'Find something that’s worth living for'

COEUR d’ALENE — Trey Gowdy doesn’t want you to count on someone else to do what you believe should be done.

Nor your mayor.

Nor your City Council.

Nor your president.

“I get it. I get this notion that we’re going to let other people do it," he said Friday night before about 350 people at the Best Western Plus Coeur d’Alene Inn.

The former Congressman wants Americans to get involved, no matter their political party.

“If you want to see change manifest itself in whatever world you live in, I would respectfully invite you to be whatever that change you want to see is,” he said.

Gowdy was the keynote speaker at Mountain States Policy Center's inaugural spring dinner. He delivered a 40-minute speech that included humorous family stories before turning serious and focusing more knowing why you believe what you believe and respecting those who have a different view.

MSPC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center that provides free market solutions. It concentrates its work in Idaho, Eastern Washington, Montana and Wyoming.

Gowdy graduated from Baylor University in 1986, with a degree in history, and the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1989.

From 1994-2000, he was a federal prosecutor.

In 2010, Gowdy ran for Congress to represent South Carolina's 4th Congressional District in Greenville and Spartanburg counties, and won. After four terms, he did not seek re-election in 2018.

In January of 2019, he returned to South Carolina to practice law, teach classes and speak on legal issues. He is an author and host of a television show.

Gowdy asked a few key questions of the crowd.

What do we believe?

Why do we believe it?

Are we mindful of the manner in which we communicate?

His message included the importance of hope.

He quoted 1 Corinthians 13:13, which says, "Three things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

"How powerful is hope that it would be one of those three and even be in the conversation about what remains?" he asked.

He talked of flying from the Carolinas to Reagan National Airport and looking out one side of the plane and seeing monuments to famous, well-known, historically significant people of yesteryear in this country.

“I get this temptation to go and let the famous people, the people that signed up, do it,” he said. “I get this temptation to let others do it.”

He said the United States is the greatest experiment in self-governance the world will ever know and asked who was responsible: the names most of us know, or selfless, nameless people who served and sacrificed.

He asked who founded America, perfected it and defended it.

“The handful of names you read about, or the hundreds of thousands of average everyday Americans that just found something a little bigger than themselves?”

Gowdy said he was not asking anyone to sacrifice their life for the good of a cause.

“I'm not going to ask you to find something worth dying for,” he said. "I will ask you to find something that’s worth living for, worth fighting for, that’s worth persuading for.

“If you do that, we've got a chance to remain the world’s greatest experiment in self-governance the world will ever know.”