Tulsi Gabbard Told Young Americans "Today Is the Day." She Was Talking to Us Too.

Tulsi Gabbard stood in front of a room full of young people at the Texas Youth Summit and asked them a question she first read on a sign in Iraq: "Is today the day?"

She was talking to students. I think she was talking to us too.

If you're in your 60s or 70s, people may tell you it's time to slow down, relax, and let someone else handle things. After watching her speech, I don't buy it. Our freedom needs every generation. And those of us with a few decades behind us have something the young folks don't: we remember how things used to be.

Here's the full speech. Below it are the parts that stayed with me.

She opened with Abraham Lincoln. Not President Lincoln, but Lincoln at 28 years old, giving a speech in Springfield, Illinois. She shared one line from it:

"If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher."

Then she pointed to the first three words of the Constitution. We the people. In her words, they remind us "that the power that this government has comes from us. It's not the other way around."

She also told the story of Benjamin Franklin walking out of Independence Hall in 1787. A woman named Elizabeth Powell asked him what they had, a republic or a monarchy. His answer: "A republic if you can keep it."

If you can keep it. That part is on us.

This is the line I keep coming back to. She said freedom usually isn't taken in one big, obvious move. "Usually, it's something that's traded away bit by bit and eroded slowly here and there."

And almost every time, we're told it's for our own good. "It's for your own safety. It's for your own security."

She walked through examples, from censorship during COVID to the Patriot Act, which Congress passed just 45 days after 9/11. (I wrote about that day and what it did to all of us in Twenty-five years ago today, something broke in all of us.) She also spoke about the cost of endless war and the threat she sees from Islamism.

You may agree with every word or only some of it. Watch the whole speech and decide for yourself.

The part that hit closest to home was about license plate cameras.

She said there are an estimated 13,000 Flock cameras in Texas alone and more than 80,000 nationwide. Add the other companies doing the same thing, and it may be around 300,000 cameras across the country. They're "logging where we were, what time we were there, and where we're going at every step of the way." And she said law enforcement can search that data without a warrant.

She read the Fourth Amendment out loud:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause."

Then she told the story of a 23-year-old woman in Florida. Witnesses said the car in a deadly crash was maroon. Hers was a brand new black Dodge Durango without a scratch on it, photographed by a camera two or three miles away. She was arrested anyway, charged with three counts of vehicular homicide, and held in solitary confinement for 86 hours.

"She spent 13 days in jail because of that picture."

The charges were dropped, and someone else was charged with the crash. But think about her parents getting that knock on the door at 1:00 in the morning.

Next time you drive to the grocery store, look up at the poles. You may start noticing them too.

Here's the hopeful part. People did speak up, and it worked.

She said Governor Abbott pulled state funding for these cameras. At least 14 cities and counties in Texas cut their contracts with Flock, and more than 900 cameras went dark. "But it all started with people realizing that if we don't stand up for ourselves, we will wake up in a world where we no longer have our freedom."

From her own years in Congress, she said "votes were changed in real time because people were lighting up the phones."

So what can we do, at our age, from our own kitchen table? More than you might think:

• Call or email your representatives about the issues you care about. A phone call takes five minutes.
• Go to a city council or county meeting and ask whether your town uses license plate cameras, and who is allowed to search them.
• Vote, then keep paying attention after the election is over.
• Talk with your kids and grandkids about what "We the people" means. They may listen to you more than you think.

I've always loved what Margaret Mead said: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

She closed with her first deployment to Iraq in January 2005. Mortar sirens went off the very first night. The next morning she walked to the main gate of the camp and saw a sign in big block letters: "Is today the day?"

It reminded every soldier walking out that gate that any day could be the last. She came home a little over a year later, and that sign stayed with her. "But what we are in control of is what we choose to do with every day that we are blessed with."

She told those young people, "No one is too young or inexperienced." Jonathan Dayton was just 26 at the Constitutional Convention.

I'd add this for my readers: no one is too old, either.

Your experience, your memory of how things used to be, and your voice still count. Maybe more than ever.

One of my favorite quotes is from C.S. Lewis: "You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending."

That's what this blog is about. Your next chapter can be about more than slowing down. It can be about freedom, yours and your grandkids'.

So I'll ask you what she asked that room in Texas. Is today the day?

Watch the full speech above, then pick one thing from the list and do it this week. And if this post meant something to you, share it with one person who needs to hear it.

P.S. Her last words to that room were "Stand up. Speak up. Don't be afraid." Good advice at any age.