Dallas Woodhouse spoke at the recent Defending the American Dream Summit, hosted by Americans for Prosperity (AFP). Woodhouse has recently garnered attention because of the interesting relationship between him and his brother Brad: Dallas is a state director of the conservative AFP Foundation, and his liberal brother is the White House Communications Director. Dallas focused on this relationship to begin his speech.
“Growing up, my brother had to believe in redistribution—he wanted to redistribute the good looks and talent from me to him,” Woodhouse began. “The other day Newsweek wrote a column on us, and they got some guy to psychoanalyze us, and they wrote that we were both just fighting to get our mother to love us. But let’s just be honest: I’m going to win that, because it’s hard to love a liberal child.”
Woodhouse quickly shifted to serious matters, however. He told the story of Rebecca Dillingham of Burlington, North Carolina, whose premature twins required extensive care. “Her health insurance allowed her to go from hospital to hospital across this country until she ended up in Ohio to get a very rare medical treatment,” Woodhouse said. He went on to mention how she wept when she explained to him that “she didn’t believe she would be able to get that treatment for her children in a Canadian-style system, simply because the government wouldn’t view them as worth the treatment.”
Woodhouse also spoke about a member of the audience named Herbert. This man, now in his seventies, had once fought for his country in Korea to “defeat statism.” Today, Woodhouse said, Herbert is still fighting against statism as it threatens our health care system. Woodhouse described his dismay that the “highest level of our government” would be referring to people like Herbert as “thugs” and “un-American.” “How dare this government question [Herbert’s] patriotism for simply questioning a government proposal. How dare they lie about his concerns [regarding health care],” Woodhouse said.
Woodhouse concluded with a powerful statement of belief in freedom-loving America. “Here’s what I know: you are stronger than them,” Woodhouse said, referring to the left wing currently so influential in America. “You made the decision to draw the line in the sand and say ‘not on my watch’; you are stronger than Nancy Pelosi. You are even stronger than any cartoon character on MSNBC who gets a thrill up his leg. You are stronger than any force in American politics because you embody the three most important words ever strung together in the English language…‘we, the people.’”
“We can defeat the radical left who want to destroy our lives,” Woodhouse concluded. “We can stop them because we are right and they are wrong.”
Allie Winegar Duzett is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
