Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 449 ｜ SHE'S BACK： Demolishing Anti-America Propaganda & Leftist Lies

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. I am back in the studio after maternity leave. Thank

00:00:15.540 you guys so much for watching and listening to all of the episodes that we put out over

00:00:21.440 the past 12 weeks. That's a lot of content. Four episodes a week for 12 weeks that we

00:00:27.440 pre-recorded before I left. I just wanted to make sure that you guys had a lot of good

00:00:32.680 content to consume while I was gone. Thank you so much for your feedback and for being

00:00:38.640 consistent in your listening and watching. It really does mean so much to me. Also, thank

00:00:44.200 you for all of your prayers and all of your thoughts and messages and emails and questions

00:00:50.520 to see how I'm doing over the past three months. Baby and I are doing well. Our family of four

00:00:56.520 is doing well. I went to 41 weeks and one day pregnant. That is really pregnant. If you've

00:01:03.400 ever been that pregnant before, you know how insanely ready you are to not be pregnant.

00:01:09.020 Eight pounds, eight ounce baby, head full of hair, totally healthy. Thank the Lord. And

00:01:15.880 I've recovered and our oldest has adjusted to being an older sibling to having a crying baby

00:01:21.380 thrown into the mix. And we are very happy as a family of four. So grateful to the Lord for

00:01:28.020 these precious gifts that we have. And again, thankful for all of you for praying for us and

00:01:36.260 for thinking of us and encouraging me and our family during this time. I'm really excited to be

00:01:44.260 back. I may do a motherhood focused episode either this week or next week if that is of interest to

00:01:51.640 you all. Some of you have told me that it is. But today, I've got to go all in on the state of the

00:01:58.140 country. And maybe that's what you expected that I would do. There's a lot going on. I've gotten so

00:02:03.540 many messages over the past few months asking me, can you please address this? Can you talk about this?

00:02:08.400 I just have this whole page of notes in my notes app in my phone, various stories and tweets and

00:02:15.180 different subjects and topics that I've been wanting to talk about. I probably won't be able

00:02:20.480 to dive into everything that happened over the past three months. That's just going to be impossible,

00:02:26.320 but I will try to cover it as much as I can. Today is going to kind of be a general overview on

00:02:34.520 this trend of intense anti-Americanism that I see. And in that, I'm going to weave in a lot of the

00:02:40.780 stories that you guys have been asking me about. Now, it's been really nice not to have to be in

00:02:49.900 the news or reading the news constantly over the past three months, but it's also been really hard

00:02:55.860 for me to not have an outlet. I am an external processor. A lot of you are probably the same way.

00:03:02.720 If I did not have this job, if I didn't have a podcast where people were listening to what I

00:03:08.820 have to say, I would still find some way to get my thoughts out, whether it was just talking to

00:03:14.760 myself or whether I just recorded something on my phone and sent it to my family every week,

00:03:19.620 or I just stood on a street corner telling everyone my thoughts. I would do that. I would be

00:03:24.440 standing on the busy street corner and I would be saying critical race theory is poison. Abolish the

00:03:32.500 teachers unions, supporting communist China is the same thing as supporting Nazi Germany. There's no

00:03:38.460 such thing as gender identity. Jesus could have waged a revolution against the Roman Empire and the

00:03:44.240 hetero patriarchy, but he chose not to. I would be standing in the street yelling all of those

00:03:50.660 things to anyone who would listen if I did not have this job. But I do. I'm very grateful for this

00:03:56.840 job. I'm very grateful that I do get to sit in front of a microphone and tell you the thoughts

00:04:01.760 that I have because I am teeming with thoughts about everything that is going on. Now, I warned

00:04:07.900 some of y'all on Instagram that I am feeling especially feisty and spicy and sassy these days.

00:04:14.800 It's the opposite of how I felt during my last postpartum. I don't know why, but I'm just feeling

00:04:21.660 very riled up. I think that's kind of a Southern term. I don't know if you Northerners know what

00:04:26.320 that means, but I'm feeling very riled up about the state of the country. And I apologize in advance

00:04:31.140 if I teeter on the edge of too much sass. That's not my intent, but it might just get there. I'll

00:04:37.340 just blame my hormones or something like that. Today's episode is not all negative, even though I

00:04:43.500 would say the state of our country is pretty negative. It will be a condemnation of sorts, but

00:04:48.620 you should finish this podcast. I hope feeling fired up and ready to go, not down in the dumps

00:04:55.000 about the state of our country. The state of our country is bad. It's pretty bad. I'm not going to

00:05:01.340 lie to you. I'm not going to try to sugarcoat that. I will give you a spoiler though and say that I do

00:05:07.080 feel that the tide can turn. Maybe. I'm never too hopeful. I've grown to be pretty cynical when it comes to

00:05:15.260 the culture wars and politics, but I am still hopeful. However, that hope dies just a little

00:05:22.460 bit when I log on to Twitter. If you are looking to abandon all hope, then definitely log on to

00:05:28.160 Twitter on, say, the 4th of July. Seriously, Twitter? Twitter on the 4th of July is like Dante's

00:05:34.500 Inferno. I mean, surely one circle of hell will be reading Alyssa Milano's tweets for all of

00:05:40.980 eternity. On July 4th, Alyssa Milano tweeted that Frederick Douglass speech, what to the slave

00:05:47.440 is the 4th of July. She said, what to the slave is the 4th of July? The sunlight that brought life

00:05:55.200 and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. The 4th of July is yours, not mine. You may

00:06:00.820 rejoice. I must mourn. Now, Alyssa Milano was not the only one to tweet an excerpt of this speech.

00:06:08.100 Of course, this has become a very fashionable thing to do. Colin Kaepernick did it last year.

00:06:13.280 There were several accounts I saw tweeting it this year. NPR dedicated an entire thread to how the

00:06:21.160 Constitution and Declaration of Independence are hypocritical and contradictory. That's our

00:06:27.800 taxpayer dollars at work. By the way, Congresswoman Cori Bush tweeted, when they say that the 4th of

00:06:33.880 July is about American freedom, remember this, the freedom they're referring to is for white people.

00:06:39.740 This land is stolen land, she says, and black people still aren't free. That's an amazing statement

00:06:46.000 from a black congresswoman. I saw several blue check marks tweet a similar sentiment. I also saw

00:06:52.680 many people on Twitter upset. Understandably, I think that Peloton, after offering every themed ride

00:06:59.460 possible, they always do, but especially in the past year, BLM rides, Pride rides, even a Canada

00:07:05.560 Day ride, but no Memorial Day ride, no Independence Day ride for the country on which this company relies

00:07:13.680 on for its profits. This is all happening after, I'm sure you saw, Gwen Berry showed her spirit a couple

00:07:20.520 weeks ago. And in case you didn't see it, in case you missed it, she is an American who got third place

00:07:26.700 in the Olympic trials for hammer throwing. Did not know that that was an event, but cool, more power to

00:07:32.060 you. She turned during the national anthem when she was up on the podium, she turned it into a photo op

00:07:39.460 by refusing to face the flag during the anthem, refusing to put her hand over her heart. Instead,

00:07:44.240 she faced the camera. You probably saw this, what is now like a very viral and maybe in a very negative

00:07:51.240 sense, iconic photo where she's facing the camera. She's got her hand on her hip. She's got a scowl on

00:07:55.680 her face. And she said, in response to a lot of the blowback and attention that she got, that the

00:08:01.120 American flag doesn't represent her. The U.S. women's soccer team, you also might have seen this on

00:08:07.940 Twitter. They've got some members of the team that look to have refused to face the flag with their

00:08:15.780 teammates during the national anthem. Here is that clip you can decide for yourself. So you see some

00:08:24.860 of the team members are facing the flag at the end of the stadium. And then some of the team members

00:08:30.060 were actually facing away. Now, a World War II veteran was playing the national anthem on a

00:08:37.420 harmonica. Some of the players were, you know, facing that end of the stadium with their hands

00:08:42.440 over their heart. Some of the players, as you saw in that short clip, if you're watching on YouTube,

00:08:46.780 were facing away with their hands behind their back. Now, they're saying, the soccer team is

00:08:53.180 saying that, no, this was no disrespect. This had nothing to do with the flag. I find that hard to

00:08:59.380 believe. I find that hard to believe. But like I said, I will let you decide that for yourself. If

00:09:04.920 you're just listening to this, then you can go on Twitter and you can look at the video and you can

00:09:09.760 see if you just thought it was a coincidence that some of these American players were facing away from

00:09:14.580 the flag. It did not have their hand over their heart or if it was truly intentional. I happen to

00:09:20.200 believe it's the latter. So we're seeing that it's trendy to rag on the country. It gets you fame.

00:09:30.760 It gets you applause. It's brave, apparently. We are so oppressive as a nation that absolutely

00:09:38.240 anyone can criticize her, not only without fear of punishment, but with an expectation of praise,

00:09:45.180 approval, and fame. Now, I want to tackle specifically both the Frederick Douglass and

00:09:51.060 the Cori Bush tweets, but let me address this general trend that we're talking about that is so

00:09:56.720 prevalent today, especially in the younger generations, to rag on the United States, to reserve

00:10:02.000 July 4th for trashing our country, to turn your nose up at patriotism and insist on some nonsense that

00:10:09.900 America has been, without exception, a force for evil, both here and abroad. And I'm going to speak

00:10:15.260 to these people directly, or I'm going to try to, but know sincerely that I'm not trying to be mean.

00:10:22.060 I'm not trying to be condescending. I am just trying to tell you very pressing truth. If someone

00:10:29.680 believes a lie that is damaging them and the people around them, and they just refuse to see that lie,

00:10:36.240 the loving thing to do is to put your hands on their shoulders, to look them directly in the eye

00:10:41.180 and say, wake up, wake up for the love of all that is good. Wake up. So that's what this is. It's not

00:10:48.520 me being mean to you, America haters. It is me trying to love you and to love the country in

00:10:55.080 which God has providentially placed both of us. Because those of you who were told America is

00:11:01.600 this awful place that we should be ashamed of, were lied to, okay? You were fed regurgitated 20th

00:11:08.760 century Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean propaganda about the oppressiveness of capitalism

00:11:14.160 and the United States, and you were told that it was history. If you read about, for example,

00:11:19.580 North Korean propaganda, you see the same rhetoric that we see from the left in America today,

00:11:25.300 that America is an evil, imperialistic, capitalistic force that's the cause of

00:11:29.420 all famine and bloodshed. The North Korean government in the 90s blamed America and Japan

00:11:35.180 on their food shortage, when in reality, Bill Clinton had approved $3 billion in aid to them.

00:11:42.060 And it wasn't until the North Koreans who defected that we actually knew the rest of the world that

00:11:49.660 North Korea had been lied to about that, and that they never actually got the aid that was sent to

00:11:55.440 them from the United States. They were fed, again, this lie that the reason that they were starving was

00:12:00.680 because the United States was oppressing them in some way. The people never benefited from that aid

00:12:06.900 because North Korea is evil and corrupt. And that's just a side note lesson for you. By the way,

00:12:12.680 foreign aid does hardly anything good for anyone. Like Ron Paul said, foreign aid is money from poor

00:12:18.200 people in rich countries given to rich people in poor countries. But you have believed this propaganda

00:12:24.600 that despite the outpouring of foreign aid that we have given across the world, despite the help

00:12:29.380 militarily and financially, that we have given to countries aiming for freedom, America has only

00:12:35.660 ever been bad, you're told. Your edgy freshman professor had you read Howard Zinn's A People's

00:12:41.460 History of the United States, and you took it as Bible, and you were never told that Zinn's writing

00:12:46.120 relies on secondary sources and glaring omissions in order to try to make the argument that the evil

00:12:51.800 United States has to be taken down and socialism must be built in its place. You bought the lie.

00:12:57.080 You bought the lie that loving your country is for dumb hicks. And since you went to college and

00:13:02.760 double majored in English and feminist philosophy, you're too sophisticated for it. You feel that

00:13:08.380 there's not just an intellectual superiority that comes with looking upon America with disdain,

00:13:15.280 but a moral superiority to it. You feel that hating the U.S. makes you an ally, a fighter for justice

00:13:23.400 inequality. You say things like, we live on stolen land, or the 4th of July doesn't mean

00:13:28.600 freedom for everyone. Or you post about the, quote, nuance or the, quote, tension that you feel

00:13:34.480 eating hot dogs and watching fireworks while knowing that America has been such a horrible,

00:13:38.680 oppressive place. You were lied to. Whether your resentment for the country has been slow-growing or

00:13:44.300 whether you're one of the many women who has been sucked into the social justice Instagram world that

00:13:50.460 convinced you that Glennon Doyle and Robin DiAngelo could be your Sherpas in the work of anti-racism,

00:13:56.380 you've bought a false narrative. You read Cast by Isabel Wilkerson. You read How to Be an Anti-Racist by

00:14:04.200 Ibram X. Kendi. You, too, have been convinced that America is not actually worth celebrating. You want to

00:14:12.080 be on the right side of history. And you somehow imagine that means joining the droves of ingrates who

00:14:18.300 enjoy the benefits of America without actually celebrating her. So you decide to retweet or repost

00:14:26.020 posts like those of Alyssa Milano, quoting what to the slave is the 4th of July. Now, here's the problem

00:14:33.300 with everyone posting this on July 4th. And I hope that this helps shatter your general negative view

00:14:39.660 that I just described of the country as well. You're not a slave. And chances are, unless you've got some

00:14:45.720 very destitute friends in Africa, China, or the Middle East, or unless you have befriended women

00:14:50.980 and children who have been sex trafficked in this country or abroad, you don't know any slaves.

00:14:55.460 You do not know anyone in America enslaved because of their skin color. In fact, it is insulting to the

00:15:01.860 misery and the true oppression endured by African slaves in the US to say that people here today

00:15:07.240 and the wealthiest nation in the world that affords opportunities to people of all backgrounds and

00:15:12.960 nationalities are suffering the same as the slaves did. I mean, really think about that. Listen to

00:15:18.520 yourselves. That doesn't mean that there is no oppression. That doesn't mean that there's no

00:15:23.280 racism. That doesn't mean people don't have it really hard or were placed in situations beyond

00:15:30.600 their control. But to imply that we've made no progress and that Black people in the United States

00:15:36.060 have nothing to celebrate on July 4th, that is the definition of insanity. If you are pushing that

00:15:42.500 madness, especially trying to push that madness on the Black people that you know in this country or if

00:15:49.420 you're just going along with it, you are being hateful because that kind of misguided resentment will

00:15:55.260 only ever suck the life out of its host. It will only ever lead to misery both individually and

00:16:01.700 collectively. Frederick Douglass knew oppression. He knew it. He experienced injustice. He saw true

00:16:08.420 inequity, the unequal application of the law. He wasn't concerned about equal outcomes. He was

00:16:14.060 concerned about equal opportunity. And he loved the ideals upon which America was founded. He said it

00:16:20.180 all the time. If you actually read beyond a few sentences of one of his speeches, he said the reason

00:16:26.800 he was confident that slavery would come to an end in the U.S. was because of our foundation, not

00:16:33.380 despite it. He called the Constitution a glorious liberty document without a single pro-slavery clause

00:16:39.620 in it. He believed in the goodness of America's founding. He urged people to fully manifest that

00:16:46.520 founding by recognizing the equal dignity and the equal rights of Black people. He was an amazing man.

00:16:52.240 He was an amazing patriot and such a far cry from so many of the left-wingers decontextualizing and

00:16:59.700 exploiting his work on Twitter today. Now I want to address this argument that Cori Bush makes that I've

00:17:10.900 seen several people make that America is legitimate because it's stolen. To that I say, hello and welcome

00:17:20.720 to the world, the history of which, tragically, is characterized by oppression, by slavery, by war,

00:17:29.700 if we go back far enough, we see that every single people group has been both oppressed and an

00:17:36.460 oppressor. White, black, brown, whoever, everyone has oppressed and has been oppressed at some point.

00:17:43.020 The Native Americans were constantly stealing land from each other through vicious warring and

00:17:49.260 conquering. Every nation on earth has experienced some sort of injustice and brutality. America is not

00:17:55.520 unique because of the bad that she's done. She is unique because of the good that she's done in such

00:18:02.500 a short time. Every tribe, people group, ethnicity, and nation has perpetuated injustice, but not every

00:18:10.980 nation has fought a war to end slavery. Not every nation has helped deliver the world from tyranny

00:18:16.260 three times in 50 years. It's true that America was conquered by Europeans and the land that was here

00:18:22.540 was stolen and re-stolen before the Europeans even got here by rotation of Native tribes for hundreds

00:18:29.660 of years. Again, that is the history of the world. And what would be the solution, by the way? We keep

00:18:37.360 hearing that we should give their land back. Okay. And then what? Do we all go back to our nation of

00:18:43.920 origin? How far back, by the way, do we go in order or in our lineage in order to figure that out?

00:18:51.340 Take a moment to realize how amazing it is that America went from the horrors of Jim Crow to a

00:18:59.640 black president in less than 50 years, a black Supreme Court justice in less than 30 years,

00:19:05.820 that we have people whose ancestors were slaves not all that long ago who are now entrepreneurs,

00:19:11.660 heads of state billionaires. That's amazing. Black people in America are the richest black people

00:19:17.700 in the world. And now I know people will say, well, we never should have had injustice in the first

00:19:24.280 place. We never should have had slavery in the first place. We never should have conquered America

00:19:28.220 in the first place. And you're right in that the treatment of these people by the settlers of America

00:19:36.200 and then later by those who owned slaves, by those who implemented Jim Crow was absolutely wrong and

00:19:44.580 atrocious. But again, sadly, that is the world. It's messy and it's bloody. The question is not

00:19:52.060 whether a country has wronged people. Every country has. The question is whether we have righted those

00:19:58.720 wrongs. And we have done incredible work to do so in a very short period of time. Remember,

00:20:04.560 America is a very young country. We became a global powerhouse in a very short period of time

00:20:10.820 and have been sprinting towards change and our founding ideals. And yet the people who hate her

00:20:16.960 both in and outside the U.S. want to hold her to this impossible standard, a much higher standard

00:20:23.360 than every other country. We see that when we see corporations talking about America's systemic

00:20:30.480 racism problem, inequity, inequality, and then turn around and actively profit off of and celebrate

00:20:37.640 the most racist, oppressive, xenophobic, enslaving, colonizing regime in the world, the Chinese Communist

00:20:43.180 Party. The CEO of Nike, John Donahoe, said that Nike is a brand of China and for China.

00:20:50.600 Now, on June 5th, 2020, Donahoe said this in a statement, quote, systemic racism and the events

00:20:57.640 that have unfolded across America over the past few weeks serve as an urgent reminder of the

00:21:02.740 continued change needed in our society. We know Black Lives Matter. We must educate ourselves more

00:21:09.160 deeply on the issues faced by Black communities and understand the enormous suffering and senseless

00:21:14.960 tragedy racial bigotry creates. Look, Donahoe does not care about racial bigotry or systemic racism

00:21:23.680 or societal change. He and all of these American corporations who rely on China for business care about

00:21:31.780 money. That's it. And they know they can keep duping Americans into thinking they're social justice

00:21:37.220 advocates when really they could not care less about actual slavery, concentration camps, child labor,

00:21:43.300 anti-black policies and the surveillance police state of China. They don't care that China is

00:21:48.360 colonizing and exploiting poor African countries as we speak. They didn't care when China was evicting

00:21:54.000 African immigrants and kicking them out of restaurants in 2020 and using COVID as an excuse.

00:21:59.280 They don't care that China very recently murdered millions of full term babies for their one child

00:22:05.000 policy or that they're currently forcibly sterilizing and aborting the babies of Uyghur Muslim women right

00:22:11.080 now. They don't care that they overtook Hong Kong last year and have completely cracked down on all

00:22:18.000 dissent. They don't care that they covered up the origins or the extent of COVID and murdered any

00:22:24.780 scientists who dared to talk about it. They don't care about injustice. They don't care about racism or

00:22:30.980 Black people or democracy or anything that they tell you that they care about. None of these companies do.

00:22:36.020 Not the NBA, not Apple, not Disney, not any of the tech companies. And in case you're thinking, well, they're

00:22:42.900 criticizing their own country. It's not their business to criticize another country. First of all, you don't

00:22:48.900 actually believe that if you're on the left wing social justice side, because most people who are on that

00:22:53.900 side who rag on the United States have no problem with other people from other countries doing the same

00:22:58.900 thing. Secondly, I'm not asking these companies like Nike to go criticize a random country. I'm saying

00:23:05.880 if you are going to say that you are for a country, for a country as repressive as China, actively do

00:23:13.140 business with them and profit off of them, use their labor, basically slave labor, you do not have

00:23:21.880 the moral authority to turn around and criticize a free country, the country that has afforded you

00:23:26.240 the liberty and the opportunity to start and build your own company of being systemically bad and in

00:23:33.060 need of some kind of revolution to tear the institutions down. Just stop. Be a bad person.

00:23:38.880 That's fine. You can be a person that's fine with cozying up to a wicked communist regime, but at least

00:23:44.500 have the tiny bit of decency not to be a hypocrite. But they won't have that decency because this kind of

00:23:50.820 thing is normal. The holding America to a higher standard than everyone else. The U.N. now is

00:23:57.000 demanding the U.S. pays reparations for slavery and that we, quote, fix our justice system. I literally

00:24:04.200 cannot roll my eyes any harder at that. Can I read you a few of the countries on the Human Rights

00:24:12.480 Council of the United States Council of the U.N.? China, Nepal, where citizens are jailed for

00:24:18.600 criticizing the government, Russia, Cuba and Pakistan. Last term, the council had Sudan, Libya and

00:24:26.360 Venezuela. You know, all of the world's bastions of human rights. Guys, some of these countries have

00:24:33.040 slaves right now. Libya has a slave trade. Sudan just technically ended slavery a few years ago.

00:24:41.000 This is from the Wall Street Journal in 2001. What's Sudanese slavery like? One 11-year-old Christian

00:24:48.060 boy told me about his first days in captivity. Quote, I was told to be a Muslim several times and I

00:24:53.540 refused, which is why they cut off my finger. 12-year-old Alikor Nyor Ding was taken as a slave in 1993.

00:25:01.660 She has not seen her mother since the slave raider sold the two to different masters. 13-year-old

00:25:07.920 Akan was seized by Sudanese military while in her village five years ago. She was, content warning,

00:25:14.900 gang raped by six government soldiers and witnessed seven executions before being sold to a Sudanese

00:25:20.620 Arab. Many freed slaves bore signs of beatings, burnings and other tortures. More than three

00:25:26.860 quarters of formerly enslaved women and girls reported rapes. While non-governmental organizations

00:25:32.780 argue over how to end slavery, few deny the existence of the practice. Estimates of the

00:25:38.040 number of blacks now enslaved in Sudan vary from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands,

00:25:43.800 not counting those sold as forced labor in Libya. So that was written in 2001. The slavery technically

00:25:52.940 ended in Sudan several years after that, although it's probably still going on. It's still going on

00:25:59.780 to this day in Libya. These are countries that are sitting or have sat on the Human Rights Council of

00:26:07.620 the UN, which is turning around and telling the United States that we need to fix our justice system.

00:26:14.680 So several things. First, the UN can take several hundred thousand seats. They have way bigger fish to

00:26:22.920 fry than pointing out the supposed problems in America. They are a cynical left-wing organization that

00:26:28.820 enables authoritarians and helped China cover up the pandemic. They have no place to point fingers

00:26:35.240 at anyone. Second, do you see what I mean? That America is not unique in its evil. Slavery still

00:26:44.040 happens today in much of the non-Western world. Really, if you think the West is so bad, go live in

00:26:51.880 not just a non-Western country, but a non-Westernized country and see how you like it. You probably

00:26:59.140 won't. That's the harsh truth of it. So in all of this, I am urging you to release yourself from this

00:27:11.840 burden of misery and resentment and to be grateful. It is okay to love your country for what she is at her

00:27:20.080 core, what she is at her best, even if you hate what she has done at her worst. It seems like every

00:27:27.440 other country understands this concept, except for us. Mexicans love Mexico despite the narco-terrorism

00:27:35.660 that has ruled many of their lives. Even Chinese and North Korean and Soviet defectors who come to

00:27:41.880 America still love their culture in their country, even if they resent the rulers. That's why refugees and

00:27:47.520 immigrants who come to America fleeing violence and tyranny still retain much of their original

00:27:52.540 culture because they love it. There are few places on earth where you can do that, by the way.

00:27:57.680 There are even fewer places where you can find refuge in the United or find refuge in that country,

00:28:03.300 then become an elected official, and then gain fame and applause by constantly putting down the

00:28:09.620 country that gave you refuge, like, say, Ilhan Omar. But America is so tolerant and sometimes too

00:28:16.520 tolerant of the wrong things that that is actually possible here. Most people love their country

00:28:23.460 and their culture too much to celebrate that kind of ingratitude, that kind of disrespect. But not

00:28:30.160 America. Because when Americans say that we love our culture, we love our values, we love our history,

00:28:37.340 even in a lot of its ugliness. We love our founding. We love our flag. We love our national anthem.

00:28:44.340 Now it's considered bigotry or arrogance or idolatry or, God forbid, Christian nationalism.

00:28:51.280 The Christians, specifically, who are so scared of churches waving the flag or singing God bless

00:28:57.900 America on the 4th of July, I just wonder if they would have the same criticism of any other country

00:29:03.420 doing the same. Like, do you fault the patriotic Zambian or Korean or Canadian? Do you accuse them of

00:29:09.960 being a Christian nationalist if they say that they love their country more than other countries?

00:29:15.920 If they thank God for the blessing of living in their country? And if they said that they want to

00:29:21.760 use the gospel to positively influence their fellow citizens, their rulers, and their culture,

00:29:27.200 would you accuse them of dangerous Christian nationalism? Now, is idolatry of patriotism possible?

00:29:34.120 Of course it is. There are people who elevate America to a place of God's chosen nation, like

00:29:40.220 being like the modern-day Israel, and that is not biblical. It is bad, damaging, myopic theology.

00:29:48.320 But there are, from what I see, far fewer people doing that, demonstrating that kind of idolatry,

00:29:54.140 than there are people constantly bringing up how awful America is and how the 4th of July is just so

00:29:59.700 nuanced because of the military-industrial complex and redlining and whatever it is.

00:30:07.420 C.S. Lewis writes about patriotism in his book, The Four Loves. Highly recommend it. We've talked

00:30:12.360 about it. We did a whole podcast episode on it once for Valentine's Day. He talks about both the

00:30:18.740 goods and the bads of patriotic love. In describing the positive kind of patriotism, he's inspired by

00:30:25.180 Chesterton, who argues that countries are like families with distinct characteristics that are

00:30:31.260 preferred by its members. And you should like your family more than other families. That doesn't mean

00:30:36.760 that you hate other families or you think other families are bad. You just like your family the

00:30:41.300 best. Like, think about your family, your kids. You love your family more than you love other people's

00:30:47.040 families. That doesn't mean that you hate your neighbor's family. You might love your neighbor's

00:30:50.500 family, but it's a different kind of love. And that's good. Your family is not only yours,

00:30:54.540 but it's familiar. Even in all of its peculiarities and imperfections, you defend your family. You

00:31:01.140 work to better your family, not from a place of hate, but from a place of love. All families

00:31:07.560 have very complicated histories and every generation has a responsibility and should have a desire

00:31:13.100 to set their family on a better path rather than try to destroy or deny their genealogy.

00:31:19.660 Chesterton argues that it's good for the English to stay English, to keep their food, their dialect,

00:31:27.480 their idiosyncrasies, their culture. It's good for the French to be French, for the Indian to be

00:31:33.640 Indian, for the Chinese to remain Chinese. And yes, for America to be American, to be free,

00:31:39.620 to be hardworking, to be entrepreneurial, innovative, efficient, dogged in our pursuit of liberty and

00:31:44.960 biblical justice, to eat hot dogs and watch fireworks, all the big and small things that

00:31:50.820 make us us. So do Christians chastise Christians in other countries for wanting to put their country

00:31:56.520 first or waving their flag or feeling patriotic or doing what is true to their culture and their

00:32:03.720 traditions? Why is it that when Christians in America love our country, that all of a sudden,

00:32:10.940 we see people clutching their pearls talking about Christian nationalism. It is good to love your

00:32:18.700 country. It is good to love your flag. It is good to celebrate the good things about our country, to

00:32:24.820 pray for our country, to thank God for our country. We know that as Christians, Christ calls us to

00:32:30.580 gratitude. Thankfulness is a mark of the believer. Thankfulness in all circumstances is what we're called

00:32:36.820 to, even in the most fiery trials. So if God calls Christians to rejoice amidst persecution, famine,

00:32:43.620 disease, and the face of death and martyrdom, do you really think he's impressed and glorified by people

00:32:48.980 living in a free and prosperous country, scoffing at the rare blessings of liberty that we have?

00:32:55.380 You don't have to love everything about your country. You don't have to love everything that

00:32:59.340 America has ever done. I don't think anyone does. In order to appreciate your country's ideals,

00:33:04.440 even when those ideals have been haphazardly implemented at times, we have every reason in

00:33:10.700 the world to thank God for how gracious he has been toward America, how much good he has allowed

00:33:16.420 us to do, even when we have disobeyed him. Celebrating the good that America has represented

00:33:21.640 to so many glorifies God. It shows joy and gratitude to him for purposely, providentially placing you here.

00:33:31.200 I promise that he is not glorified by your grumbling malice. I've said it before and I'll say it again.

00:33:39.120 In 1776, a seed of liberty was planted at our founding. A seed. You don't criticize a seed for

00:33:46.280 not yet being a tree. And you don't criticize a tree for once having been a seed. You nourish it.

00:33:51.540 You water it. You're eager yet patient at each stage of growth. You do everything you can to ensure

00:33:57.920 it can grow its branches as far as possible. The seed that was planted in 1776 had never been

00:34:04.820 planted before in the history of the world. Or if it had been planted, it had never been properly

00:34:10.020 nourished so that it could fully grow and thrive. Our founders took a risk. They took a risk planting

00:34:15.980 the seed of a self-governing free republic, not knowing if it would work. They based a radical vision

00:34:22.940 for a country on timeless and biblical principles of human beings being made in God's image with equal

00:34:30.500 dignity and an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. And it is absolutely true

00:34:36.400 that when those words were penned, they only applied to white men. That is true. They didn't apply to white

00:34:43.400 women. They didn't apply to black men and women. But just as Douglass knew, those words weren't hollow.

00:34:50.220 They were just a seed. And the blood of black and white and brown Americans watered that seed.

00:34:57.080 And it grew slowly, shakily. There were seasons and years when it looked like its branches

00:35:02.840 would never give shade to some people. But it has. It's still not perfect. But we should respect what

00:35:09.860 it's done. We should respect how it's grown, providing shade for millions and millions of people

00:35:15.980 around the world from the scorching sun of tyranny. You think socialism and communism would be better

00:35:22.940 than this? Ask survivors of the revolutions in, say, Cuba or Venezuela, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, China,

00:35:30.840 Germany, the USSR, North Korea, who risked everything to come here to flee oppression. Ask them if they

00:35:37.840 think the U.S. is uniquely evil. Ask people who went from nothing to being able to provide a better

00:35:44.880 life for their kids than the one that they had. That story is not only possible in America, it is

00:35:50.640 probable in America. With just a few foundational good choices, that story is probable. Not guaranteed,

00:36:00.600 but extremely probable. Most of the loudest people maintaining that America is uniquely or pervasively

00:36:08.640 evil and oppressive literally have to ignore their own life. They have to ignore their own

00:36:14.600 privileges and the privileges of almost every single person they know in America to try to

00:36:19.620 convince themselves that it's true. It's like they say, sure, my hard work has been rewarded and so has

00:36:25.460 the work of my parents and so was the work of my immigrant neighbor and my poor cousin who now owns

00:36:30.700 a successful business. And oh, yeah, sure, there are people of all backgrounds in the most influential

00:36:36.660 positions in our nation. And yes, I guess it's true that more immigrants flee to the U.S. every year than

00:36:42.940 to any other country by far. And yeah, I have to acknowledge that Asian Americans being a minority are

00:36:48.460 more successful across almost every category than white Americans. But still, the white supremacist caste

00:36:54.340 system is out there somewhere in the United States, even though I and every other American I know has

00:37:00.240 escaped, surely it is still there. You have to pretend that your life isn't absolutely exceptional

00:37:06.180 compared, maybe not compared to everyone in the U.S., but compared to most of the world to convince

00:37:12.220 yourself that America is the wicked place that you say it is. I'm just not willing to do that. I can

00:37:18.400 absolutely critique, and I believe we should critique, we're obligated to critique, policies and

00:37:23.920 politicians and patterns here in the U.S. that we want to change. And we should do so from a place

00:37:30.160 of love and a desire to keep growing the tree of liberty. We should do that. We all should. But I

00:37:37.780 have no respect at all. Just to be honest, I have no respect at all for the people who criticize

00:37:41.980 America because they want to chop her down. So here's my advice to all of us who love this country.

00:37:48.880 We've got to double down on all of it. We've got to double down on loving our country, double down

00:37:55.540 on our values, double down on biblical definitions of justice and fairness. We've got to double down

00:38:03.920 on praying for our country, thanking God for our country, teaching our kids, our students,

00:38:09.420 our congregants to love our country in a way that glorifies God, not idolatry, but in a way that

00:38:15.760 obeys the directive to love our neighbor. We've got to push back loudly against any ideology or way

00:38:22.220 of thinking that encourages people to hate our country. Listen, that does not mean pushing patriotic

00:38:28.800 propaganda in the way of covering up the wrongs that any of our forefathers committed. We should

00:38:34.700 absolutely be teaching about the Trail of Tears, about slavery, Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow,

00:38:41.020 civil rights. It's because we love our country and believe in her founding ideals that we're not

00:38:46.540 afraid to bring these things to light and to learn from them. A lot of countries like China, for example,

00:38:51.120 never bring up anything like that. They want to convince their people that the regime has never

00:38:56.380 done anything wrong. But America, because we should be so confident in our ideals, we are free to bring

00:39:03.580 up the bad that has been perpetuated in this nation because we know we can be better than that and we are

00:39:09.100 better. Anything that purposely fosters division and resentment and needless misery and carrying the

00:39:17.700 burdens of the past needs to be put away. And yes, that includes critical race theory, which has taken

00:39:23.940 center stage in the past few weeks and which we will discuss here this week or next. Teachers, pastors,

00:39:31.100 parents, friends, Romans, countrymen, it is okay and fitting to love this country and all that she's

00:39:39.380 offered you and millions of other people. Teach others to do the same. That is a task that we should

00:39:47.120 happily be willing to take on. And again, that doesn't mean that we put patriotism above holiness.

00:39:54.320 That doesn't mean that we have this wrong, sugar-coated, whitewashed view of our history.

00:40:01.740 It just means that we are incredibly grateful to live in such a wonderful country and that we

00:40:06.960 should open our eyes to the blessings that we and others have. And if you want to change something,

00:40:11.020 then change it. Change it within the confines of the really good institutions that have made America

00:40:16.820 the good and the great country that it is. I love this country. I will never not love this country,

00:40:22.600 even if it keeps barreling down this extremely slippery slope of left-wing totalitarianism

00:40:31.720 and amorality. I will still love this country because I believe in its ideals and I don't

00:40:36.900 believe that God does anything arbitrarily. So I believe that you and I, our kids and our children's

00:40:41.920 children are placed in eternity where we are supposed to be placed. There is no use and no time for having

00:40:49.740 nostalgia for a different time when we feel America was better. One thing that is true that I think that

00:40:55.620 people on the right need to acknowledge more regularly is that America has never been perfect

00:41:00.940 morally. When we look at one area that looks like we were doing well, we can look at another area and

00:41:07.200 see that we were doing badly. And so America has been rife with different kinds of division and

00:41:14.100 different kinds of immorality at different points in our history. We were placed at this point to deal

00:41:19.960 with the issues that we are facing today. That is not an accident by God. We are called to be a light

00:41:27.800 in darkness. We are called to be salt and light. We use the power of the gospel to share the gospel and

00:41:35.080 to love other people and to serve other people. That does not mean that we are trying to live in a

00:41:43.060 theocracy. It does mean that we shine light in darkness with the power of the Holy Spirit and

00:41:48.500 the truth of God's word. Every other group in America has an ideology that they are pushing.

00:41:55.500 Christians being ambassadors of truth, ambassadors of love, ambassadors of light are also called to do

00:42:02.020 the same thing in a kind way. Like I said, we raise a respectful ruckus in a way that we think advances

00:42:08.620 truth and advances love and advances the betterment of our country because we love our country.

00:42:13.060 And we thank the Lord for placing us here. All right. That's all I've got for today. We will be back

00:42:17.420 here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 06, 2021

Ep 449 ｜ SHE'S BACK： Demolishing Anti-America Propaganda & Leftist Lies

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