Rex Tillerson Keynote Address

Well, thank you so much and what a pleasure it is to be here in Omaha and participate in an opportunity to support the Boy Scouts of America, the Mid-America Council, in today's events. And congratulations to all those who've been recognized. This is my first virtual event. I do a number of speaking engagements and as this being the year that it is, a lot of them have been postponed and I've been asked, "Would you do a virtual event?" And so far, I didn't say yes to anybody, so this is my trial balloon. And so far, so good. But so we find ourselves obviously here in the times of COVID, civil and social and political unrest. And you know, it'd be really easy to kind of get your dauber down, and I want to assure you it's not my objective today to do that. But I've got to tell you, it's just my nature to have to look at things the way they are. And so I'm going to share some thoughts with you, some of my perspectives on how I see some of the things in our country today and the challenges that are ahead of us. But the good news is I know we have a solution. So being retired and tied up in this COVID thing, I've had a little more time to look at some polling data. I don't look at political polling data, that's kind of a waste of time, but I was looking at some recent Pew Research Center data which indicated that most Americans believe key institutional actors behave unethically. 81% of Americans think members of Congress act unethically most or all of the time. 66% think journalists act unethically most or all of the time. Clearly Kvet is in that other 34%. Even our military leaders and K-12 school principals, 50% of Americans think they act unethically most or all the time. And I think some of the things that most disturbed me while I was looking at some of this data was that Americans do not think unethical behavior results in any serious consequences to those who do so or to their institutions. 71% believe members of Congress face no serious consequences or only small consequences for their unethical behavior. In scanning editorial pages from time to time, I've pulled out a few comments that I think also are interesting. Trust is on trial and integrity is under investigation in America. Moral relativism has created shifting sands of the once sure foundations of trust and integrity in America. Situational honesty, leadership, and ethics are crippling the nation's ability to solve big problems and engage in critical conversations. And finally, absent the combination of trust and integrity, the leaders of the nation are left to focus on what divides them. Some of those words or phrases, I have to tell you, I've never even heard -- moral relativism, situational honesty -- but I understand what they mean. The bigger crisis for the country is that the distrust perpetuated by big government, large organizations, and political leaders has begun to fray the very fabric of trust in the communities and even in personal relationships. Our trust in one another: 80% of Americans do not now trust the government leaders, but more worrying is that those same Americans also no longer trust each other. So how in the world did we get in this situation? How did this happen to our democracy? How did we come to such a point of division and how do we reverse this downward spiral we seem to have found ourselves in as one nation under God?

How did our fellow Americans become so polarized and how do we return to civility and respectfulness towards one another? I've told this story in many speeches and some of you may have heard this story before, but when our founders of the nation completed the 4,200-word document that became our Constitution, they put into place the legal foundation for the greatest experiment the world had ever seen or has ever seen since. The first attempt by a nation at governing itself. As the delegates were leaving Independence Hall, a woman stopped Dr. Benjamin Franklin and asked, "Well, Doctor, do we have a monarchy or a republic?" To which Franklin replied, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." His response was an acknowledgement that the founders knew they were creating something very fragile and very risky. A form of self-governance by "We the People" that had never been tried before in its current form. Martin Luther King, in his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, said, and I quote, "The Constitution and Declaration of Independence before it constituted a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. It was a promise that was not fulfilled instantly. It is a promise that is being fulfilled and it must keep being fulfilled by We the People." End quote. If we don't do our duty toward keeping that promise, our nation will soon cease to exist in any real sense. Instead of Americans being defined by the commitment of the promise and the promise of the American idea, we will simply become defined by the geography, the piece of dirt that we occupy. Even when our national unity has been put to its most severe tests, such as during the great Civil War, our leaders were able to call upon the better angels of our nature, saying that we are all Americans, we are not enemies, we are friends, we cannot be enemies. No passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection for one another. Can we not also today call upon the better angels of our nature? It's up to us to deliver on this same promise to the next generation. But over the past few decades, there's been a growing disconnection between our people and their country and the American idea, and as such, that disconnection gap has only grown with each subsequent generation. What is it Franklin warned we had to keep? The duty and obligation of each American to deliver on the promise of the rarest of ideas. But if the American people do not know what that idea is, how are they to deliver upon it? How do we ensure future generations know what it is we're trying to keep? Where are they learning it today?

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, "Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor without faith." The founders strongly held the belief that people with strong moral belief shaped by their religious convictions would demand the same of their leaders. That when people chose their leaders, they would look beyond their own personal needs or wants to deliver on the promise of one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. The idea that We the People not only want but require servant leaders is fundamental to the survival of our republic. Ronald Reagan is said to have kept a plaque on his desk in the Oval Office that read, "There's no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he does not mind who gets the credit." The notion that we want servant leaders is from a recognition that we as a nation have been made great because we are a servant nation to others. We as a nation have come to the aid in service of others to strike down tyranny in the great wars and the conflicts since and to protect the vulnerable. We do these things because we are a nation of good people. We recognize our moral responsibility and we answer our call to fulfill our duty to others. An essential tenet of a free society and a free people is access to the truth. A government structure and societal understanding that freedom to seek the truth is the very essence of freedom itself. "Ye shall know the truth, and it is that truth that makes you free." It is only by a fierce defense of the truth and a common set of facts that we create the conditions for a democratic society, a free society of self-governing people to explore and find solutions to the most daunting challenges of an ever-growing complex population. If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on the path to forfeiting our freedoms. This is the life of non-democratic societies comprised of people who are not free to seek the truth. People in Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, to name a few. A responsibility of every American citizen to one another is to preserve and protect freedoms by recognizing what is truth and what is not, what is fact and what is not, and begin by holding ourselves accountable to truthfulness and demand our pursuit of America's future be fact-based, not based on wishful thinking, not based on hoped-for outcomes made in shallow promises, but with a clear-eyed view of the facts as they are, guided by the truth that will set us free to seek solutions to our most daunting challenges. It is also a foundational commitment to truth and facts that binds us to other like-minded nations, that we Americans will always deal with them from the same set of truths and facts. And it is truth that says to our adversaries, we say what we mean and we mean what we say. When we as a people, as a free people, go wobbly on the truth, on even what may seem the most trivial of matters, we go wobbly on America. If we do not as Americans confront this crisis of ethics and integrity in our society and among our leaders in both the public and private sector, and regrettably in the nonprofit sector as well, then American democracy as we know it is entering its twilight years.

We simply cannot normalize being untruthful or ignoring our oaths to the American people. The same Pew Research data said 80% of the American people believe the solution to the problem is found in their own families and their own neighborhoods. They do not expect the leaders of our country to solve it. They believe that it starts with their own family, their neighborhood, their community, and if they solve it there, the problem at the top will eventually be solved. I know of no better organization prepared to deliver that solution into neighborhoods and families than the Boy Scouts of America. Scouting was built for this challenge. It's what the movement was created to do. The Cub Scout program is made for families. Scouting is made for neighborhoods and communities. We prepare young people with values and notions that may seem antiquated, and in fact from time to time I get into debates with people about, "Well, that Scout Oath and Scout Law, it's really kind of past its time." Moral relativism, situational honesty. People that live by those values can't live with the Scout Law. But we teach boys and young men, girls and young ladies, words like duty, honor, trustworthiness, loyalty, and we give them opportunities to put servant leadership into practice. Service to others, duty to others. The Scout Oath: duty to God and country, duty to others, duty to yourself. The 12 points of the Scout Law: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, reverent. Which one of those would you like to get rid of? All bookended by the duty to God and a Scout is reverent. Our founders relied upon the faith in God and the morality of future generations to keep our republic. The slogan "Do a good turn daily." How different would our society be and feel if every day everyone went out without being asked, without expectation of recognition, and simply did something for someone else? A simple act of kindness. And the motto "Be prepared." There's never been a time when scouting was most needed in our nation.

I think we have a generation or two to try and save the republic. This country, the great American experiment, really is approaching a fork in its journey forward. Are we going to decide to live by moral relativism, situational honesty, tribalism in our politics, or are we going to rediscover that what binds us are the American idea, the American ideals? And this country will continue to be defined as Americans who share those ideals, and not defined by the geographic borders we happen to live in. Will Rogers famously said one time, "There's only one problem with the Boy Scouts of America: there's not enough of them." He was so right. Notwithstanding scouting's current challenges and circumstances, many of us remain committed to continue with a renewed sense of urgency to get the scouting program into every community. It's what the American people are asking for. We can solve this challenge by starting with our local families and communities. And what most Americans believe is if they can do that, the problem will be solved at the top because it will start right here. We will save future generations. If we do not do this for our next and future generations of Americans, who will? Tell me, what organizations are teaching these values? What organizations are teaching citizenship, patriotism? If we don't do this, who will? Who will teach them these things? Who will give them the values to live a life of integrity? I want to thank all of you for being here today and those who have dialed in, and thank you for what you've done for scouting already. Thank you for what I know you will do in the future. I want to close by reciting the words of the Scout Vesper to you: "Softly falls the light of day, as our campfire fades away. Silently each Scout should ask, have I done my daily task? Can I keep my honor bright? Can I guiltless sleep tonight? Have I done and have I dared everything to be prepared?" Prepared for life, prepared to keep the republic. God bless all of you. God bless the Boy Scouts. God bless America. Thank you.