“She smiled. She knew she was dying. But it did not matter any longer. She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now. She had been awaiting it and she felt it, as if it had been, as if she had lived it. Life had been, if only because she had known it could be, and she felt it now as a hymn without sound, deep under the little whole that dripped red drops into the snow, deeper than that from which the red drops came. A moment or an eternity- did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist. She smiled, her last smile, to so much that had been possible.”

— from We the Living, by Ayn Rand

A meme eloquently puts it: “Your grandfather didn’t sleep in a foxhole in a far away land while clutching a picture of your grandmother so you would surrender your guns.”

And so much more.

Your grandfather didn’t endure fighting Nazis so you could wear a mask everywhere you go. Or submit to an untested vaccine. Or surrender your free speech. Or accept a totalitarian green dictatorship based upon the weather forecast 500 years from now. Or submit to a tyranny of racial terrorists allied with mental disorder patients. Or to tolerate questionable election results with no right to discuss them. Or to replace capitalism with Chinese Communist manipulation. Or to pay 50 times for gas what he paid. Or to open up the nation’s borders and place every entrant (terrorists, criminals, child molesters and sociopaths all included) on the government dole forever. Or to pay off your college loan only to pay off your neighbor’s daughter’s college through taxes (or inflation). Or to get permanently used to supply chain shortages for absolutely no reason. Or to experience hyperinflation. Or to enable you to experience intellectual nausea when watching The View, or Joe Biden drooling through his ice cream cone. Or to watch narcissistic ball players take a knee before what used to be a gloriously fun, entirely nonpolitical sport. Or to experience the ruination of American comedy and theater through the 21st century’s “woke” equivalent of a Maoist nightmare group psychosis.

Your grandfather didn’t huddle in a foxhole FOR ANY OF THIS CRAP.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

What a joy to watch this speech. It’s not only a reminder that NOT all young people, and NOT all Ivy League graduates, are ignorant idiots.
It’s also a reminder for all eras: The rare jewels matter way, way more than the heaping mounds of trash all around us. Never lose hope, because the good guys and the good ideas — by definition — HAVE to win in the end.