Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 270 ｜ What Makes America Great

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Friday. We have a very special episode for you today

00:00:15.600 since tomorrow is July 4th. We are going to talk about why America is so awesome. And

00:00:22.640 I think that this is a message that is probably more needed than ever right now. So if you've

00:00:28.320 been listening to me for any amount of time, you probably have heard me say that the 4th

00:00:32.840 of July is my favorite holiday. And before I get any accusations from people saying that

00:00:39.480 I am idolizing America more than I love Jesus because I like 4th of July over Christmas or

00:00:47.020 Easter, it is not because I am prioritizing America or my patriotism over the birth of

00:00:53.800 Christ or the resurrection. I care about those things, obviously, more than I care about the

00:00:59.780 United States. Those are much more significant events than the founding of the United States

00:01:08.760 of America. It is just the celebration of these holidays that I am comparing here. And I like

00:01:15.560 the celebration of the 4th of July because of the atmosphere, because of the season that

00:01:21.460 it's in, summer is my favorite season. And just because of all of the different things

00:01:27.720 that go along with celebrating the 4th of July, it's just a fun atmosphere. It's a fun holiday

00:01:33.700 to celebrate. Of course, I do love America and I do love the reasons that we're celebrating

00:01:38.580 it, but not even in the same light year of the celebration of Jesus. I just want to make

00:01:44.620 that clear. I do love the 4th of July. I do love America. I've always loved America.

00:01:50.580 When I sing the Star-Spangled Banner, when I pledge allegiance to the flag, I get teary

00:01:57.760 just because we are so incredibly blessed to live in this wonderfully free country. Are

00:02:05.660 we perfect? No. And we're going to talk about that a little bit today. It's important for

00:02:10.000 us to be able to see our country and see our history and see our present state in the right

00:02:17.240 way through a truthful lens. And so that's what we're going to do today. I hope that you

00:02:21.880 finished this episode feeling so excited to celebrate the 4th of July this weekend with

00:02:27.760 your family, even as you might be looking out your window and seeing chaos waging all around

00:02:32.920 you. And maybe you're questioning your own patriotism. You're questioning whether or not

00:02:36.700 this really is a great place to live or whether we really are a fundamentally good country based

00:02:43.280 on good ideals and ideals. This episode is for you. If you have not noticed, which I'm

00:02:50.360 sure you have, especially if you listen to this podcast, a lot of Americans, an unprecedented

00:02:56.080 number of Americans, I would say, do not feel that gratitude for American freedom or pride

00:03:02.820 in American accomplishments. If you talk to, for example, a professor at an elite university

00:03:08.980 or especially a student of one of those professors, you will probably hear them say that America

00:03:13.880 is inherently irrevocably evil. In fact, we are the most evil nation on earth that we are built

00:03:20.840 on white supremacy, that we are a wicked imperialist force, and that all international turmoil in the

00:03:27.880 modern day can be traced back to American aggression. That might be what you hear from a number of

00:03:33.140 professors and college students and recent college grads. A Gallup poll came out last year tracing

00:03:40.660 patriotism among self-identified Republicans and Democrats from 2001 to 2019. And I think the

00:03:47.340 findings are really interesting. In 2001, 64% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats were, quote,

00:03:54.840 extremely proud to be an American. That number shot up. By 2003, 86% of Republicans, 65% of Democrats,

00:04:06.080 so the vast majority of both parties. It dropped slightly for both parties after that. By 2013,

00:04:14.200 71% of Republicans and 56% of Democrats were extremely proud to be an American. That's still a majority of

00:04:22.040 both parties. And then something amazing in a very sad sense to me happened, especially among Democrats

00:04:28.400 from 2013 to 2017. That sense of patriotism or the feeling of being extremely proud in the words of

00:04:37.740 these of this poll, it dropped 13 points, 40 to 43%. That's amazing to me that their patriotism in the

00:04:47.420 Democratic Party dropped while their favorite president was in office. And what's interesting

00:04:52.420 is that if you look at other, there's another Pew research study that I cite a lot, polarization in

00:04:58.580 politics, and it's from 2017. The Democratic Party moved left on every issue while Barack Obama was in

00:05:07.600 office. So if you look at the views of the Democratic Party on things like race and welfare and immigration

00:05:13.540 in the Second Amendment from 1990 to 2017, the biggest change, the biggest shift to the left for the

00:05:20.820 Democratic Party was while Barack Obama was in president. And it coincides with, I can't say that,

00:05:27.500 you know, I can't say unequivocally that it correlates to, but it coincides with this lowering of

00:05:33.540 patriotism while he was in office. Now, in 2019, it is down to 22%.

00:05:39.540 Only 22% of Democrats, and it probably is less now in 2020, are extremely proud to be an American,

00:05:48.340 according to this Gallup poll, whereas 76% of self-identifying Republicans are still extremely

00:05:55.100 proud to be an American. So there is a big divide in how we see the country, and it's due to, as I'll

00:06:00.840 talk about in a little bit, really a worldview divide. A 2017 Pew study shows that fewer and fewer

00:06:07.240 people believe that America is the greatest country in the world. This is this idea of American

00:06:11.800 exceptionalism. 38% believed that America is the greatest country in the world in 2011. The vast

00:06:19.220 majority believed that it's at least one of the best countries in the world. But only 22% of all

00:06:25.060 Americans believe that today. 41% of Republicans believe that America is the greatest country in the

00:06:30.480 world. Only 19% of Democrats believe that. Only 12%. This shouldn't surprise anyone, but it still is

00:06:38.740 sad. 12% of 18 to 29-year-olds believe that America is the greatest country in the world. Almost a third

00:06:45.460 of 18 to 29-year-olds believe that there are other countries better than the United States. The older

00:06:51.340 you are, according to this Pew study, the more likely you are to see America as the best country or one of the

00:06:58.340 best countries in the world. It's amazing what kind of perspective experience it gives you. Also

00:07:04.920 interesting and important, about the same number of white Americans and black Americans believe it to

00:07:11.540 be the best country in the world. 30% of white people, according to this study, and 31% of black

00:07:17.740 people believe that America is the greatest country in the world. The media and far-left activists,

00:07:23.340 far-left activist groups, do not want you to believe that. They don't want you to know that.

00:07:30.180 They would love to have you believe that only white people are patriotic and that every other race hates 0.72

00:07:35.940 the country and they have good reason to hate the country. And that actually couldn't be further from

00:07:40.380 the truth, at least according to this study. The numbers of people who are white and people who are

00:07:46.380 black are about the same, who believe that America is the greatest country in the world.

00:07:50.580 And we're going to hang out here for just a little bit. This exacerbation of a divide,

00:07:57.300 this desire to stoke division where there might not actually be division for political purposes.

00:08:05.540 The leftist media, most of which is driven by Marxism, thrives on this kind of division. Marxism

00:08:12.240 in the economic sense, for those of you who don't know, and this is just kind of a crude description of

00:08:16.820 it because Marxism as a term can be very elusive. But in the economic sense is the desire to take

00:08:23.200 down capitalism, replace it with socialism and communism. It calls for an uprising, a revolution

00:08:29.400 of the working class or what Marx called the proletariat, to take down the rich, the bourgeois.

00:08:35.540 But it's not just economic. It's also a social philosophy. So social Marxism seeks to take down

00:08:41.680 any hierarchy, either a real hierarchy or a perceived hierarchy. So whether that's

00:08:46.880 ethnic or gender or familial. That is why, for example, self-avowed Marxists like Black Lives Matter

00:08:54.380 and Antifa, they're not only against racism and not even all of the activists, especially in Antifa,

00:09:02.060 can be said that it can't be said that all of Antifa is against racism. If you have seen

00:09:07.740 some of the videos of Antifa activists talking to Black cops, for example. But these groups aren't

00:09:15.360 just against racism. They are also, according to the BLM website, against cisgender privilege is what

00:09:22.340 they call it, heteronormative thinking. They seek to, quote, disrupt and dismantle the Western prescribed

00:09:28.840 nuclear family. And just a note on that, the nuclear family, the idea of a mom and a dad and a

00:09:35.540 children raising their kids together is not a Western idea. Whether you believe in the Bible

00:09:40.560 or not, it is a book that is not a Western book. It is an Eastern book, if you want to call it that.

00:09:47.200 It certainly wasn't written by white people. And it is also an ancient book. And in the beginning,

00:09:52.620 we see this so-called nuclear family. So this idea that the nuclear family is Western prescribed is

00:09:57.620 just not true. But the BLM website says that they would like to dismantle that. It is why their

00:10:04.320 statements of belief on their website mentions mothers three times, but it never says the word

00:10:09.420 fathers. It is a Marxist organization that, like all Marxist organizations and nations, it categorizes

00:10:16.120 people by their various points of perceived oppression, socioeconomic, racial, sexual orientation,

00:10:22.340 etc. It seeks to dismantle any system or institution it views as oppressive. Marxists see any disparity

00:10:30.160 between the groups they view as privileged and the groups they view as underprivileged

00:10:35.300 as the result of discrimination and oppression. So they seek equal outcomes, which they determine to

00:10:42.240 be fair and just. But here's the problem with that. A disparity in outcomes does not always mean

00:10:49.140 discrimination. So equal outcomes doesn't necessarily mean fairness and justice. I highly recommend

00:10:56.160 you read Thomas Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities. It is not very long at all. I listened

00:11:01.440 to it on audiobook, and it was really good, really enlightening. It talks about all of this stuff,

00:11:06.660 and I highly recommend that you read it, no matter what side of the aisle that you're on. If you're on

00:11:11.140 the left side of the aisle, it's going to challenge you. But if anything, it could just sharpen what you

00:11:17.200 already believe, but I encourage you to read it. There are innumerable reasons why one individual

00:11:24.600 has a different outcome in life than another. One of them might be discrimination, but the problem is,

00:11:31.420 and something that Marxists just don't want to believe, is that we cannot assume that based on

00:11:38.060 someone's group identity. So siblings coming from the same family often have different outcomes in life.

00:11:43.720 We can't expect all people from all different backgrounds and all capabilities and all 1.00

00:11:48.820 experiences to have the same outcomes in life. And that's not necessarily what justice looks like.

00:11:55.360 If we could somehow redistribute all the money and all the social status, which is what a lot of

00:12:01.420 Marxists want, so that everyone has the same amount of wealth, has the same kind of housing, the same

00:12:06.840 education, the same everything, you are still going to have unequal outcomes because individuals

00:12:12.940 are different. There are a million different factors that play into people's lives. The idea,

00:12:20.200 for example, that white privilege is the determining factor of wealth and success in America is just

00:12:26.940 not true. It's not true. According to the U.S. Census, Indian Americans have the highest median income

00:12:33.440 by a long shot, followed then by East Asian Americans and then white. Asian Americans have higher test 0.98

00:12:41.120 scores, higher graduation rates, lower unemployment, higher rates of two-parent households than any

00:12:46.540 other ethnic group in the country. White people, as a collective, have inarguably had the most

00:12:52.820 opportunity and the most freedom and the most fairness in America since its beginning. And we are not the

00:12:59.500 most successful group. Is there another country? And I'm genuinely wondering, is there another country in the

00:13:05.300 world in which an ethnic minority is on average wealthier and more economically successful than members of the

00:13:11.880 majority? If so, I haven't found it. And if there is, please point it out to me. There are all kinds of

00:13:17.960 privileges that exist. And I would argue that white privilege is actually one that does exist in America,

00:13:23.800 depending on where you are. Some of you are thinking, well, duh. And some of you are thinking, well, no, that's not

00:13:28.980 true. But I believe that it does because white people are in the majority. So that means just like 0.88

00:13:35.080 majorities in every other country, they will be represented more in the media, in halls of power,

00:13:41.280 in the products that you see, in stores. But I would also argue that America in 2020, this has not

00:13:49.200 always been the case, and we'll talk more about this, but America in 2020 probably has the least

00:13:54.460 majority privilege in the world that has, like I said, not always been the case. But right now, compare America

00:14:00.800 to any other country in the world and how ethnic and religious minorities are treated, and you will find

00:14:06.620 that America is one of the fairest, if not the fairest and best place for people of all backgrounds to live.

00:14:13.120 And once we get into statistics, we will talk about why so many refugees and immigrants, more than any other

00:14:19.060 country in the world, come to America. There are all kinds of privileges, like I said, that exist.

00:14:24.460 There is two-parent privilege. So studies show that the presence of a dad in the home drastically

00:14:29.680 decreases your chances of poverty, drug use, delinquency, depression, teen pregnancy, dropping

00:14:35.180 out of high school. You, for example, as a Hispanic American who comes from a stable two-parent home,

00:14:43.320 are more privileged than, for example, the white kid whose dad left him when his mom was pregnant.

00:14:49.440 There are less consequential but also existent privileges. There is pretty privilege. There is

00:14:56.780 skinny privilege. There are privileges that come with age, that come with physical ability, that come

00:15:02.180 with gender. There are geographic privileges, topographic privileges. There are all kinds of

00:15:08.580 privileges in life that may or may not contribute to your outcomes in life. There are people who defeat

00:15:15.820 all odds, who only have the privilege of being alive, and then they make something incredible

00:15:21.140 of themselves. And then there are people who have every privilege in the world and make nothing of

00:15:26.240 themselves. People have different abilities. People have different talents. They make different choices.

00:15:31.180 There are countless, unforeseen, and many times unfair circumstances that people find themselves in

00:15:38.000 that can shape the outcomes of their life. And yes, discrimination and injustice can and do

00:15:44.560 inhibit people's success. But the point is, discrimination cannot be assumed by disparate

00:15:52.740 outcomes in life, which is why the Marxist idea that if we eliminate all hierarchies and that we

00:16:00.300 distribute all money and all power, that people will naturally be equal in all things is simply untrue.

00:16:07.720 Equal outcomes are only possible by forcibly and constantly redistributing power and punishing the 0.55

00:16:14.760 accumulation of success and capital, and by forcibly breaking up hierarchies like the family, getting rid

00:16:20.940 of dichotomies like the so-called gender binary, which of course is what we're seeing. I mean, this is why 0.93

00:16:27.340 you've never seen a free communist country. It has to be forced. Every communist or socialist country

00:16:34.140 country is not going to be existent alongside freedom of speech, for example, because you have

00:16:41.340 to squash all opposition because it is unnatural. It goes against human nature to not have private

00:16:47.040 property, to not have unequal outcomes because of unequal circumstances. We believe in equal

00:16:53.000 opportunity. We believe in liberty and justice for all. We believe in fairness and we should be striving

00:16:58.460 towards equal opportunity, but equal outcomes is impossible without tyranny. Equal outcomes doesn't

00:17:06.060 necessarily mean justice. As Thomas Sowell says, justice at all costs is not justice. So like I said,

00:17:12.860 equal opportunity, the elimination of unjust discrimination, fighting for the freedom and the

00:17:18.840 rights of all people of all backgrounds to have life, liberty, and property are worthy causes to fight for.

00:17:26.100 These are the ideals upon which America was founded and they are good. It is vital to note and to learn

00:17:33.560 from the fact that America has failed many times to live up to those ideals. We were founded upon the

00:17:40.360 then radical notion that all men were created equal and were given certain inalienable rights by God.

00:17:47.840 We have failed to live up to that standard in slavery, in Jim Crow, in Japanese internment camps,

00:17:53.500 in our allowance and celebration of abortion. And our failure has cost human life and liberty. There is no denying 0.76

00:18:00.600 that. I don't think there's anyone in the world, especially any American, that would deny that. We should not

00:18:07.040 even minimize it, that there are ugly parts of American history that we should look at square in the eye and we

00:18:13.240 should learn from them. We should reckon with our history. But that does not mean, as we talked about on a

00:18:18.740 previous episode, that we should wreck our country. So we should reckon with our history and learn from

00:18:24.720 our history. But that does not mean we need to wreck our country and our foundations. The idea that is

00:18:31.380 very popular, especially today, that America was founded upon slavery and white supremacy, not just that

00:18:38.760 those things existed then, but that we were actually founded upon those things, as the 1619 Project

00:18:44.500 asserts, is not true. And in fact, has been debunked by historians across the aisle. I recommend a piece

00:18:53.840 in the Atlantic called A Matter of Facts by Sean Walentz that talks about the shoddy historical

00:19:00.520 analysis, if you can even call it that, of the 1619 Project. It's simply not true that this is what

00:19:08.480 America was founded on, that was not the point of the revolution. The ideals and ideas of the revolution

00:19:15.540 of our nation's founding were and are good. It is when we have moved away from those ideas and ideals

00:19:22.720 that all men are created equal and deserve equal justice and liberty and opportunity that we have

00:19:27.960 allowed for and even perpetuated human rights abuses. It is when America, in her special,

00:19:35.440 valiant way, has moved towards those good ideals, that's when the beauty happens. That's when men

00:19:42.260 give their lives for slavery as they did in the Civil War. That is when emancipation happens. That 0.95

00:19:47.460 is when we help save the world from Nazis and fascism. That is when we help liberate Eastern Europe from

00:19:53.580 communism. That is when Jim Crow ends. That's when desegregation happens. That is when America goes 0.74

00:19:59.500 from having segregated schools and facilities to black people serving on the Supreme Court as a

00:20:06.580 secretary of state steadily and increasingly represented in Congress and a black man named

00:20:11.820 Barack Hussein Obama winning by a landslide twice in a little over 50 years. Every country in the world,

00:20:19.320 every people group in the world has conquered and stolen land from other groups. That's unfortunately a 0.97

00:20:25.380 tragic part of human history. Native Americans were doing that to other Native Americans before 1.00

00:20:30.780 the new Americans got there. Every society has enslaved both their own people and other people. 0.93

00:20:37.840 Every group has oppressed and every group has been oppressed. Africans and Middle Easterners sold 1.00

00:20:43.580 and bought European slaves. Europeans sold and bought European slaves. Native Americans had African 0.99

00:20:49.620 slaves. African Americans had African slaves. The kind of slavery that we saw in early America still

00:20:56.320 exists to this day in much of the non-Western world. And of course, there are still tens of millions of

00:21:02.840 sex slaves suffering as we speak. America is two things. It is an experiment and it is young. We are

00:21:11.000 an experiment that had never been tried before. It had never been tried before we decided that we were

00:21:18.900 going to courageously try it. Self-governance had never been tried before America. A government

00:21:24.120 for the people and by the people was fairly novel. It still is. The ideas of free speech, freedom of

00:21:30.700 religion, freedom of the press, freedom to protest, to defend yourself against tyrants, to own property.

00:21:37.100 These all are ideas that in a lot of ways go back to the Bible and they also go back to the Magna Carta and

00:21:44.140 they go back to British rule of law, the Enlightenment. So they were not isolated ideas,

00:21:49.440 but they were newly implemented in the dawn of America. That means just like any other experiment,

00:21:56.980 it was implemented imperfectly at its beginning. But as I heard author and scholar John McWhorter say

00:22:03.200 recently, America is an ongoing rehearsal and we keep rehearsing and we get better and we get better.

00:22:10.180 And the closer we get to our founding ideals, the better we are. That is why there is no need for a

00:22:18.440 revolution. There's no need to tear down American institutions. I don't care about democratically

00:22:23.820 taking down Confederate statues. I completely understand the reasoning behind that. And if a

00:22:30.060 community wants to come together, decide that and peacefully do that, I think that's fine. But the

00:22:35.520 defacing of monuments of the founders by mobs, the monuments of abolitionists, the discussion

00:22:42.360 surrounding somehow destroying Mount Rushmore. Yes, our founders owned slaves and slavery was and is a

00:22:51.320 moral travesty. I think we should read about it. We should know about it. We should learn from it. But

00:22:56.040 every historical figure is flawed. Every single one, every single one of us is flawed. We have,

00:23:02.780 we have to have the ability to place people in their historical context to denounce their sin

00:23:09.420 and appreciate their goodness and appreciate their productive ideas. Karl Marx, whom a lot of these

00:23:15.480 revolutionaries admire, was both a terrible person and had terrible ideas. So there's literally no reason

00:23:21.620 to honor him. His ideas have only ended in destruction and human suffering, as you can see from the state of

00:23:27.800 any communist country. We are, America is an experiment and we are young. We are only 244 years old. We are

00:23:36.460 ridiculously young to have made so much progress, not just here in the way of equality, of opportunity and

00:23:43.360 justice, but in the whole world. We're not perfect, but the arc of American history over our very short life has been

00:23:53.560 good. I just wonder, I wonder this often as I'm scrolling through Twitter and looking at these crazy

00:23:59.480 videos of what's happening in some places and these anarchists. I just wonder if these people who

00:24:06.220 denounce America as inherently evil and a failure, who hate our founders, hate the constitution, realize

00:24:11.780 how rare it is for them to be able to complain about our government and our systems with impunity,

00:24:18.600 to be able to threaten police officers, to criticize our leaders, to tear down statues in most cases

00:24:25.020 without any consequences whatsoever. That is a product of liberties that the vast majority of

00:24:30.660 the world will never know. We'll never know because they didn't have the founders we have who created

00:24:36.380 the constitution that we have, that recognized the inherent rights that we have. Just look at what's

00:24:42.260 happening in Hong Kong right now. Crazily enough, the Antifa rioters here wants to compare themselves to

00:24:49.840 the Hong Kong protesters, but it's really just the opposite. Hong Kong is protesting communism. They are

00:24:56.480 protesting dictatorship. They are fighting for freedom, for autonomy, for liberty. And China has just taken

00:25:05.000 that away. The UN has done absolutely nothing. That's why the UN is an absolute joke. And

00:25:12.140 they are working hand in hand with China, as is the World Health Organization. That's why these

00:25:17.340 organizations cannot be trusted. China has taken away the freedom, has taken away the liberty, has taken 0.86

00:25:23.260 away the autonomy of Hong Kong, and it will end in suffering and death. They are going to snuff out

00:25:31.060 any dissent. There is no freedom of speech there. There's no freedom of religion there. And Hong Kong was

00:25:37.440 kind of the safe haven for liberty. And now it is going to be taken over by the communist dictatorship

00:25:42.640 of China. And we are going to see the worldview that the anarchists here want play out in Hong Kong,

00:25:51.040 as we have unfortunately seen play out too many times over the past 100 years. And so we can see what

00:25:57.600 it looks like in a country that doesn't believe that we have inherent human rights. Again, we have

00:26:03.240 violated our own ideals, but at least we have those ideals. Like, at least we have a standard to try to

00:26:09.700 reach. At least we have something to go back to. At least we have something to get in line with and

00:26:14.880 realize, okay, we were off in this human rights abuse because we believe that all men are created 0.99

00:26:19.860 equal and are given inalienable rights by God. China doesn't have that. Communist countries don't

00:26:24.600 have that. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. I just want to read some statistics

00:26:29.320 about America and what makes us so great and what makes this narrative of America being the worst

00:26:35.620 country in the world so crazy. America gives the vast majority of the foreign aid. We give

00:26:42.160 more foreign aid than any other country that is over $31 billion. We adopt the most children per year

00:26:49.240 by far than any other country. In a 2018 Gallup study, it showed that America is the most generous

00:26:55.460 country in the world in terms of the percentage of Americans that A, donated their money to charity,

00:27:01.520 B, volunteered their own time to an organization, three, helped a stranger who needed help. 2018 was

00:27:07.460 the first year since 1980 that America didn't lead the world in the number of refugees accepted. Before

00:27:13.700 that, we were far and away the country with the highest number of refugees accepted every year. America

00:27:21.780 has by far the highest number of immigrants in the world. One million people immigrate to America

00:27:29.220 every year more than any other country by far. And so it just reminds me that so many of the people

00:27:35.420 that have grown up with the rights and the privileges of America are so blinded to the hardships of people

00:27:41.940 that live in other countries that they claim have it better than the United States does. And they point

00:27:47.300 to everyone else for their privilege. They don't realize that these people, many of them, especially

00:27:51.860 Antifa, who are rioting in the street, are actually the ones who are privileged, who don't realize the

00:27:57.020 reason why a million people every year immigrate to the United States that's more immigrants than

00:28:05.840 any other country except in the world is because America is much better than these anarchists think that

00:28:12.840 it is. Capitalism, property rights, global markets, which America has helped champion, has slashed the

00:28:20.580 global poverty rate in half since just 2000. That didn't happen during the communist revolutions of

00:28:26.520 the 20th century, by the way. That happened as communism began to die. And the countries who have insisted

00:28:33.020 upon socialism, North Korea, Venezuela, haven't done so well as the rest of the world has. America has led the

00:28:40.160 world in higher education, in science, in innovation, in technology, in medicine, in space exploration for

00:28:46.560 decades, if not centuries, obviously not in space exploration for centuries. But we have done these

00:28:53.860 things really for as long as we have been leading the free world. We are the hub of entertainment, the hub of

00:29:02.220 academia, of technology, of advanced medicine. And only 244 years we have become that. America is imperfect.

00:29:10.760 Because like all countries, it is made up of imperfect people. But by the grace and provision of God,

00:29:19.200 we have been and still are at our foundation, an incredible nation that has done so much good.

00:29:26.340 Do we still have room to grow? Of course we do. Absolutely. We always will. But we will not grow by

00:29:32.540 getting rid of our ideals, but rather by getting closer to them. So it is vital for the future of your

00:29:39.700 children and their children and their children for the good of the poor, for the good of the vulnerable,

00:29:45.860 for the good of the minority. And I mean minority in thought, minority in political ideas. For us,

00:29:54.840 especially as Christians, to fight for liberty, to push against Marxism, which seeks to steal, kill,

00:30:01.140 and destroy, to reject the narrative that America is inherently evil and has only ever done bad

00:30:09.560 things. In order to have a thriving society, we have to have free speech. We have to have freedom

00:30:17.180 of religion. We have to have a right to bear arms to protect the First Amendment. We have to have the

00:30:22.620 cohesion of the family. All of these things. Unfortunately, revolutionaries want to abolish.

00:30:29.680 That means ensuring our children know how to reason, know how to think critically, know how to

00:30:35.660 read and to study history, to appreciate the incredible and the rare rights and blessings and

00:30:42.060 privileges that we have in the United States that most people in the world, most people in human history

00:30:46.840 will never be able to enjoy. And most of all, to know God, the giver of our rights. As George

00:30:52.920 Washington said, it is impossible to reason without arriving at a supreme being. That is why we are

00:31:00.580 looking outside our window and seeing so much chaos and confusion. That is the result of moral

00:31:05.540 relativism, which is the result of godlessness. As C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity and a lot of

00:31:11.200 other theologians have talked about as well, God is the supreme moral lawgiver. And without the

00:31:16.820 acknowledgement of a supreme moral lawgiver, there is no supreme moral law. That means there is no

00:31:21.780 objective standard of right and wrong. There is no objective standard of good and bad. And so you just

00:31:27.860 have a bunch of confused people vying both for anarchy and dictatorship at the same time because

00:31:33.600 the godless worldview is constantly contradictory and it doesn't make any sense. China, the human rights

00:31:40.720 travesties that we have seen in China, perhaps worse than any other country, their forced abortion 1.00

00:31:46.800 not just a couple decades ago, but actually currently of the Muslim population in China,

00:31:53.640 forced abortions, forced sterilizations, organ harvesting, torturing these people,

00:31:59.300 murdering these people, putting them in concentration camps. It is because of the godlessness of the

00:32:05.680 government. The common denominator in all Marxist regimes that have ended in suffering and death

00:32:11.480 is godlessness because you lose your ability to reason. And so the unthinking masses are put in

00:32:20.140 subjection to a cruel tyrant because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And when you

00:32:27.680 are seemingly an all-powerful being who is not in subjection to a supreme moral lawgiver and therefore is

00:32:35.940 not in subjection to a supreme moral law, then the idea of human rights and the idea of freedom is

00:32:42.000 completely arbitrary and really irrelevant. So it is vital, obviously, for individual salvation and the

00:32:48.260 advancement of the kingdom of God, which is going to outlast America and is not determined by American

00:32:54.900 freedom and the gospel is not inhibited by limitations on freedom of speech. But in addition to

00:33:03.200 that, secondary to that, much lower than that, the importance of our children believing and knowing in

00:33:09.400 God is also that they understand where rights come from and the importance of fighting for those rights

00:33:16.020 doesn't just affect our lives. It affects the lives especially of the least of these that Jesus calls us 0.98

00:33:22.620 to personally care for. And by the way, that's not calling for the government to care for them.

00:33:27.300 That responsibility is to be on us. Alexander Hamilton says this, give all the power to the

00:33:33.260 many, they will oppress the few. Give all the power to the few, they will oppress the many. And we are

00:33:39.260 certainly seeing that play out right now in mob rule. And it is the importance of America to continue

00:33:46.040 to be a representative democracy that is a government for the people and by the people and to hold our

00:33:52.080 leaders accountable. That's another beautiful thing about living in the United States that we get to

00:33:57.980 do that. One more quote by a founder, Thomas Jefferson said, experience hath shown that even

00:34:04.580 under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have in time and by slow operations

00:34:11.700 perverted it into tyranny. And man, that is true of both Republicans and Democrats right now.

00:34:17.660 That is absolutely the case. And it is our job to fight for the freedoms that we know are not only

00:34:25.540 good, but vital for the flourishing of this generation and the generations to come. So knowing

00:34:31.660 all of that, knowing that our belief in a sovereign creator is what allows us to foster liberty and care

00:34:40.160 for liberty and fight for liberty and to recognize inalienable rights. It is also why we believe in

00:34:47.320 the importance of and the triumph of the individual. Knowing these things, we should spend this weekend

00:34:52.720 thanking God, thanking God for the foundation of this country. And despite our many sins, despite our

00:34:59.220 many flaws and failures, he has blessed us and has blessed other nations through us. And we should

00:35:06.220 thank him for that. I am thanking him for that. We should celebrate this weekend. Every country has

00:35:11.560 its flaws. Every country has its mistakes. There is no country that has accomplished and done the good

00:35:16.820 that America has, again, by the grace and the strength of God. So God bless America. God bless you

00:35:23.660 and your family. I hope you have a great weekend celebrating. I know that we're going to.

00:35:36.220 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 03, 2020

Ep 270 ｜ What Makes America Great

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