Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 74 ｜ Demonization of Excellence

00:00:00.000 Hello. Happy Tuesday, Relatable listeners. I think that's the first time I've ever started

00:00:05.120 with hello and not, hey, what's up? I realized that I say, hey, what's up every single time.

00:00:11.280 I have no idea why I do that. I don't do that in real life. But I've realized it's kind of

00:00:17.420 my signature. And for some reason, my brain today was like, nope, you're going to say hello.

00:00:23.140 So hello. Hey, what's up? Hi, guys. It's Allie. Thank you for listening to Relatable. I hope

00:00:29.660 that you guys had a great weekend. If you're anything like me, a huge football fan who knows

00:00:34.540 everything about football, you had the best weekend ever preparing for the Super Bowl,

00:00:39.220 watching the Super Bowl with your eyes peeled and just celebrating for hours and hours after. I mean,

00:00:44.440 I'm still recovering. If this is your first time listening to the podcast, I am joking. I know

00:00:49.940 nothing about football. As many times as someone has tried to explain what football is and what

00:00:56.220 like a down is. I still I just I don't know what it is. It's kind of like math for me.

00:01:01.720 It goes in one ear and out the other. And I know I'm being such a stereotype right now of girls, but

00:01:07.920 I'm sorry. That's just who I am. I don't know anything about football. I do like the environment

00:01:15.420 and the atmosphere and the kind of like the spirit of football games. And so I did. I mean,

00:01:20.740 I enjoyed watching it. My husband said I talked too loud the whole time because I was talking to my

00:01:25.640 sister-in-law and he said that we were being kind of aggravating with how much we were talking. I

00:01:30.720 didn't even notice. I didn't even notice that we were talking. But I guess, yeah, I mean, I looked

00:01:34.900 up after two hours and the game was over. So that makes sense. I am going to actually talk about the

00:01:40.180 Super Bowl today. Don't worry. I'm not going to use any football metaphors because I think I would

00:01:44.780 fall flat on my face. I am going to talk about the demonization of excellence that I think is

00:01:52.460 happening in our country, particularly on the left side of the political and cultural aisle.

00:01:56.720 Doesn't really have that much to do with football, but I'm going to use it as an illustration or as

00:02:02.860 an example. And then we're going to get into the political side of it. So for those of you ladies who

00:02:07.780 are like me, don't know a lot about the NFL, only know of Tom Brady because in high school,

00:02:13.700 you thought he was hot. I'm going to give you a little refresher. I'm going to give you a little

00:02:19.560 brief on who he is. So obviously the Patriots won. If you didn't know that you're like, you're worse

00:02:25.000 than me. The Patriots won the Super Bowl. This is the sixth Super Bowl win for Tom Brady. He's been

00:02:30.600 to nine Super Bowls. He holds the record for a career wins. 237. I read on ESPN.com, but people

00:02:38.360 hate Tom Brady. I've known that for a while. I kind of follow Barstool sports from a distance just

00:02:45.880 because I think their model is interesting, not because I agree with their content or how they

00:02:49.700 explain things or the language that they use. But I noticed how many people that follow them or who

00:02:57.580 are a part of them, not Dave Portnoy, but other people at Barstool hate Tom Brady, people that follow

00:03:04.940 them. People just in life, it seems like hate Tom Brady and don't want him to win. My husband is not

00:03:10.760 one of those people. He has like the TB12 book and reads from it and like even has these like pants

00:03:17.220 that Tom Brady suggested that athletes wear. So he's a fan. And I've just always thought it was kind

00:03:22.540 of odd. Why? Why do people hate Tom Brady so much? So I started asking some people and really,

00:03:28.600 it comes down to not liking how much he wins, not liking that his life seems so perfect. He's

00:03:36.460 married to a supermodel, Giselle. He wins so much. He says things like I am the baddest mofo on the

00:03:45.320 planet. He apparently said that last month. There was also that whole deflate gate thing that I

00:03:51.600 remembered was from 2015. I feel like that was just yesterday, but that happened a few years ago where he

00:03:57.860 and the Patriots were accused of deflating the balls to make them easier to grip. And yeah,

00:04:04.300 so that happened and people didn't like it because of that. They think, you know, he's a cheater that

00:04:10.460 maybe he doesn't have integrity because of that whole thing. But they also don't like him because

00:04:14.720 in 2015, there was a MAGA hat in his locker and that was caught on camera. And he apparently was a

00:04:21.640 friend of Trump, had played golf with him before. There is a picture of them playing golf together.

00:04:27.040 So this was a big scandalous deal. Daniel Radcliffe, you know, like Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe said

00:04:33.160 just a couple of weeks ago when he was in an interview with Variety that, oh, the whole world

00:04:38.760 is cheering against the Patriots because of that. He said, dude, take the MAGA hat out of your locker.

00:04:46.100 Number one, we have no idea if Tom Brady actually supported President Trump in the election. In fact,

00:04:51.840 Giselle, I'm pretty sure came out and said, we don't support President Trump. I'm sure Giselle

00:04:57.200 isn't a conservative or a Trump supporter. So that's probably true. I have no idea if he voted

00:05:01.960 for him. He wasn't outspoken about him very much in the election. He said he wasn't going to talk

00:05:06.920 about politics anymore. He hasn't talked about Donald Trump since then. And he also said that

00:05:12.540 he believes that the players should have a right to kneel in the NFL during the national anthem.

00:05:21.520 And so for people to hate him because of that just doesn't make any sense. Sure. You can be jealous

00:05:26.620 of him. You can be envious of his career, of his life, of his wife, whatever. But to envy his

00:05:32.940 political or to be mad at him because of his political stances, that just doesn't make sense.

00:05:36.860 If you look up Tom Brady's name on Google or on Twitter, then you will see lots of different

00:05:46.120 articles about Tom Brady's privilege, about his white privilege. And you just got to roll your eyes.

00:05:52.420 I mean, the man is an amazing athlete. I might not know that much about football,

00:05:56.980 but I can read numbers. And I know that he holds a lot of records and he's an incredible athlete.

00:06:01.380 He's in his 40s and he wants to keep playing. I like Tom Brady just because not necessarily as a

00:06:06.160 person. I don't know him as a person, but he seems like a leader that people really respect

00:06:10.180 that his teammates really look up to. He's always building his team up whenever he is talking to the

00:06:15.680 press about how proud he is of his teammates. He seems like he just really loves the game of

00:06:20.660 football. And you like that about people when they really love their trade and they're doing it for

00:06:24.960 the love of the game or whatever industry they're in and not just for the fame, not just for the

00:06:29.280 attention. I like that about him. He seems in some ways, I mean, I know he said he's the baddest

00:06:34.820 mofo that's ever existed, but he seems in some ways like a really humble guy, like a down to

00:06:39.280 earth guy who really cares about his family, cares about his wife. And there's just something to be

00:06:43.780 admired about that. There's something wholesome about that, almost nostalgic about that, even

00:06:48.560 though I don't know that he's necessarily like some wholesome guy. There's just something about him

00:06:54.260 that you like and you feel like represents a part of America that is admirable. But what there seems

00:07:02.900 to be, I mean, this hatred of, of Tom Brady and hatred of people like him, it seems to echo this

00:07:11.020 larger hatred of excellence that we have in our country. Now, I'm not saying that all of the hatred

00:07:17.740 of Tom Brady is political or is just from people on the left. It's just an example of us hating

00:07:26.060 meritocracy, us hating hard work and hating excellence in this country. And I have a better example of how

00:07:32.600 that's really become endemic in our country. And it really is a trend moving from progressivism on

00:07:38.240 over. So Howard Schultz, he is the former CEO of Starbucks. He is a billionaire. He's worth $3.4

00:07:45.100 billion. If you haven't heard, he is running for president. And although he's pretty progressive,

00:07:50.740 he's pretty liberal. He is running for president as an independent because he has called himself

00:07:56.080 fiscally conservative, but socially liberal. I mean, we know that he's socially liberal. He has

00:08:01.800 said that he is pro-choice. He's obviously on board with the LGBTQ agenda. I can never say that

00:08:07.940 correctly. Um, but when it comes to, uh, fiscal issues, he is probably going to lean more conservatively.

00:08:15.880 He is a self-made guy. He grew up in the projects of Brooklyn. He got a football scholarship to,

00:08:22.080 what was it? Northwestern, Northern, Northern Michigan. I think it was. Yeah. Northern Michigan.

00:08:27.920 He was the first in his family to go to college. And then he was a salesman for, I forget the company,

00:08:34.520 maybe Xerox. He was a salesman. And then he went into the coffee industry. Starbucks already existed,

00:08:39.660 but he basically took Starbucks over eventually and made it what it is. I mean, he's an incredible

00:08:44.280 person who genuinely has worked hard for what he has done. He has earned what he has paid. And now he wants

00:08:51.220 to, now he wants to run for president. Now he wants to lead a bigger so-called corporation or

00:08:56.680 a bigger so-called industry, AKA the United States of America. And he said he cannot run on the

00:09:01.820 Democratic ticket, even though he's probably more Democrat than he is Republican. Um, because he

00:09:06.640 believes, like he said, that he would have to be disingenuous. He would have to say things that he

00:09:11.440 doesn't believe in his heart. He has slammed people like Ocasio Cortez, like Kamala, Kamala,

00:09:16.840 Kamala. I never know. Kamala Harris, uh, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, who want to put exorbitant

00:09:23.740 taxes on the rich in order to redistribute their wealth to other people to pay for whatever programs

00:09:29.140 they think is going to help the country. He said, that's just not feasible. Green new deal by Ocasio

00:09:34.540 Cortez that we have talked about on previous episodes. That's just not feasible. Sorry. He thinks

00:09:40.580 really one of the biggest problems is the federal deficit, which Democrats and commentators on the left

00:09:45.040 have laughed at him for, for saying, uh, for saying that that's the biggest problem. Of course,

00:09:49.860 they think that social issues are a much bigger problem than that, or even, uh, healthcare coverage

00:09:55.480 is a much bigger problem than that. But here's, here's the thing. Here's why they are so scared.

00:10:00.940 Uh, well, one, they don't agree with his politics because in order to be a Democrat, you have to be

00:10:06.040 on the left on everything. You have to be Bernie Sanders left. If you're not, you're going to be left

00:10:10.260 behind. I mean, you'll notice that the more conservative or the more moderate Democrats,

00:10:15.040 like Nancy Pelosi. Um, if you can even believe that she's a more moderate Democrat,

00:10:19.500 they don't really talk about issues very much. Um, now they might say things like, Oh, a wall is

00:10:26.720 immoral, or they might even jump on board saying we need Medicare for all, but they're no longer the

00:10:31.860 voices of the party. The far left are the voices of the party. Michael Moore, who is obviously an

00:10:37.500 idiot. Like, I think I can say that kindly. Like, I think that counts as biblical sass. Like he's just

00:10:42.640 an idiot. Um, he said that obviously everyone knows. He said that Ocasio Cortez is the voice

00:10:49.460 of the democratic party. Okay. Okay. That's fine. That's fine. That means that I and other people on

00:10:54.900 the right have free reign to talk about her as much as we want to. And we shouldn't be guilted for that.

00:10:58.440 But Howard Schultz is not on board with her green new deal, not on board with taxing, uh, the rich

00:11:03.880 70 to 90% is a lot of the Democrats or some of the Democrats are now saying, but the reason why

00:11:09.460 Democrats don't like this in addition to him not being far left enough is because they know that

00:11:14.260 he speaks to a certain section of the electorate. They know that there's plenty of people who think

00:11:20.500 that the democratic party has gone too far to the left who don't want to vote for Bernie Sanders,

00:11:25.480 who don't want to vote for Elizabeth Warren, who don't want to vote for Kamala Harris or Ocasio

00:11:29.400 Cortez. She's not running for president. She's too young, um, but don't like the direction that,

00:11:34.660 uh, the left is going. And so Tom Perez head of the DNC or, or the Democrats, instead of saying,

00:11:41.020 you know, maybe we should revise some of our policy positions. Maybe we should reign it back a little

00:11:46.000 bit. Maybe instead of putting Ocasio Cortez and Ilhan Omar, another radical leftist at the, at the

00:11:52.080 front, at the front lines of our party, we should try to modify just a little bit. You don't hear them

00:11:56.840 saying that instead they say, Oh no, Howard Schultz is running for president. I mean, they're

00:12:01.920 really upset over this. You should see the commentators on CNN, on MSNBC, the Washington

00:12:08.460 post. You should see and hear and read what they're saying. I mean, they are angry about this.

00:12:14.580 Just go on Twitter and see how many people hate that Howard Schultz is, is running for president.

00:12:20.320 Um, they know that he taps into the desires of a large part of the country who maybe don't care

00:12:27.220 about the social issues quite so much the way that he doesn't, or they're socially liberal.

00:12:32.040 They're down with gay marriage. They don't really care about all of that stuff, but they just,

00:12:36.040 they also don't want to see our country go to socialism. Like he's going to tap into that.

00:12:40.520 Claire McCaskill, who is actually a Democrat in Congress. Um, she tweeted out, uh, a statistic

00:12:46.760 from Pew research that I thought was really interesting. According to Pew, 54% of Democrats think

00:12:51.840 that the party should be more moderate 54%, uh, 40% think the party should be more liberal,

00:12:57.440 which that in and of itself is like a little bit troubling, but the majority right now of Democrats

00:13:03.320 or yeah, of Democrats think that the party should be more moderate. And Schultz is in a lot of ways,

00:13:09.880 a moderate Democrat. He would have been seen a while ago, probably a mainstream Democrat. Remember

00:13:15.800 the word socialism 10 years ago was still a bad word. Even on the left, you had people,

00:13:20.780 uh, is early or as recently as last year, Nancy Pelosi and Maxine water saying, no, I'm not a

00:13:27.440 socialist. I'm not a socialist. You had Hillary Clinton say, no, I'm not a socialist. But now

00:13:31.160 they've learned to keep their mouth shut. They have learned that that's the way that the country

00:13:35.280 is going. That's what millennials want. Unfortunately, the majority of them. And so they're just going to

00:13:39.840 be quiet on that. And they'll let people like Ocasio Cortez and Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris and

00:13:44.840 Bernie Sanders just kind of lead the way. Schultz is now seen as an independent, though. He's now

00:13:50.480 seen as almost a conservative just because he cares about the federal deficit, just because he doesn't

00:13:56.200 want to be a socialist. He actually went so far as to say in an interview that taxing the rich 70 to 90

00:14:03.140 percent, which is what is kind of being proposed by some people on the left, some people in the

00:14:07.420 Democratic Party is un-American. And he cites his own story because of that, because he is self-made.

00:14:14.700 You had he had hecklers in I think it was in New York yelling at him for being a billionaire on

00:14:21.080 MSNBC. Joe and Mika, you know, who hosts the Morning Joe, I think it's called it. I've honestly

00:14:27.280 never watched it, but I did watch this clip where they asked Howard Schultz in an interview. So how

00:14:32.260 much is a box of Cheerios? Obviously trying to trap him, obviously trying to show that he is just so

00:14:38.320 out of touch with reality. This this billionaire, he doesn't know anything about the needs of the

00:14:43.440 American people. OK, did you ask Hillary Clinton that she's worth tens of millions of dollars?

00:14:48.620 What about Elizabeth Warren? She's also worth tens of millions of dollars. What about Nancy Pelosi?

00:14:53.300 What about Bernie Sanders? I think that he has about three houses. Kamala Harris, she's made plenty of

00:14:58.380 money in her life. Why don't you ask any of them that? Do you think any of them know what it's like

00:15:03.340 to struggle in America? Do you do you really think that? I mean, Howard Schultz knows probably better

00:15:09.760 than any of them because he grew up in the projects in Brooklyn. But no, it's not OK that

00:15:15.720 he made his way up. It's not OK that he actually got out of poverty, not because of government

00:15:21.700 handouts, but because of choices that he made. We're not we're not OK with that anymore, at least

00:15:28.000 not on the left. And I'm afraid that it is going to become more mainstream. Here's here are some

00:15:34.840 examples of Ocasio-Cortez, Warren, Kamala Harris. People like that saying how bad billionaires

00:15:43.360 billionaires are. So one of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is policy people, which I think she would probably

00:15:51.140 agree with this. She probably retweeted it. She said he said that for every billionaire, every

00:15:58.100 billionaire demonstrates a failed policy. OK, Elizabeth Warren called billionaires and millionaires

00:16:04.960 freeloaders who need to who need to pay their fair share. Bernie Sanders said years ago that the

00:16:12.380 American dream has turned into a nightmare. Bernie Sanders tweeted yesterday instead of repealing the

00:16:17.960 estate tax and giving a massive tax cut to the Walton family, a.k.a. the Walmart people and the

00:16:23.380 coax as Mitch McConnell and Trump want to do. Let's substantially increase this tax on multimillionaires

00:16:28.660 and billionaires and reduce wealth inequality in America. So here's the crazy thing. They're all

00:16:35.260 talking about paying your fair share. Howard Schultz says this is un-American. They're basically

00:16:39.860 demonizing excellence, as we're talking about. They're demonizing the true American dream, which is

00:16:44.340 pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, making good choices and being who you want to be and doing what

00:16:49.400 you want to do. Here's the reality behind what they're saying. So they're saying millionaires and

00:16:54.580 billionaires are freeloaders who need to pay their fair share. The implication is there that the rich

00:17:00.360 are getting by on the backs of others. They are making their money on the backs of others. And it's

00:17:06.920 not fair that they didn't actually earn what they have, that they're almost stealing it in a way that

00:17:11.840 that's what you hear, which is just crazy. So according to the Tax Foundation in 2016,

00:17:16.720 the top 1% of earners, 1%, the top 1% of earners in America paid 39% of all income taxes in the

00:17:27.940 United States. The top 1%, the top 50% of earners, the top 50% of earners pay more than 97% of all the

00:17:37.420 income taxes. 97%. That means that the bottom 50% of earners in this country are only paying 3% of all

00:17:46.240 income taxes. And so we need to raise taxes on the rich. They're not paying their fair share.

00:17:52.240 America has one of the most progressive tax systems in the industrialized world.

00:17:57.460 They always compare to the Nordic countries and say there's so much more progressive than we are.

00:18:03.180 But as a matter of fact, Sweden has basically a flat tax rate to where if you are making about $60,000

00:18:08.940 a year, you are getting taxed about 60%. And it just kind of stays the same. We have a very progressive

00:18:15.040 tax system. The rich are paying more than their fair share. They are paying almost

00:18:19.000 all of the income tax in this country. So how much more, how much more do you want to tax them

00:18:26.260 until it's fair? What is fair? Is it what Bernie Sanders says is fair? And here's, here's another

00:18:32.100 question that we should ask. So while they hate billionaires and want to tax them into oblivion,

00:18:38.140 tax them maybe up to 90%. That's what Ilhan Omar said the other day that, oh, you know, yeah,

00:18:43.220 it's been as high as 90%, whatever. So you want to obliterate the billionaires as Ocasio-Cortez's

00:18:50.760 policy person said that it's all because of failed policies that billionaires even exist.

00:18:55.760 Who's going to pay for your stuff? I'm just, I just, I don't get that logic. I might need

00:19:01.020 someone like Bernie Sanders to explain that to me. So if you are taxing people so much to where they

00:19:06.200 are no longer millionaires and billionaires, who is going to pay for your green new deal? If you don't

00:19:12.820 have billionaires anymore, I just don't, I just don't get that. I mean, I guess that's what

00:19:18.540 Margaret Thatcher meant when she said the problem with socialism is that pretty soon you start to run

00:19:23.360 out of other people's money. And it's just not true. We haven't seen throughout history that when

00:19:29.080 people are given wealth redistributed from people who are richer than them and have done different

00:19:35.780 things than them, that they actually get out of poverty because of that. I mean, even if you look at

00:19:41.240 foreign aid, uh, that's given to poor countries, it doesn't help. They don't get out of poverty

00:19:46.840 because of that. Just giving the money doesn't help, but foreign trade does foreign aid, not so

00:19:52.220 much. And it's really the same thing, uh, on a domestic level. This is, we are seeing not just

00:19:57.580 the demonization of excellence, but in a more specific sense, the demonization of the American

00:20:02.840 dream and the American dream being, as I've already said, that anyone can do anything. Uh, now that

00:20:08.220 doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist. It doesn't mean the obstacles don't exist. It doesn't mean

00:20:12.500 that some forms of injustice don't exist. Um, but as I heard someone say the other day,

00:20:16.960 I think it was Dave Ramsey. He said, there are all kinds of isms. Uh, there are all kinds of,

00:20:23.520 uh, of things that you are going to come up against. There's going to be someone who doesn't

00:20:27.780 like blondes. There's going to be someone who doesn't like women in general. So there are sexes.

00:20:31.560 There's going to be someone that doesn't like that you're from Texas. They don't like, uh,

00:20:35.500 your Southern accent. They don't like that. You say y'all there's going to be someone that doesn't

00:20:39.100 like that. You went to the university of Alabama. There's going to be someone who doesn't like the

00:20:42.820 fact that you're a mom. There are going to be all kinds of isms throughout your life. There are

00:20:46.780 going to be all kinds of prejudices throughout your life. There's no way for the government to

00:20:51.580 eliminate personal prejudices, no matter how wrong they might be. The question isn't whether or not

00:20:57.760 prejudice exists. It does because men and women are sinful. The question is, what are you going to do

00:21:03.260 about it? What are you going to do about it? Are you going to ask the government to step in and help

00:21:08.780 you? I mean, at this point, we've got every law on the books that makes this country as equal as it

00:21:14.380 can possibly be. So what are you asking for? I mean, you have people like Bernie Sanders and

00:21:20.140 Ocasio Cortez saying that we need to eliminate the gender wage gap. Uh, Bernie Sanders tweeted out the

00:21:26.640 other day, the, for, for every $1 of a white man, here's what the Asian American woman makes.

00:21:33.260 Here's what the white woman makes. Here's what the black woman makes. And of course it gets lower and

00:21:36.840 lower. I think for Asian women's 87 cents on a dollar for white women, it's 79 cents on a dollar.

00:21:42.860 All that stuff, basically saying that we are all being crushed under the white man. And the implication

00:21:47.560 there is that white men are treated better and paid more than women. And that's actually not true.

00:21:53.760 The reason why there is a wage gap and there is a wage gap, it's called the uncontrolled wage gap

00:22:00.040 between men and women. In general, women do make 79 cents to every dollar a man makes. You know why?

00:22:05.660 Because women choose that. They choose that. When you account for, um, all of the, all of the different

00:22:13.300 factors that, that go into getting paid a certain level. So when you look at education, when you look at

00:22:18.640 how many hours worked, when you look at full-time versus part-time, when you look at the choices that

00:22:24.520 men and women make, when it comes to the workforce, when it comes to labor versus when it comes to

00:22:29.060 staying home or working fewer hours, uh, men simply in general work harder than women do.

00:22:35.720 They, uh, decide to work longer hours. Uh, they decide to make sacrifices that quite frankly,

00:22:41.620 a lot of women aren't willing to make. That's not every single woman. Um, but that is in general,

00:22:47.220 what is true. That is why in general, a man makes $1 to every, or a woman makes 79 cents to

00:22:54.420 every dollar that a man makes. It is life choices. Even if you look at somewhere like Sweden, uh,

00:23:00.520 that is seen as the most egalitarian, the most progressive, the most gender neutral country in

00:23:05.640 the world. Well, women are still making less than men because if you look at who takes longer, uh,

00:23:11.440 parental leave, who decides to quit work earlier and stay home with their family, whatever it is,

00:23:18.420 has taken them away from work. Uh, it's the women, it's the women, the majority of the time that tend

00:23:23.780 to do that because men and women make different choices. But when it comes to the American dream,

00:23:29.240 when it comes to the idea of hard work and how much you earn any gap to the left is indicative

00:23:35.600 not of a deficit of hard work or the choices that you made, but because of some kind of injustice

00:23:41.340 and injustice must be righted by the federal government stepping in and doing something

00:23:47.140 when it's just not true. Every statistic, every study shows that the way to get out of poverty

00:23:52.180 is to make sure that you finish high school, then get married, then have kids. If you are going to get

00:23:58.280 married and have kids, you should finish high school first. You should get married before you have

00:24:02.480 kids. That's what every study shows that you will, the majority of the time you will stay out of

00:24:08.320 poverty. If you just make those extremely simple decisions. But nowadays it's bigoted to say that

00:24:14.640 the choices you make actually affect your lot in life. No, it has to be because you are a victim of

00:24:21.380 your circumstances. If you are poor, you are a victim of your circumstances. It's not because of

00:24:26.260 anything you ever did wrong. And look, I'm not saying people aren't born into hard times. People aren't born

00:24:31.260 into really bad situations that they couldn't help, that people aren't used and abused and put down

00:24:37.020 in a way that they really felt like they could never get out of their station in life. I'm not

00:24:41.840 saying that bad things don't happen and people don't fall on bad luck. And I actually do believe

00:24:47.120 that the government does have a role. I believe that the government can provide relief for families,

00:24:53.180 but not entitlement to families to where they are dependent on the government to ever survive and

00:24:58.140 subsist. There's a difference in that. We've gone from relief, what it was during the great

00:25:03.380 depression to entitlement. And so our mentality has shifted as well to, we believe now that someone

00:25:10.200 cannot get out of poverty. They cannot get out of their situation by working hard and making better

00:25:15.180 choices. It has to be the government who lifts them up out of it. Democrats don't just want equal

00:25:21.580 opportunity, which is part of the American dream. They want equal outcome. That's what they believe

00:25:26.660 justice is, but that's just not going to happen because guess what? I'm probably not going to

00:25:31.720 have equal outcome with the person who works harder than me and is smarter than me. I'm probably just

00:25:38.020 not. They were born with a higher IQ than I was. They have a better work ethic than I do. Maybe they

00:25:44.740 work longer hours than I do. Maybe they work more efficiently than I do. Maybe they made better

00:25:49.860 connections in life that they didn't really have any control over and I didn't either. Okay.

00:25:54.680 That's life. That's not an injustice. There might be a gap between what that person makes and what I

00:26:01.220 make. And some of it might have been out of my control, but that's not injustice. That's just

00:26:06.600 life. It's really funny how our generation in particular has forgotten what our parents told us

00:26:13.000 that life isn't fair and how we used to just kind of like accept that. Yeah. Life isn't fair.

00:26:18.860 It is what you make it. Do whatever you can to be responsible and work hard and, uh, you know,

00:26:26.360 live out your potential. Things might get in your way, but it's all about overcoming those obstacles

00:26:31.140 too. Okay. Well, if I have an obstacle, something is wrong. It's because I've been treated unfairly

00:26:37.800 and I need to talk about this. It's because of sexism. It's become a cause of some immutable

00:26:42.840 characteristic that I have. It couldn't be because of choices. Um, my parents, my, my parents

00:26:50.520 taught me with maybe you could even say indoctrinated me if you want to with this. Um, I just, I've never

00:26:59.640 been able to get past it or get it out of my head. This idea that I could do anything that I wanted to

00:27:06.000 do. Um, as far as my, my talents went, obviously I was never going to probably be Beyonce. I mean,

00:27:14.420 I didn't really try if we're honest, but probably not going to happen for me. But my parents taught

00:27:19.920 me from a very early age and they weren't feminists. I didn't even know what a feminist was. They just

00:27:25.160 taught me in this country, if you dream big and you chase after those dreams and it's part of God's

00:27:31.540 will. Um, you can do anything that you want to do. Like I just knew from an early age that anything

00:27:38.300 was possible. I never doubted that. Um, my parents gave me a lot of confidence growing up. Some of the

00:27:44.000 confidence is something that I was just born with, but my parents really built a lot of confidence in

00:27:48.800 me in, um, sorry, I just lost my voice in affirming the things that I'm good at being honest about the

00:27:55.440 things that I'm not good at providing opportunities for me when I needed those opportunities. And I just

00:28:00.660 never doubted it. And I think part of it is because what I saw in their lives. And I think

00:28:07.160 I've shared this story before. I've certainly shared it in speeches and maybe even a video that

00:28:12.120 I did. I'm not, and I actually, I think I did talk about it on my podcast one time, but just in case

00:28:17.780 you don't remember, um, my grandmother, she was one of 13. My grandmother on my dad's side,

00:28:24.340 she was one of 13. She was the oldest girl of 13. So she was the second oldest. She was the first

00:28:29.300 one in her family to graduate from high school. First one in her family to graduate from college.

00:28:34.320 She went on to get her master's. She was a teacher during the day while she was taking classes at

00:28:38.700 night. Uh, she grew up on a cotton farm in Louisiana, poor as dirt. They had to make their

00:28:43.740 own food. They had to make their own clothes. I mean, she really came from nothing. And there

00:28:48.260 was something in her that decided I want more than this. I'm going to work hard and I am going to

00:28:55.940 have a different life than this. And I don't think she ever resented her parents. I don't think she

00:29:00.320 ever resented her life, but there was something in her that made her decide I'm going to finish high

00:29:05.180 school. I'm going to finish college. I'm going to go on to get my master's and I'm going to work

00:29:09.240 really hard. I mean, she's a woman in the 1950s going from nothing. And she worked, uh, through this

00:29:15.520 entire time to make sure that she finished her education. She got married. She had four kids. She was

00:29:22.260 raising them, of course, while she was working, while she was getting her master's. And my dad

00:29:27.040 was passed down that hard work ethic from my grandma. And so my dad decided, of course, he was

00:29:33.340 going to finish high school. He was going to work his way through college, but it took my dad 10 years

00:29:38.520 to get through college while he was working full time because it wasn't an option to get into a ton

00:29:44.880 of debt. He had to do what he could to make sure that he got his bachelor's degree, but he worked full

00:29:49.540 time through the entirety of college because he and my mom got married when they were 19 and 20.

00:29:54.440 My mom promised herself she was not going to get married or get pregnant as a teenager,

00:29:58.120 something that was rare in her neck of the woods and rare in her family. She decided,

00:30:03.180 I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to get pregnant as, uh, as a teenager, I'm not going to

00:30:06.840 get married as a teenager, teenager. So, uh, one month after she turned 20, she got married to my dad

00:30:12.620 and she finished her, her college career. She got her bachelor's degree. She went on to work. They had my

00:30:18.840 brother when they were only 21. Like I said, my dad taking classes, working this entire time.

00:30:23.780 Of course they ended up having three kids. I came along a lot later when things weren't quite as hard.

00:30:28.500 They lived in a cockroach infested trailer, uh, with all kinds of creatures. And then my mom still

00:30:33.640 has a fear of these things called water bugs that look a lot like cockroaches. Uh, my parents worked

00:30:39.060 really hard. My dad sacrificed a lot. My mom sacrificed a lot as well. Not in the exact same way that

00:30:46.820 my dad is. Although my parents have both worked at different periods of my life. Uh, but my mom

00:30:51.120 sacrificed a lot when she could be a stay at home mom, she was a stay at home mom. And she sacrificed

00:30:55.460 a lot in that sense. My dad sacrificed a lot of time, a lot of energy to build a company. And he did,

00:31:03.340 he did well, he was successful. It's almost like scary to say now, Oh yeah, my parents were successful,

00:31:08.340 but I am proud of what my parents accomplished. My mom also came from a poor family. And, um,

00:31:15.180 although she loved her parents, she didn't have a great example, but something in her,

00:31:19.860 just like something in my grandma, just like something in my dad, they all decided

00:31:23.800 to make different choices than the people around them. They took whatever they could,

00:31:28.560 uh, from the upbringing they had, whatever good they could, they held onto it and they

00:31:32.700 used it to do something better. And my dad always told me that the reason I work hard,

00:31:37.580 the reason I sacrifice for you guys is so I can make sure that you have a higher jumping

00:31:42.660 off point than I did. I can make sure that you have an even better life and even better career

00:31:48.860 than I did. And in this, in this world, when we demonize excellence, when we demonize, uh,

00:31:55.320 this idea of privilege or this, uh, or of wealth or of success or of pulling yourself up by your

00:32:01.080 bootstraps. And we insist upon the fact that it, it just doesn't work. It only works for the white

00:32:05.780 man denying reality altogether. Um, you almost feel a sense of guilt for talking about, uh, how your

00:32:14.540 parents worked harder, how you worked hard. You almost want to deny the fact that you have been

00:32:20.220 successful or that you've made, uh, money at all. And I simply don't think that that's right.

00:32:25.900 Because if we're all honest with ourselves, we all want to be something like we all want to make

00:32:31.400 something of ourselves in a certain way. Like we all at least want to be responsible with our money.

00:32:35.940 Like we all at least want to be able to provide for our kids. And if any of us had the choice between

00:32:40.820 struggling, uh, from meal to meal, our kids not being able to afford shoes or know when their next

00:32:47.000 meal is coming and being able to be comfortable or in a position where you can be generous with your

00:32:52.200 money and provide for your family, we would probably choose the latter. And yet we've got this

00:32:57.140 cognitive dissonance going on in America where we demonize wealth. We demonize people like Howard

00:33:01.800 Schultz who have made it, who have worked hard. And we say, Oh no, he's just the exception to the

00:33:06.420 rule. No, actually he's not. I mean, he is in the sense that he's a billionaire, but the American dream

00:33:11.600 is not rare in this country. Now what's rare in the world. That's why we have a million people coming

00:33:17.200 to live and work here every year. That's why we give so many work visas, uh, every day in this

00:33:23.680 country, awarding them to people with a hard work ethic and who prove that they can actually

00:33:27.860 contribute something to our society. There's a reason why people all around the world come here

00:33:33.240 for their education, for their medicine and for their work to invent, to, um, to just provide for

00:33:42.840 their families. America and the American dream is rare in the world. And it has contributed, uh,

00:33:50.940 to more alleviation of poverty and of suffering and of mediocrity than any other force, any other force

00:33:59.000 on God's greener. And yet, and yet we want to pretend like merit doesn't exist. Like everyone

00:34:05.940 is a victim of their circumstances unless they are a rich white millionaire. And of course we don't talk

00:34:11.260 about the minorities. We don't talk about the women who have also succeeded, who have taken charge of

00:34:15.740 the American dream, who have lived responsibly and their lives and have done well. We don't talk

00:34:20.060 about them. We only talk about the people that have been crushed by the billionaires and the

00:34:25.260 millionaires. Um, it makes me sad because my parents are living proof of the American dream. I've always

00:34:31.560 believed in it. I've always known that's probably why I've just almost like born a fan of Ronald Reagan.

00:34:37.240 I believe in a very idealistic and ideological way, um, in the spirit of the American man and woman.

00:34:46.320 I just do. I think there's something different about it. If you read about the American revolution,

00:34:51.380 you see, there's something different about Americans. And I believe anyone, no matter what

00:34:56.260 country they come from, no matter what religion they are, no matter the color of their skin,

00:35:00.380 uh, no matter what culture they are, I believe they can come here. They can adopt the American dream.

00:35:04.800 They can adopt, uh, that spirit of resolve that seems so unique to Americans and they can do anything

00:35:10.520 they want to do. And I want to keep it that way. Uh, that's why I don't like socialism. That's why

00:35:16.160 I don't believe in it. And that's why quite frankly, even though I would never vote for Howard Schultz

00:35:19.720 because he's pro-choice, I am encouraged by someone like him running for president. And I hope that he

00:35:26.360 gains more support than the Democrats want. It gives me hope because it reminds me, okay, not everyone

00:35:31.500 has gone off the deep end. Like not everyone is so far left that they've lost their minds. Not everyone

00:35:36.720 is so open-minded that their brain has actually fallen out. Um, even though I don't want him to be

00:35:42.580 president again, because I'm not really sure about his social policies. Like I'm just not really sure

00:35:48.920 about the whole size of the government thing in the hands of Howard Schultz. Um, I I'm still encouraged

00:35:55.280 by his existence. Like I'm still encouraged that even though we might disagree on some things, especially

00:36:01.000 on social things, especially on abortion, that you believe in the American dream. That's what I'm

00:36:06.680 afraid of. As I've said so many times, um, the differences and the disagreements between the

00:36:12.520 right and the left, this country in this country are not so much complex as they are simple. They're

00:36:19.460 more fundamental than they used to be. We disagree on truth. We disagree on the American dream. We

00:36:23.740 disagree on morality. Now, just a brief word on what the Bible says about this. And this is not me

00:36:29.540 using the Bible to support my opinions. My opinions are always supposed to be formed by the Bible,

00:36:37.500 not the other way around. And I don't want it to seem like that at all where I get my ideas

00:36:43.440 are, are from the Bible. Now I'm not calling God a Republican. I'm not calling God a conservative.

00:36:48.820 He transcends all of that. He's bigger than that. And one day, every knee shall bow and every tongue

00:36:53.360 confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. So I am not saying that he is my political mascot, but I am using

00:36:59.340 the Bible, um, as the foundation of what I believe. And I can tell you what it says about, uh, about

00:37:05.360 wealth. And so we can read the book of Proverbs and we know, uh, how highly God favors and how much

00:37:13.620 God prefers hard work over laziness, over apathy. Um, Proverbs 10, four, a slack hand causes poverty,

00:37:21.120 but the hand of the diligent makes rich. Now that said, you can read, I mean, you can read the book of

00:37:27.680 Proverbs and you can see that the wise man is one who is responsible, who is good with his money,

00:37:32.800 who is able to provide for his family, uh, who doesn't give into temptation, who is not controlled

00:37:38.180 by anything, by, um, alcohol, by his money, by gambling, by anything that would take him away

00:37:44.000 from the road that God has called him on. He is able to do that, uh, in submission to the Lord.

00:37:48.600 He is in control of his body, his finances, and his life. And in the Christian world, this is controlled

00:37:54.400 by the Holy spirit and stays on the narrow path. Um, and now the Bible also has something to say,

00:38:01.420 while it says we should be good stewards of our money, we should be responsible with our money.

00:38:05.420 We should do everything we can to provide for our family. It also warns against idolizing wealth.

00:38:10.840 So Matthew 19, 24, uh, Jesus says, again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of

00:38:16.620 a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Why? Because of first Timothy 6, 10 for the love

00:38:23.560 of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away

00:38:28.720 from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. And then this one, which is just a devastating

00:38:34.820 and dramatic, and I don't mean that in a pejorative way, like just a very dramatic rendering of the,

00:38:41.340 the devastation of idolizing wealth James 5, one through five. Come now, you rich weep and how for

00:38:47.420 the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted in your garments are moth eaten. Your gold

00:38:52.180 and silver have corroded and their corrosion will be evidence against you. And you will eat your

00:38:55.980 flesh like fire and will eat your flesh like fire. Uh, you have laid up treasure in the last days,

00:39:00.780 behold the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud or crying out

00:39:06.420 against you. And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have

00:39:10.400 lived on the earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

00:39:14.640 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you. And if it sounds like I was

00:39:19.400 like about to cry when I was reading that it's not, it's because my throat is really dry. You know,

00:39:24.280 when you like catch that dryness in your throat and you're just about to die, that's what's happening

00:39:29.800 to me right now. Anyway. So the Bible has a lot to say about idolizing wealth and putting wealth first

00:39:37.040 and loving money and desiring to be rich in your life and how that becomes your God and how you're

00:39:44.580 unable to worship God and worship money. Actually, the Bible says that you're not able to do both.

00:39:51.440 Now, this doesn't mean that you can't work hard and you can't earn money for your labor. Um, it does

00:39:57.420 mean that if you idolize this, if you put this first in your life, also, if you are corrupt with your

00:40:02.600 money, which we see in that James passage, that that will, um, be your destruction. That will be your

00:40:08.380 demise. You cannot serve God and money at the same time. That doesn't mean you can't make money,

00:40:13.640 but it does mean you cannot serve money. There's a big difference with that. Now the Bible is very

00:40:20.000 clear about what we should do with wealth, what we should do with our money. Money in itself is not

00:40:25.660 evil, but the love of money, the idolatry of money is. So what to do with wealth, Proverbs 3, 9 through

00:40:32.460 10, honor the Lord with your wealth and with the first fruits of all of your produce. Second Corinthians

00:40:38.460 9, 7, each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion

00:40:44.680 for God loves a cheerful giver. So we are to be good stewards of whatever we have, whether

00:40:50.400 we have a lot or whether we have a little, it is not ours. It is the Lord's. We are to

00:40:54.940 steward it according to God's word. We are to be outrageously generous with what we have

00:40:59.800 and cheerfully, joyfully generous with what we have. Um, it is not our wealth that we accumulated.

00:41:06.320 It is God's wealth that through his grace, he allowed us to have, and therefore we give

00:41:10.260 it back as he sees fit again. Well, in and of itself is not a sin is not evil, but the

00:41:17.120 love, the idolatry, the hoarding, the corruption that can come with wealth. Those are sense.

00:41:23.140 And like I said, can be our demise. Now it's also important to remember that God does not

00:41:28.720 promise wealth. Proverbs are principles. They are not promises. So just because you work

00:41:35.320 hard and just because you are responsible does not mean necessarily that you are going

00:41:40.440 to become a millionaire. Life is hard. We do have trials. We do have things that come

00:41:45.240 up that we didn't see. Someone in our family does fall sick. Someone sues us and we lose

00:41:50.000 all of our money. We did everything right, but we just didn't see that coming. God does not

00:41:55.560 promise wealth in that. He also does not say that wealth is indicative of worldly favor.

00:42:01.140 There's a lot of corrupt, wealthy people. Like you cannot say that God has his blessing

00:42:07.820 on El Chapo just because El Chapo has millions of dollars. It's not indicative of earthly blessing.

00:42:14.560 Some of the poorest people might have, might be closer to God and might be more blessed by

00:42:22.080 God's presence because they are in closer communion with God than someone who has more money with

00:42:27.440 than them. John 16, 33, Jesus said in the world, you will have tribulation, but take heart. I've

00:42:32.980 overcome the world. So he says, we will have trials. We will have tribulation. Life will be hard. As

00:42:38.660 Christians, we know that we're going to have to stand up for our faith and it's going to take

00:42:42.200 a significant sacrifice for that. It's going to be difficult. We're never promised ease in this life.

00:42:48.200 We're not promised happiness, even a superficial happiness. We're not promised in this life. We're

00:42:52.900 promised eternal joy. We're promised eternal riches. We're promised that we will inherit

00:42:57.860 God's riches in heaven. We are not promised that we will be richer. We will be wealthy in this life.

00:43:03.440 But if we are, whatever we are given, whether it's $5 or $500 million, we are to be faithful stewards of

00:43:09.440 it. We are not to let it control our lives or corrupt our hearts. So that is my comprehensive view

00:43:15.700 of the demonization of excellence and how it's not only not American, but it's not biblical to demonize

00:43:21.900 excellence, to idolize excellence or to idolize the wealth that can come with excellence. Absolutely.

00:43:28.040 But to be an enemy of excellence is just to be a sloth. And the Bible has a lot to say about that as

00:43:33.880 well. This was a little bit of a longer podcast. Hope that you guys liked it. I hope it got you

00:43:37.900 through your commute, maybe even two commutes. And I hope you have a great day. We will be back here

00:43:42.580 on Thursday and we will be talking about a very exciting subject called hipster Jesus. Okay. I'll see you

00:43:49.320 guys then.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 05, 2019

Ep 74 ｜ Demonization of Excellence

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