Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - August 19, 2020


Ep 290 ｜ Trump & the USPS Conspiracy Theory


Episode Stats

Length

59 minutes

Words per Minute

173.44765

Word Count

10,311

Sentence Count

601

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

9


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a lovely week so far. Today
00:00:15.800 we are going to talk about the United States Postal Service and the conspiracy theories
00:00:22.860 that are surrounding it and Trump and mail-in voting. And we will also talk again about the
00:00:29.580 craziness that's going on in America's biggest cities and the worldview behind that. We'll talk
00:00:35.780 a little bit more about the election. There's so much that I want to talk about today, but I only
00:00:40.300 have a finite amount of time and I'm only going to be able to get to these big topics. If you guys
00:00:45.440 are like, oh my gosh, I am just maxed out on politics and the election and all of that craziness right
00:00:50.540 now, then you are in luck because on Friday we are going to take a break from that. You will enjoy
00:00:55.700 the refreshing and Christ-centered conversation that I am going to have with Rayshawn Copeland.
00:01:00.880 And so if you are looking for an outlet, a way to kind of exit this chaos, this political craziness
00:01:08.400 that's going on right now, then you will thoroughly enjoy Friday's episode. I'm super excited about it.
00:01:14.600 But today we have to delve into the chaos. We have to delve into the craziness. And if you are watching
00:01:19.760 this on YouTube, you will notice that I am looking down at my phone to look at my notes because I
00:01:27.380 forgot my computer. I typically have all my notes on my computer, but today I forgot. And so I have
00:01:34.080 to hold my phone to be able to follow along on the things that I want to talk about. A lot of times I
00:01:40.760 don't even look at my notes. Some episodes I've just got like a few bullet points and I can just kind
00:01:46.440 of riff and rant. But today I have so many details in the things that I am going to talk about that I
00:01:52.960 want to make sure that I get exactly correct, that I actually have to follow along on my notes the
00:01:57.820 whole time. So I am going to be looking down at my phone from far away like a baby boomer. And that's
00:02:04.560 just how I'm going to have to do this episode. So if you are watching on YouTube, that is what is going
00:02:09.720 to happen. So as a reminder, you know this if you listen to my episode on Monday, but every Monday
00:02:15.320 until the election, there are only 11 Mondays left. By the way, I am going to be tackling one
00:02:21.560 election related issue and I'm going to be breaking it down, talking about why this issue is important,
00:02:27.720 why we should care about it, and then contrast the two tickets, Trump versus Biden. On Monday,
00:02:34.440 we covered abortion very thoroughly, but there are things that I didn't even get to in that episode
00:02:39.020 that I could talk about more. But we covered abortion and the two tickets positions on abortion.
00:02:44.820 I think as thoroughly as we could in the amount of time that we had on Monday, we will be talking
00:02:49.320 about religious liberty. At the end of that episode, I will have an interview with Dr. John
00:02:53.620 MacArthur, the pastor in California that has been pushing back on the draconian regulations that have
00:03:00.100 disproportionately affected churches in California. And so you can look forward to that. We'll be talking
00:03:05.040 about school choice. We'll be talking about justice issues. We will be talking about a variety of
00:03:11.260 issues that affect you and me and that affects the most vulnerable in our society. And we'll talk
00:03:17.260 about why we should care about them. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today after we get
00:03:23.340 into all of this insanity surrounding the United States Postal Service. And I also, if we have time,
00:03:30.800 I want to talk a little bit about the DNC that's going on right now and just some of the funny things
00:03:35.920 that have gone on. Okay, let's talk about the U.S. Postal Service. Now, any of you who have liberal
00:03:43.600 friends or family members who have been posting about this on Facebook, you have probably seen
00:03:47.980 them go into a tailspin saying that Trump is trying to steal the election by undermining the U.S.
00:03:54.760 Postal Service because he doesn't want mail-in voting because he's afraid that he is going to lose
00:03:59.120 if more people vote. So they're claiming that he's trying to disenfranchise people. This is what
00:04:02.980 an autocrat does. This is totalitarian, dictator behavior. And he is trying to steal mailboxes in
00:04:09.820 order to steal the election. Okay, let us go through the facts of what is actually happening here
00:04:15.720 because you can read plenty of sources even on the left that will tell you there are myths,
00:04:21.140 there are conspiracy theories that are going around, that are working people up into a tizzy
00:04:26.840 that are just not, they're just not factual. They're just not true. So let's go through it.
00:04:32.900 Number one, number one fact, mail-in voting is fraught with problems and potential problems. Okay,
00:04:38.940 so this idea that Trump is just trying to undermine mail-in voting because he is afraid that the more
00:04:45.960 people that vote or the more easily that people can vote, the more likely he is to lose, that is
00:04:51.360 not based on fact. Mail-in voting, independent of Donald Trump, whether you're a Republican or a
00:04:57.400 Democrat, is fraught with potential problems. And if you Google this, if you Google mail-in voting
00:05:03.480 fraud or mail-in voting problems, all the left-wing outlets will tell you, oh, this is just a myth.
00:05:08.280 That's not true at all. There's no evidence whatsoever that there's anything wrong with mail-in
00:05:12.380 voting. There's no potential for fraud. There's no potential for any kind of malfeasance at all.
00:05:17.020 Everything is going to go perfectly well. We have to have mail-in voting due to COVID. That's what the
00:05:22.520 left-wing outlets are going to tell you. But again, that is simply not true. It is not like a lot of
00:05:29.680 people are saying that it's like absentee voting and states already allow absentee voting, but it's
00:05:34.400 not like absentee voting at all. And here is why. For an absentee vote, a voter has to fill out a form
00:05:39.720 to apply for an absentee ballot using their identification and information. And then they receive
00:05:45.340 that ballot, whereas mail-in ballots are just sent to all registered voters. So that makes a really
00:05:51.220 significant difference because a person applying for an absentee ballot will ensure the address is
00:05:57.160 correct and up-to-date and is creating a paper trail that proves that they requested the ballot,
00:06:03.040 sending ballots to all registered voters, whether without an application means that you are probably
00:06:09.680 going to get ballots that are sent to the wrong people to old addresses. You might unfortunately
00:06:16.440 send ballots to people who have died. Plus, according to Pew Research, there were 29.6 million people who
00:06:23.360 voted by mail in 2016. That includes absentee ballots. If everyone votes by mail in 2020, that is
00:06:29.640 around 156 million people, according to a Democratic group named Catalyst. Scott Hodginson wrote for the
00:06:37.760 Wall Street Journal about his experience of moving from Washington to Texas and continuing to receive
00:06:43.220 Washington ballots even after he changed his residence to Texas. Of course, he chose not to
00:06:49.820 vote in the Washington elections that he would have been able to vote in because that, of course,
00:06:55.620 would be fraudulent. He writes this for the Wall Street Journal. Therein lies but one of a cavalcade of
00:07:01.760 problems with vote by mail. There's no way of knowing how many non-residents will receive ballots.
00:07:07.240 They're not legally allowed to cast. There is no way to confirm how many eligible voters don't receive
00:07:13.020 ballots, how many dead people receive multiple ballots, how many ballots actually make it through
00:07:18.400 the mail in time, and how many ballots aren't delivered to the place where they're to be counted.
00:07:23.720 Vote by mail may sound like a good idea, he writes, but it isn't. It can't be. It is subject to too many
00:07:29.600 vagaries, too many errors, too much malevolent temptation. The American Republic has done reasonably well
00:07:36.140 with voting at polling places and a radical revision of the voting process three months ahead of a
00:07:40.940 presidential election would be doomed to inaccuracy and, yes, fraud. In an article in The Atlantic
00:07:48.160 titled The Chaos in New York is a Warning, the subtitle is the first large-scale test of mail-in voting in
00:07:55.620 the pandemic has left one in five New Yorkers with their votes tossed out. This is from July 24th.
00:08:02.220 The article says this, more than a month after New York's June 23rd primary election, state election
00:08:09.280 officials are still counting votes. In some legislative districts, they haven't even started
00:08:14.280 counting absentee votes. Election officials in New York City have already invalidated upwards of 100,000
00:08:21.160 absentee ballots, about one of every five that were mailed in from the five boroughs.
00:08:26.460 In New York, the election infrastructure was overwhelmed by a massive increase in voters
00:08:32.000 requesting absentee ballots rather than risking voting in person. Ballot printing firms couldn't
00:08:37.800 keep up with the demand and the already rickety U.S. Postal Service didn't move the ballots to and from
00:08:43.940 voters quickly enough. New York is a solidly democratic state with a democratic governor and
00:08:48.520 all the officials who matter said they were committed to expanding voting by mail and other
00:08:53.960 options. And it was a disaster. Almost done. All of this in this article is important. So I want to
00:09:00.420 make sure that I read it all to you. Imagine what happens when the results matter more. Imagine it's
00:09:05.820 December 5th, a month after the national elections in the fall. Is President Donald Trump ahead or Joe
00:09:11.460 Biden? Who's ahead in closed house races, Senate races, local races for mayor or state legislature?
00:09:16.720 Are votes still coming in? Are they being contested? Who's making the decisions? Which courts are
00:09:22.440 getting involved? Recounts, if they're needed, would be in January, February. When is the presidential
00:09:28.400 election going to be called? When will every seat be filled for the next session of Congress?
00:09:33.600 So these are the relevant questions that this article in The Atlantic is asking, especially looking at a
00:09:40.320 place like New York that ended in a disaster for the people who voted by mail.
00:09:47.220 Here's another example of this not working mail in voting in New Jersey. This is reported by
00:09:52.180 CNN on June 25th. Quote, a city councilman and a councilman elect are among the four people charged
00:09:58.320 with voting fraud related to a New Jersey election. The investigation began after after the U.S.
00:10:04.940 Postal Inspection Service found hundreds of mail in ballots in a mailbox in Patterson. Numerous
00:10:10.560 additional ballots were found in another mailbox in nearby Halliden, according to a release from
00:10:17.220 the attorney general. The May 12th elections in New Jersey were conducted by mail-in ballots due to
00:10:22.720 the coronavirus pandemic. New Jersey allows a bearer to take ballots from several people and deliver them
00:10:31.040 to the county board of elections. A bearer can only collect and deliver ballots for only three people
00:10:35.920 and a candidate in the election is never permitted to be a bearer. Democratic Councilman Michael Jackson
00:10:42.740 is one of the people who was charged in this case of fraud. And the article says Jackson allegedly did
00:10:49.240 not identify himself as a bearer on the mail-in ballots that he delivered to the Passaic County
00:10:55.160 Board of Elections. And he allegedly had more than three ballots that were not his. So that's another
00:11:01.740 case happening in New Jersey and West Virginia. According to USA Today, a mail carrier pled guilty
00:11:07.160 to election fraud after altering ballot requests to Republican. We could go on and on. There is not
00:11:14.320 just obviously the potential for fraud as we have already seen proven in particular states. There's also
00:11:20.220 the fact that we are just not prepared. We don't have the infrastructure in place. According to NBC News,
00:11:25.820 the Postal Service says that the mail-in voting rules for 46 states don't match up with the
00:11:32.080 Postal Service's delivery standards of possible timeframes. The article says this, quote,
00:11:36.920 in recent weeks, Postal Service General Counsel Thomas Marshall penned letters warning that states
00:11:42.180 may be overestimating the speed with which ballots will move through the mail. If the post office is not
00:11:47.700 afforded a few extra days of leeway to deliver ballots to the election offices, Marshall warned that
00:11:53.400 late arriving ballots could leave some voters disenfranchised. So, no, I obviously don't
00:12:00.420 believe that we should be doing mail-in voting this election, which may be the most consequential
00:12:05.420 election in American history. And I understand we say that about every election and in some way it's
00:12:12.880 true maybe about every election, but I truly believe and I would say even Democrats would say that
00:12:18.000 America is at a crossroads. If we tried to force mail-in voting for all 150 million plus voters
00:12:26.140 without the infrastructure, without the systems in place, without the accountability that's needed to
00:12:31.140 maintain the integrity of our elections, it would be mass chaos. Mass chaos. Is that what we need right now?
00:12:38.120 More mass chaos? And knowing all of these things, Democrats know these things. The journalists who are
00:12:43.360 putting out articles saying there's no problem whatsoever with mail-in voting. There's no potential for fraud.
00:12:47.860 There's no potential for chaos, for miscounts, for the need for recounts. There's nothing wrong
00:12:52.980 with it at all. We have to do mail-in voting to protect people from coronavirus. The people that
00:12:59.320 are pushing so hard for this, the people that know the problems that could potentially come with it,
00:13:05.180 the same people, by the way, the same Democrats, the same liberals who fight tooth and nail against
00:13:10.920 voter ID laws, which simply say that you have to show a valid ID in order to vote to make sure that you
00:13:16.720 are a citizen. They fight hard against those. And so they are also the ones that are saying we don't
00:13:23.400 need to worry about the integrity of our elections when it comes to mail-in voting. I mean, these are
00:13:29.720 the same people also who have been talking about Russia interfering in our elections in 2016, and they
00:13:35.560 have talked about the importance of making sure that we don't have any interference in our elections,
00:13:40.320 but they're pushing against voter ID laws, and they're pushing against any proper system to make
00:13:45.800 sure that the 2020 election is legitimate and is orderly. The fact that they are pushing so hard for
00:13:52.800 this, knowing, knowing that we don't have the logistical know-how, that we don't, again, have the
00:13:58.920 accountability tells me that they want the chaos. They want the chaos that is inevitably going to ensue
00:14:06.440 because they believe that the chaos is going to benefit them. If they can go ahead now and push
00:14:12.720 for a process that will inevitably lead to confusion and recounts and mysteriously found boxes of
00:14:19.080 Democratic ballots, then they will be able to. I think they believe, and this is all, this is
00:14:24.160 conjecture. This is my personal analysis. I believe that a lot of the Democratic leadership believes that
00:14:30.140 they will be able to win that fight. If they cannot win the fight at the ballot box, I think that they think
00:14:35.320 that they will be able to win the fight afterward if they can put this cloud of confusion around
00:14:42.100 election day. They will say, if we don't do mail-in voting, this is a form of voter suppression and
00:14:48.180 disenfranchisement, and that the election results are therefore wrong or therefore illegitimate if Trump
00:14:57.420 wins. If Trump wins mail-in or not, Democrats know their base who are right now destroying the streets
00:15:05.040 of Portland and Seattle, which we'll get into in a second. They know that they will lose their minds.
00:15:12.100 And so I think that they are trying to leverage, they are trying to create as much chaos, as much
00:15:17.540 confusion, as much doubt and fear as possible, even before the election happens, to try to preemptively
00:15:25.260 say these results are going to be illegitimate. Leftism, remember, as an ideology. So this is not saying
00:15:32.760 that all people who identify as leftist or all people who are Democrats or all people who identify
00:15:39.240 as liberals, but leftism as an ideology, as a school of thought, if you could even call it that,
00:15:44.760 is fueled by chaos. It is fueled by division via identity politics. It divides people by their race,
00:15:51.820 their gender, their socioeconomic class, etc. It pits them against each other by fostering resentment
00:15:57.620 against those they claim are privileged from those they claim are oppressed. And so the reason a
00:16:02.820 single Democrat has not condemned the outright violent terrorism by Antifa and BLM in some of our
00:16:10.680 major cities, the reason why Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley says that there must continue to be,
00:16:17.160 quote, unrest in the streets on MSNBC is because the chaos helps them achieve their goals, which long
00:16:24.140 term is a complete remaking of the United States into a socialist, what they would call a utopia,
00:16:31.860 I would say is a dystopia. Now, I don't think, again, that everyone on the left consciously thinks
00:16:38.160 this or consciously wants this. I would say that most people on the left don't think that that is the
00:16:43.620 future the Democrats are painting. They don't see the leftist ideology in this way. So I don't think
00:16:49.940 that they consciously have these goals. But the far left has more and more power in the Democratic
00:16:56.520 Party to the point where no member of Congress will denounce its extremists that are killing people,
00:17:02.500 that are assaulting people. And again, we'll get into more of that in a second, because this radical
00:17:07.500 ideology is now driving their side. And as an ideology, leftism stops at nothing to gain power
00:17:14.660 and chaos helps them achieve that. If they can create anarchy, then they can create the case that
00:17:21.120 the government needs to swoop in and to be our savior and to crack down on dissent. Again, we are seeing
00:17:30.280 the creation and the exacerbation of this chaos through these conspiracy theories about Trump
00:17:39.340 and conservatives and Republicans being against mail-in voting. So they are gaslighting the rest
00:17:46.040 of the country into saying there are no problems with mail-in voting. The only reason you don't want
00:17:49.680 it is because you don't want certain people to vote. The reality is, is that mail-in voting has more
00:17:54.440 potential to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people than voting in person does. And then
00:18:00.660 there are all these wild conspiracy theories about the USPS that are going around that is being used
00:18:07.100 to fuel further the distrust in the election results and cause the ensuing chaos that we just talked
00:18:12.840 about. Here are the facts about the United States Postal Service. You've probably seen a lot of crazy
00:18:18.660 posts going around. Here are the facts about that. The USPS overall, most of us know this,
00:18:23.660 it's become this crazy partisan issue. But two weeks ago, everyone would have agreed
00:18:28.260 that the USPS overall is not great at its job. That doesn't mean there aren't wonderful people
00:18:33.800 who work at the USPS and wonderful people who do their jobs really well. Of course, of course there
00:18:40.580 are. But the fact is, they have been losing money for 13 years because people don't need mail services
00:18:47.600 much. We've got FedEx, we've got UPS. Those two companies have not been losing money. They've also made
00:18:53.160 terrible deals with the postal unions, which like all public public unions, as I've argued before,
00:18:58.300 should not exist. They have drained the USPS of money. And actually, Obama in 2014, his administration
00:19:05.380 actually took funding away, some funding away from the USPS. This has been a problem
00:19:10.780 that administrations have been trying to address for a long time. And the Democrats in Congress right now
00:19:17.760 want a USPS bailout to the tune of 25 billion taxpayer dollars in the coronavirus relief package. And Trump
00:19:26.980 has said in the past, no. And he blatantly said, you guys have been wanting mail and voting this whole
00:19:32.180 time for what, you know, he believes that he believes that it's for the purpose of voter fraud. And
00:19:39.140 he believes that it's for the purpose of stealing the election. And so he says, we're not going to do
00:19:45.580 that. I'm not going to give you what he would call election money. And the Postal Service doesn't
00:19:50.100 deserve a bailout. That's what I believe. They got themselves into the mess that they are currently in.
00:19:55.880 Now, should Trump have said, hey, I don't want to fund this because of the election? No, I don't think
00:20:00.180 that was the most politically savvy thing to say. I understand what he's saying. And it's not nearly as
00:20:06.260 nefarious as the left is saying that it is. But I don't think it was, you know, the smartest thing for
00:20:14.620 him to say in the midst of all of this. Here's another fact that dispels a lot of the myths that
00:20:20.420 are going around about this. The USPS does not rely on Congress for funding. It is almost entirely
00:20:26.180 self-funded. So Trump saying, hey, we shouldn't bail out the USPS with 25 billion taxpayer dollars is not
00:20:35.060 taking money away from the Postal Service that is rightfully theirs. Also, the USPS does not have to
00:20:41.240 be funded by Congress. That is not required. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7 of the Constitution
00:20:47.700 gives Congress the power or gives Congress, quote, the power to establish post offices and post roads.
00:20:53.880 So Congress can create and fund the Postal Service, but it does not have to. Democrats are claiming the
00:21:01.640 USPS is going to go under before November. And that is why Trump doesn't want to save it. But that's
00:21:08.000 not true. And it's June 2020 fiscal report. The USPS said it has, quote, sufficient liquidity to
00:21:14.040 continue operating through at least August 2021. So even if they don't get bailed out, they wouldn't
00:21:19.660 stop operating before the election. That's just not a possibility. That's not what's happening. But none
00:21:25.980 of that matters to people like Taylor Swift, to Jamie Lee Curtis, Rex Chapman. He's kind of a he used to be a
00:21:32.860 basketball player, but he's kind of just a Twitter figure. Now, they all have obviously many, many,
00:21:37.760 many millions of followers all together on Twitter. And they are all claiming that Trump is stealing
00:21:43.140 the election by literally stealing the blue USPS boxes. They've posted pictures and videos a lot of
00:21:50.100 Twitter users have of these boxes being picked up and hauled away and locks on boxes and influencers,
00:21:57.160 liberal, liberal figures on Twitter are saying that this is Trump trying to undermine mail-in voting so
00:22:06.820 he will win. They are saying that this is all part of a grand conspiracy to stop mail-in voting. Barack
00:22:12.120 Obama tweeted this. Everyone depends on the USPS, seniors for their social security, veterans for their
00:22:19.000 prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can't be collateral damage for an
00:22:23.520 administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing the virus. Well, the problem
00:22:28.940 is, Barack Obama, that social security stopped sending physical checks, stopped sending paper
00:22:35.840 checks in 2013 when you were president. So this is just a farce. Plus, Trump is not trying to undermine
00:22:43.600 the USPS and these pictures and these videos going around of the USPS allegedly taking these boxes and
00:22:51.380 putting them away so people can't vote. They're not real. In most of these cases, the boxes are being
00:22:56.920 replaced by new ones. And since 1985, hundreds of thousands of boxes have been taken off the streets
00:23:02.540 because, again, the USPS just isn't used in the way that it used to be. It's not used as much as it used
00:23:08.680 to be. And so every year, there are hundreds of boxes that are being taken down. We just haven't noticed
00:23:15.220 because it wasn't a partisan issue. And the locks that are on these USPS, those, you know, those blue
00:23:21.340 boxes, there are red locks on them sometimes. They're typically on there on Sundays. So people
00:23:26.800 don't go in and steal the mail and the packages that are in there. That is a huge problem in some
00:23:32.840 areas and places like Burbank, California, for example, where some of these pictures were taken.
00:23:37.540 People are saying this is Trump trying to steal the election. In August, they're putting locks on USPS
00:23:43.140 boxes to try to steal the election. It's just crazy. It's a conspiracy theory. These locks have
00:23:49.580 been on there for a long time. They are in a lot of places on there every Sunday. But again, people are
00:23:56.120 just now noticing because the Democrats are trying to make this a political issue. They're trying to
00:24:01.100 claim pretty much baselessly, except for Trump made a gaffe, which he shouldn't have made. But
00:24:06.200 they're claiming baselessly that Trump is trying to end the USPS before the election so we can't have
00:24:12.460 mail-in voting. That's not what's happening. That's not even possible. There's not even the
00:24:16.480 potential for that happening. And the changes that are being made to the USPS are being made for cost
00:24:22.120 efficiency reasons. And they've been being made for months, if not years. Because again, the USPS has
00:24:28.000 been losing money for 13 years. But Democrats, that doesn't stop them from peddling this wild
00:24:35.540 conspiracy theory to cause chaos, to cause distrust, to preemptively cast doubt on the election. The past
00:24:41.500 four years have unfortunately been these kinds of conspiracy theories, the Russia conspiracy theory
00:24:47.440 that died a gruesome death with the Mueller report, the kids in cages conspiracy theory that said Trump
00:24:52.580 built these cages to put children in, when in fact, the picture that was going around saying,
00:24:57.760 this is Trump's America. Those were pictures from 2014, aka when Obama was in office. The Obama
00:25:04.720 administration built the facilities that people are saying, no, this is kids in cages. Yeah,
00:25:10.000 the Obama administration built those cages. They built those facilities on the border.
00:25:16.140 The quid pro quo Ukraine conspiracy theory that led to a partisan impeachment, which no one even
00:25:21.400 talks about anymore. So there have been a lot of conspiracy theories that have been going around
00:25:26.540 in the Democrat world since Trump took office, because they still have not been able to accept the
00:25:32.500 results of the 2016 election. And they preemptively are showing that they are unwilling to accept the
00:25:38.500 results of the 2020 election if Trump wins. The only way to get Democrats to admit, say we do have
00:25:45.480 mail-in voting, which, like I said, would be absolutely crazy. Say we do have mail-in voting
00:25:50.340 and Trump wins. That will be the only way that you will get Democrats to admit at this point that mail-in
00:25:57.080 voting has problems. That will just allow them to say, oh, well, actually, actually, there has been
00:26:02.280 fraud. Actually, there has been miscounts. Actually, this did disenfranchise and leave out more voters
00:26:07.560 than would have happened if we had had in-person voting. So here's the thing. Here's what we just
00:26:18.020 have to realize is that in-person voting is safe. If you can go to the grocery store, unless you are a
00:26:24.980 very vulnerable, fragile person, like your health is in jeopardy in an extreme way, so you haven't been
00:26:33.820 outside since March, if you can go to the grocery store, if you can stand in line anywhere else, then
00:26:40.320 you can stand in line to vote. Dr. Fauci himself said there is no reason why someone cannot go in
00:26:48.740 person to vote. So if we want every vote possible to count Republican and Democrat, then we need to
00:26:55.740 do everything we can to make sure that we can vote in person. If you've got to vote absentee, do that.
00:27:01.440 I think in-person voting benefits Democrats just as much as it does Republicans. I don't think it
00:27:07.300 necessarily benefits anyone's side, but I think that there is a possibility of less chaos, of more
00:27:15.680 integrity and accountability in our elections in ensuring that people on both sides of the aisle,
00:27:21.240 that as many people on both sides of the aisle, get their vote counted as possible. I don't think
00:27:27.060 that in-person voting benefits Republicans anymore. I just think that it is the best way, especially
00:27:34.120 just a few months before the election, it is the best way to make sure that our process is
00:27:41.460 is as transparent and is as smooth as humanly possible. So this shouldn't even be a partisan
00:27:50.220 thing. And the fact that it is a partisan thing, the fact that Democrats are pushing for it, knowing,
00:27:56.020 knowing that this is fraught with potential problems, again, just makes you wonder if they are
00:28:02.020 vying for, if they are vying for the chaos that they know will ensue. So for you, don't be afraid.
00:28:09.140 Make sure that you vote. Unfortunately, I talked to someone who told me about a friend, someone that
00:28:14.420 they know who is an 18-year-old who is afraid to vote, not because of coronavirus, but because
00:28:20.920 they're scared that they're not going to be able to get a job if they vote Republican. That's the
00:28:27.980 United States of America right now. The people are afraid to vote Republican because they see the
00:28:32.460 bullying that goes on in the mainstream by Democrats, by liberals, by major corporations,
00:28:37.480 by a lot of the major institutions in this country, that if you do not fall in line ideologically and
00:28:42.860 politically, you are excluded from society. You are excluded from being able to get a job.
00:28:50.080 And they want to point to Trump as the autocrat? Like they want to point to Trump as the dictator and
00:28:56.020 as the tyrant, as the fascist? Is it not more fascist to say that you have to fall in line with
00:29:03.480 us on every single issue and vote exactly the way we want you to vote or else you are excluded from
00:29:09.960 everything in society that counts? I would say that that is much more totalitarian than anything
00:29:15.940 Trump has ever done. Now, I want to address this as a Christian. Must you vote? Is it imperative that
00:29:35.680 you vote? Is it a matter of obedience to God that you vote in our elections? I personally don't think
00:29:41.920 so. I probably would have said something different a few years ago, but I've heard a lot of good
00:29:46.760 biblical arguments from people I trust. I don't believe that there is a biblical mandate for you
00:29:52.800 to vote that says that you have to vote or else you are in sin. But here's what I'll say. Here's my
00:29:59.480 personal perspective. I am obviously, I never claimed to, but I am not speaking, you know, for the Holy
00:30:06.780 Spirit here. This is my opinion from what I have studied, what I see, and what I believe. So take it
00:30:14.500 as you will. Policies and politicians affect not just me, not just my family, not just the people I
00:30:22.560 know, and not just the future generations of my family, all of whom I care about very much, but
00:30:27.400 policies and the politicians that we put in place affect the most vulnerable among us, the poor,
00:30:34.320 the outcast, the downtrodden. So when I vote for a politician who promises to protect my First
00:30:41.300 Amendment rights to freedom of religion and freedom of speech, that protection doesn't just protect me
00:30:48.520 and my family. It extends most importantly to the person with the least popular opinions and the most
00:30:56.100 marginalized religious beliefs. When I vote for a politician who believes in the sanctity of unborn
00:31:01.680 life, it doesn't protect me as much as it protects the unborn, vulnerable, defenseless babies in the
00:31:08.420 womb in this country. When I vote for a politician who believes in cutting taxes, that benefits the
00:31:13.520 working class family who is trying to make ends meet, who has finally been able to make something
00:31:19.020 of themselves. When I vote for a politician who believes in strong border policy, that benefits the
00:31:25.180 children who are otherwise victims of the traffickers and the drug cartels that exploit lax border
00:31:30.540 policy. It benefits the immigrants who have sacrificed everything to become citizens legally.
00:31:36.860 When I vote for a politician who stands for law and order and impartial justice, I am voting for
00:31:42.420 the protection of the poor, that helpless men and women who are suffering at the hands of violent
00:31:47.280 criminals in the cities where derelict leaders have neutered the police. When I vote for a politician
00:31:51.900 who supports school choice, I am voting for opportunities for kids whose parents cannot afford to send them
00:31:57.900 to private school or to homeschool them. So who we vote for matters because the policies affect flesh
00:32:05.040 and blood human beings. They affect their lives. They affect their livelihoods. And I will always vote
00:32:10.620 for the platform that best protects faith, that best protects freedom, and best protects and promotes
00:32:16.140 the family. Because these are, inarguably, the bedrock of a strong society for every demographic,
00:32:22.820 especially, especially for the most vulnerable. And when I see that far leftism, self-described
00:32:29.200 anarcho-communists, have the Democratic Party by the horns, and I look throughout history at Mao's China,
00:32:35.680 at China Today, at Pol Pot's Cambodia, at the USSR, at Eastern Germany, at Venezuela, Cuba, and Zimbabwe,
00:32:41.960 and I see the effects of Marxism, of collectivism, of communism, of socialism. I see the effects that
00:32:49.040 these things have had on the least of these, while the elites have remained elite, while the most rich
00:32:54.700 have remained rich. And I cannot, I cannot let that happen to the vulnerable in this country,
00:33:01.020 if I can help it. I have to try my best doing what I can as just, you know, one individual finite
00:33:06.800 person to prevent America from experiencing the very poison that we fought so hard against in the 20th
00:33:13.560 century. Men and women have fought and died for the right and the privilege to vote. We have a say in
00:33:21.780 who represents us. That is something that millions and millions in the world have never known, and
00:33:26.740 will never know. So I believe that we should exercise that right while we still have the freedom
00:33:32.860 to do so. I don't know if we always will in America, but right now we do. We shouldn't take it for
00:33:38.000 granted. We should thank God that we live in a country where that is still possible, even understanding
00:33:42.980 as we will go into at the end of this episode, that no vote changes God's sovereign will and no
00:33:48.840 politician is our savior. We know that right now we are seeing the leftist ideology taken to its
00:33:57.500 logical conclusion in places like Portland, places like Seattle, San Francisco, LA, New York City,
00:34:03.140 and Austin. And we still have the opportunity to write our course. I believe that. In Portland and
00:34:09.760 Seattle, you are still seeing incredible violence, devastating violence. And I think it's so
00:34:15.740 important for us to not look away because this is happening. This is not happening in the Middle East.
00:34:20.480 This is not just happening in China. This is happening in America's major cities, some of the
00:34:25.380 most beautiful cities in the country. This violence is happening. So I'm going to play you
00:34:29.660 a few clips from what is happening right now in Portland, Oregon.
00:34:33.100 You didn't do nothing, bro. That's all.
00:34:44.920 I ain't trying to hurt no one down there. What do you mean you're not trying to hurt nobody?
00:34:56.080 So for those of you who aren't watching, who are just listening, this is a man who is driving
00:35:05.880 in his car with a woman in Portland who is trying apparently to get around these Black Lives Matter
00:35:11.080 and Antifa anarchists. They get in his way. It forces him to crash into a building. The woman gets
00:35:16.320 out. A BLM activist beat her to the ground. The guy gets out. He's not fighting. He's not in their
00:35:22.780 face or anything. They beat him, push him to the ground. Then while he's just sitting there on the
00:35:26.480 road, not doing anything with his head down, a BLM activist wearing a security vest. These are people
00:35:33.080 that BLM and Antifa have designated as their private security. These are the people that they would like
00:35:38.860 to replace the police. He comes up and he drop kicks him in the head, knocks this guy who was
00:35:46.260 sitting there completely defenseless, not doing anything, knocks this guy out cold. And then someone
00:35:51.760 else comes up and kicks him in the head. Last we heard, this guy is unconscious in the hospital.
00:35:58.300 And this man, the security person apparently for BLM has not been arrested yet. Apparently,
00:36:04.700 Portland PD is working on it. But Portland PD, because of the policies that are in place,
00:36:09.980 have been arresting a lot of these people and releasing them. But of course, this guy should
00:36:13.940 be arrested for attempted murder. I mean, this is absolutely terrifying. If you do not follow
00:36:19.780 Andy Ngo, his last name is spelled N-G-O on Twitter, I encourage you to do so. You can't
00:36:24.360 spend forever on his timeline because it really is just depressing. But it's so important for you
00:36:29.000 to see that this is the logical conclusion to leftism that is being played out right before our
00:36:35.160 eyes. Like what a gracious gift and a privilege that we get to see that for ourselves right now.
00:36:40.540 And not a single Democratic member of Congress will criticize Antifa or BLM for the violence and the
00:36:46.060 anarchy that they are causing. In fact, like I said earlier, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley
00:36:51.280 said that we should expect unrest in the streets. So as people are dying, as people are being assaulted,
00:36:59.240 as their businesses, as their lives, their livelihoods are being ruined. And no, it's not
00:37:04.700 just property. These are people's lives that we are talking about. As people's lives are being ruined,
00:37:10.220 some people's lives are being taken as people are being assaulted violently in these cities because
00:37:15.800 of these rioters, because of these anarchists. You've got Democratic Congress people, number one,
00:37:21.560 unwilling to call out these groups for terrorizing America's cities, but they're actually actively
00:37:26.660 encouraging it by saying, oh yeah, well, there needs to be unrest in the streets. It's been three
00:37:32.420 months of this. BLM and Antifa haven't stopped looting. They haven't stopped robbing. They haven't
00:37:37.000 stopped rioting. They haven't stopped killing. And some of you believed that it was for justice for
00:37:42.620 George Floyd. For a lot of these violent activists, it never was. Now again, we distinguish between the
00:37:49.420 peaceful protesters. We distinguish between the people who have genuinely been trying to have
00:37:54.560 sincere conversations about impartial justice in this country, who have sincerely been pushing for
00:37:59.760 good change in this country. We distinguish between them and these violent anarchists. I do believe
00:38:05.400 there is a distinction. Now they would probably say though, that their cause is the same, that their
00:38:12.100 aim is the same, and that should cause the peaceful people to take a step back and to re-examine what is
00:38:18.600 your definition of justice? And what are the real problems in this society? And what are the real
00:38:25.040 solutions? What are the real tactics? I want to play you a couple more clips of these BLM Antifa
00:38:34.020 activists and the demands that they are making. Your mother's umbilical cord should have wrapped
00:38:42.720 around your neck and choked you just the way you choked George Floyd, you filthy animal. Not only should
00:38:51.420 that umbilical cord should have wrapped around your neck, it should not have wrapped around your neck. What? It should've
00:38:58.020 wrapped around your neck two times, not six times, but seven times. Don't run now! Don't run now, racist white people!
00:39:06.720 I'm here! Oh yeah, we pull up! We pull the f*** out! And we're here! Come on over here, it's your Blue Lives Matter saying! Blue Lives ain't s***! And if people who go to support black people, f*** you go to Minnesota! F*** you go to Minnesota!
00:39:21.420 So this is a theme. These are not just one-offs. These activists at the so-called demonstrations have called for the abolition of the police,
00:39:31.200 for the abolition of the United States, the abolition of prisons, and it's easy to see why, because a lot of them are criminals.
00:39:37.440 And so they want to be able to commit crimes with impunity. This is the leftist ideology. This is the result of Marxism.
00:39:45.140 And Marxism isn't just a boogeyman. There are unfortunately a lot of people right now, a lot of Christian leaders, like Beth Moore has done this,
00:39:52.480 and I've heard some other pastors do this, and they preempt the criticism of Marxism by just saying,
00:39:59.980 oh, some people are going to call us Marxists, and they dismiss it without actually addressing it,
00:40:04.240 pretending like when we say Marxism, we don't actually mean anything by it, and we don't know what we're talking about.
00:40:08.820 The reality is, the people that are dismissing that criticism, they often don't know what Marxism is.
00:40:14.400 They don't take our concerns seriously, because they don't want to look into what Marxism is,
00:40:19.480 and figure out whether or not the ideology that they're pushing actually is Marxism,
00:40:24.960 which always leads to chaos, which always leads to violence. It always has throughout history.
00:40:29.680 I listed the regimes that have implemented forms of Marxism into their government and into their society.
00:40:36.980 It always leads to unrest. It always leads to more inequality. It always leads to more oppression.
00:40:43.280 It always leads to more injustice and unfairness and starvation and suffering.
00:40:49.480 That is simply what the ideology does. It divides. And so, by the way, the DNC, their theme is unifying America.
00:40:59.120 Well, there's no way for the ideology that is currently coming from the fringes of the Democratic Party
00:41:04.260 and becoming more and more mainstream, there is no way for that ideology to unite,
00:41:10.700 because that is not in its nature. That's not what it does.
00:41:13.900 What it does is create Portland and Seattle. And you also see this ideology taking root in places like New York City
00:41:22.400 and places like Chicago and places like Austin and San Francisco and L.A., where people are leaving in droves
00:41:29.960 because this ideology that says everyone is split up between the oppressed and the oppressor.
00:41:35.380 Therefore, there is no moral agency for people that we say are part of groups that are oppressed.
00:41:42.140 Therefore, we don't need police. We don't need law and order.
00:41:46.160 People need to be free to do what they want to do, and we just need to make sure that they are comfortable and provided for.
00:41:51.700 That is kind of the view, the messed up worldview that is driving a lot of these poor decisions,
00:41:57.720 like neutering the police, that are resulting in an uptick in crime.
00:42:03.300 Once again, as I've said, neutering the police, defunding the police, as they've done in places like Minneapolis
00:42:10.100 and New York City, taking away and L.A. and Austin, taking away a large portion of funding
00:42:17.340 and demonizing the police so that not only are a lot of police fired because of the defunding
00:42:24.460 or the shifting a certain fraction of funding away, but also there are police officers quitting
00:42:31.740 because they don't want to deal with this anymore.
00:42:34.020 They can't do their jobs anymore.
00:42:37.160 This results in disproportionate effects, negative effects on the most vulnerable,
00:42:44.460 on the poor women and children, on the elderly, on the disabled, that cannot leave these poor
00:42:50.920 communities that are now riddled with homelessness because it's incentivized by liberal policies,
00:42:56.680 who cannot leave the cities that are now riddled with crime, which is incentivized by liberal
00:43:02.080 policies.
00:43:02.680 And so they're stuck there.
00:43:04.020 They're stuck there in the danger.
00:43:05.660 They're stuck there in the misery.
00:43:08.260 This is the logical conclusion to leftism.
00:43:11.360 This is a worldview played out that we are getting to see firsthand in America's major
00:43:17.120 cities.
00:43:17.540 And it doesn't have to be this way.
00:43:19.940 It doesn't have to be this way.
00:43:21.420 We don't have to vote Democrat anymore.
00:43:23.600 I know you watch the DNC or you listen to Michelle Obama and they give compelling speeches.
00:43:29.000 Every celebrity that you know is voting for these people and talking about social justice
00:43:34.600 and talking about the importance of voting for Democrats and getting Trump out of office.
00:43:40.900 And I understand the GOP certainly isn't perfect.
00:43:43.580 Trump is very far from perfect.
00:43:45.980 And so I get it.
00:43:47.580 I get the distaste that you have for Republicans.
00:43:51.000 But consider the fact, consider the fact that everywhere where the leftist ideology that
00:43:57.380 is being pushed in your face, everywhere that it takes hold, lives get worse.
00:44:01.220 They get worse.
00:44:02.060 The only cities that are run by Democrats that are actually not in disarray right now are the
00:44:08.860 ones in which the leaders have decided to make more conservative decisions.
00:44:13.960 So you look at a place like Dallas or you look at a place like Detroit where the mayors,
00:44:20.520 the leaders of those cities have decided they are going to side with the police and the police
00:44:24.880 chiefs in those two places.
00:44:26.700 For example, there are other cities like this have said, you know what, we're not going
00:44:29.740 to deal with the unrest.
00:44:31.220 We're not going to deal with the looting and the rioting.
00:44:33.700 We're not going to deal with the crime.
00:44:35.600 We are going to continue to do our jobs.
00:44:37.540 We're going to continue to crack down on criminals and we are not going to allow our
00:44:41.740 city to devolve and to disarray.
00:44:44.580 And so it is very, it's possible for Democrats to lead well, but they have to make decisions
00:44:49.340 that conservatives are typically the ones that are in favor.
00:44:52.340 If they go with the leftist ideology that says, oh, police, they're just a form of oppression
00:44:58.040 and we shouldn't enforce the law because, you know, there's no moral agency for people
00:45:02.480 that we say are part of groups that are oppressed.
00:45:05.700 Then you see lawlessness, then you see chaos, and then you see despair, and then you see disarray
00:45:10.540 disproportionately for the people who are most vulnerable.
00:45:15.000 And remember, everything that leftists do is in the name of social justice, which sounds
00:45:19.700 really good, but what we see proven is what Thomas Sowell wrote about in his book, Quest
00:45:25.480 for Cosmic Justice, which I highly recommend.
00:45:28.000 And this is what he says, quote, in its pursuit of justice for a segment of society in disregard
00:45:33.360 of the consequences for society as a whole, what is called social justice might more accurately
00:45:39.040 be called antisocial justice, since what gets dismissed are precisely the costs to society.
00:45:45.840 We talk about this in my book, You're Not Enough, and That's Okay, Escaping the Toxic
00:45:49.400 Culture of Self-Love.
00:45:50.880 If you haven't read the book, that might surprise you, but I actually believe that the removal
00:45:55.100 of faith and belief in the God of Scripture places the God of self at the center.
00:46:02.340 And when we place the God of self at the center, then we decide that we are the arbiters of truth.
00:46:07.620 When we decide that we are the arbiters of truth, things like justice and morality, they become
00:46:12.680 subjective and anarchy and chaos ensue.
00:46:16.320 And that is an argument that I make in my book, that it's all connected.
00:46:21.600 Leftism does not build.
00:46:23.320 It is effective activism.
00:46:25.020 It is effective at getting people riled up.
00:46:27.420 It is not governance.
00:46:28.700 Because in the name of fighting oppression, it tears down the various structures and incentives
00:46:33.380 and institutions that society needs to function peacefully, like family, like the church, like
00:46:38.420 law enforcement.
00:46:39.200 So you have a choice in November between the ideology of social justice that sounds really
00:46:45.840 good, but always, always, when taken to its most extreme, which is what we're seeing playing
00:46:52.220 out right now, it always ends up more oppression, more violence, more injustice, and more inequality,
00:46:57.060 or law and order, building our economy back up, school choice, continuing to defund Planned
00:47:03.480 Parenthood, all the things the Trump administration has been promoting.
00:47:06.940 Planned Parenthood, by the way, as we talked about on Monday, the world's largest abortion
00:47:11.660 mill and aider and a better to rapist, scumbag boyfriends, and sex traffickers.
00:47:16.500 That is the institution, the organization that is propped up by the Democratic Party.
00:47:23.140 Trump and Republicans, like I've said, they are far from perfect.
00:47:26.680 In fact, I tend to think that most Republicans right now are very weak.
00:47:29.980 They're very spineless.
00:47:32.120 And if you can't bring yourself to vote for either of them, I do get it.
00:47:36.760 I understand that might be unpopular to say among other conservative commentators, but I
00:47:42.660 do.
00:47:42.980 I'm not here.
00:47:44.100 If that's you, if you're like, I can't vote for either party, I am not here doubting certainly
00:47:48.820 your salvation or your sincerity.
00:47:50.860 That is certainly not my place.
00:47:52.840 Um, and your righteousness obviously is not judged by that.
00:47:57.200 It's not judged by agreeing with me.
00:47:59.020 I am not the arbiter of these things.
00:48:02.120 Um, I pray that God gives all of us voters wisdom, um, that I pray every day that he would
00:48:08.460 give our leaders wisdom.
00:48:09.840 I pray for our Democratic leaders.
00:48:11.340 I pray for our Republican leaders.
00:48:13.320 I don't want Democrats to fail.
00:48:15.120 I, in fact, want to be wrong on my analysis that I am telling you.
00:48:19.360 I do.
00:48:19.940 I desperately want to be wrong.
00:48:21.580 Like some people want what's going on in Portland and Seattle to play out.
00:48:26.560 A lot of conservatives do so we can continue to get a look at the leftist ideology.
00:48:31.660 They almost want the Democrats to be radicalism, to make the choice more obvious.
00:48:36.340 I don't want that.
00:48:37.580 Like, I wish it were a more difficult choice.
00:48:40.160 Like, I wish that Democrats actually represented values that some values that I think are good
00:48:45.360 for the country.
00:48:46.940 I just don't see that at all.
00:48:49.480 I don't want them to be extreme.
00:48:50.960 I don't say, hey, you've got communists in the Democratic Party and mainstream Democrats
00:48:56.600 are refusing to condemn them.
00:48:57.920 I don't say that flippantly.
00:48:59.380 I don't want that to be true.
00:49:01.340 I want there to be, uh, I want there to be more commonality.
00:49:05.500 Like, I don't have a desire to demonize Democrats.
00:49:08.940 I don't have a desire to be partisan.
00:49:11.120 I really wish that I could stand in the middle and say there is moral equivalence here, but
00:49:16.900 they're simply not.
00:49:17.980 And again, that's not saying Republicans like the, the, uh, the political party, like they
00:49:24.440 are necessarily the beacon of morality.
00:49:27.300 But I'm talking about the two worldviews, the leftist secular worldview or the conservative,
00:49:33.660 uh, worldview.
00:49:34.680 There's simply, there's simply not enough overlap there for me to be able to stand in the middle
00:49:41.980 and to say, yeah, I can take good things from both sides.
00:49:45.420 I just know too much about where leftism leads.
00:49:48.660 And I know that it sounds good even to a lot of Christians, but I know what's underneath
00:49:53.800 it.
00:49:54.420 I know what's pushing it and I know where it takes us.
00:49:59.380 And I just cannot get on board with any of it.
00:50:03.500 And I wish I were exaggerating.
00:50:05.140 I really, really do.
00:50:06.900 Like, I wish that I could say, oh, this is just, you know, me fear mongering because I
00:50:10.800 really desire that you become a Republican.
00:50:13.380 I really don't care whether you become a Republican.
00:50:15.940 I really don't.
00:50:16.960 That's not the point of this podcast.
00:50:18.320 The point of this podcast is trying to show you worldviews as best as I can.
00:50:24.580 And I fail because I'm a flawed, finite person.
00:50:27.020 And there are blind spots that I have because I'm a flawed, finite person.
00:50:30.280 But my desire is to do my best as wisely, as precisely as, and as biblically as I possibly
00:50:36.520 can compare the two worldviews because that's what we're voting for in November.
00:50:41.420 It's a worldview.
00:50:42.640 It's a set of policies, not a person.
00:50:44.800 It's actually very short-sighted to just look at the person.
00:50:47.440 And as I said on Monday, as I said on Monday, both sides are pushing aside the flaws that
00:50:53.000 each candidate has in order to vote for a platform.
00:50:56.340 So the left is constantly saying that we're ignoring Trump's flaws in order to vote for
00:51:01.140 him.
00:51:01.460 Well, the left is doing the same thing with Joe Biden.
00:51:03.380 Like, you remember that he was accused of sexual assault by one of his staffers when
00:51:07.920 he was a senator.
00:51:09.120 He's been accused by several women of sexual harassment.
00:51:12.320 He has been accused and found to have said many racist things.
00:51:17.280 And so you're pushing those to the side.
00:51:18.960 You're voting for a platform.
00:51:20.240 I understand.
00:51:21.120 We're doing the same thing on the right.
00:51:22.520 So we just both need to understand that both sides are doing that, that we are voting for
00:51:26.440 a worldview.
00:51:27.120 And you have to decide, you have to critically think which worldview lines up best, not just
00:51:32.080 with biblical Christianity, but also with what is best for society as a whole.
00:51:38.200 And those two things overlap.
00:51:40.460 Those two things go together.
00:51:41.480 Now, just an end note here, and I know I say this a lot and very often I end with this,
00:51:47.580 but that's because I think it is so important.
00:51:50.200 We understand as Christians that no politician can save us.
00:51:54.840 No party is our hope.
00:51:56.020 No party is our savior.
00:51:57.260 The GOP has corrupt and spineless, terrible people in its ranks and Democrats do too.
00:52:02.760 Thankfully, we follow a perfect ruler, a righteous king, a just judge named Jesus who will one day
00:52:09.180 rule in perfect peace.
00:52:10.360 There will be no partisanship.
00:52:12.060 There will be no affiliation except to Jesus Christ.
00:52:14.600 There will be people in heaven that we disagreed with here on earth, and we will not care because
00:52:19.600 we will be too busy basking in the joy of worshiping Jesus face to face.
00:52:25.140 As Philippians 3.20 says,
00:52:27.280 But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:52:32.220 We are not Americans first or conservatives first or Republicans or Calvinists or anything
00:52:38.140 before we are Christians, our citizenship, our identity, our nationality, if you will,
00:52:44.380 is in heaven.
00:52:45.660 That is where we belong.
00:52:47.080 That is where we are headed.
00:52:48.580 That's where our hope is.
00:52:49.700 That's where our glory is.
00:52:51.000 That is where our victory is.
00:52:53.260 Psalm 37.1-2 says,
00:52:54.980 Fret not yourself because of evildoers.
00:52:57.380 Be not envious of wrongdoers, for they will soon fade like the grass and wither like the
00:53:03.940 green herb.
00:53:05.500 We trust that.
00:53:06.480 Again, I've said a million times, read Psalm 37 for comfort for your soul in God's promises.
00:53:13.560 We trust in the promises of Psalm 37.
00:53:16.140 We know them.
00:53:17.100 We remain confident in them.
00:53:18.400 So that means we remain joyful and we remain steady, even when chaos wages all around us.
00:53:24.980 Now, what can we do as we hope, as we are patient, as we are steadfast?
00:53:29.520 We can be obedient in the roles that are right before us.
00:53:32.560 So that means we can be good employees.
00:53:34.960 We can be hard workers.
00:53:36.140 We can be good spouses.
00:53:37.440 We can be good moms.
00:53:38.960 We can be good community members and church members.
00:53:42.460 We can continue to educate ourselves, be dogged in our pursuit of truth and true biblical
00:53:49.040 justice that is based not just on scripture, but also on fact, not narrative.
00:53:54.980 That means we never accept a headline, whether it's from a conservative outlet or a liberal
00:54:00.200 outlet.
00:54:01.100 We never even accept a statistic without looking more deeply into the story and thinking critically
00:54:06.880 about that.
00:54:07.660 I look at several stories before coming to a conclusion or even understanding what happened.
00:54:13.960 I personally believe that in addition to our pursuit of truth that is biblical truth, that
00:54:19.560 is also factual truth.
00:54:21.520 I personally believe that voting is a part of our responsibility.
00:54:26.580 It's a part of caring for those around us as well.
00:54:29.740 They're brilliant and good faith people who would disagree with that.
00:54:34.240 And I do respect that.
00:54:36.100 Um, but from what I, uh, can see and from what I know, I believe it is a responsibility and
00:54:44.020 a privilege and a right that we should exercise.
00:54:46.900 Um, let's pray about all of this.
00:54:49.220 Let's seek God and his wisdom.
00:54:51.340 Let's admit when we are wrong.
00:54:54.500 Um, let's ask God to help us see our hypocrisy, to see our blind spots.
00:55:00.040 And let's God, let's ask God to rid us of unnecessary partisanship.
00:55:04.960 Now that doesn't mean that you don't lean conservative or lean a particular way, but that
00:55:10.360 we are seeing things clearly and biblically and that we humbly accept when we don't see
00:55:14.860 something or when we are ignoring something or paying attention to something just because
00:55:19.280 it advances a particular narrative rather than because it's something that God actually
00:55:23.200 cares about.
00:55:23.840 That is something that I have to examine very consistently.
00:55:26.440 And I know that I fail, but by his grace, I hope to constantly get better at that.
00:55:31.320 And that is something I think we should all pray toward.
00:55:33.620 Okay.
00:55:34.700 Uh, that's all I have today.
00:55:36.120 I actually have a lot more to say, but I don't have, I don't have the time.
00:55:40.980 Well, let me just say one thing.
00:55:42.280 Let me just say one thing really fast.
00:55:44.580 So there are a lot of Christian teachers who would agree, you know, with everything that
00:55:49.320 I said at the end, who would take issue with other things that I said.
00:55:52.480 And these are the same Christian teachers who say that they're always going to speak
00:55:56.320 up when they see the marginalized treated unjustly, that are always going to speak up for the
00:56:00.440 voiceless, that are always going to speak up for the least of these.
00:56:02.980 But what they really mean is a particular, is a particular segment of society that it
00:56:09.160 is trendy to defend, that it happens to be mainstream right now to defend.
00:56:13.640 There are lots of instances of injustice of people of different skin colors, of people
00:56:19.120 of different socioeconomic classes, of people of, of, of different identities, um, that
00:56:25.880 are being treated unjustly that these same church leaders will not speak up about because
00:56:30.720 they will get backlash from the very same social justice activists that have been booing
00:56:35.440 them with praise for the past several months.
00:56:37.880 And so I would also encourage them in the same way that I am encouraging myself and that I
00:56:44.680 am praying that God would reveal my blind spots and where I am unnecessarily partisan and where
00:56:50.280 I am wrong.
00:56:51.800 I would encourage other church leaders to do the same thing.
00:56:56.320 Let us care about injustice everywhere where it really exists.
00:57:00.500 That doesn't mean that we have to care about all things at all times.
00:57:02.540 That doesn't mean that we can do everything all at once.
00:57:05.300 We're not omniscient, we're not omnipotent, but we have to make sure all of us, especially
00:57:10.700 Christian leaders and pastors and influencers, that you are, that your pursuit of justice and
00:57:16.680 your calling out of injustice is not partisan and that you are not just picking the stories
00:57:22.380 that you know is going to get you praise by social justice activists.
00:57:27.640 Um, if you continually find yourself on the side of the atheists and the agnostics and the
00:57:34.000 activists that don't believe in God, if you consistently find yourself caring only about
00:57:38.460 the stories that the people, you know, who don't know God care about, then you should
00:57:43.280 question whether or not the things that you are choosing to speak up about happen to be
00:57:48.900 biased.
00:57:49.740 And also, again, we all need to make sure that the stories that we're speaking up about, that
00:57:56.240 the, um, that the instances of injustice or perceived injustice, the trends that we talk
00:58:03.160 about, the history that we point to, uh, that they're actually based in fact, that they are
00:58:10.540 statistically true.
00:58:12.080 That is, uh, a responsibility of church leaders and all of this.
00:58:16.380 So anyway, in the same way that I encourage myself and pray for myself to see my own blind
00:58:21.640 spots, I really hope that other Christians on the other side of the aisle, on the other
00:58:25.640 side of these issues that they examine themselves to, that they allow themselves to actually look
00:58:30.920 into Marxism, to look into critical theory and to make sure that they're not falling into
00:58:34.860 that trap in the same way that I don't want to fall into the trap of idolizing a political
00:58:38.780 party or idolizing a certain worldview of America that doesn't align with the Bible.
00:58:43.260 So we just have to make sure that we are relentless in being biblical in our perspectives.
00:58:49.540 And I am preaching to myself the most in that, okay, that truly is all that I have.
00:58:54.660 And I will be back here on Friday with a wonderful conversation that I know will lift your spirits.
00:59:00.580 If you have not ordered my book, you're not enough in that's okay.
00:59:03.800 Escaping the toxic culture of self-love, make sure you go to AllieBethStuckey.com slash book.
00:59:08.520 You can see all the places where you can purchase it online.
00:59:10.720 It's available on Amazon.
00:59:12.620 Um, and if you have read it, I would love for you to leave me a five-star review on Amazon.
00:59:16.580 That would leave me, that would mean so much to me.
00:59:19.400 And if you love this podcast, please leave a five-star review as well.
00:59:23.720 I would greatly appreciate it.
00:59:24.900 Thank you guys so much.
00:59:26.260 See you on Friday.