Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - REPLAY： What Makes America Great

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. This is post-pregnancy Allie speaking to you.

00:00:16.360 I am not back quite yet. I'll be back tomorrow for the first fresh episode talking about all

00:00:24.020 the craziness that's gone on over the past couple months. But for today, I'm going to play you a

00:00:30.460 repeat of the 4th of July episode that I did last year, just talking about how much I love America.

00:00:37.620 I hope you guys had fun celebrating America and our freedom over the weekend. And so this episode

00:00:44.360 is going to be about that. And of course, my favorite holiday, the 4th of July, and then I

00:00:49.820 will be back tomorrow with a fresh new episode in my studio to talk to you about all of the good

00:00:56.500 stuff that you guys have been wanting to talk about for the past three months. So I will see you guys

00:01:00.380 then. But until then, enjoy this vintage 4th of July episode. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy

00:01:13.000 Friday. We have a very special episode for you today. Since tomorrow is July 4th, we are going to

00:01:20.580 talk about why America is so awesome. And I think that this is a message that is probably more needed

00:01:27.540 than ever right now. So if you've been listening to me for any amount of time, you probably have heard

00:01:32.320 me say that the 4th of July is my favorite holiday. And before I get any accusations from people saying

00:01:40.220 that I am idolizing America more than I love Jesus because I like 4th of July over Christmas or

00:01:47.940 Easter. It is not because I am prioritizing America or my patriotism over the birth of Christ or the

00:01:55.740 resurrection. I care about those things, obviously, more than I care about the United States. Those are

00:02:01.940 much more significant events than the founding of the United States of America. It is just the

00:02:11.400 celebration of these holidays that I am comparing here. And I like the celebration of the 4th of July

00:02:19.840 because of the atmosphere, because of the season that it's in. Summer is my favorite season. And just

00:02:25.520 because of all of the different things that go along with celebrating the 4th of July, it's just

00:02:31.900 a fun atmosphere. It's a fun holiday to celebrate. Of course, I do love America and I do love the reasons

00:02:38.580 that we're celebrating it, but not even in the same light year of the celebration of Jesus. I just want to

00:02:45.300 make that clear. I do love the 4th of July. I do love America. I've always loved America. When I sing

00:02:52.940 the Star Spangled Banner, when I pledge allegiance to the flag, I get teary just because we are so

00:03:00.280 incredibly blessed to live in this wonderfully free country. Are we perfect? No. And we're going

00:03:08.080 to talk about that a little bit today. It's important for us to be able to see our country and see our

00:03:14.420 history and see our present state in the right way through a truthful lens. And so that's what we're

00:03:20.660 going to do today. I hope that you finished this episode feeling so excited to celebrate the 4th of

00:03:27.100 July this weekend with your family, even as you might be looking out your window and seeing chaos

00:03:32.980 waging all around you. And maybe you're questioning your own patriotism. You're questioning whether or

00:03:37.480 not this really is a great place to live or whether we really are a fundamentally good country based on

00:03:44.640 good ideals and ideals. This episode is for you. If you have not noticed, which I'm sure you have,

00:03:52.280 especially if you listen to this podcast, a lot of Americans, an unprecedented number of Americans,

00:03:58.160 I would say, do not feel that gratitude for American freedom or pride in American accomplishments.

00:04:04.980 If you talk to, for example, a professor at an elite university or especially a student of one of those

00:04:12.300 professors, you will probably hear them say that America is inherently irrevocably evil. In fact,

00:04:18.800 we are the most evil nation on earth, that we are built on white supremacy, that we are a wicked

00:04:24.720 imperialist force, and that all international turmoil in the modern day can be traced back to

00:04:30.960 American aggression. That might be what you hear from a number of professors and college students and

00:04:35.820 recent college grads. A Gallup poll came out last year, tracing patriotism among self-identified

00:04:43.740 Republicans and Democrats from 2001 to 2019. And I think the findings are really interesting. In 2001, 64% of

00:04:52.200 Republicans and 46% of Democrats were, quote, extremely proud to be an American. That number shot up.

00:05:00.540 By 2003, 86% of Republicans, 65% of Democrats, so the vast majority of both parties. It dropped

00:05:10.460 slightly for both parties after that. By 2013, 71% of Republicans and 56% of Democrats were extremely

00:05:20.280 proud to be an American. That's still a majority of both parties. And then something amazing in a very

00:05:25.940 sad sense to me happened, especially among Democrats. From 2013 to 2017, that sense of patriotism or the

00:05:34.980 feeling of being extremely proud in the words of this poll, it dropped 13 points, 40 to 43%.

00:05:44.560 That's amazing to me that their patriotism in the Democratic Party dropped while their favorite

00:05:50.720 president was in office. And what's interesting is that if you look at other, there's another Pew research

00:05:56.880 study that I cite a lot, polarization in politics, and it's from 2017. The Democratic Party moved left

00:06:04.640 on every issue while Barack Obama was in office. So if you look at the views of the Democratic Party on

00:06:11.800 things like race and welfare and immigration and the Second Amendment from 1990 to 2017, the biggest change,

00:06:20.000 the biggest shift to the left for the Democratic Party was while Barack Obama was in president.

00:06:25.840 And it coincides with, I can't say that, you know, I can't say unequivocally that it correlates to,

00:06:31.100 but it coincides with this lowering of patriotism while he was in office. Now in 2019, it is down to 22%.

00:06:40.960 Only 22% of Democrats, and it probably is less now in 2020, are extremely proud to be an American,

00:06:49.060 according to this Gallup poll, whereas 76% of self-identifying Republicans are still extremely

00:06:56.020 proud to be an American. So there is a big divide in how we see the country, and it's due to, as I'll

00:07:01.740 talk about in a little bit, really a worldview divide. A 2017 Pew study shows that fewer and fewer

00:07:08.160 people believe that America is the greatest country in the world. This is this idea of American

00:07:12.720 exceptionalism. 38% believed that America is the greatest country in the world. In 2011, the vast

00:07:20.140 majority believed that it's at least one of the best countries in the world. But only 22% of all Americans

00:07:26.380 believe that today. 41% of Republicans believe that America is the greatest country in the world. Only 19%

00:07:33.280 of Democrats believe that. Only 12%. This shouldn't surprise anyone, but it still is sad. 12% of 18 to

00:07:41.800 29-year-olds believe that America is the greatest country in the world. Almost a third of 18 to 29-year-olds

00:07:48.080 believe that there are other countries better than the United States. The older you are, according to

00:07:53.460 this Pew study, the more likely you are to see America as the best country or one of the best

00:07:59.420 countries in the world. It's amazing what kind of perspective experience it gives you. Also

00:08:05.840 interesting and important, about the same number of white Americans and black Americans believe it to

00:08:12.460 be the best country in the world. 30% of white people, according to this study, and 31% of black

00:08:18.660 people believe that America is the greatest country in the world. The media and far-left activists,

00:08:24.260 far-left activist groups, do not want you to believe that. They don't want you to know that.

00:08:31.100 They would love to have you believe that only white people are patriotic and that every other race

00:08:36.500 hates the country and they have good reason to hate the country. And that actually couldn't be further

00:08:40.900 from the truth, at least according to this study. The numbers of people who are white and people who

00:08:47.040 are black are about the same, who believe that America is the greatest country in the world.

00:08:51.500 And we're going to hang out here for just a little bit. This exacerbation of a divide, this desire to

00:09:00.320 stoke division where there might not actually be division for political purposes. The leftist media,

00:09:07.700 most of which is driven by Marxism, thrives on this kind of division. Marxism in the economic sense,

00:09:14.620 for those of you who don't know, and this is just kind of a crude description of it because Marxism as a

00:09:19.040 term can be very elusive. But in the economic sense is the desire to take down capitalism,

00:09:25.300 replace it with socialism and communism. It calls for an uprising, a revolution of the working class

00:09:31.680 or what Marx called the proletariat, to take down the rich, the bourgeois. But it's not just economic,

00:09:37.860 it's also a social philosophy. So social Marxism seeks to take down any hierarchy, either a real

00:09:44.700 hierarchy or a perceived hierarchy. So whether that's ethnic or gender or familial. That is why,

00:09:51.240 for example, self-avowed Marxists like Black Lives Matter and Antifa, they're not only against racism

00:09:58.620 and not even all of the activists, especially in Antifa, can be said that it can't be said that all of

00:10:06.360 Antifa is against racism. If you have seen some of the videos of Antifa activists talking to black cops,

00:10:13.820 for example. But these groups aren't just against racism. They are also, according to the BLM website,

00:10:21.060 against cisgender privilege is what they call it, heteronormative thinking. They seek to, quote,

00:10:27.040 disrupt and dismantle the Western prescribed nuclear family. And just a note on that, the nuclear family,

00:10:33.820 the idea of a mom and a dad and a children raising their kids together is not a Western idea.

00:10:39.960 Whether you believe in the Bible or not, it is a book that is not a Western book. It is an Eastern

00:10:46.520 book, if you want to call it that. It certainly wasn't written by white people. And it is also an

00:10:51.480 ancient book. And in the beginning, we see this so-called nuclear family. So this idea that the

00:10:56.740 nuclear family is Western prescribed is just not true. But the BLM website says that they would like

00:11:03.320 to dismantle that. It is why their statements of belief on their website mentions mothers three

00:11:08.640 times, but it never says the word fathers. It is a Marxist organization that, like all Marxist

00:11:14.400 organizations and nations, it categorizes people by their various points of perceived oppression,

00:11:20.660 socioeconomic, racial, sexual orientation, etc. It seeks to dismantle any system or institution

00:11:27.080 views as oppressive. Marxists see any disparity between the groups they view as privileged and the

00:11:34.460 groups they view as underprivileged as the result of discrimination and oppression. So they seek

00:11:40.220 equal outcomes, which they determine to be fair and just. But here's the problem with that. A disparity

00:11:48.280 in outcomes does not always mean discrimination. So equal outcomes doesn't necessarily mean fairness

00:11:54.920 and justice. I highly recommend you read Thomas Sowell's Discrimination and Disparities. It is

00:12:00.540 not very long at all. I listened to it on audiobook, and it was really good, really enlightening. It

00:12:06.260 talks about all of this stuff, and I highly recommend that you read it, no matter what side of the aisle

00:12:11.160 that you're on. If you're on the left side of the aisle, it's going to challenge you. But if anything,

00:12:15.620 it could just sharpen what you already believe, but I encourage you to read it. There are innumerable

00:12:23.640 reasons why one individual has a different outcome in life than another. One of them might be

00:12:29.680 discrimination, but the problem is, and something that Marxists just don't want to believe, is that

00:12:36.660 we cannot assume that based on someone's group identity. So siblings coming from the same family

00:12:42.700 often have different outcomes in life. We can't expect all people from all different backgrounds and

00:12:48.140 all capabilities and all experiences to have the same outcomes in life. And that's not necessarily

00:12:54.180 what justice looks like. If we could somehow redistribute all the money and all the social

00:13:00.520 status, which is what a lot of Marxists want, so that everyone has the same amount of wealth,

00:13:05.460 has the same kind of housing, the same education, the same everything, you are still going to have

00:13:11.760 unequal outcomes because individuals are different. There are a million different factors that play

00:13:17.620 into people's lives. The idea, for example, that white privilege is the determining factor of wealth

00:13:25.880 and success in America is just not true. It's not true. According to the U.S. census, Indian Americans

00:13:32.240 have the highest median income by a long shot, followed then by East Asian Americans and then white.

00:13:40.160 Asian Americans have higher test scores, higher graduation rates, lower unemployment, higher rates

00:13:45.420 of two-parent households than any other ethnic group in the country. White people as a collective

00:13:51.200 have inarguably had the most opportunity and the most freedom and the most fairness in America

00:13:56.800 since its beginning. And we are not the most successful group. Is there another country? And I'm

00:14:04.000 genuinely wondering, is there another country in the world in which an ethnic minority is on average

00:14:09.480 wealthier and more economically successful than members of the majority? If so, I haven't found

00:14:14.580 it. And if there is, please point it out to me. There are all kinds of privileges that exist. And I

00:14:20.640 would argue that white privilege is actually one that does exist in America, depending on where you

00:14:25.700 are. Some of you are thinking, well, duh. And some of you are thinking, well, no, that's not true. But I

00:14:30.680 believe that it does because white people are in the majority. So that means just like majorities in

00:14:37.020 every other country, they will be represented more in the media, in halls of power, in the products

00:14:43.200 that you see, in stores. But I would also argue that America in 2020, this has not always been the

00:14:50.800 case, and we'll talk more about this, but America in 2020 probably has the least majority privilege in

00:14:56.740 the world. That has, like I said, not always been the case. But right now, compare America to any other

00:15:02.920 country in the world and how ethnic and religious minorities are treated, and you will find that

00:15:07.720 America is one of the fairest, if not the fairest and best place for people of all backgrounds to

00:15:13.760 live. And once we get into statistics, we will talk about why so many refugees and immigrants, more

00:15:19.420 than any other country in the world, come to America. There are all kinds of privileges, like I said,

00:15:24.800 that exist. There is two-parent privilege. So studies show that the presence of a dad in the home

00:15:29.900 drastically decreases. Your chances of poverty, drug use, delinquency, depression, teen pregnancy,

00:15:35.860 dropping out of high school. You, for example, as a Hispanic American who comes from a stable two-parent

00:15:43.660 home, are more privileged than, for example, the white kid whose dad left him when his mom was

00:15:50.060 pregnant. There are less consequential but also existent privileges. There is pretty privilege.

00:15:56.560 There is skinny privilege. There are privileges that come with age, that come with physical ability,

00:16:02.540 that come with gender. There are geographic privileges, topographic privileges. There are all

00:16:08.520 kinds of privileges in life that may or may not contribute to your outcomes in life. There are people

00:16:16.160 who defeat all odds, who only have the privilege of being alive, and then they make something incredible

00:16:22.060 of themselves. And then there are people who have every privilege in the world and make nothing of

00:16:27.160 themselves. People have different abilities. People have different talents. They make different choices.

00:16:32.100 There are countless, unforeseen, and many times unfair circumstances that people find themselves in that

00:16:39.180 can shape the outcomes of their life. And yes, discrimination and injustice can and do inhibit

00:16:46.200 people's success. But the point is, discrimination cannot be assumed by disparate outcomes in life,

00:16:54.840 which is why the Marxist idea that if we eliminate all hierarchies and that we distribute all money and

00:17:02.780 all power, that people will naturally be equal in all things is simply untrue. Equal outcomes are only

00:17:10.440 possible by forcibly and constantly redistributing power and punishing the accumulation of success

00:17:17.160 and capital and by forcibly breaking up hierarchies like the family, getting rid of dichotomies like the

00:17:23.100 so-called gender binary, which of course is what we're seeing. I mean, this is why you've never seen a

00:17:29.220 free communist country. It has to be forced. Every communist or socialist country is not going to be

00:17:36.920 existent alongside freedom of speech, for example, because you have to squash all opposition because

00:17:44.180 it is unnatural. It goes against human nature to not have private property, to not have unequal outcomes

00:17:50.160 because of unequal circumstances. We believe in equal opportunity. We believe in liberty and justice for

00:17:56.440 all. We believe in fairness and we should be striving towards equal opportunity. But equal outcomes

00:18:02.260 is impossible without tyranny. Equal outcomes doesn't necessarily mean justice. As Thomas Sowell says,

00:18:09.660 justice at all costs is not justice. So like I said, equal opportunity, the elimination of unjust

00:18:17.320 discrimination, fighting for the freedom and the rights of all people of all backgrounds to have life,

00:18:23.000 liberty and property are worthy causes to fight for. These are the ideals upon which America was founded and

00:18:30.520 they are good. It is vital to note and to learn from the fact that America has failed many times to live up to

00:18:39.380 those ideals. We were founded upon the then radical notion that all men were created equal and were given certain

00:18:46.260 inalienable rights by God. We have failed to live up to that standard in slavery, in Jim Crow, in Japanese

00:18:53.580 internment camps, in our allowance and celebration of abortion. And our failure has cost human life and

00:19:00.400 liberty. There is no denying that. I don't think there's anyone in the world, especially any American

00:19:05.780 that would deny that. We should not even minimize it, that there are ugly parts of American history

00:19:11.640 that we should look at square in the eye and we should learn from them. We should reckon with our

00:19:16.200 history. But that does not mean, as we talked about on a previous episode, that we should wreck our

00:19:22.040 country. So we should reckon with our history and learn from our history. But that does not mean we need to

00:19:27.560 wreck our country and our foundations. The idea that is very popular, especially today, that America was

00:19:35.720 founded upon slavery and white supremacy, not just that those things existed then, but that we were

00:19:41.580 actually founded upon those things, as the 1619 Project asserts, is not true. And in fact, has been

00:19:48.280 debunked by historians across the aisle. I recommend a piece in the Atlantic called A Matter of Facts by

00:19:57.180 Sean Walens that talks about the shoddy historical analysis, if you can even call it that, of the 1619

00:20:04.940 Project. It's simply not true that this is what America was founded on. That was not the point of

00:20:13.180 the revolution. The ideals and ideas of the revolution, of our nation's founding, were and are

00:20:19.180 good. It is when we have moved away from those ideas and ideals that all men are created equal and

00:20:25.720 deserve equal justice and liberty and opportunity that we have allowed for and even perpetuated

00:20:31.280 human rights abuses. It is when America, in her special, valiant way, has moved towards those

00:20:39.340 good ideals. That's when the beauty happens. That's when men give their lives for slavery as they did in

00:20:45.420 the Civil War. That is when emancipation happens. That is when we help save the world from Nazis and

00:20:51.420 fascism. That is when we help liberate Eastern Europe from communism. That is when Jim Crow ends.

00:20:57.300 That's when desegregation happens. That is when America goes from having segregated schools and

00:21:03.420 facilities to black people serving on the Supreme Court as the Secretary of State, steadily and

00:21:09.520 increasingly represented in Congress, and a black man named Barack Hussein Obama winning by a landslide

00:21:15.360 twice in a little over 50 years. Every country in the world, every people group in the world has

00:21:22.280 conquered and stolen land from other groups. That's unfortunately a tragic part of human history.

00:21:28.400 Native Americans were doing that to other Native Americans before the new Americans got there.

00:21:34.420 Every society has enslaved both their own people and other people. Every group has oppressed and every

00:21:40.880 group has been oppressed. Africans and Middle Easterners sold and bought European slaves. Europeans

00:21:46.760 sold and bought European slaves. Native Americans had African slaves. African Americans had African

00:21:53.140 slaves. The kind of slavery that we saw in early America still exists to this day in much of the

00:21:59.760 non-Western world. And of course, there are still tens of millions of sex slaves suffering as we speak.

00:22:06.100 America is two things. It is an experiment and it is young. We are an experiment that had never been

00:22:14.720 tried before. It had never been tried before we decided that we were going to courageously try it.

00:22:21.660 Self-governance had never been tried before America. A government for the people and by the people

00:22:27.220 was fairly novel. It still is. The ideas of free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press,

00:22:33.160 freedom to protest, to defend yourself against tyrants, to own property. These all are ideas

00:22:39.460 that in a lot of ways go back to the Bible and they also go back to the Magna Carta and they go back to

00:22:45.960 British rule of law, the Enlightenment. So they were not isolated ideas, but they were newly implemented

00:22:52.580 in the dawn of America. That means just like any other experiment, it was implemented imperfectly at

00:22:59.960 its beginning. But as I heard author and scholar John McWhorter say recently, America is an ongoing

00:23:06.400 rehearsal and we keep rehearsing and we get better and we get better. And the closer we get to our

00:23:13.580 founding ideals, the better we are. That is why there is no need for a revolution. There's no need

00:23:20.600 to tear down American institutions. I don't care about democratically taking down Confederate statues.

00:23:26.440 I completely understand the reasoning behind that. And if a community wants to come together,

00:23:33.000 decide that and peacefully do that, I think that's fine. But the defacing of monuments of the founders

00:23:39.020 by mobs, the monuments of abolitionists, the discussion surrounding somehow destroying Mount

00:23:45.840 Rushmore. Yes, our founders owned slaves and slavery was and is a moral travesty. I think we should read

00:23:54.440 about it. We should know about it. We should learn from it. But every historical figure is flawed.

00:23:59.380 Every single one. Every single one of us is flawed. We have to have the ability to place people in their

00:24:07.880 historical context to denounce their sin and appreciate their goodness and appreciate their

00:24:13.280 productive ideas. Karl Marx, whom a lot of these revolutionaries admire, was both a terrible person

00:24:19.760 and had terrible ideas. So there's literally no reason to honor him. His ideas have only ended in

00:24:25.860 destruction and human suffering, as you can see from the state of any communist country. We are,

00:24:31.580 America is an experiment and we are young. We are only 244 years old. We are ridiculously young

00:24:38.600 to have made so much progress, not just here in the way of equality, of opportunity and justice,

00:24:44.700 but in the whole world. We're not perfect, but the arc of American history over our very short life has

00:24:54.160 been good. I just wonder, I wonder this often as I'm scrolling through Twitter and looking at these

00:25:00.100 crazy videos of what's happening in some places and these anarchists. I just wonder if these people

00:25:06.900 who denounce America as inherently evil and a failure, who hate our founders, hate the Constitution,

00:25:11.960 realize how rare it is for them to be able to complain about our government and our systems with

00:25:19.020 impunity, to be able to threaten police officers, to criticize our leaders, to tear down statues in most

00:25:25.600 cases without any consequences whatsoever. That is a product of liberties that the vast majority of the

00:25:31.700 world will never know. We'll never know because they didn't have the founders we have who created the

00:25:37.520 constitution that we have, that recognized the inherent rights that we have. Just look at what's

00:25:43.180 happening in Hong Kong right now. Crazily enough, the Antifa rioters here wants to compare themselves to

00:25:50.760 the Hong Kong protesters, but it's really just the opposite. Hong Kong is protesting communism. They are

00:25:57.420 protesting dictatorship. They are fighting for freedom, for autonomy, for liberty. And China has just taken

00:26:05.940 that away. The UN has done absolutely nothing. That's why the UN is an absolute joke. And they are working

00:26:14.160 hand in hand with China, as is the World Health Organization. That's why these organizations cannot

00:26:19.600 be trusted. China has taken away the freedom, has taken away the liberty, has taken away the autonomy

00:26:25.220 of Hong Kong, and it will end in suffering and death. They are going to snuff out any dissent. There is no freedom

00:26:33.760 of speech there. There's no freedom of religion there. And Hong Kong was kind of the safe haven for

00:26:39.720 liberty. And now it is going to be taken over by the communist dictatorship of China. And we are going

00:26:45.980 to see the worldview that the anarchists here want play out in Hong Kong, as we have unfortunately seen

00:26:53.560 play out too many times over the past 100 years. And so we can see what it looks like in a country that

00:27:00.600 doesn't believe that we have inherent human rights. Again, we have violated our own ideals, but at least

00:27:06.280 we have those ideals. Like at least we have a standard to try to reach. At least we have something

00:27:11.740 to go back to. At least we have something to get in line with and realize, okay, we were off in this

00:27:17.840 human rights abuse because we believe that all men are created equal and are given inalienable rights

00:27:22.820 by God. China doesn't have that. Communist countries don't have that. And we'll talk a little bit

00:27:26.840 more about that in a second. I just want to read some statistics about America and what makes us

00:27:33.720 so great and what makes this narrative of America being the worst country in the world so crazy.

00:27:38.260 America gives the vast majority of the foreign aid. We give more foreign aid than any other country

00:27:45.060 that is over $31 billion. We adopt the most children per year by far than any other country.

00:27:52.200 In a 2018 Gallup study, it showed that America is the most generous country in the world in terms

00:27:58.100 of the percentage of Americans that A, donated their money to charity, B, volunteered their own

00:28:03.580 time to an organization, three, helped a stranger who needed help. 2018 was the first year since 1980

00:28:10.740 that America didn't lead the world in the number of refugees accepted. Before that, we were far and

00:28:16.780 away the country with the highest number of refugees accepted every year. America has by far the highest

00:28:24.660 number of immigrants in the world. One million people immigrate to America every year more than

00:28:31.240 any other country by far. And so it just reminds me that so many of the people that have grown up with

00:28:37.300 the rights and the privileges of America are so blinded to the hardships of people that live in other

00:28:43.560 countries that they claim have it better than the United States does. And they point to everyone else

00:28:49.040 for their privilege. They don't realize that these people, many of them, especially Antifa, who are

00:28:53.700 rioting in the street, are actually the ones who are privileged, who don't realize the reason why a million

00:28:59.060 people every year immigrate to the United States that's more immigrants than any other country

00:29:08.080 accepts in the world is because America is much better than these anarchists think that it is.

00:29:15.080 Capitalism, property rights, global markets, which America has helped champion, has slashed the global

00:29:21.740 poverty rate in half since just 2000. That didn't happen during the communist revolutions of the 20th

00:29:27.920 century, by the way. That happened as communism began to die. And the countries who have insisted upon

00:29:34.400 socialism, North Korea, Venezuela, haven't done so well as the rest of the world has. America has led

00:29:40.900 the world in higher education, in science and innovation, in technology, in medicine, in space

00:29:46.520 exploration for decades, if not centuries, obviously not in space exploration for centuries. But we have done

00:29:54.460 these things really for as long as we have been leading the free world. We are the hub of entertainment,

00:30:02.280 the hub of academia, of technology, of advanced medicine, and only 244 years we have become that.

00:30:09.760 America is imperfect because like all countries, it is made up of imperfect people. But by the grace

00:30:18.640 and provision of God, we have been and still are at our foundation, an incredible nation that has done

00:30:25.660 so much good. Do we still have room to grow? Of course we do. Absolutely. We always will.

00:30:31.520 But we will not grow by getting rid of our ideals, but rather by getting closer to them. So it is

00:30:38.380 vital for the future of your children and their children and their children for the good of the

00:30:44.640 poor, for the good of the vulnerable, for the good of the minority. And I mean, minority in thought,

00:30:52.000 minority in political ideas. For us, especially as Christians, to fight for liberty, to push against

00:31:00.060 Marxism, which seeks to steal, kill and destroy, to reject the narrative that America is inherently

00:31:06.640 and inherently evil and has only ever done bad things. In order to have a thriving society,

00:31:14.340 we have to have free speech. We have to have freedom of religion. We have to have a right to

00:31:20.340 bear arms to protect the First Amendment. We have to have the cohesion of the family. All of these

00:31:26.000 things. Unfortunately, revolutionaries want to abolish. That means ensuring our children know

00:31:33.400 how to reason, know how to think critically, know how to read and to study history, to appreciate

00:31:39.000 the incredible and the rare rights and blessings and privileges that we have in the United States

00:31:45.140 that most people in the world, most people in human history will never be able to enjoy. And most of

00:31:50.780 all, to know God, the giver of our rights. As George Washington said, it is impossible to reason

00:31:56.640 without arriving at a supreme being. That is why we are looking outside our window and seeing so much

00:32:03.540 chaos and confusion. That is the result of moral relativism, which is the result of godlessness.

00:32:09.120 As C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity and a lot of other theologians have talked about as well,

00:32:14.560 God is the supreme moral lawgiver. And without the acknowledgement of a supreme moral lawgiver,

00:32:19.640 there is no supreme moral law. That means there is no objective standard of right and wrong. There is

00:32:24.960 no objective standard of good and bad. And so you just have a bunch of confused people vying both

00:32:31.220 for anarchy and dictatorship at the same time because the godless worldview is constantly contradictory

00:32:37.000 and it doesn't make any sense. China, the human rights travesties that we have seen in China,

00:32:43.900 perhaps worse than any other country, they're forced abortions, not just a couple decades ago,

00:32:51.020 but actually currently of the Muslim population in China, forced abortions, forced sterilizations,

00:32:57.560 organ harvesting, torturing these people, murdering these people, putting them in concentration camps.

00:33:02.880 It is because of the godlessness of the Chinese government. The common denominator in all Marxist regimes

00:33:10.220 that have ended in suffering and death is godlessness because you lose your ability to reason.

00:33:16.600 And so the unthinking masses are put in subjection to a cruel tyrant because power corrupts and absolute

00:33:25.440 power corrupts absolutely. And when you are seemingly an all-powerful being who is not in subjection

00:33:34.500 to a supreme moral law, then the idea of human rights and the idea of freedom is completely

00:33:43.380 arbitrary and really irrelevant. So it is vital, obviously, for individual salvation and the

00:33:49.200 advancement of the kingdom of God, which is going to outlast America and is not determined by American

00:33:55.820 freedom and the gospel is not inhibited by limitations on freedom of speech. But in addition

00:34:03.860 to that, secondary to that, much lower than that, the importance of our children believing and

00:34:09.940 knowing in God is also that they understand where rights come from and the importance of fighting

00:34:15.780 for those rights doesn't just affect our lives. It affects the lives, especially of the least of

00:34:22.060 the is that Jesus calls us to personally care for. And by the way, that's not calling for the

00:34:27.100 government to care for them. That responsibility is to be on us. Alexander Hamilton says this,

00:34:32.880 give all the power to the many, they will oppress the few, give all the power to the few,

00:34:37.460 they will oppress the many. And we are certainly seeing that play out right now in mob rule. And

00:34:43.560 it is the importance of America to continue to be a representative democracy that is a government

00:34:50.320 for the people and by the people and to hold our leaders accountable. That's another beautiful thing

00:34:54.880 about living in the United States that we get to do that. One more quote by a founder, Thomas Jefferson

00:35:01.800 said, experience hath shown that even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with

00:35:09.300 power have in time and by slow operations perverted it into tyranny. And man, that is true of both

00:35:16.140 Republicans and Democrats right now. That is absolutely the case. And it is our job to fight for the

00:35:23.960 freedoms that we know are not only good, but vital for the flourishing of this generation and the

00:35:30.180 generations to come. So knowing all of that, knowing that our belief in a sovereign creator

00:35:35.980 is what allows us to foster liberty and care for liberty and fight for liberty and to recognize

00:35:44.080 inalienable rights. It is also why we believe in the importance of and the triumph of the individual.

00:35:51.640 Knowing these things, we should spend this weekend thanking God, thanking God for the foundation of this

00:35:57.020 country. And despite our many sins, despite our many flaws and failures, he has blessed us and has blessed

00:36:03.920 other nations through us. And we should thank him for that. I am thanking him for that. We should celebrate

00:36:10.320 this weekend. Every country has its flaws. Every country has its mistakes. There is no country that has

00:36:16.400 accomplished and done the good that America has, again, by the grace and the strength of God. So God bless

00:36:23.100 America. God bless you and your family. I hope you have a great weekend celebrating. I know that we're going to.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 05, 2021

REPLAY： What Makes America Great

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