New York Times writer David French is here today to debate pronouns, toxic empathy, James Tallarico, voting for Kamala Harris, abortion, and so much more. You will love this lively discussion on today s episode of Relatable.
00:02:57.500And so, you know, you very vividly talk about what happens in abortion, right?
00:03:01.780Which is a way of generating, quite frankly, empathy for the unborn child, that you're
00:03:06.880trying to put yourself into the shoes of total innocence, total innocence.
00:03:11.660And so I do think absolutely, as I was reading your book, the parts that really stood out to me were what I would describe as almost like emotional manipulation.
00:03:21.620In other words, you're saying, here's the story, this is the story of a person's pain and anguish, and that's what we're gonna focus on exclusively, but there's other stories as well.
00:03:33.380So my issue wasn't so much with your point that telling one-sided stories leads to bad decision-making, including immoral decision-making, because you only hear one side.
00:03:48.640My issue was really we don't have enough empathy, that empathy needs to be more holistic.
00:03:54.680In other words, we need to think about the unborn baby and the mother.
00:03:58.460We need to think about the immigrant family and the border town or and the American economy,
00:04:23.540Only the people I've decided to ally with, only their experience really matters.
00:04:28.460Whereas my view is I don't think that we can make morally informed choices.
00:04:32.420We can't make morally sound choices unless our understanding is much more holistic that you're thinking about the unborn child as well as the experience of the mother.
00:04:44.960And it sounds it really sounds like we agree because my definition of toxic empathy is that empathy that causes you to ignore the person on the other side of the moral equation.
00:04:54.640So I would agree with you that I'm actually calling people into a deeper and more expansive
00:08:34.980that are the consequence of your policy.
00:08:37.720And then you write this off as, well, that's toxic empathy.
00:08:40.860And I don't think that's what you're trying to say here,
00:08:43.040But I do see that this has been a cultural phenomenon, especially in parts of like what I would call MAGA Christianity, that if you talk about human suffering that results as a product of policy, that the reference to human suffering is referred to as, well, that's what toxic empathy is.
00:09:02.480But in my view, what we're talking about here is we're dealing with incomplete empathy.
00:09:07.300We're dealing with selective empathy in the same way that let's say you had two kids and for some inexplicable reason, you loved one of the kids and you didn't love the other kid.
00:09:17.100You wouldn't necessarily cause that failure to love the other kid, toxic love, because love itself is not toxic.
00:09:23.820You would say you need to have more love.
00:09:28.120We need to have an expanded view of love, not a restricted view of love.
00:09:31.960But if someone used for the title of a book or for the name of a concept, toxic love to describe, for example, the overbearing love that a mom has for his son so that he has a failure to launch, you would understand what they're talking about.
00:09:46.780And you would understand the point that they're trying to make, that they're not saying that all love is bad, that there's actually a healthy way to do it, but that it's turned toxic.
00:09:53.720And I would actually say selective empathy that makes us make immoral decisions is a
00:10:49.560I don't have your Twitter feed in front of me, but the problem that I see is when we articulate ideas, you know, and when we articulate ideas about empathy, one of the things that is very, very important is that we need to be in a position where our position about that idea is crystal clear to people in a way that is reflecting your holistic view of this situation.
00:11:11.640And one of the difficulties I have is that what we're seeing right now, and I've seen this again and again and again and again, is I'm seeing a remarkable decline amongst many Christians, a remarkable decline in whether you want to call it empathy or compassion for people on the other side of the political aisle.
00:11:34.640Just remarkable. And I see this from the far left, too. I see a dehumanization of people on the right. I see a dehumanization of people who are, you know, Trump supporters, etc. I see a remarkable dehumanization of people from on the right of the left, like this phrase I frequently hear, like demon crats, for example.
00:11:53.320and that in my view, one of the responses0.50
00:11:56.720and one thing that's absolutely necessary
00:11:58.500is to be walking out into the public square
00:12:27.580Or let's get into the shoes of a young college student who goes to Yale University, for example,
00:12:33.440and let's suppose they're a conservative Christian.
00:12:36.500Tell me, just tell me what you think their experience is and walk, just do a thought
00:12:42.700experiment, walk in their shoes for a minute.
00:12:45.120And what I have seen time and time again is when we actually expand that concept of empathy,
00:12:49.800Not restrict it, but expand it and say, you are not empathetic enough, as I have seen real progress at bridging some of these divides.
00:12:58.600And so I would say, you know, amongst the, in the world of empathy conversation and the conversation about empathy, the last thing that I want to do is communicate to people that we've got too much of this, when the reality is we just have too, we have much too, we have too little.
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00:14:17.380As you know, and I hope I don't think that your New York Times readers would know this based on the articles about my book or this concept, but I'm not calling all empathy toxic.
00:14:28.880Actually, I start the book with an example of how someone who could put herself in my shoes really benefited me.
00:14:35.980And then I was able to do that for another struggling mom in the airport.
00:14:39.140And so I don't disagree that there is value in putting yourself in someone else's shoes.
00:14:44.140is my argument is that feeling so deeply for a person,
00:15:14.140You are. You are a woman. And you know what? As a woman, you can play women's sports and you can go
00:15:19.640into the women's bathroom. That is my argument. We can talk about semantics, whether you want to1.00
00:15:23.200call it selective or whatever, disproportionate. But my argument is when your empathy leads you
00:15:28.600there, and you could say it exists on the right or the left. I'm a conservative, of course,
00:15:33.740but that is when it becomes toxic. And I think that that is a very understandable concept for
00:15:39.160a lot of people. I think you understand it because you actually articulated it beautifully at the
00:15:42.960start. You know, I think that one of the things, you know, in looking at your book that I looked
00:15:48.800at and I kind of tripped over it was you really refer to empathy as kind of an emotion. You refer
00:15:53.740to it as an emotional phenomenon. The ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes emotionally
00:15:59.020because you're not doing so physically. Well, what you're doing also, you're doing it emotionally,
00:16:03.020you're doing it intellectually. Sometimes you're literally doing it geographically. So for example,
00:16:08.760one of the ways in which I developed much greater understanding about what was happening in Ukraine.
00:16:14.880I can read about a Russian missile attack. I can see a video of a Russian missile attack. I can
00:16:20.700even try to imagine what it is like to be under a Russian missile attack. But then when I was in
00:16:26.320Kiev and we had a host of Kinzhal missiles coming in, you really, that allowed me, that allowed me
00:16:32.880to be almost much more empathetic to the plight of Ukrainians. So it wasn't just an emotional
00:16:38.340thing. It's a, it's a practice. It's a skill. It's something that is, uh, something that is
00:16:43.880cultivated and developed. But you were able to feel how they feel, which is, which is my point.
00:16:48.580Yeah. And also many other things. I'm also able to see what they see. I'm also able to, uh, I'm
00:16:55.100also able to hear their arguments made in, in, in the place where, and I'm going to get a lot
00:17:02.260better sense of their arguments by hearing them in person as opposed to imagining what they are,
00:17:07.300etc so there's emotional components to empathy for sure no question about it but there's also
00:17:13.100intellectual components to empathy there's practice physical practice components to empathy it's a
00:17:18.560it's a pretty broad concept and it's actually pretty difficult like to do it well is pretty
00:17:25.400difficult and what i really want i don't want people to think of empathy as just an emotion
00:17:29.920because that's more of a concept like emotional contagion in other words like you experience an
00:17:36.400emotion alongside somebody, and because they're experiencing an emotion, you experience an
00:17:40.820emotion. That's a very normal human reaction. When people are sad around us, we tend not to
00:17:45.460be happy. We tend to kind of join them in their sadness or vice versa. And so it has to be really
00:17:51.680pulled out of that emotional context because it is an intellectual practice as well, very important
00:17:56.960intellectual practice. And often it's the intellect that precedes the emotion because
00:18:02.780it's the intellectual practice that allows you to imagine that allows you and then also you know
00:18:09.080it provides you with opportunities to try to think about how can i understand better and this is part
00:18:14.880of why i start every chapter with a story that maybe conservatives hadn't hurt the story of the
00:18:19.740woman who is going through the hard time when she's pregnant the story of the illegal immigrant
00:18:24.220who has built a life here and lived in ohio for several decades the story of the person who feels
00:18:28.960that they're trapped in the wrong body. And so, again, I want to reiterate that my claim is not
00:18:33.840that all empathy is toxic. Now, maybe we disagree on the extent of what empathy actually is. And I
00:18:40.300think that you make an important point there that it can look different ways. I do wonder what you
00:18:45.740think about my argument. And I wonder if this is part of also what tripped you up in that.
00:18:51.320I make the argument, as others have, like Paul Bloom, secular Yale psychologist professor,
00:18:55.500who claims that empathy itself is actually neutral that is really my one of my arguments there that
00:19:03.720empathy itself is neutral because you could have gone and felt what they felt in ukraine and you
00:19:09.160said okay i don't you know i don't care that doesn't actually you know i'm on the side of
00:19:13.500putin i love putin so it actually didn't necessarily lead you to virtue there had to be something else
00:19:19.080truth that led you to virtue conviction that led you to virtue and my point is leading people
00:19:24.280towards that. I'm saying don't allow your empathy to drown you so that you make bad decisions,
00:19:30.700so that you make desperate, immoral, unbiblical decisions. And I think you would agree with that,0.94
00:19:34.920that your empathy has to be tethered by truth. And for the Christian, it has to be biblical truth.
00:19:39.460So I would say I completely agree that empathy is neutral. I think empathy is an indispensable0.52
00:19:44.680element of moral reasoning. And so it doesn't end the inquiry. So for example, I'm pro-life.
00:19:52.360I have been a pro-life activist and lawyer my entire adult life.
00:19:57.660And I have a lot of empathy, as you articulated, for the plight of unwed mothers.
00:20:03.180It's one of the reasons why I'm pro-life, especially when I was in high school.
00:20:06.620I was in high school at the age where abortion was far more prevalent than it is now, where abortion was almost like a form of birth control in some places.
00:20:15.480And I saw the effect that that had on the young women
00:20:19.960who were, many of them, their parents would pressure them.
00:21:11.180That then does, but it doesn't end the moral inquiry. So I can have empathy for somebody, which is a real virtue and value to have empathy, but the empathy alone doesn't settle anything. Empathy alone doesn't settle anything, but what empathy does is it gives us information and understanding that we then apply, say, for example, biblical reasoning to, that we apply logic to, that we apply science to, that we apply all of these other things.
00:21:38.520But it's very much like, you know, how in college you have prerequisites before you take like the 400 level class.
00:21:46.980I think of empathy as like the 100 or 200 level human interaction that is the necessary prerequisite to really understanding in a greater way who people are, how to reach them, how to talk to them, what their life experience is.
00:22:03.840And from that standpoint, what I have seen and what really distresses me, and I've seen it in the church, is just a lot less curiosity about the experiences of the people that they oppose and a lot more harshness directed towards the people that they oppose.
00:22:21.100You and I have both experienced this. I mean, I know you have experienced a bunch of hate online. I have experienced a bunch of hate online. It is something that is a very sad reality of being any kind of public figure politically nowadays.
00:26:49.420I think that that's an example where I think a shared sense of empathy, a greater sense of empathy and a more complete understanding would show that that is not just sort of political folly just from an instrumental way, that it's also moral folly.
00:27:03.740That it's an apples and oranges comparison between, say, a murder statute and an abortion by a desperate 19-year-old, that these are very different moral and very different from just a matter of intent and mindset.
00:27:22.240These are just very, very different things.
00:27:24.020Yeah, I think they would probably argue, and I think it is an interesting topic, and we've kind of debated it and discussed it on this show.
00:27:31.160But I think their argument, to be fair, is not necessarily a lack of empathy, but one that it's a case by case.
00:27:37.880They're not always desperate 19 year olds.
00:27:39.740And I do think that you have to look at each circumstance, that there are women who know exactly what they're doing.
00:27:44.480And it's not just at six weeks gestation.
00:27:46.540It's at 16 weeks gestation and that not all women just because they're having an abortion are an automatic victim.
00:27:54.720And then I think the bigger idea is that if we really believe that all human beings are made in the image of God from the moment of conception, why doesn't that little baby deserve the same rights that you and I do?
00:28:05.020We believe that if someone conspired to murder us, paid someone to murder us or murdered us, that they should go to jail.
00:28:10.900And I think the argument, and you could tell me if I'm wrong by abolitionists, is that, well, then we really are treating those little embryos as unequal.
00:28:20.000If we're saying that their murderer or the person who paid for them to be, say, in this case, knowingly murdered, if they don't go to jail, we don't actually believe in fair and equal justice for that embryo.
00:28:31.380So I don't know if I can say overall that the abolitionists are lacking empathy.
00:28:36.320I think that they're driven by, you know, the desire to oppose unequal weights and measures when it comes to these little babies inside the womb that I know you also care about.
00:28:44.680Yeah, it's interesting. And maybe they're out there, but I have not seen too many people calling for murder prosecutions in IVF clinics. And as we know-
00:28:55.380Oh, I think that you could get abolitionists-
00:28:59.440No, they're aggressive. They're intense and aggressive people. They haven't always been nice to me either. So I'm not defending all of their tactics.
00:29:05.740And so, you know, one of the things that I've seen, and when you're talking about the situation that a lot of moms are in, in these circumstances before abortion, one of the most interesting elements and phenomenon in the last, like, 30, 40 years is why is it, how is it that the abortion rate kept going down, down, down, down, down for year after year after year after year after it peaks around 80, 81?
00:29:30.240And it goes down, down, down a lot because there's a couple of things going on.
00:29:34.060One is that the abortion experience itself for a lot of people was just horrible, that they have deep, deep, deep and profound regrets and have communicated that to their own families, to their kids.
00:29:44.960And so there's been an experience of abortion, especially when it's at its peak, that was just profoundly negative for people, and they communicated that.
00:29:53.120But there was also another thing and that is when the pro-life movement for, sadly, for 40 years, we were really cut off from meaningful legal reform.
00:30:03.780We could dabble at the edges, you could pass a waiting period law, things like this, but we were really cut off from major legal reform.
00:30:12.040And so we had to get really creative and we had to get very intentional in interacting with human beings out in the real world.
00:30:20.000And one of the things that we found was that, you know, this real intentional intervention
00:30:24.340with women in their real lives was helping diminish and diminish the abortion rate.
00:30:31.080And so we went through this period where by 2017, the abortion rate was lower than it
00:30:39.180And what's shocking is that this is something that's really surprising to a lot of people.
00:30:44.460The largest drop in abortions actually occurred during the eight years of the Obama administration.
00:30:49.320But, you know, presidents don't make laws and, you know, it was mostly state level Republican legislatures.
00:30:55.420But the problem is it's not. We can tie some restrictions, some diminished abortion rates to some restrictions, but is well beyond that because we got more restrictive.
00:31:06.140We kept getting more restrictive, but then the abortion rate went up again. And so in 2017, the abortion rate comes up again.
00:31:13.020So for the first president, really since Carter, who ended with more abortions and a higher rate than when he started, was Trump.
00:31:22.260And what do you think Trump did that caused that?
00:31:24.640Because your argument is that he caused it.
00:32:34.860and Donald Trump is a very libertine man.
00:32:37.340He does what he wants. He does what he wants sexually. He does what he wants financially. He just does what he wants. And libertinism, not libertarianism, that's a different thing. Libertinism is incompatible with a pro-life ethic.0.99
00:32:55.200Yeah. And I would one of my problems is I truly believe that the right has become much more infected with libertinism in the last 10 years than anything when I was growing up.
00:33:08.380That the emphasis on personal character is much less.
00:33:11.760Sexual ethics. All of this is just less, less, less, less, less.
00:33:16.680Yeah. And I remember I had a podcast with my friend, dear friend, Alexandra DeSantis, who's just a marvelous pro-life advocate.
00:33:23.880Yeah, I've had her on the show a couple of times a long time ago.
00:33:25.980And eight or nine years ago, I said, I'm really worried about what's going to happen with the abortion rate in this country because of the rise in libertinism.
00:33:36.340And the more libertine a movement is, the more libertine a population is, I firmly believe the less pro-life they're going to be because parenting is immense love.
00:33:47.100And as you know, it's also immense sacrifice that you are not the most important person.
00:33:51.180And we would also agree probably that libertinism and just leftism has also increased on the left.
00:34:17.880We were talking about a bunch of trans stuff
00:34:19.980and Drag Queen Story Hour 15 years ago.
00:34:22.320And now that's something that parents really worry about.
00:34:24.640I would say that definitely on the ideological edges,
00:34:29.800you have just seen a degradation of...
00:34:34.300Gosh. I mean, libertinism is one word, just an extraordinary cruelty, an extraordinary—if you look at the actions of the wings of American life, and, you know, I know you're familiar with horseshoe theory, that when people become ideologically further apart, ironically, they often begin to adopt the same tactics, the same methods, the same morality, etc.
00:34:58.660We just see this, I think, all over the place in the United States.
00:35:01.460And I do think the extremes in this country are just ripping us to shreds because what
00:35:06.680they're doing is they're dehumanizing their opponents.
00:35:09.860They lack any empathy for their opponents at all.
00:35:12.860And that they are in dehumanizing their opponents and in believing that they're righteous and
00:35:19.300believing that we are the righteous side and the other side is entirely evil and horrible
00:35:25.340I think they're harming their own souls in that.
00:35:27.460We are not built to be that self-righteous.
00:35:31.020We saw that a lot after Charlie was murdered.
00:35:33.580Now, you definitely saw some empathy with liberals, and I'm not saying this is only a left-wing problem, but I was shocked by a lot of people who basically said he had it coming because he was racist.
00:35:57.320And so, yeah, you had this, it's one of the more dispiriting things, Allie Beth, that I've seen in my life is this one, two thing that happened after Charlie was killed.
00:36:07.560One was these people on the left celebrating his death, just like the, you know, the cult of Luigi or whatever, this guy who murdered a healthcare executive.
00:36:16.360Like the fact that there are people in the world who will celebrate the death of an innocent person just because they disagree with them politically or believe that they were an economic problem or whatever is vile.
00:36:27.100And then we immediately switch over and we see this host of conspiracy theorists and people just destroying.
00:36:34.680Like I can't even imagine treating a young widow with young children the way they've treated her.
00:36:56.320I think that also a lot of it is just, like, a lack of virtue and a lack of morality and a lack of guidance.
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00:37:59.560one thing that you said in the article where you said that i was the prime architect of
00:38:09.420of toxic empathy is that a lot of maga people have um decided that cruelty is a virtue that
00:38:15.620decency is a vice and we live in the harsh new world that they made and i will say like it does
00:38:21.240bother me for my argument and for me myself to be conflated with someone who is saying that virtue
00:38:28.840is a vice and that cruelty is a virtue i think that you know if you've read my book and you've
00:38:34.120talked to me that that is not who i am and that's not the argument that i make and again i think it
00:38:39.520would have been interesting if in the article you have said you would have said like look this is
00:38:43.500not what ali says and it's actually sad that it's being distorted or maybe even if you said if she
00:38:48.120had been stronger and saying this it would have stopped those distortions but i was the hook for
00:38:54.200the article in making your argument. And that bothers me.
00:38:57.120Well, I understand that. The hook was the concept, this attack on empathy that we have
00:39:03.960been seeing, not just from you, from a number of people. And one of my problems is that,
00:39:09.620Allie Beth, we have seen Christians calling cruelty a virtue and attacking civility and1.00
00:40:18.460Yeah, that is applauded, applauded by so many Christians.
00:40:23.080And look, I don't live in a blue bubble.
00:40:25.780In 2024, 85% of my neighborhood voted for Trump.
00:40:30.100The large majority of my extended family voted for Trump.
00:40:34.260I've seen with my own eyes the change in the character of the American church towards more
00:40:39.380cruelty, towards more anger, towards more fury, towards more—it is one of the most
00:40:45.600distressing things I've ever seen in my life.
00:40:48.180And I feel like we're looking at the point where the American church, especially American evangelical church, has in many ways become so much more cruel than I remember with most of my life.
00:41:03.300I feel like the one thing that we should absolutely be telling them is you need more empathy.
00:41:08.880And that empathy should lead to a better way of knowing and loving people.
00:41:14.720That definitely wouldn't be my primary message.0.98
00:41:17.000It would be to, yes, feel deeply for people on both sides of an issue, but don't allow your feeling to be untethered from biblical truth because you'll make bad and stupid decisions and affirm sins, which is not good.0.94
00:42:09.880And my view is, my view is, number one, I'm not going to be, if there is a trans person in front of me, if there is, and, you know, Jessica Riedel is a brilliant analyst, a brilliant analyst of the federal budget, probably knows more than anybody else, right?
00:42:28.840And one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to go out of my, I'm going to be kind to them, but I also don't want to say things that I don't believe are true.0.74
00:42:37.540And so the way I deal with that is I use people's names.
00:42:41.060That's my practice is I use people's names.
00:42:43.760And so that's been my practice forever that as I use people's names, but I'm definitely
00:42:48.720not going to go out of my way to call Jessica he.
00:42:54.160I'm not going to do that, but I'm also going to use names.
00:42:57.240And that's the way I, because I want to be kind to people, but I also don't want to say
00:43:01.320things that are, I don't believe to be true.
00:43:04.000And so that's how I try to square that circle.
00:43:06.240In 2018, you wrote this article, which I really appreciate and agree with. You said the use of a pronoun is not a matter of mere manners. So it's a declaration of a fact. I won't call Chelsea Manning she for a very simple reason. He's a man. You say that you'll use someone's legal name, but I will not use my words to endorse a falsehood. Do you agree with yourself?
00:43:56.260Even when talking about that person like you did on the podcast.
00:43:59.760Like, do you equate calling a man who identifies as a woman, he, with being unkind?
00:44:07.060Like, if I tell the truth, as you said, it stayed in a biological fact, and I think it's wonderful that people are made in God's image from the moment of conception, be male or female.
00:44:16.040So I don't see it as unkind, calling someone, whether it's to their face or not to their face, the gender that God made them.
00:44:23.620Oh, I think if somebody is dealing with gender dysphoria and is struggling with gender dysphoria, I don't see the value in me saying something to them that I know and they know is going to be hurtful to them.
00:44:40.760It's this normal, complete politeness and manners.0.89
00:44:44.280I mean, if you are interacting with somebody and there are words that you know, even if they're true words, they're going to be hurtful to somebody.
00:44:52.160i'm generally unless unless we're in in a in a debate for example over for you know uh is a
00:45:00.420trans woman a woman like if you're actually in a debate over that well then we're gonna we're
00:45:04.680gonna talk about this we're gonna have that conversation but the one thing that i'm not0.97
00:45:09.060gonna do is i'm just not gonna go out of my way to say something that i know is gonna be hurtful
00:45:13.960just because i can justify it as being true that's not the all true words are not kind by virtue of
00:45:20.940just simply being true maybe then it's not going out of your way i mean it's easy to you know in
00:45:26.100conversation you've already a few times you're not trying to go out of your way to talk about
00:45:30.580this person but you know you've used the name where you would typically use a pronoun and so
00:45:35.460if you hadn't though like if you had said he that wouldn't have been you going out of your way to
00:45:39.420say that that would have just been you saying something that's true and so i just don't equate
00:45:45.140telling the truth in that case i agree that you don't have to you know be rude to someone say
00:45:49.780that shirt looks bad on you. That might be true, but it's not a kind thing to say. But when it
00:45:54.980comes to this, like when we know it's a lie that damages someone, that hurts them spiritually and
00:46:00.700physically and emotionally, hurts their family, I just can't get on board with assenting to the
00:46:05.120idea that two plus two equals five just because they're struggling. Well, I'm not assenting to
00:46:09.440that. You don't think you're assenting to that by calling a man she? Well, I don't do that.0.61
00:46:15.400I did that as so far as I know, one time.
00:46:22.360I literally, but the, because when you're speaking in names, like often pronouns just flow, you know, so it's very, it's an intentional act, right, to sort of reset your mind.
00:46:36.200But I'm not advocating saying anything false at all.
00:46:43.360I avoid the pronoun because I do not want to say anything false, and I do not want to be unkind.
00:46:49.160Both of those things at the same time.
00:46:50.700And you do think it's unkind to call a man he?
00:46:52.980I think it is unkind if I'm talking to or about a person who's trans that to, if I don't have to call them he or she, depending on, I'm just not going to do it.
00:47:06.760I do not want to create a barrier, an unnecessary barrier between me and this other human being when, you know, I don't see the point of taking this thing that is so singularly important to them, that is so singular in how they're defining themselves and just shoving the contrary statement in their face in a context that where I know and they know it would be hurtful to what end?
00:47:36.080to what end and and again a lot of truthful things are hurtful but that doesn't mean the intention
00:47:42.320is always to hurt like i think if i had this you might even know who this is but she's a wonderful
00:47:47.400woman her name is laura perry and she tells her testimony of she really believed from a young age
00:47:52.300that she was a boy named jake and she was trapped in the wrong body i mean kind of textbook clear
00:47:57.120gender dysphoria i don't think everyone who identifies as trans has true gender dysphoria
00:48:01.740But I think that, you know, she really struggled with that.0.76
00:48:04.920Well, her parents, conservative, Christian, all of that, she goes off, she gets a double
00:48:09.100mastectomy, she gets hormones when she's an early adult, and her parents would never call
01:00:37.540That he is not the monocausal reason in your words.
01:00:39.240It's not monocausal, but he's part of it. I believe he's part of it.
01:00:42.640What did he do that caused abortions to rise?
01:00:45.800What I'm saying is, as I said earlier, this is a man who contributed to an extraordinary,
01:00:51.560extraordinary growth in libertinism, especially on the right.
01:00:54.880Do we have data that shows us that it's more people on the right that we're getting abortions under Donald Trump?
01:01:00.220It's the whole—I don't—we don't have data.
01:01:02.340Okay, so tell me what you can prove that Donald Trump contributed to the rise in abortions.
01:01:06.480If you have 40 years of uninterrupted decline in abortion, 40 years, and then you have an increase in abortion in 2017, and you have an increase in abortion—
01:01:16.280And you don't think it has anything to do with the president who was in office eight years before that?
01:01:20.780Well, the president was office eight years before that. He had 330,000 fewer abortions.
01:01:25.620But you don't think that his policy or his advocacy had any contribution to the increase in abortion?
01:01:33.760I'm just looking for, like, is that just a theory that you have?
01:01:37.720I think his policies contributed to the decrease in abortion.
01:01:40.860And do you? OK, well, I'm interested in which policies specifically, but which policies for Trump contributed to the increase in abortion under Trump?
01:01:48.940In 2017, he had just become president.
01:01:51.460I think it's the cultural effect of Donald Trump.
01:01:53.660Okay, so you think the cultural effect of Donald Trump made MAGA more libertine, which I wouldn't necessarily disagree on that.
01:02:00.020For me, I see it more in the endorsement of gay marriage and all of that kind of stuff, which I'm adamantly against.
01:02:04.940Do you have any data that shows that it's MAGA that was getting more abortions?0.51
01:02:08.060Because that's the only way your argument makes sense to me.
01:02:10.100So I think that what you're talking about is Donald Trump is reflecting a, because it's not just, it's not just evangelicals, obviously, who voted for Donald Trump.
01:02:19.180A lot of what Donald Trump did was bring in a new coalition.
01:02:22.100You're familiar with this term barstool conservatives, for example.
01:02:27.560Yeah, what we've seen is a growth in the right, and what we've seen is a growth in the right of this very libertine UFC slash barstool culture of sexual, I mean, the, gosh, Allie Beth, go to, when you go to CPAC now, I've seen fraternity parties that are more restrained and circumspect than like CPAC now.
01:05:56.720Right now, we're beginning to see the DOJ is lying and defying quarters to such an extent
01:06:01.960that is, for the first time in my lifetime, is losing something called the presumption
01:06:05.540of regularity, where federal judges can count on the honesty of the Department of Justice.
01:06:11.760We're seeing essentially pardons for sale at a scale that is mind-boggling.
01:06:16.720We're seeing a dramatic drop in prosecution of public corruption and white-collar crimes.
01:06:22.760We are seeing a situation where the DOJ is firing people for doing their jobs.
01:06:28.440If they were involved in the January 6th investigations, et cetera, they're being fired for doing their jobs.
01:06:33.560What is happening to the Department of Justice is a catastrophe.
01:06:37.300And so, yeah, there were a lot of things about Kamala Harris.
01:06:40.420In normal circumstances, that is not somebody that I would consider voting for.
01:06:45.200But against this particular president who had both transformed the Republican Party in a way that I find to be just morally abhorrent, and then the migration of Democrats to be stronger against Russia than the Republican Party, to be stronger on public corruption than the Republican Party, in my view, they were moving towards me in some pretty important ways.
01:07:08.660And the Republican Party has been sprinting away from my conservatism, just sprinting away. Fiscal conservatism, social conservatism, national security conservatism. I was talking to somebody the other day.
01:07:20.040I understand these frustrations. I don't understand voting for someone like Kamala Harris. I remember this just absolutely evil story that I think that you would agree is evil, that under the Biden-Harris administration, that they had used the USDA to take snap breakfast and lunches away from poor schools that didn't abide by the rewrite of Title IX.
01:07:39.240So if a public school that took these funds for poor students that maybe didn't get meals at home, if they did not allow boys on girls sports teams or girls or boys in girls bathrooms, those poor kids, those kids like wouldn't get food anymore for that.
01:07:55.620And like we can talk about is SNAP overfunded.
01:07:58.820Like I'm open to conversations about welfare reform, but for that reason, and I mean, they
01:14:49.980That's what we, the evangelical church, said in 1998.
01:14:53.700And you just feel like we need to be saying that now.
01:14:56.580On the issue of gender, I do think things like Title IX do matter.
01:15:00.800I think that how that's rewritten—and look, Gorsuch was part of the Bostock case, and
01:15:05.400I understand all of that, and he was appointed by Donald Trump.
01:15:08.000So I don't think that Supreme Court nominees and appointees are everything.
01:15:12.060But I do think as a man of religious liberty, like you could agree that the current makeup that we have of the Supreme Court is really good for religious liberty.
01:15:21.720It's been pretty good on the issues that I believe you still care about.
01:15:25.120We do have to give Donald Trump some credit for those things.
01:15:27.560I do believe also that being able to define reality, whether or not Donald Trump can always see that, I think he's actually been like sometimes a little weird about the question, like what a woman, she, her and all of that.
01:15:39.200But the people around him absolutely do.
01:15:42.060I really care about that. I really care about them getting rid of the people in the DOJ. And
01:15:47.260we can talk about the other issues that you think that we have another time, but getting rid of the
01:15:51.420people who were tracking the movements of pro-life activists along with Planned Parenthood and
01:15:56.000feminist movements. Like talk about the rule of law. It's again, I strongly, like with your history
01:16:02.080of defending the first amendment, it again, Kamala Harris with her history of just lawfare
01:16:07.200and hatred against pro-lifers, you know, pro-lifers that you've defended, that's tough.
01:16:12.560Okay, I really want to respect your time, and I think that I gave you a fair hearing
01:16:17.220in describing your case for Kamala Harris.
01:16:21.660So you wrote an article for The New York Times claiming that James Tallarico,
01:16:25.340state representative, he is running for Senate,
01:16:27.880is one of the few openly Christian politicians in the United States who acts like a Christian.
01:16:33.760Now, this is someone who said this summer after the Dobbs decision was decided, Tallarico said more than half of our population became second class citizens, talking about women, every one of our neighbors with a uterus became the property of the state and nothing is more unchristian.
01:16:49.100He says our trans community needs abortion care too.
01:16:53.640He says there are certain interpretations of certain passages from the Torah that give instructions for an abortion.
01:16:59.000And then he also says, God is non-binary, trans children are God's children made in God's own image.
01:17:05.080So when you say Tallarico is one of the few openly Christian politicians who acts like a Christian, what do you mean?0.55
01:17:10.300So in the article, I said there's two ways to sort of think about a progressive Christian.
01:17:15.900One is on policy, and progressive Christians and conservative Christians have disagreed on policy forever.
01:17:21.860I have been arguing with Christian friends of mine about abortion, more left-leaning Christian friends of mine about abortion my whole life.
01:17:28.740I've been arguing with more left-leaning Christian friends of mine about trans issues ever since trans issues have become part of the national conversation.
01:17:39.540It's not necessarily interesting that he's a left-leaning progressive Christian on policy.
01:17:45.500And as I said, that's not interesting to me.
01:17:48.060But what is interesting to me about him is the way in which he interacts with his opponents and the way with which he interacts in the public square.
01:17:56.760And what we have seen, and one thing that is ripping this country to shreds, is our country was built from the ground up to accommodate disagreement.
01:18:06.580One way to think about the American Constitution is it's really a kind of an elaborate dispute resolution mechanism.
01:18:12.220It's how we channel all of the fights that used to lead to war.
01:18:16.840How do we channel it into a political process that still leaves us with a united nation?
01:18:21.500And the First Amendment, for example, is absolutely critical in all of that.1.00
01:18:25.240But, and so I'm very used to Christians0.95
01:18:27.620disagreeing with me on political matters.0.99
01:18:36.320is it's a very different thing to disagree on substance
01:18:38.880and then to turn around and be cruel to another human being,
01:18:42.220to be vicious, to be cruel to another human being
01:18:45.120because you disagree and you dehumanize them
01:18:47.660and you hate them because of your disagreement.
01:18:49.860And we have a massive problem with that in this country.
01:18:52.380And one thing that I liked about the Democratic primary was you had a really interesting confrontation there, and you also have it on the Republican side that's coming up with a runoff.
01:19:02.000And the confrontation was you had two progressive politicians, one of them who made her name being vicious and cruel to her political opponents, and another one who was making his name by reaching out and trying to extend an open hand, even though he's much more progressive than I am.
01:19:16.980and his kindness towards opponents, his openness towards opponents, and that I saw, to me,0.60
01:19:23.780that's acting like a Christian. And when you look at the kindness and the openness to people,
01:19:29.120that is acting like a Christian, even though I strongly disagree on policy. With Jasmine Crockett,
01:19:34.980what I was seeing there was, not only do I disagree on policy, but I also think she's1.00
01:19:39.260just cruel to people. So you go to Cornyn and Paxton, both of them are very conservative men.
01:19:46.800One of them, however, is a serial adulterer.0.98
01:19:49.760One of them is remarkably corrupt.0.98
01:19:52.360One of them is incredibly cruel to his political opponents.
01:19:55.000One of them tried to overturn a lawful election.
01:19:58.600And so I don't look at these people as balls of policy only.
01:20:03.940I see them as both possessing a set of policy positions and possessing a character and temperament
01:20:09.720in the way they interact with their fellow man.
01:20:12.120And in Tallarico, I saw somebody who was interacting with his fellow man in a way that was kinder and more Christian than the way I've seen many cruel Christian politicians relate to their fellow man.
01:20:24.020And I will tell you this, you know, also it's very important to know part of this column was just pure analysis.
01:21:09.220one thing that's gonna be very sad for me
01:21:11.180is to watch a lot of Christians then sort of come out there and say, well, Christians can only
01:21:15.500support Paxton. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm literally, you know, I get it from the
01:21:23.380standpoint of kind of MAGA radicalism. You don't get it from the standpoint of policy?
01:21:29.300No, no, I'm talking about in the primary. Are we really, is in the state of Texas, guys,
01:21:35.780Is it really the case that whatever minor sins Cornyn has committed against conservatism, it's worth kicking him to the curb for an election denying adulterer corrupt man who was impeached by a Republican controlled house?
01:24:54.900Well, the conduct that I was referring to, I do think he's a Christian example. And I think that that's one reason why people are responding to him is because he is so countercultural in this political moment. And this brings me to, I think, a really important point. And this is something that I really want folks to sort of sit with.
01:25:12.640the Bible says a lot more about how we treat human beings than it says about public policy
01:25:19.860positions, a lot more. And one of the things that I think is very important in this Christian
01:25:26.800curriculum, this political curriculum I created with Russell Moore and my friend Curtis Chang,
01:25:31.940we said, look, you go to Micah 6.8. This is a key verse in the Bible. Anytime that it says,
01:25:36.800what does the Lord require of you, oh man, what is good? In other words, you really want to listen
01:25:42.200of this. This is one of these big summary verses. It says to act justly, so you cannot forsake
01:25:47.120justice. You should pursue your positions that you believe are right and just biblically.
01:25:53.100But it also says, and to love kindness, so you cannot abandon kindness. And it also says to
01:25:58.220walk humbly with the Lord your God. And so one of the things that I have seen is an immense amount
01:26:03.940of cruelty and almost no humility being directed at political opponents, all in the name of justice.
01:26:11.480And so when you see people who actually seem to walk with some humility and also with some kindness in their pursuit of justice as they see it, and we're going to disagree on a lot of it, but we're also going to agree on a lot of things.
01:26:24.400Then in that circumstance, I think it's entirely appropriate to say this person's commitment, look, I can't peer inside his soul, Ali, but I can't say that he has pure motives or he has mixed motives or he's just a malign actor who's using politeness for his own ends.
01:26:40.500But in the bottom line is when I see things like kindness, when I see things like humility in the public square, I think that is something that is we should be really reinforcing.
01:26:50.760We should be really we're going to be a lot better country if we have, for example, a situation where you have a Republican and a Democrat who disagree on policy, but they're united on kindness and humility.
01:27:01.460It's going to be a lot, a lot better for our country because right now, hatred is killing us.
01:27:06.940I disagree. I disagree with someone who denies the basic tenets of Christianity to be, you know, someone who's a Christ-like example. Is there someone on the Republican side that you think reflects that level of Christian civility?
01:27:20.800Spencer Cox, governor of Utah. Spencer Cox has been phenomenal. I don't know if you followed his disagree better initiative, but he, you know, what he did, and this is what I really appreciate is Spencer Cox is a conservative, but he's also, he is also kind to his political opponents and he sees them as fellow citizens and neighbors to love and not enemies to oppose and hate.
01:27:44.680And so he's absolutely conservative at the same time he reaches out to people.
01:27:49.500And there are other Republicans like that as well.
01:27:54.100He's one who comes to mind right off the top of my head.
01:27:57.440But, you know, I think of it, you know, it's funny of people to ask me, because I'm not
01:28:03.540really as much a political pundit as I am right about law and religion and armed conflict.
01:28:08.640But people ask me all the time, I mean, what race are you really looking at this midterms? And I said, I'll tell you, it's not even a general election race. It's the primaries in Texas. And if you end up with Cornyn and Tallarico, that's a sign I think American politics are turning a positive corner.
01:28:26.460You're going to have a conservative who is not corrupt, who is known to be the person of integrity that people across the aisle can interact with, against a progressive who is not corrupt, who's known as being a person of integrity, so far as I know, who can operate with people across the aisle.
01:28:44.940If we ended up, thank the Lord we don't have a Paxton Crockett race, which I think would just be an unmitigated disaster no matter who wins that.
01:29:22.740I just wanted to respond to the Micah 6-8, which, of course, is a beautiful verse, an important verse, a verse that all Christians should believe in.
01:29:28.960We have to define justice and love and mercy and kindness the way God defines these things.
01:29:34.020And one thing that stands out to me in the abortion conversation, we talked about that very thoroughly, but that I meant to say at the time when you were saying abortions go down, this president, they go up in this president.
01:29:44.460I think that you would agree that justice is not just about outcomes.
01:29:47.740outcomes. Justice is not only for unborn children about how many children are slaughtered. We care
01:29:54.220about that a lot. And there's a lot of things that Christian pro-lifers do non-legislatively
01:29:58.160to help those women. But it's also about the process of justice and giving them their due.
01:30:04.360I think you would agree with that. Acknowledging their rights. And when I look at not just the
01:30:09.220candidates, but the people that they're going to put in place, the people that they're going to
01:30:12.440appoint, the judges that they're going to appoint, do they recognize the due process of justice for
01:30:19.020any person, but especially when it comes to that unborn child? For me, it's like, well, Kamala
01:30:23.940Harris, no way. It's not even her. It's everyone that she's going to appoint, what she did
01:30:28.040in California, whatever. Donald Trump, more likely. Can you understand that position?
01:30:35.060Can you understand my position to say, you know, I don't really love everything that Trump does.
01:30:40.300that's tough for me i think it's more likely that we'll see a better definition of justice when it
01:30:45.760comes to certain things under trump than under kamala harris oh not only do i understand that
01:30:50.020position but i wrote to that i understand that position like that that is a i explicitly said
01:30:56.040that in that very article that i do understand that position and and as i said you know 85 percent
01:31:02.900of my neighbors voted for trump i think they made a mistake but i love them i you know and i don't
01:31:09.660disrespect a human being simply because they voted for Donald Trump. Now there are Trump voters I do
01:31:15.200disrespect, but not just because they voted for Donald Trump. And there are Harris voters I
01:31:19.980disrespect, but not because they voted for, I mean, obviously not because they voted for Kamala
01:31:24.580Harris. We can't be using somebody's vote as a shorthand for in total assessment of their
01:31:32.380character. We just can't do that. I'm never going to say to somebody who says, you know, look,