Time & Perspective Quote by Jim Ryun

Budget talk rarely sounds like a pep rally, but Jim Ryun - an athlete turned politician - delivers it with the cadence of someone used to framing sacrifice as purpose. The line is built to preempt disagreement. By declaring “no higher priority,” he’s not just ranking expenditures; he’s trying to seal the debate before it starts. In sports terms, he’s calling the play and daring anyone to break formation.

The phrase “as I said a moment ago” is a subtle power move: it implies continuity, reasonableness, and consensus, as if the room already agreed and we’re merely reaffirming the obvious. Then comes the real emotional ballast: “protection and security,” paired with “support of our troops.” That coupling matters. Security is abstract and elastic; troops are concrete and culturally protected. Put them together and you get a rhetorical shield: questioning the size or shape of defense spending starts to look like questioning loyalty to people in uniform.

The context is post-9/11 political language, when “security” became both a policy goal and a moral credential. Ryun’s framing borrows from athletic ethos - discipline, defense, backing the team - and translates it into civic identity: the nation as squad, the budget as scoreboard, the military as the players taking hits on our behalf.

Intent-wise, it’s less about specifying what’s needed than about setting the terms of legitimacy. If defense is the highest priority, other needs are implicitly downgraded before they’re even named.