Back to the 1970's

Ladies and gentlemen, it's back to the 1970s. Please welcome former CEO Papa John's Pizza, Papa John Schnatter. Good afternoon. Thanks, man. Thanks, Mercedes. Thank all of you all for your courage to be here. I think it's outstanding. Who loves pizza? Yeah, who loves freedom? If it wasn't for freedom, there wouldn't be no pizza. There wouldn't be no Papa John's, that's for sure. Hey, we got record inflation, record gas prices, interest rates going through the roof. We're weak on the foreign front. And what I'm referring to is the 1970s. Jimmy Carter, there you go, foreign. Not the 2020s. In the 70s, I was a dishwasher at Rocky Sub Pub at 2.30 an hour. And that's where I learned to make pizza when I was 15. But the things I remember most is my father was a cereal entrepreneur. And he got through the UK school selling hot dogs on a hot dog stand. So he was an entrepreneur, and he had six businesses in the 70s, and they all went bankrupt. High regulation, high fuel, anti-business and attitude against the entrepreneur. And the toll it took on me to this day, starring, was just immense. And all of a sudden, you know, we had to live with this every day. And you can't really have empathy for anybody unless you walked a mile in their shoe. And I don't know if any of y'all have ever been bankrupt or had, you know, kind of been in the end of the rope. It's the worst feeling in the world. And we lived that in the 70s. And I look at the poor entrepreneurs today in the 2020s, and I reflect back on just what they have to deal with. Yeah, regulation, printing of money, inflation. But we have a mindset from a commander in chief who's really anti-entrepreneur. And entrepreneurship is not the thing. Entrepreneurship is everything. Everything we have in America in the capitalistic system starts with an entrepreneur. It's an idea. It's an innovation. It's creativity. It's a better, more efficient way to do something. Then all of a sudden, 1980 comes along. And what's the saying is that if you don't learn from history, you repeat the mistakes. I would argue that the key is to learn from history and don't repeat those mistakes. And Reagan comes along. He's pro-business. He's pro-entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. He lowers rates by half, takes inflation down half, fuel prices drop. And all of a sudden, we have this magical time. We call it the shining city on the hill. What were Reagan's nine words that were the most dangerous words in the English language? I'm from the government, and I'm here to help. You know, the guy got the joke. I mean, he was a superstar. Then, 84, Papa John's, when we came up. We're in a broom closet. We got 1,600 bucks. And we had a dream of making a better pizza. And, I mean, it was killing we had by having leadership and having an economy and having pro-entrepreneur and pro-business mindset. How lucky was I? Here I am, you know, in a broom closet, my dad's tavern, and we had $1,600. Ended up building 5,000 stores. We're doing $4 billion a year. But we thought we could do it because we were in an environment that we could do it. And I just felt so lucky and fortunate to be in the environment I was in the 80s versus today in the environment that my dad was in the 70s. The thing we're up against is kind of a linear equation. I call it the evil elite left. Gates, Torres, Schwab. I mean, there's, we'll just take one exhibit there, the food supply. The pharmaceutical, or the processed foods, processed food that the FDA shouldn't really approve doesn't kill you, but it really does make you sick. And then the same five groups that own processed foods also own the pharmaceutical companies that they get you on because they're not sick. So there's five entities that really control media, academia, and everything else. It's those five evil entities. You can always tell when they're active and what they're doing. It goes back to 1918, the Frankfurt Institute, where the concept was fashion is a Marxism. But destroy, destroy, destroy. Disrupt, disrupt, disrupt. Without any solution. They start out in the 40s where they attacked the middle class, 60s and 70s with the sex revolution, the culture in the 90s and 2000s. And now they're attacking our youth. Whether it's sex trafficking on the border, illegal drugs coming through the border, the CRT vaccines to five-month-olds or five-year-olds. Everything they do, they're trying to disrupt their youth. Because if you're going to create a global economy, you've got to have America to participate. And the only way America is going to participate is if we're discombobled or we're in disarray. We're in a position of weakness. And the evil forces at the top, because it is a battle now between good and evil, is that we must protect our youth. Our youth is our future. Our children are our future. And they know that. And our children are under attack. So I end this with a little bit of a note. Okay, what's the solution? We have this linear tug of war. We throw a dart, a missile, we throw a missile back. You take something like, okay, the left wants security. The right wants freedom. And we fight over those two things. That's just one aspect of what we fight over. And then the government puts in bad policy right down the middle. It doesn't really solve the problem. And I would argue that we have the right ideology. We have truth in God, free markets, free enterprise, which enhances the betterment of humanity. We have that on our side. That's a good thing. But I think if we're going to change the world, we have to change ourselves. It's not only what we say, it's not only what we do, it's who we become as a nation. The outer work can never be small if the inner work is great. And the outer work can never be great if the inner work is small. The tug of war is a very low vibration, low frequency game that it's a plus. It's a game that they're going to win because of numbers. A high vibration game, one of joy, passion, kindness, mutual respect, enlightenment. That's a game. When we increase each of our individual vibrations, and we increase this CPAC vibration, and we increase our party, then we together can change the world. And I know we have to fight to get it right. I have liberal friends. I love them. They think like buffoons. They think arithmetic's an opinion. They're full of anger. I ask them, are you angry because you're stupid, or are you stupid because you're angry? And the answer is the latter. They're stupid because they're angry. There's a jealousy aspect, a hatred, envy, shame, guilt aspect that keeps them from functioning at a higher level of rationality. It's not their fault. It's not an intellect issue. It's a level of awareness. And so if we want to increase awareness, if we want to be attractor like Reagan, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, if we want to be attractor, we have to change ourselves. If we want to be the pilot light, the real light, that shining city on the hill, we have to change ourselves. Not what we say, not what we do. It's who we've become. We have to have more compassion, more joy, more consideration, more understanding. That in itself will destroy the other side. Because when you're aligned with the right ideology, you're aligned with principles, if there's two attributes you want on your side, it's God and truth. Those are the two strongest characteristics you can have. You combine that with awareness and a consciousness to really see and understand and love, we will win this battle. We will win this war. We will keep that light on, on that shining city on top of the hill. Thank you.