James Lankford: “250 years ago--actually, 250 years ago this summer--we wrote a letter to good King George III, and in that letter we now…”

“250 years ago--actually, 250 years ago this summer--we wrote a letter to good King George III, and in that letter we now call the Declaration of Independence, we complained about foreign intervention into the activities of Americans, the colonists. We wanted the right to be able to actually control our own destiny. We wanted the ability to be able to speak for our own future, decide for our own families, without having foreign interference coming across an ocean to be able to affect us. We determined that we wanted to run our own Nation. Now, 250 years later, we still want to run our own Nation. We want to make our own decisions without foreign interference, without anyone stepping in and telling us, as Americans, whom we are going to be and what we are going to do. We disagree with each other enough; we don't need individuals from the outside coming in and expressing their opinion. We handle this as Americans, and the way that we do that is with elections. Elections have been routinely done through the history of our country since our Constitution was ratified in 1789. It has been a distinguishing mark of the United States. We are the oldest functioning constitutional democracy in the world. And in our Republic, we choose representatives. Those representatives speak on our behalf. And if we decide we don't like them for whatever reason, we choose different representatives. But we, as Americans, choose our own path through our own elected officials.”