“We have neglected our wonderful country. And this is what you get when you neglect it … [a] perception that the American people are running Washington, D.C. They’re not. That’s the problem,” said the head of the House Freedom Caucus.
As a nation, we need to reinvigorate a culture where people understand what made America the greatest country in the world, Rep. Scott Perry told Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts on “The Kevin Roberts Show” podcast.
Perry said we need to “recreate” that culture and have a “revival of sorts … the revival of believing in something—someone—bigger than yourself, a creator that has all this figured out.”
People in the “Greatest Generation” in the World War II era used to know “what was right and what was wrong,” said Perry. “That’s when people understood their place in the world, and in their family, and in their community, and in their country.”
People used to not argue about, “Are you a man or a woman? And should your daughter be showering with my son in the school? We wouldn’t even have that discussion.”
We can’t learn to accept things like throwing away marriage, family, and responsibilities. “If we learn to accept those things and start accepting them, they become acceptable,” he said.
This problem is solved when people “understand what their place is … get up out of bed in the morning, make your bed, get dressed, and go to work with a good attitude, whatever your work is. … Be the best at it and smile through it,” according to Perry.
People need to understand “what this government is about and what it’s not about. It’s not about fixing all your problems,” the Freedom Caucus chairman said.
Perry explained that he never expected to run for office, but he said he realized “the world was on fire.”
“How can this be so screwed up? Can’t anybody do anything? Won’t anybody do anything? And then … this window of opportunity opened,” Perry said about how he ended up in Congress.
To get Congress back on track, he said he believes Congress needs to pass a budget as well as ensure accountability by ensuring that the American people see how their members of Congress vote on legislation.
But the congressman said he has hope because he sees the same spirit the Founding Fathers had in some of the members of his Freedom Caucus. “You need to have some courage when you come here.”
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