President Trump delivered an epic two-hour speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference Saturday. If you missed it, you can watch it here. 

As you can imagine, the president covered a lot of ground. He highlighted several themes, which I expect we will hear frequently in the days ahead, including this one:

“We believe in the American Dream, not in the socialist nightmare… The future belongs to those who believe in freedom. I have said it before and I’ll say it again: America will never be a socialist country — ever." 

As I have noted recently, the left is openly embracing socialism with policies like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and confiscatory tax rates. Left-wing candidates increasingly now welcome the "socialist” label.

So it seems the free market system that has made our economy the envy of the world is on the defensive, particularly among the young. 

But so too, it seems, is America itself — our history, our traditions and our culture. During his CPAC address, President Trump commended his audience, saying:

“The men and women here today are on the frontlines of protecting America’s interests, defending America’s values, and reclaiming our nation’s priceless heritage.”

Those remarks about American exceptionalism were met with utter scorn by Samantha Vinograd, a former Obama national security adviser.  Speaking on CNN, Vinograd compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, and presumably the CPAC audience to Nazis, saying: 

“Preserving your heritage, reclaiming our heritage — that sounds a lot like a certain leader that killed members of my family and about 6 million other Jews in the 1940s.”

By the way, Ms. Vinograd is currently a senior advisor at the University of Delaware’s Biden Institute.

Her outrageous response reminds me of the left’s knee-jerk reaction to Trump’s outstanding speech in Warsaw, Poland. One progressive columnist compared the president’s defense of Western Civilization to “white-nationalist dog whistles." 

When did defending America and the values of our Judeo-Christian culture become the equivalent of racism? It has happened step-by-step because our universities are teaching our children that America and its history are evil.

The Fight For Our Future

Vinograd’s reaction is evidence that while Republicans slept the left created a generation of young Americans who believe our country and the West are evil. Polling shows Millennials are the least patriotic generation in history.

Some #NeverTrumpers point to Millennials’ low affinity for the GOP and say, "Look at what Trump has done to the Republican Party’s reputation among young people. The party will never recover." 

What they are completely missing is what the left-wing educational complex has done to Millennials. 

Unless we come up with an antidote, decades of indoctrination will make it virtually impossible for any candidate who defends American history and Judeo-Christian civilization to prevail. The implications for the future of the country are too horrible to contemplate.

Reclaiming The Campus

During his CPAC remarks, President Trump also praised the courage of Hayden Williams, the conservative activist who was punched in the face recently at the University of California-Berkeley. 

In response to Williams’ assault, and dozens of other incidents, Trump announced that he would be "signing an executive order requiring colleges and universities to support free speech if they want federal research dollars.”

I think that is a great idea! 

And, of course, it was immediately attacked by the left and by some libertarians, including Larry Elder on Fox News Monday morning. Elder seemed to be concerned about how the policy would be enforced and how we would know if schools are violating free speech.

Well, if the only people who can speak on a university campus are leftists and liberals, while conservatives often can’t speak at all because of “security issues,” that’s called failing to defend free speech. 

Once upon a time, our university campuses used to be centers of learning. Academic freedom requires free speech and the free exchange of ideas. Diversity also includes diversity of opinion.

If conservative activist Candace Owens or Ben Shapiro or Sean Hannity can’t speak on college campuses today because progressives might leave their “safe spaces” and riot, that’s called appeasing a mob. It’s suppression of speech, not free speech. 

And if public universities refuse to uphold even our most basic rights, they should do so without our tax dollars!

The Intolerant Left

While we’re on the subject of left-wing intolerance, former Vice President Joe Biden ran into a progressive buzz saw recently. He’s thinking about running for president in 2020 and positioning himself as the responsible, moderate candidate in a crowd of radicals.

Biden was speaking last week about foreign policy when he referred to Vice President Mike Pence as “a decent guy.” That’s very true. Mike Pence is one of the most decent men I know. But as CNN noted, Biden’s nice comment about Pence was a “big mistake." 

Lesbian actress and progressive activist Cynthia Nixon pounced, and Biden quickly apologized. Now he’s being attacked by Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Here we go again. We’re back to Obama’s "bitter clingers” and Hillary’s “basket of deplorables." 

Progressives are proving just how intolerant they truly are. They are attacking Mike Pence because of his Christian values, denouncing him as a "bigot” and making it clear that anyone with his values cannot possibly be “decent." 

My friends, don’t miss the big picture: When the left attacks Mike Pence, or his wife, Karen, for their faith, they are attacking you and your faith. It is all part of the left’s effort to make commonsense conservative values unspeakable.

They are proving why compromise is next to impossible in Washington today. It has nothing to do with Donald Trump and everything to do with the left’s increasing extremism.