"We're not going to rebuild prosperity and opportunity," Vance said. "We're not going to rebuild the kind of society where we teach children the important virtues and skills to thrive, as opposed to trying to tear our kids down, which is what I think our education system does all too often. We're not going to rebuild a foreign policy that's rooted in our shared interest, rather than in liberal values that were invented 20 or 30 years ago, but have become the innovating concept of the foreign policy of too many Western leaders and too many Western nations. We're not going to solve any of these problems unless we have the courage to speak the truth, unless we have the courage to live the truth."

President Donald Trump has this courage, Vance said.

"One of the things that makes me most proud of our administration, not that we've won every battle, or win every battle. Some of these battles are going to take 20, 30, 40, years for us to see, I think, through to ultimate victory," Vance said. "But the president, I'm very proud to say, is not a person who is afraid of criticism from those in power."

"And I think there's anything that sort of ties the first Trump administration to the second Trump administration and the president's entire political career, is that this is a guy with incredible courage," the vice president continued. "He just doesn't care what other people say about him. He doesn't care what the media writes about him. He's going to do what he thinks is right."

Vance gave remarks at The Heritage Foundation before a private premiere of a new docuseries from Angel Studios based on Rod Dreher's book "Live Not By Lies," which tells the story of USSR-era Christian dissidents.

"I would not be standing here were it not for Rod Dreher," said the vice president, noting how a viral interview with Dreher helped "Hillbilly Elegy," his memoir, become a bestseller. (Screengrab image: via The Ingraham Angle /Fox News)

The founding ideas of the West, including the Christian faith, have fallen into disfavor with the ruling elite, Vance said. But this truth does not lead him to despair.

"The way to deal with this, the way to deal with being attacked by the ruling elites of a given society, is to speak the truth, is to live, not by lies," Vance said, referencing the title of Dreher's book. "The incentives, the financial rewards, the social benefits of living by lies is too often very great, but Rod's lesson is important that you're going to sacrifice your soul, you're going to sacrifice your civilization, you're going to sacrifice your family. You're going to sacrifice your country, if you give in to the easy pathway."

Conservatives in the past have struggled with giving way to despair when elections don't go their way, Vance said, yielding to the idea that Western civilization is on a negative trajectory. This is something Vance himself said he has struggled with.

"But I think that what we've learned over the last few months is that the American people," Vance said, "and I think Western peoples, are aHellof a lot more resilient than our elites give them credit for.

Rebuilding Western civilization will not be easy, according to Vance. In Europe, people are arrested for praying outside abortion clinics, and the police question them about what they're praying about.

"Yes, you see people who are thrown in prison or have their jobs destroyed because they don't believe the right things, or they don't say the right things, according to the liberal intelligentsia, that rules some of these societies," Vance said. "But at the same time you have that happening, you have people of incredible courage speaking up and saying, 'No, we're not going to live by lies. We're going to speak the truth.'"

Vance listed a few examples, such as Western peoples pushing back against their government on issues like migration and religious freedom.

"My point is that part of living, not by lies, is to continue to maintain the optimism that I think is really at the root of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the United States of America and in the West," Vance said.

As a devout Christian, Vance has faith that God is in control.

"The promise of the Christian faith is not that we're always going to win on a short-term horizon, but that ultimately God calls the shots," he said. "He is in control. And if we keep on fighting, and we keep on working and we keep on having faith, and we keep on pursuing the values that we know are right, I really do believe that we are going to see great things happen."

The president believes great things are happening in America and in the West, Vance said.

"In the past two months in this administration, we've gone from a country where we would harass and threaten and investigate and even arrest pro-life protesters to one where we're encouraging pro-life activists to do what they can to persuade their fellow Americans," Vance said.

"A couple of months ago, we had social media censorship run amok," he continued. "We were threatening people's right of free expression for not saying the things that Silicon Valley technology companies told them to say. Now I believe that we have more free speech on the internet today than we've probably had in 10 or 15 years. So we're making progress. We're making steady progress. We're making solid progress, and we'd all do a lot better if we remember Rod's advice to live, not by lies." Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House Correspondent for "The Daily Signal."

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