Winsome Sears: Why Socialism Always Fails

[FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW] In this episode, we sit down with Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, author of “How Sweet It Is: Defending the American Dream.” We discuss her remarkable story, her values, and what drives her.

“Here I am, second in command in the former capital of the Confederate States. Don’t tell me America hasn’t changed. Of course it has. Now, are there problems? Of course. There are problems in other countries. There is no utopia. But America is the best we’ve got and we’re going to keep her,” Ms. Sears says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.   

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Jan Jekielek:
Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears:
Thank you for having me, Jan.

Mr. Jekielek:
I’ve really been enjoying your autobiography, and let’s start there. Your grandmother, and my grandmother, who I actually never knew because she died when my mother was nine years old, had something in common. I would say an interest in helping others above and beyond. That influenced your life significantly, and I want to start there.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
My grandmother was a very interesting woman. She started with nothing. When you read the book, you’ll see that she was born in a one room hut, and it’s still there today. Sadly, it doesn’t belong to my family, but maybe we can buy it back again someday. But I’m very proud of it. It’s got boards of all shapes and sizes and colors on the building. I say to myself, “This is a reminder of where I’ve come from. We can’t afford to get too big in our britches.”

She would have said to me, “The same people you meet on the way up are the same ones you’re going to meet on the way down, so you treat everyone with respect.” Yes, she was a one woman force. She’s my paternal grandmother, but so was my mother’s mother. Grandparents, because they have more time for you as a grandchild, you can learn a lot from them.

Mr. Jekielek:
The thing that you noted was that she made a point. She would be helping people out when there was very little around, and sometimes people would have issues with that, saying, “Why are you doing this? This isn’t your family.”

Lt. Gov. Sears:
As the grandchildren, we would say, “Don’t they have anyone else to help them?” You get jealous because that is your grandmother, or your grandparents. This is just the woman she was, and you think when you grow up you’ll never do that. But because you saw the example, you can’t get away from it for too long, because there’s something in you. The seed was planted, and then you find yourself wanting to help others.

If you don’t help others who need that help when you see it, then what kind of a person are you? You’re callous. You walk by someone and you just leave them be? Now, I’m not saying that you help every single person, because there’s some that you can’t help no matter how you try. Some you have to understand, and you have to have the discretion on how to help them. Maybe I’m not going to give you the money to go buy the food. Maybe I will buy the food and bring it to you.

Mr. Jekielek:
While we’re talking about this, one of the most traumatic parts of your book is actually you figuring out how to deal with your daughter Dejon, the tragic events that followed, and dealing with mental illness in the family. Please tell me about that.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
She was growing up and you’re thinking maybe she’s just rebellious, because she’s not doing what we would say are the normal things. You just don’t think that it could be a mental disease. Nobody wants to talk about mental issues, so you’re not recognizing the signs. When it’s happening during the teenage years you just think it’s a rebellious teenager. But then she had that real breakdown in college and we had to go and get her. She was an adult by that time and the doctors weren’t telling you everything. She had stopped taking her medication.

But the doctors did tell us that sometimes mental illness gets to a place where they come back into themselves with the chemicals, because she had a chemical imbalance. She was working again, she was productive again, and because of that she assumed that she was fine and she didn’t need her medicine, so it was a rollercoaster. She doesn’t take her medication, and then she goes right back off of it. It’s this cycle, it’s like a seven-month cycle.

But you learn to recognize the signs. By the time I did, it was cycle number whatever, but then it was too late. She seemed to be on the right foot and understood that, “No, I have to keep taking my medication.” We even had to watch her and say, “Stick out your tongue,” as an adult. We just thought she was back on the right track, but she clearly wasn’t.

Mr. Jekielek:
You actually had a premonition of sorts.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Actually, it started with my granddaughter, Faith. A month before they went to heaven Faith would say, “Grandma, Jesus is giving us a big house, a really big house.” I would just wonder, “What is she talking about?” Then she started drawing big houses in the childlike way that she did. My daughter would drop them off and we would go to Bible study. One night I heard her praying and she said, “Thank you, Jesus, for the big house you’re going to give us.”

That’s when I thought, “Okay, something’s going on. I’m going to ask my daughter if she is moving.” The next day she came to pick them up and I asked, “Are you guys going somewhere? Because Faith keeps talking about you’re going into a big house.” She said, “I don’t know what she’s talking about, mom, we’re not moving.” But now I understand, the child was trying to say mansion. In the Bible, Jesus promises a mansion, but she didn’t know the word so she kept saying big house.

The day before they went to heaven my daughter came to pick them up again. She bent down and she looked at me and I just saw this skeletal skull in her face. I said to myself, “She has stopped taking her medication. I’ve got to talk to her about that. But I’ll do it next week, because I don’t want a war,” because that was always what inevitably happened.

Once again, Faith came and sat on this hip and asked a question of me, but I cannot tell you to this day what the question was, because I heard a voice fill the room and ask, “What are you going to do if she dies?” That was sort of jarring. I looked to see if my other daughter had heard the voice, but she hadn’t. My other granddaughter hadn’t, and my husband was in the kitchen. I was the only one who heard it, so I thought…hmm.

Faith jumped off my hip, came around, looked me in the face and said, “Grandma,” because it was obvious I was not there. “Yes?” Then I just studied the curvature of her nose and I studied her whole face. I just studied her because the voice had asked, “What are you going to do if she dies?” The very next day they were going back home.

Mr. Jekielek:
I’m very sorry for your loss. I know this was some years ago, of course. But it’s been incredibly evocative how you explain this, and also how it influenced you and your thinking, and what you learned from it.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Yes.

Mr. Jekielek:
That’s actually a big theme in your writing and in your life.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Yes, trauma just seems to be a clear and definitive point. What do you do now? Are you going to disintegrate? Are you yourself going to lose your mind? Are you going to just exist until you die? That happened when my grandmother died when I was 18-years-old. I was supposed to start college that August, but when she died that July, I thought my life was over and I was just going to die. Here I was at age 18, and I was so traumatized.

But the Marine Corps saved me when I joined, the few and the proud. I thought, “That’s what I need, discipline.” Then here it is again, another traumatic death, and what do you do? My husband and I had two remaining children. You can’t fall apart. They need you too, so you find a reason to get up every morning. Then after, you collapse, of course, because there are three caskets in front of you. What are you going to do? How do you go to the funeral with three caskets; not one, not two, but three? You have to find a way.

Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, you also lost your two granddaughters.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Yes, my daughter and the two grandchildren. I don’t say lost, because I know where they are. They’re in heaven, and they’re where I want to be. That is very comforting, because they’re not subject to the vagaries of life anymore, the insults and all of that. They’re fine, they’re just fine.

Mr. Jekielek:
Speaking of insults, let’s work on that for a moment. The term, not black enough, comes up a lot in your book, along with the questions about this. What is this thing?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
It’s all political. Unfortunately, it is a divisive type of argument. It has happened, especially during my first run for election, just because I’m a Republican, and I’m black. I guess I’m supposed to be a Democrat if I’m black. But this is America, and nobody tells us what we’re supposed to be and how we’re supposed to be. We make those decisions for ourselves. But for some people, it’s all about political power.

If you can keep all of us in the one basket, then we need you as our political savior. I don’t need a savior, I already have that. I need the government to get out of my way so that I can accomplish things. This is America. My dad came to America with $1.75, and just to picture that, that is seven quarters. Seven quarters. Yet he succeeded, and he is comfortably retired now.

Mr. Jekielek:
At a time when there were actually some pretty serious barriers for him, right?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Yes.

Mr. Jekielek:
More than there would be now, right?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
This was in 1963, 17 days before Dr. King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. Think about that. He, as a black man, having read about and been told about what to expect in America, begged to come to America. He thought this was where he could restart his life. Then he brought me.

You know who else knows that America is the place to be? The people at the southern border. They’re literally throwing their children over the fence to plant them in American soil. Now, I say that you have to do it the right way. We have to know who’s entering the country, and we have to know everything about you. We have to give you permission. But they believe that if they get their foot on American soil, their trajectory, their opportunities, and everything else will be for the better. They’re not believing that we are racist or sexist. They don’t believe that.

Mr. Jekielek:
I might add, despite all the huge problems that many Americans are seeing, they’re actually right about that, I would say.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
They want America to stay America. They want the America that they hear about, where opportunities abound, where if you work hard you can make it, where you can literally decide your own future, and where you’re even free to fail. What government do you know that puts happiness in their Constitution? The government is actually interested in you pursuing happiness.

Now, that wasn’t always true, and of course, we know that. But we are not there anymore, and I am proof. I was elected under the same Constitution that existed way back then. Not only that, but here I am, second in command in the former capital of the Confederate states. Don’t tell me America hasn’t changed, of course it has. Now, are there problems? Of course, but there are also problems in other countries. There is no utopia. But America is the best we’ve got and we’re going to keep her.

Mr. Jekielek:
Talking about immigration, from everything I’ve seen and the experts I’ve spoken with, I’m convinced that the main reason that there is this huge interest in the southern border and crossing at the southern border is because people know they’ll get to stay here, after all the perils of getting through. How are you approaching that? Is this an issue for Virginia?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
As we know, there really are no more border states, per se, because the immigrants coming through don’t stay in Texas and Florida and New Mexico. They’re coming into California, and they’re coming up through the rest of the states. Texas is making sure we get some of them. The state in which I grew up, New York, they’re now crying. They don’t have the numbers of immigrants that Texas has, for example, and yet they’re crying with the small percentage that they do have. This impacts all of us.

Fentanyl, which is coming across the border, from China especially, is killing at least nine Virginians every day. We have other types of drugs coming through. We have crime that’s affecting us because of people coming through the border. There are terrorists who have come through the border, and now I understand the FBI and the CIA are trying to locate some of them.

There is so much happening. The sex trafficking and child trafficking is happening. It’s coming up, maybe sometimes on the 95 side, but definitely on the 81, 85 side, and going all the way through. Some of these small towns in Virginia are affected by this. You would be surprised. You would think not so much in the rural areas. We’re all affected by it, and we have to know who’s in the country. A country without borders is not a country, after all.

Mr. Jekielek:
You know, as we’re speaking here, I can’t help but think about this recent election a few weeks before, as we’re sitting here and filming right now. I remember you saying something in the book, I think actually I took a note. You of course talk about your win and how sweet it is, right? You say it was a win for Republicans, Democrats, and everybody in between. With this recent election, do you read that as people saying we don’t want these policies that you were elected on? How do you read what happened?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Fundamentally, at its very base, elections are about numbers. Elections are about turnout. In our race in 2021, for example, there were 500,000 Republicans who voted for us, who the very next year set out the race for Congress. No business, a small business especially, medium-sized business in particular, can lose 500,000 customers and think they’re going to be a viable enterprise. It’s impossible. We kept losing, because these are people who only vote if it’s a presidential race or if it’s a gubernatorial race, otherwise they sit it out.

The Democrats, mind you, have the same problem. They have their low propensity voters, as we call them. But they’ve figured it out, and they have a solution. They get them to vote absentee. Whether you come to the polls or not, a ballot is mailed to your home. After all, the objective is to get the ballot in the hand, and they have figured it out.

They’re about three to four years ahead of us, but we were able to cut into that. In fact, we were able to lessen that amount. In certain races we won the absentee ballot numbers before election day. As Republicans going into the election, we were already 17,000 votes down and having to make that up. We cut into that significantly, and we just have to keep on doing it.

The Democrats in this race cycle raised $110 million for state reps. For state senators, they raised $110 million, but we only raised $77million. The reason we raised the $77 million was because Governor Youngkin really pushed for it and was able to bring that money in. I think we’re going to do better. We did pick up a Senate seat, but we didn’t win the Senate outright. Yes, we did lose the House, but it could have been much worse.

Mr. Jekielek:
Do you think it was a referendum on the policies that you and Governor Youngkin had?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
No. When we were going door to door, we were letting them know that Democrats believe in abortion up until the day that the child could be born, and even afterwards. Two years ago we had the Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, who is a pediatrician, come on the radio and explain how you could have an abortion after the baby is born. He said, “If the infant is born alive, we’re going to keep the infant comfortable until the mother decides what to do.”

What are you talking about? The baby is already here and breathing on its own. You’re just going to leave the baby on the abortion table to die with no help? What kind of a society have we become? When we were explaining this at the door, the voters said, “No, we don’t believe that. We don’t believe in that at all.” You see, they never heard the whole message.

Mr. Jekielek:
That’s actually one of the criticisms that I’ve heard, which is that there’s a very successful messaging campaign around what Roe vs. Wade actually meant, which was something like no abortion anywhere.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Yes, and that was a lie.

Mr. Jekielek:
Which obviously is not the case.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
It was a lie. Because if the life and the health of the mother is at stake, we can’t force her to go forward with it—her life’s in danger. We had rape and incest, but you never heard about that, and the Democrats just flat out lied. But next time will be different.

Mr. Jekielek:
Just to touch on it, and I don’t want to harp on abortion too long, but you are pretty strong in your thoughts. You believe, especially for the black community, it has been a form of eugenics, which is a controversial position.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
No, it’s not a controversial position at all because it’s a fact. I guess facts can be controversial, but the truth is the truth. One of the reasons Margaret Sanger started Planned Parenthood was to help get rid of the black population. In fact, it’s one of the reasons why there is a Planned Parenthood in New York who took Margaret Sanger’s name off, because it was noted that she said, “If the N-words ever find out that this will get rid of their population and their babies, then we’re in trouble.”

It’s amazing to me that those who did not want black people to be around are somehow our saviors. Black women make up 14 percent of the childbearing population nationwide, and yet we have 40 to 46 percent of the abortions. If you had wanted to get rid of us, you couldn’t have planned anything better. I want our babies to live, as well as other babies.

Mr. Jekielek:
Right. I’m going to read from here; you were the first woman lieutenant governor of Virginia, the first black woman, the first naturalized female citizen, an immigrant from Jamaica, and the first female veteran elected to statewide office. That’s a lot of firsts, but I don’t see that being as celebrated as one would expect.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
It’s a political thing, again, because I am destroying narratives. It is said that Republicans hate immigrants. Well, here I am. I was born in Jamaica. It is said that Republicans hate black people. Well, here I am again. It is said that Republicans are not too loving of women in general. Well, here I am. I am destroying all those narratives.

The funny thing is that I did nothing special to become lieutenant governor except to stay in school and study. I try to tell that to whoever will listen, that you must dictate your own life. But children can’t. You depend on your parents to fight for you, and on your parents to love you and to care for you. But you can’t be 40-years-old and continue to blame your parents. At some point ,you have to take responsibility for your own life.

It’s your life. If you have to restart your life at whatever age, maybe at 20, then restart it and get going. I didn’t go to college until I had three children under five. I’m saying that you can do this. This is not some pollyanna-type comment. But yes, my win is not so celebrated. But it’s not necessarily a win for me, it’s a win for everyone. Because they can say, “If Winsome can do it, then I can do it too.” That’s the uplifting message.

Mr. Jekielek:
Yes. You had a small electrical business. You were an electrician in the Marines.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
An electrician and a diesel mechanic, so you could smell me before you saw me.

Mr. Jekielek:
Right, so there’s just a lot of things about you which are kind of unexpected and breaking the gender norms in some ways.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Whatever that is. I’ve always been taught that you have to do it for yourself, and nobody’s going to do it for me. If it is to be, it’s up to me. It’s that old adage. Really, it’s your life. If you don’t care about your own life, who will? Are you going to just roll over and die, or are you going to get up and go get it done? Go and get it done.

Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, you told me, “There’s always tomorrow no matter how hard it seems.” I was asking if there was something you wanted to make sure folks got out of our interview. That’s a great message.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
There’s nothing that happens to you that hasn’t happened to someone else. Nothing you are facing is so unusual that nobody in this world has ever faced that and you think, “Woe is me.” Now, we don’t make light of the things that people suffer, like abuse and racism, whatever it may be.

Do you allow your perpetrator to win, or do you forgive them? As someone once pointed out, unforgiveness is like drinking poison expecting it to hurt someone else. No, you have to forgive that person. Sometimes, you have to forgive them as many times as it comes to your mind, and then you move on. On some days it’s easier, and on some days it’s harder, but then you move on.

There was somebody who really did a terrible thing to me, and one day I just decided that I’m going to forgive. I’m just going to forgive. I heard that person had died not long after I had decided to forgive. Had I carried that with me, I would have been angry at a dead person, waiting for that person to come and ask for forgiveness.

As I said, you’ve got to get the strength. You’ve got to find people who will energize you, who will encourage you, who sometimes will say, “You can’t go down this road anymore. You know when you start down this road you’re going to end up in some depressive mode, so don’t go there.” You have to find friends like that, who will tell you like it is, and who will pull you up out of it. Surround yourself with those kinds of people.

Mr. Jekielek:
You mentioned racism moments ago. A lot of people today are still saying America is a systemically racist country. How do you react to that?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Some really understand what it is, especially President Biden. He was asked that question and said, “No, America is not a racist country.” That was the same question asked of Vice President Kamala Harris, and she said, “America is not a systemically racist country.” If they’re saying it doesn’t exist, then I’ll agree with them, because there’s some people who see racism in everything.

Now, are there racists? Of course. But if it’s not racism in our country, then it’s colorism. We had that issue where some people are lighter and some people are darker. If it’s not that, then it’s sexism. If it’s not that, then it’s classism. We always find reasons to divide ourselves, and humans are good at that. It’s in every country. But I don’t see anybody leaving America for any of these other countries.

They’re all breaking down the doors to get in. We work around things, and we overcome things. Surely, we’re not back in the days of slavery. Surely we’re not back in 1963 when my father first came, when there were real dog whistles, and when there were real fire hoses. Surely, we’re not. We’ll overcome and we’ll keep overcoming. We’re not victims.

Mr. Jekielek:
During Covid, starting in 2020 with all these shelter-in-place lockdown policies and bizarre monetary policies, your business actually suffered quite a bit. I didn’t quite remember if that was it, or if you rode it out in the end. What’s your view on what happened during that time?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
You see that apparently there was a lot of overreach. There was a lot of stepping on toes and stepping on the Constitution. That shouldn’t have happened. If you wanted to keep your job you were forced to get a vaccine. You had waitresses and waiters asking you for your vaccination status. Are you kidding me? You had houses of worship closed down and businesses shut down. You had big box stores open, but mom and pop stores were closed because of government policies.

Covid didn’t shut us down. It was the government policy on Covid that shut us down. Florida didn’t shut down in the way that Virginia did. Our public schools were closed, but yet private schools were open five days a week for a whole year. But somehow, the public schools were closed. Covid doesn’t go to private schools? None of this made any sense.

In Virginia, we had the state-run liquor stores. Those were open, but other stores were shut down. Why? Did they need spirits or something? Yes, there was a spirit in the air that infected my business. I remember then Governor Northam declared you had to have permission to be outside in case the sheriff stopped you. What country is this? South Dakota didn’t shut down in the way that we did.

Everybody flocked to these free states, as they were being called, even the Democrats. I saw AOC [Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] in Florida without a mask, then she went back to New York. What are you doing down there? Governor Pritzker from Illinois locked his state down, but then sent his wife and children to Florida where everybody was free to do as they wished. They’re all hypocrites.

Governor Newsom in California was hobnobbing and having a wonderful time at dinner with donors, all maskless. Speaker Pelosi was in San Francisco, California, getting her hair done without a mask. Fauci was without a mask, until the camera caught him. None of this made any sense. But the people are slowly waking up.

Mr. Jekielek:
One of the themes that comes out in your autobiography is dealing with fear. You’re dealing with fear constructively. But here’s the connection. During this time, we could call it industrial-grade propaganda to sow fear was employed at an unprecedented scale with all the newest technologies, and enabled through social media. It turns out it’s very difficult for people to deal with that, and to even see it for what it is.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Yes, probably because we’re not used to it. I’m from a Third World country, and I’ve seen propaganda. I knew the word propaganda when I was eight years old. I knew about what that meant, because we were taken over by a socialist democrat. That’s what AOC and her ilk call themselves. They say, “We’re going to do this the right way,” but it destroyed Jamaica. It destroyed our economy and brought Castro over from Cuba. Cuba is only 45 miles from Jamaica.

Now, Jamaica and Cuba have always had a good relationship. My grandfather worked at Guantanamo Bay way back then. But by then they were communists, and they brought that Russian money over. They started building schools, destroyed Jamaica’s economy, and nationalized everything. I remember you couldn’t buy the chicken unless you bought something else that went with the chicken. We had supply issues, and it was bad.

Multinational corporations who were doing so well in Jamaica and providing so many jobs up and left because they understood their profits were no longer theirs. These communists and these socialists, one day they’ll figure it out. We learn from history that we never learn from history. Maybe we won’t ever learn that communism doesn’t work, and that socialism is no good.

Mr. Jekielek:
How does that relate to what you see happening in this country now?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
It sounds really good that we’re all going to share and share alike. Except in your job, if you work harder than your coworker, do you want to share the bonus that you got with your coworker who didn’t do half of the work that you did? Because that’s what communism says, “We’re all going to share. There is no merit in working hard. None of that makes any sense.”

If you work hard, you should get the reward. That sounds fair to anyone. I’m reminded of the classic teacher situation where he asked the class, “If you get an A, are you going to share your A with your classmate who got a D?” Nobody wants that, do they? Let’s just be real about how things really work in the real world.

One of the things that we hear communists and socialists say is, “If you read the Bible,” and apparently they pick and choose the scriptures that they want, “Jesus said that you’re supposed to share everything together. Here’s one of the verses that talks about that.”

Except they forget that when Jesus talks to the rich, young ruler, he doesn’t say, “Give everything away.” He says, “Sell everything you have and then come follow me.” He doesn’t say give it away—he says sell it. So, there you are.

Mr. Jekielek:
That’s an interesting distinction that I’ve never heard about. Just something that just came to my mind actually is during the election in 2021 there’s this poster, I don’t know if it was a poster or just a photo, that went viral of you with a menacing looking weapon.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
The Marine NCO [Non-Commissioned Officer] sword, yes.

Mr. Jekielek:
Absolutely. You’re a fierce Second Amendment advocate, and you were very clear about that from the outset.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
The fastest growing segment of gun owners are women, black women especially. They understand, especially those who were crying for the defunding of the police, “Who are we going to call when we are in need of rescuing?” When I call 911, I want to know somebody is coming to help me and to rescue me.

But in the meantime, what do I do? If the intruder is entering and he has a gun, what do I do? I need my own protection while I’m waiting. By the way, if you have a neighbor, you hope that they are going to help. They say, “Well, we don’t, Winsome.” Do you see what I mean? We have to be able to protect ourselves.

There are over 400 million guns in America. There are people who are not law-abiding, and we’re going to deal with those people. But how could there be 400 million guns and we’re still as safe as we are? We just have to make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. We need our protection.

Mr. Jekielek:
One of the things I’ve heard people saying lately, and I’ve really been reflecting on, is that you need the Second Amendment to protect the First Amendment.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
The First Amendment, yes.

Mr. Jekielek:
I’m sure you’ve heard that a million times. Just this morning, before we were filming, I was at a hearing of the subcommittee on weaponization of government with astonishing, newer evidence even of basically government encroachment on the First Amendment. Have you been following this?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Governments over time tend to want more and more power. The founding fathers tried to devolve power. When they wanted to make Washington into a king, thankfully he said no to that. They realized, and this is through a Bible verse, Isaiah: 33 and 22, “The Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our King.” King means executive branch, lawgiver means legislative branch, and judge means judicial branch, the three branches of government. The founding fathers would’ve known this because John Knox, the great philosopher, spoke about it all the time. He was of their time.

They devolved power. Of course, man being who he is, fights for his power, and so there come the checks and balances. We don’t want encroachment from the legislative branch, on the judicial branch or the executive branch. That fight for power, like the wrong ends of the magnet, keeps power. Invariably, there comes along some smooth talker, we give all our power to that person, and off we go again. We learn from history, that we never learn from history. The Romans tried it and it didn’t work out very well. We tried, but we just have these petty tyrants.

Mr. Jekielek:
Let me share with you something that just struck me recently for the first time. I’ve been learning with lightning speed about the American founding and what the Constitution was about. It took me a while just to grasp the whole concept. You said the concept of the Constitution and the approach of the U.S. government was to limit the obvious accumulation of power which would happen when you put people in charge of anything.
I was recently at Mount Vernon where there was a reenactment of the assistant to George Washington speaking about his legacy. They wanted to make him king, and he absolutely refused this. I wonder if all of this was a great, fantastic idea, until that moment when George Washington said, “There’s a lot of good reasons for me to be king, and there’s a lot of people that are certainly my lessers.” He might’ve been right, and he would’ve been a great ruler, except that he said, “No, I have to step away because I have to let this work itself out.” Maybe that was the moment when this whole experiment actually became real.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
We’re still experimenting, and hopefully we’ll keep it alive. In America, it’s interesting that the military has to answer to the President, that the generals aren’t in charge. That’s interesting and fascinating. You really couldn’t have a coup in a sense that we see coups all around. It just wouldn’t do. It’s so ingrained in the American psyche. We’re independent, and we don’t overrun one branch or the other branch. But you never know, anything can happen.

We hope for the best. We need more civics classes and we need people to understand more about how America came to be. No, she didn’t get it totally right. There were atrocities on black people and atrocities on Indians. We don’t deny that, but we learn from it, and here we are. As I said, people are breaking into the country wanting to come here.

Mr. Jekielek:
I want to touch on the military for a moment, because during the Covid years, which I guess we’re still kind of in, I was reading how the military is now asking people back, who were let go because they refused to take the vaccine by mandate. But at some point people were even dishonorably discharged because of this.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Yes.

Mr. Jekielek:
Then at the same time, there’s a lot of criticism of the military becoming more woke, just basically a very different focus from what you imagine a military to be focusing on, which is the defense of the nation.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Yes. As I said, the Constitution was trampled on quite a bit because of Covid policies. We didn’t know very much about this vaccine. Now I said if you want to take the vaccine, take it. If you don’t want to take it, then that’s your prerogative. But can’t force people to put something in their bodies just because you said so. Where will it end then? If you’re talking about your body, it’s your decision, and wouldn’t that apply to Covid vaccines?

What new thing will we think about next? Because we’ve already started down this path. We’ve shut down businesses because the government is going to tell you what to do about that. We shut down houses of worship, we shut down education, and we shut the whole economy down. It was absolute power.

Here in Virginia, the Democrats had absolute power. They had the executive branch, they had the legislative branch, and they ran wild. Whatever their hearts desired is what they did. It was absolute power. They went a bridge too far, and the very next year the people elected us, the Republicans, because they understood that all bets are off.

You made certain decision when you kept my child out of school, shut my business down, and now my business is dead. Who are you? We had Democrats who voted for us and we had independents who voted for us. We have to keep remembering these lessons, because those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat those errors, as it is said.

Mr. Jekielek:
What should the military do now given what has happened?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
The military has to remember that it’s about guarding our safety and security, and we’ve got to be careful with the policies. Then again, Congress has a role to play. This is the beauty of the military. The leaders are confirmed by the Congress.

It’s not the President who makes the decisions about who is this general and who is the colonel. We all have a part to play and we’ve got to make sure that we first and foremost understand that we’re supposed to protect the people, and protect the people even from its own government. We are the people.

Mr. Jekielek:
Governor, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Any final thoughts as we finish?

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Just one thing, along with everything that we’ve already discussed. It is your life, it’s the one life you have, and live it to the fullest. Help others as you’re coming along. Fear will always be with us, the fear of man. I read the Bible, and I see great men being in fear, like David, the giant slayer. David, who slayed lions and bears as a boy, was afraid of a man, a political leader. He feared for his life. It’s common to all of us. If you’re going to do something, do it while being afraid.

Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is doing it even as you are afraid. You take those shaking knees of yours and you go do it. If it’s you’ve got to challenge the boss, then you’ve got to challenge the boss. Now, the reason why you’re afraid is because there are consequences. You could lose your job and you could lose your life.

But so many people got ahead of that fear. Yes, they suffered, but they created America. Benjamin Franklin said to his fellow patriots in the Revolutionary War, “Gentlemen, either we hang together or we will surely hang separately.” In fact, some of them did hang, and those who didn’t lost everything. It is what it is.

Mr. Jekielek:
People lost everything, but gained something very, very valuable to many other people.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Yes, they lost family, lost estates, and lost everything, but here we sit. It’s life.

Mr. Jekielek:
Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.

Lt. Gov. Sears:
Thank you for having me.

Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you all for joining Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I’m your host, Jan Jekielek.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.