Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took the oath of office on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his wife and children, beginning his second term as governor of Florida.
“Freedom lives here in our great Sunshine State of Florida,” DeSantis said Tuesday in front of Florida’s historic state Capitol, aware that the eyes of not only the nation but also former President Donald Trump were upon him. “When the world lost its mind, when common sense suddenly became an uncommon virtue—Florida was a refuge for sanity, a refuge for freedom.”
The 44-year-old governor won his reelection campaign in a landslide in November. His campaign released a “Freedom Agenda” in August touting the governor’s accomplishments and offering a guide to other states to follow Florida’s example on law and order, parental rights, economic policy, and the environment.
On Tuesday morning, DeSantis emphasized that fighting for freedom has become harder than ever as the “threats to freedom are more complex and more widespread than they have been in the past.”
“But fight we must. We embrace our founding creed that our rights are not granted by the courtesy of the state, but are endowed by the hand of the Almighty,” he said. “We reject the idea that self-government can be subcontracted out to technocratic elites who reduce human beings to mere data points. We insist on the restoration of time-tested constitutional principles so that government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.”
During the ceremony, DeSantis used the “Bible of the Revolution,” or the “Aitken Bible,” the last Bible commissioned by Congress in 1782 and the first English Bible printed in North America, according to The Blaze. The Founding Fathers used this Bible, one of the rarest books in the world, and DeSantis used it on loan from Blaze co-founder Glenn Beck.
Florida’s first lady, Casey DeSantis, held the historic Bible, flanked by the three DeSantis children, while the governor took his oath of office.
Beck said that he offered both the Aitken Bible and Mary Todd Lincoln’s Bible to DeSantis for use during the inauguration.
“I offered Gov. DeSantis the use of these Bibles for his use at his oath of office ceremony in Florida, as I believe his work in the state has real historic significance. It is the beginning of a renewal of the principles for which our Founders fought,” Beck told The Blaze.
“Florida has led the way in preserving what the father of our country called ‘the sacred fire of liberty,’” DeSantis said in his Tuesday remarks. “It is the fire that burned in Independence Hall, when 56 men pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to establish a new nation conceived in liberty. It’s the fire that burned at a cemetery in Gettysburg, when the nation’s first Republican president pledged to this nation a new birth of freedom.”
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“It’s the fire that burned among the boys who stormed the beaches of Normandy, to liberate a continent and to preserve freedom for the world. It’s the fire that infused the young preacher’s dream, relayed at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, that the Declaration of Independence said what it meant and meant what it said: All men are created equal.”
“It is the fire that led a resolute president to stand in Berlin and declare ‘Tear down this wall,’ staring down the communists and winning the Cold War. It is our responsibility here in Florida to carry this torch. We do not run from this responsibility. We welcome it, we will be on our guard, we will stand firm in the faith, we will be courageous, we will be strong, and we thank God and are proud to be citizens of the great free state of Florida.”
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