Rick ScottVerified account

While I didn’t always appreciate my tough-love, my-way-or-the-highway Mom growing up, I now thank God every day for my Mom and this country. She gave me the opportunity to experience every lesson this country had to offer before I was 20.

Unfortunately, the Left has worked hard over the last fifty years to discredit the values of the America I was raised with – the values of the America I want my grandsons to grow up with.

I was able to live the American Dream because I worked hard. I lived out the values my mom taught me in my business career – hard work and fiscal responsibility, but with a caring spirit to support those around me.

I took those same values to the Gov’s office when I got elected in 2010. FL had been struggling. 832,000 jobs lost in the 4 yrs before I took office. Home prices cut in half. Debt was soaring. The state raised taxes on its poorest citizens by more than $2B to fill a budget hole.

In eight years, Florida added 1.7 million new jobs, we paid down almost one-third of state debt and invested record funding in education, the environment, and transportation.

But I also tried to fight for the values that are being lost in this country – I fight to protect life, to support the institution of the family, to lift up our military members, veterans & law enforcement, to promote capitalism and to defend the rule of law and the constitution.

These values are under attack from the Left, and have been for quite some time. There’s no easy solution to that problem, but one thing is clear: government is not the solution. Washington is not the solution.

We need a renewal in America of the values that made this country great. That won’t happen on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It will happen in living rooms, and classrooms, and churches, synagogues, and board rooms.

If we want America to be great in the future, we must reject the politically correct attempts to rewrite our history, and we must reject the left-wing attempt to slander the greatness of our ideals.

America is in fact the greatest country in the history of the world, and we should not be embarrassed to say so – we should proclaim it proudly. America is the greatest country in the history of the world.

I love it when my grandkids pray before eating, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, ask to visit military museums, join the Boy Scouts, thank police officers and soldiers for their service, and place their hand over their heart when they hear the National Anthem.

I hope they memorize the Declaration of Independence and the 23rd Psalm, become Eagle Scouts, have crummy paying teenage jobs with unreasonable bosses, and get benched in sports for not trying hard enough.

I also pray they consider a life of military service – one already wants to be a paratrooper – and are lucky enough to marry a wonderful person and have enough kids to worry about how to pay for college.