In this episode, First Liberty Institute President and CEO Kelly Shackelford joins Glenn and Stu to talk about the government cracking down on the First Amendment rights of Americans and their right to freedom of speech and freedom of worship.
00:00:00.000Welcome to the podcast today. Kamala Harris is the VP pick for Joe Biden. We go into that and what she's going to do for the campaign.
00:00:07.620Ilhan Omar won her primary. I'm sure you're very excited about that. We'll get into that.
00:00:11.480Jason Buttrell joins us on tonight's program on Blaze TV with Glenn Beck and on Glenn TV.
00:00:18.000That's one you are not going to want to miss. We have a preview of that show.
00:00:20.960We talked to teachers and pastors today about all the crazy stuff, the way the government is cracking down and the way the teachers are being told they have to do all sorts of crazy things to teach kids about critical race theory.
00:00:38.760The truth there is absolutely insane. Get into the podcast every single day at on any of your podcast apps.
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00:01:29.280Kelly Shackelford is a good friend of the program. Been on several times.
00:01:36.700He is doing well. I mean, he's doing God's work literally and figuratively, and it was a really great three years.
00:01:46.580And then in the last three months, it is really kind of turned a nasty corner.
00:01:51.760President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, chief counsel of First Liberty Institute.
00:01:57.100This is a group that works on protecting the First Amendment, our first liberty and religion.
00:02:32.680It's just ratcheting up, and people see it, right?
00:02:35.320I mean, you've got their decapitating statues of Jesus.
00:02:38.380I mean, the best example, and we've had hundreds and hundreds of churches calling us during this, you know, coronavirus attack on churches going on around the country.
00:02:49.060But I thought, and I don't know if you saw this, Glenn, I bet you did.
00:02:53.260What happened in Portland two weekends ago, I thought was the visual of the entire, you know, last four months,
00:03:00.000which was they took a stack of Bibles and used those to ignite them to light the American flag.
00:03:08.220And to me, that was the visual, is if you're going to take America down, you've got to get rid of the church, of religious freedom,
00:03:16.300because that kind of moral constraint gets in the way of oppressive governments.
00:03:25.920First of all, no one is really even speaking out about the literal attacks on the churches.
00:03:35.940As you said, churches have had statues of Jesus desecrated and beheaded.
00:03:42.200You've had all kinds of destruction being done to our churches, and nobody is saying anything.
00:03:49.680And that is not a coincidence when you have Marxists marching in the streets.
00:03:54.200And then we also have the government not recognizing all of the First Amendment.
00:04:02.780They'll say, oh, you have a right to protest if you're on the right side,
00:04:05.960but you don't have a right to make your own decisions when it comes to church.
00:04:11.880And the worst place this is that I have found, New York and California.
00:04:15.940We've had more protections put in and the Constitution strengthened on the First Amendment over the last three years, thanks to Donald Trump.
00:04:30.720But it doesn't seem to matter right now what the Constitution says.
00:04:34.580Yeah, I really do think it's a dichotomy right now.
00:04:39.540I mean, we're in, let me sort of, bad news, good news, I guess.
00:04:42.920Bad news is we're in a huge battle right now for whether the government controls, you know, the church,
00:04:49.200whether the government controls the First Amendment.
00:04:52.100If, I mean, we started out at First Liberty, we, I mean, people can go, Glenn, if they want, thefirstliberty.org.
00:04:58.240And we have a list of all our victories.
00:05:00.020We've won every case we filed during the pandemic.
00:05:04.720We knew how difficult it would be to win when judges are going, well, I don't want to overrule somebody who's trying to protect public health.
00:05:10.860But, you know, we waited, we filed the right ones, and we established a lot of good law.
00:05:16.100Well, then a lot of people started filing lawsuits that weren't so smart.
00:05:20.260And you had some bad judges that were filed in bad places.
00:05:57.580And right now, we don't know where we're going to end up at the end of this.
00:06:00.560Because I'll tell you this, if the rule is that if a government official declares an emergency, then your rights are gone,
00:06:08.580then none of us have any rights because any government official can declare an emergency.
00:06:12.400And so things like, you know, you can't sing at church because that's a danger for spreading the virus.
00:06:23.320But you can scream with, you know, 10,000 people at a protest.
00:06:27.620I mean, that's just complete nonsense.
00:06:29.180And it's clearly discriminatory and it's clearly unconstitutional.
00:06:34.560But that's what's happening out there.
00:06:36.660We had one situation, Glenn, where they were going to have a worship outside and the county was telling them that it was illegal for them to worship outside on the beach.
00:07:23.440We were watching, you know, fathers throwing a baseball with their sons being arrested, you know, hand-cut in front of their children, right?
00:07:32.200And everybody was like, well, does the Constitution apply anymore?
00:07:36.260And so we knew the first case had to be the right case.
00:07:57.980They listened over the radio to the pastor.
00:08:00.960You can't pass the virus from car to car, right?
00:08:03.940And not only did they outlaw it, the governor of Kentucky had said they're going to go to every parking lot on Sunday, church parking lot,
00:08:12.580right down the license plate of every person, and they were going to be visited, their home, by police and told that they had to be quarantined.
00:08:25.880We got Judge Justin Walker, who really laid the wood to the Louisville mayor and what they were doing there and said, that is not what we do in this country.
00:08:50.220And let's not do the sort of Hail Mary type things that, you know, unless you get the right judge, you're not going to win because this is a new thing for a lot of these judges.
00:09:01.180And so we have to come forward with good facts, with good arguments, and really file them in the right place because this is a very important battle for the future of our country.
00:09:11.460What does it mean if Donald Trump is not the president and we have the left take over with as many vacancies that are going to be on the Supreme Court, and they could even pack the court?
00:09:29.160What does that mean to freedom when we're so close to losing it with this president and with the Constitution?
00:09:39.280Yeah, I would tell people, like you said, Glenn, before the pandemic even, I mean, we were really turning the corner on – we've gotten so many good judges in that the law is starting to change.
00:09:52.000We're going back to the words of the Constitution.
00:09:55.260We had a significant victory a year and a half ago at the Supreme Court in one of our cases that really was a major change, positive change for religious freedom.
00:10:03.940And so the good news is we were really starting to turn things around, and I think what would have been maybe 40 or 50 years.
00:10:13.000If we can keep that going, obviously that's wonderful for our country.
00:10:17.000But like you said, if they pack the court, then the court is no longer a court.
00:10:22.120It's just a political body because whoever comes in next time, they'll just add people to the court too.
00:11:51.680We're not going to get into any of the other details because this is how hostile of an environment it is now to speak out if you're a teacher.
00:12:02.480Welcome to the program, and thank you for your courage.
00:12:20.460Well, to be honest with you, the wait, wait, hold on, what is happening has been over a decade in the making.
00:12:26.980So, but just specifically a couple weeks ago, I started noticing, you know, I'm watching the news, and it's all about race, and they stopped using the term civil rights, and they started using the term critical theory.
00:12:41.500And I went, what is critical theory, which I think a lot of the country is going, okay, I mean, it's probably just kind of race theory.
00:12:50.220Well, it didn't sit right with me, so I listened to a couple podcasts about it, I did my own research online, and I found out it's founded by Karl Marx.
00:13:06.260Facts, data, and the scientific method are a white concept.
00:13:11.280So, if you use facts and data to disprove an argument against a black or an oppressed person, you are proving you are racist, because, again, facts and data are, quote, false whiteness.
00:13:24.040I want to reiterate, critical race theory, it holds, and I'm quoting, data, facts, and the scientific method are whiteness and inherently racist.
00:13:40.480Therefore, if you use data to disprove an oppressed person's narrative, you are proving your ties to racism by using facts.
00:13:48.880So, this is why we can't have conversations, because as soon as you say, well, you know, I hear you on the police thing, I hear you on the shootings, but let's talk about black-on-black crime, which exponentially has a higher death rate.
00:14:04.140That person would say, well, you're false, you're using facts, my feelings are worth more, which is craziness to me.
00:14:12.880So, that was the first huge red flag, okay?
00:14:17.140Capitalism is racist, also, because it was developed by whites and does not force racial equity.
00:14:27.240So, these are the foundational principles of critical theory.
00:14:31.600I about fell off my chair, but, so I've been feeling really passionate about just getting this out here, but, I mean, I knew it was kind of creeping into the educational system.
00:14:41.120I haven't seen that term used yet, but I've seen little things like that happening.
00:14:45.900So, anyway, a couple weeks ago, the week before school starts, we have to have a training, and I noticed that the training is on race, and I'm thinking, oh, man, I'm in California.
00:15:00.560I open up the training, and right across the top, it says critical race theory.
00:15:05.380Glenn, I wanted to quit on the spot, or go on a crusade, or text all my friends that have their kids in public school just going, get out now.
00:15:18.080But, of course, I want to read through it, give them the benefit of the doubt, because maybe the people who developed this don't know what critical theory is.
00:15:25.500So, here are the main points that they taught us.
00:15:30.740Now, this is in the training document for California teachers.
00:15:36.120Not all California teachers, but I can tell you that it is endorsed by the California Department of Education, the California School Board Association, the Association of California School Administrators, Bay Area Schools, the California Conservation Corps, and a bunch of other districts who have hired them to train teachers.
00:15:56.920And you're not in a small school district in California, so it's a large number.
00:16:07.180I'm in a small-ish district, small enough to where I'm nervous that I'm going to be identified.
00:16:12.760So, people know me, so I'd rather, you know, stay anonymous.
00:16:18.020So, in the training, it's called Epic Education.
00:16:21.920You can go on their website and look everything up.
00:17:16.880That's why we're not getting anywhere.
00:17:18.460That's why we can't agree to disagree.
00:17:20.560That's why we can't talk about the real issues of what's going on.
00:17:24.100That's why we can't talk about, I mean, I am a white female teacher.
00:17:27.900And I have had reverse racism against me multiple times in my own classroom.
00:17:33.500I walk on eggshells around my students of color because I want to make sure that they know that I love them, that I care about them, that I want them to succeed.
00:17:41.480Because I've had more experiences than I can count where if a black student doesn't get the grade they want, they're storming my door.
00:19:00.020I'm sure that I've screwed up many times.
00:19:02.440But to say, just because you're white, you are racist.
00:19:05.580It is exactly what caused, it's exactly what caused or allowed slavery to happen, is we say, we said blacks are different, they're different than us, they have some sin or some mark or whatever, and that's, they can never achieve.
00:19:43.420Children should be raised by a tribe, not a nuclear family with two parents.
00:19:48.920So that's where you see parental rights being taken away slowly in school.
00:19:52.400So that's what I mean by this has been a slow kind of fade away from, I mean, don't talk to your parents about, you know, if you feel like you have homosexual feeling.
00:20:04.600Don't talk to your parents if you feel like you're a boy and you're really a girl.
00:20:07.600And teachers will tell you, and to some extent, I agree, there is a safety thing with parents at home because you don't know how parents are going to react to that.
00:20:18.240But in this training, they actually said, do not talk to your parents about this because they might not be enlightened enough to realize their own racism within them.
00:20:34.100And I've been reading article and article and article now about teachers being worried because now we're all at home learning that parents, when they get their curriculum at home, they're going to go, wait, my kid's being taught this and they're going to be outed.
00:20:49.560So I have a tweet thread from Matthew K.
00:20:54.280So this fall, virtual class discussions will have many potential spectators, parents, siblings, et cetera, in the same room.
00:21:00.640We'll never be quite sure who's overhearing the discussions.
00:21:04.660What does this do for our equity inclusion work?
00:21:08.780How much have students depended on the somewhat secure barriers of our physical classrooms to encourage vulnerability?
00:21:15.520How many of us have installed some version of what happens here stays here?
00:21:19.320While conversations about race are in my wheelhouse and remain a concern with a no walls environment, I am most intrigued by the damage of the helicopter snowplow parents who can do honest conversations about gender and sexuality.
00:21:34.480I mean, conservative, he goes on, conservative parents are my chief concern.
00:22:24.580So tell me how many other teachers feel this way, like you do, that you're just you've seen the slow boil, but now you realize this thing is boiling over.
00:24:15.440But, again, the scary part was they never actually defined what critical theory is, which talks about, like I said in the beginning, the scientific method is false.
00:26:51.200But it is, in California, it is crazy that your First Amendment right to gather and have the services that are essential, I believe, to the soul of each individual and soul of our nation, that's not okay.
00:27:11.800But if you decide to engage in a peaceful protest, which looks an awful lot like a riot, you're fine.
00:27:49.120The governor basically had a decree a year or so ago in which he invited people who couldn't get an abortion in another state to come to California.
00:28:04.060There's just what we feel is a targeting of churches based on fear, based on statistics that are not believable.
00:28:13.520You know, just before we move on from abortion, it was Kamala Harris, now the vice presidential pick that actually began the litigation against the reporter that did the uncovering of the selling of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood.
00:28:34.440That that that was Kamala Harris in California.
00:28:38.940So so, so, John, you you are now standing up.
00:28:45.720And did you ever think that you might in this country be put in a position of someday following the Dietrich Bonhoeffer kind of path where you go to jail for what you believe?
00:28:58.600Um, you know, it was a reality and increasingly so.
00:29:06.600Life was fairly benign a half a century ago in terms of the thought of persecution.
00:29:14.780But in the last 10 or 15 years, this has been coming.
00:29:19.920It's been coming because of the corruption of the university system, which eventually eventually puts everybody in leadership who has been jaded and sold an anti-God, anti-Christian, anti-American ideology.
00:31:08.320And Romans 13 basically says the government has a sword.
00:31:12.020That's their weapon to punish evildoers and protect those who do good.
00:31:16.340And the fourth restraint in society are the people of God, the church, that are salt and light, salt as a quiet influence, light as a blazing declaration of truth.
00:31:26.000So given those four restraints, am I surprised that basically the law written in the heart has been completely overturned and replaced with a corrupt, perverted law?
00:31:37.120And if your conscience gives you any trouble, you need to silence your conscience because you don't need to take any blame for anything you do.
00:31:48.040So the conscience and the law of God in the heart has been devastated systematically through the sexual revolution, homosexual revolution, and all the other stuff that comes with it, the Me Too movement, social justice, everything.
00:32:00.360Then the family, the family is the next barrier, the next restraint that allows humanity to flourish.
00:32:06.860And what's happened to the family is just complete devastation to the family to the degree that there is law being made to give some kind of normalcy to transgender people.
00:32:23.100Next comes the government, defund the police.
00:32:25.480You have a generation of people milling around in the streets, destroying everything because there never have been any consequences to their behavior as they grew up.
00:32:34.600So now we want to get rid of the police.
00:33:08.820I don't know that this is something that has come as fast as it appears.
00:33:13.680I think it's it's been growing for decades.
00:33:19.260No, I think it's you know, you you've never gone in for a prostate exam and you're 70.
00:33:25.960Well, all of a sudden you're you've got a month to live.
00:33:29.280Well, you could have seen it coming, but you didn't look.
00:33:32.520And many of us just turned away and we didn't look.
00:33:35.840And and so we didn't realize we were being rotted from the inside out.
00:33:40.220You know, I I've talked to a lot of people and I said, you know, it actually gave me a lot of hope if if Jesus were coming, because I know he could fix it and he will when he comes.
00:33:54.920But I also wouldn't be surprised if this this was the beginning of the end of days, if you will.
00:34:01.840So do you do you find that more and more people are going, you know, I mean, are we approaching those times?
00:34:14.480Well, you know, Jesus said no man knows the day nor the hour.
00:34:17.720So I'm not one to speculate, but I've never seen as many people hope it's soon as there are hoping now.
00:34:27.820So but I think there's another thing to look at in the first chapter of the book of Romans.
00:34:33.440There's a verse, verse 18, that says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness.
00:34:41.180No nation has ever held the truth and been unrighteous at the same time to the degree that the United States has obviously founded on Christian values, founded on biblical principles.
00:34:53.060We've held the truth for the duration of our national identity, but we have held the truth increasingly in unrighteousness.
00:35:01.080And the Bible says God's wrath will be revealed.
00:35:03.580And here's how it defines that wrath in that same chapter.
00:37:13.600But I think America is experiencing that judgment.
00:37:18.180You don't hear people say those things anymore, John.
00:37:24.260And I appreciate your willingness to stand up and say what you believe and call your church back and be willing to go to jail for the things that you believe are true.
00:37:41.020Thank you for being on the program, John.