Featured speaker J.D Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” delivers a moving speech to the dinner attendees. (Photo by Ashley McCarty)
By Ashley McCarty
People’s Defender
The Adams County Republican Club hosted a successful Lincoln Reagan Day Dinner on June 1.
Held at the Willow Event Center in Winchester, Ohio, the venue was packed with members of the community laughing and enjoying the camaraderie of their Republican brethren.
The social began at 6 p.m., and shortly before 6:30 p.m., John Robinson approached the podium to welcome the attendees.
“We’re here tonight to celebrate the legacy of President [Abraham] Lincoln and President [Ronald] Reagan. The Adams County Republican Party has a lot to be thankful for. Last year, President [Donald] Trump in Adams County won 81.27 percent of the vote. That was the highest percentage of votes of any county in southwestern and southeastern Ohio. It was a great effort on all of our parts,” said Robinson.
As dinner wound down, a hush fell over the assemblage once more as Robinson once again approached the podium to introduce featured speaker J.D Vance.
According to his biography, Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio, and Jackson, Kentucky. After high school, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in Iraq. A graduate of Ohio State University and Yale Law School, he has contributed to the National Review and New York Times. He also works as an investor at a leading venture capital firm. Currently, Vance lives in Columbus with his family.
Published in 2016, Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” tells the true story of upward mobility. Vance examines the social, regional and class decline of white working-class Americans and relates his family’s experience trying to escape poverty.
“Hillbilly Elegy” provides an eye-opening perspective on the rise of political populism. Last year Netflix released a film adaptation of “Hillybilly Elegy,” directed by Ron Howard, starring Amy Adams, Glenn Close and Gabriel Basso.
“One of the reasons I’m here today is because I’m thinking pretty seriously about running for Senate. If I do run, the reason I want to run is that I care about this country. It’s been very good to me, as I know it’s been good to so many of you. If you read the book or watched the movie, you know that my story is really one of overcoming the odds. I grew up in a very poor family, I was raised by my grandparents because as a young boy, my mom got caught up in an opioid addiction; I was 12-years-old the first time I saw my mother hauled away in a police cruiser,” said Vance.
Because of his grandmother, he was able to have this incredible life, he said.
“I live in Cincinnati right now, I have two beautiful boys — but I think to myself, my God, only in America could a story like this happen. If you look at the statistics, if you look at the odds, the evidence suggests that kids that come from backgrounds like mine, come from families with a lot of trauma, a lot of chaos, they’re not supposed to make it. That didn’t happen [to me]. People always ask me why, and I have to give credit to my grandmother. She was the person who really raised me and gave me all the opportunities that I was able to have,” said Vance.
It was his grandmother’s love and discipline that got him on the straight and narrow, he said.
“Because of that, I’ve been able to have such a great life here in this country, and I think those of us who have benefited from all this country has to offer, we owe something to it in return. We need to make this a country where stories like mine are still possible — where no matter who your parents are, no matter what chaos or disadvantage you grew up with, you can still work hard, play by the rules, and receive your share of the American dream. I worry that we’re living in a moment where that’s less and less likely to be true. Folks like us who grew up in this part of the world are looked down upon, and if they grow up without a whole lot of advantages, as many of us do, they’re not living in a country that’s making it easier for them to achieve their dreams. It’s actually making it harder,” said Vance.
It’s making it easier to look down upon them and condescend them, and we have to do something about that, he said.
“People always ask me, ‘what as a conservative do you believe in? What is this all about?’ You could talk about a lot of things. You could talk about opportunity, you could talk about freedom, you could talk about the important liberties that make this country great, but the thing that I always try to tell people is that I’m a conservative because I think that conservatives have a vision for this country that’s actually worth accomplishing. To go back to that American dream, we believe, if you work hard, and play by the rules, you should be able to support a middle-class family on a single middle-class dignified wage. That’s what it’s all about. All the things that we talk about, all the political principles that we fight for, and advocate for, if you really think about it, it goes back to that basic idea,” said Vance.
We want this to be the sort of country where if you do the right things, you can have a middle-class life so long as you work hard, he said.
“That’s what it’s really about. Why do we care, for example, about immigration and the chaos at the southern border? We care about it because we know if the Democrats legalize 11 million new voters, it’s going to be harder for decent middle-class people to have a say in how our democracy works, and we know that if you don’t get control of the southern border, you have a ton of drugs and a ton of crime coming across that southern border, making it harder for people like us to be safe in our communities. That’s why we care about immigration. Why do we care about the economy and good jobs? Because we know that you can’t just build a middle-class economy based on silicon valley technology companies. You’ve got to have a manufacturing company,” said Vance.
You have to make things in your own country if you want middle-class people to be able to have a decent wage, he said.
“We have learned the last year-and-a-half what happens when we depend on other countries to make all our stuff. It makes us weaker. It makes us more vulnerable in times of crisis, and it also destroys good American jobs in the process. Why do we care about the crazy attack on American culture in our schools, our universities, coming from our government, but also recently coming from some of our biggest companies? Because if you cannot have pride in this country, if you cannot look to the past of this nation with pride, and with a sense of responsibility and duty, if you cannot teach your children to honor the same heroes and the same icons that we were taught to honor as children, then you don’t have a real country. You can’t live a dignified life if the heroes you were taught to honor are now being taught that they’re terrible people — that they’re not worthy of respect, that they’re not worthy of honor,” said Vance.
Vance believes the Republican party and the conservative movement is the solution to what is going on in this country.
“Unless we’re willing to fight for it, unless we’re willing to undo the crisis at the southern border, unless we’re willing to fight for American history and American values, unless we’re willing to say enough is enough, we’re not going to take the constant assault on American freedom, American values and American history, we’re going to lose this country. I don’t want to lose this country, because it’s this country that made it possible for a kid like me to have a story like mine. All across this nation, it’s happening, but they’re trying to destroy the very thing that made this country worth living in. Now, I have to be honest with you, I’m hopeful about the future of this country, but I’m also a realist about the challenges that we face,” said Vance.
For too long, many people — including those in the Republican party — are unwilling to accept what must be done to fight back against what is going on in this country, he said.
“Again and again, the simple principle that we need to follow is that we are the people that stand between an America where the American dream is possible, and an American where it’s not possible. That is our inheritance, and that is our obligation as citizens of the greatest country in the world to pass it off to our children and grandchildren. Now, the reason I’m hopeful is because we’ve been in this place before as a country; in the Civil War fought to preserve the Union, end slavery and bring equality to our country, we’ve been in this place in World War II, where millions of Americans went overseas to defeat the Nazi’s, and defeat fascism, we’ve been in this place before when people we honor today, Ronald Reagan, was a critical figure in defeating the spread of communism,” said Vance.
We come from the greatest people in the world, he said.
“People who have consistently turned back tyranny, and turned back the forces that are trying to make it impossible for people to live their dreams. We come from that country, we come from those people, and we’re going to preserve and fight for the American dream this time, just as Americans before us did it in their time,” said Vance.
That is the charge as the conservative movement, and as a Republican party, and that is what we must do, he said.
“Now, one of my favorite quotes of all time is from the other person we honor tonight, Abraham Lincoln. In a time much darker in this nation’s history than today, he said, ‘the fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We – even we here – hold the power, and bear the responsibility.’ We, even we here, hold the power to save this country, we bear the responsibility to do just that, let’s get to work,” said Vance in closing.
As the night came to a close, a Proclamation of Gratitude was presented to Highland County Recorder Chad McConnaughey from Adams County Recorder Chris Moore, the President’s Award was presented to Dane Clark and Liz Lafferty and the M. Douglas White Republican Leadership award was presented to Jack and Sis McCoy.
