Ep 637 ｜ America's Masculinity Crisis
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Summary
On today's episode of Relatable, Allie talks about the tragic shooting that took place in Highland Park, IL on the 4th of July. She also talks about her favorite holiday, Independence Day, and what she did to honor it.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Tuesday. This episode is brought to you by our friends
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at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com slash Allie for American Meat Delivered.
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All right, guys, today we are going to talk some about the shooting that happened in Highland
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Park, Illinois over the weekend. Super sad. We're going to talk about some other things as well.
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We've got a big week, some good interviews, lots of good things to talk about. We covered a really,
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really big and important, profound, and disturbing also subject last Thursday. And I really encourage
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you to go listen to or watch that episode if you have not already. I learned a lot from my guest,
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Genevieve Gluck. I know you will too. Listen to it, watch it, share it. It really is that important
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because the episode is doing so well. Hopefully we'll be able to have her back maybe in a few
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weeks for a part two. We didn't even really scratch the surface of what I wanted to talk to her about
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because the web that is transgender ideology and activism and the institutions that it has now
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infected, whether it's academia or whether it is medicine. I mean, it's just a huge tangled web and
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she is doing a lot of unraveling. And so it's really important that we get to be a part of that and we
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get to help untangle that web so we can really understand what is going on. If you love this
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podcast, I do have a request. If you can leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, wherever you
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get your podcast, that would mean a whole lot to us. If you don't subscribe on YouTube, go ahead and do
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that as well. All right. Before we get into some of the serious stuff, we'll talk about some light
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hearted stuff. We'll talk about what I did over the weekend, my favorite holiday, 4th of July.
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Now, that does not mean that I think it is more important than my Savior's birth or Jesus's
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resurrection. It is just that I love the summer and I love everything that is involved in celebrating
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the 4th of July. I love it all. And you guys know, as I said on my special 4th of July six-minute
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episode from yesterday, that I'm a very patriotic person, still tear up when I am singing the Star
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Spangled Banner. I just love everything America was founded on. I love the good things that we have
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done. And I truly still believe that we live in the greatest country in the world, even though there
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are so many things that I wish I could change about it, so many things that I don't like about it.
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The reality is that everything that I want to change is really, I want it to conform to our founding
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ideals and ideas, not that I want to get away from that. So we had fun celebrating over this long
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weekend. There was a lot of swimming. There was a lot of eating. I made, speaking of eating, you
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might have seen on Instagram that I made my grandmother's, Grandma Dot. She's in heaven. She
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died in the fall of 2019. We were very, very close. And so I wanted to honor her by making,
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also almost her birthday, honor her by making her famous peaches and cream. Now, this is a little bit
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different than peach cobbler. And a lot of you guys, when I posted this on Instagram, you asked for the
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recipe. I don't really know if I can consider it a secret recipe. I don't think that she would really
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care if I shared it. But at the same time, if you, I don't know, I feel protective of it for some
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reason. I don't know. So I'm not going to share it for now. But it's a little bit different than
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peach cobbler. It is basically just like canned peaches and sugar and flour and cream cheese. This is
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the thing that's on top that makes it peaches and cream and not peach cobbler. It's peaches and cream
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because on top is cream cheese and sugar. So people were asking if there's some kind of like
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bisquick breading on top or no, it's nothing like that. There's no actual crust. It's just that when
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you put it in the oven, it browns and it kind of creates a kind of crust over it. Even if you're
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not like a huge peach fan and I'm not really, it's so good. I am a huge cream cheese fan. So I made it
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and this was the first time that I made it. And I accidentally, so you're not actually supposed
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to put the three fourths cup of sugar into the mix. That's only for the topping of cream cheese.
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And I didn't realize that. I wasn't paying close enough attention. So I put the huge scoop of sugar
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into the actual mix. And so I was a little worried that it could be too sweet. But then I thought about
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it and I was like, is that even a possibility? Can something like a peach cobbler or peaches and cream
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be too sweet? Thankfully, it turned out really well. And I think one of the reasons that it ended
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up evening out is because when my husband went to the store to get the ingredients, he got,
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so you also put like instant jello pudding mix into it, vanilla. And he got the keto sugar-free kind.
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So I think that I made up for it by putting too much sugar in there. So it turned out, I'm sure
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that Grandma Dot was looking down from heaven and was like, did you just put a second scoop
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of sugar into my peaches and cream? But it all turned out, I think that she would be very proud
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of my, of my baking skills over the weekend. So that's one thing we did. Let's see, did we do
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anything else? We went to a parade and that was really fun. It was really hot, as you can imagine,
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as I'm sure it is wherever you are as well. And so, yeah, we just did all of the fun 4th of July
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things, hung out with family, saw some friends, went to church. And it was just a weekend that I was
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just so thankful, so thankful, not just for my family and my life and all of these wonderful
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blessings, but that we do live in a country where we can do those things. And we are celebrating
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our independence and where we are celebrating the freedoms that we have, even if we feel
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like they're constantly being fought against, like the powers that be are trying to minimize them or
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trying to redefine them or take them away. The fact of the matter is, is that we could go to church this
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weekend and we could read from the Bible. We could worship God out in the open without fear of
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persecution, without fear of being sent to jail, being detained, being murdered, being tortured.
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I know that sounds dramatic, but you understand that there are millions of Christians around the
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world today that do not have that liberty. And so while we still do have it, we take advantage of it.
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And I was just filled with so much gratitude this weekend that we still have that. And that is a
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reason to celebrate. So I hope that you enjoyed this weekend. I know that per usual, as is popular over
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the past few years, you probably saw some tweets from some, you know, Christians, more social justice
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Christians who couldn't celebrate the 4th of July or couldn't post about celebrating the 4th of July
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without some kind of caveat, without some kind of mention of the injustices that were, that have been
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perpetrated by the United States without some mention of racism or how things are imperfect or
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what America has done wrong over the years or is still getting wrong now. They might have used words
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like tension or nuance. And I really hate these kinds of, I really hate these kinds of posts.
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I mean, I also hate the kinds of posts that act like celebrating the 4th of July or talking about
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the 4th of July or American independence in church is some scary form of Christian nationalist fascism,
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where people are worshiping the American flag or worshiping the United States of the America. I
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mean, maybe that's happening in some places and I'm obviously that's not good creating any kind of
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idol ever, but these are the same people that are fine typically with the church waving a pride flag or
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something like that. They just don't like this particular, this particular flag or this particular
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kind of church because they perceive it as conservative. And there is a group of professing Christians
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that calls anything conservative or patriotic, scary, fascist, Christian nationalism. So those
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group of people, there are that group of people that can't celebrate the 4th of July. They can't
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celebrate American independence without either caveating it or just they can't celebrate it at all.
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I know that they want to be perceived as having more thoughtfulness and more righteousness and more
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love and more empathy and more understanding and more knowledge than those of us who are lighting
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fireworks and eating our hot dogs without a care in the world. But really the truth is, is that they
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lack gratitude. As we talked about yesterday, think of patriotism, which Augustine said was actually a
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virtue. Think of patriotism just as gratitude. Gratitude for where God providentially placed you.
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Gratitude for the gifts that God has given you in liberty. For gratitude for where you are, the time
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that you live in, the way that you are able to participate as a free citizen of the United States.
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Patriotism is just a form of gratitude. Celebrating the 4th of July is a form of gratitude. It can be used
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as a way to worship the Lord and say, thank you so much for the gifts that you have given me.
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Thank you so much for placing me where you have placed me. Thank you so much for the people I
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live next to. Thank you so much that I get to raise my kids here. I know that I have it really
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good. I know that I have a lot of blessings. I know that you have shown so much grace to me by
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allowing me to live in this place and you do nothing arbitrarily and nothing by accident.
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Fourth of July can be a day to simply reiterate your gratitude to the Lord for those things. But
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mumbling and grumbling and bitterness and resentment and entitlement and holding America
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to this standard of perfect justice that you hold no other country to and saying basically that you have
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to withhold your celebration until America meets this impossible standard of perfect righteousness,
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it is ungrateful. I mean, and ingratitude is certainly not a fruit of the spirit. Ingratitude
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and bitterness and resentment are actually the exact opposite of what the Lord is calling Christians
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to. So that doesn't mean that we pretend like America has never perpetrated injustices. I mean,
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just in the past 50 years alone, America has legally slaughtered over 60 million babies. So you don't
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have to tell me that there are things wrong with justice in the United States. But that doesn't mean
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that you have to diminish your gratitude or your celebration of the 4th of July and how God has
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shown his mercy so much to this great nation. So I just don't like posts like that because I just
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really do see them as miserable and ungrateful and not at all as nuanced or thoughtful or empathetic.
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I think there is a facade of those things. And underneath, it's just a lot of mumbling and
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grumbling that I don't think actually glorifies the Lord at all and is not a good witness. So all that
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said, I hope that you had a great 4th of July, that you had a fun time celebrating. We certainly did.
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I'm thankful for you all that we live in a country where we can be friends and have this community
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and talk about the things that we do. All right, let me tell you what we know about this shooting
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in Highland Park, Illinois. Now, I think when people hear that Highland Park, Illinois is outside of
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Chicago. They think, well, Chicago has mass shootings every weekend. Multiple people die
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from shootings every weekend in Chicago. But Highland Park is not the part of Chicago that
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is typically seeing this sort of violence. But I also don't want to diminish the seriousness and the
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sadness of the mass shootings that happen in inner city Chicago every weekend that, of course,
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are not covered because they are so commonplace that no one really makes a big deal of them. But
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when something like this happens in this kind of community that is not used to that kind of
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violence, of course, we highlight it because it is so rare. And I'm not going to name the name of
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the shooter. That is something that I try to do. I have not always had this rule in the past. But
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because it seems like these shooters want attention, they want fame, and they want their picture and name
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out there. I just don't want to contribute to that. But we do know the shooter in this Highland Park
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shooting 22 year old guy. He apparently was on a roofer in some kind of position where he could
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just take aim with his gun at the floats and at the bystanders and he just opened fire. And he killed
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at least six people. That's what we have right now. And then there are at least 26 people in the
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hospital who are injured. Now, the first question that we have in this, because this is such just
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a question that unfortunately has to be asked, did the FBI know about this? Were there warning signs?
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Did law enforcement know about this? Did this person have a criminal history? We don't know everything
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about him. But we do know that he has a pretty significant social media footprint. He had a YouTube
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channel where he posted different music videos. Apparently, he was an aspiring rapper. And the
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music videos that were circulating on Twitter, again, I'm not sure how helpful that is, because it seems
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like that is just kind of contributing to this person's seeking of fame or infamy, maybe. But the
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videos are, they seem to be simulating like a school shooting. There was a music video that looked like
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that's what he was trying to depict that had over 42,000 views. I mean, his music videos were very
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creepy. They were at least insinuating violence. And not that this necessarily indicates that someone
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is going to be violent in any way. But I mean, this, he obviously is going for a particular
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a particular look. He's got face tattoos and neck tattoos. That's actually what he what the police
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were using to try to identify him. I think that's part of what helped them find him because he has
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these very distinct face tattoos. And so he was arrested at 630 p.m. on Monday after the attack.
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Thank God for law enforcement. Thank God for the men and women who put their time and their energy
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into finding him. And so he is arrested. There have been family members who have been
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interviewed. Of course, they say there were no warning signs. But even as they're saying no
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warning signs, there was an interview with the uncle that said, oh, no, there were no warning signs. But
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he was a really quiet kid who kept to himself, who was kind of a loner and never really expressed
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himself. Yeah, that tends to be the profile of these guys. That doesn't mean that if you are a loner
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and you spend time by yourself that you're going to do something like this. But that seems to always be
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a characteristic of the a characteristic of these men who are committing these crimes. So that in
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addition to the violent videos and the videos glorifying violence that he was putting on his
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YouTube channel, that probably should have been an indication to someone that something is going
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wrong. But just as we discussed when we were talking about the Buffalo shooter, it is really difficult
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to take away someone's Second Amendment or any kind of right if they do not go through due process or
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if they are just saying things that are scary. Because we do have First Amendment rights. You are allowed
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to say things that are disturbing. You are allowed to say things that are insinuating violence. You are
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allowed to be like a creepy guy who makes weird and creepy music videos. You are allowed to do that
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legally. You can't take away someone's rights for maybe fitting the profile of someone who might
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commit a crime one day. And I mean, we're thankful for that, right? Like we don't want people to have
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their rights taken away who haven't actually committed a crime. But there must be some kind of system in
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place. There has to be some kind of system in place to be able to spot these people and to be able to
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prevent them from carrying out these attacks. And I just don't know if we have a great system in place
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right now. It doesn't seem that we do. There are a lot of details about him, about his life, about his
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background that we don't know. People are arguing online about whether he was a leftist or whether he was
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a Trump supporter. I saw that the New York Post, they had a headline saying his dad liked to tweet
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supporting the Second Amendment. At one point, there was a picture of him like holding a Trump flag.
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Other people were saying, though, that he was making fun of Trump supporters and that he was actually a leftist.
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As far as I'm concerned, like I don't I don't really want to engage in that argument. I don't really want to engage in
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that debate because it looks like we're not going to find that out. I think that we should be asking
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ourselves so much some some deeper questions why it seems like no matter the political ideology
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of the shooter, they are these young loner men who have some other characteristics in common, that they
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are idle, that they report feelings of purposelessness, wanting meaning in their life, wanting to be
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someone wanting a fight to fight for. Like when are we going to deal with that epidemic of idleness
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and purposelessness and godlessness that is so obviously infecting young men? Like when are we
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going to confront that? When are we going to do something about that? The fact of the matter is we
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have cultural and moral rot that has to be rooted out in our country. We can talk about gun laws. We can
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talk about legislation. We can talk about all that. But until we deal with the root, until we deal with
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what is going on, the depravity, the rot that is underneath all of this, things are never going
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to change. You know, there was also a mass shooting over the weekend in Copenhagen that has some of the
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strictest gun laws in the world. We always hear, oh, these mass shootings only happen in the United
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States. If you look at the data, that's not actually true. It's not actually true that these only
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happen in the United States. I would say it's probably disproportionate. It is disproportionate
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in the United States, but it's not true that they only happen in the United States. But I would say
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the problem that we really have is just this insidious amorality and purposelessness
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that is so prevalent, especially among our young people.
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The truth is, there is nothing more dangerous than a man with no one to live for and nothing to do.
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Idleness is an enemy of healthy masculinity. Idleness really, for any of us, can send us down
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a spiral of anxiety and depression. It can warp how we see the world. Loneliness can do the same
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thing because we're not meant to be lonely. We're meant to live in community. We're meant to have
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family. We're meant to have friendship. For most of time, friendship and kinship and community was
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really inevitable for people because they had to depend on one another for what they needed. They
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needed to rely on their village, to rely on their next door neighbor for food and for protection or
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for whatever it was. And so you relied on one another and you had very interconnected communities
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simply out of necessity. We really don't need in-person interaction to survive anymore. I mean,
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you can sit on your couch and you can be fully entertained and get all of the food and all of
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the supplies that you need and you can be completely comfortable and never have to interact with another
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human. You certainly wouldn't have to depend on your church for these things or your community
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for these things. And so the luxury that we have in this country isolates us. It makes us very lonely.
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It also makes us very idle because we do not have to put a lot of time into producing the things
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that we need. We are so actually distant from the production of the things that we need that we don't
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even know how to produce most of the things that we need. So idleness and loneliness also creates the
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purposelessness that is an infection in humanity because God created us to work. He created us not only to
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be in communion, in community, but he also created us to work, to be productive. As with so many things
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that we talk about today, this really goes down, it comes down to Genesis 1. It comes back to Genesis 1
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creation. What we see from the very beginning is that man was meant to work. We like to think of work as
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like a necessary evil or a product of the fall or a product of sin, but it's not. Work is something that
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God mandated Adam do before the fall. This is a part of the created order. This is something that is
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innate in human beings that we were created to work and work is very good. It is not a necessary evil
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or a product of the fall. Genesis 2.15, the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work
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it and to keep it. And then we see after the fall, after sin, that the curse on work is about the
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fruitlessness that can come from toil, that you can try to plant seeds and you can try to cultivate the
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ground and it still may not sprout with anything that is good or worth eating. So the curse of work
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comes with the fruitlessness that can sometimes be the product of toil, but the toil itself is a part
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of the good created order. So that tells us something about how human beings are supposed to function.
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That is not just how we survive, but is also how we thrive. And if that is true of the individual,
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as we see in the beginning of Genesis, then that is going to be true of society as a whole. You see this
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kind of progressive vision that human beings will own nothing, that we'll do nothing, that we'll just
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spend time on our hobbies all day. Everything will become automated. Everything will be done for us. And
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there's just kind of this idea that if human beings have all of our needs met and we don't have to work
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for what we have, then we will all just kind of be happy and be content. And there won't be all of
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these social and moral ills and division and anger that we deal with today. It's this idea that it's
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capitalism that is really oppressing us, these systems of hierarchy or what are kind of tearing
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us apart and tearing us down. But that's not actually true. We see from the beginning that
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productivity and working for what you have and supplying what your family needs through work,
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that it is actually something that is necessary for the well-being of human beings. And as I
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said, also for society, since society is made up of individual human beings, we also see from the
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beginning that God says that it is not good for man to be alone. So God creates a partner for Adam
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because Adam needs a helper. We see that also in who God is. God is triune. He is in constant community
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and fellowship with himself, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And we are made in his image.
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So we see, again, from the creation account that we are made for fellowship and community,
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that we are made for work and productivity. We are made also, we see, from the Genesis account to
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glorify God, to be in communion with God. So again, it goes back to what I think is ailing us,
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and especially men. Idleness, which is not part of God's plan for us. We were made to work. Purposelessness
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and loneliness is not what I originally said, but loneliness and also godlessness. This is a toxic
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combination. It is especially a toxic combination for young men because men just biologically, they have
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a lot of testosterone. And testosterone makes you more aggressive. Men are naturally more aggressive than
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women. I know today that we want to try to deny these very real categories of male and female and
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try to say that how male and female manifests itself is just a product of social norms. It's something that
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we created in order to, I don't know, oppress women or keep these arbitrary categories. But it's not true.
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There are innate differences between men and women. One of those innate differences is that men are
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generally naturally more aggressive than women. It is because of how God made them just biologically.
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That's how they function, which means God created men to seek a good fight to fight or just to seek a
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fight to fight. And so when the aggression that men, that boys naturally have, is not channeled towards a
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good fight, fighting for their family, fighting for their community, fighting in the sense of just
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being a productive worker. They're going to find unhealthy means to channel that aggression. And I
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don't think that you need to think very hard or look very far to see that young men's aggression is being
00:26:51.300
channeled in this country towards bad, violent means. I mean, we see that surely every weekend in
00:26:59.860
Chicago, every weekend in basically every inner city in this country. We don't talk about that
00:27:07.800
disparate outcome that it is. If you look at like the gender makeup between male and female
00:27:15.260
violence and homicide that's committed every year, that the vast, vast majority of the violence is being
00:27:23.680
committed by men. We'll look at every disparate outcome between races or if it allows Democrats to
00:27:31.080
make some kind of policy to create equity. Let's talk about the inequity or the inequitable outcomes
00:27:37.460
between the violence that is perpetrated by men and women. It is mostly young men. We are not providing
00:27:47.000
purpose. We are not providing community. We are not providing a higher and better calling to young men.
00:27:53.520
Rather, we are trying to demonize masculinity. We're trying to call it toxic. We're trying to
00:27:59.240
minimize the differences between men and women. We are not addressing one of the biggest problems
00:28:06.620
with young men is that they don't have any examples to look to, that they don't have a father in the home
00:28:14.540
many times. And that causes delinquency. That also causes loneliness and purposelessness and all these
00:28:22.100
dangerous characteristics that we're talking about. They don't have anyone that's taking them under
00:28:28.040
their wing and teaching them how to be a responsible man. That is the deficit that we are experiencing
00:28:35.320
in this country. We have a deficit of healthy masculinity, of healthy male role models who are
00:28:43.700
taking responsibility and leadership in their communities for the boys that are around them.
00:28:48.660
Now, there are a lot of organizations and a lot of people and a lot of churches that are trying to do that,
00:28:53.840
but we need more. And I understand men have been told by the feminist movement for decades that you just
00:29:00.960
need to shut up, that you just need to sit down, that you just need to be quiet, that now this is going to be
00:29:06.920
a matriarchy where women are in charge. I understand that there have been women, that there have been
00:29:12.820
feminist activists that have tried very hard to neuter men, thinking that it is going to lead to a more
00:29:17.880
peaceful world, that it is going to lead to a more equitable and equal world. It's not going to.
00:29:24.420
The fact of the matter is, is that men are men. Men, throughout all of history, for all of time,
00:29:32.120
in every place, men have been the ones to both found civilizations and destroy civilizations.
00:29:37.880
They have been the ones to start wars and end wars. That's the truth. But that feminist attempt to try
00:29:45.140
to change what masculinity is or try to minimize it or try to neuter it in some way is never going to,
00:29:54.340
and it has never, and it's never going to achieve its goal. That is not how a society achieves
00:30:01.920
equality by denying the innate differences between men and women. The fact is, as we've already said,
00:30:08.680
that male aggression has to be channeled towards good things. It has to be channeled towards a good
00:30:13.840
fight. Men need a good fight to fight. An idle man is a dangerous man. There is nothing more dangerous
00:30:21.000
than that, as we have seen over and over again. And so this denial or this theft, I would call it,
00:30:30.040
that we have committed as a society to that. It manifests itself in like stealing the joy of
00:30:37.700
patriotism, stealing the joy and the necessity of hard work, stealing the joy that comes with like
00:30:47.080
real life interaction and adventure with friends, stealing purpose, stealing busyness
00:30:55.820
from young men. We are paying for it. And I don't even think we've seen all of the chickens come
00:31:01.740
home to roost. Unfortunately, I think that we are going to see more of these because we are not even
00:31:07.740
starting to address the problems that these young men are facing because we disagree fundamentally.
00:31:14.520
That's the thing. I mean, the right and the left disagree fundamentally on what the issue is.
00:31:19.400
One side thinks that if we just take away guns and we make it harder for law-abiding citizens to
00:31:24.540
defend themselves and if we just give more money to young people and we just queer up the world,
00:31:33.120
then all of our problems will be solved and everyone will be happier and these things will
00:31:37.800
go away. And the right realizes that there is a deep moral issue here. There is a godlessness
00:31:45.460
issue here. There's a spiritual issue here. And if we don't start to address that,
00:31:52.360
if we don't start to address the root, then it doesn't matter. The symptom management that is
00:31:58.760
being attempted right now obviously isn't working and it will ultimately be fruitless and it will not
00:32:06.920
matter if we do not have some kind of revival on the spiritual level and men in churches and
00:32:14.460
neighborhoods and communities stepping up and ensuring that they are going after that one
00:32:18.900
lonely, purposeless kid who needs a man in their life to mentor them and to take them under their
00:32:27.580
wing. Maybe you know. Maybe you know someone that you can think of in your community, in your church,
00:32:34.360
in your neighborhood, in your family. You can tell that they need guidance. They need male guidance.
00:32:43.260
And maybe if you're listening to this and you're thinking of your husband or your brother or someone
00:32:48.200
that you know that can maybe take that young man under their wing, like maybe that is the first step.
00:32:53.620
Maybe all of us think of that person in our lives who needs guidance, who needs fellowship, who needs
00:32:59.440
a purpose. And we try to supply that for them. I mean, we can all only do what we can do, but maybe
00:33:05.540
that's a first step that we can take. Because if you look at this guy in Illinois, it was so obvious.
00:33:10.600
It was so obvious that he needed some intervention in his life. And yet it seems that no one did
00:33:17.460
anything. That is a common theme here. No one's doing anything. So what can we do in our own small
00:33:25.360
There was another tragic event that happened over the weekend, and that was in Akron, Ohio. There was
00:33:42.180
a young man named Jalen Walker. He was a young black man who was shot in the back by police officers. And
00:33:49.880
of course, there were a lot of protests. There were riots that occurred over the weekend in Akron,
00:33:55.020
Ohio by BLM activists and other activists in the city, angry about this, calling this racist police
00:34:02.820
brutality. And so this is according to Fox News. People gathered in the streets of downtown Akron,
00:34:07.920
Ohio Sunday night to protest the deadly police shooting of Jalen Walker. A crowd of people formed
00:34:12.680
in the city outside the Akron Justice Center around 6 p.m. shortly after police footage showing the
00:34:17.180
final moments before Walker's death was released to the public. At the police, the demonstrators can
00:34:23.140
be heard chanting. So this is a part of what happened. So officers fatally shot 25-year-old Jalen
00:34:33.120
Walker, an unarmed black man, after a vehicle and foot pursuit last Monday. A medical examiner
00:34:40.200
confirmed there were more than 60 wounds that were on Walker's body. Now, unarmed is
00:34:47.060
misleading in this case because his car actually did have a handgun and apparently, reportedly,
00:34:53.020
he was shooting at the police from his car. He led them on a wild car chase and then got out of his car
00:34:59.740
and started running. And that is when police officers shot at him. Now, why would police officers do this?
00:35:06.020
Because they didn't know whether he was going to be harmful to the community. Wherever he went,
00:35:13.640
he could have had a gun and he could have shot at people and killed people. It is part of their
00:35:19.280
responsibility not just to stop this person who is driving away from him, but also could pose a
00:35:27.260
threat to the rest of the community and try to just save the lives of the other people that he could
00:35:31.660
have potentially harmed. That is part of their job. Now, I am not someone who unconditionally defends
00:35:37.960
the police. I see no reason to do that. I am obviously conservative. And so I am very wary
00:35:45.560
of the power of the state, especially used against defenseless individuals. And so I am not someone that
00:35:54.240
you are going to see unconditionally, unwaveringly backing the blue. Obviously, there was a big reason
00:36:00.920
to criticize the police in the Uvalde shooting that happened a few weeks ago in Texas. But in this case,
00:36:08.980
it looks like the police were trying to protect the community from someone that they weren't sure
00:36:16.620
was harmful and a threat. He led them on a wild car chase. This was not something to where they
00:36:23.600
just this they provoked an individual who was doing nothing wrong and then shot and killed him.
00:36:33.540
And so that's what people are angry about. That's what people are protesting and rioting about. Do we
00:36:40.640
have any indication whatsoever that this had to do with skin color, that this had to do with race,
00:36:45.660
that this had some kind of racial motivation to it? No. As we've talked about many times, the data simply
00:36:51.560
does not show the idea that there is an epidemic of violence by cops against unarmed Black men. That
00:37:00.340
is not an epidemic that is happening. We have gone through the data many, many times on that. Now,
00:37:07.660
that's not to say that it's not tragic when there are unjustified shootings by the police or killings
00:37:14.320
by the police to a person of any race. That is something that happens and that should be condemned and
00:37:20.700
there should be accountability for that. But just because there is a certain melanin count of the
00:37:27.160
person who was shot by the police and there was another melanin count by the police officer who shot
00:37:33.680
them does not mean that it is a racial incident. It also doesn't mean that it was necessarily
00:37:38.820
unjustified. And so we'll see what comes out. There could be more information that comes out here and I'm
00:37:46.220
happy to change my assessment and my analysis based on any information or based on any facts
00:37:54.620
that come out. But that's what we have right now that he was he led them on a car chase that he had
00:37:59.760
a gun in his car. He apparently reportedly shot at them. And so he was not technically unarmed. And so
00:38:08.600
yeah, we will continue to talk about that story if it develops.
00:38:24.860
Lots of craziness going on in the world today. Lots of bad. I want to show this picture that I
00:38:30.900
meant to show a couple minutes ago. And it's of this police officer who was walking through
00:38:35.400
the wreckage, the aftermath of the Highland Park, Illinois shooting. And if you're listening to this,
00:38:43.940
it's a police officer. He's walking by himself and he's got his hands covering his face. I think
00:38:50.240
a lot of times it's so easy for us to criticize law enforcement when we feel like they've done
00:38:54.820
something wrong. And sometimes they really do wrong things. They carry hefty responsibility and
00:39:00.320
sometimes that's misused. But they are also some of the best people among us. They are also
00:39:06.920
putting themselves on a line that we would never put ourselves on. They are also making sacrifices
00:39:11.760
that many of us just are not courageous enough to make. And the emotional toll, the physical toll,
00:39:17.560
but also the emotional toll that this puts on men. And as we're talking about earlier, just the lack
00:39:24.760
of masculinity that I think our country is suffering from and the young men who use the natural aggression
00:39:31.960
that they have in violent and evil and destructive ways. We also have to remember that we do have men
00:39:38.560
among us that are using that natural drive towards protection and aggression that God has given them
00:39:44.860
in a way that protects and that builds and that helps. And this police officer, gosh, it just breaks my
00:39:52.520
heart. And this is also behind the tough veneer of every courageous and heroic man. They're people.
00:40:01.520
They're humans. They have a heart. They have emotions. It is hard for them to see this kind of tragedy.
00:40:07.080
And so let us pray for the people who are on the front lines. Let us pray for this community. Let us pray
00:40:12.860
for the young men of this country, for the older men of this country, that there would be an alliance of
00:40:18.660
responsible mentors with young men who need to be mentored, who need to be fathered, who need to be
00:40:25.460
helped, who need to be paid attention to, who need friends, who need purpose, who need productivity.
00:40:31.700
Let us do everything that we can in our own lives, in our own communities to help that. That's how we
00:40:37.380
really get to the root of all of this. And God just comfort the families that are dealing with the
00:40:44.080
aftermath of this. It gets so tiring to talk about over and over again every single month. There's
00:40:50.820
something like this that happens, and there's not a quick fix. I wish I had a 10-step plan to fix it,
00:40:57.620
but we need God's mercy. We need His guidance, and we need strong men. Thanks so much for listening.
00:41:03.460
We'll be back here tomorrow with a great interview that I know you guys are going to love. It's going to
00:41:08.180
be inspiring and encouraging, also enlightening as we kind of peel back the layers of what's really
00:41:13.340
going on in our education system, how we got where we are, and how we get out of it. So we will see