Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 351 ｜ The Fall of Free Speech & the Rise of Tyranny

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone has had a great week so far.

00:00:15.000 Today we are finally going to get to the subject that I have said that we were going to talk about

00:00:19.820 since Monday, and that is big tech censorship. You guys have probably been hearing that

00:00:25.140 censorship is not that big of a deal. It's not a First Amendment issue. It's just private

00:00:30.060 companies doing what they want to do. I thought you conservatives, you know, you allowed freedom

00:00:35.320 when it comes to companies making their own choices. I thought y'all were fine with the free

00:00:39.780 market and all of that good stuff. Well, we're going to break down some of the misunderstandings

00:00:44.780 with a claim like that. We're going to talk about what happened as far as censorship goes and why

00:00:50.200 actually a culture of free speech is really important. I do want to ask you guys a favor.

00:00:57.820 If you love this podcast, if you could leave me a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever

00:01:03.820 you listen, you don't even have to say, you know, why you like the podcast if you don't have time to

00:01:09.120 do that. But that would really mean a lot to me. It really does help, especially with what we're

00:01:13.500 talking about today and with everything that's going on. It helps out the show a lot. Also,

00:01:19.040 if you can subscribe to Blaze TV. So they do have this really good deal going on because they

00:01:25.040 understand people are worried about censorship and their favorite shows and content getting kicked

00:01:29.700 off. So they're offering a $30 discount on annual subscriptions for a limited time. So you can go to

00:01:36.940 blazetv.com slash Allie or blazetv.com. You can subscribe year-long subscription, $30 discount,

00:01:45.080 which is a really big deal. I think you can probably use promo code Allie, but I don't even

00:01:49.500 know if that's necessary. They do have this discount going on for a limited time, blazetv.com. So if

00:01:55.560 you're worried, a lot of you have asked me, okay, are you going to be able to stay on Instagram? Are

00:01:59.520 you going to be able to, you know, am I going to still be able to listen to your podcast? Well,

00:02:04.140 there would have been one time when I would have said, oh, you don't need to worry about that.

00:02:07.760 Um, and hopefully we don't have to worry about that, but you just never know the idea or the,

00:02:13.220 the things that have gone on for the past week have kind of, uh, kind of made us, um,

00:02:19.660 realize that things can happen very quickly. So make sure you subscribe to blaze TV, $30 off.

00:02:25.920 It's a really good time to do that. If you love this podcast, leaving a five-star review would mean

00:02:31.600 a lot to me. Okay. Let's go ahead and get started. If you don't know what's been going on over the past

00:02:37.100 week, hopefully you've listened to the other episodes this week where we've talked about,

00:02:41.080 you know, the storm into the Capitol and all the craziness and all of the illegality,

00:02:46.180 the criminality that went on last week and kind of how we've been wrestling through that. There

00:02:51.200 has been a backlash, not just in the reaction of people, not just a political backlash, but there's

00:02:57.960 also been a big tech backlash. So after all of this happened, Trump's personal Twitter account

00:03:03.980 got suspended. Twitter deleted tweets written by Trump from the POTUS account. So the POTUS account

00:03:08.940 is used by every president. It, uh, so they didn't take down the POTUS account, but he can't access it

00:03:15.400 anymore. And all of the tweets that he did send from that official POTUS account, president of the

00:03:20.680 United States, if you didn't know, uh, were taken down Facebook permanently banned Trump. Uh, so Reddit,

00:03:28.260 Twitch, Shopify, Twitter, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, I don't know if it would be

00:03:33.660 hilarious if Snapchat didn't ban Donald Trump. And that was how he was communicating with the

00:03:40.080 American people and used all the filters and all that great stuff. That would have been

00:03:44.000 really 2021, but that's not what happened. He was also banned from TikTok. That would have also been

00:03:49.840 a hilarious way for the president to continue to communicate with the American people. If he was

00:03:55.760 like doing the dances and, and popping up and trying to send his messages through TikTok dances again,

00:04:00.960 unfortunately we do not, uh, we don't get to enjoy that. Banned from Apple, banned from discord,

00:04:07.480 Pinterest, Stripe, Amazon cloud hosting. Um, now you would think that everyone on the left is

00:04:12.580 applauding this. And a lot of people on the left are applauding this. Even, uh, the so-called champions

00:04:17.080 of free speech and the media class are applauding this saying that this is a great and wonderful thing.

00:04:21.780 Even some people on the right are saying this is a good thing. Now, uh, the ACLU actually came out

00:04:27.960 against banning Trump from Twitter, which is surprising because the ACLU has been on the liberal

00:04:35.320 side of most issues for the past, at least 30 years. Now, not every single issue. I'm not saying

00:04:42.060 they have been wrong in my opinion on everything, but they are a liberal organization who stands for

00:04:47.740 liberal values and who promote liberal causes, even at the expense of civil liberties, in my

00:04:53.860 opinion. But in this case, here's what they said. The civil rights organization, which often fights

00:04:59.480 against conservative, uh, this is actually the blaze reporting this, the civil rights organization,

00:05:04.260 uh, which often fights against conservative causes released a statement Friday expressing concern that

00:05:09.120 the movement to de-platform Trump could be a slippery slope with eventual unintended consequences,

00:05:13.860 especially for minority groups. ACLU senior legislative council, Kate Ruane said in a

00:05:19.880 statement for months, president Trump has been using social media platforms to see doubt about

00:05:24.040 the results of the election and to undermine the will of the voters. We understand the desire to

00:05:28.520 permanently suspend him now, but it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter

00:05:33.500 wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech

00:05:39.520 of billions, especially when political realities make those decisions easier. President Trump can

00:05:45.440 turn to his press team or Fox news to communicate with the public, but others like the many black,

00:05:50.680 brown and LGBTQ activists who have been censored by social media companies will not have that luxury.

00:05:56.740 It is our hope that these companies will apply their rules transparently to everyone. And that's really

00:06:01.900 all conservatives have been asking for. It's not that we don't think that Twitter should be able to

00:06:07.220 have enforceable rules or Facebook or or YouTube, but that they apply the rules evenly and that they don't

00:06:13.480 use political bias to make those rules, as we've talked about, or to enforce those rules. And as we've talked

00:06:20.200 about for the past week or so, there have been Democratic politicians, people on the left who have said

00:06:25.800 things equivalent to what Donald Trump has said that you could argue have incited violence. And that's where the

00:06:32.860 slippery slope comes in. That's what you worry about. That if we say that any political rhetoric that we

00:06:38.200 don't like, even the kind that may or may not rile people up is inciting violence and therefore can be

00:06:43.780 censored. You're looking at at least a culture of repression, even if the First Amendment is still

00:06:51.080 intact. If you have these what are truly corporate oligarchies making the rules for people and silencing

00:06:58.860 their voices based on political bias and politically tense situations, you could see how that power could

00:07:05.700 be wielded towards the other side, too. And that's what I want people on the left to realize. Do you

00:07:09.980 not see how this also could possibly, depending on where the power lies in a few years, could negatively

00:07:17.740 affect the voices that you think are important? Now, I have been a steady critic against Donald Trump's

00:07:23.760 rhetoric in some cases, especially his rhetoric on Twitter. And a lot of people disagree with me on this.

00:07:28.420 I think that if he would have showed more restraint, especially in his social media behavior,

00:07:35.060 that he could have won in a landslide. I think people wanted stability. People wanted normalcy.

00:07:40.540 People did want decency and decorum, especially with the craziness of the past year. A lot of good

00:07:45.980 policies by by Donald Trump. But I think that his lack of decorum, his lack of restraint, his bombastic

00:07:53.860 and dogmatic nature, especially on social media, really hurt him. So I have been a big critic of

00:07:59.220 Donald Trump's tweets. And I agree that some of his rhetoric has been very irresponsible. I think

00:08:03.880 some of the rhetoric at the Capitol was very irresponsible. But I think that we just have to

00:08:08.740 be fair in applying that standard to everyone and to not take the leap of saying, yes, this speech

00:08:14.580 definitely incited violence if it didn't explicitly do that, because then you're looking at the justified

00:08:20.500 censorship of all kinds of different voices on the right or the left. And then we don't have a

00:08:26.260 society of free speech anymore. Again, even if the First Amendment is technically intact. Even

00:08:32.120 Germany's Angela Merkel has spoken out against Twitter's ban on Trump. And she is not a fan of

00:08:38.340 Trump. I would say that she might not even be a fan of the United States. But she is actually coming

00:08:44.100 out and saying free speech is important. And this is a place where I wouldn't say free speech really

00:08:48.680 thrives. So Angela Merkel says German or this is what this is the the statement that her

00:08:55.660 spokesperson said the chancellor sees the complete closing down of the account of an elected president

00:09:01.760 as problematic. He said at a news conference in Berlin, rights like the freedom of speech

00:09:08.240 can be interfered with, but by law and within the framework defined by the legislature, not according

00:09:15.200 to a corporate decision. So I disagree with that, obviously. And that's what I'm talking about is

00:09:20.060 that Germany is not some is not some bulwark of free speech that we should be looking to. Like he

00:09:25.940 thinks that free speech should be limited and it should be limited by law. His real contention with

00:09:30.700 it is that a corporation did it. And I don't think that's right. But they are speaking out against it.

00:09:36.340 They do think that it's problematic because they at least can see and the ACL at least can see how

00:09:41.580 this could negatively affect them as well. And that's all I'm asking for. Just see what this

00:09:47.460 precedent sets for other people. And, you know, I hear people say, well, I'm never going to spread

00:09:51.240 fascist propaganda. I'm never going to incite violence. I'm always going to follow the rules.

00:09:55.220 So it's not going to affect me. That's very naive as extremely naive. Like, don't you see how the

00:10:00.140 standards are so subjective and it depends on the people who are in charge and if someone who disagrees

00:10:05.520 with you and might even find your leftist or progressive ideology dangerous as propaganda

00:10:12.300 that they could censor you, would you think that's fair? No, I don't think that you would.

00:10:16.720 So that's not all. They also these big tech companies, Google, Apple, Amazon band together

00:10:23.060 to take down Parler, which was a Twitter like company. And I'll get into that story and how

00:10:30.200 scary and problematic that is in just one second. All right, let's talk about Parler. So Google took

00:10:41.980 Parler off of its app store. Apple took Parler off of its app store. Amazon cut Parler off of its web

00:10:49.300 hosting service, forcing it to find a new host or to shut down. And right now it's not available.

00:10:55.340 And so what we hear so often is, oh, you don't like Twitter? Just go to a different platform or

00:11:00.720 you don't like this social media site and how they run their site. Well, you should just

00:11:04.460 build your own. Okay. Well, that's exactly what, that's exactly what Parler did. But now like a

00:11:10.080 cartel, these, these huge big tech companies, they come together and they basically say, sorry,

00:11:16.440 like you can't play on our court. You're going to have to build yourself another court. And oh,

00:11:20.940 by the way, that's going to be very difficult and expensive to do. And we understand that. And so

00:11:25.800 what they're saying, the reason why these companies say that they're taking them down is because of

00:11:30.640 course, they're spreading disinformation, they're spreading misinformation, they're spreading

00:11:35.740 dangerous rhetoric that is leading to violence and things like, and things like that. Parler is a

00:11:41.620 small company. And so even though they have rules against illegal conduct or illegal,

00:11:47.180 illegal content being spread on their platform, even though they have rules against incitement of

00:11:53.800 violence, they do not have the manpower yet to moderate all of this content. And so Apple is

00:12:00.600 saying, look, you got to moderate all this content. You got to take this content down on a regular basis

00:12:05.860 or else we're not going to host you on our Apple or on our app store. Google said the same thing.

00:12:11.820 Amazon basically said the same thing. And Parler even said, look, we've got a team of volunteers.

00:12:18.000 We'll do it. We'll figure it out. We can't afford to pay these people right now, but we'll get

00:12:22.780 volunteers to moderate. And they said, oh, no, sorry. We just don't think that's going to be

00:12:27.580 enough. So yeah, we're basically going to shut you down. See the hypocrisy in this, you might be

00:12:33.240 listening and say, well, you know, that's whatever Google and Amazon and Apple want to do. They're just

00:12:38.240 they're just a private company working in their best interest and the interest of the people and

00:12:42.420 public safety. No, no, no. That's hypocrisy. Because if they really cared about public safety,

00:12:48.760 like if they really cared about abiding by those rules and having regular and consistent moderation

00:12:55.120 of, you know, what's illegal content or dangerous content, then they would also be threatening Facebook

00:13:02.260 and Twitter in the same way. But they're not. There's loads of misinformation and disinformation

00:13:07.160 on Facebook. You think there aren't violent threats on Facebook. You think people haven't

00:13:11.100 been doxxed on Facebook. You think people aren't sharing criminal activity and pornography on

00:13:16.060 Facebook. Of course they are. Same goes with Twitter. All of that content can be found on

00:13:20.460 Twitter. All of that content can be found on YouTube and Instagram as well. And a lot of that

00:13:26.980 content is never moderated. It's reported, but it's never blocked. It's never taken down. And so the

00:13:32.920 real reason why these companies are coming after Parler is because they don't want the competition.

00:13:38.460 They don't want the competition. And that is when they start, they seem to be acting like some kind

00:13:42.920 of cartel or acting like some kind of monopoly against the little guy. So you can't simultaneously

00:13:48.300 say that, oh, this is fine. This is just the free market. Why don't you create some competition?

00:13:53.440 Oh, by the way, these big giants that you can't possibly win against because they have so much of

00:13:58.860 the market share. Google has 90% of the market share. They're going to come and they're going

00:14:03.420 to take down the competition. That's not the free market. The market is no longer free. And look,

00:14:08.660 I used to be, I used to be very recently a conservative who said, you know what? I might

00:14:15.040 not like the censorship that happens in these companies. I might not like a lot of things that

00:14:19.280 they do, but they are private companies. They can de-platform the people that they want to

00:14:23.620 de-platform, not realizing the very basic principle that a culture of free speech is also important,

00:14:30.820 not just the first amendment, because you can have the first amendment, which I do think is so

00:14:34.840 important. It's so important for the government not to stifle speech. It's so important for us to

00:14:38.960 have that protection. But if you don't have a culture of free speech, and if you have these

00:14:42.940 corporations that have so much unprecedented, that is such an overused buzzword right now, but it truly

00:14:48.760 is in history, unprecedented power. We have this corporate oligarchy who makes a lot of decisions

00:14:54.500 for our lives, who really influences how freely we can move. Like if you're talking about what

00:15:01.420 airlines allow you to do, how freely we can speak and share information, the things that we can

00:15:06.260 know and say, they're basically an oligarchy. And when they are making the rules that are actually

00:15:14.200 against the first amendment and do not promote a culture of free speech, when they are trying to

00:15:20.340 drown out competition in a way that is not fairly applied to, to other companies like Twitter and

00:15:29.200 Facebook, then you're no longer really living in a free society. A culture of free speech is just as

00:15:36.700 important as having legal free speech is having the first amendment because laws actually follow

00:15:43.060 culture. So if our culture starts to believe that all political opposition and all unpopular opinions

00:15:50.640 is inciting violence, even if it's not explicitly inciting violence, if you see all forms of dissent or

00:15:59.540 disagreement as dangerous misinformation, as harmful rhetoric that could lead to bad things, then you're

00:16:08.480 only going to allow for a very small minority of voices. And then you do have a culture of tyranny.

00:16:16.180 You do. So people are saying that this is not a free speech issue. Don't understand that it's a lot

00:16:21.180 more complex than just saying, well, the first amendment still exists. And so you don't, you don't even need

00:16:28.200 to make a constitutional argument. First of all, I am not taking constitutional lessons from people

00:16:34.220 who think that the first amendment doesn't matter when it comes to a Christian cake baker. Like these

00:16:40.820 are the same people who think that a Christian cake baker in Colorado should be forced to bake a cake

00:16:46.340 for a gay wedding or a florist should be forced to provide her services for a gay wedding. These are

00:16:51.200 the same people who believe that nuns should be forced to provide insurance for birth control,

00:16:56.640 no matter what the first amendment says. So I'm not going to be taking lessons on the constitution

00:17:00.620 from people who think that the second amendment only includes muskets. So spare me. Now, for those

00:17:06.600 of you who are conservatives, who actually care about the first amendment, and not just conservatives,

00:17:11.780 there are people on the other side who care about the first amendment. But if you're someone who truly

00:17:15.700 does care about free speech, if you truly do care about our first amendment rights, and you were all,

00:17:20.720 you're on the side that I was, that genuinely just believe this is not a first amendment issue. This is

00:17:24.680 not a free speech issue. This might be, you know, a corporate policy issue. This might be an unfairness

00:17:31.780 issue, but this has nothing to do with free speech. If you're on the side that I was, let me explain why

00:17:36.700 I think this is a little, it's just more complicated. I already explained the whole culture of free speech

00:17:42.340 thing, but there's also a legal part of this. This is not just private companies. These are not just

00:17:48.720 cultural issues. There's also a political and legal part of this, and it has to do with Section 230. So

00:17:56.440 Rachel Bovard, she's a policy expert out of DC. I've had her on the podcast before. Go back and listen

00:18:03.320 to the episode I did with her a few weeks ago. She talks a lot about big tech, and she talks a lot

00:18:08.640 about big corporations, and how much power they have, and how this does have political freedom

00:18:14.380 issue or implications on our lives. So she wrote in USA Today about Section 230, which kind of outlines

00:18:24.260 the rules for these internet platforms. Let me read you some quotes from her article. Quote,

00:18:32.220 internet platforms would receive a liability shield so they could voluntarily screen out harmful content

00:18:37.960 accessible to children, and in return, they would provide a forum for true diversity of political

00:18:42.360 discourse and myriad avenues for intellectual activity. So that is why Section 230 was originally

00:18:48.180 set up. So they could kind of function as both a platform and a publisher. So that means that they

00:18:55.020 could be a platform in the sense that people could share their opinions and that these platforms were

00:18:59.800 not liable for the content that was shared. So I would be able to post on some internet forum. I'd be

00:19:06.640 able to post on Yelp. I'd be able to post on Twitter, and Twitter would not be liable for something that I

00:19:11.280 said. They couldn't be sued for something that I said. But it also gave them the ability to be a publisher

00:19:16.520 in that they could have rules and take down the content that they wanted to take down. But the exchange

00:19:23.440 was supposed to be, okay, we're going to give you these protections in Section 230, but these companies

00:19:29.320 are supposed to provide a forum for, quote, true diversity of political discourse and myriad avenues for

00:19:35.240 intellectual activity. And that's where we are now. It is very questionable and arguable whether

00:19:40.740 or not these companies are holding up their end of the bargain. She goes on to say, but what was

00:19:46.560 originally understood to be a privilege granted for reasonable content moderation has become

00:19:51.120 judicially contorted, stretched into a bulletproof immunity that protects these companies from all manner

00:19:56.720 of misdeeds. Critically, in protecting these companies from costly damages and lawsuits, Section 230 has

00:20:02.860 also fueled the growth of the big tech platforms, which now engage in viewpoint discrimination at an

00:20:08.080 unprecedented scale and scope. International megacorporations determining what news information

00:20:14.180 and perspectives Americans are allowed to read here in Access. A handful of big tech companies are now

00:20:20.240 controlling the flow of most information in a free society, and they are doing so aided and abetted by

00:20:26.520 government policy. See, so it's not as simple as just these companies, private companies doing what they

00:20:31.260 want to do. That these are merely private companies exercising their First Amendment rights is a

00:20:37.040 reductive framing, which ignores that they do so in a manner that is privileged. They are immune to the

00:20:43.120 liabilities to which other First Amendment actors like newspapers are subject. And also that these content

00:20:48.600 moderation decisions occur at an extraordinary and unparalleled scale. When Google decides to suppress or

00:20:55.400 amplify content, it does so for 90% of the global marketplace, Rachel Bovard says. Twitter's choices

00:21:02.320 to cut off circulation of certain content, as they did when they banned circulation of a story critical

00:21:07.120 to the Biden family a month before the November election, do you remember that, very much shapes the

00:21:14.520 national news narrative. Facebook, by its own omission, has the power to swing elections, which is troubling as

00:21:20.340 some of the platform's fact checkers are partially bankrolled by a Chinese company. I think it is

00:21:26.540 ByteDance. The downstream impact these companies have on shaping independent thought, market access,

00:21:34.980 consumer behavior, election integrity, and speech are undeniable. In a very real way, these platforms are

00:21:40.740 transforming the nature of what it means to be free in a free society. That policymakers have a role here

00:21:47.520 is obvious. While private companies have the right to set the rules for their own platforms and online

00:21:52.200 communities, they do not have a right to do it with the privilege of Section 230 protections. And the more

00:21:57.380 these companies engage in behavior that ranges away from the original goal of ensuring a true diversity

00:22:02.580 of political discourse and toward gatekeeping independent thought in America, the more they prove

00:22:08.080 themselves undeserving of special government treatment. And so she makes a really good point about that,

00:22:14.180 is that there is a legal aspect to it. There is a part of this that also has to do with the law,

00:22:22.960 that really does have to do with the First Amendment. Now, I'm going to talk to you also about the other side

00:22:27.360 of this, about the benefits to Section 230. A lot of conservatives, Trump himself, Josh Hawley has talked

00:22:32.580 about repealing Section 230 and how important that is. Now, why there was really no meaningful legislation

00:22:37.880 when Republicans were in control is the perpetual question that conservatives and Republicans have

00:22:43.760 been asking our lawmakers for years and years and years. They use these big issues like defunding

00:22:50.680 Planned Parenthood and, you know, border security and all of this stuff to win elections and they get in

00:22:55.980 power and then it doesn't happen. And then the cycle just goes over and over again. But conservatives

00:23:01.620 talk about repealing Section 230. I think it's a little bit more complicated than that. And David French

00:23:07.280 makes a pretty good argument for keeping Section 230 that I'll read to you in just one second.

00:23:16.540 All right. So people say we should just repeal Section 230, but I don't, I really don't think

00:23:21.940 it's that simple. I have really tried to look at both sides of the argument here. And there are people

00:23:26.240 on the left and the right, by the way, who want to repeal Section 230 for different, for different

00:23:30.480 reasons. I think that the right wants it to be to where these companies basically can't discriminate

00:23:37.360 at all against, against content. That's, I would say, a crude way to describe what a lot of people

00:23:44.340 on the right would say that they want. The left wants them to be more like a publisher so that they

00:23:49.000 have more regulation. So the government can impose more of what they want these big tech companies

00:23:55.740 to do. And Section 230 could theoretically accomplish either one of those things. But David French,

00:24:03.700 he argues that Section 230 actually prevents censorship, like political censorship, by giving

00:24:09.560 social media companies the benefits of being both a platform and a publisher. So again, they're a

00:24:14.400 platform in the sense that they're not liable for what you say, but they're a publisher in the sense that

00:24:17.700 they can remove bad content like porn or threats or doxing. He argues in Time Magazine that if you take this

00:24:25.420 away, then the websites, then the websites, these sites become publishers, then they're liable for

00:24:31.840 everything that you put on their site, which means that they are going to go wild on censorship because

00:24:36.520 they're certainly not going to allow anything on their site that they cannot personally verify or

00:24:41.680 vouch for, which will actually give even more power to these big tech companies because they're the only

00:24:47.500 ones with their resources to moderate and filter out a lot of that content that they don't want to be

00:24:53.060 liable for. So a company like Parler couldn't exist if it had to become a publisher if it didn't have

00:25:00.560 230 protection. Now, of course, like the irony here is that the 230 protection is supposed to also protect

00:25:07.320 them from the rules that are being slapped on them by these companies like Amazon and Google and Apple.

00:25:15.220 I'll say if you don't follow our rules, if you don't moderate all this content, we're going to take you off.

00:25:19.080 Section 230 is actually supposed to protect companies like Parler by saying, you know,

00:25:24.480 you're not liable for all of the content that is on your site. So that, again, is where we have

00:25:32.760 these companies acting with more power than the government is kind of subverting the rules of

00:25:38.920 Section 230 by saying we're a private company and we can do what we want to do and applying those rules

00:25:44.180 arbitrarily. So my question is to someone out there who knows more about this than I do,

00:25:49.820 who has done more research, who is an expert in all of this, like what is the answer? Because

00:25:54.260 I don't think it can keep going how it's going. Like we can't have Twitter and Facebook who control so

00:26:00.420 much of our information and who really can sway elections, who do a terrible job of moderating the

00:26:05.460 content on their site to make sure that there's no doxing and no abuse and no threats and no illicit

00:26:12.620 content and also are, for example, stopping the circulation of a New York Post article about the

00:26:21.900 Biden family that is just as legitimate as any story that the New York Times has written about

00:26:26.580 Donald Trump. Like we can't keep going like that. There has to be some kind of harness. At the same

00:26:32.120 time, I see the importance of Section 230 that they have to be able to have enforceable rules

00:26:37.680 without being liable for everything that is on its website or else these competitors like Parler,

00:26:45.060 even though it doesn't exist right now, it wouldn't be able to exist because it wouldn't have

00:26:49.480 the protection that's needed to be able to not be, again, liable for the content that is on its site.

00:26:58.960 And so I think it's a complicated issue, but that's really my point. My point isn't that I have all the

00:27:05.300 answers. My point is that it's much more complex than saying, well, this has nothing to do with

00:27:10.200 the First Amendment. This has nothing to do with free speech. This has nothing to do with anything

00:27:14.520 like that. It's just private companies doing what they want to do. No, this does have, it has legal

00:27:19.020 implications, but more importantly and mainly right now at least, it also has cultural implications and

00:27:26.680 the law does follow culture. And if you do not have a culture of free speech, then it doesn't really

00:27:32.960 matter that much if you have the First Amendment. This is the analogy that I came up with the other

00:27:36.700 day. If you are, and I hate when people pick apart analogies and metaphors to say, so like,

00:27:42.560 are you calling me a child? Who are you calling a child in this situation? It's a metaphor.

00:27:48.020 So please take it as that. So if you are a little kid, if you've got a little kid who wants a cookie,

00:27:53.860 asks his mom, who is the government in our metaphor, that asks his mom if he can have a cookie.

00:28:00.140 The mom says, yes, you can have a cookie. But Big Brother, pun intended, comes along and says and

00:28:06.860 takes away the cookie jar and makes sure that he doesn't have access to cookies. Make sure he doesn't

00:28:11.080 have access to the oven so he can't make his own cookies. Make sure that he doesn't have access to

00:28:14.580 the ingredients or is able to go to the store for his own cookies. If Big Brother, who in our metaphor

00:28:20.840 are these big corporations, takes away the little brother's ability to get his own cookies,

00:28:29.040 it really doesn't matter if mom says yes. Technically, he is free to have a cookie. But is

00:28:34.100 he really free to have a cookie? No, he still lives in this repressive environment where Big Brother

00:28:39.080 comes along and makes sure that he can't have the cookie that he wants. So you can't just stand there

00:28:43.580 as a bystander to this family situation and say, well, yeah, that little kid is totally free to have

00:28:48.960 a cookie. Well, not really. Is he really free to have a cookie if Big Brother is making sure that he

00:28:54.000 can't have a cookie? And cookie in this case is free speech, saying the things that you want to

00:28:57.920 say. So it's a lot more complicated than what people are saying, that this is not a First Amendment

00:29:02.780 issue. And once again, do not take constitutional lessons from people who don't actually believe in

00:29:09.920 free speech and religious liberty, who want to limit it at every turn, and who do not value the

00:29:14.860 Second Amendment either. And you really see the Constitution as a hindrance to their progressive

00:29:18.300 values. They have no leg to stand on when it comes to schooling us on what the Constitution means

00:29:24.780 and its importance. Now, here's something that I think is interesting in all of this. So as these

00:29:30.740 companies are cracking down on the president, they're cracking down on, it seems like, conservative

00:29:37.060 voices in general, or at least we see that is on the horizon, if not right in front of us. We've got

00:29:45.000 Biden filling his White House staff with people who have worked in Facebook. So this is according

00:29:51.380 to the New York Post, or worked in Facebook and Twitter and all of these places. And by the way,

00:29:55.960 it's so funny because the left and Democrats always say, oh, we're against big corporate power. We're for

00:30:00.580 the little guy. They're very for big corporate power. And by the way, Republicans have also given tax

00:30:06.300 breaks to these companies at the expense of the working class. And so neither party is really innocent

00:30:12.560 in all of this. But Democrats have always said that they're not for a big business, that they're not

00:30:17.580 for these big corporations. But at every turn, they also give them breaks. And they also contribute

00:30:24.780 to the elitism and oligarchy that exists in corporate America. It's at the expense of the little

00:30:31.400 guy. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, you need to realize that most of the people in Washington

00:30:36.260 are not for you. They're not. And Democrats, I think, especially get won over by this social

00:30:44.220 justice rhetoric that Democrats use to win them over and to win elections, not realizing these

00:30:50.800 Democrats are not fighting for you. They're not. They're feeding into these big corporate power

00:30:57.420 structures that then turn around and control your life. And this is especially true for conservatives

00:31:03.300 because Republicans, by giving tax breaks to these big corporations, by giving immunity in some cases

00:31:08.980 to these corporations, along with a lot of the Democrats in Washington, are giving more power to

00:31:14.680 these corporations who not only control our lives, but also hate our values as conservatives.

00:31:20.600 And so, you know, I'm not a populist. I wouldn't consider myself a populist. But there's an argument

00:31:27.520 to be made for there's an argument to be made for not giving so much power and so many cuts and so many

00:31:37.400 shortcuts and so many breaks to these big corporations and using that political capital and using that

00:31:44.900 and using whatever power and funding you have to help the people who actually who help the people who

00:31:53.440 actually need it. Now, speaking of all of that, that I went on a tangent because I was talking about

00:32:02.500 how Democrats always say that they're for the little guy. They really are for big tech. They really are

00:32:07.500 for these major corporations and the people that Biden is putting in positions of power in the White

00:32:13.060 House reveal that. So we've got from The New York Post, Jessica Hertz. She'll serve as Biden's White

00:32:19.260 House staff secretary, vetting correspondent. She was a former Facebook lawyer. We've got Emily

00:32:24.000 Horn. She worked at Twitter from 2017 to 2018. She will broker the White House National Security

00:32:29.120 Council's communications with the media. Mark Schwartz, formerly worked at Amazon Web Services,

00:32:35.000 now helping vet appointments to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Dionne Scott,

00:32:41.100 Google Global Program Manager, is reviewing applicants to the Department of Homeland Security.

00:32:46.380 Zaid Zaid. Is that really this person's name? Facebook's strategic response aide is on the

00:32:54.100 Biden vetting team for State Department jobs. Christopher Upperman, Facebook Associate General

00:33:00.020 Counsel, is working on the Small Business Administration. Rachel Lieber, Facebook Director

00:33:04.980 of Strategic Responses, vetting spy agency staff Tom Sullivan. Amazon International Tax Director is

00:33:10.700 vetting State Department appointments. Cynthia Hogan led Apple's lobbying as Vice President for Public

00:33:16.240 for Public Policy and Government Affairs, previously helped with Biden's VP selection vetting. So Biden

00:33:23.780 loves big tech. Big tech embed in so many ways with the Chinese Communist Party. If D.C. is the swamp,

00:33:32.360 then Silicon Valley is the swamp number two. And these swamps colliding on the coast of our country are

00:33:39.380 going to envelop the rest of the country in their swampiness. That is what we will get from a Biden

00:33:45.240 presidency. We will see more corporate power. We will see more big tech power. And they will be

00:33:51.040 aided and abetted by now, the Democratic controlled company. And it's going to be at the expense of all

00:33:56.260 of us, Republican or Democrat. OK, it's not going to be, oh, this is going to help the little guy. This

00:34:02.460 is going to help the least of these. It's it's going to definitely wreck the working class. But this is

00:34:07.860 what it is. I mean, this is how it is now. We are run by a lot of elites who know how to win

00:34:12.060 elections and do not care about our lives and for conservatives completely run counter

00:34:17.600 to the things that we believe in and the things that we hold dear. Also, according to CNBC,

00:34:24.400 there's Austin Lynn, a former program manager at Facebook. He's on an agency review team for the

00:34:28.880 executive office of the president, Erskine Bowles. A former Facebook board member is advising the

00:34:34.940 transition team. Jeff Zients, a former Facebook board member, picked to become Biden's COVID-19

00:34:42.240 czar, which what a weird word to talk to, like associate with COVID-19. You know, it's just funny

00:34:50.320 that Biden on his transition team and his White House staff have all these people from Facebook,

00:34:56.060 from Google, from Amazon. These happen to be the companies that are silencing voices the most,

00:35:03.700 certainly deplatforming the president. So don't tell me this has nothing to do, that big tech has

00:35:08.880 nothing to do with the government. Yes, they're in bed with the government. They're also in some ways

00:35:14.540 catering to foreign regimes that hate us. Don't you understand that so many in Washington, D.C.,

00:35:20.400 I would say Republicans and Democrats, but especially on the Democratic side, truly hate you.

00:35:25.680 They hate you and they hate your way of life and they don't care about you. And the government

00:35:30.460 can't save you, left or right. That's what I want you to know. It's the title of John MacArthur's

00:35:35.420 book a long time ago. And even though I don't agree with everything in the book, like the

00:35:39.140 Revolutionary War was a sin and all of that, I still agree with the premise. The government can't

00:35:45.700 save you. It's not going to save you. It doesn't love you. It doesn't know you. It doesn't know your

00:35:49.960 name. It doesn't know your kid's name. It doesn't know your kid's favorite food. People who allow the

00:35:54.380 government to educate their children, to take care of their children. People who are convinced that the

00:35:58.700 government actually cares about poor people, that actually cares about the disenfranchised, they

00:36:03.660 don't. They don't. They don't. Okay. That's why it's up to you, church. It's up to you, Christian.

00:36:09.520 It's up to you, individual. It's up to you, mom, dad, employee. If you want to make change, if you want

00:36:15.480 to take care of people, do it yourself. Do it yourself. Do not trust a bureaucrat to take care of the

00:36:21.640 things that cannot be taken care of. There is a function of the government. I'm not a libertarian. Okay.

00:36:25.700 I am not some, I'm certainly not an anarchist. I think there is a role of the government. I think

00:36:31.280 the military is important. I think that we are to pay taxes. That's a biblical idea. I'm also not

00:36:37.440 a theocrat. There is no biblical precedent for imposing a theocracy on people who don't hold

00:36:44.040 to that belief. Certainly not in the New Testament. There is no biblical precedent for a theocracy.

00:36:48.900 Of course, I do believe that the government should be a moral institution looking to the Judeo-Christian

00:36:57.180 ethic of right and wrong and good and bad and lawmaking. And I know some people don't like

00:37:03.200 that, but there is a depiction of Moses at our state's capital for that reason. He's the first

00:37:07.980 human lawgiver that those are the values that America was founded upon. But I'm not for theocracy.

00:37:14.760 I'm not a libertarian. I'm not an anarchist. I do think there's an important role of the government

00:37:20.060 to protect us and to protect our freedoms. But don't put your hope there. My goodness. And especially

00:37:26.780 anyone who claims that they are going to do things for you to advance your life and to make your life

00:37:33.940 better. The best thing that the government can do for you is leave you the heck alone. Leave you

00:37:39.700 alone. Protect your freedoms. Protect your safety from enemies, foreign and domestic, and allow you

00:37:47.240 to pursue your happiness and your life and your liberty. That's what the government is good at.

00:37:55.400 And that is why its power is so important to be reined in. But we're going to see the government

00:37:59.920 grow. Its power grow exponentially over the next few years, right alongside the growth of the power of

00:38:07.240 big corporations and big tech. I also think that there is probably not a coincidence that Josh

00:38:14.940 Hawley and Ted Cruz are being attacked so viciously, not just for saying, hey, we're going to push back

00:38:23.100 against the electoral outcome of the election, but also because these have been the two guys that have

00:38:29.820 actually tried to push back against big tech. I don't think it's a coincidence that, for example,

00:38:34.380 people are talking about putting them on the no-fly list. You can disagree with what they were

00:38:38.420 going to do, like I do, by the way. I didn't think that what they were going to do was right

00:38:43.540 on January 6th. However, them being on the no-fly list and being told to resign because they were going

00:38:51.840 to peacefully and rhetorically lay out their case of election front, that's crazy. Again, you're setting

00:38:56.600 up such a slippery slope that I think it's so important for you to see how it could affect the other

00:39:02.560 side as well. Also, there is this whole, I mean, there's this whole virtue signaling aspect to all

00:39:08.240 of this, the Apple, Google, and Amazon pretending that they're virtuous for taking down Trump,

00:39:12.760 pretending that they're virtuous for shutting down Parler when they are catering to the CCP,

00:39:21.120 the most racist, xenophobic, oppressive, repressive regime that exists, colonizing Africa,

00:39:29.140 this regime, the CCP, colonizing Africa, colonizing South America, preying upon the poor and the

00:39:36.160 oppressed. And so these companies cater to them at every corner. They're pretending like they're

00:39:43.580 virtuous for shutting down speech here. Remember, Twitter still allows the dictators of Iran and

00:39:49.600 Saudi Arabia and the propagandists in China to have Twitter accounts and to spread their propaganda

00:39:54.740 freely. But they think they're virtuous for taking the account down of the president of the United

00:39:59.360 States. I mean, it's just crazy. It's the same thing that they do as they, you know, support social

00:40:05.380 justice here. They support Black Lives Matter here. And yet, just like the NF or the NBA, they turn

00:40:12.280 around and they also support the most racist and repressive and suppressive and oppressive regime

00:40:17.960 that exists, the CCP. It's all a big virtue signal. These are not virtuous companies. The motto of Google,

00:40:24.680 used to be, don't be evil. Apparently, they've dropped the first word of that motto. Frederick

00:40:34.640 Douglass says something that I think applies here. He says, liberty is meaningless where the right to

00:40:39.460 utter one's thought and opinions has ceased to exist. That of all rights is the dread of tyrants. Let me

00:40:45.820 read you that again from Frederick Douglass. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thought

00:40:52.040 and opinions has ceased to exist. That of all rights is the dread of tyrants. Frederick Douglass

00:40:59.660 is a must-read American. Last year, you probably remember Fourth of July, there were leftists like

00:41:05.760 Kaepernick who were putting out videos with Frederick Douglass' What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,

00:41:14.120 which, by the way, is a really good work that everyone should read. But the fact of the matter is,

00:41:18.860 is that most of the left doesn't align politically at all with Frederick Douglass, who said that the

00:41:23.800 Constitution is a glorious liberty document. That's a quote. He was very much in favor of the Republic.

00:41:30.020 He understood that the Constitution planted a seed of liberty that was meant to grow. It wasn't meant to be

00:41:35.860 perfect from the start. And so the fact that the founders didn't live up to their ideals by saying that

00:41:42.680 all men were created equal and doubted certain inalienable rights because they still owned and allowed

00:41:47.380 slaves in slavery. That doesn't mean that the Constitution is a moot document, that it's not a

00:41:52.820 good document. Frederick Douglass understood that. Leftists today don't understand that. So they quote

00:41:56.920 what to a slave is the Fourth of July. They forget his defense of free speech, his defense of the

00:42:03.040 Constitution. Thomas Sowell, another great American, says, in a sense, the political left's attempts to

00:42:08.820 silence ideas they cannot or will not debate are a confession of intellectual bankruptcy. And that's

00:42:15.060 absolutely true. You see a lot of people on social media say, you know, they're going after people's

00:42:20.900 sponsors. Any conservative commentator, they can say, oh, it's just the ones that spread conspiracy

00:42:25.220 theories or it's just the it's just the ones who support violence. No, no, no. You honestly think

00:42:31.120 they're going to be discerning and distinguished between just a regular conservative like me and the

00:42:35.160 people who spread conspiracy theories? No, of course they're not. So they're going after people's

00:42:39.420 sponsors. They're doxing people online and they're saying this is not cancel culture. This is just

00:42:43.740 holding people accountable. That really sounds like something a fascist would say. It really,

00:42:48.620 really does. And speaking of speaking of fascism, I just want to play you this clip from Portland. So

00:42:54.940 Antifa, which stands apparently for anti-fascist in the irony of all ironies, is outside of a bookstore

00:43:02.660 trying to get the bookstore named Powell's to take to stop distributing Andy Ngo's book called

00:43:12.000 Unmasked. So Andy Ngo is a reporter. He reports on Antifa uprising and riots, Black Lives Matter

00:43:18.400 riots throughout the country. He posts footage from those things and he writes about them and talks

00:43:23.380 about them. And he wrote a book called Unmasked. And they're really mad that this bookstore in

00:43:28.880 Portland is distributing it. And so here's Antifa telling them to stop distributing Andy Ngo's book.

00:43:36.420 Stop selling Andy Ngo's book. So if you're on the side, if you're on the side of silencing your

00:43:58.320 opponents, if you're on the side of basically burning books, taking books out. And by the way,

00:44:03.940 this bookstore said, okay, we'll take it off our shelves. We're still going to keep it online,

00:44:08.600 but we'll take it off our shelves. Cowards. Like what I want corporations, businesses to just stop

00:44:15.220 doing is kowtowing to people who have no real power. They have no real power. Corporations,

00:44:21.920 churches, organizations start saying, no, no, no. Stop giving into the toddler temper tantrums.

00:44:29.760 You know what happens if you always give in to your toddler? If you do everything that your toddler

00:44:34.640 wants you to do and you kowtow to every single temper tantrum, they grow up to be brats and they

00:44:39.820 grow up to be really powerful brats. And then they rule over you. Is that really what you want

00:44:46.120 with these grown toddlers? Start to say, no, this is ridiculous. You do not have to agree with the book

00:44:52.560 to distribute it. You don't have to like its content. You don't have to like the author. You don't have to

00:44:57.000 agree with everything the author has said, but in a society that actually values diversity of thought,

00:45:02.320 which leftists, true leftists do not, by the way. It's what James and I talked about yesterday,

00:45:07.220 this idea of repressive tolerance and trying to hold back what they see as intolerant in the name

00:45:14.080 of tolerance. It's just this very, it's this form of cognitive dissonance that they have justified in

00:45:21.240 themselves. If you are on the side of banning books, if you are on the side of silencing voices

00:45:28.620 that you don't like, if you are on the side of calling everything that you disagree with harmful

00:45:35.140 or inciting violence or something that should be taken down, you are the fascist. You are the fascist.

00:45:42.800 And a lot of leftists, again, they say that they're for the little guy. They're against these

00:45:47.380 big corporations. They're against Amazon. That's not true because they're really for all of these

00:45:53.240 companies, these big companies, when they virtue signal, when they say their social justice lines

00:45:59.040 and when they silence the voices that these leftists don't like. Benito Mussolini, the famous

00:46:07.500 fascist, said this. Fascism should more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state

00:46:14.620 and corporate power. It's so funny that leftists think that it's actually conservatives who want

00:46:20.100 this. When if you look at Biden's cabinet, I'm not even calling Biden a fascist, but if you look at

00:46:25.020 the people that Biden are putting in place and you look at which side these corporations are on

00:46:30.620 and who they're coming down upon, and you realize as a leftist, you are also on the side of these

00:46:36.460 corporations and you're on the side of banning books and censoring voices that you don't like,

00:46:40.700 maybe you should look in the mirror and realize that you are the fascist. Not everything that you

00:46:47.900 don't like is hate speech, and by the way, the First Amendment does cover what you consider hate

00:46:53.640 speech, what I would consider hate speech too. Guess what? I, as a conservative Christian,

00:46:59.040 think you, as some far-left progressive, I think that your ideology is dangerous. Like, I think it's

00:47:05.040 really harmful. I think some things that you say could be labeled as hate speech. I think a lot of what you

00:47:10.120 say is misinformation and is complete propaganda is totally untrue. I think most things that

00:47:16.840 critical race theories say are conspiracy theories, basically. They're not reality when it comes to

00:47:22.040 history, and I do think that that kind of stuff can gin up violence. And guess what? I don't want

00:47:26.860 to silence you. I don't want you to be deplatformed. I don't want you to be taken off Twitter. I don't

00:47:31.480 want you to be cracked down upon. I don't want you to not feel like you can't protest peacefully or that

00:47:38.000 you can't speak out about what you believe in. I don't want to silence you. I don't want you to go

00:47:43.540 off into obscurity. I want you to feel like you are totally free to write the books you want to

00:47:47.280 write, to believe the things that you want to believe, to worship or not worship, how you want

00:47:50.940 to worship or not worship, to say the things that you want to say. But I understand the feeling is not

00:47:55.020 mutual. You don't feel that way about me because you think, well, you're really harmful. And so it's so

00:48:00.780 funny how you become this moral absolutist, and you become this person who believes in absolute and

00:48:05.880 dogmatic and autocratic truth, even though you believe that you're on the side of tolerance.

00:48:09.900 Again, you might be the fascist. Now, I want to end with some encouragement, as I like to do,

00:48:19.500 because I know that you listen to this and you get worked up because there's a lot going on and it

00:48:25.620 worries you. And there's reason for concern. I'm not going to pretend like there's not. I'm not going

00:48:29.900 to pretend like there's nothing scary going on and we don't have a reason to be worried. I am worried

00:48:35.120 about conservative and Christian voices being drowned out. I am very worried about that, even

00:48:39.780 though I know God doesn't need the First Amendment to advance his kingdom and advance his gospel,

00:48:43.700 that he doesn't need American freedom for those things. These are also gifts of grace that I think

00:48:47.940 that we should steward well and that we should fight for. And we should realize that people of all

00:48:51.860 faiths and all backgrounds, all socioeconomic classes, have found refuge in these unique,

00:48:57.700 exceptional American freedoms that are recognized in the Constitution and given to us,

00:49:04.440 we believe, by God. And so I do want to leave you with just a bit of encouragement. So I talked

00:49:13.560 about yesterday in my interview with James Lindsay, definitely go listen to that if you have not.

00:49:19.520 It's relevant no matter, you know, it's not strictly news. We're analyzing things that are going on. So

00:49:25.060 even if, you know, you already know what happened in the news yesterday, it's still a relevant interview

00:49:30.600 to listen to. And I talked about, I paraphrased something that I read in C.S. Lewis's Abolition

00:49:35.880 of Man. And that's really what I want to end on. And I want to end with this question is,

00:49:41.760 are we creating an environment for the society that we want to exist? Are we creating a society

00:49:48.820 for the virtues that we want to exist? And so there's a lot of people who say that we want

00:49:54.180 tolerance, that we want love, that we want unity, that we want healing, that we want within the church

00:50:00.460 racial reconciliation. There's a lot of evangelicals that use that terminology. We want progress. We want

00:50:07.740 things to get better. We want people to, you know, be enlightened and love each other and all of these

00:50:13.500 things. Are we actually, are we providing young people, are we providing each other with the tools

00:50:20.180 to make those things happen? Are we really doing that? Or are we just repressing the voices that

00:50:26.760 we don't like? Are we actually creating a very intolerant society? And that's, that's what I

00:50:31.860 argue is that racial reconciliation will never be accomplished through critical race theory because

00:50:36.520 critical race theory as an ideology admittedly divides, it splits people up. We are never going

00:50:43.000 to become a tolerant, more loving and accepting society through repressive, what is called repressive

00:50:49.200 tolerance, what we talked about yesterday. We're never going to become a more forgiving and gracious

00:50:54.360 society through doxing and cancellation, what you're using in very dystopian terms, accountability.

00:51:00.980 Like that is not going, you're not going to punish people into being more loving. You're not going to

00:51:06.280 chastise people and wag your finger in the face of people and make them your version of accepting or

00:51:13.780 tolerant. It's just not going to happen. The only way those things are going to happen is if we create an

00:51:18.460 environment where people are free to debate and to discuss ideas, where people are not afraid to be

00:51:24.400 honest, where people are not afraid to say what they believe and for us to go into the public square

00:51:28.980 and for us to figure out which idea is actually better. And we have to be able to detach disagreement

00:51:35.940 from hate in order to do that. That is the only way that we can make us make a society that actually

00:51:42.120 achieves these virtues that we all say that we want. Love, intolerance, and some kind of

00:51:47.800 togetherness. And we're going to have to have those debates so that we can have a foundation

00:51:54.000 that we actually agree upon. We're not, we're never going to agree on everything as Americans,

00:51:58.800 but can we have some foundational things that we agree on? I'm afraid that we don't. And I don't,

00:52:04.480 I honestly don't know how or when we're going to get there because I don't, it's hard to see a way

00:52:10.520 forward with people who don't believe in the same definition of truth that I do, who don't believe

00:52:15.300 that America is a good country at all, who don't believe that the constitution is a worthy document,

00:52:19.580 who don't actually believe in free speech or freedom of religion, who don't actually believe

00:52:23.760 that I should be able to have the freedom to say what I want to say, who don't believe that a man

00:52:28.740 is a man and a woman is a woman, that the family actually matters at all, or that parental rights

00:52:33.380 are even a legitimate thing, who don't believe in the freedom to homeschool or private school your

00:52:37.800 children. I mean, there are people on the left who are against everything I believe in foundationally,

00:52:44.380 not just these policy issues. Like we can disagree on immigration policy and welfare policy,

00:52:49.780 but unless we have these basic truths that we can all come together on, then I, it's hard for me to

00:52:56.180 see how we can achieve the virtues that we say that we want to virtue or the, the, the virtues that we

00:53:01.320 say that we want to preserve and have. Um, and so I think that the only path to that is through debate

00:53:07.100 is through discourse. But if we have one side who actually thinks the discourse and debate is

00:53:11.200 dangerous and that you should just oppress opposing voices, we're never going to get there. And you're

00:53:15.700 not going to create an environment, a society of love and tolerance by being hateful and intolerant.

00:53:21.980 Like you're just, you're just not going to, it's not going to be accomplished. And so let me read you.

00:53:27.120 I mean, C.S. Lewis felt that he had this same problem, um, in his era, in his country, in a

00:53:33.500 different way. And here's what, here's how he describes this issue. Uh, we continue to clamor

00:53:39.520 for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming

00:53:45.140 across the statement that what our civilization needs is more drive or dynamism or self-sacrifice or

00:53:52.560 creativity. In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function.

00:53:58.400 We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh and honor and are

00:54:04.540 shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful. And it seems like

00:54:11.160 that's what we're doing today. We are supplying tools to our kids of hatefulness and inability to

00:54:19.140 disagree intellectually, inability to tolerate opposing views, inability to actually have some

00:54:25.440 kind of thoughtful discussion, inability to be able to critically think about things. And then we

00:54:31.860 are saying, Oh, be independent thinkers that love people that can reconcile and unite and heal. It's

00:54:38.780 just, it's not going to happen. And so what does this look like in our own lives? What does this look

00:54:44.020 like as Christians to create the society that upholds the virtues that we actually want? Well, one, it is

00:54:51.100 living out those virtues for ourselves. And of course, I don't believe that tolerance means compromising

00:54:57.300 on the truth. I think that you can tolerate people who have other views, while still standing up for

00:55:02.580 what you for what you believe in. And I do think that that is the responsibility that we have right now

00:55:08.900 that in our private and public life, that we once again, as I've said so many times that we live not

00:55:14.540 by lies, it means refusing to tell lies, it means refusing to accept lies, and to believe lies

00:55:20.660 ourselves. It means refusing as far as we can to not allow lies to flourish. And so that means if you've

00:55:27.360 got a child that is in school, and they are being shoved critical race theory nonsense about how America is

00:55:34.520 this awful and oppressive place without condition, that you know, isn't true, they're learning virtues,

00:55:40.640 they're learning about biology, that in a way that is not true, it's time for you to stand up to the

00:55:45.660 school board, or to the teacher in a kind way. If you know that your pastor is preaching something

00:55:49.940 that is not in accordance with scripture, whether it comes to justice or any other issue, then it is

00:55:56.780 your responsibility along with your spouse, if you're married to set up a meeting and have that

00:56:00.780 conversation that is based on scripture, if you see some kind of training going on in your work

00:56:05.820 that you know is actually going to just create more implicit bias and division and hate, it is your

00:56:12.400 responsibility to be equipped to have the conversation of why this particular kind of training is actually

00:56:17.580 going to be counterproductive rather than productive. If you are sitting in your class and

00:56:21.460 your professor is teaching something about history that you know isn't true, or morality or virtue that

00:56:26.460 you know isn't true, that it is your responsibility to raise your hand or to set up a meeting and to

00:56:32.840 say something. These things are vital at this point. I don't think we have time to be quiet anymore. We have

00:56:40.000 to fight for the virtues that we actually want society to exist. That is not going to happen unless you

00:56:45.820 speak up and you are willing to represent your views in a way that is thoughtful and intelligent. And I have a list of

00:56:52.100 resources on my website, allibethstucky.com slash blog slash recommended dash resources. You can, it's a

00:57:00.960 highlight bubble on my Instagram too. I think reading all those books that I have on those lists will, on that

00:57:06.000 list will be very helpful to you. Okay. I hope that was helpful. We will be back here tomorrow. Happy Wednesday.

00:57:12.640 day.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - January 13, 2021

Ep 351 ｜ The Fall of Free Speech & the Rise of Tyranny

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