Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 06, 2020


Ep 247 ｜ Gaslighting, Virtue-Signaling & Social Justice


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

169.83585

Word Count

7,315

Sentence Count

374

Misogynist Sentences

10

Hate Speech Sentences

8


Summary

Gaslighting, virtue-signaling, and social justice are two trends that are very prevalent in our current political and news-centric conversations. In this episode, we will discuss how these trends go hand in hand and how they relate to social justice and leftism as an ideology in general. And we will talk about how we as Christians in our behavior and the things we pursue and the way we act should oppose these things that are divisive and destructive.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. We've
00:00:05.940 got a fun, I think it's fun, I mean talking about politics is fun for me, so I think this is a fun
00:00:13.400 episode today. We are going to be talking about two trends very prevalent in our current political
00:00:20.280 and news-centric conversations and that is gaslighting virtue signaling and how these
00:00:27.260 things go hand in hand and how they relate to social justice and leftism as an ideology in
00:00:34.280 general and then we will talk about how we as Christians in our behavior and the things we
00:00:39.620 pursue and the way that we act should oppose these things that are not only divisive and destructive
00:00:46.280 but are also sinful. Okay, so gaslighting, virtue signaling, social justice, what do all of these
00:00:55.180 things have to do with one another? Why are we talking about these things? Why is it important?
00:00:59.540 Well, I am going to tell you first, as we always do, let us define our terms. So to gaslight, if you
00:01:07.300 are on Twitter, which God bless you if you're not, honestly every day I debate whether or not I am
00:01:12.460 going to delete my Twitter because it is such a cesspool, but it's also a good tool to be able to
00:01:18.780 stay in the know and to be able to state your opinion and to insert your voice into the public
00:01:23.820 arena. And hopefully you're hoping against hope that maybe you are making some kind of difference
00:01:29.040 by putting out what you believe to be truth. But for the most part, it truly is a cesspool, which
00:01:35.400 drags you down into the dregs of its misery. And this term, gaslight, is a term that is used a lot
00:01:45.400 on that site. And what it means is it is making someone feel crazy for feeling a certain way by telling
00:01:52.800 them that they have no reason to be angry or upset or frustrated when in fact there is in reality a
00:01:59.820 reason for them to be angry and upset and frustrated. So let me give you an example of this that has
00:02:04.780 nothing to do with politics in the news. So for example, this is what abusive boyfriends and
00:02:10.200 girlfriends often do to their significant others. So because most of you who are listening and
00:02:16.100 watching are women, I will use the scenario of a guy doing this to a girl. So say a guy is cheating
00:02:23.200 on a girl. And as girls, you probably have friends who have been in this scenario. He starts doing
00:02:28.800 things that the girlfriend finds suspicious. He is staying out late without texting her back. He's
00:02:36.080 keeping his phone with him at all times, like won't let her even touch his phone, acting despondent in
00:02:41.780 their conversations. Generally, he has changed his attitudes and behavior and whatever. And as it
00:02:47.820 turns out, behind the scenes, he is actually cheating on her. And the girlfriend is picking
00:02:52.580 up on these behaviors and she starts to wonder, hey, is he being unfaithful? So maybe she starts
00:02:58.240 asking questions. Maybe even she comes right out and says, hey, are you cheating on me? And the
00:03:04.140 boyfriend, rather than just denying it, he does what is called gaslighting. He says, oh my gosh, babe,
00:03:09.900 you're so paranoid. You're so crazy. You're psycho. I don't have any suspicious behavior. I'm not doing
00:03:16.300 anything different. That is gaslighting. To take an example of how this is happening right now in the
00:03:23.540 news, and this is not the subject that we're spending the entire episode on today, but this
00:03:30.880 is just an example of gaslighting. This is happening with the Kavanaugh versus Joe Biden coverage debate
00:03:37.700 that's happening online and in the news. So as we have talked about a few times now, the media
00:03:42.580 feverishly and without discretion covered the Kavanaugh saga as if Blasey Ford's accusations were
00:03:48.620 absolute fact. Much of the same media are now tiptoeing around the issue. Not every journalist,
00:03:53.640 but a lot of journalists are tiptoeing around the issue, like the Washington Post, the New York
00:03:58.100 Times, and they are giving Biden the benefit of the doubt, writing headlines about conservatives'
00:04:04.100 reaction to the accusations, casting doubt on Biden's accuser, calling for due process, demonstrating
00:04:10.880 all of the hesitance and the investigative skepticism that they should have been using
00:04:16.960 during the Kavanaugh confirmation. That is the point that conservatives are trying to make.
00:04:21.560 Not that we should automatically believe Biden's accuser, but that we should have the same standard
00:04:26.520 of skepticism for all accusations. So conservatives have pointed this out that, hey, this is a double
00:04:32.600 standard. This is pretty obviously a double standard. And then we get this lovely tweet from
00:04:38.520 a journalist, Kirsten Powers of CNN. She's a columnist also for USA Today. She says, as I point
00:04:46.400 out in my column today, there is no double standard in the way Kavanaugh was treated versus Biden. A few
00:04:52.040 Dems called for immediate withdrawal of nomination, but the prevailing view was that the accusations
00:04:57.480 should be heard and investigated. Same should be done with Reed. Now, this is just not true. This
00:05:04.640 is what not only do we call gaslighting, and I'll explain that, but it's also what you call a memory
00:05:10.200 hauling something. So if you have never read 1984, we are going to read it in my women's book club that
00:05:15.700 I have online, but also you should just read it whenever you can. You should pick it up if you've
00:05:20.980 already read it and just give yourself a refresher. There's something called a memory hole in 1984.
00:05:25.860 They shoot newspapers down this memory hole, never to be seen again. So you don't know what
00:05:33.700 the news was yesterday. So if yesterday you thought you read in the newspaper that we are at war with
00:05:38.440 Eurasia, the next day the headline could say that you are at war with East Asia and you would have
00:05:43.280 no idea whatsoever, no history book, no literature, no newspaper to tell you otherwise. And so you really
00:05:51.180 never know what was reality yesterday versus what is reality today. So that is something that a lot of
00:05:57.400 journalists, unfortunately, including Kirsten Powers, is attempting to do with this whole Kavanaugh thing.
00:06:02.460 They are trying to memory hole what the reaction was so they can say they're not holding a double
00:06:07.060 standard now. But the truth is that every single Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee at the
00:06:12.020 time of the whole Kavanaugh thing, and most Democrats beyond that committee, both in the House and the
00:06:17.180 Senate immediately called for his nomination to be revoked. They immediately and unconditionally
00:06:23.460 believed not only Christine Blasey Ford, not just gave her the benefit of the doubt, not just said,
00:06:30.320 hey, you know, it's probably rare that a victim is going to falsely accuse someone, especially
00:06:36.940 this publicly. They didn't just say that. They completely unconditionally believed her,
00:06:42.940 but they also believed the accusations of Julie Swetnick, who took back her own accusation, and Deborah
00:06:48.800 Ramirez, whose story of Kavanaugh flashing people at a party when he was in high school was never
00:06:54.180 corroborated and was even contradicted. They ran with these stories feverishly full steam ahead. Kirsten
00:07:00.460 Powers, this woman who wrote the tweet that said there's no double standard, she herself wrote for USA
00:07:06.920 Today in 2018 that while Kavanaugh should be forgiven, he shouldn't be on the Supreme Court. She said,
00:07:13.300 if the person who sexually assaulted me and my friend turned into an outstanding citizen,
00:07:18.360 good father and husband, do I think that he should be put on the Supreme Court? No, I don't. Kirsten
00:07:23.320 Powers says, we should send teenage boys the message that they can, we should, we cannot send teenage boys
00:07:30.000 the message that they can sexually assault someone, and as long as they eventually become good citizens,
00:07:35.020 we will elevate them to one of the most important positions in our society. We cannot send the message
00:07:39.400 to teenage girls that attacks on their bodies don't matter because the perpetrator is young
00:07:43.980 like them. She then wrote on May 1st, 2020 for USA Today regarding the Biden allegation,
00:07:51.320 you can believe Reed, that's Tara Reed, and vote Biden. All right, so let's try to square this.
00:07:58.080 Her reasoning for Kavanaugh not sitting on the Supreme Court was that we need to make sure that
00:08:02.020 teenage boys get the right message, that they know that their actions matter, and that teenage girls
00:08:06.500 know that they should be respected. So why doesn't that same reasoning extend to Biden? According
00:08:12.600 to this logic, by saying that, by staying in the race and by voting for him, would we not be telling
00:08:21.060 men that as long as they're powerful, and it happened a long time ago, that they can get away with
00:08:27.040 whatever they want and run for president with impunity? And are we not telling women by Kirsten
00:08:33.340 powers is logic, that their stories aren't to be believed if their perpetrator is a democrat?
00:08:38.660 Or is, for some reason, Tara Reed's story less believable than Blasey Ford's? For reasons that
00:08:45.660 honestly escape unbiased logic. This is what is called a double standard. Just own that. She also
00:08:54.600 reportedly deleted all of her anti-Kavanaugh tweets. If there wasn't a double standard, then why would you
00:09:01.120 need to delete them? This is what gaslighting is. Gaslighting is making you feel like you are crazy
00:09:07.120 or wrong for your reaction by telling you the thing you're reacting to doesn't actually exist when,
00:09:14.020 in fact, it does. This is a tactic. Unfortunately, it does happen on the right and the left, but it is
00:09:19.780 so prevalent on the left because this is what the ideology is built on, and we'll get more into that
00:09:25.380 in just a second. Now that you know about it, you will see it more and more. So here's another example
00:09:31.040 of this happening. As you know, conservatives and Republican governors who are, most of them are in
00:09:38.040 favor of strategically reopening the economy so, you know, people can get back to work and provide for
00:09:43.860 their families and can get the kind of non-COVID-related medical treatment that they need. They are being
00:09:50.860 accused. We, as conservatives, are being accused of sacrificing people. Sacrificing people for a 401k,
00:09:57.820 sacrificing people to get a haircut, sacrificing the elderly. The Washington Post wrote a story
00:10:03.420 titled, Many Parts of America Have Already Decided to Sacrifice the Elderly. The article argues that states
00:10:09.920 that have lax rules or are opening parts of their state back up are sacrificing old people. The Atlantic
00:10:16.720 had a similar piece titled, Georgia's Experiment in Human Sacrifice, talking about Governor Kemp starting
00:10:22.380 to strategically and slowly allow businesses to open back up. And just a reminder, none of these
00:10:28.660 governors, none of these government leaders are forcing businesses to open up or forcing individuals
00:10:33.940 to go outside. It's about, okay, we've got to have some level of mutual trust here in order to function
00:10:39.700 as a society and in order for you to be able to provide for your family. That's what is happening
00:10:45.900 here. But all over, liberal media and Twitter, conservatives are being accused of being heartless,
00:10:51.040 of not caring about the most vulnerable because we believe in strategically opening things back up
00:10:57.000 while still practicing or while still protecting the elderly and the vulnerable. It's like saying this
00:11:03.600 is a form of gaslighting because it's like saying you are crazy for wanting to open back up.
00:11:08.980 You are completely irrational. You're illogical for wanting to do this. Don't you see you're a bad
00:11:15.200 person for wanting to sacrifice all these people? But the reality is, again, that we're not. Abuse is
00:11:20.780 up. Suicide is up. Depression is up. Loneliness, anxiety. Like I said, people can't get their surgeries
00:11:26.060 and cancer treatments. People can't provide for their families. People need work for both provision
00:11:31.080 and purpose. Lockdowns have fatalities too. So we're not crazy. Of course, we care about the vulnerable
00:11:37.840 and the sick and the dying. And I think that people should take responsibility and still distance and
00:11:42.460 all of that. But none of the people, by the way, calling us crazy can tell us what the actual
00:11:49.700 solution is. What will an indefinite lockdown do? When do we open up? And why do we open up? What
00:11:57.320 exactly are we waiting for? So if not right now, since the curve is already flat, the hospital system is
00:12:02.920 not overwhelmed. In fact, lots of nurses have been laid off, furloughed because hospitals around the
00:12:09.160 country are across the country are empty. People can't stay inside until a vaccine is developed.
00:12:15.560 We don't even know if that's going to be effective. We don't know when that's going to happen. It could
00:12:20.640 be two years from now. But the people that are saying that we are crazy, that we are irrational,
00:12:26.300 that we are heartless and lack compassion don't have a solution themselves. This is just a way to
00:12:32.360 gaslight, to make you feel immoral and insane. And yes, to virtue signal, which we will get to
00:12:38.740 that in a second. All of this, by the way, brought to you by the same people who are for abortion and
00:12:45.320 assisted suicide. So I'm not really interested in taking cues from people who think that you should
00:12:50.040 be able to dismember a defenseless baby inside the womb on compassion, not taking cues on compassion
00:12:56.380 from those people. Meanwhile, and this is just another part of this. Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo of
00:13:02.180 New York issued an order on March 25th, according to the New York Post, that elderly coronavirus
00:13:07.640 patients still positive with the virus must be accepted into nursing homes. That has been disastrous
00:13:16.040 and absolutely deadly for the New York elderly population. According to the New York Times,
00:13:21.540 at least 14 New York nursing homes have had more than 25 virus deaths. And that was reported mid
00:13:28.500 April. But no conservatives who want to slowly and strategically open things back up for the sake
00:13:34.260 of people's lives and livelihoods. We are the ones who are heartless and are sacrificing the elderly
00:13:39.360 on the altar of our 401k, right? Here's another example of this gaslighting that is just so prevalent
00:13:46.520 right now. John Favreau of the Favreau, I don't know how you pronounce his last name, of the left
00:13:51.560 wing angst podcast, Pod Save America, tweeted this the other day. He said, I can't imagine being in a
00:13:58.020 political party. I just can't even say this without laughing. He said, I can't imagine being in a
00:14:05.680 political party that has an entire propaganda network at its disposal. Do GOP staffers even prepare
00:14:12.200 their bosses for Fox interviews? No hard questions, no gotchas, no follow-ups, nothing even remotely
00:14:18.840 challenging. Oh my goodness. So this is a form of gaslighting, making you a conservative feel crazy
00:14:25.980 for thinking Democrats have propaganda networks when in fact, according to this person, it's the
00:14:31.960 Republicans that do. And Democrats apparently, apparently are all alone out there in the big,
00:14:38.840 bad, journalistically rigorous world of mainstream media. He goes on to say in a little tweet thread
00:14:45.080 that if MSNBC is considered a democratic propaganda network, he wants a different one. Okay, great.
00:14:51.460 Well, you've got a wide array of choices here, John Favreau. You get to choose from a few. You can have
00:14:56.560 CNN, you can have ABC, who are totally ready to and willing and actually are right now bowing down to
00:15:05.500 any part of the democratic platform, or I could interest you in some newspapers like the New York
00:15:09.840 Times or the Washington Post. There's some online outlets like the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, like if
00:15:15.140 you're feeling fun, or you could take a magazine like the New Yorker or Time, or maybe you're looking
00:15:21.520 for like a whole social media platform. Maybe you're looking for Twitter or Facebook, or you can just go
00:15:26.880 ahead and take all of Google. That includes YouTube. Great. And just for good measure, you can have all of
00:15:32.440 Hollywood do your bidding as well. So if you don't have the propaganda networks that you like,
00:15:38.860 if MSNBC is cutting it for you, you've got a wide array of options to choose from. But no,
00:15:46.000 apparently conservatives have one mainstream network that is somewhat sympathetic to Republicans and
00:15:52.580 conservatism, and it's labeled a preposterous propaganda machine. Okay, got it. So that is him
00:15:59.260 trying to make you feel crazy for thinking that the media is biased, is biased towards the left,
00:16:06.740 which of course, in fact, you are not. That is like the cheating boyfriend that we talked about
00:16:12.540 at the beginning of this, accusing his girlfriend of cheating, of her being the one of cheating,
00:16:17.600 when in fact, she is not. That is this form of gaslighting. And we see this kind of stuff
00:16:23.100 constantly being accused of the very thing the other side is doing, being accused of overreacting
00:16:30.040 or reacting wrongly altogether when our reaction, not all the time, but so many times, especially in
00:16:36.800 the last few months, is in fact justified. This is exactly what happens when outlets like the
00:16:42.020 Washington Post report, quote, conservatives pounce rather than on the thing on which we are pouncing,
00:16:47.900 which is the actual story. So gaslighting is inextricably intertwined with virtue signaling,
00:16:55.800 what is known as virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is a phrase that I hear a lot, but I'm not sure
00:17:01.380 if everyone knows what it means. It often can be the same thing as gaslighting, but it is slightly
00:17:08.280 different. A virtue signal is when you literally signal virtue. You're over there and you're standing
00:17:13.800 up on the hill and you're like, I'm virtuous. You're signaling that you are virtuous, but
00:17:18.560 there's no real virtue behind it. You were just saying something to make you look awesome,
00:17:24.440 to make you look like a good person, but you saying it doesn't accomplish anything. Does it mean
00:17:29.760 anything? There's no substance or action behind it. Or you stated something really obvious that no one
00:17:35.880 disagrees with and, or maybe, uh, you don't even really truly agree with it. And your actions actually
00:17:42.400 belie your virtue signaling. So some examples, the U S women's soccer team refusing to go to the
00:17:47.980 white house after they won the world cup virtue signal. That's not brave. It didn't accomplish
00:17:53.380 anything. It didn't actually do anything that doesn't make anyone moral or virtuous. Sure. That's
00:17:58.560 their prerogative and that's totally fine, but it wasn't courageous. It wasn't virtuous. It wasn't
00:18:03.700 moral. They did it to signal their supposed virtue to the left wing world. Uh, there is a form of
00:18:11.160 virtue signaling that is also not just meaningless, but totally hypocritical. So putting on a show of
00:18:18.240 virtue while contradicting that show with their actions. So this hilarious thing happened with
00:18:24.140 Andrew Cuomo. You might've heard on the news last week that, wow, New York city is doing this
00:18:28.900 awesome thing. They're sanitizing the subways and the media put this out there. Like we're all
00:18:35.180 supposed to applaud, but we're kind of like, good. Maybe you should have done that. I don't know.
00:18:42.340 Maybe you should have been doing that for the last forever, but you especially should have done it
00:18:46.720 eight week, uh, eight weeks ago, six weeks ago. Come on. Like, okay. And so now there's this picture
00:18:53.760 of Andrew Cuomo. He is, um, going out there and he is spraying down the subways with sanitizer and the
00:19:02.920 media is like, wow, this is the leader that we need. The left is like, gosh, Trump would never do
00:19:07.680 this. Cuomo was a man of the people. This is amazing. This is a virtue signal because it's not
00:19:13.380 virtuous. He doesn't have to go out there and actually spray down the subway. What would have
00:19:18.360 actually made a difference is if he had allocated some funds and, uh, issued a directive to have that
00:19:25.980 happen. I don't know, eight weeks ago, that would have made a huge difference. They should have been
00:19:31.580 doing that every night. New York city never shut down the subway and they're wondering why cases
00:19:37.860 keep occurring. Not to mention the fact, which we talked about in the episode titled little tyrants
00:19:42.760 everywhere. Their hospital system is a complete mess. The state of New York is a complete mess
00:19:48.660 because of Cuomo's corruption, because of his lack of integrity, because of his mismanagement of the
00:19:54.260 budget. And he is using this crisis as not just PR for his own reputation, but also to try to get as
00:20:00.780 much federal money as possible to make up for the $4 million budget hole that he had created with his
00:20:06.380 own irresponsibility. Not to mention mayor bill de Blasio, the most incompetent mayor in the Utah,
00:20:12.000 you entire United States of America, uh, not to mention his own corruption and his own lack of
00:20:18.820 leadership and his own total incompetence. We haven't even talked about him targeting the Jews
00:20:24.100 because he is, I'm sorry. I don't know how to say this, but an antisemitic scumbag. The guy is just a
00:20:29.600 scumbag. So virtue signaling. This is what Andrew Cuomo was doing by making, uh, sanitizing the
00:20:37.100 subways, this, uh, PR opportunity, this photo opportunity, when really that's not virtuous at
00:20:44.860 all. That looks virtuous, but in reality, what you should have done was have the subways sanitized a
00:20:51.120 long time ago, and you should have continuously had them sanitized. I mean, that's just crazy.
00:20:55.580 And the leftist media just falls all over this guy. Uh, here's another one. So she should have been
00:21:01.900 included in our tiny tyrants or little tyrants everywhere episode, but I didn't know about this
00:21:06.660 then. So Chicago mayor, mayor Lightfoot, uh, she does a speech and she says, if you have a party,
00:21:14.940 we are going to arrest you. If you even talk about having a party, we also might at least track you
00:21:22.380 down. Uh, here is a little video for saying that. And this is how it's going to be. We will shut you
00:21:28.220 down. We will cite you. And if we need to, we will arrest you and we will take you to jail period.
00:21:36.940 There should be nothing unambiguous about that. Don't make us treat you like a criminal,
00:21:43.320 but if you act like a criminal and you violate the law and you refuse to do what is necessary to
00:21:49.980 save lives in the city in the middle of a pandemic, we will take you to jail.
00:21:55.820 So she wants to seem really tough while, by the way, so mayor of Chicago, by the way, their, uh,
00:22:03.500 gun death numbers are up from last year. So I'm wondering if she could maybe focus a little bit
00:22:08.580 more on that. And here's just the icing on top of the virtue signaling cake for her, because this is
00:22:14.380 what she's doing. She's trying to seem really strong and virtuous. She went out and got her hair
00:22:19.000 done a couple of weeks ago. You know what her excuse was when media thankfully reported on this?
00:22:24.660 She said, well, you know, I'm a public figure and I need to look good. And I take, I take hygiene
00:22:32.660 very seriously, as opposed to all you peons who are just coughing and sneezing in people's faces.
00:22:38.900 She takes her hygiene very seriously. This is what a virtue signaling is. It is also a little bit of a
00:22:45.120 gaslight, making you feel crazy while she is the one that is doing crazy things. This is what it
00:22:51.160 means to virtue signal. It is both meaningless and it is hypocritical. Bernie Sanders. This is another
00:22:56.460 example. Anytime he talks about the capitalism is evil and rich and you're a bad person. If you don't
00:23:01.100 agree with that. Meanwhile, he has two more houses than most of us do and a lot more money than most of
00:23:07.680 us do. Uh, he says things that don't have any formidable principle underneath it. And yet he gets
00:23:13.400 thousands of likes on social media because Twitter loves empty virtue signals. They don't care at all
00:23:19.760 about virtue. And here's a great one. Here's a great example of virtue signaling from this week,
00:23:24.700 courtesy of representative Ilhan Omar. She tweeted, she tweeted this, that we should cancel rent and
00:23:31.980 mortgage payments. No stipulations, no qualifications for that. No caveats. We should cancel all rent and
00:23:39.440 mortgage payments. This is a huge, ginormous virtue signal because it is meaningless. It is worthless.
00:23:45.440 It is counterproductive. It's not even actually virtuous or virtuous sounding. It is meant to signal
00:23:51.340 compassion, but it's not compassionate at all. Let's think about this. This is what's required of
00:23:56.140 virtue signals. Let's put our thinking caps on for just a second. Ilhan Omar, a congresswoman for the
00:24:02.640 United States of America. Okay. Not a state representative. She's a congresswoman in DC.
00:24:08.080 She says that we should cancel all mortgage and rent payments, no conditions, no qualifications,
00:24:13.360 no stipulations that she put on that. This is supposed to be compassionate. Does she realize,
00:24:18.620 I don't know if she realizes this or not. She might not realize that very often tenants are richer than
00:24:24.560 their landlords. There's this communistic idea and you'll see it a lot on Twitter that landlords
00:24:28.620 are leeches, that they're evil. Well, that's a very bigoted generalization. Landlords are probably
00:24:34.620 representative of the rest of the population, which there are some good and generous people
00:24:39.320 and some selfish and not good people. I don't see why landlords are any different than that,
00:24:45.060 but this is this weird communistic idea that rent is evil and that therefore landlords are evil.
00:24:51.400 It's real weird. Millionaires, here's the reality, and they should understand this because
00:24:57.560 they're all about hierarchy and oppression. Millionaires who rent a $10,000 a month apartment
00:25:04.580 in New York City, I don't even know because I don't live in the city, but really expensive apartments
00:25:11.120 in New York City, they shouldn't pay rent to their landlord who probably takes home a lot less than
00:25:17.000 their tenant does. If you make $60,000 a year and your landlord takes home 40K a year, why is it
00:25:23.660 compassionate for you to screw him over by not paying your rent? Does that sound right to you?
00:25:29.180 Is that compassionate to you? If you're paying a mortgage on your house and you and everyone else
00:25:33.740 you know stops paying your mortgage, the bank that gave you that loan is going under. And that bank
00:25:39.480 teller, that single mom at that bank trying to provide for her family on $35,000 a year if that
00:25:45.840 is now out of a job. Does that sound compassionate to you? Of course it doesn't because that's not fair.
00:25:52.380 That is unjust. And this of course is why virtue signaling is wrong and why social justice, which
00:26:01.240 we'll get to a little bit more in a second, sounds good but is wrong because it never looks at the
00:26:08.320 other side of the equation. It is always doing what sounds good, trying to even the playing field
00:26:13.960 and to create equal outcomes at the expense of another group that they subjectively perceive
00:26:19.500 as privileged landlords, people who are requiring payments. When those people aren't necessarily
00:26:25.980 privileged and even if they were privileged doesn't mean that they should be punished by you
00:26:29.920 not paying your rent or mortgage. Does that make sense? So this is why whenever you see something like
00:26:35.520 this, whenever you see a suggestion that sounds virtuous and you're being gaslit by being told,
00:26:41.120 hey, you are a bad person for wanting to open up the economy. You're a bad person for wanting to
00:26:46.860 collect rent or for believing that other people should pay their rent or pay their mortgages. You're
00:26:52.300 a bad person if you believe that the rich shouldn't pay more in taxes. Every time you see this virtue
00:26:57.760 signal or this gaslighting that sounds really good and makes you feel like a bad person for not agreeing
00:27:03.600 with it, you got to think. You got to think a little bit more deeply about the consequences of it and
00:27:08.760 if any of it even makes sense. So you hear this a lot like cancel all student loan debt, cancel all
00:27:14.260 mortgage and rent payments, make the rich pay their fair share, free health care for all, abolish ICE,
00:27:19.640 it's time for racial reparations or in the form of politicians making particular promises like
00:27:26.040 Elizabeth Warren saying that she is going to get a trans kid to help her pick her head of department
00:27:30.720 of education or when Joe Biden promises to pick a woman as his VP. These are all nothing more than
00:27:37.320 empty, hollow, meaningless signals of virtue that when looked at carefully, when thought about
00:27:43.680 critically, are meaningless and to be frank, they're stupid. Why? Because they're not economically feasible,
00:27:50.180 they're not effective, they're not beneficial to society. Canceling student loan debt puts the cost
00:27:55.820 of college on the taxpayer who didn't choose to, many of whom didn't choose to go to college and
00:28:00.920 who may actually make less money than the parents of the kid going to college or even some of the
00:28:06.100 people who are in college. Is that fair? Making the rich pay their fair share is built on a false
00:28:12.620 premise. What is fair? The rich already pay the vast majority of taxes in this country, whereas the
00:28:18.280 poorest pay nothing and actually can make money from the government. Free health care for all means less
00:28:23.660 choice. Lower quality. We've done an entire podcast episode on this because the profit margins for
00:28:29.060 hospitals will be almost non-existent, which means laying off nurses and doctors, but also stymied the
00:28:34.840 motivation for innovation. That's not to say that our health care system doesn't have problems, but
00:28:39.480 forcing people off of their private health care plans that they like and forcing them onto government
00:28:45.640 run care, which just like all government run programs will be both inefficient and ineffective is not
00:28:52.600 compassionate. It's also not just considering that you will be forced to subsidize things to which you are
00:28:58.960 morally opposed like abortion and gender reassignment surgery, for example. Abolishing ice only makes the
00:29:06.420 country less safe. Racial reparations are impossible to calculate. Choosing a woman as your VP rather than the
00:29:13.300 most qualified person just makes you a discriminatory sexist, not virtuous. So if you poke at the holes of these
00:29:20.760 things that sound good that is currently building what is the new and what a lot of people would say
00:29:27.540 is improved ideology of leftism, if you just prick it just a little bit with your pin of critical
00:29:34.040 thinking, it falls apart. I've heard Dan Crenshaw say in his speech, leftism works as activism, not
00:29:40.840 governance. It sounds good, but it doesn't actually work. And this is why I talk so often that social
00:29:48.960 justice is not justice. It is what Thomas Sowell calls cosmic justice. Social justice sounds good.
00:29:56.980 It even sounds good to the Christian because you think that you are helping the least of these.
00:30:01.880 But here's the problem. I just did a PragerU video that just came out. It's my second PragerU video
00:30:08.080 that I've done. And I'm really proud of how it came out. And it's about why social justice is not
00:30:14.300 justice. It is subjective. It is not based on truth. It is not based on reality. It is about these
00:30:22.040 contrived rules of the game in order to try to achieve equal outcomes, which is impossible. It's
00:30:30.500 just impossible to achieve equal outcomes without absolute tyranny to force people into mediocrity in
00:30:36.900 order that they will be equal. So I did a video on that and I got a comment from someone who was
00:30:43.640 very respectful of no problem with this person's comment. She said that she was very disappointed in
00:30:49.540 the video and that I should, I think she recommended, no, this was, I got this from someone else
00:30:56.720 recommending Tim Keller's book, Generous Justice, which I just agree, just totally disagree with the
00:31:01.700 premise of his book. But she talks about how people are born into certain kinds of families and they
00:31:08.480 have certain disadvantages that they didn't choose. And so social justice is about showing these people
00:31:13.300 mercy, not handouts. But the problem with that is that who gets, what is mercy? Who gets to decide
00:31:23.160 what that mercy is? Who gets to decide who gets that mercy and why? What are the qualifications for
00:31:31.660 the mercy? What's the mercy? And who gives it? Who gets to decide all of that? That's why social
00:31:37.080 justice being not blind and being, uh, weighing the intersectionality points and the oppression
00:31:44.100 points of the people that it is allocating so-called mercy to, that's why it is inherently unjust. It is
00:31:51.940 built on nothing more than gaslighting and virtue signaling, telling you that you are crazy for not
00:31:57.980 believing the set of totally subjective and brand new virtues that so many of the people that purport
00:32:03.760 these virtues don't actually fall behind. Quest for Cosmic Justice is a book. It's also a speech
00:32:10.600 by Thomas Sowell. He is the amazing economist who has so much good work out there, but he talks about
00:32:18.020 the inherent injustice of social justice. I highly recommend you read Quest for Cosmic Justice.
00:32:24.900 And what he talks about is that people who want social justice, they want equal outcomes rather
00:32:31.180 than equal opportunities. And they try to, uh, they try to contrive certain scenarios in which
00:32:40.040 everyone will be equal and end up with the same, but it's just impossible. People are different.
00:32:45.360 People of the same backgrounds have different outcomes in their life. And when you try to make
00:32:50.820 everyone have the same results in their life, uh, you end up suppressing innovation, you suppress
00:32:56.400 success, you suppress motivation, you suppress people's willingness to work. And it ends up in
00:33:02.220 tyrannous ruins. This is just the case. He talks about this in his speech quest for cosmic justice.
00:33:08.320 And I just want to read you some of that. He says traditional concepts of justice or fairness,
00:33:14.340 at least within the American tradition, boil down to applying the same rules and standards to everyone.
00:33:19.460 This is what is meant by a level playing field, at least within that tradition, uh, though,
00:33:24.480 the very same words mean something radically different within a framework that calls itself
00:33:28.620 social justice. Words like fairness, advantage and disadvantage, likewise have radically different
00:33:34.580 meanings within the very different frameworks of traditional justice versus social justice.
00:33:39.540 A fight in which both boxers observed the marquee of Queensberry rules would be a fair fight
00:33:44.440 according to traditional standards of fairness, irrespective of whether the contestants were of
00:33:49.220 equal skill strength experience or other factors likely to affect the outcome and irrespective
00:33:54.820 of whether that outcome was a hard fought draw or completely one-sided beating. This would not,
00:34:00.660 however, be a fair fight within the framework of those seeking social justice. If the competing
00:34:06.660 fighters came into the ring with very different prospects of success, especially if these differences
00:34:12.580 were due to factors beyond their control, presumably the vast ranges of undeserved inequalities found
00:34:19.380 everywhere are the fault of quote society, uh, according to social justice advocates. And so the
00:34:25.620 redressing of these inequalities is called social justice going beyond the traditional justice of
00:34:31.620 presenting each individual with the same rules and standards. In a sense, proponents of social justice are
00:34:37.300 unduly modest. What they are seeking to correct are not merely deficiencies of society, but of the cosmos.
00:34:44.180 What they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for.
00:34:50.340 Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man, but the oversights of God,
00:34:56.500 or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailor-made
00:35:02.260 to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice. Um, he goes on and, and I won't,
00:35:10.180 uh, read the entire thing, but he talks about how social justice advocates want to destroy the entire
00:35:16.500 rule of law and the idea of, uh, the traditional idea of fairness and equality. He says, ironically,
00:35:23.780 the quest for greater economic and social equality is promoted through a far greater inequality of political
00:35:29.860 power. If rules cannot produce cosmic justice, only raw power is left as the way to produce the kinds
00:35:36.100 of results being sought. In a democracy where power must gain public acquiescence, not only must the rule
00:35:43.300 of law be violated or circumvented, so must the rule of truth. However noble the vision of cosmic justice,
00:35:50.660 arbitrary power, and shameless lies are the only paths that even seem to lead in its direction. As noted at
00:35:58.100 the outset, the devastating costs and social dangers, which go with these attempts to achieve the
00:36:03.700 impossible should be taken into account. So like what I was saying, it is impossible to achieve
00:36:09.540 the ends of social justice, which is equal outcomes without absolute tyranny. And those who fight for
00:36:16.980 equal outcomes, you notice that it's always equalized downward rather than upward. So success is made into
00:36:24.100 mediocrity rather than mediocrity being made into success. And that's why it always ends so disastrously.
00:36:32.100 Every communist, every socialist regime that has started out with the premise and the goal of social
00:36:37.540 justice, higher literacy rates, more success, more food, more equality. And it ends with destruction.
00:36:46.260 It ends with suffering. It ends with starvation because the goals of socialism and this, uh, leftist
00:36:52.820 contrived social justice, it goes against human nature. And human nature is that there will be
00:36:59.380 always unequal outcomes. America is based on the premise that we should have equal opportunity,
00:37:06.580 but not equal outcomes because we know that it's impossible without absolute dictatorship. And that is
00:37:11.940 what the argument is. And social justice is not based on any kind of impartiality or unbiased truth.
00:37:19.380 It is based on trying to create new rules to lift one group up that someone that the social justice
00:37:25.780 advocates see as oppressed and hold another group down that the social, social justice advocates see
00:37:31.540 as privileged. And that inherently is unjust. That is why we Christians care about what our definitions
00:37:39.940 are. That is why we as Christians care about seeking truth and seeking true virtue and seeking true
00:37:47.060 justice and not seeking false accusations that come with gaslighting, not seeking a virtue signaling that
00:37:54.180 is completely hollow and meaningless and not can, and not, uh, pursuing a type of social justice that has
00:38:00.420 no true, just outcome. All of these are the makings of modern day leftism that when you tap it
00:38:07.540 with just a little bit of weight of critical thinking completely crumbles under the weight of human
00:38:13.860 nature and reality and the necessity of democratic governance, uh, Micah six, eight tells us to seek
00:38:20.820 justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. The question is what is actual justice? What is
00:38:28.100 actual truth? What are the things that we should really care about? Should we be gaslighting and memory
00:38:34.580 holding stories that we don't want to be true? Should we be making other people feel crazy for the things
00:38:40.500 that we are doing or that they do have a justified, uh, a reason to be crazy for? Should we be signaling
00:38:47.140 virtue in a way that doesn't really mean anything? Should we be pursuing a justice that the secular
00:38:52.260 world tells us is just, but isn't actually justice according to God is a impartial Leviticus 19 15.
00:39:00.420 You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great,
00:39:05.540 but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. God's justice is also be, uh, based on evidence and
00:39:12.100 truth throughout Deuteronomy. As God is laying out his rules and statutes for the people of Israel,
00:39:16.740 we see his desire for due process to see if someone is guilty. Israel is too told to inquire,
00:39:22.660 to search diligently, to find proof that someone is innocent or guilty. Guilt is not assumed. Social
00:39:28.740 justice as Thomas Sowell says is not about the rules of the game. It's about, uh, it's not about an even
00:39:34.420 playing field. It's not about equal opportunity. It is about subjective rules based on some subjective
00:39:42.580 idea of intersectionality and oppression. And that does not fit the biblical definition of what justice
00:39:50.260 is. And neither does gaslighting and virtue signaling and all of these attempts that the left
00:39:56.420 makes in order to, in order to force their ideology onto people so that you feel morally obligated to be a
00:40:03.460 leftist, uh, that doesn't fit God's qualifications for what is virtuous for what is true and right and
00:40:09.460 good. Second Peter 1 31, three through 11 says his divine power has granted to us all things that
00:40:16.420 pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence
00:40:21.540 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them, you may become
00:40:27.300 partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of
00:40:32.340 sinful desire for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and
00:40:38.580 virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness
00:40:46.020 with godliness and godliness with brother brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.
00:40:52.260 For if these qualities are yours and increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the
00:40:58.740 knowledge of our lord jesus christ for whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind
00:41:04.740 having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins therefore brothers be all the more
00:41:10.100 diligent to confirm your calling and election for if you practice these qualities you will never fall
00:41:16.260 for in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our lord
00:41:22.580 and savior jesus christ this is true virtue it has substance this is what truth looks like it's the
00:41:30.180 gospel of jesus christ this is what justice really is it's what god says is good and right and true it is
00:41:37.460 impartial it is based on evidence it is based on the author of truth which is god himself uh which is the
00:41:45.460 gospel of jesus christ and so if you've got any question about what is true uh if you are being
00:41:52.980 gaslit feeling crazy about something that you know is right if you are seeing virtue signals and you feel
00:41:58.980 guilty about not buying into these virtue signals and doing the same kind of virtue signaling if you are
00:42:03.780 being told that you need to be a social justice advocate just remember that uh if you need to know what
00:42:10.100 is true if you need to verify what is right and good and what justice is you have an objective
00:42:15.700 standard and that's the word of god like you don't have to you don't have to be swirling around the
00:42:22.260 cesspool of twitter in order to know what is true there are headlines and there are tweets and there are
00:42:29.380 lots of different directions that the news can pull you but ultimately at the end of the day we have a god
00:42:34.180 who created virtue who created justice and who created truth and we don't need to borrow secular
00:42:40.020 standards of morality we don't need to borrow secular terminology in order to inform our world view or
00:42:46.260 our vocabulary regarding what justice is okay that's all i have for you today we will be back here on friday