Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 08, 2021


Ep 365 ｜ Best of the Super Bowl & the Worst of Progressivism


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 2 minutes

Words per Minute

178.61281

Word Count

11,202

Sentence Count

618

Misogynist Sentences

16

Hate Speech Sentences

14


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful Super Bowl Sunday
00:00:15.440 and a great weekend. We are going to talk a little bit about the Super Bowl, some highlights,
00:00:21.380 some lowlights, some good tweets. That's just going to take up the first part of the episode
00:00:27.040 and then we're going to transition into stuff that's a little bit more serious. I want to talk
00:00:32.360 about this idea that I've been thinking about and unfortunately that I've been seeing
00:00:36.540 of children being the subject of progressive social experiments, how I've seen that play out
00:00:42.660 in the past few months and then what we as Christians should make of all of that.
00:00:47.360 First, I want to start with some of my favorites from the Super Bowl. So there were a few good
00:00:53.440 commercials. I know that conservative Twitter was very cynical about the Super Bowl commercials
00:00:58.420 that were being played for the most part. And of course, not all of them are good. And there are
00:01:02.980 many, many virtue signaling ones that are just ridiculous. But a lot of them were actually,
00:01:09.800 I thought, really funny or really clever. There was one that wasn't like, you know,
00:01:14.700 slappy or any funny, but I thought it was clever. And that was the Bud Light
00:01:17.740 Seltzer lemon commercial. And so I'm going to play a little bit of that now.
00:01:22.720 When did Bud Light Seltzer start making lemonade? Probably when 2020 handed us all those lemons.
00:01:28.320 2020 was a lemon of a year.
00:01:29.720 So I just thought it was cute. I mean, videos of people being hit in the face with things.
00:01:57.820 It's one of those things that never fails to make you laugh. I think the perfect balance of a good
00:02:04.880 Super Bowl commercial is just a little bit clever and just a little bit humorous, but not trying too
00:02:11.820 hard. When you try too hard and when you have people in it that are trying to be funny but aren't
00:02:17.720 funny, it just fails. I don't know if you guys saw the poor Oatly commercial. So Oatly, it makes oat milk
00:02:24.520 and we have Oatly oat milk in our refrigerator. And we watched the commercial and we were like,
00:02:29.700 I think we need to throw our oat milk out because it was so bad. I saw someone say, and I feel bad
00:02:37.260 for the guy. I feel bad. Everyone makes mistakes. But it was the CEO. He was playing on a keyboard,
00:02:43.560 which, you know, he didn't have a terrible voice, but he didn't have like, hey, you need to sing
00:02:47.880 in a Super Bowl commercial voice either. And he was singing this kind of like, I don't know,
00:02:52.820 theme song about his Oatly oat milk. And it was pretty strange. I'm pretty sure it actually said
00:02:58.900 like, it's milk except made from humans. And I'm like, well, it's not that kind of milk. Not that
00:03:05.220 kind of milk. That's different. It's oat milk. So it's made from oats. Maybe I remember that wrong,
00:03:10.900 but I remember thinking as I was watching it, okay, this is kind of strange. I saw someone say on Twitter,
00:03:15.600 like, this is what happens when people are too scared to tell the CEO that he has a bad idea.
00:03:20.540 Poor guy. So that was one of the worst commercials, I would say, but at least it wasn't virtue
00:03:26.240 signaling. Those are my least favorite kinds. There was one very virtue signaling one, and that was the
00:03:32.700 Bruce Springsteen. And this is a different kind of virtue signaling, okay? So typically virtue signaling
00:03:37.760 goes to the left. It is trying to signal that you as a company or you as an individual
00:03:43.040 are a performative activist, that you're going to say the right things. You're going to throw
00:03:46.920 the right images up on screen, and you're going to act like you are all for the social justice cause,
00:03:53.600 even as you are, for example, profiting from China like Amazon or Apple. I hate those kinds of
00:03:59.980 commercials. This was a different kind of virtue signal. And I'll talk about why I'm going to play
00:04:05.220 you a few seconds of this Bruce Springsteen Jeep commercial.
00:04:08.420 There's a chapel in Kansas, standing on the exact center of the lower 48. It never closes.
00:04:18.380 All are more than welcome to come meet here in the middle. It's not the property of just the
00:04:27.220 fortunate few. It belongs to us all. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, it's what connects us.
00:04:38.420 And we need that connection. We need the middle. We just have to remember the very soil we stand on
00:04:48.380 is common ground.
00:04:50.380 All right. So I liked it. When I was watching the commercial, I'm always skeptical whenever I see
00:04:56.600 any kind of patriotic seeming message come from a major company, because it seems like so much of
00:05:02.960 corporate America is just against any kind of patriotism. I'm going to be perfectly honest.
00:05:09.200 I didn't know who this guy was in the commercial. I had no idea. I thought this was just a random
00:05:16.600 actor that they had picked. And then people were saying, oh, it's Bruce Springsteen. I just didn't
00:05:22.880 know. I had no idea what the guy looked like. I know obviously who Bruce Springsteen is, but I just
00:05:28.420 didn't know what he looked like. And OK, I thought this was a pretty unifying message. I was surprised
00:05:34.960 by the Christian imagery in it that you guys saw. If you're watching this on YouTube, there was a
00:05:41.420 chapel which represents like the middle of the country. And inside it, there is, you know, the
00:05:46.640 shape of the United States with an American flag. And then it had a cross in front of it. And as soon
00:05:51.400 as I saw that, I said, oh, woke Twitter, woke Christian Twitter is going to be so mad. They're
00:05:57.480 going to say this is Christian nationalism. And so I typed in Christian nationalism on Twitter,
00:06:03.020 Christian nationalism Jeep, just to see. And I was not disappointed. Immediately, there were hundreds,
00:06:09.960 if not thousands of tweets saying Jeep just put up a Christian nationalist commercial. And I am so mad
00:06:16.560 as if you're not allowed to put up a cross in the United States of America. And so Twitter is very
00:06:23.300 predictable. Segments of Twitter, including conservative Twitter, are very predictable in
00:06:28.300 their takes on things. And I just knew that the mixing of the American flag and Christian symbolism
00:06:35.300 was going to make a lot of people mad. And indeed, it did. That's not what bothered me about this
00:06:40.980 commercial. And it wasn't the message that we need to come together and find common ground. I think
00:06:46.200 that's all well and good. I will say I was actually surprised. There's a portion of the commercial
00:06:51.600 where he picks up dirt and he says, we're all on common ground. And I was like, oh, we're on common
00:06:56.900 ground instead of stolen ground now. Okay. That's a new message that we're not typically hearing from
00:07:02.480 the mainstream. That's better, I would say. But here's the whole weird thing about it is that Bruce
00:07:09.960 Springsteen is an outspoken progressive, which is fine. Everyone has a right to their opinions,
00:07:15.320 even as a singer, you're allowed to say what you think about politics. But here's what he had to
00:07:20.700 say on October 29th, according to USA Today, quote, a good portion of our fine country to my eye has
00:07:27.200 been thoroughly hypnotized, brainwashed by a con man from Queens, said Springsteen on the Wednesday
00:07:33.020 episode of his serious XM East Street radio show from my home to yours. Didn't know that existed
00:07:39.160 either. You mix in some jingoism, some phony patriotism, fear of a black planet. I've never
00:07:45.260 heard that phrase in my life. Vanity, narcissism, paranoia, conspiracy theories, and a portion of
00:07:51.920 our nation undergoing mass delusions and teetering on violence. And you're left with the greatest threat
00:07:56.660 to democracy in my lifetime. How did he do it? So that is how he categorizes the tens of millions of
00:08:04.700 people who voted for Donald Trump. We're all hypnotized. We're all conned. We have all been
00:08:09.640 duped by this guy who just pretends to be a patriot and, of course, is some kind of vicious
00:08:15.580 racist. It's not because our values just don't align with Joe Biden. It's not because we have
00:08:20.520 policy disagreements. It's not because we don't like some of the things that we've already seen
00:08:25.340 Joe Biden execute. We knew he was going to execute in the first few days of his presidency.
00:08:29.460 It's because, of course, we have been hoodwinked. We have been tricked. And so that person who then
00:08:37.100 later in his show says that we need an exorcism from the White House. So, of course, comparing
00:08:43.180 Donald Trump to some kind of demon, some kind of demonic force, that person who said that in late
00:08:49.560 October is now doing a commercial with Jeep saying that we need to come together and find common
00:08:55.940 grounds. I mean, as we've been saying for the past few months or, yeah, I guess it's been a few
00:09:00.720 months. It's crazy that it's been that long since the election. The people who supported Biden have
00:09:05.720 been saying, let's come together. Let's come together. Meanwhile, constantly chastising us and
00:09:11.500 categorizing us, everyone who voted for Trump, the tens of millions of us, as racist, white supremacist,
00:09:18.440 uh, domestic terrorist enablers, uh, people who have been conned and tricked. And so how are we
00:09:25.660 supposed to, how are we supposed to unite with people who think of half the country in that way
00:09:31.360 and who feel some sense of moral superiority and have since the 2016 election toward people who voted
00:09:37.280 differently? There hasn't, it doesn't seem to be, there doesn't seem to be even a slight willingness
00:09:43.620 by a lot of people, especially in the media class to say, okay, how is it that so many people could
00:09:48.960 vote for someone who is so scandalous in a lot of ways? Why is it that so many evangelicals voted for
00:09:54.880 someone who ostensibly is against a lot of our values, at least in his personal life? It's not
00:10:01.260 just because we pretend that he didn't have moral issues. It's not because we pretend like he's some
00:10:07.240 perfect person. Maybe you could seek some understanding and understand the issues, the policies that we
00:10:12.760 actually care about and what we just can't bring ourselves to vote for in a democratic candidate.
00:10:17.780 But there's been none of that. There's been no attempt at reconciliation. There's been no attempt
00:10:22.700 at understanding. It's just, oh, yep, they're all racist. Let's, uh, reprogram them. I think that was
00:10:29.420 AOC's words. Um, and, uh, let us, let's kind of re-educate and let us make sure, or deprogram them
00:10:38.460 rather. Um, and let us make sure that they're no longer believing in Trump's tricks, not understanding
00:10:44.780 that we are human beings with agency and with plenty of understanding of what's going on. But
00:10:50.120 Bruce Springsteen represents that kind of people who thinks that he can call half of the country,
00:10:56.580 terrible, awful bigots who have been tricked. And then a couple months later say that we need to come
00:11:01.500 together and try to use middle America and Christianity in the American flag to do the very
00:11:08.460 thing that he was accusing Donald Trump of doing, which is showing phony patriotism and using, uh,
00:11:16.020 what he thinks is going to attract conservative America to come to the middle, which is some
00:11:21.660 superficial form of Christianity. I mean, he is actually doing the very thing that he accused
00:11:28.700 Republicans and Donald Trump of doing to attract the conservative and the evangelical vote. So
00:11:33.820 that was my problem with the commercial. It was a good commercial. Other than that,
00:11:37.960 why did they pick this guy who literally said that the white house needed to be exercised
00:11:43.260 just a couple of months ago? Um, okay. Now to another, uh, another commercial that I did like.
00:11:50.260 So the Bud Light Seltzer commercial I thought was cute and I liked it. The Bruce Springsteen commercial
00:11:55.120 wanted to like it, didn't end up liking it for the reasons I listed. And then
00:11:58.540 this commercial was probably my favorite commercial. And I'll tell you why, after I play a snippet of
00:12:04.140 it, it is the Toyota Olympic commercial.
00:12:17.740 Mrs. Long? Yes?
00:12:19.740 We found a baby girl for your adoption, but there's some things you need to know.
00:12:25.780 She's in Siberia and she was born with a rare condition.
00:12:28.740 Her legs will need to be amputated. I know this is difficult to hear. Her life, it won't be easy.
00:12:41.660 So I thought that this just sent a very good pro-life message, pro-adoption message. Now I'm sure
00:12:48.920 that that is not the message that the Olympics nor Toyota, uh, were trying to convey. But, um,
00:12:56.300 this woman who didn't have, uh, didn't have full legs, she was adopted by this family and then turned
00:13:04.000 out to be a very successful swimmer. I mean, that represents what the pro-life, what the anti-abortion,
00:13:10.900 if you want to call it that side believes about human life. Uh, not just that we all have the
00:13:17.800 potential to be Olympic swimmers, because that's not where we derive human value from. We don't derive
00:13:23.440 human value from how successful they're going to be. We derive human value from this idea that we
00:13:30.200 all have inherent worth as individuals from the moment of conception. We are not just, um, clumps
00:13:36.600 of cells. We're not just matter. We're not just potential humans, but we are humans and we are
00:13:41.220 people at that time. And we are made in the image of God. We have purpose, but this commercial does show
00:13:48.120 what happens when you choose not to waste a life, when a life is redeemed, when it's pulled up from
00:13:54.160 what seems like a despairing, desperate situation. And someone has given love, someone has given
00:13:59.740 acceptance, someone has given a chance who knows what that person can accomplish. And again, I'm not
00:14:05.060 saying that accomplishment is the reason that we are pro-life and against abortion, but it, it does make
00:14:10.520 you wonder how many babies have been aborted who could have grown up to do something like that,
00:14:16.780 who would have grown up to be an incredible doctor or an incredible researcher or an incredible
00:14:22.760 statesman or Congresswoman or amazing mom or amazing teacher or incredible loyal friend. Who knows
00:14:30.960 how many lives and how many people we have taken out and placed on the altar of convenience. And this is
00:14:37.220 just such a good reminder of what happens when we take a chance on people, when we love people,
00:14:42.920 when we accept people. And, um, when we decide to choose love instead of, instead of fear and man,
00:14:51.720 all of you parents out there who have adopted kids, whether it's here or abroad, whether it's kids with
00:14:57.500 special needs or just a child who needed a home. Thank you so much. Thank you for the example that you
00:15:04.880 set. Thank you for the love that you give. Um, of course, you know, and I hope everyone knows that
00:15:10.760 adopted parents are every bit of a parent is a, as a biological parent is. And there are some people
00:15:16.400 that only have adopted children and some people that have biological and adopted children. There
00:15:20.660 are some parents who are incredible foster parents. And I think that the parent child relationship
00:15:27.360 obviously is such a wonderful depiction of the gospel. When you have a child, for example,
00:15:33.520 like me, like a biological child, you realize the moment they lay that child on your chest,
00:15:39.740 what it means to have sacrificial love in a way that you didn't really understand just when you
00:15:44.960 got married. I mean, yes, you love your spouse so much and you lay your life down for your spouse in
00:15:49.980 a metaphorical sense and for the husband in a spiritual sense. But when they lay that baby on your chest,
00:15:55.360 you feel this tidal wave of overwhelming love. And you realize all in a moment that you
00:16:01.760 would die a thousand deaths if it just meant the wellbeing of that child, all the hopes and the
00:16:08.960 fears that you had for your own life are then transferred onto your child and their happiness
00:16:14.400 and their success and their wellbeing becomes your highest hope and their failure becomes your biggest
00:16:22.360 fear. And it is that amazing, just a rush of sacrificial selfless love, this heartbreaking,
00:16:29.520 gut-wrenching love that you feel for your child that gives you just a snippet into just a small
00:16:36.980 glance into the father's love for us. And also what it must have been like for God to send his only
00:16:45.980 son, the son that he loved so much, his only begotten son, as John 3, 16 says, to die a gruesome
00:16:53.020 death that he didn't have to die on our behalf. Like how hurtful, how hard must that have been for
00:17:00.000 the father? But also how much did he love us, his children, that he would do that, that he would
00:17:05.820 allow that kind of sacrifice. So of course, the parent-child relationship, the biological parent-child
00:17:12.100 relationship is a depiction of the gospel, but so is the adopted child-parent relationship,
00:17:18.480 because we are told that God adopted us as Gentiles, those of us who aren't a part of
00:17:24.380 Israel, who aren't a part of the Jewish people, the original chosen people, we Gentiles have been
00:17:30.900 grafted in. We have been adopted through Jesus Christ to become part of God's family. That is the
00:17:39.020 gospel, that God took us from a place that was far off. He took us from a place of despair when we were
00:17:45.180 dead in our sin, according to Ephesians 2. It made us alive together with Christ. By grace,
00:17:50.440 we have been saved, that chapter says. And that is what adoption looks like. We are now a part of his
00:17:55.720 family. We are now heirs with him. We get to enjoy all of the pleasures and all of the mercies and all
00:18:02.720 of the blessings of being in his home, not because of anything we did, not because we earned it, but
00:18:08.980 because God loves us so much as our father. And for us Gentiles, as our adopted father, we are
00:18:16.440 adoptees. And so every kind of parenthood is such a beautiful depiction of the gospel and God's love
00:18:24.320 for us. And I know that is certainly not what Toyota was after when they were creating this
00:18:29.820 commercial, but it's just a reminder to me the beauty of adoption, the beauty of family, the beauty
00:18:34.940 of parenthood, which we're actually going to talk about in just a little bit too when we get to the next.
00:18:38.980 segment of our podcast. But good job, Toyota. Good job on that commercial. I hope that it resonated
00:18:47.460 with a lot of people. And I hope it just reminds us of the, not just the gospel, but also the
00:18:54.460 importance of our cause, of the pro-life cause, of the anti-abortion cause, to remind people, to show
00:19:00.180 people that adoption is an option and that all life matters because it does, even the smallest life.
00:19:07.560 All right. Into a little bit less serious. Unpopular opinion of mine. I like, I liked the weekend
00:19:17.160 performance. Okay. I know that it wasn't as good as Beyonce. There wasn't as much dancing. It wasn't
00:19:24.380 as good as, uh, what's his name? Bruno Mars. Probably better than Maroon 5, in my opinion. But I, I mean,
00:19:32.920 I'm not like the, the biggest, I don't want to say I'm not a fan of music, but you know, back in the
00:19:38.920 day, back in high school and college, I actually cared about, um, I actually cared about like the
00:19:44.380 latest music and, and things like that. I actually invested time in thinking about what music I wanted
00:19:49.120 to listen to and like curating podcasts and burning CDs back in the day. Um, but I, I obviously don't do
00:19:56.580 any of that anymore. I just listened to Christian music and then whatever comes on, but I actually
00:20:01.900 like the weekend. Like, I think that he has a lot of really good songs. They're just catchy and they're
00:20:08.480 not just catchy. They're, I don't know. They're unique. They're different. I was trying to explain
00:20:12.120 it to my husband last night and, um, I, I couldn't really put into words why I like the weekend and why
00:20:17.620 I think he's so talented because I really do. The bottom line is, is he's not an amazing dynamic
00:20:22.740 performer because he can't dance and that's a problem, but he did a really good job singing
00:20:28.380 live. I mean, in that kind of situation, I think that's very difficult. I thought it was a pretty
00:20:32.720 good show. Um, like I said, I liked the weekend and so I was like glued to the TV during that time
00:20:38.240 and I was actually looking forward to it. I might be some of like one of the only people who thinks
00:20:42.800 that because apparently Twitter didn't like it. I liked it. I thought it was good. Um, I don't really
00:20:48.460 have any comments about the football game itself. You guys don't come to me for football
00:20:52.100 commentary and man, that's good. If the blaze came to me and was like, Allie, we got, we need
00:20:56.840 you to put out some, some more football content. That would be a huge problem because guys, I
00:21:02.820 don't understand football and I'm not just trying to be typical girl. I really wish I did. It's
00:21:10.040 one of those things for me that I, my brain just is like, nope, I don't want to know that. I don't
00:21:17.060 want to know that I've, I get it generally. Obviously I know what's going on generally,
00:21:22.080 generally, I get what they're trying to do. But every time I ask a question to my husband
00:21:26.880 of like, okay, what is this? What does it mean when they say this? What are they trying
00:21:30.520 to do here? Why is that good? My brain, it's just like, nope, I know you just asked this
00:21:35.140 question, but I'm not going to take in the answer. I don't know why my brain does that.
00:21:38.340 It's the same thing with, it's the same thing with certain, certain aspects of math, not all
00:21:43.140 math, but math was just not my subject of expertise growing up. And my parents would always
00:21:47.820 say, stop saying you're bad at math. You're just, you're just saying that and it's coming
00:21:52.720 true. And I'm like, I don't know how to explain this to you, but my brain shuts off when I try to
00:21:59.000 do a math problem, like a word problem, something beyond like algebra two, because leading up to
00:22:04.640 that is okay. But anything more complicated than that, my brain just shuts off. And it's the same
00:22:10.000 thing with football. So I'm not going to give you any commentary whatsoever on the football game.
00:22:15.280 Thank goodness you guys don't come to me for that. But I mean, I just think about Tom Brady
00:22:20.440 and I know this is not original commentary. I know, but how, like, I don't think that he's an
00:22:26.960 arrogant person, but how arrogant do you have to be to say, okay, I was with this team for a very long
00:22:32.600 period of time. The Patriots, who didn't even make the playoffs this time now that I don't play with
00:22:37.480 them. And then this team, the, the Buccaneers, I, or do people just call them the Bucs? I don't
00:22:42.680 know who were kind of mediocre. Like they weren't that good. Now I'm on this team and now they won
00:22:49.520 the Superbowl. It really is just me. Like maybe before when he was playing for the Patriots, he
00:22:54.340 could just say, okay, you know, it's not just me as the franchise is the whole team in general,
00:22:58.260 but then he leaves and they do bad. And he goes to another team that was doing bad and they're doing
00:23:02.160 good. Like, it'd be really hard not to just like go home and be like, yeah, you know what? I am
00:23:06.240 the greatest of all time. It'd be really hard. I think for him to keep his humility, but you know,
00:23:12.220 I like Tom Brady. I know people love to hate Tom Brady. I think people love to hate excellence,
00:23:17.820 but being 43 years old and working as hard as he does, he also seems like a genuinely good person.
00:23:23.120 Like the stories that I hear about him of how he really treats his fellow team members, like their
00:23:28.760 family and how he really takes them in and seems to love them well and encourage people. Well,
00:23:34.340 I think that speaks to a level of confidence that a lot of really good athletes, it seems
00:23:38.920 like just, they just don't have. And I think it's not just that he's a good player. It seems
00:23:43.480 like, and this is what I've talked about with my husband because I asked my husband about this
00:23:47.280 kind of stuff. And he said, it's also just his leadership abilities. Like some people are
00:23:51.740 just really good leaders. They know how to make a team work together toward a goal. And we should
00:23:56.740 all aspire to that. We should all want to be that kind of leader that people want to follow
00:24:00.880 that kind of person that people are like, you know what? I, I trust you. And it's not necessarily,
00:24:06.400 I know that he's also a really good football player. I understand that, but I don't think
00:24:10.080 it's necessarily be just because of that. I think that there is something else that maybe can't even
00:24:15.980 be taught that he has that makes him such an important leader on a team. Um, speaking of leaders
00:24:24.700 leaders and bad leaders, um, and people who are very different than Tom Brady, uh, people were
00:24:32.440 also talking about Colin Kaepernick on Twitter, Mariah Carey, her tweet went viral. She said that
00:24:37.980 it's, I guess the day after the Superbowl today, or I don't know, maybe she tweeted it yesterday that
00:24:42.920 it's Colin Kaepernick appreciation day. I don't really understand why, again, not a football expert,
00:24:50.460 but from what a lot of you guys tell me, from what I've heard from people who do understand football
00:24:55.300 is that he wasn't very good. Like I, I, maybe he, I'm sure he was good. And I know that there's some
00:25:02.280 like debate over that, but apparently he wasn't very good. And there are a lot of people on the
00:25:07.320 left who hail him as a hero for kneeling for the national anthem. And I will credit him with saying
00:25:12.100 that he did kind of start a movement that people weren't really kneeling or doing the kind of what I
00:25:18.300 call performative activism that he was doing, uh, before that. And apparently he does actual
00:25:23.940 substantive activism too, with the causes that he believes in. But I don't, I still don't understand
00:25:29.540 why he is hailed as a hero. I mean, he wore socks with cops depicted as pigs on them. He, um,
00:25:39.540 you know, acts like he has been victimized. Like he has, um, been wronged by these different
00:25:46.260 organizations, including the NFL. Like he has just had such a rough go of it because of,
00:25:51.400 you know, deciding to, to speak out when in fact, he's made millions and millions of dollars as a
00:25:58.400 spokesperson for Nike. Like when it comes down to it, he really hasn't sacrificed. Like I guarantee you,
00:26:03.900 he makes more money doing what he does now than he would have probably being a third string
00:26:09.520 quarterback. Again, you can correct me if I'm wrong. Those of you who know more about football than I do,
00:26:13.460 but, um, I mean, he's probably has more notoriety and is more famous and has more of a platform and
00:26:22.100 more influence and more money now than he ever would have if he had just, you know, stood for
00:26:28.220 the national anthem and continued to play football or if the NFL had tolerated what he was doing and
00:26:33.980 continue to give him a spot. But I mean, he, I, you probably remember that whole like tryout thing
00:26:39.960 from a couple of years ago, or maybe it was last year where he had like his own camera crew come
00:26:45.800 and like film him try out for certain teams and he didn't make the cut. I don't really know,
00:26:52.100 but the fascination and the idolatry surrounding this person, um, because of, because of things that
00:27:00.920 I just don't fully understand. Again, I'm not, I'm not saying that he didn't do anything. I understand
00:27:05.620 that he kneeled when no one else was kneeling. He raised awareness about a subject that of course,
00:27:09.900 a lot of people care about, but the way he went about it and how he has reacted since then and
00:27:15.460 how he has been rewarded since then, it just doesn't speak to this guy who has been so victimized that
00:27:21.280 we need to put on a pedestal and say that this is calling Kaepernick Appreciation Day. And he doesn't
00:27:26.040 have the same kind of characteristics of leadership. I don't think it doesn't seem like at all is some
00:27:31.080 of the most successful players do. Um, let's not pretend like he would have ever reached the level
00:27:37.720 of success of someone like Tom Brady talent wise, or just leadership wise. That's fine. You can
00:27:43.000 appreciate him. You like his politics. You like what he stands for. I just think the level of worship
00:27:48.480 of calling Kaepernick is very strange. It's a, it's, it's very, very strange. Okay. A couple more
00:27:54.480 things. There were some tweets that I thought were, uh, were kind of funny. And then we'll get into,
00:28:00.480 uh, the last 15 or so minutes of, of the podcast. Uh, probably, probably longer than that. We'll see.
00:28:07.680 Um, all right. So here's some funny tweets. This is a little, it's a little inappropriate,
00:28:13.420 but as I was saying, like the Superbowl commercials today are like, they can be so
00:28:18.660 virtue signally and like, no one's allowed to laugh at some of these commercials and they're just
00:28:23.200 so insufferable. Some of them. Um, and this person, I don't even know who he is. Mark, a G
00:28:30.240 someone on my timeline retweeted him. It said Superbowl commercial in 2021. Racism is a disease
00:28:36.540 of the soul. We at Arby's can do better. Superbowl commercial 1990s. Twins are hot because there's
00:28:42.280 two of them. I thought that was so funny and such, such a true contrast to where we used to be just
00:28:50.200 like not having to take everything seriously and to where we are now. These companies that we really
00:28:56.620 don't care what they think about these social justice issues. Like we don't care what Arby's
00:29:01.040 or Cheez-Its or whatever, what they think about politics. We've just want them to tell us about
00:29:06.740 like what food they offer. And we want them to make us laugh because they're not supposed to be a
00:29:11.220 serious, a serious company. Now they're taking these activist stances and it just seems so silly
00:29:17.400 in contrast with the, with the brand that they have. Um, and SNL actually parody, parody this as
00:29:25.220 well in a video. And I thought that it was funny. Um, there was this also, there was a Washington
00:29:30.620 post article that said the Buccaneers embody Tampa's love of pirates. Is that a problem?
00:29:36.820 And then it goes on to say how it's like politically incorrect to, I don't know, glorify piracy.
00:29:42.160 I'm not really sure the argument, but I thought Matt Walsh's response to it was funny. This is a
00:29:46.900 good point. I know many people who spent years swashbuckling on the high seas because of the way
00:29:52.380 piracy was normalized by professional sports teams. Very true. We all, we all know a swashbuckler who
00:29:58.960 said, you know what, if, if Tom Brady is going to normalize and glorify pirates, I'm going to go out
00:30:05.720 and get an eye patch. And I also am going to become a pirate on the high seas of the, of the coast of
00:30:13.720 Florida. Um, Dan rather posted this. He didn't mean for this to be funny, but I had a good chuckle.
00:30:19.180 Um, is it responsible having commercials showing people gathering in large groups without masks?
00:30:24.960 Well, I, I don't know, Dan rather, was it responsible for Doritos to imply that they could
00:30:29.380 take Matthew McConaughey from being 2d to 3d just by eating their chips? Was that responsible?
00:30:34.520 People might actually think that they are able to make flat Stanley into a real person. If they just
00:30:41.120 feed their flat Stanley 3d, uh, Doritos chips. Yes. I think it's highly responsible because it's a
00:30:48.900 fictional depiction. And by the way, at one point, like we're not going to wear masks anymore. That's,
00:30:56.220 I think that it would drive so many people insane. If even their forms of escapism,
00:31:02.620 like commercials and TV shows, if they all showed the dystopian reality that we're living in with
00:31:09.740 everyone wearing six masks and face shields while they're walking their dog, as Jill Biden recommended
00:31:15.920 that we do on Twitter. She said that we need to wear a mask even when we're outside walking or talk,
00:31:20.660 but this is the fall of the science administration. But Dan rather, because he cannot have fun. He's
00:31:27.760 actually allergic to fun and he's allergic to laughing and he's allergic to entertainment.
00:31:33.740 He has said that it is irresponsible for commercials, which are fiction, by the way. I don't know if you
00:31:40.620 guys see that. It's actually, it's not real. It's not, it's not happening. That it's irresponsible for
00:31:44.900 people to, um, to show large gatherings without masks. Oh goodness gracious. This virus has become a
00:31:53.080 disease of the mind for some people, a disease of the mind. All right. That's all of my, um,
00:31:59.980 very profound commentary on the, on the Superbowl. We kind of went, we kind of went a lot of different
00:32:06.720 places in those, in those past 30 minutes. I mean, we talked gospel, we talked adoption,
00:32:11.580 we talked anti-abortion, we talked Doritos. We went a lot of different places. Um, and now we're
00:32:18.860 going to switch gears entirely for the last portion of the podcast. All right. I want to
00:32:28.840 talk about this idea that I've been thinking about recently, and we might not be able to spend as much
00:32:33.360 time on it as I, as I want to, so that this podcast isn't an hour and a half long, but something I was
00:32:39.080 thinking about, and this kind of relates back to what we were talking about, about the importance of
00:32:43.480 the family, but just scrolling through Twitter over the weekend. And I saw a few different threads
00:32:49.300 about how children are suffering, um, through the COVID restrictions, not through COVID because most
00:32:56.580 children aren't suffering from COVID. Most young people aren't suffering from COVID. And if they do
00:33:01.100 get COVID, most young people, um, it's, it's a cold to them. Yes, there have been children who die.
00:33:07.460 Yes, there have, um, been rare instances of serious illness and hospitalization. I'm not discounting
00:33:13.060 that. I'm not minimizing that, but the vast majority of young people, um, are very minimally
00:33:19.140 affected by the virus. And so when I say that they've been affected by COVID, what I mean by that
00:33:23.820 is they've been really affected by the lockdowns. They've been really affected by the school closures
00:33:28.420 or the remote learning, or even just the lack of normalcy in their everyday lives. It's affected
00:33:33.360 the young minds and the psychological state of a lot of young people. And I started to think about
00:33:40.360 how children really the most vulnerable in general, but I would say in particular, children
00:33:45.560 are, are always the subject of progressive social experiments. And the reason why I say progressive
00:33:53.600 social experiments is because I would say conservatives just by nature, by definition,
00:33:57.840 don't experiment with, um, you know, social engineering, because, uh, we tend to believe that
00:34:06.400 we have like a teleological view of nature. Christians do that nature tells us something
00:34:11.740 about how society should be formed and how society should function. And we believe that when you go
00:34:17.280 out of that original teleological design of nature, that things tend to devolve and get worse.
00:34:23.320 Whereas progressives think something different. They think that's in the nature versus nurture
00:34:27.660 debate when it comes to how human beings are and how we should function, that it is almost all
00:34:34.220 nurture that there can be this kind of third party social engineer that, um, creates societies,
00:34:41.440 how they, how they want them to be created. So they think that human beings are able to adapt
00:34:47.280 to everything. Now, I would say the 20th century, when you look at communism and socialism and fascism,
00:34:53.040 trying to take root and then failing to be able to create any kind of surviving or thriving society,
00:34:59.560 and instead, uh, producing lots of suffering. I think that it goes against this kind of progressive,
00:35:06.140 uh, leftist notion of being able to construct society however you want to. And, uh, human
00:35:14.060 beings are just going to adapt to that. It just doesn't happen. Communism and socialism are outside
00:35:18.120 of human nature. They, they cause suffering because of that. This idea of personal and private property,
00:35:24.320 it's a part of human nature, this idea of earning a profit to be able to provide for yourself and to
00:35:29.700 provide for your family. It's part of human nature. You know how I know that not just because I, I think
00:35:35.160 that the Bible speaks to that because, uh, the laws that God created for Israel speak to that and speak
00:35:41.220 to human nature, the moral laws anyway, but also I've talked about this before. If you look at a place
00:35:46.680 like North Korea where capitalism is so adamantly propagandized against and communism is seen as,
00:35:54.380 um, as not just the picture of perfection, but the savior of North Korea and the savior of all
00:35:59.380 people, even while they're starving, what people resort to and have resorted to, it's been reported
00:36:04.580 in North Korea are these black markets, these capitalist markets where they buy and sell, they,
00:36:11.440 they trade food, they smuggle the food from China and then they trade it in these markets. And so
00:36:16.900 without having any knowledge at all of supply and demand, without having any training in
00:36:21.080 entrepreneurship, without having any affection whatsoever, uh, towards capitalism, people
00:36:27.780 naturally understand what it means, what supply and demand means, what it means to provide for your
00:36:33.440 family, what it means to make a profit, what it means to buy something, this kind of top-down
00:36:37.620 approach of the government is going to take care of you. It just goes against human nature.
00:36:41.440 And of course it goes against human nature in another way in that power corrupts and absolute
00:36:45.800 power corrupts. Absolutely. The more centralized and the bigger government power is, the more
00:36:51.000 corrupt it becomes. And we elect these bureaucrats on the basis of them taking care of people. But
00:36:56.640 then once they centralize and once they expand all of the power, they never, ever, ever deliver
00:37:03.340 the promises, uh, deliver on the promises that, um, got them elected. So that is, in my opinion,
00:37:10.660 I mean, that's a huge reason why I'm a conservative because this kind of progressive idea of, uh,
00:37:17.900 bureaucrats know better and they're able to kind of engineer society, how they see fit in a way that
00:37:24.040 fits their definitions of equity and fairness. It just doesn't work. It leads to corruption. It leads
00:37:28.740 to human suffering. Um, and I would say socialism and communism, all forms of totalitarianism,
00:37:36.800 collectivism, I would say fascism is included in that for the past 100 years shows that that social
00:37:42.700 experiment has failed. And yet we see over and over again, Marx is trying to revive those failed
00:37:49.220 philosophies, but it's not just in socialism and communism that we see these failed progressive
00:37:54.560 social experiments that I think predominantly end up affecting children who just can't defend
00:38:00.280 themselves, who are in so many of these cases, when these totalitarian regimes take over, they're
00:38:05.940 taken out of their homes. They're brainwashed. We see this of course, in 1984, we saw this in
00:38:11.640 Pol Pot's Cambodia. We saw this in Nazi Germany. We saw this in Mao's China, these children taken out
00:38:16.540 of their homes. They're indoctrinated to hate their parents, to hate the certain parts of the culture,
00:38:21.900 society, or history that the government wants them to hate. Um, they start thinking in the way that
00:38:28.260 the government wants them to think and they become these little spies. They become these little
00:38:31.940 soldiers, these little ideologues that are vessels for whatever government propaganda and government
00:38:37.600 purposes that these totalitarians want them to have. We've seen that throughout the 20th century.
00:38:42.820 So once again, I think children in those cases, um, and of course the elderly, the disabled,
00:38:48.460 those that society deems not as valuable, they always are the main victims of that.
00:38:53.240 But it's not just in that great sense of socialism and communism and progressivism in general.
00:38:58.980 It's also in the smaller, uh, the smaller ways that I think that even as conservatives, we kind of,
00:39:05.620 we kind of ignore because we see these as social issues. And I think even as conservatives,
00:39:11.360 we don't think about how social experiments, progressive social experiments affect kids. So we've already
00:39:18.120 talked about COVID and how the COVID restrictions are unfortunately, um, affecting children, how kids
00:39:25.080 are struggling with mental health. The hospitalization rate for kids as young as five, uh, with suicidal
00:39:31.520 thoughts and mental health issues has risen over the past year. Uh, kids, uh, their rates of depression,
00:39:38.060 their rates of anxiety, their rates of suicidal thoughts are all up. Um, unfortunately, this is
00:39:45.440 something that is going to be very difficult for parents to rectify when a child slides into depression
00:39:51.200 or when they, they, um, start to be tempted with those suicidal thoughts. It can be very difficult
00:39:56.360 to take a child out of that. I mean, we're talking about irreversible in some cases, irrevocable
00:40:01.300 damage that we are doing to children because they aren't allowed to have friendships like they're used
00:40:07.840 to having friendships. They're not used to being in a classroom and, and, um, having the kind of
00:40:13.800 social life that they're used to or having the kind of organization and predictability in their day
00:40:18.620 that they're used to, especially kids with special needs are suffering from that kind of thing. Um,
00:40:23.800 just to the normalcy and the routine of everyday life is gone for most of these kids and they are
00:40:30.120 suffering mentally. They're suffering psychologically. We are seeing kids killing themselves at almost
00:40:35.160 unprecedented rates in the past year because their normal way of life has just been swept
00:40:40.120 out from under them. And not for a second are these teachers unions who are refusing to teach
00:40:44.520 their classes, thinking about that. Because as I've talked about many times, teachers unions don't
00:40:48.760 care. They don't care about the students. They care about power and, uh, they don't even care about
00:40:54.560 their teachers. They care about power and all of the leaders that are kowtowing to the teachers
00:40:59.000 unions, refusing to allow the schools to open. They are exacerbating and they are,
00:41:05.160 uh, worsening this issue of children. We're talking little children suffering from suicidal
00:41:11.800 thoughts and mental health issues, not to mention all the education that's going to have been lost,
00:41:17.640 all the progress that's going to have been lost. And not to mention the kids who are already dealing
00:41:22.480 with domestic abuse situations now being made vulnerable for multiple hours, hours on end in a day,
00:41:29.000 um, to further abuse at the hands of either their parent or their uncle or their brother,
00:41:35.000 or whatever it is. We've also unfortunately seen the rates of child abuse and hospitalization
00:41:40.280 from child abuse, uh, go up in this past year. So children, once again, because they don't have the
00:41:47.380 power and they don't have the choice, they don't have the physical ability. They don't have the
00:41:51.480 mental ability to be independent and to, uh, you know, make some of their own choices. They are
00:41:57.080 at the mercy of the state. They are at the mercy, unfortunately, of these restrictions and regulations,
00:42:04.040 and they just don't have the ability to be able to process all of it. And I'm just afraid we're losing
00:42:09.480 an entire generation of kids. So this is yet another way that progressive social experiments,
00:42:15.000 that progressivism, in my opinion, just gets human nature wrong because it says, you know, people are
00:42:20.120 going to be able to adapt. And it's also this, it's also this misunderstanding of the human person
00:42:26.120 that in general, progressivism, because whether you identify as a Christian progressive or not,
00:42:31.480 what you may not understand is that progressivism is a secular worldview. It's a secular ideology.
00:42:36.560 It's a materialist ideology that sees human beings as just clumps of matter that again,
00:42:42.120 can be molded and are made malleable. However, uh, the people in charge want them to be made.
00:42:47.120 The reality is what we know as Christians, uh, is that we are whole people, that we are souls,
00:42:52.800 that we are hearts, that we are minds, um, that we have needs other than the physical.
00:42:57.940 So it's not always most important to just protect kids from a virus with a 99.9% survival rate.
00:43:04.960 That's not your highest priority when you're raising kids or you're thinking about education
00:43:09.160 or when you're thinking about the wellbeing of an entire generation, you have to think about their
00:43:13.280 mind. You have to think about their hearts. You have to think about their souls.
00:43:15.920 You have to think about all of the other needs that human beings need as people made in the image
00:43:21.800 of God. We are whole people and we are not meeting the needs of an entire generation. Now look,
00:43:26.820 as a conservative and someone who is generally against the public school system, because I don't
00:43:32.460 think that, I don't think that it's good. I'm not saying that all private schools are good. I'm not
00:43:37.580 saying that all charter schools are good. I just think that parents should be able to have a choice
00:43:41.620 if the public school in your area isn't working for you. I think it's better for Christian parents
00:43:45.960 to pull your kids out of public school, uh, to send them to a place where you at least have a
00:43:50.280 little bit more control and more say, uh, over the curriculum that they're learning. Unfortunately,
00:43:55.420 I think a lot of public education wants to make kids mindless activists rather than critical thinkers
00:44:00.700 with, um, a wide breadth of knowledge and understanding of, of a variety of subjects.
00:44:06.160 And so I of course think it's better for parents to homeschool for parents to send their kids to
00:44:11.160 some kind of classical Christian education, um, or to, uh, even a charter school, you have a little
00:44:17.460 more say in kind of how your child learns and what your child's, um, the kind of environment that your
00:44:24.820 child is, is in and what they are being indoctrinated with. But at the same time, I understand that's not
00:44:30.060 an option for everyone. And for the people that it's not an option for, I want them to be able to
00:44:34.180 go to school for all the reasons that we just listed. So this is another example, I think of
00:44:39.660 kids being the unfortunate, the unwilling subjects of progressive social experiments and suffering the
00:44:46.180 costs of it. Um, the other one that, uh, is very scandalous. I would say that even conservatives or
00:44:55.920 just people who, you know, identify as Republicans don't want to talk about. And I understand why,
00:45:01.220 because it is, um, very controversial, but I think the redefinition of the family is another way that
00:45:08.100 we are just saying, eh, kids are just going to be the subject of our social experiment. And we're
00:45:12.720 just going to kind of hope for the best. I mean, for all of human history, for all of human history,
00:45:18.200 uh, we have had a mom and a dad and a kid. So like the natural family has been the family that it was
00:45:26.820 supposed to be this way. It wasn't even a question. The idea of men and women being arbitrary categories
00:45:32.720 without any definition or without any implication of what their responsibilities would be was totally
00:45:38.400 foreign as a means of survival. Uh, men did what men's bodies do best, which is hunt and fight. Women
00:45:44.380 did what women, women's bodies do best, which is birth babies, raise children, create, nurture,
00:45:50.100 nourish, and beautify. Um, and yes, we don't have those exact survival needs in the United States.
00:45:56.540 Of course, uh, today we don't have the same demands as hunter-gatherers, but that doesn't mean that men
00:46:02.840 and women, um, are, are interchangeable. That doesn't mean that we're arbitrary. We are still different
00:46:09.300 down to our DNA. Our bodies are still different. Our physiology is still different. Our psychology is still
00:46:15.000 different. Our, our minds are different. How we function, how we think, what we want is
00:46:19.860 different. That doesn't mean that all men fit into one neat category or one neat stereotype and neither
00:46:25.520 do women, but physiologically, biologically, we are still men and women with certain functions. We offer
00:46:32.740 different things to society. We offer different things to family. And for us to say over just the
00:46:38.700 past few years that, Oh, actually those things don't matter that the natural family, which again,
00:46:44.680 for all of human existence for millennia has been, has been necessarily been a mom and a dad and kids,
00:46:52.600 we're just going to rearrange that because we've become too progressive for human nature. We've
00:46:57.640 become too progressive for science. We're going to rearrange that. We're not even going to ask the
00:47:02.520 question whether or not this has a consequence on kids. Like we're not even going to let ourselves
00:47:07.840 wonder, is there some purpose outside of biology or in addition to biology that kids would need a mom
00:47:14.500 and a dad? Like, is there something unique that moms offer? Is there something unique that fathers
00:47:21.680 offer that when we take at least one of those things away, there may be unintended bad consequences
00:47:28.100 on kids? Like we didn't even ask that. We just blew right past, Hey, how would this affect kids?
00:47:34.200 Like, are we even asking the question what happens when, for example, um, we have a child
00:47:40.960 whose biological mother, like the egg that that child came from is one woman. And then another
00:47:48.400 woman actually gestates the child has the child grow in her womb. And then that child is taken from
00:47:55.820 the mother whose womb he has been a part of for the last nine months and then given to two other
00:48:01.560 people. Like, are we even going to ask if there's any effect on that child whatsoever for that to be
00:48:09.160 how he or she was created? Like we haven't even asked that question. We've just thought, well, it's
00:48:14.000 possible. It's scientifically possible for us to manipulate the natural order this way. And so let's
00:48:20.140 just do it. Why not? Without even wondering, without even asking, Hey, is it better for kids to have a mom
00:48:28.700 and a dad? Does science tell us anything? Like does human history tell us anything? The hubris
00:48:33.820 that human beings have in the 21st century to say, you know what human history, how human beings
00:48:40.420 naturally function, that doesn't have any effect whatsoever on what is actually good and right and
00:48:47.260 true. And what is actually beneficial for kids who, by the way, are future adults, which means they
00:48:51.780 make up society. Like, I don't even think that we wondered about that because we didn't want to
00:48:56.640 because we want to quote social progress because science and technology allowed us to do something
00:49:02.300 to manipulate nature in a way that fit into what we saw as human progress, progressive social
00:49:09.000 experiments. So we just said, whatever, whatever, like we're not even going to think about how
00:49:15.460 fatherlessness has an effect on kids. I mean, we know that to be true. We know that, uh, when kids
00:49:23.340 don't have a dad, there are higher rates of, uh, there are higher rates of depression. There are
00:49:28.640 higher rates of suicide. There are higher rates of teen delinquency, teen pregnancy. There are higher
00:49:33.840 rates of eating disorders in girls when they don't have a dad. Um, we know that they are higher rates
00:49:39.800 or higher chance of poverty, a lower rate of high school graduation when you don't have a dad. And this
00:49:46.340 is particularly true. Um, not when, for example, the dad dies, but say the dad walks out to that kind
00:49:54.600 of rejection or never having known your dad that has a serious psychological wellbeing effect on a
00:50:02.600 child. And we also know that the mother is the biggest influence on a child's life. Like that
00:50:08.240 nurturer, that giver of life, whether you're an adoptive parent or a biological parent, like that
00:50:14.160 has a real effect on how that child is raised, their self-confidence, what they think about
00:50:20.260 their themselves and what they're actually able to do. But we just throw all that out the window
00:50:26.380 for progressive social experiments. And I don't even think conservatives are willing to take a step
00:50:30.640 back and ask, hang on, is this right? Remember human beings or, um, Christians, we believe that human
00:50:38.280 beings, uh, are teleological. Like I've talked about this before. Christians, the Christian ethic,
00:50:44.040 has a teleological view of nature. So we believe that everything created has a particular purpose.
00:50:48.700 We believe as most people do that a wing on a bird has a purpose. Its purpose is to fly in most cases,
00:50:55.640 not all birds can fly, but in most cases, um, it is, that's, that is its purpose. It serves a
00:51:02.200 particular function. And in it goes, if it goes out of that function, if it tries to do something that
00:51:07.060 is not in alignment with what it has been purposed to do, it doesn't function well. Um, now most people
00:51:13.140 agree with that. Most people see that, but they don't want to apply that to human beings because
00:51:16.940 they want, quote, social progress. So if I say, okay, a bird has a particular function, it can't do the
00:51:22.760 same thing that an elephant can. It can't do the same thing that an ant can. Well, human beings are the
00:51:27.600 same way. Like our bodies and every single part of our bodies have a particular function. And when they're
00:51:32.660 taken out of that biological function, and when they're taken out of what they are naturally made to do,
00:51:37.720 then we are going to suffer. Then society is going to suffer. People don't like that teleological view
00:51:44.080 of nature that includes human nature, that includes human beings, because it gets in the way of how we
00:51:51.080 want to view the world is constantly evolving according to these arbitrary progressive social
00:51:56.720 standards. But the people who are suffering from that are always going to be the people who don't have
00:52:01.020 a say. And that is kids. And I just think that we should care about that. I think that we should at
00:52:06.580 least be asking the questions about that. I think that we should be wondering. The same thing goes with
00:52:12.260 this whole gender identity movement with young girls. How we are basically saying, even the American
00:52:19.800 Academy of Pediatrics is saying, oh yeah, you know, if a girl wants to transition into a boy, which of
00:52:29.240 course we know that is something that can't actually happen, then she should be given cross-sex
00:52:34.060 hormones. When she's 11, 12 years old, and when she's 15 years old or however old, she should be
00:52:40.360 able to get a double mastectomy, where healthy breasts are removed because it is supposedly causing
00:52:49.480 some kind of gender dysphoria. The reality is that gender dysphoria is a real disorder, but it is very
00:52:55.260 rare. It is far more rare than the rate that we are seeing among young girls. You should read
00:52:59.540 Abigail Schreier's Irreversible Damage. I've had her on before. She talks about how it's become this
00:53:10.060 social contagion among young girls in the same way that anorexia is sometimes a social contagion,
00:53:15.640 sometimes cutting is a social contagion. Now this idea of wanting to identify as a different
00:53:20.840 group to kind of co-suffer and co-otherize with other girls is just another form of that.
00:53:28.200 And that also is very scandalous to say, and that is the exact reason that the American Academy of
00:53:33.500 Pediatrics and most psychologists won't actually, again, ask questions of how is this affecting this
00:53:39.160 girl long-term? What happens if she regrets it? What happens if she's sterile for the rest of her life?
00:53:43.840 What happens if this discomfort that she says that she's suddenly feeling actually abates,
00:53:49.700 and then she realizes that, oh my gosh, I have completely changed my body for the sake of something
00:53:55.680 that I felt when I was 13, 12 years before my frontal lobe had even fully developed. And now
00:54:00.900 I don't know what to do with myself. That dysphoria is not actually going to be satisfied. It's not
00:54:06.300 actually going to be satiated by surgery in those cases, in most of these cases. And we're not asking
00:54:14.200 ourselves, what does it do to a child when we say to a little girl who says, you know what, I really like
00:54:19.440 cars, I like dirt, and I don't want to wear dresses. What does that do to her when we say, well,
00:54:24.320 that means that your body is wrong. That means that you're actually a boy. Like, what are we doing
00:54:30.220 to our kids in the name of progress? How is that progress? That's abuse. That's abuse. The fact of
00:54:36.120 the matter is, is that most people who care about, um, most people who want to, without even thinking,
00:54:44.460 push these progressive causes, do not care whatsoever about how this may negatively affect kids.
00:54:50.980 Because again, they have a different view of human nature. They think everyone and everything
00:54:55.800 should just be able to adapt according to what the progressive social engineers think they should
00:55:01.560 be adapting to. The fact of the matter is, is that we do have a human nature, that God did create us a
00:55:06.700 particular way, that we, our bodies are made how they are supposed to be made. And yes, there is a very
00:55:12.500 rare disorder in which someone's brain makes them very uncomfortable in the body they were born with,
00:55:17.920 but it is rare. And it is not the reason for us to wholesale accept this ridiculous idea that men
00:55:26.120 and women and families are just arbitrary, that we're all interchangeable. Again, the people who
00:55:31.340 suffer most from this are these kids who are going to be gender confused, who are going to be
00:55:36.740 psychologically tortured, who are going to be sexually messed up by such a young age. Another
00:55:41.920 social experiment that we see is this radical K through 12 sexual education that we're seeing in
00:55:48.300 schools that teach young kids, young kids about things like masturbation and gender fluidity and
00:55:53.980 two spirit and all of these things that kids are just not able at a young age to be able to learn and
00:56:00.640 understand. And even if they were, it is not the state's job. It's not the job of the public school
00:56:06.240 to teach kids this. It's not the job of the private school to teach kids this. And I saw a quote by
00:56:11.260 Thomas Sowell the other day is that it does not take 12 to 13 years to teach a child how sex works.
00:56:18.400 Like that biological function has been around for a very long time without sex education. Now,
00:56:24.380 I understand that trying to create a healthy culture and a healthy mentality around sex and consent
00:56:31.500 and all of that is very important. I still think that the person with that job is the parent. I
00:56:38.280 understand that sometimes parents are absent. And so you want to teach good things to kids about sex
00:56:44.020 and about their bodies, but that's not what they're learning from progressive sexual education. It's
00:56:48.780 actually that your body is very arbitrary, that you can do whatever you want with your body as long as
00:56:54.700 you have autonomy, as long as you have control, as long as you give consent, whatever you do, however you
00:57:00.460 want to identify whatever sex you want to have at whatever age is totally fine. That's not healthy.
00:57:06.820 That's not going to create a healthy generation of functioning adults that cares about family and
00:57:13.420 that cares about all the things that make society survive and thrive. No way. No way. But it's not
00:57:19.980 about that. It's not about that. The reason why there is radical sex education being pushed on kids
00:57:25.940 ages, ages, kindergarten, grades, kindergarten through 12th grade is because it's about a holistic
00:57:31.500 ideology. It's about an ideology. It's about progressivism that is actually very regressive
00:57:38.380 in every sense of the word. And you as a parent, you as a parent have the responsibility not to shield
00:57:46.580 your kid from everything. I don't think that that's our responsibility, but it is to be the filter
00:57:52.780 through which these ideas come through. Um, or I, I used one too many prepositions there. You are the
00:58:00.540 filter through which these ideas come. You are the one that teaches your child about the body that God
00:58:08.700 gave them. Um, and you help them rejoice in that and thank God for that. And you remind them that God
00:58:14.980 made the male and female. And he said, it was very good that their body is very good, that it was made
00:58:20.220 with a particular purpose that God loves them, loves their body, cares about their body. The
00:58:24.580 Christian ethic doesn't just throw away. The body is something that it's not important. No,
00:58:28.680 it says that our bodies as Christians are dwelling places for the Holy Spirit that were made in God's
00:58:33.060 image. As Christians, we believe that the body matters. We believe also that the whole person
00:58:37.340 matters. That's why the Christian worldview is so beautiful. In addition to, of course,
00:58:42.600 sin and salvation and, and reconciliation and redemption and ultimate victory by, by Christ.
00:58:48.180 Christ. Also, it has a beautiful understanding of a holistic human nature, a teleological human
00:58:55.080 nature that has a purpose that is cared for, um, in all its different aspects by the God who created
00:59:02.400 that includes our bodies, that includes our minds, that includes our souls, that includes our hearts.
00:59:07.340 And that is what we have the responsibility to teach our children. It is not to say, Hey, you just decide
00:59:13.320 whatever you want to decide in these areas, figure it out. You identify however you want to identify
00:59:19.220 when you're five years old and you don't even know if you want a hamburger or a hot dog, and you don't
00:59:25.560 even know how to tie your own shoes. Like that is a form of abuse. Our, our job, our responsibility is
00:59:33.420 to steward the gift that God gave us in children, to train them up in the way that they should go,
00:59:39.720 to love them well, to help them rejoice over who they are and how God created them to create,
00:59:45.480 um, an environment in which they can survive and thrive. And for us to think about kids when we're
00:59:50.580 thinking about the policies that we care about, when we think about the issues at hand, when we think
00:59:56.600 about human nature and the purpose and the care with which God created all of us. Uh, Psalm 127,
01:00:03.000 three through five, behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of a womb of the womb,
01:00:06.980 a reward, like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man
01:00:11.520 who fills his quiver with them. That is the kind of language you see surrounding children in the Bible,
01:00:17.700 that they are fearfully and wonderfully made. Christ in Luke 18 invites the infants, invites the children
01:00:24.240 to come to him. Proverbs 22, 6 tells that we train up the child in the way that we should go.
01:00:29.080 Every single depiction of children in the Bible views them as blessings, as gifts to steward,
01:00:34.940 as people to protect, as children to discipline and train in a loving way that is godly, that is
01:00:42.100 compassionate, that is kind, that shows them the goodness of the God who created them. They're not
01:00:47.900 just social experiments because people aren't just material objects. Vulnerable people aren't just,
01:00:53.560 uh, at the mercy of society to do with what we will. That's why we're against abortion. That's why
01:00:59.000 we're against, uh, euthanasia for the elderly or even for the terminally ill. We are for the
01:01:04.600 preservation of life and we are for the care of children. Children are never in the Bible depicted
01:01:10.800 as an inconvenience. They're never depicted as these, uh, things that we should put off until
01:01:15.980 we've traveled enough or until we have accomplished all that we want to in our career. They are people
01:01:22.180 to love, to take care of, to steward, to send as arrows into the future. As Psalm 127 says,
01:01:29.820 uh, the arrows I'm afraid that we are sending into the future in the form of children are very confused
01:01:37.300 and are very fragile and are unable to, um, understand themselves or under understand the
01:01:46.960 family, understand the world, understand morality in a way that makes sense because a lot of parents
01:01:53.420 and teachers have abdicated that responsibility and have accepted this postmodern progressive
01:01:58.140 nonsense, which says truth and biology and all of these things are completely arbitrary and young
01:02:03.500 children can just decide whatever they want to. They're the victims of these progressive social
01:02:08.600 experiments. And we just need to be very aware of that and very careful of that. And as Christians,
01:02:13.040 we parent our kids in a way that is different, that is so much more compassionate and so much
01:02:17.660 more loving and so much kinder and so much more gracious and truthful than, uh, the secular world
01:02:23.900 tells us to. That is how we set ourselves apart as we are parenting our kids, especially when it comes
01:02:29.400 to all these social experiments. It is not scandalous for you to say no to those things that which God
01:02:34.660 has not said are good. Um, all right, long episode. That's all I got for today. I will see you
01:02:41.560 back here tomorrow.