Notable Speeches

The late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson (a former U.S. Attorney General) once said,  "The prosecutor has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America." In this address, current Attorney General Bill Barr argues that career federal prosecutors must not only be committed to even-handed justice, but they also must be accountable to the attorney general,...

The battle against "political correctness" isn't new. In this 1999 address presented at Harvard Law School, actor and social activist Charlton Heston decried political correctness as a kind of "cultural war...in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain accepted thoughts and speech are mandated." He called on his audience to not "let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for this...

Many Americans think the American Civil War was solely about slavery, but the cultural, political, and economic dynamics leading to war were multi-faceted. In this address, Donald Livingston, founder of the Abbeville Institute , argues that the historical record undercuts oversimplified explanations and common mischaracterizations.  Mr. Livingston also speculates that slavery in the Confedera...

Voddie Baucham, a native of Los Angeles, is a former pastor and church planter who is now Dean of Theology at African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia. In this address, he warns of a "cultural Marxism" that is driving America by dividing people by race and other forms of identity.  While acknowledging the deleterious impact of multi-generational national sins, Mr. Baucham argues that ra...

In a Senate Floor address on July 30, 2020, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said he would not support any Supreme Court nominee who hasn't explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. "How long before we ask our nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States to recognize Roe as the outrage that it is?" he said. " Roe is an illegitimate decision. It has no basis in the Constitution. N...

The Chinese Communist Party "seeks to...overthrow the rules-based international system and to make the world safe for dictatorship," U.S. Attorney General William Barr warned in this address delivered July 16, 2020. "How the United States responds to this challenge...will determine whether the United States and its liberal democratic allies will continue to shape their own destiny or whether the C...

This bonus episode features an address by President Donald Trump at South Dakota's 2020 Mount Rushmore Fireworks Celebration. Mr. Trump honored the four presidents whose images are presented on Mount Rushmore: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. Citing the "radical ideology attacking our country," he said "the United States of America is the most just and...

One day after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its controversial decision in the case of Bostock v. Clayton County (and companion cases Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. EEOC and Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda ), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) denounced the decision during a speech on the Senate floor. "If you can invoke textualism and originalism in order to reach such a decision...then textualism and or...

In the wake of protests that swept the nation following the death of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) delivered this speech on the Senate floor. "Until we heal this divide, we will never, ever have the kind of society we want," Mr. Rubio warned. "The only way forward is to treat each other with the empathy and respect required of a people who have decide...

On May 17, 1981, just six weeks after being shot and wounded by a would-be assassin, President Ronald Reagan delivered the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. "[I hope] that you will always be able to speak of an America that is strong and free," he told the graduates, "to find in your hearts an unbounded pride in this much-loved country, this once and future land, thi...

Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington delivered this brief speech in May 2015 at Dillard University in New Orleans.  Mr. Washington, a native of Mount Vernon, New York, holds a degree in theater (1977) from Fordham University in New York City. He also studied at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. Denzel Washington won Oscars for his performances in Glory (Best Support...

Peggy Noonan, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and former presidential speechwriter (for Ronald Reagan), presented this address one year ago at the University of Notre Dame near South Bend, Ind. She addressed the question, "How does conservatism find its best expression now, in the 21st century?"  Peggy Noonan's books include What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era...

Antonin Scalia served as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1986 until his death in 2016. In this 2015 address, presented at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Md., he poked gentle fun at the platitudes often offered in graduation speeches, such as "follow your star" and "never compromise your principles." Justice Scalia's remarks have been abridged slightly for t...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a post he has held since 1984.  He has advised six U.S. presidents on domestic and international health-policy matters. Dr. Fauci presented this address in January 2017 at an event hosted by the Center for Global Health Science and Security...

This episode features an address by Ken Myers, host of the long-running Mars Hill Audio Journal , a bimonthly audio magazine that "encourag[es] conversations about faith, faithfulness, and culture." Mr. Myers is also the author of All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians and Popular Culture (Crossway redesign edition, 2012). Earlier in his career, he was the arts and humanities editor f...

In a Nov. 1, 2005, speech at the National Institutes of Health, President George W. Bush laid out a plan to prepare the U.S. for a possible pandemic.  The Bush strategy called for detecting outbreaks as early as possible anywhere in the world, stockpiling existing vaccines and antiviral drugs, speeding up the process of making new vaccines for a pandemic virus, and improving general readiness...

Many churches will be empty this Easter, as the world continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. In this troubled time, this episode presents words of comfort and challenge from the One who rose from the grave on Easter: Jesus the Messiah. Actor Alexander Scourby (1913-1985) reads three chapters from the Gospel According to John. If you have a comment or question about the Notable Speeches podcast...

Most people living today have never seen anything like the current coronavirus pandemic. But an even worse pandemic struck just over a century ago: the 1918 Spanish Flu. It claimed an estimated 50-to-100 million lives worldwide, including more than 600,000 in the U.S. Dr. Jeremy Brown is the author of Influenza: The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History (Atria Books, 2018). He...

Clive Staples Lewis, a professor of English literature at the UK's University of Oxford (and later at Cambridge University), became one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, with works ranging from fiction to philosophy to Christian apologetics. This radio address, presented on the BBC on March 21, 1944, later formed the basis for a chapter in his book, Mere Christianity , first pub...

Attorney General Bill Barr presented this address in Nashville, Tenn., on Feb. 26, 2020, at the annual convention of National Religious Broadcasters . His remarks have been condensed slightly for this podcast. For a text of this address (as prepared for delivery), go to https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-p-barr-delivers-remarks-2020-national-religious-broadcasters Have a c...

Marvin Olasky, editor in chief at WORLD News Group, is the author Reforming Journalism (P&R Publishing, 2019). He taught journalism at the University of Texas at Austin from 1983-2007 and later held the distinguished chair in journalism and public policy at Virginia's Patrick Henry College. His earlier books include The Tragedy of American Compassion (original edition 1992, republished in 2007...

Journalist/blogger Rod Dreher is the author of The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (Sentinel, 2017).  He presented this address Feb. 4, 2020, at an event titled "God, Honor, Country: President Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and the Freedom of Nations — A National Conservatism Conference." The conference, sponsored by conservative groups from Hungary, I...

Arthur C. Brooks , a Harvard University professor and president emeritus of the American Enterprise Institute, was the keynote speaker at this year's National Prayer Breakfast, held February 6 in Washington, D.C. The breakfast is an annual event, attended more than 3,000 leaders from the U.S. and around the world. Mr. Brooks is the author of 11 books, including Love Your Enemies: How Decent People...

The United Methodist Church, America's second-largest Protestant denomination, seems likely to split this year — a decision to be voted on at the denomination's General Conference this spring. One prominent plan would divide the UMC into at least two denominations — one adhering to historic Christian teaching, the other taking a "progressive" doctrinal stance. In this address, Professor William J....

One day after this year's March for Life in Washington, D.C., Heritage Foundation president Kay Coles James spoke to about 3,000 pro-life activists gathered for the National Pro-Life Summit . Before becoming the president of Heritage in 2018, Kay Coles James served as the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (2001-2005) and as dean of the Roberston School of Government at Virginia's...