent some time this weekend on Fox and Friends talking to a panel of voters, one of which described herself as the working poor. You want to tell me about job numbers? You want to tell me about GDP? She tells me how she can't buy anything at the grocery store. I should can't feed her family.

And the scary part of this is in order to tame inflation, we're probably going to have to force ourselves into a recession in 2023. Interest rates are on the rise and don't know when they will slow, because we don't know when we can slow inflation. Once the recession takes in, then unemployment rises. The worst of all scenarios is what if we have a recession, rising unemployment, and inflation. The state of the economy is precarious.

Everyone you talk to, from the person on the street to actually the Wall Street financier. Everyone feels like this economy is sitting on a razor's edge. That at any moment, it could fall. Point number four, international relations. We should begin every calculus when it comes to the U.S. dealing with a foreign power through the prism of one question.

Does this serve America first? That's the only question that I've asked when it comes to Ukraine. It's not really about the moral clarity of one side versus the other. There isn't a lot of moral clarity in a war, whether not that be Russia or Ukraine. The question is, in what way and to what extent? Does it impact the United States of America? To take this full circle, that question cannot be removed from the potential corruption of the leaders of the United States of America. If it is true that the dysfunctional family is the Bidens is one that took corrupt money from powers where we're now involved militarily,

I'm skeptical the decisions being made serve America first. The same with China. I can talk about predictions of 2025 or 2027. I can even talk about China's invasion of Taiwan, but I think the case has to be made by American leaders were that to happen. And I know the argument. I know about semiconductors.

But I want a rigorous debate. I want a rigorous analysis. I want every step of the way. And most importantly, when it comes to war, to be asking the question, I'm going to sacrifice American lives, I'm going to sacrifice American treasure, I'm going to sacrifice American time.

does it serve America first? Almost invariably. When we elect a president, we elect a president based upon what he will do internationally in foreign affairs, such as the nature of circumstance. You don't get to dictate what will happen. So we define, we elect leaders based upon how they prepare and how they react. So here's one that I would like to see a leader focused on. Mexico 250,000

encounters in the month of December an absolute record at the southern border we're sitting on a ticking time bomb oh we've talked about the cultural changes of importing a city the size of Waco every month, yes but what about the terrorists the people

on the terror watch list what happens when something happens in the United States of America? Something horrific. We're going to look back on this time, on this moment, almost assuredly, how they got into this country? I want to say, how could we have let it go like this? How could we have let this flood into our country?

What more? You want a bigger question? How are we going to deal with Mexico over the long term? Mexico can't do much to stop this. They're not doing anything to stop the drug cartels involvement. They're not doing anything to stop the fentanyl coming into our country. Is Mexico a narco state? And if Mexico is a corrupt narco state, how can it be redeemed?

You want to talk about serving the American interest. How about dealing with a corrupt narco state as our neighbor, much less what's happening in Eastern Europe? We're going to have to figure out, because it will impact America first, the future of our relationship with Mexico. While those four points are something that I would hope that an American leader could devote focus, I'll end on this fifth point. I think there is always hope. I'm not a pessimist. I'm truly not.

And a lot of these points, and a lot of conversation when it comes to politics and news often comes off as negative. I'm not a pessimist. I'm an optimist. I am an optimist and I have hope for the United States

for this reason. I believe in the people of the United States as individuals. I think you do too. When people are involved in their own lives, their own families, their own communities, they're so rarely liberal, progressive, conservative. They're simply members of their community.

They're individuals that respond to their call by their conscience or their God. They step up for one another. America is the place of pioneers pushing west, of entrepreneurs starting new businesses, of risk tolerance. America is the place of cowboys an exploration of vigorous can-do individualism rugged individualism of Theodore

Roosevelt you see it abstractly you see it in our history books when told properly you see it in your neighbor and you see it in your own life choices that is an unending well

of hope I think we should always hope to find the right leader. But I think we can even find more hope in being the right leader in our household, in our community, in our own life. That right there will always be. For me, it always has been when I'm talking about entrepreneurship, small businesses, explorers, community. It's always been the source. of what it means to be an American, and that is the source of hope. We're going to step aside here for a moment. Stay tuned.

Following Fox's initial donation to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund, our generous viewers have answered the call to action across all Fox platforms and have helped raise $7 million. Visit go.com. Forward slash TX flood relief to support relief and rebuilding efforts. That's going to do it for me today. Go enjoy your Memorial Day with your family, with your kids, with your friends. go enjoy this day. Remember why we have this day off. And read a story, tell a story, share a story

about one of the heroes that helped purchase this day of enjoyment and freedom. That's going to do it for me today here on the Will Kane podcast. Listen to ad free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcast and Amazon Prime members. You can listen to this show, ad free on the Amazon music app. If you find it so worthy, I hope you will give us five stars, leave a comment and share this podcast with your friends. I'll see on Wednesday. From the Fox News Podcasts Network. Hey there, it's me.

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