Hillsdale College Hosts National Leadership Seminar on Amelia Island, Florida
Speakers discussed the James Comey case, where Antifa gets its funding, and more.
HILLSDALE, Mich. — Hillsdale College hosted a National Leadership Seminar on Amelia Island, Florida, Feb. 18-19. Speakers discussed the James Comey case, where Antifa gets its funding, and more. National Leadership Seminars gather America’s business, education, and community leaders to promote limited government, free-market economics, individual liberty, personal responsibility, and a strong national defense.
CNN Political Contributor Scott Jennings spoke on “Working for CNN.” Drawing on his new book, “A Revolution of Common Sense: How Donald Trump Stormed Washington and Fought for Western Civilization,” Jennings spoke on the conflict between Western civilization and the radical Left.
“Somewhere along the way, excellence became suspect, merit became controversial.”
“We have universities out there with enormous endowments and very fragile constitutions,” Jennings said. “We have administrators who talk endlessly about diversity but panic at the sight of a conservative coming within 500 feet of their campus. Somewhere along the way, excellence became suspect, merit became controversial. Western civilization became something to apologize for — or worse, tear down. And then there’s Hillsdale — no federal money, no strings, no ideological fashion-chasing, no bending the knee to the spirit of the age, just a steady, stubborn insistence that ordered liberty is worth understanding and preserving.”
Investigative journalist Catherine Herridge spoke on “The James Comey Case,” recounting the former FBI director’s “difficult relationship with the facts.”
“I’ve covered every FBI director since 2001,” Herridge said. “And I believe that no FBI director did more damage to the bureau and undermined public trust in the FBI more than Director Comey. And when you think about what our adversaries want, they want to undermine our confidence in democratic institutions. It’s actually not that much about party, Democrats over Republicans. They want us to lose faith and lose trust in what makes America so powerful and so unique. And I would make the argument that James Comey did so much to aid and abet our enemies when he was director of the FBI.”
Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn spoke on “Defending the American Way of Life,” discussing the principles of the Declaration of Independence and how the bureaucracy has violated them.
“It’s actually not that much about party, Democrats over Republicans. They want us to lose faith and lose trust in what makes America so powerful and so unique.”
“In the hierarchy of the Declaration of Independence, God appears four times, and he actually is named as each branch of government: as the supreme judge of the world, as the maker of the laws of nature and nature’s God, as divine providence — that’s the executive, as the creator — that’s the founder,” Dr. Arnn said. “And the lesson is, only in those hands would all those powers be combined. And then when they complain about the king in the middle of the Declaration of Independence, they talk about the fact that he has invaded the judiciary and the legislatures, and he’s taking their powers unto himself. He’s putting himself in the position of God.”
Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute addressed the question “Who Is Funding Antifa?” According to Bruner, organized political violence is only part of a larger pipeline funded by the same entities.
“The dark money NGO sequence is very straightforward: migration and welfare benefit facilitation, political and electoral mobilization, and — when threatened — organized disruption and riots,” Bruner said. “These are not separate movements. They are three stages of a single system. The same tools used to uncover benefit fraud — following the money, mapping relationships, tracing organizational control — reveal the continuity across all three. It’s the same investors. We’ve seen it time and time again.”