The Story of America Is a Story of Risking Everything for Freedom

Yesterday I delivered remarks at the Latino Coalition’s 2019 Legislative Summit. There, I highlighted my family’s own experience as Hispanics in America working to achieve the American Dream, and my legislative efforts to increase opportunity and prosperity for families of every background across the nation.

My remarks may be viewed here. Excerpts of my speech are below. 

[Cuba] went from one [S.O.B.] to an even worse [S.O.B.]. So, my aunt is still back there and she does the obvious next step, she joins the counter revolution fighting against Castro after he’s taken over. My tía among other things went and burned fields down in acts of protest to the new regime, and then my aunt ends up being thrown in prison as well and tortured by Castro’s goons. And then a few years later she too flees Cuba, comes to America, comes to Texas.

Now, I tell that story because everyone here has a story like that. Everyone here has a story. The story of America is a story of risking everything for freedom.

And if you think about it, if you actually design this country as a social experiment, you sat down a group of sociologists and, say, ‘We’re going to design a country and for four or five hundred years we’re going to sort we’re going to bring people from all over the world who are we going to bring? Well, we’re not going to bring the richest, we’re not going to bring the smartest, sorry about that that was not who we collectively were, we’re not going to bring the strongest. We’re going to bring the people crazy enough to risk everything for freedom and generation after generation after generation, give me those across the globe who value being free above everything else and are willing to put it all on the line because your heart yearns to breathe freedom.’ That’s America, that’s who we are.

Now there’s all sorts of different manifestations of freedom. There’s freedom from oppression, freedom not to have the police or army kick-in the door throw you in jail and torture you. Our neighbors in Venezuela haven’t experienced that freedom in a long time. There’s freedom of speech: the right to stand up and speak whether you’re right or wrong. […] But that freedom of speech, what an incredible liberty!

Now, think about the debates we’re having right now in college campuses where college administrators say, ‘No, no, no. You can’t be expressing that view. No, no, no. We’re going to censor what you say. No, those ideas are scary; they’re dangerous.’ 

You think about why your family and my family came to America it was precisely because you didn’t have some higher power deciding what you get to say and what you don't get to say. It was because we wanted that freedom of speech. We wanted the freedom of religion that every one of us the right to worship, to worship God to live according to our faith and conscience. A faith journey different for each one of us but it’s not the government that gets to decide who and how and when we worship.

And then, there’s the freedom. […] You know most of the history of mankind has been a history of oppression. It’s been a history of kings and queens. It’s been a history of power from the top down, and it’s been a history of, whatever station you were born into, that is the station in which you shall stay. If you’re blessed and you’re born into the family of aristocrats and royalty, well then you can live the life of kings. But if you’re born into the home a cobbler, than a cobbler you shall be. At the end of the day, that is a freedom that is right at the heart of what America is. Any one of us, doesn’t matter where we come from, doesn’t matter what we started with, doesn’t matter if we could speak English when we got started, doesn’t matter if we were washing dishes, what matters in America is how big your heart is and how big your dream is and how hard you are willing to work to achieve that dream, and how hard you are willing to work when you fail. And note I said the word ‘when’ and not if.

A few weeks ago, my daughter Caroline, who is 10 years old, she played in her fifth-grade basketball team. I was one of the assistant coaches on the team. They made it all the way to the finals and they lost by one point. I had a crying little 10-year-old asking me, ‘Dad, why did we lose?’ And I said, ‘Look, losing, it’s part of life. But it’s especially part of an extraordinary life. You made it to the finals and next year you’re going to win.’ But I told her, ‘Look I’ll tell you something, I had for many years, I kept a file folder labeled failures. But I just collected everything I tried and failed.’ I said, ‘You know, Caroline, if you don’t ever fail at anything it means you’re not trying anything.’ Here’s an easy path to never ever, ever, ever fail: sit in your room, stare at the ceiling. You’ll never fail. You’ll accomplish nothing. But you’ll never fail. And that’s the incredible thing about America, is that you could go and fail and get punched in the face and then get yourself back up again. And, if you still have the burning desire, if you still have vision, you can climb the mountaintop.

That’s the freedom. Look at small businesses, if you care about jobs and economic growth, you care about small businesses. Why? Two thirds of all new jobs come from small businesses. How do we get small businesses to grow? Well, it isn’t rocket science. There are two major tools that government has: tax reform and regulatory reform.

History’s simple, every time we cut taxes, simplify the tax code, every time we repeal job-killing regulations, the exact same thing happens--which is more and more businesses are started grow, expand, create jobs and opportunity. By the way, the converse is equally true. Every time we go down the path of higher taxes and higher regulations bigger government, you see economic stagnation. You see small businesses struggling and gasping. We’re seeing the results right now of an economy that’s booming. We all know the basic numbers, the lowest unemployment in over fifty years. The lowest Hispanic unemployment ever recorded. The lowest African-American unemployment ever recorded. The lowest Asian-American unemployment ever recorded. The lowest unemployment for women in seventy years. Look, these are incredible results but we shouldn’t be surprised. Because if we understand where we started, why is it that brought our families to America? Because in most of the rest of the world you can’t do what you can do here. […] And I’ll tell you, in the Hispanic community, we’re blessed to have a reasonable understanding of it. One of the ways you lose liberty is you take it for granted. Our community is blessed that typically our journey to freedom is much more recent and acute than many other Americans. That means it’s harder to forget. Let me tell you, don’t forget. 

January 2013, when I was first sworn into office in the Senate. The Bible that I was sworn in on was my father’s bible. Today, my dad’s a pastor. And as I was taking into account and thinking back to 1957, thinking back to that teenage kid washing dishes for 50 cents an hour, and if someone had come to my dad then and said, ‘Your son 50 years from now will be a United States senator representing the state of Texas,’ he never could have imagined that. That teenage immigrant, that, it was easier to imagine flying to the moon than that possibility. And there, my father was sitting in the Senate gallery with tears streaming down his face and as he said that day, ‘Only in America.’

What we have here is special. It is unique. It is precious. And it is very much worth fighting for, and I’m proud to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with each of you fighting to preserve and protect the freedom that makes America that shining city on a hill. Thank you.