Today on the Morning Update, Oliver Anthony spoke at Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) again this year, and you have got to hear what this man had to say.
00:00 The Resilience of Mary Draper Ingalls
01:21 Finding Inspiration in Adversity
Watch on the ‘Grok Rumble Channel if the Embedded Video does not load.
Ep 208 link(s):
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANC66JWW7AE
- https://www.marydraperingles.com/
Authors’ and Speakers’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers.
Edited Transcript:
Steve (00:00)
Hey there, and welcome to your July 2nd, 2026, morning update.
Reminder: we’re running a Granite Rock Bare Minimum Books collaboration this month. Check it out, it’s on the website. All over the place.
So, Oliver Anthony is back at ARC and every time he speaks there, he says some pretty amazing things. And this time is no exception.
I’m gonna share a clip from the end of it, and you can watch the entire thing. It’s only a little over five minutes, and the link is below this video. But he opens with a story about a lady named Mary Draper Ingels. She was abducted by the Shawnee in 1755, July of 1755, in fact.
And basically made into a slave. Her children were taken from her; they were very young, and he tells you this story. And what was important about the story was that at some point she escaped and marched, mostly naked and without food, through the winter, over six hundred miles, to get back to her home in West Virginia.
They were settlers. They had chosen to come here. They’d toughed it out. And Mary Draper Ingels was determined. She wasn’t going to give it up
Oliver Anthony opens with the story, and here’s how it closes.
[transcript from ARC video]
When I was in my early 20s, I worked for a family-owned business that was sold to a private equity company. The sign on the door remained the same, and even the old owner used to come in once a month and wave at all of us and pretend like things are okay.
But the new owners had no interest in us. That was their investment, and their objectives, their goals were to serve them, not us, even the people who built the company originally.
Everyone there was eventually fired, replaced, or forced out of their positions.
And now I stand in this city, A city that was once the most powerful on Earth, and although the flag is the same as it was 300 years ago, and many of the titles and processes use the same nomenclature, I believe that somewhere during the industrialization and modernization of the new world, its government, along with many others like it, were sold to the highest bidder, to powerful people who have mastered the art of acquisition.
And this is where I think we went wrong.
Some of our craziest traveled the sea, conquered the wilderness, fought the strongest empire of their day and created what is arguably the only government in modern history to recognize people with unalienable rights based off the idea that they are created in the image of God and to live free or die.
What a powerful statement.
The descendants of Europeans who stayed never escaped their oppressors.
And then the descendants of Europeans who settled in America forgot where they came from or who they even are. And now here we are, the tides have turned. We share the same oppressors, but our societies are separated.
And in these troubled times, I think about Mary Draper Ingels.
There’s no oppressor or captor that can keep you held down.
You are beholden to no one except for God.
All you have to do is get up and walk back home.
Thanks.
If you were looking for some inspiration, even just a little inspiration, in the face of any adversity, be it a tough day at work, an argument with a relative or a spouse, or maybe a SCOTUS decision that didn’t go your way, or an election you didn’t win, what you really gotta do is remember what really matters: independence, perseverance, hard work, determination, faith.
You gotta get up, and you gotta walk back “home.”
That’s it for today. We’ll talk to you tomorrow.
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