Ep 269 ｜ Wrecking vs. Reckoning with Our American History
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Summary
In the midst of all of the chaos and chaos, God's work does not make headlines. He is actively working in everything that is going on behind the scenes. He doesn't come in later just to clean up the mess, he doesn't stand back aghast and say, I didn't see that coming. He doesn t stand back and be surprised to everything that's going on, but rather, he is actively planning, actively working, actively purposing, actively serving, and actively encouraging people to know the truth of God's Word.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone has had a great week so far.
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I was on vacation last week, which is why you had the two-part interview with Stephen
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Bancars on Monday and Wednesday. Then you had a replay episode, Rise of the Millennial
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Witches on Friday. And then you had another interview on Monday with Jim Daly of Focus
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on the Family. If you haven't listened to those podcast episodes yet, I encourage you to do so.
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Some of my favorite of all time. I just love listening to, talking to guests that are experts
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in a particular field. They gave me a lot of insight. And I know for a fact that they gave
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you a lot of insight as well, because I got emails and messages and reposts on Instagram stories of
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all of you who listened to the podcast episodes, especially last week, the interviews with
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Stephen Bancars on The New Age. If you have not listened to those yet, I highly encourage you to
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do so. And just a little bit of encouragement to you guys as you're looking around and you're
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thinking, oh my gosh, this entire world is devolving into chaos. People are abandoning the objective truth
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of God's word. And they are slipping into the anarchy that inevitably comes with postmodernism
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and moral relativism. All of that may be true. But as I shared on my Instagram story the other day,
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God's work does not make headlines. God is working on hearts. He is softening hearts. He is calling
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people to himself. He is calling people to repentance. People's eyes are being opened. The eyes of their
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hearts, as Ephesians, I think 1.18 says, are being enlightened. They are coming to know the truth
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of the gospel and the truth of God's word in the midst of all of this. And that won't be reported
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on. It's not going to be trending on Twitter, but we can rest assured that not only is God still on his
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throne, and Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, but he is also actively working. He
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doesn't come in later just to clean up the mess. He doesn't stand back aghast and surprised to
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everything that's going on and saying, you know, I didn't see that coming. He is actively planning,
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actively purposing, actively working in everything that is going on right now. And I was reminded of
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that in the messages and some of the emails that I received after people listened to the interview
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with Stephen Bancars and also the episode I did a few months ago with Doreen Virtue, who also left the
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New Age the same way that Stephen Bancars did. And these messages of people saying,
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I did not realize that I was deceived. I did not realize that I was following New Age philosophy.
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I didn't realize that some of the beliefs and some of the so-called doctrines that I held on to
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actually weren't biblical doctrines, but were New Age doctrines. Or, hey, I thought that I was a
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Christian before I listened to these episodes, but now after listening to them and hearing the real
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gospel and hearing the difference between the New Age and the true biblical gospel, I realized that
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I was wrong, that I was deceived. And now I have seen the light by the grace and the power of the
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Holy Spirit. I have gotten a lot of messages like that. And it's just a reminder that even though
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that is not going to be headline news, that that is what is happening behind the scenes. And we can
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praise God for that. And we can ask God to help us be a part of that and to be used by him to advance
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his kingdom and to share his gospel. And if he so chooses to do that, which if you are in Christ,
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he will choose to do that. We don't take credit for any of that. We simply thank him for graciously
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and mercifully using us as his vessels to spread his truth and his love. So I just wanted to encourage
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you with that. Maybe I'll start posting some of these, with their permission, posting some of
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these messages that I receive if they are encouraging to you guys. Because I think, like I said, it's easy
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to get kind of trapped in a pit of despair, looking at everything that is going on. That's not what
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we're focusing on today. And I kind of got off on a tangent, but I just wanted to give you a little
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bit of encouragement to start out. I'm kind of going to do a little bit of rapid fire today
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because since I was on vacation last week, went to the beach with my family, I kind of
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checked out of everything and I didn't comment on a lot of things that were going on. And I'm not
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going to be able to cover every single story that we missed last week, but I want to go through some
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of them and just give you kind of a quick analysis or at least a quick reaction to some of that.
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And then we are going to talk about what I call wrecking versus reckoning. So a reckoning with our
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history versus wrecking our history and what we as Christians are called to in the mindset that we
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should be taking on in a mindset that I think can give us as Christians a lot of peace. So we're
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talking about coronavirus again. We stopped talking about coronavirus for a long time because it seemed
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like things were abating. And especially when the protests started happening, I think that's when
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a lot of people said, oh, OK, the protests are happening and we don't see the media having the
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same reaction towards these protests and these riots as they were about people, say, going to the beach
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or wanting to go to the hair salon or go to work so they can feed their children or protest the
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draconian lockdowns. The media said all of those things were actually racist and all of those things
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were irresponsible and immoral. And you are complicit in murder if you are not actively a murderer
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yourself if you go out and do these things and you go out into the public. And if, hey, you want to go
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to work, we heard from a lot of people on the left and a lot of people in the media during those
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lockdowns. If you are concerned about the economy, if you're concerned about, for example,
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the economic downturn driven, driven suicides or depression or child abuse or anything like that,
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then you're just a grandma killer and you don't care about humanity at all and you lack compassion
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and you just care about your 401k. That's what we were told when people were saying, hey, I've got
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some concerns about how these draconian lockdowns are actually going to affect people's mental and
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physical health and how they're going to affect the economy long term, which does affect real flesh
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and blood human beings and their livelihoods. We were told, no, you can't be concerned with that at
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all because that means that you just want people to die. And then we saw the protests where hundreds
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of thousands of people across the country went out and they protested against police brutality.
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That's what a lot of these people were protesting against. Of course, a lot of the rioters and
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looters did not have police brutality in mind. They didn't have any kind of injustice in mind.
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They went out to do something that they simply wanted to do because they could do it. People acted
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lawlessly in some cases because they wanted to act lawlessly. It didn't have any correlation
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whatsoever with injustices that were going on. But you had people who were peacefully protesting
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out in droves in the streets, peacefully protesting against police brutality. And I am all for that,
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by the way, whether we are in a pandemic or not, I believe that the First Amendment is absolute and
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that the government can't tell you or punish you for exercising your First Amendment rights. That's
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exactly what the First Amendment is for. So I'm not blaming people who went out with masks or not,
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who went out and protested for the things that they believe in. It really doesn't matter,
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you know, it doesn't matter to me what they were protesting, although we do know that they were
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protesting police brutality. But even if they weren't, even if they were protesting something
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else, I believe that their First Amendment right is protected. Where I think a lot of Americans saw
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hypocrisy and a lot of Americans started taking the coronavirus less seriously was seeing the media
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reaction to that. Who didn't mention at all, by the way, that coronavirus could possibly spread
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through these hundreds of thousands of people body to body in the streets or through the rioting and
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the looting in which people were not wearing masks. In a lot of cases, some of them were wearing them
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to disguise their identity. But the media hailing these people as heroes and not mentioning at all
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that, hey, this is also dangerous for the spread of the coronavirus. I think that's when a lot of people
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said, hang on. You told me that I couldn't go to church and that I was a complicit in murder for
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going to church. You told me that I couldn't go to work and provide for my family. You told me that
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if I wanted to open up my restaurant or go out to a restaurant that I was irresponsible and immoral.
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And now all of these people are protesting in the street. Again, their right to do so.
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And the media doesn't mention at all that, hey, there are some concerns here with the spread of
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coronavirus. I think that's when a lot of people said, you know what? This seems like a double standard
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and I'm not going to try to meet double standards because it's impossible. I'm going to read you
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some of the headlines about some of the headlines covering the protests and the rioting in
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correlation with the coronavirus. It's really amazing how the media decided to cover this.
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Let's see. Protests in Seattle, says the Seattle Times and elsewhere, don't appear to be a driving
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coronavirus surge, researchers say. Cleveland.com. Did Cleveland's coronavirus surge start with the
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May 30th protest and riot? They say no. And then we have from CNN, co-founder of Maryland Group that
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protested for state to reopen, test positive for coronavirus. So they wanted to make sure that you
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reported on that or that they reported on that. COVID-19, says the Philadelphia Inquirer,
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has not surged in cities with big protests, but it has in states that reopened early. Here are some.
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The Colorado Sun. Black Lives Matter protests may have slowed, may have slowed overall spread of
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coronavirus in Denver and other cities. CBS News. Protests did not lead to spike in COVID-19 cases,
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study finds. Now, what's interesting is that they apparently were able to find researchers and
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scientists who said that masses of people together, many of them unmasked, did not spread the virus to
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each other. But people, for example, in bars and who went to restaurants and who went to beaches in
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Florida, they apparently all did spread the virus. So that's a very interesting scientific finding about
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this virus that apparently it is extremely aware of, it's extremely aware of woke politics, that it
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apparently avoids people at protests against police brutality, but it specifically targets people
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that go to restaurants and beaches. That's an amazing scientific finding. And also, apparently, it targets
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people at Trump rallies. Washington Post said this, with Trump leading the way, America's coronavirus
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failures exposed by record surge in new infections. So this is actually Trump's fault. So it's Trump's fault that
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there is another surge. There's another surge in these new infections, despite the fact that still the highest
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number of cases are occurring in New York, New York City and L.A. County, L.A. County is now the epicenter of all of
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this. There were protests and there were riots in L.A. County. That's not Trump country. That's certainly not led by
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Republicans. So I'm a little bit confused about that correlation. Politico said this, a new dilemma for Trump's team
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preventing super spreader churches. So again, the problem is the churches, the Atlantic. This is the headline. This is
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Trump's plague now. So, of course, this is being used as a political attack against Donald Trump. But I'm not
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saying that he shouldn't be held accountable for his leadership. Of course, he is the president of the
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United States. I think he could have done and said some things better in the beginning. But it's interesting
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how they are willing to absolve governors and mayors of blue states of their responsibility and put the
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surge in their states on Trump. But when it comes to places like Arizona or Texas or Florida, it's all the
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governor's fault. It's always Republicans' fault. And I think this is why a lot of people aren't taking
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the coronavirus seriously. And the media is saying, oh, it's Trump's fault. It's Fox News' fault that
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conservatives aren't taking this seriously. Maybe it's media malfeasance. Like maybe it's the media
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hypocrisy that it's so obvious that they're saying, OK, well, coronavirus is only spiking at churches.
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It's only spiking on beaches in Florida. It's only spiking in red states. It's only spiking
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at Trump rallies when that's obviously not true. Like if you look at the map and you look at the
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coronavirus infection rates and hospitalization rates and death rates, death rates thankfully
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are staying down as younger and younger people are getting infected. They're getting infected.
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They're getting sick for two or three days. They're not having to go to the hospital in most cases.
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And they're certainly not dying. One positive that we are seeing from more and more people
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testing positive for the coronavirus is that the death rate seems to be a lot lower than we
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thought it was. Right now, I think it's about 0.26% death rate, which of course, if anyone dies
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from the coronavirus, it's tragic. But now that more and more people are testing positive,
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we are seeing that there is a lower death rate. But if you look at the map and you look at the
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statistics, it is simply not true that this is exclusively surging in red states. That's just not true.
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Again, if you look at California, if you look at D.C., if you look at New York,
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the cases are still bad there. Yes, they might be going down in New York, but they're going down
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from the highest numbers in the nation. And it's funny also that the media are praising Andrew Cuomo,
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the governor of New York, for how he handled this whole thing, when by any objective standard,
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how he has handled the coronavirus outbreak in New York has been an absolute travesty. Like,
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it's been a disaster. We talked about this on the podcast before, but his office administered an
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executive decree, basically, that said, hey, if you are an elderly person that lives in a nursing home,
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if you go to the hospital for coronavirus, you have to go back to the nursing home before you're
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even better. So you have to go back to the nursing home as soon as possible. A lot of this has to do
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with Medicare reimbursements and the state being able to make as much money as possible because
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Andrew Cuomo was in a budget hole before this whole thing. But that was a disaster. Thousands and
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thousands of elderly people in these nursing homes died because of Andrew Cuomo's policies. Like,
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by no objective standard whatsoever has New York done a good job with this at all. You can go back. I
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think it was the podcast titled Little Tyrants Everywhere from several weeks ago now that talked
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about exactly why Andrew Cuomo and the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, have done such a terrible
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job and why their state and specifically New York City are seeing such high cases. And yet the media
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absolves them from any guilt, says that they're doing a great job, that they've just been handled,
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handed really unfair cards, but that they are doing the best job that they possibly can.
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But Trump, when it comes to things that are really outside of his control at this point and outside
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of his jurisdiction, it is all his fault. And it's also Christian's fault for going to church. It's
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also people who want to work. It's their fault. It's people who protested the lockdowns. It's their
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fault. But it's not the blue state's fault. It's not blue governor's fault. It's not blue mayor's fault.
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It's not any Democratic politician's fault. It is not the protesters' fault. It's not the rioters'
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fault. It's not the looters' fault. It is only conservatives' fault. And so if you want to go
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back to some kind of reasoning for why maybe a lot of conservatives aren't taking coronavirus as
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seriously as they should, it's because they see the hypocrisy. And it looks political rather than
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practical. So it looks like there are political reasons behind the coverage and behind some of the
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hysteria in the media rather than just trying to objectively warn people about the dangers of a
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virus. There's also kind of this debate about masks right now. So you have some Democrats saying
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that the government should mandate masks, that if you don't wear a mask, then you're going to get
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fined. You have some people, I would say, mostly on the right saying, look, I'm not wearing a mask.
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I'm very anti-mask. I'm not even going to wear a mask if a store asks me to. There's some debate
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going on about the science of masks, whether masks actually work. And then you have people,
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I would say, mostly on the left, but some people on the right as well saying, wear your mask,
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usually with some kind of expletive in there. You're killing people. You're complicit in murder.
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And again, we hear this kind of rhetoric. If you don't wear masks, then you're racist because,
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unfortunately, this virus is disproportionately affecting the African-American community and the
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minority communities in general. So if someone doesn't wear a mask, the logic goes they are
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complicit in targeting or in murdering these minority communities. Now, let's just add some
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nuance to this conversation a little bit. You guys know I'm not in pursuit of nuance. I am in pursuit
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of the truth. And sometimes the truth is nuanced. Sometimes it's not. But let's talk about the
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debate on masks really quickly. So I was, in the beginning, pro-mask before we heard Anthony Fauci
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and the Surgeon General say, please stop buying masks. They said, don't buy masks. Masks aren't
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going to do anything. They're not going to protect you. They're not going to protect anyone around you.
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So don't buy masks because, you know, the workers in the hospital need those masks and you are just
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making sure that they don't get the mask they need. And we actually heard from Anthony Fauci himself in
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an interview say that, hey, masks aren't going to affect, aren't going to be effective. They might
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maybe prevent large droplets from, you know, spraying out of your mouth or from, you know,
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getting onto your mouth. But it's really not going to help you that much. Now, in the beginning,
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I remember thinking that this logic was faulty. Like, we bought masks even when they were like,
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don't buy any masks. Actually, we already had masks because, as I've said many times,
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I am already a germaphobe year-round. So I was wearing a mask on planes during flu season.
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And again, I don't know if it was totally effective, but it made me feel better. And so I thought it was
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weird that they were saying don't wear masks because they were also saying that it can be spread
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through small and large droplets. So I'm thinking, well, if I cough or I sneeze or I talk or whatever
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I'm doing in public and a droplet gets out, then it gets on a surface and someone touches that
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surface, they could get sick and vice versa for other people. So I didn't really understand the
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logic of not wearing a mask or especially encouraging people not to wear a mask. And so
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I continued to wear a mask, but they said, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.
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And a lot of people said, okay, I'm not going to. And then all of a sudden, it seemed like it
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changed and said, oh, no, no, you have to wear a mask. Not just, okay, actually, we were wrong
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about the science in the first place. We didn't really understand how the virus worked, but now
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we understand that masks are really going to help a lot more than we thought that they would,
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even a bandana, even a cloth mask, whatever it is, just wear a mask because we were a little bit
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wrong. And here's why it was all of a sudden, if you don't wear a mask, you're a murderer. And if
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you don't wear a mask, you're irresponsible and you're evil and you're immoral and all of these
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things. And so you can't wonder why people who remember what we were told just a couple months
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ago, dogmatically told not to wear masks, you can't, you can't wonder why people are taking a
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step back and saying, hang on just a second. What changed? Can someone explain to me what changed?
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Why were you so ardent about us not wearing masks? And now you're so ardent about us having to wear
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masks. So of course, people are skeptical about this. Now, let me tell you my take on the masks.
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I do not believe that there should be a government mandate about the masks. I don't believe that you
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should be fined if you don't wear a mask. But I think if a business asks you to wear a mask and you
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are voluntarily entering that business, then you should comply with that business's regulations.
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I don't really understand any kind of argument that would say, no, a business shouldn't, shouldn't
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ask us to do that. I mean, you might think a business shouldn't ask you to do that, but you
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don't have to go in to that store. Like you can take your business elsewhere to a business that says
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you don't have to wear a mask, whatever. But I think businesses are, they're not being tyrannical.
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They're simply trying to do everything they can to mitigate the risk for people that are inside
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their stores. And again, you can disagree on the science. You can say, okay, masks are actually bad.
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You can go to a store that believes that. You can buy from a company who believes that masks are bad.
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But for all the grocery stores, all the retail stores, the restaurants, whatever, that are saying,
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you know, we think that masks are going to help at least a little bit and we would like to help as
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much as we can stop the spread of this virus, then I don't see any reason not to comply with that or
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to complain about that. I understand some people have a medical reason that they, you know, they
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don't want to wear a mask or maybe they're uncomfortable wearing a mask. Okay, that's fine.
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Maybe there is an exception for you, or maybe again, you go to a place that doesn't require a mask,
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but masks in and of themselves and requirements by private companies to wear masks in and of
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themselves are not tyrannical. They're not dictatorial. They're not wrong. I would wear a
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mask in any place that asked me to wear a mask. I went in a place the other day and they actually
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provided me with a disposable mask. I had one in my purse anyway, but I thought that that was very kind
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didn't. There's no reason to me to not wear one if it is required by the store that you're going
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into or if you're in a place where, you know, everyone around you is made more comfortable by
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you wearing one. I don't think that there is any danger to that. Again, I understand that there
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are, you know, some people who are pointing to studies that say, actually, it is bad for you to
00:23:01.160
wear a mask and you can get reinfected. I don't know about that. There's competing science,
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but I am not in principle against masks and I'm certainly not in principle against companies
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requiring people to wear masks. Okay. We talked about that a lot more than I thought that we were
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going to, but I've got a few more things I want to talk about. Okay. One more thing that I wanted
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to say about the coronavirus. So there's this narrative that's going on in the media that it's
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red states that are doing really badly because they reopened and blue states that are doing really
00:23:33.820
well because they stayed closed. That's obviously not true. Look at LA, look at New York, look at DC,
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look at all of these places that have high rates. I won't say that they have rising rates in all of
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these places. They do in LA, but maybe not as much in New York, but they still have a high number of
00:23:50.300
cases, a high positivity rate, and in some cases, a high hospitalization rate. But if you look at places
00:23:56.200
like Texas and Florida, Texas has upped its testing, Florida has upped its testing, New York has stopped
00:24:04.700
testing as many people. And so we don't actually know if the data there is comparable to Texas and
00:24:11.900
Florida. Now, I don't think the surge can be solely attributed to the rise in testing in Texas and
00:24:18.140
Florida, but that certainly has something to do with it. And the seeming plateau or the decrease that's
00:24:24.220
happening in New York at least has something to do with the fact that they are, according to
00:24:30.260
themselves, they are not testing as many people. So I just want to point that out as well. It's always
00:24:35.880
important to go beyond the headlines. So now I want to talk about something that I mentioned at the
00:24:40.320
beginning, wrecking versus reckoning. So wrecking our history versus reckoning our history. All of you
00:24:47.280
reckoning with our history. All of you who have been watching the news have noticed that there's a
00:24:54.120
lot of chaos going on. So not only are Confederate statues coming down, but statues of Union heroes,
00:25:02.380
statues of Thomas Jefferson. They are defacing statues of George Washington. They're even
00:25:09.520
abolitionists. Their statues are being taken down and desecrated. And this has something to do.
00:25:19.240
There are some people who are doing this because they don't want to see monuments that are honoring
00:25:26.220
Confederate soldiers. They don't want to see monuments that are honoring a part of our history
00:25:32.260
that we should be ashamed of. And I do think that there is an argument to be made for that,
00:25:38.000
that taking down these Confederate statues is not about erasing history. There are ways that you can
00:25:43.560
learn about history and learn about the Confederacy, learn about Robert E. Lee without paying homage to
00:25:49.600
them, without honoring them, with a monument. Absolutely. The problem is how these are being
00:25:55.280
taken down and how this is being done. It's being taken down by angry mobs who are indiscriminate
00:26:02.240
in their anger. By the way, like I said, they're taking down statues of Grant, for example. They are
00:26:08.940
taking down or defacing statues of the founders, statues of abolitionists. This is a lot more to
00:26:17.760
do for some people, not all, but for some people about the degradation and the demolition of Western
00:26:26.460
civilization much more than it is about the demolition of white supremacy. Again, I think there
00:26:31.800
is an argument to be made for taking down Confederate statues. But when it's done by the mob, rather than
00:26:37.120
done democratically, why don't we ask the people in these communities to take a vote? Why don't we do
00:26:44.400
this in a way that is civilized? Why don't we do this in a way that involves conversation and debate
00:26:51.120
and some kind of deliberation to take these statues down in the communities where they reside? Why are we
00:27:01.800
allowing? Why are city officials, why is law enforcement allowing these mobs to vandalize,
00:27:08.080
to desecrate, and to take down these statues? Again, I'm not just talking about Confederate statues. I'm
00:27:12.940
talking about statues of George Washington, of Thomas Jefferson, of Francis Scott Key, of abolitionists,
00:27:21.660
of Ulysses S. Grant. Why aren't authorities stepping in and saying, hey, you're not going to do this?
00:27:28.500
And if the city, if they want to take it to a vote, if they want to have some kind of deliberation and debate
00:27:33.920
and discussion and decision making about this, then they should absolutely do this. I do think that it is
00:27:39.780
time for us to have a reckoning with parts of our past when it comes to how we honor people in the past as
00:27:47.420
heroes, rather than pointing to them, like, for example, Robert E. Lee and saying, okay, you know, he was on the
00:27:53.360
wrong side of history. He was on the wrong side of the story and learned the good and the bad and the
00:27:58.360
ugly without honoring him with a monument. But when we allow the mob to rule and when we allow them to
00:28:06.000
tyrannically decide which monuments get to stay up and which monuments get to go down, well, then we
00:28:12.180
lose a very important part of our democracy and our democratic process. And it reminds me of when
00:28:18.780
people say democratic socialism, this is how democratic socialism would play out. You put
00:28:25.580
the word democracy in front of it, or you put the word democratic in front of it, and it is still led
00:28:30.540
tyrannically because socialism is by nature tyrannical. That reminds me of what's going on right now.
00:28:36.280
They're talking about freedom. They're talking about democracy. They're talking about taking these
00:28:40.620
statues down in the name of justice. But what they're doing is not just and it's not democratic.
00:28:45.720
And it is not about personal liberty or freedom at all. It is simply about mob rule. It is simply
00:28:52.340
about indiscriminate anger, not just against racism, which is, of course, justified anger,
00:28:57.480
but against Western civilization in general. And that is what I mean by wrecking our history versus
00:29:02.960
reckoning with our history. I think it's important to reckon with our history, to talk about the good
00:29:07.760
and the bad and the ugly of our past, of the past of the Christian church, of the past of the South,
00:29:14.160
of the past of America in general. I think we should look at, examine, and learn from the bad
00:29:20.180
parts of our history, from slavery to Jim Crow, Japanese internment camps, Chinese railroads, any
00:29:27.320
kind of systemic, so legal, institutionalized injustice that was allowed to persist. Anytime the
00:29:35.340
church did not step up and say something about injustice, I think that we should look at all of
00:29:41.320
that. We should look at injustices that are happening right now. You guys know that I care
00:29:45.580
about that. We talk about abortion very often on this podcast. That is an example of a grievous
00:29:51.340
injustice that has been able to persist for decades, longer than that, in this country and is still
00:29:57.440
prevalent today. So I believe that we should have a reckoning with all of these things, that we should
00:30:02.180
have conversations about them, that we should talk about them, that we should learn from them.
00:30:05.660
And I don't have a problem. If a university decides, you know, we're not going to name this building
00:30:12.260
after Woodrow Wilson because of the views that he held and the views that he propagated, or we're not
00:30:17.640
going to honor this particular person because of, you know, because of the decisions they made or the
00:30:24.160
philosophies they represented, I think that's fine. If there is deliberation and there are conversations
00:30:29.440
about that, culture does change. The moral landscape of a country does change the things that we didn't
00:30:37.040
used to see as problems and atrocities we see as problems and atrocities today. That's also my hope,
00:30:42.620
by the way, about abortion, that one day we will look back and realize the way we do today about slavery,
00:30:47.900
that it was the worst, one of the worst moral travesties that we ever allowed to persist
00:30:55.080
in this country. And that's okay. Like, I believe that it's okay for culture to change. It's okay
00:31:00.220
for us to have conversations. What is not okay is allowing the mob to indiscriminately take down
00:31:07.000
institutions and take down ideas and take down monuments and statues without any deliberation of
00:31:15.300
the public, without any agreement of the community. That is not what democracy is about. And it's really
00:31:21.920
interesting, the parallels between what's going on right now and some of what went on in Mao Zedong's
00:31:29.480
China with getting rid of the four old, so the cultural revolution that tried to get rid of old
00:31:35.340
traditions, old cultures, old ideas, and do the great leap forward, which was Mao's leap into communism,
00:31:45.220
which of course killed tens of millions of people. They also tried to erase history in some
00:31:51.820
kind of way. And there are some similarities between what the mob wants to do and what Mao
00:31:59.380
Zedong did and really what a lot of communist countries did in trying to get rid of history.
00:32:04.160
I mean, that's what 1984 is about. That's what Orwell is talking about when he talks about the
00:32:08.280
memory hole, when he talks about not knowing if they were warring against East Asia or Eurasia the
00:32:12.980
day before because the party controlled history. Let me see if I can get this quote right.
00:32:17.740
He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.
00:32:24.760
That's not right. It's something along those lines, though. I think it's, well, I'm not even going to,
00:32:30.380
I'm not even going to think about it because I'll get all twisted and I won't remember what it is,
00:32:33.780
but I'll correct it. I'll correct it maybe in the description. But there are some similarities
00:32:39.420
between the radicals on the left who do genuinely want to not just have a conversation about
00:32:45.320
reckoning with our history, but obliterate our history altogether, obliterate our foundation
00:32:50.640
and want to get rid of things like the national anthem, probably want to get rid of the American
00:32:55.820
flag. The American flag is very offensive to them. Of course, want to get rid of capitalism,
00:33:00.400
want to get rid of the Constitution, want to get rid of the founders. And people,
00:33:06.560
people in the 20th century who did the same thing in the Soviet Union, in Eastern Germany,
00:33:14.420
in North Korea, they do the same thing to this day in Mao Zedong's China, in Cuba, in Venezuela.
00:33:21.140
All of this is very eerily similar to the things that were going on there. Again, that is what I would
00:33:28.540
call wreckage of our history. I think that we can have a healthy reckoning with our history where we
00:33:33.520
actually have conversations about who we should memorialize, who we should honor, how we should
00:33:38.540
learn from our history. And here's what I kind of want to end with, is that I think the majority of
00:33:45.700
people agree on that. I think that the majority of people want to have a conversation about reform.
00:33:53.120
For example, a reform in the police or wants to talk about the kind of heroes that we honor,
00:34:02.200
want to talk about our education system, want to talk about some of the problems that are plaguing
00:34:07.320
poor and minority communities. I think that there are more people who love America, who care about
00:34:13.980
America, who can appreciate the good things that America has not just brought us, but has brought the
00:34:21.340
entire world for all of her history. And we just want to be better. We want to make sure that we
00:34:27.720
are living out to the fullest our ideals, that all men were created equal by their creator and were
00:34:37.020
endowed with certain inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
00:34:41.760
We want liberty and justice for all. I think there are a lot of people who agree on that. We might
00:34:47.860
disagree on policy. We might have disagreements on what that looks like, but we are willing to have
00:34:54.160
a debate. We're willing to have a discussion. I think that there is a small minority of people
00:34:59.780
on the left who do want to tear down everything that America has ever stood for. They see America
00:35:06.160
as an inherently evil, racist, white supremacist, imperialist nation with nothing good in it,
00:35:14.200
who has never accomplished anything good. And they actually ascribe every bad thing that has
00:35:18.360
ever gone on in the world to America and to the founding of America and even to our founding
00:35:23.860
documents and the founding fathers. And that is just ahistorical nonsense. That is called wreckage
00:35:29.740
of our history, not reckoning with our history. The fact of the matter is, every time, and I've said
00:35:34.620
this before on the podcast, every time we move closer to the ideals stated in, for example, the
00:35:40.260
Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, that we're given inherent rights,
00:35:43.960
that cannot be taken away from us because they were endowed to us by a creator that is higher than
00:35:49.040
the government. Every time we have moved closer to manifesting those ideals, things have moved
00:35:54.380
forward. It is not in erasing our founding principles that we are going to make progress.
00:36:00.520
It is not going to be in rewriting our constitution or rewriting the Declaration of Independence that we
00:36:06.160
are going to make progress. It is going to be more fully and more truthfully, more accurately
00:36:11.080
living out the very good ideals upon which this nation was founded. Every time we have done that,
00:36:17.400
every time we have taken a step closer to those founding ideals, good things have happened.
00:36:21.740
It's been when we have stepped away from that, when we have tried to warp that, when we have tried
00:36:26.320
to circumvent that, get around those principles that all men are created equal and therefore are endowed
00:36:33.920
the same exact rights by a sovereign creator. It's when we have tried to ignore that, that things
00:36:40.080
have gone south. That is how we got slavery. Like, that is how we get abortion. That is how we got Jim
00:36:45.940
Crow. That is how we get any injustice when we ignore the ideals on which this country was founded. So
00:36:53.880
we don't need a revolution. We need to go back to what our constitutional, what our founding principles
00:37:01.140
are. And we need to debate and discuss and talk about how to better live those out, both in policy
00:37:09.860
and individually, culturally, socially, all of that. So the people who want to get rid of everything that
00:37:16.240
America has ever stood for, they have unfortunately been indoctrinated and brainwashed by all of these
00:37:21.560
documentaries and professors that are emotionally appealing but are factually just wrong. And they
00:37:27.860
aren't able to take a look at all of the good that America has accomplished and the objectively good
00:37:33.120
ideals upon which we were founded. The fact of the matter is, is that history is very complex. People,
00:37:39.040
individuals are very complex. All of our heroes are flawed, by the way. Every single political hero
00:37:46.020
that we have, every single historical hero that we have, they're all flawed. We don't honor people for
00:37:53.240
their flaws. We honor people for the good that they attributed. We honor people for the ideas that
00:37:58.680
they have. That doesn't mean that everyone has to be memorialized. That doesn't mean that everyone
00:38:02.180
has to have a statue in their name. I think that, again, we decide, we weigh the good and the bad,
00:38:07.660
and we say, okay, yes, this person contributed more good than they did bad, and so maybe we're going to
00:38:12.040
honor them more. This person stood for something that was so bad that even the good that they did,
00:38:16.420
it doesn't matter. We don't need to memorialize them at all. And I think that's an important
00:38:20.260
conversation to have. And I would say Confederate soldiers and Confederate heroes, so-called heroes,
00:38:26.040
fall into the category of not needing to be memorialized and not needing to be honored by way
00:38:31.740
of monuments. But the fact of the matter is, is that, yes, were the founders flawed? Of course they
00:38:37.420
were, because they were slave owners, and they were just sinners in general, like all of us were. And so
00:38:41.700
they had lots of different flaws. But did they also stand, at least theoretically, at least
00:38:47.220
ideologically for liberty and for equality? And did their ideas build the best and most prosperous
00:38:55.200
and most equitable nation in the world, in the history of the world? Yes, they did. And if we look
00:39:01.120
at any history or any historical figure who has done anything good ever, they are going to have
00:39:06.900
very serious flaws. And if we are going to rename everything because of flaws that people had or
00:39:15.260
because of sins they are committed, then we are not going to have anything named after anyone. We
00:39:20.800
might as well just name everything after animals or inanimate objects if we want to be safe. But
00:39:25.860
there's probably something problematic in that, too. I think that what the majority of Americans need to
00:39:32.560
do is ignore the illogical, nonsensical outrage mob that is demanding that we be divided because
00:39:40.660
divisiveness contributes to the advancement of their Marxist revolution. What if there are more of us
00:39:47.680
who agree on all of these issues than disagree? What if we agree on the majority components of some
00:39:57.040
of these issues that we're debating, like police brutality, like so-called racial reconciliation,
00:40:02.520
like injustice? What if we agree, the majority of us, on a lot of the components of these issues?
00:40:09.740
What if we are willing to have conversations peacefully and democratically and locally about
00:40:15.820
replacing Confederate flags and monuments? What if the people who want to tear down not just Confederate
00:40:20.600
statues but all statues that represent the United States, Grant, Abraham Lincoln, abolitionists, are just
00:40:26.360
a really, really small minority? What if Black Lives Matter Marxists don't represent most people that
00:40:32.820
they say that they represent? Which, by the way, they did say in a video that they are trained
00:40:37.960
Marxists. So for everyone who said, oh, you're so wrong for linking that organization to Marxism, well,
00:40:43.900
they're proud Marxists. They talk about being Marxists. What if most Black people don't believe
00:40:50.640
in getting rid of the police? What if most Black people don't care about Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben or
00:40:55.400
an episode of Golden Girls where they're wearing mud face masks? If you didn't know that episode of
00:41:01.600
Golden Girls was taken down, even though it had nothing to do with blackface. Like,
00:41:05.080
what if most people in the country, black, white, whatever, that they don't actually care about
00:41:10.040
those things? They're not actually offended by those things, but it's actually much deeper
00:41:13.200
problems that we're trying to reconcile and rectify. What if most Democrats and leftists
00:41:18.400
aren't actually Marxist revolutionaries? What if most people on the left aren't Antifa? Like,
00:41:23.360
they don't hate the police. They don't believe in mob justice. They don't want to tear down all
00:41:27.560
American institutions. Now, I do think that a lot of people on the left are supportive or at least
00:41:31.800
complicit in the anarchy. But what if most of them aren't down with the radicalism and the
00:41:36.900
anarchy coming from the far left? What if this outrage mob offended by everything, tearing everything
00:41:42.700
down with no plans for rebuilding, ruining lives, livelihoods, reputations without any regard
00:41:47.860
whatsoever for what's right or fair, sustainable or good is a tiny portion of the American population
00:41:53.920
whose power is only as great as we allow it to be? Like, what if we just ignored them? Like,
00:41:59.120
what if they're just a group, a tiny group of wimpy communists who would shrink into oblivion if we
00:42:04.060
let them? Who really actually only get stronger every time we capitulate to them? Who gain strength
00:42:08.920
every time someone apologizes, for example, for something that they're not really sorry for?
00:42:13.040
Every time someone loses a job for expressing an opinion? Every time a business or an organization
00:42:18.060
issues a so-called statement about something they did that was allegedly problematic but actually
00:42:23.400
isn't problematic at all. Every time a TV series or a movie is pulled off air for supposedly being
00:42:30.520
politically incorrect and having politically incorrect themes that no one is actually offended
00:42:35.140
by. Maybe they're empowered every time someone is censored for an unpopular view, every time someone's
00:42:40.560
life is ruined for making a mistake or being in a bad or uncomfortable situation where they reacted
00:42:46.020
wrongly. Every time people virtue signal in a way that masquerades as goodness but actually is just a way to
00:42:52.080
cause more division. So what if the outrage mob has power simply because we allow them to have power
00:42:58.920
simply because we keep capitulating to them? Simply because we are too scared to say, no, I'm not
00:43:04.280
playing by your rules. I'm not going to apologize for that. What if organizations just stopped issuing
00:43:09.660
these unnecessary statements? People stopped apologizing things for things that they're not sorry for.
00:43:15.660
If companies stopped firing people for their political views or based on unsubstantiated
00:43:20.820
allegations of social media platforms, stopped kicking people off their site just for having
00:43:25.220
the wrong opinions. Like if advertisers just ignored the calls, ignored the demands of the perpetually
00:43:31.500
offended mob of institutions and buildings, stopped renaming things like that's going to solve anyone's
00:43:38.720
problems. If law enforcement and politicians just said, no, you're not going to tear down or vandalize
00:43:45.380
the statue. You're not going to burn down this building. You're not going to illegally occupy this zone.
00:43:50.280
You're not going to threaten the safety of lives and livelihoods of law-abiding citizens just because
00:43:55.680
you're mad, just because you want to. Like what if we stopped explaining away or minimizing or saying
00:44:01.080
sorry for our sincerely held beliefs because a bunch of nitwits born in 2002 who were radicalized by
00:44:08.320
their gender theory professor last year because they want capitalism and everything that America is
00:44:15.400
founded on to die. Like what if we just stopped capitulating to them? What if the Marxists are
00:44:20.180
actually the minority and we just ignored that silliness and the rest of us who are saying got
00:44:24.660
together to have productive dialogue and debates about these issues that are important, debates about
00:44:29.860
the Confederate statues, to have debates about how we honor and learn from our history, debates
00:44:35.060
about choosing between wrecking our history and reckoning with our history and rectifying some of the
00:44:42.580
mistakes that we have made and seeking justice in a way that's true? Like we should talk about what
00:44:49.440
what do words actually mean? Like what is justice? What does justice really look like? What does
00:44:55.960
rectifying our mistakes really look like? What is reckoning with our history really look like? Can we do that
00:45:02.660
without starting a revolution that wants to wreck all of the good principles and the good institutions
00:45:08.720
upon which America was founded? Can we do that? Like can we have a dialogue between those of us
00:45:14.680
who not just don't agree necessarily on politics but want to be able to have same conversations? Is that
00:45:21.080
possible? I think it's possible if we start ignoring the fringes who are predominantly leftists I would say.
00:45:28.300
Maybe there's some on the far right too but predominantly leftists who are now even though they're a small
00:45:33.980
minority they are controlling the majority of the dialogue. They're controlling what companies do.
00:45:39.680
They're controlling what city councils and what public officials do and don't do. They are controlling
00:45:46.040
now law enforcement in a lot of cases. What if we just ignored them? What if we just ignored them and the
00:45:52.320
rest of us who are saying actually had conversations about the things that matter in order to make things
00:45:57.400
better? I want to make things better. I think you want to make things better whether you're on the left
00:46:01.420
or the right. I believe you when you say that you care about justice when you care about truth
00:46:06.820
that you care about making sure that we have the fairest country that we possibly can that society
00:46:13.480
provides you know that we have opportunities equally for people of all races and all socioeconomic classes
00:46:19.840
in all backgrounds. I believe you. I think we have different perspectives probably if you're on the left
00:46:24.600
side of the aisle on what those problems are and how we actually fix them but I want to have you know
00:46:29.580
let's have a debate about that. Let's talk about the things that are actually going to make things
00:46:33.620
better but stoking the flames of division to perpetuate a revolution that seeks to wreck and tear down
00:46:40.680
the very good parts of America that have made America what it is that's not helping anyone. It's not helping
00:46:46.340
anyone. So on Friday we are going to talk more about what those good founding principles are. We're going to
00:46:53.280
talk about both the good and the bad in America and why Fourth of July is something that we should all be
00:46:59.020
honoring. We should all be celebrating. We should all be happy about. I think that we're unfortunately
00:47:04.000
going to be seeing riots and protests on the Fourth of July but no matter what our background is, no matter
00:47:10.140
what our race is, what our gender is, why we should be celebrating the Fourth of July as Americans and so
00:47:17.200
we're going to talk about that more on Friday and I'm excited about that. You guys know how much I love
00:47:21.820
the Fourth of July so I will be back here on Friday for that and I will see you guys then.