Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 03, 2021


Ep 363 ｜ Truth： The Dread of ＂Reality Czars＂


Episode Stats

Length

50 minutes

Words per Minute

175.41092

Word Count

8,783

Sentence Count

402

Misogynist Sentences

17

Hate Speech Sentences

19


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Wednesday. Hope everyone's having a wonderful week. Today
00:00:14.660 we are going to talk about truth, absolute truth, the reality of truth, natural truth,
00:00:21.660 supernatural truth in relation to this New York Times article that I read just the other
00:00:28.580 day by Kevin Ruse about the appointment of reality czar. Those are the words used in Biden's
00:00:37.180 administration. And we'll look at a couple ways that I think this has applied practically. If we
00:00:43.400 have time, we'll go into this House resolution by Sheila Jackson Lee that has to do with the Second
00:00:50.920 Amendment and gun ownership. And then I also want to talk about, if we have time again, a story about
00:00:59.580 a woman named Arielle Robinson. She was a Food Network star. She was recently charged with
00:01:04.600 murdering her adopted daughter and why we're not really hearing about this story across mainstream
00:01:10.440 outlets, even though it's a unique story and of course, a devastating story. And this all kind of
00:01:16.400 centers on this idea of what is true and what is not and who gets to say what's true and who doesn't.
00:01:22.920 So let's first start with this New York Times article by Kevin Ruse. It's titled this,
00:01:28.720 How the Biden administration can help solve our reality crisis. Quote, several experts I spoke with
00:01:35.380 recommended that the Biden administration put together a cross-agency task force to tackle
00:01:40.180 disinformation and domestic extremism, which would be led by something like a, quote, reality czar.
00:01:46.980 It sounds a little dystopian. Al Grant. Well, he's right about that good analysis, Kevin. But let's
00:01:52.900 hear them out. Right now, these experts said the federal government's response to disinformation and
00:01:58.480 domestic extremism is haphazard and spread across multiple agencies. And there's a lot of unnecessary
00:02:05.120 overlap. So I am never going to be opposed to cutting down on bureaucracy and making sure that
00:02:13.660 there's not any overlap between agencies and making sure that we're running as tightly and
00:02:19.320 efficiently as possible in the federal government. I have a feeling that's probably not what he's
00:02:24.460 talking about, since that seems to not be Democrats or, quite frankly, Republicans' first
00:02:29.300 priority when they get into office. But I do have a problem with this idea of a reality czar.
00:02:36.660 A political appointment by the Biden administration, I guess, to be the arbiter of what is true and what
00:02:42.420 is not, to try to gatekeep the information that we are allowed to see, that we are allowed to read,
00:02:47.840 and, of course, that we are allowed to say. There's this pesky thing called the First Amendment that
00:02:52.420 could possibly make this complicated. But as we've talked about before, a limiting speech and
00:02:58.240 limiting our rights to say what we want to say, to speak our opinions freely, is not just a matter of
00:03:06.200 the First Amendment and what the federal government can or can't do. It's also a matter of how much
00:03:10.920 power corporations have and how much power certain political appointees, like our realities, are willing
00:03:17.280 to try to get away with before something, before some kind of measure is taken to the courts and
00:03:24.380 challenged. So certainly, our free speech can absolutely be limited by big tech. It can absolutely
00:03:30.860 be limited by major corporations. It can be even limited in some ways by the general population.
00:03:39.400 If you do not feel safe saying what you believe, stating a perfectly reasonable opinion, like, hey,
00:03:45.540 I don't believe that we should be able to legally kill babies in the womb. If you honestly feel like
00:03:50.540 it's not safe for you to say that without the cancel mob coming after you, then you're not really free.
00:03:56.520 You might be technically free because, yes, we have a First Amendment, but that doesn't mean
00:04:00.980 that we are not living with certain effects of totalitarianism that make you feel scared
00:04:05.880 to speak up about the things that you believe. So talking about taking that kind of totalitarianism
00:04:12.660 into the federal government via realities, realities are, is something that people on both sides of the
00:04:18.860 aisle should have a problem with. This should not be a partisan issue. Really, the Constitution
00:04:24.180 shouldn't be a partisan issue. I understand there may be different interpretations and different
00:04:28.440 priorities on the left and the right in regards to our Bill of Rights, but free speech, there's a reason
00:04:34.320 why it's in the very First Amendment. It is, like Frederick Douglass said, the dread of tyrants, being able
00:04:40.740 to say what we want to say, speak in opposition to the people in power, say something that is
00:04:45.800 unpopular. As George Orwell said, freedom is the right, the ability to say two plus two equals four.
00:04:53.300 The freedom to be able to speak that which is true or even just that which we think is central to
00:05:00.420 living in a free society, certainly in a representative democracy in which we live. So this is the reason I,
00:05:10.740 from a conservative perspective, have a problem with this, not just because I worry about how it's
00:05:15.700 going to affect people across the aisle when it comes to free speech. But specifically, from my
00:05:20.480 perspective, I have a problem with the party that claims that men are women and should be able to
00:05:26.540 compete against boys in sports or girls should be able to compete against boys in sports and vice versa,
00:05:31.920 that they should be free to share bathrooms and locker rooms together, that we should intermix
00:05:36.980 prison populations and we should allow biological men into women's abuse shelters, for example,
00:05:44.220 telling me what is true and what is not. Like, I have a problem with people who believe that kind
00:05:50.780 of nonsense trying to tell me what reality is. I have a problem with the party who says that babies in the
00:05:57.800 womb are blobs until they are taken from their, until they are born. I have a problem with that
00:06:07.560 party saying that a child in the womb has no right to life because they're not really human. I have a
00:06:13.780 problem with that party, with those people who believe that telling me what reality is. I have a
00:06:19.620 problem with the people who believe that opening the borders and taxing the middle class will lead to
00:06:23.640 prosperity. I have a problem with the party who daily perpetuates the lies of critical race theory
00:06:29.940 and identity politics and the narrative of racialized police brutality. I have a problem with
00:06:36.240 those people telling me what is true, telling me what is right, telling me what reality is, only talking
00:06:42.340 about disinformation and misinformation when it comes to their political opponents, but refusing to
00:06:47.100 confront it when it comes to their own side. Don't you see the problem with this? If you were someone on the
00:06:52.140 left, can you imagine if Donald Trump, if he appointed, say, I don't, I don't know, Jared
00:06:59.380 Kushner or Ivanka Trump to be the reality czar, to tell you what is real and what is not, what kind of
00:07:07.340 real information you're allowed to say, you're allowed to hear, you're allowed to accept, you're
00:07:11.400 allowed to believe, like you would probably think that's a problem, right? Because you don't have the
00:07:15.940 same worldview as Jared Kushner. You don't, you don't think that you don't have the same view of
00:07:20.920 reality. You don't have the same view of morality. And so it would be a problem if Donald Trump and
00:07:27.060 his administration started to tell you what you can believe, what you can read, what you can say,
00:07:32.960 and trying to control the flow of information that comes into your life. That would be a problem,
00:07:37.000 right? And so you can put yourself in my shoes and see how I don't want the Biden administration
00:07:41.660 or any administration, by the way, to have a realities are. And when Kevin Ruse so insightfully
00:07:48.080 says that this is dystopian, he is absolutely right. This is a quote from 1984, Women's Book
00:07:54.660 Club with Ali Stuckey. We read it together last year. We're about to read another dystopian novel,
00:08:00.120 Brave New World. If you are a woman, in particular a Christian woman, you're looking for a like-minded
00:08:05.600 group of about 8,500 women on Facebook, join Women's Book Club with Ali Stuckey. Make sure you
00:08:10.960 answer all the admission questions. And we have literally thousands of requests. And so it might take a
00:08:18.080 request and join us and join the conversation about Brave New World. Anyway, this is from the
00:08:23.760 book that we read last year that a lot of us read in high school as well, 1984. Quote,
00:08:29.180 in the end, the party, the people in charge, would announce that two and two made five,
00:08:34.500 and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make the claim sooner or later.
00:08:38.460 The logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience,
00:08:42.660 but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy
00:08:48.640 of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you
00:08:54.060 for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For after all, how do we know that two and
00:08:59.180 two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and
00:09:05.260 the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable, what then?
00:09:12.140 So I hope you followed that. You can back up and you can listen to it again. If you haven't read 1984,
00:09:17.560 you might have to listen to it or read it a couple of times to kind of understand the context of what's
00:09:22.840 really going on. But in 1984, the party led by Big Brother was controlling people, telling them that
00:09:31.080 something that they said happened yesterday didn't really happen, that they were constantly changing
00:09:37.100 history. Newspapers were sitting down a memory hole, and there was no proof whatsoever that what
00:09:42.340 was reported on yesterday, for example, that they were at war with Eurasia was actually true. Today,
00:09:48.680 they say that they're at war with East Asia, and you just have to accept it because there is no
00:09:52.660 external reality. There is no common sense. The only reality that exists is that which is in your mind,
00:09:59.280 and your mind is controlled by the propaganda, by the information that is told to you by the party,
00:10:05.880 by Big Brother. Remember, Orwell said, like I said at the beginning of this, freedom is the ability to
00:10:12.100 say two plus two equals four. But where he was in this dystopia, there wasn't the freedom to say that.
00:10:18.880 If the party said that two plus two equals five, because the only reality that exists is the reality in
00:10:24.320 your mind, and because the party controls your mind, then two plus two actually equals five, and you
00:10:29.420 have no way to prove that. Because they've controlled the language, they've controlled the
00:10:33.780 curriculum, they've controlled the idea of math and science so closely and so tyrannically that you
00:10:40.300 don't even have the tools to be able to prove that two plus two actually equals four.
00:10:45.740 The point of Winston's torture, you might remember if you've read it, at the end of 1984 was to make
00:10:50.880 him accept the party lines, to reject all understanding of reality outside of what the
00:10:55.860 party tells him, to believe that two plus two truly equals five, for him to really believe that, to
00:11:00.760 truly love Big Brother and adore Big Brother as his source of truth. And in the end, he does. That is
00:11:07.960 just maybe the most devastating ending to any novel ever. Before that, how he tried to keep sane,
00:11:16.440 how he tried to resist Big Brother, was to keep insisting to himself and to those, or to the person
00:11:23.280 that he felt like he could actually confide in, that two plus two actually does equal four, and that
00:11:30.440 there is a reality that exists outside of what the government or anyone in power says. And that's going
00:11:36.260 to be true for us too, not just if there's a reality, Zara, but if we have all of these voices,
00:11:41.440 cultural, political, whatever they are, telling us things that aren't true, our sanity depends
00:11:48.040 on us insisting to ourselves on a daily basis that which is true, that which we know, that which was
00:11:53.980 common sense just a few years ago. And now we are being told in the words of Orwell that common sense
00:12:00.580 is heresy of heresies. So men are men and women are women. The fact that you feel afraid for your job,
00:12:09.560 for saying that, you feel afraid that you're going to lose friendships, you feel afraid that social
00:12:14.140 media is going to crack down on you, you feel afraid that your small business could be targeted,
00:12:19.180 you feel afraid for your livelihood, for your life. Because if you say online, if you say publicly,
00:12:26.620 hey, men are men, women are women, biological sex matters, the sexes are different. The fact that you
00:12:32.800 feel afraid and ashamed to say that, that you feel like you have to whisper something that honestly,
00:12:38.120 five years ago was totally uncontroversial. That tells you what direction we're heading,
00:12:45.740 whether or not Biden actually appoints a realities are. A human embryo is still a human. Again,
00:12:53.060 that was common sense. We knew that even if your stance on abortion was that that's a human that you
00:12:58.520 should be allowed to kill legally, a human embryo is still a human being. Stating an opinion is not
00:13:05.900 inciting violence. Christianity is not a domestic terrorist threat. That's the cool vogue thing to
00:13:11.960 be writing about in a variety of outlets right now. Parents have a right to teach and raise their
00:13:16.880 children how they see fit. Treating everyone equally is not racism. Justice is not showing
00:13:22.060 favoritism toward one group to allegedly make up for wrongs of the past. America is not a terrible
00:13:28.640 country based on evil ideas that has unconditionally been a force for bad in the world. The American
00:13:34.600 revolution was not, was not because of slavery. Socialism and communism don't work. Like these are
00:13:42.420 all things we're going to have to continue to remind ourselves when we have self-appointed realities
00:13:47.400 are is telling us the opposite and telling us that common sense is heresy, telling us that two plus two
00:13:52.600 equals five. And look, I'm willing to debate all of these things. I'm willing to have a conversation
00:13:57.060 about all of these things. I'm not saying that I am the arbiter of absolute truth either,
00:14:02.100 but I am going to continue to hearken back to that which all of us knew were true just five minutes ago.
00:14:07.540 And now we are being told to, to put all of those things down the proverbial memory hole and to deny
00:14:15.240 them. And I'm just not going to hop on board with that. I'm just not, I'm not going to play that game.
00:14:20.720 I told you guys about, um, how I listened to, you know, birthing and pregnancy podcasts and
00:14:26.940 how, uh, in the birthing world, a lot of you, you, uh, you told me that you are training to become a
00:14:32.860 doula or maybe you're training to become a midwife or maybe you're a labor and delivery nurse. The
00:14:37.440 language has changed. You're no longer allowed to say mom. In some cases, I'm not speaking for
00:14:43.280 everyone's experience or everyone's hospital where you work, but in a lot of cases, you're not allowed
00:14:47.840 to say mom or you're encouraged not to say mom. You're encouraged not to say woman. Uh, but you have
00:14:53.540 to say birthing person. You have to say gestator. You have to say lactator, these ridiculous terms
00:15:00.160 that purposely muddy the waters and muddy our understanding of what it actually means to be
00:15:06.200 a woman. And I'm just not going to play along in that game. Like I'm not going to deny women
00:15:12.760 the most uniquely powerful capability that we have, which is to deliver life. I'm not going to reduce
00:15:21.340 women down to our physiology and our biological functions by calling a woman, a menstruator or
00:15:28.400 calling a woman, a gestator or a lactator or something ridiculous like that. There's a name
00:15:33.420 for it. It's called woman. And we are being told literally in the last 15 minutes, not literally
00:15:39.280 figuratively in the last 15 minutes that that's bigoted and wrong. I'm just not going along with it.
00:15:45.600 I'm not going to play that game. I am not going to pretend that women don't exist. I'm not going to
00:15:51.320 pretend that by declaration, you can just be another sex or that gender and sex are not
00:15:57.200 interchangeable. I'm just not going to play along with this postmodern manipulative nonsense. And I
00:16:04.620 encourage you not to either. If you want to keep your sanity, if you want to, uh, in the end,
00:16:12.060 be able to resist loving big brother and resist, uh, the ridiculous lie that two plus two equals five,
00:16:19.960 I highly encourage you right now to be able to tell the truth to yourself and to other people
00:16:24.900 about that, which was common sense five seconds ago. And now we are being told is not real. This
00:16:31.540 is the result of postmodernism. This is the result of godlessness. When we no longer believe in absolute
00:16:37.760 truth, we no longer believe that there is a source of transcendent morality. We no longer believe
00:16:43.500 that there is any kind of authority that tells us what's right and what's wrong, what's good and
00:16:48.120 what's bad, that we all become the gods of self rather than worshiping the God of scripture. Of course,
00:16:53.220 everything becomes arbitrary, even science itself, even facts. Like you'll remember it was, um, uh, the,
00:17:01.060 the museum of, I think African American history that came out over the summer and, uh, gave a list
00:17:07.580 of that, which is actually whiteness and white supremacy that we need to get rid of. And one of
00:17:14.160 them was objectivity. The other one, linear thinking. I've been told before that bringing up data about,
00:17:21.580 for example, racialized police brutality, or, um, talking about statistics or facts surrounding
00:17:27.580 claims of systemic racism as a way to kind of challenge some of those vague assertions that
00:17:33.460 that is actually just, uh, that's actually just white supremacy that we are not supposed to talk
00:17:39.520 about the data. We're not supposed to talk about numbers, but we're actually supposed to accept
00:17:43.740 something called standpoint epistemology, uh, which is that we gain knowledge from our position or we
00:17:51.040 gain knowledge from our experiences alone. We gain knowledge from our race or our, uh,
00:17:57.260 standpoints are a subjective view. That is a way to shut down any kind of objective thinking or
00:18:04.000 objective conversation. If someone has authority just because of their standpoint and that authority
00:18:09.540 trumps objectivism and trumps facts and trumps data, then a person who insists, for example, um,
00:18:17.620 that systemic racism is the number one problem in America in 2021, uh, that that statement actually
00:18:23.640 trumps any kind of data that someone else might bring up to challenge that. That is the danger
00:18:28.560 of any kind of epistemology that is outside of objective truth or outside of the reality that we
00:18:36.360 can see and observe and quantify that is outside of the moral truth that we get from the great moral
00:18:42.380 lawgiver, God himself. And that's where all this confusion is coming from. And, you know, this is all
00:18:48.340 created, it's created very strange bedfellows between, for example, atheists and Christians who
00:18:54.700 are against critical race theory or, you know, radical feminists and very traditional people
00:19:00.700 like me who are against the demeaning of women and the eraser of women through transgender activism
00:19:07.720 and the manipulation of language. But at the same time, I know that there's a separation between me
00:19:14.380 and between James Lindsay or between the feminists that I have on my show that have a different
00:19:19.840 worldview and have a different belief system, because to me, from my perspective, and they would
00:19:24.700 totally disagree with this, obviously, and that's fine. This is all a result of some of the religious
00:19:31.440 or non-religious views of the people, um, that are now complaining about the problems with critical
00:19:37.140 race theory and the crazy postmodern definition of gender and sex. Yeah, this is a result of godlessness
00:19:44.340 I mean, they can say all they want to, they believe in some kind of objective morality and
00:19:48.540 objective truth. But my question, if you don't believe in Genesis 1-1, that God created the heavens
00:19:54.060 and the earth, if you don't at least believe in some kind of transcendent moral lawgiver,
00:19:59.520 why? Why does science matter? Why is there reality? Why can't the party say that two plus two equals five?
00:20:06.240 Like, why do people have inherent human rights? If there isn't a God who created all of us,
00:20:10.440 if there isn't an authority higher than government, then who says what is and what isn't?
00:20:15.700 Um, and so, like I always say, your cultural beliefs are downstream from your theology,
00:20:20.060 whether you believe in God or not. Your political views are downstream from both your cultural views
00:20:24.820 and your theological views, whether you believe in God or not. So all of this, this postmodernism,
00:20:30.840 this confusion, this, uh, need for an appointment of realities are in our federal government among
00:20:36.660 people who can't even tell you what a woman is. It's a result, in my opinion, of godlessness,
00:20:42.120 of replacing the God of scripture with the God of self, of postmodernism, of a kind of epistemology
00:20:47.940 that prioritizes subjectivism over objective truth. People are very confused. And if you want to stay
00:20:55.300 sane, you've got to commit to convincing yourself on a daily basis that two and two equal four. And I have
00:21:04.040 three pieces of advice or three tips to make sure, um, that we do that. Number one, remember that there
00:21:11.380 is an authority higher than the government. There is an authority higher than big tech. There is an
00:21:15.620 authority that is higher than you, higher than me, higher than any cultural or political influence in
00:21:20.920 the entire world who says exactly what is and what isn't, who has given us general revelation through
00:21:28.180 just the natural world that anyone Christian or non-Christian alike can observe. We can observe that
00:21:32.880 there are men and women, that there are differences in men and women. We can, um, you know, we can
00:21:37.440 observe in, for a very simple example, that something like trees exist or vegetation exists, or that
00:21:43.840 there's, you know, there's, uh, diversity in our, in what people look like, whatever it is. And there is
00:21:52.560 natural revelation that we can see with our own eyes that we will be told to deny, by the way. And then
00:21:58.980 there's also special revelation that we are given in God's word that tells us what this all means,
00:22:03.940 why we're here, what sin is, what salvation is, uh, what the afterlife looks like, what morality looks
00:22:10.640 like, what good is, what bad is, what right is, what wrong is. Genesis 1.1, in the beginning, God created
00:22:16.420 the heavens and the earth. Everything flows from that. That is the most controversial verse in the
00:22:22.080 Bible. Uh, we have to remember that God is the realities are, he is the moralities are, he is the
00:22:31.900 one that says, again, what is and what isn't, what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad.
00:22:35.860 We appeal to his authority when we have a question about anything, when it comes to the definition of
00:22:40.340 what gender is, when it comes to the value of life inside the womb, when it comes to all of our chaos
00:22:45.960 and confusion, we find our respite, we find our clarity in him and his word. And so number one,
00:22:51.120 remembering that there is an authority that's higher than us, that's higher than all human
00:22:55.420 institutions, um, and renewing our mind and saturating our mind and our heart in that truth
00:23:02.640 that we find in his word. Number two, surround yourself with at least a few people who share
00:23:08.000 your values. I've talked to a lot of young women who are on college campuses who feel like they're
00:23:13.660 alone. They feel like they're isolated. And that's really when you start to question your beliefs.
00:23:17.960 That's when you really start to question what's true because you're like, okay, I'm the only one
00:23:21.700 who believes this stuff. Maybe I really am a bigot. Maybe I really am an extremist. Maybe it really is
00:23:26.720 radical to believe that babies inside the womb matter. Um, so you have to surround yourself with
00:23:31.900 at least a few people who share your values, who can challenge you, who can encourage you,
00:23:36.520 who can spur you on toward loving good works. As the Bible says, first Corinthians 15 33,
00:23:41.180 do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. And so, uh, you know, we've all been in this
00:23:48.180 situation before where we've surrounded ourselves by people who aren't good influences. We tell
00:23:52.420 ourselves we're going to bring them up. They end up bringing us down and it comes, uh, it even comes
00:23:58.380 down to our belief system that is on the line when we surround ourselves by people who don't share our
00:24:04.020 values, who are actually bad influences. And remember, it's actually more important for you to surround
00:24:08.620 yourself by like-minded people than it is to surround yourself by people that you like.
00:24:13.640 Uh, now that doesn't mean that I want you to have friends that you just don't enjoy time with,
00:24:19.140 but, uh, I'm not asking you to look for a click that you have everything in common with. I'm asking
00:24:25.180 you to at least build a small community of people that you can get together on a weekly basis and just
00:24:31.820 be able to talk to each other and say, okay, we're not crazy, right? Like you still believe this. I
00:24:36.200 still believe this. Here's why we believe this. Okay, great. That's going to do wonders for you.
00:24:41.220 Number three, seek wisdom. Kind of goes with both number one and number two, James 3, 17. But the
00:24:48.560 wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, then gentle, open to reason. Any of your friends
00:24:55.260 who are not open to reason and claim to be the arbiters of truth, I would challenge that because
00:25:02.100 of this descriptor, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, impartial. So that means not showing
00:25:08.520 partiality or favoritism to one group or another, impartial and sincere. So pure, peaceable, gentle,
00:25:14.420 open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And what we've talked about
00:25:18.880 before is that wisdom is a promise. According to James, it's also a process according to Proverbs.
00:25:24.500 And so we ask God for wisdom. We also seek wisdom through his word and through the natural world,
00:25:29.780 the gifts of common grace that he has given us through a lot of, through many resources that
00:25:36.880 aren't his word, that can tell us about history, that can tell us about economics, that can tell us
00:25:40.480 about politics. I've got a list of resources on my blog. I'll put the link in my description. So those
00:25:46.620 are my three tips to be able to continue to insist until the end that two plus two equals four. That
00:25:55.900 reality is reality, that truth is truth. Remember, Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, the life. No
00:26:03.100 one comes to the Father except through me. You want clarity in the midst of confusion. You want
00:26:07.540 respite from all the chaos. You want a refuge in all of the confusion and all of the postmodern nonsense.
00:26:19.300 Then you go to Christ. He is the embodiment of truth. He has the answers. He has everything that
00:26:28.320 you are trying and failing to find inside yourself and in the world. It's all right there. What amazing
00:26:33.320 grace that is. All right. I'm going to move on to a couple other stories before we finish.
00:26:39.500 All right. So we don't really talk about the Second Amendment very much on this podcast. That's not
00:26:49.080 because I don't care about it. Obviously, I care about it very much. I am not what you would consider
00:26:54.460 a gun nut. Not that there's anything wrong with loving guns, but I'm not someone who you will see
00:27:00.160 at the range every single day who knows everything about guns. But I very much believe in the right to
00:27:06.180 defend yourself and to defend your family how you see fit. I am all for responsible gun ownership
00:27:12.620 for women, especially to know how to use a gun, to carry a gun, to defend yourself.
00:27:21.700 I think it is one of the greatest protections that we have in addition to free speech and religious
00:27:28.860 liberty against tyrants. And that is not me advocating, of course, for any kind of violence
00:27:37.840 or any kind of use of force. But that is why the Second Amendment exists to be able to protect us
00:27:46.440 against the tyrannical nature of the government that we have to be and we get to be well armed.
00:27:53.520 And it's not just police officers and it's not just the military. It's not just the government
00:27:59.620 who has all the guns that we as citizens are also able to defend ourselves and to defend our families.
00:28:08.120 Now, this has been something that the left has been after for years, gun ownership. It's difficult
00:28:13.380 to go after. It's difficult to pass any kind of substantial what they call common sense gun legislation
00:28:22.580 or gun ownership restrictions in this country, because even a lot of Democrats represent people
00:28:28.840 in their states who like to own guns, whether it's because they like to hunt or they just like guns
00:28:34.560 recreationally or they want to be able to defend their families. Except for in these major cities,
00:28:39.860 it can be really hard for a bill like this to pass because there are still a lot of senators and
00:28:46.680 representatives who, like I said, represent people who are for the Second Amendment.
00:28:52.840 Representative Sheila Jackson Lee has just introduced a new gun bill or a new resolution,
00:28:59.560 H.R. 127, quote, to provide for the licensing licensing of firearm and ammunition possession
00:29:06.420 and the registration of firearms and to prohibit the possession of certain ammunition.
00:29:11.360 So this probably won't go anywhere. Like I said, I mean, Democrats do this a lot and Republicans
00:29:19.500 do this in their own way, too. But they present some kind of piece of legislation that they know
00:29:24.360 is probably going to die. But they're really more making a point about it. This is from MRC.TV.
00:29:31.320 Lee's bill named after Sabika Sheik, a Palestinian girl killed at the age of 17 in a 2018 Texas public
00:29:37.360 school shooting would not only mandate that all gun owners place themselves on a federal registry,
00:29:42.160 it would mandate that all people trying to get a gun or keep a workable gun or keep an even antique
00:29:47.760 gun must ask for it and be granted a federal license. I mean, this is exactly why the Second
00:29:53.680 Amendment exists, because you're not supposed to have to get some kind of permission just to have
00:29:57.740 a workable gun in your house from the federal government. The bill would also mandate that those who
00:30:03.300 desire to own self-protection devices called firearms would be at least 21 years of age,
00:30:08.200 unless, of course, they're 18 and enter the military, which I think is so interesting because
00:30:12.380 there is another bill, HB1, that is, quote, a voting rights bill that I'm working through right now and
00:30:18.440 that I will eventually do an episode on. There's just a lot in it. But this bill that probably will be
00:30:25.000 passed by the Democratic Congress that is trying to lower the voting age from 18 to 16. So while they
00:30:32.400 want to lower the voting age from 18 to 16, they also want to raise the age for gun ownership from
00:30:39.160 18 to 21. And so you are apparently old enough at 16 years old to be able to vote, even though
00:30:47.420 your frontal lobe is not even close to being developed. Like all of us have been 16 before.
00:30:52.060 If you're 16 and you're listening to this, you're a lot smarter than I was at 16 because you actually
00:30:56.980 care about the things that are going on in the world. I have no doubt that you have a lot of wisdom.
00:31:01.560 However, I have been your age before, and it's just a biological fact that our brains just aren't
00:31:06.560 developed. We don't have that much life experience at 16. Most of us were under our parents' roof. We
00:31:11.080 have no idea how taxes work. We have no idea how the world works. We don't know really how politics
00:31:15.900 work. We don't know how it works to get a paycheck. We don't know any of that. So the idea that we should
00:31:22.600 be voting at age 18, but you can't defend yourself until you are 21 years old. So you've been in college for
00:31:29.160 two years and you're not allowed to defend yourself until you're 21. That doesn't seem just. That doesn't
00:31:34.560 seem right at all. If you don't think that an 18-year-old is able mentally to be able to operate
00:31:40.760 a gun, that a 16-year-old certainly isn't able mentally to be able to vote. That would be my
00:31:46.700 argument. Anyway, the article goes on, whereupon they might be ordered to conduct unconstitutional
00:31:51.900 activities in the United States and around the globe. So they're saying, so let me just read
00:32:01.480 that all together. The bill would also mandate that those who desire to own self-protection
00:32:05.740 devices called firearms be at least 21 years of age, unless, of course, they're 18 and enter the
00:32:10.080 military, whereupon they might be ordered to conduct unconstitutional activities in the U.S. and
00:32:14.620 around the globe. Americans wanting to own firearms would also have to pass a federally created
00:32:20.920 psychological evaluation. And this is where it ties into what we were talking about at the beginning
00:32:25.280 of the podcast. In order to get that wonderful government license, require passage of a psych
00:32:31.340 test of anyone else in the home, mandate a government agent doing an interview with one's
00:32:37.600 spouse or ex-spouse prior to issuance of the license, mandate the annual $800 purchase of firearm
00:32:46.100 owner insurance, ban certain kinds of ammo, and any magazine that holds more than 10 rounds of ammo,
00:32:52.580 mandate the purchase of a license to get ammo, continue to mandate a national background check,
00:32:57.720 require at least 24 hours of training, as well as live fire training for those who want to own
00:33:03.500 military-style firearms, which, as the feds have shown, is a term that politicians apply to virtually
00:33:08.700 any gun that they choose. Like, there's not an objective definition of military-style firearms.
00:33:14.900 And would require reapplication for the renewal of said license every few years. So this is just
00:33:21.280 making it as hard as possible to own a gun. A psych evaluation, not just for you, but also for the
00:33:27.760 people in your house. Maybe that sounds good to you, but you understand, again, that those evaluations
00:33:33.540 are going to be very subjective. You honestly think that a federal government that is run by Democrats
00:33:38.600 and who calls any kind of conservatism these days extremism and domestic terrorism is going to allow
00:33:46.340 any conservative to own a gun? Like, these psychological evaluations are probably going to be
00:33:52.560 partisan. They're going to be biased against certain kinds of belief systems. Do you honestly think
00:33:58.320 they're going to want a Christian and conservative to be able to own a gun? No. And that's, I think,
00:34:04.580 partly the point of this, but also I want to point out that making it more expensive and more cumbersome
00:34:10.200 to own a gun is probably not going to affect a lot of the people, a lot of the wealthy people that own
00:34:17.940 guns. These pieces of legislation always disproportionately affect poor people, people who
00:34:24.840 can't afford to pay the $800, for example, every year to be able to own a gun. They don't have
00:34:30.420 the time or they just don't have the resources to be able to jump through all of these hoops to be
00:34:35.440 able to defend themselves. And so it's almost always poor people that are negatively affected
00:34:41.200 by these bills that makes it much harder for them to be able to defend themselves. And a lot of these
00:34:46.680 poor people live in these inner cities, inner city communities where the majority of gun violence and
00:34:52.140 the majority of homicide, the majority of these violent crimes are happening. And so all you're doing is
00:34:57.740 making it harder for innocent people to defend themselves. That's all you're trying to do here
00:35:02.480 because criminals are going to own guns. They're going to find a way to own a gun. If someone
00:35:08.680 unfortunately wants to shoot up a school, if someone wants to go commit a crime, they are not worried
00:35:16.020 about whether or not they're in compliance with Sheila Jackson Lee's new bill or new law, if it actually
00:35:23.500 gets passed. That's just the reality of it, that these pieces of legislation, all they do is they
00:35:30.260 stop innocent people from being able to protect themselves easily. It doesn't actually stop any
00:35:36.300 kind of crime. I mean, if you look at somewhere like Chicago, some of the strictest gun laws in the
00:35:40.320 world, you also have the highest, highest proportion of gun violence. I mean, that's true in all these
00:35:46.940 inner cities. And you can't blame the states with loose gun laws for all the crime that's happening
00:35:53.040 in these inner cities where the gun restrictions are so strict. And the reason why this connects
00:36:00.820 at all to what we were talking about is this definition of who is actually acceptable to be
00:36:07.640 able to own a gun and who is not based on the psychological evaluation, based on the opinions of
00:36:13.620 the people who are in charge. Again, they are trying to determine a form of reality and a form of
00:36:21.040 acceptability that is based not on any objective standard, but just on their subjective belief that
00:36:27.320 people shouldn't have the right to defend themselves how they see fit. This is, of course, this entire
00:36:32.300 bill is against the Second Amendment. I don't think it would stand up in court, which is just another
00:36:37.760 reason why we should be so worried about the future of the Supreme Court, which is really the only barrier
00:36:44.900 right now between the American people and Democratic-controlled White House and Congress, who have
00:36:51.220 many radical things in mind and far-left policies in mind. But of course, they want to pack the court,
00:36:57.780 which is going to depend also on the future of the filibuster. So if you think the almost 40
00:37:04.240 executive orders, radical executive orders that Joe Biden has signed in the past couple of weeks
00:37:10.960 was any indication of where this administration and where this Congress is going, we haven't seen
00:37:17.640 anything yet. Like they are just getting started on the things they want to pass and push. And the
00:37:23.120 Second Amendment, just like the First Amendment, is absolutely in their line of sight. All right, we have time.
00:37:29.620 And so I'm going to talk about this one story that I think is, it's super sad, and you're not going to
00:37:35.300 hear about it on CNN. It's not going to be trending on social media. You'll see it in places like the
00:37:39.920 Blaze. I actually saw it in Huffington Post, but of course, they left out, I think, a lot of analysis
00:37:44.900 in it. The reason why this is pertinent is because the person that's at the center of this was on the
00:37:52.920 Food Network. She was a Food Network reality star, like World's Worst Cooks or America's Worst Cooks or
00:37:59.140 something like that. And she has been charged with murder along with her husband. And we'll talk
00:38:03.740 about, you know, why I think this is significant and what this has to do with a lot of the narratives
00:38:09.580 that are surrounding race and surrounding truth and surrounding the idea of what justice and equity
00:38:15.560 is and all of that in just one second. All right, let's talk about this tragic story. I really don't
00:38:24.680 want to talk about it because it's going to cause me to have to say controversial things about a very
00:38:29.440 sensitive topic, but that's what we do. And because most people probably won't cover this or most
00:38:35.840 mainstream outlets probably won't cover it, I think that it's incumbent upon us to do so. So this is
00:38:41.620 according to the Blaze. Police allege that Ariel Robinson, 29, and her husband, Jerry Robinson, 34,
00:38:47.600 inflicted a series of blunt force injuries on their adopted child, Victoria Rose Smith. I guess I should
00:38:53.320 stop there and say that there is trigger warning to this story. I'm talking about child abuse. And so
00:38:59.480 if you're listening with your kids in the car, this is something that you just don't want to listen to.
00:39:03.900 You might want to fast forward to the very end. So just FYI, the parents called 911 on January 15th
00:39:09.620 to report that the child was unresponsive. When medical professionals arrived, they immediately
00:39:13.840 suspected child abuse. According to the heavily redacted police report, Smith was taken to a hospital.
00:39:19.980 This is the little girl. I believe that she's four years old. Yep. Smith was taken to a hospital
00:39:26.900 where she was pronounced dead. WYFF TV reported the two were charged with homicide by child abuse.
00:39:33.960 The TV station reported Ariel Robinson is best known for winning season 20 of the Food Network show
00:39:40.180 Worst Cooks in America. In August 2020, the network deleted the season where she won after she was charged
00:39:46.580 with murder of her adopted child. Also, and we'll put a picture up of this from the blaze of this
00:39:55.160 mother and her adopted four year old little girl. What I think is missing in a lot of the analysis,
00:40:02.140 thankfully, the blaze includes this. But of course, this is not mentioned in the in the Huffington Post
00:40:07.400 article that talked about this simply because she was on the Food Network. There was a tweet that she
00:40:13.320 made sense just a couple weeks ago in my house. My black children get treated the same as my white
00:40:18.580 children and my white children get treated the same as my black children. It's a shame that when
00:40:23.060 they go out into the real world, that won't be the case. Hashtag white privilege. Hashtag Black Lives
00:40:28.580 Matter. So I'm going to resist trying to attach this story to the larger problem of this kind of
00:40:35.060 language of chastising and condemning a group of people because of their skin color and victimizing a
00:40:42.080 whole group of people because of their skin color and and pitting the pitting the two races against
00:40:47.480 each other because I don't like it when people take a single story and then attach that to a larger
00:40:55.240 narrative without any kind of correlation. It's really hard for me not to do that. But I still think
00:41:01.740 that I can talk about the problems with this kind of idea in relation to this story without saying I'm
00:41:08.440 I'm not saying that everyone who talks about white privilege, even though I disagree with that
00:41:12.580 phrase, and everyone who talks about this kind of thing is leading to the kind of violence that we
00:41:17.780 saw. Obviously, this woman and her husband, who apparently allegedly both beat this child to death.
00:41:25.720 I mean, they probably have some kind of mental health issue. I can't imagine that anyone stable
00:41:30.960 would be able to do something, would be able to do something like this, would ever
00:41:35.600 kill a child and especially kill a child in this kind of vicious way. And so I'm not trying to attach
00:41:43.500 what she said to everyone who who says something like, you know, white privilege, black and white
00:41:48.580 people are treated different in this country. But I do think, like I said, that I can use this situation
00:41:53.960 to speak to the problems with this kind of mentality. Because think about this, just think about this
00:42:03.980 illogic for just a second that this woman who allegedly killed her child, her four year old
00:42:10.460 little girl, who had been in foster care for several years, whose parents gave her up supposedly
00:42:16.320 because of because of poverty, because they couldn't take care of her previous families that had had her
00:42:23.000 in foster care said that this little girl was beautiful. She was a light. She was so sweet. And she brought so
00:42:28.800 much joy to their family. This family that ended up apparently killing her. They they were able to
00:42:36.620 adopt her. And this woman is saying this. She's apparently a comedian. This Food Network star,
00:42:43.220 Ariel, is saying that her child has white privilege, that her white children that I guess she adopted
00:42:49.940 have white privilege and that her black children are underprivileged because they won't be treated the
00:42:55.240 same way in the world. So think about this, that her white child, she is saying, has white privilege,
00:43:00.100 who is given up by her biological parents and praise God that they chose life and that they decided to do
00:43:07.620 that, that they bravely chose adoption instead of abortion. This child who was given up by her
00:43:13.600 biological parents, who has been in foster care for the four years of her tiny life, who has gone from
00:43:19.880 family to family, was finally adopted by a family, finally had a mom and a dad who took her in,
00:43:24.980 who then beat her to death and murdered her. Does that sound like white privilege to you?
00:43:30.160 Is that the kind of privilege that you're hoping to cash in on? Like, did her privilege protect her
00:43:36.180 from being murdered by her adopted parents? And this woman who had joked, there's a video of her
00:43:42.000 joking to social workers about putting her kids in cages so that the social workers don't know like
00:43:48.700 how crazy her kids are so she's able to adopt other kids. Like, does that not show a level
00:43:54.840 of privilege that this poor little girl didn't have? This is also the problem with critical race
00:44:01.180 theory in how you interpret the story. If you believe in the tenets of critical race theory,
00:44:05.780 which says that America is endemically racist, that it's systemically, institutionally,
00:44:12.800 irrevocably racist, and sees all personal interactions, all pieces of legislation,
00:44:19.020 policies through the lens of white and black. White, the party of the oppressors, and black
00:44:25.100 people, the party of the oppressed. No matter individual experiences, no matter individual
00:44:29.580 culpability or innocence, it categorizes people into white, non-white, and places them in categories of
00:44:36.160 the oppressor versus the oppressed based on that skin color, which forces you logically to believe
00:44:43.080 that even children, even innocent children are part of, are complicit in, are beneficiaries of this
00:44:50.520 racist anti-black system. That is what critical race theory logically asserts. And so if you believe
00:44:57.540 that, then you look at a story like this and you have to then deduce that this child is a product of
00:45:04.940 privilege, that she is on the side of the oppressor, and that this charged murder is still on the side of
00:45:12.100 the oppressed. That's the only option that critical race theory gives you. So don't you understand
00:45:17.240 how it subverts truth, how it subverts justice? Now think about if that kind of critical race theory
00:45:23.180 mentality is placed into our justice system, that if all people of one skin color are oppressed and all
00:45:29.960 people of another skin color are on the side of the oppressor, then how does that hold up in a court of
00:45:37.660 law? Like, is this little girl, is she still seen as the side of the oppressor? Is she not seen as a
00:45:45.140 victim because of her white privilege? And these two people who murdered her, are they seen as the
00:45:50.920 side of the oppressed or are they let off for some reason because they have been oppressed their whole
00:45:55.760 lives because of their skin color? Like, you see how that subverts justice, right? How that subverts
00:46:01.460 the objective idea of right and wrong, how there is no impartiality behind that, there's no truth
00:46:07.340 behind that, there's no mercy behind that, there's no compassion behind that. This idea that people,
00:46:12.800 because of a skin color that they didn't choose, are born into privilege and are therefore complicit
00:46:17.760 in a racist system until they become, I don't know, anti-racist and that people with another skin color
00:46:23.160 are always and irrevocably on the side of the oppressed and should be treated differently
00:46:27.240 than white people. Like, that's going to lead to you looking at a story like this and not being
00:46:33.280 able to draw just conclusions. So that's the point I want to make. I'm not trying to make the point
00:46:39.180 that this person, that critical race theory, is all to blame for what happened to this little girl.
00:46:44.260 Obviously, these parents are sick in the head and hard-hearted and calloused and terrible
00:46:51.560 and awful people if they truly did kill this poor child. But I am making the point that the reason
00:46:58.000 why you are not seeing this story plastered on every headline, the reason why the Instagram account
00:47:07.100 NoWhiteSaviors isn't talking about this, but they would be if the races were reversed, the reason why
00:47:13.540 this isn't the center of every mainstream media story and hasn't been for the last few weeks
00:47:19.680 is because it doesn't fit into critical race theory. It doesn't fit into this new worldview and this
00:47:25.660 brave new world in which we live that says everyone of one group is oppressed and everyone of one group
00:47:31.440 is an oppressor and we're not allowed to talk about the stories in which those categories are actually
00:47:37.120 reversed. That is why you're not seeing this talked about. And that has real tangible implications
00:47:44.800 if that truly does infiltrate itself into our justice system, into our definitions of what truth is,
00:47:50.880 what morality is, what right and wrong is, and what justice looks like. That's a problem. That's a problem.
00:47:57.280 May justice be done? To these parents who allegedly killed their four-year-old little adopted girl,
00:48:05.620 may we start caring about instances of injustice that don't fit into the popular mainstream narrative
00:48:11.760 of what we're supposed to care about? May our outrage not be driven by hashtags and by social
00:48:20.780 movements, by what's popular, by what's posh? May we not just engage in performative activism
00:48:27.160 that posts a black square because the celebrities in our lives told us that that's what it looks like
00:48:32.040 to be compassionate. Let us be as God tells us to be as Christians, which is impartial,
00:48:37.020 which is caring about instances of injustice, whether it's a black person killing a white person
00:48:42.140 or a white person killing a black person. Let us actually look for the truth and care about both
00:48:46.820 situations equally. Unfortunately, that idea of caring about things equally based on what actually
00:48:52.920 happened, what is true and real culpability and real justice is no longer in vogue. But again,
00:48:59.280 again, if we are people who care about truth, if we care that two plus two equals four and not five,
00:49:04.140 to be able to maintain our sanity, we have to care about things like this too.
00:49:12.240 All right, that's all I got for today. Tomorrow, I'm super excited about the episode. I will be
00:49:17.380 talking to Dr. Christina Crenshaw. She is a professor at Baylor who is under fire for sending a tweet
00:49:25.140 saying that, hey, what if I don't want my daughters to share a bathroom with a biological boy? What about
00:49:31.920 the 99% of us who don't want Title IX to be expanded? Well, of course, some people in the
00:49:37.140 cancel mob came after her, tried to get her fired, sent her mean messages and all this stuff. And
00:49:42.400 this show was actually the only interview that she has accepted so far. She is in studio and we're
00:49:49.620 having a conversation about all that. Really, we've already recorded it. Really, really good
00:49:53.440 conversation. Super insightful. She is a conservative Christian and has really good advice
00:49:58.900 wisdom for all of us. So make sure you tune into that conversation tomorrow. I'll see you guys then.