00:00Before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding.
00:04Its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores
00:09to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires, extending out across the globe.
00:16But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting.
00:24Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an iron curtain,
00:29and the rest looked like it would soon follow.
00:32The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline,
00:36accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings
00:41that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle
00:46across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.
00:50Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West's age of dominance
00:56had come to an end, and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our
01:03past.
01:04But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice,
01:12and it was a choice they refused to make.
01:16This is what we did together once before,
01:18and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now,
01:23together with you.
01:26And this is why we do not want our allies to be weak,
01:29because that makes us weaker.
01:31We want allies who can defend themselves
01:34so that no adversary will ever be tempted to test our collective strength.
01:39This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame.
01:43We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage,
01:46who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization,
01:50and who together with us are willing and able to defend it.
01:56And this is why we do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo
02:00rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it.
02:05For we in America have no interest
02:08in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West's managed decline.
02:13that is the worst part of the world.
02:13the worst part of the world is the worst part of the world.
02:13Grazie.
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