The Great America Show - IS AMERICA WOKE OR AWAKENING？

00:00:00.000 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great America podcast with Lou Dobbs,

00:00:04.240 always in the fight for truth, justice, and yes, our American way of life.

00:00:09.260 And now here he is, the Peabody award-winning voice of truth, the great Lou Dobbs.

00:00:14.380 Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Great America show.

00:00:18.380 President Biden is having a few problems, a few issues.

00:00:22.680 Yes, he did get enough votes to pass the infrastructure bill, thanks to 13 rhino turncoats. 0.99

00:00:28.600 They can also take a bow for adding another trillion dollars to our $30 trillion national debt.

00:00:35.480 Republicans in name only, and certainly not conservative, those 13.

00:00:40.400 Amongst Biden's problems, the federal appellate court, the Fifth Circuit in particular,

00:00:45.560 blocking his business vaccine mandate for at least a period of time.

00:00:50.080 The FBI seems enthusiastic now to investigate parents who dare to assert their interest

00:00:56.140 and educating their children at school board meetings.

00:01:00.060 And more than a few Americans are a little concerned about the vast number of illegal immigrants

00:01:05.040 Mr. Biden has permitted into the country, some 2 million over the past year,

00:01:10.700 and a border that remains wide open.

00:01:14.240 The national mood is, let's say, muted.

00:01:17.080 So, how did a Republican get elected governor in Virginia, and how about deep blue New Jersey?

00:01:24.780 Very, very, very close.

00:01:27.900 We take all of this up with a pollster who called it right in Virginia,

00:01:31.640 and who in my book calls it right more often than most.

00:01:34.760 We're joined by the Trafalgar Group's Robert Cahaley, pollster extraordinaire and a great American.

00:01:42.000 And now, Robert Cahaley, and Robert, a delight to have you here.

00:01:46.920 No one more accurate than you.

00:01:49.060 We're just delighted to talk about so many issues, but let's start with how in the world

00:01:55.100 do you keep being so accurate in your polling while others are so, well, such laggards? 0.99

00:02:03.460 Well, I think part of the problem is they really haven't changed the way they do things.

00:02:12.000 They're still using this model of these long surveys with only live callers.

00:02:19.260 And, I mean, the way you would poll people in the 60s or the 50s, and people just don't live that way anymore.

00:02:25.540 People don't have a life that lets them stop what they're doing, you know, go into the room of the house where the phone is,

00:02:34.280 and sit down there in the parlor and, you know, answer 20, 30 questions.

00:02:38.980 That's just not reality of the way people live today.

00:02:42.420 You know, if you look back 40 years ago, the way we banked was different.

00:02:47.860 You went into a bank.

00:02:49.180 The way you did almost everything was different.

00:02:52.320 You went to the store if you had to buy something.

00:02:54.240 You never thought about ordering it online.

00:02:56.220 So our whole life has changed, and yet this archaic system has not changed.

00:03:00.640 It's why I call them Pony Express or dinosaur pollsters.

00:03:04.040 They don't see the meteor coming, but it's here, and they're going to get it wrong,

00:03:09.120 and they're going to get it wrong again and again.

00:03:11.240 Well, you got it right, and I want to talk about Virginia.

00:03:15.440 You called it for Youngkin early and correctly, 1.00

00:03:20.120 and many people, and I'll include myself, I did not.

00:03:25.600 I was very interested in that race, as you might expect, but I wasn't so sure,

00:03:31.760 and to see it unfold exactly the way you had expected was a treat.

00:03:39.140 Your thoughts on that race?

00:03:40.700 Well, the first thing people don't understand about that race is Terry McAuliffe got more votes

00:03:48.980 than the Democrat did four years before, but there was a 1.2 million difference

00:03:55.440 between the number of people who voted in the 2020 presidential and the 2017 governor's race.

00:04:02.080 So this was both parties were about going out there and grabbing people who don't usually vote in state elections

00:04:09.140 and mobilizing them, and the intensity was on the side of the Republicans.

00:04:13.900 And so all he had to do is, he had to take, even though, but he's still behind by 10 points.

00:04:22.080 So beyond that, he's got to go fight them in their backyard.

00:04:26.660 Well, you know, McAuliffe had nothing to motivate people to vote for him in southern western Virginia,

00:04:31.960 but on the other hand, just, you know, it just so happened that this critical race theory

00:04:39.320 and all this masking and all this crazy school board stuff happened to be going on,

00:04:44.080 and this created the wedge that he had to have, that Youngkin had to have, in northern Virginia.

00:04:51.460 Youngkin didn't have to win northern Virginia.

00:04:53.540 He just had to not get creamed there, and he did better than not get creamed.

00:04:58.740 Right.

00:04:58.840 It was an impressive showing, an astounding result.

00:05:04.820 I think most of the country was expecting fully just another Democratic win,

00:05:12.640 or if nothing else, perhaps a late-night adjustment in the vote.

00:05:19.220 It was an impressive win for Youngkin, and he looks and sounds the part of a man

00:05:25.080 who is a generational candidate who could really become the symbol for a turning point in this country.

00:05:34.620 Am I putting too much on him?

00:05:37.120 No.

00:05:37.680 In fact, a couple weeks ago, I actually said that if Youngkin wins this,

00:05:42.800 he's going to be on the short list for everybody's vice president.

00:05:46.160 I mean, I saw this guy, you know, the more I got to kind of witness the way he is and the way he campaigns,

00:05:52.900 I mean, he campaigns with an energy and authenticity.

00:05:57.080 I mean, he doesn't hide or is ashamed to express how he feels about his faith.

00:06:03.540 I mean, it's like, how can a guy like this win in Virginia?

00:06:07.660 And I think it's just this country's had too much of the other side.

00:06:12.900 I mean, they thought they were elected a moderate and state instability in Biden,

00:06:17.440 and they got nothing of the kind.

00:06:20.580 No.

00:06:20.800 And there's a lot of buyers for more here.

00:06:22.300 Well, there are a lot of excited buyers in Virginia right now.

00:06:26.540 It's clear the man is a Christian, a family man.

00:06:31.100 He is just a – he ran the Carlisle Group for what – well, he worked there for 25 years.

00:06:40.000 He ran the company.

00:06:41.740 He's one of those businessmen who have decided to stand up and be in the system

00:06:48.280 despite knowing he's going to be assaulted from every corner, not just by the radical left

00:06:53.940 or the national left-wing media, but just about every quarter, whether it's oppo-researched by the party

00:07:03.080 or whether it is just the vanality of the media and partisan organizations.

00:07:11.500 He stood up to it and grinned at it all the way.

00:07:14.740 I was very, very impressed.

00:07:16.320 Well, and the thing is, it actually is going to start to get easier.

00:07:22.780 One of the things that President Trump accomplished is by taking people on and not being afraid.

00:07:29.480 Every time somebody says, well, if you think this, you have to be racist.

00:07:33.580 If you think this, you're an anti-Semite.

00:07:35.300 I mean, those words that are horrible and powerful words start having no meaning

00:07:40.920 when they have thrown at everybody for everything.

00:07:43.320 And so every time a candidate stands up and refuses to take it and says, of course, I'm not a racist.

00:07:49.040 I'm a Christian.

00:07:49.640 I believe all men have created an image of God. 0.81

00:07:51.400 And how in the world could I be?

00:07:52.880 The more people do that, the more that this doesn't work anymore.

00:07:58.360 But the more people cower every time somebody makes an accusation like that and backs down,

00:08:02.660 then the more it works.

00:08:03.980 So these attacks are being weakened every time people stand up.

00:08:08.260 And having Winsome Sears right there behind him, like, yeah, this is the white supremacist ticket.

00:08:14.380 Come on. 1.00

00:08:15.420 This is ridiculous. 0.97

00:08:16.340 It's interesting to see the Democratic Party right now seeming to be quivering a bit after the victory, 0.95

00:08:26.560 particularly in Virginia, but also that close race in the state of New Jersey,

00:08:30.720 which is a deep, deep blue state.

00:08:34.740 Two issues that they're talking a lot about suddenly, education and public safety.

00:08:40.980 In Minneapolis, the ballot measure to change the police department into a department of public safety

00:08:50.220 and mental health workers failed.

00:08:54.160 There were some significant breaks in what has become, of late, strong trends.

00:09:02.500 How important was what we witnessed in that election in shaping what could be a better future,

00:09:10.180 brighter future for the Republican Party?

00:09:13.520 It's all part of a greater picture.

00:09:16.480 And this is why I get particularly angry about all the phony polling you see out there

00:09:23.020 that has literally been trying to convince, through corporations and through,

00:09:29.580 I mean, you look at the TV commercials,

00:09:31.480 that this entire country was afraid to leave their house over COVID.

00:09:35.360 This entire country thinks the country's a horrible place,

00:09:39.160 and we have to apologize for everything.

00:09:41.880 And this entire country, you know, believes that the police have been abused and everybody.

00:09:48.600 Like, this is, people are not ashamed of this country.

00:09:52.340 People, none of this is real.

00:09:55.280 And so this is a pushback.

00:09:57.440 When you start trying to tell a people like the American people that you should kind of essentially be self-hating Americans,

00:10:08.320 and that you, that then they push back because this is a country people are proud of what has been built.

00:10:14.400 People are proud of even the obstacles we've overcome.

00:10:18.360 We've overcome them more than any other country.

00:10:20.500 There's not a country in the world where a minority has a better shot, better opportunity than the United States.

00:10:29.860 And that's just a fact.

00:10:31.720 Without question.

00:10:33.780 And a lot of those same people that they're making all this stuff about,

00:10:40.480 those are the same people who are the ones saying,

00:10:42.720 no, don't get rid of the police, because they're real.

00:10:45.620 They understand reality.

00:10:46.900 It's all these kind of young, liberal, white, Ivy League kid types who have all this guilt for whatever reason.

00:10:56.100 And so they're the ones out there creating all this.

00:10:59.120 But this is not what real people who live in the communities, this is not what they're experiencing. 0.99

00:11:05.580 They know this is a bunch of junk. 0.98

00:11:07.760 A bunch of junk, and yet it's being perpetuated by the national left-wing media daily, emphatically, energetically. 0.99

00:11:15.600 And as you reference, as my wife and I watch a sporting event on television, 0.98

00:11:23.400 we're struck by the commercials and the lectures and the messaging that is just,

00:11:30.660 they're inundating those television audiences with propaganda, for crying out loud.

00:11:37.240 There was a time in this country where commercials were the voice of business.

00:11:42.380 They represented the values of the nation, the values of business and society.

00:11:51.040 It's just, it's become quite something.

00:11:53.520 It is really stunning to watch what businesses are doing with shareholder money.

00:12:00.360 But keep in mind, a lot of it is because the businesses have been sold a bill of goods by pollsters with agenda who tells them this is what the public wants.

00:12:10.940 The business needs a wake-up call.

00:12:13.360 And elections like this are a wake-up call that says, no, I don't care what your woke pollster told you.

00:12:19.340 This is not where this country is.

00:12:21.260 You know, we kept getting this nonsense about, oh, we need to say public safety and not say law and order.

00:12:28.360 Guess what?

00:12:28.720 People kind of like law and order.

00:12:31.060 And, but that's what the pollsters with the agendas told us.

00:12:36.840 Exactly, and law and order.

00:12:39.820 And, by the way, parents still think they should be in charge of the local school system, in charge of what is being taught their children, and that, yes, they are not just simply, you know, bystanders as the state takes control of their children's lives and education.

00:13:00.480 That was a powerful state, particularly in Virginia.

00:13:04.720 Yeah, there's no question about it.

00:13:07.440 And, you know, one of the – I've been talking to a lot of legislators around the country, and there's this movement to get rid of these school board elections that are always on these off years and nonpartisan.

00:13:18.760 There's movement to put those things on the ballot at the same time.

00:13:22.020 Make those things be partisan.

00:13:23.400 Make people have to win a primary.

00:13:25.900 Know where they are because when these elections are standalones, then the teachers' union can organize and win them.

00:13:31.520 If you put them on the same time they're electing your senators and your reps, you're going to get more accountable school board members.

00:13:38.160 Robert, that's a great point and a great idea that I assure you this broadcast will be driving as part of the solutions to what we're dealing with in this country.

00:13:50.940 We're not going to just talk about it on this podcast.

00:13:54.400 We're going to actually do things here for the American people, American citizens.

00:14:00.600 And I think what you've just outlined is one of – a critically important step.

00:14:05.880 Another critically important step, and that is to actually begin to change the narrative on mandates of all kinds in this country.

00:14:19.340 There is a – in the course of 11 months, the Biden administration has brought in an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants.

00:14:28.460 The border that President Trump worked so hard to secure is now wide open.

00:14:35.740 This president, Biden, is not persuading and communicating with the American people.

00:14:42.140 He hunkers down in a bunker and issues a mandate as if this were some sort of ridiculous authoritarian regime rather than the greatest constitutional Republican history.

00:14:57.560 What are we going to have to do to awaken the American people and perhaps awaken the Republican Party to what must be done?

00:15:08.160 Well, you know, as I'm a pollster, so I'm going to keep coming back to this.

00:15:16.320 We need to call it out when people are putting out this phony information.

00:15:20.840 I mean, every now and then we know where Biden's approval rating is.

00:15:24.020 So when you see these phony polls that show it like at 48, 50, we know that's not real.

00:15:29.280 But the thing is, people react until there's an election, they react to what the polling is.

00:15:39.640 And Manchin and Sinema live in the real world, okay?

00:15:43.800 They get it.

00:15:44.880 They deal with real constituents, and they kind of won.

00:15:48.220 Both of them are famous for kind of being across the aisle.

00:15:50.660 Both of them were in the House.

00:15:51.600 And in the House, they weren't hardcore liberals, even though they were Democrats.

00:15:56.240 So – but they don't – they are actually in touch with their constituents, and that's why they balked on this thing.

00:16:03.380 But so many of these guys, you know, get elected, go to Washington, stay in that echo chamber, and they don't have any idea what people really think.

00:16:10.820 They don't go to town hall meetings.

00:16:12.280 They don't really talk to people.

00:16:13.860 Their staff filters all their emails and calls.

00:16:16.940 So they don't know.

00:16:18.040 So the key is elections like these are wake-up calls, and what they have to start understanding is when people give you polling with an agenda, they're not giving you the advice you need to get reelected.

00:16:29.880 And in the end, representatives and senators want to get reelected.

00:16:33.580 And when they see how unpopular mandates are, I think you'll see a broad coalition that goes beyond just Republicans to stand up to this because as much – if you don't like mandates and you're a Democrat, think about what happens next time a Republican's in the White House.

00:16:48.820 I mean, this has to have a limit put in there.

00:16:54.660 And what has been so important, and I think this was a key for Youngkin, and it'll be a key to a lot of elections, the importance of governors and state government has been showcased in the COVID era.

00:17:06.340 People didn't really understand the difference between state and federal government, and boy, oh, boy, have they gotten a crash course in it.

00:17:13.180 And that's good.

00:17:14.080 People understanding federalism is good.

00:17:16.040 Federalism is good.

00:17:17.840 It is the foundation of this country.

00:17:22.540 And I say to this audience every day, nowhere do you have more influence over our political future than in your own home, neighborhood, and community.

00:17:35.320 There you have a greater voice.

00:17:37.080 You have a greater opportunity to control, whether it's the quality of the air you breathe or the water you drink, the education system, your police department.

00:17:50.320 And I really believe it.

00:17:53.060 There has to be participatory democracy in this country, or the most active force, ideologically, will prevail, whether good for America or bad for America.

00:18:05.620 Exactly.

00:18:06.420 Exactly.

00:18:07.100 Self-governance requires, I mean, if you're going to self-govern, that means you've got to participate.

00:18:13.120 And we've also got to have confidence in the information that we're seeing and reading and hearing about.

00:18:18.780 And my confidence in that regard is perhaps at an all-time low.

00:18:25.240 You've talked about phony polls, and I think it's a wonderful point, Robert.

00:18:28.700 But the question then becomes, are these polls phony?

00:18:32.180 Are they archaic in their methodology because of willful ignorance?

00:18:37.580 Or is it because they're driving agendas, whether it's to corporate America, whether it is corporate America, political parties and ideological groups across our society?

00:18:52.120 I think it's a mix of both.

00:18:56.640 Some of the ones that are the academic ones that you see all the time sponsored by the colleges, I think it was an apology from the guy that runs Mama today.

00:19:05.680 Their models are old.

00:19:08.060 I mean, we've said this now since 2016.

00:19:12.500 It's very simple.

00:19:13.340 If you find somebody who can answer 28, 35 questions on a Tuesday night, they're not an average voter.

00:19:20.100 They are not an average voter.

00:19:22.660 So you end up reflecting the opinion of those who are on the extreme of the left or the right.

00:19:29.300 And the right is afraid to give their opinion because they're tired of being canceled and everything else.

00:19:35.300 So it disproportionately emphasizes the left opinion.

00:19:38.500 Now, some of the more corporate types, some of, you know, some of the names you hear out there that have gotten out of the game of doing elections because the accountability stinks when they do elections.

00:19:50.280 But they put out polls all the time.

00:19:52.500 And these are the, you know, the paid corporate polls.

00:19:55.040 Those are just straight up agendas.

00:19:57.220 I'm not even sure they take surveys.

00:19:58.780 Maybe they do.

00:19:59.440 I don't know.

00:20:00.400 But they know exactly what they want.

00:20:02.760 You know, they have some kind of consulting in the morning and then decide what the polls are going to say.

00:20:08.360 Well, you're describing a, it seems like an ever-growing number of those kinds of pollsters.

00:20:18.920 And I want to say again, Robert, we thank you for your both integrity and intelligence and great success and accuracy.

00:20:27.060 I want to turn to really the national mood right now because we seem to be a fickle bunch, Americans, always have been.

00:20:40.580 We've been suspicious of our government.

00:20:42.500 We've been skeptical of our government.

00:20:44.340 But right now we are caught in a period of polarization and alienation that for the life of me, I can only compare to this country when I was a young fellow in the 1960s.

00:20:57.800 And where are we headed and what is this, what is the real mood of this country and your thoughts about the way in which we go about improving that mood?

00:21:13.860 Well, I mean, in general, I'm probably a little different.

00:21:21.900 I'm kind of a founding father type belief that I don't think two-party system is healthy because one party has to win and one party has to lose.

00:21:31.940 Right.

00:21:32.060 And so nobody wants to solve anything.

00:21:35.960 It's always about the next election.

00:21:37.820 Could there be a solution for the border which involves having limits on birthright citizenship, having limits on people being able to come across to work but not be citizens?

00:21:52.280 Of course there could be a compromise worked out.

00:21:55.300 But one party would lose and one party would win.

00:21:57.460 And so often that's the problem, and that polarization is so inherent.

00:22:05.060 And now you kind of moved into this.

00:22:08.760 When the Democrats have control, they want to make sure that the Republicans – the Republicans will make sure the Democrats achieve nothing when the other side has control, and it's always about the next election.

00:22:20.520 And so I think that's a very bad thing.

00:22:23.540 And so one party is going to emerge.

00:22:28.640 The Democrat Party has probably bitten off more than it can chew and gone so far to the left that the center has moved back right.

00:22:37.100 And I think that that's what we're going to see next is more – not necessarily just a Yunkin type, but this idea that a Yunkin, a mansion, a cinema, these kind of – these people that are on the right all the way to the – just the left side of the middle are where the country is. 0.73

00:23:04.220 The Democrat Party has gotten so far off to the left that it no longer represents the country.

00:23:09.980 I mean, you've got people like Pelosi and Schumer fighting to keep their party pro-Israel, for God's sake.

00:23:15.720 I mean, we did a poll on that earlier, and we found that the majority of Democrats thought the Israelis were to blame for what was happening in Gaza.

00:23:24.120 Now, I'm not saying that's what Schumer believes.

00:23:27.380 I don't think that's what Pelosi believes.

00:23:28.660 I don't think that's what Biden believes.

00:23:30.460 But they don't – I mean, they're like on the back of a stagecoach without reins.

00:23:36.280 And these horses are running, and they're just trying not to get thrown off.

00:23:39.580 I don't know what they believe, but I do know what they've done.

00:23:44.740 And what they've done is turned their back on Israel in their policies and in their rhetoric and in their leadership of the Democratic Party.

00:23:52.620 Because they're afraid.

00:23:53.980 Because they're afraid of their left wing. 0.76

00:23:56.140 Well, you know, if they're not going to be part – a chapter in Profiles in Courage, the least they could do is think about the American national interest at the time – you know, at the same time they're putting a finger up to see which way the wind is blowing.

00:24:15.540 But that's asking for way too much.

00:24:18.740 I'm going to give you the –

00:24:19.700 Because these guys are going to take their party off a cliff.

00:24:21.680 They don't take their party off a cliff, and they're on the way to doing it right now.

00:24:24.300 If they don't do a change of course like Clinton did after 94, they're going to have real problems more than they can imagine.

00:24:32.380 So let me ask you this.

00:24:34.540 We're going to give you the last word, and I'd just like to ask you this if you would consider it in that last word.

00:24:40.700 What are – in your judgment, what are the odds that this party is capable of turning its back on their left wing, radical, even Marxist wing of the Democratic Party, and reaching out to the middle class, to the center of our body politic?

00:25:01.500 I would never underestimate people who live and die by the opinions of voters' ability to reinvent themselves to reflect what they believe to be the current opinion of the voters.

00:25:17.140 Right.

00:25:18.800 Yeah, and I've got to ask you one last question in this.

00:25:24.540 Donald Trump, his name hasn't come up as we've discussed this.

00:25:29.440 How important is he going to be in 2022 and 2024?

00:25:34.860 Well, remember at the beginning in Virginia where I told you how important it was for the two parties to gin up their non-traditional state election voters?

00:25:45.060 That doesn't happen without the aggressive work that Trump and Trump supporters and activists on the ground did in Western and Southern Virginia.

00:25:56.960 They blew right through the goals of where they had to be to get those things done.

00:26:01.420 And so to not understand that there is a mass of people that – a lot of Republicans might – there might be a lot of Republicans who just wish they'd go away, but if they'd go away, your governing coalition, your ability to win elections in the future is going to go away.

00:26:19.540 So that is critical.

00:26:21.540 Trump's ability to motivate people, the small business owner to the waitress to the truck driver, that ability is the key to winning 2022.

00:26:31.420 And they will run those people off.

00:26:36.560 They will do it at the peril of being successful in 2022.

00:26:42.280 And that nonsense Karl Rove published in the Wall Street Journal, people just need – let them start and rewriting this stuff.

00:26:51.520 Because this has become a party that represents average working people, and that is a good place to be, and it makes – it's stupid for us to do the same thing, divide ourselves the way the Democrats are doing, because we'll fall apart too.

00:27:06.740 And with that, we appreciate it so much.

00:27:10.540 Robert Cahaley, the best pollster, in my opinion, in the country, until somebody knocks him off his perch, and I think that's going to take a lot of work.

00:27:21.340 You were terrific.

00:27:23.780 We hope you'll come back soon.

00:27:25.880 Enjoy the conversation.

00:27:27.020 Robert, thanks so much.

00:27:28.620 Yes, sir.

00:27:29.560 Take care.

00:27:30.700 You too.

00:27:31.600 And now let's do something we do, perhaps not frequently, but certainly regularly on this podcast.

00:27:37.660 Let's talk about religious liberty, the First Amendment, the freedom of religion.

00:27:42.580 Not the freedom from religion, as many on the left like to think about it.

00:27:47.040 It's freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment, as I said.

00:27:51.420 And as you know, the Marxist left in this country has tried to drive God from the public square, to drive God out of classrooms, and to deny public school students prayer and even silent worship.

00:28:05.120 There is a cultural crisis in this country that's worsening because the leadership in America is, in my opinion, worsening.

00:28:12.620 And certainly the President Biden agenda reflects deepening threats against our constitutional rights.

00:28:20.160 I want to take up all of this with radio talk show host, best-selling author, columnist, and Christian conservative, Salem Radio's Eric Metaxas, who, by the way, has a new best-seller book just out, and we recommend it to you highly.

00:28:36.240 The title is Atheism Dead.

00:28:39.140 Congratulations on the book, Eric, and a delight to have you with us.

00:28:44.380 I can't wait to have a conversation and to begin, if we may, with what is a cultural crisis that has risen to levels I don't think, even at our most despairing, either you or I would have anticipated 20 years ago.

00:29:02.720 Your thoughts on where we are and the forces at work in our society.

00:29:07.920 Well, first of all, a joy to be with you, Lou, very long-time fan.

00:29:13.880 And I want to say that when you say we're at a moment culturally that we couldn't have dreamed of 20 years ago, I think that's the first point that needs to be made, is that we have to recognize that what we're going through now is lunacy.

00:29:31.160 And I think we have to encourage other Americans that if you think this is lunacy, it's because you're sane and there are more Americans who see the lunacy as lunacy than you would ever believe.

00:29:44.460 They may not have voices in the media, but the fact is people see what is happening.

00:29:52.420 And in some ways, I will say it is a great thing because it is waking us up.

00:29:59.580 Many of us have been asleep.

00:30:01.480 We need to wake up.

00:30:02.920 Keeping the republic is something that takes effort, and sometimes things have to get even this bad before some people realize, uh-oh, maybe I better do something.

00:30:15.060 So I am cautiously encouraged.

00:30:18.560 Well, I'm glad to hear that.

00:30:20.160 And a note to our audience.

00:30:22.540 The reason we call this the Great America Show is because we truly believe America is great.

00:30:29.660 It is about a great America and not a sullen or oppressive nation, but as, to use your word, Eric, a joyous and free nation and free people.

00:30:44.500 All of that freedom is under threat, it seems, almost daily.

00:30:48.500 But we are still a great nation, and we have nothing to apologize for in being a great nation.

00:30:57.160 I want to turn to the wokeness that you reference.

00:31:02.520 I love the fact that the Marxist left in this country is talking about woke, which is sort of fitting that they would be upside down on the language

00:31:15.120 and in verse to the semantics and the actual meaning of language, what they mean is they want us to continue to slumber and to give them free reign to attack our national institutions,

00:31:29.800 to destroy our American values, and to deny us and our children and our grandchildren the promise of the American destiny.

00:31:40.820 Well, you say, you know, I mean, the irony is that wokeness is the opiate of the masses.

00:31:50.600 That's, you know, obviously an inversion of Marx's infamous statement that religion is the opiate of the masses.

00:31:58.080 But in fact, wokeness is the opiate of the masses because it tells them things that maybe they want to believe,

00:32:05.120 but that can never be true in any universe, we don't need to talk about it now, but my new book is called Is Atheism Dead?

00:32:15.140 And we have to remember that at the heart of everything that is true and good, not least American-style freedom and self-government,

00:32:26.300 this thing we call liberty, this thing we call liberty, at the heart of it all is the idea that our rights come from God and that he made us to be free.

00:32:36.080 Marxism, cultural Marxism, wokeness, is the antithesis of that.

00:32:41.140 It is explicitly, usually not explicitly, but often explicitly anti-God.

00:32:51.000 So whether it's BLM or Antifa or Nancy Pelosi's party, you have people that have pushed God out.

00:32:59.480 They have created a, they're in the process of creating a secular utopia, just as Lenin was trying to create it and Stalin was and Mao, and they can't do it.

00:33:13.520 It's like, I mean, again, there's great irony.

00:33:16.420 It's like the Tower of Babel, right? 0.80

00:33:19.240 We're going to build a tower to reach heaven.

00:33:21.620 Hey, guess what?

00:33:22.760 You can build for the rest of your life.

00:33:24.480 You'll never get there.

00:33:25.980 It has to come to you.

00:33:28.040 And so anybody who thinks that they can get what they want and they don't need God, that is antithetical to the founder's idea.

00:33:38.820 The founders all understood this.

00:33:40.720 But what's comical in a way, if you want to say how good is America, America is so good that its own idea of religious liberty, which is at the heart of everything, even says to the atheist,

00:33:54.400 even though what you would do ultimately would undermine all of this, nonetheless, we're such a free country that we give you religious liberty.

00:34:05.800 The question is, will the atheists and the cultural Marxists give everyone else religious liberty?

00:34:10.860 And the answer is an emphatic no.

00:34:13.640 But we're waking up to what is really happening and to understanding how it's happening.

00:34:20.180 And so, as I say, all of that is a good thing.

00:34:23.440 But we do need to really understand it.

00:34:26.000 Absolutely.

00:34:27.180 And it's simply it is simply an assault.

00:34:32.120 Now, this wokeness is just an expression of the assault that the left in this country has undertaken against our institutions or values,

00:34:43.540 but against, indeed, the very idea of America itself.

00:34:47.620 I wish I were comfortable with the thought or confident in the thought that, oh, these folks who want to deny conservatives access to the student bodies of universities and their campuses, 0.96

00:35:05.320 you know, that's just a misunderstanding.

00:35:07.080 Those who want to control the language in the public arena and thereby control thought.

00:35:16.680 At every turning point, there is an effort to remove freedom, to destroy liberties, not just simply minimize.

00:35:26.720 They want to eliminate freedom of speech and thought.

00:35:29.780 The academia, at one time in this country, was hallowed ground for individual liberty, for free speech, free thought, and expression.

00:35:43.040 It has become something constricted and suffocating, denying expression of whether it be liberty, whether it be freedom of speech, whether it be freedom of religion.

00:35:57.240 It is all under assault by the left.

00:36:01.620 The thing that is, it's almost funny.

00:36:04.520 I gave a speech at the University of the South in Suwannee.

00:36:10.500 I don't know if it was five or six years ago.

00:36:12.320 They invited me there to give me an honorary doctorate.

00:36:17.160 And it was very formal.

00:36:18.700 And I was the convocation speaker.

00:36:20.820 And I knew that they had gone pretty woke already then.

00:36:24.500 And so I said, I'm going to take this opportunity to deliver a speech very, very anodyne in tone.

00:36:33.820 But I said, I want to talk about free speech and the vital importance of having a conversation with people who are on the other side of various issues.

00:36:46.060 And it could not have been more measured and civilized.

00:36:50.440 I went out of my way to make this point as kindly and gently as I could.

00:36:55.640 But to make the point, the firestorm that came out of it, some student wrote to the paper.

00:37:01.440 He says this was the most hateful thing he had ever heard in his life.

00:37:04.780 You know, he was probably 19.1 years old, but he thought he would use that.

00:37:08.380 And then after that, it was almost funnier.

00:37:15.140 They are now threatening to revoke the honorary doctorate.

00:37:19.280 So simply talking about free speech, what does it tell us?

00:37:22.040 It tells us we're at war.

00:37:23.700 If you can't agree on these super basics like freedom and speech and the Constitution, you're at war.

00:37:33.140 And it's a war that right now, we're at mid-pitch of the battle, it seems.

00:37:41.920 We are neither winning nor entirely losing, but we know what's at stake.

00:37:47.380 And now we have a government that is in league with forces in our society, whether it be the doctrinaire efforts of the left on college campuses, universities, whether it be labor unions, whether it be the Democratic Party or the radical left itself.

00:38:09.720 If there is sometimes a difference between the Democratic Party and the radical left, not often as there used to be, but sometimes it's it's starting to to we're starting to see people actually afraid in this country.

00:38:24.400 Yes. Afraid to say something that might be considered offensive.

00:38:29.180 I say good. Good on you for your your speech at the University of the South.

00:38:34.660 Well, again, that was a wonderful thing to do or six years ago.

00:38:38.340 But I thought to myself, listen, I you know, you may know I wrote a 600 page biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the great heroes of 20th century who stood up to the Nazis as a Christian, felt an obligation to God to speak out for the Jews, to speak against the Nazi doctrine.

00:38:58.520 Most Christians who were actually just churchgoers calling themselves Christians, they they they look the other way.

00:39:05.840 They didn't want to get in trouble. They didn't want to get in trouble.

00:39:07.620 That's, of course, where we are in America today.

00:39:10.260 Are enough people going to wake up and be willing to use the freedom that we still have to speak up, to defy nonsense, to encourage those who see the madness?

00:39:24.480 Are we going to do that or are we going to say not yet?

00:39:28.080 I don't want to lose my job. I'm just going to go with the flow.

00:39:31.240 If you tell me to get a vaccine shot that I don't think is going to do me any good or might do me harm.

00:39:37.560 I can't think about that. I want my job.

00:39:40.540 I'm just going to do it. The government says do it.

00:39:42.840 I'm feeling this pressure. That's precisely what the good Germans were feeling in Germany.

00:39:48.840 They were not some evil tribe. My mother came from there. My my family is from there.

00:39:54.280 These are good people who simply lacked courage in the moment when it was needed.

00:40:01.060 We are in such a moment in the United States.

00:40:03.400 If people do not stand up and live out their freedom and spend what you've got now in this war tomorrow,

00:40:12.180 what you thought you could spend will be taken away from you.

00:40:15.400 And I don't just mean money. I mean your voice. So this is really, really serious.

00:40:20.700 And we did not, of course, declare war. Once somebody says to you, free speech is out.

00:40:26.500 What you say is hate speech and we're going to come after you once that happens and people go along with it.

00:40:33.480 And of course, many Republicans, craven as they are, have gone along with it. 0.93

00:40:37.160 Corporate America, ultra craven. They have gone along with it. 0.95

00:40:40.300 The few of us willing to speak can make the difference between whether we go down the path that Germany went down or whether we remain free.

00:40:50.080 I believe God's hand is on this country.

00:40:53.400 We couldn't have lasted or come into existence if that weren't the case.

00:40:58.000 But he doesn't force us to do the right thing right now.

00:41:01.160 We have to exercise our courage. Everybody has to do that.

00:41:07.000 It is absolutely vital. We do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past.

00:41:12.840 I do believe we are unique. There has never been a country like America.

00:41:18.140 And I don't think it's our time to vanish.

00:41:21.100 But sometimes things really need to get horrible for a lot of good people to finally wake up.

00:41:28.660 And one of the things, one of the most important things I wanted to talk to you today about, of course,

00:41:36.980 is the role of religion and the reception of the current American society to religion.

00:41:45.620 Because, and I do so with the full knowledge that there are some people listening in the audience

00:41:50.500 who may not believe in God or are agnostic, who do not want to talk about religion in a secular sense,

00:41:59.040 where we're talking politics and economics and other issues that certainly involve religion.

00:42:08.280 Religion is involved in all our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not.

00:42:12.340 But to see, and I want to speak, I want to get your opinion on this,

00:42:18.480 because I'm starting to see signs, whether it be in our church or whether it be our pastor or just across the country.

00:42:28.280 I'm seeing evangelicals, Christians certainly, starting to stand up and say, you know, this is wrong.

00:42:39.540 And President Biden, let's pray for him.

00:42:43.160 But what are we praying for?

00:42:45.420 And there was a time where it would be the pastor would just simply say, let's pray for our leaders.

00:42:49.900 Now, we are praying for guidance by Almighty God and being very clear about the direction that we want to go,

00:43:00.840 preserving freedom, preserving the right of worship, and preserving this great nation.

00:43:09.640 I see an awakening, and I find it exhilarating to hear these words now from the pulpit.

00:43:20.900 Well, again, these are rare churches that are waking up, but they don't all need to wake up.

00:43:27.060 The handful that are waking up and that are defying preposterous government mandates,

00:43:34.120 there are a number of churches.

00:43:35.200 I've actually spoken at them in California, Jack Hibbs' church in Chino Hills and Rob McCoy's church in Thousand Oaks,

00:43:41.720 and a number of them around the country where they have said, we refuse to bow the knee to the state.

00:43:50.020 We are free.

00:43:51.320 We have freedom of religion in America.

00:43:54.620 These are heroes, these folks.

00:43:56.220 And I'll tell you something.

00:43:57.740 They're so inspiring that atheists are going to these churches.

00:44:01.180 Atheists are saying, whatever they have, I'm attracted to it.

00:44:05.860 That freedom, that courage, these churches are growing.

00:44:10.480 And the churches that continue to speak in a mealy-mouthed way and take as their text the editorial page of the New York Times,

00:44:19.320 those churches have been shrinking for about 100 years, but they're shrinking the more dramatically.

00:44:27.280 There's no way around it.

00:44:28.760 America has always been about, we respect differences.

00:44:34.560 You can never force someone to have faith or to not have faith.

00:44:38.940 That's the whole point of religious liberty.

00:44:41.520 The founders said, we need faith in this country to make people virtuous and to make them on their own do the right thing so we can have limited government,

00:44:52.060 we can govern ourselves.

00:44:52.980 But we understand that it has to be free.

00:44:55.980 No one can force anyone to go to a church or go to a mosque or whatever.

00:45:00.120 Once you start forcing people, either it's a theocracy or it's what they were fleeing from in Europe or it's an atheist tyranny. 0.96

00:45:11.280 And we see that unless you have freedom of religion, religion can't really flourish.

00:45:16.980 And the reason freedom has flourished in America is because religion has flourished.

00:45:20.400 Tocqueville saw this 50 years after the revolution and was astonished because in France it was just the opposite.

00:45:26.640 The church was married to the state.

00:45:28.780 It was this monolith of power that they wanted to get rid of.

00:45:33.920 But in America, the faith of the people made them freer.

00:45:38.460 The churches were free to speak whatever they liked.

00:45:41.980 And so it's a dramatic experiment in liberty, this United States that we have been privileged to live in.

00:45:50.140 And I simply think that it's part of the theme of the book of my book is Atheism Dead is that in the last 60 or so years, we've taken our eye off the ball.

00:46:01.480 We believed that secularization was the answer. 0.70

00:46:06.720 In other words, rather than say we can't force religion on people and we have to have separation of church and state, we took that fatal step and said we're going to secularize everything.

00:46:15.020 We're going to take God out of everything.

00:46:16.700 Well, that's no different than imposing God.

00:46:20.420 Imposing secularism or an atheist view is no different than imposing a certain kind of Christian view or a Muslim view.

00:46:27.900 We've really blown that, and it has ultimately led to where we are today.

00:46:33.920 One of the, I think, great achievements of the Trump administration was restoring religion to the public square.

00:46:42.740 And I think he doesn't get sufficient credit.

00:46:46.280 In some cases, that contribution is ignored altogether.

00:46:49.760 But no president in recent history has done more to restore the church and religion to the public square, the public arena, and political debate in the country.

00:47:02.100 Well, it's one of the reasons so many love him.

00:47:04.240 Yeah, it's such a critically important turning point in our history that I believe sets the groundwork, if you will, for even more achievements as we confront the tests, the challenges, and threats to religion in this country. 0.98

00:47:24.120 Your book, Atheism is Dead.

00:47:27.620 Actually, it's a question.

00:47:30.120 I'm trying to frame it.

00:47:33.700 Time magazine said it's God dead, so I put it as atheism dead.

00:47:37.460 Right.

00:47:38.580 I think that they hated using that question mark.

00:47:43.940 They were asserting something, I thought, rather emphatic rather than interrogatory.

00:47:48.100 And I happen to believe atheism is certainly alive and well.

00:47:55.780 But is it dying?

00:47:57.400 Is it dead?

00:47:58.840 No better person to answer that question than Eric Metaxas, in my view.

00:48:05.320 So is atheism, is it dead?

00:48:09.320 Okay.

00:48:10.020 The reason I asked that question, the book is really not so much about atheism.

00:48:15.160 The last third of the book deals more directly with atheism.

00:48:18.200 But here's what happened.

00:48:20.920 I, over the years, I became very serious about my faith around my 25th birthday.

00:48:27.460 And since then, you know, I went to Yale and I grew up in a very secular environment.

00:48:32.020 You know, even though we went to church on Sundays, nobody was reading the Bible and praying at meals or anything.

00:48:37.480 So I had this experience at age 25 and I started reading books and I was astonished to see that, you know, there's no reason to say that science is the enemy of faith.

00:48:52.360 And I was reading these books over the years and reading what, you know, we call apologetics, realizing that there's nothing more reasonable than the Judeo-Christian faith.

00:49:02.740 It has led to every kind of great thing.

00:49:05.380 Well, as we know, in 1966, the Cognoscenti, the powers that be, decided to put this idea of the death of God in America's living rooms.

00:49:16.040 It had been in the universities.

00:49:19.900 It had been in certain areas.

00:49:22.900 But now it comes into America's living room.

00:49:25.560 And they ask, is God dead?

00:49:27.040 Of course, it comes from Nietzsche, who declared God is dead and then promptly went insane, right?

00:49:32.220 Well, I think over the decades, the evidence, this is very surprising to people.

00:49:41.180 And I'm not surprised that people almost find it hard to believe.

00:49:44.140 But the facts are in the book.

00:49:46.140 And it is surprising, but that since that Time Magazine article came out, it's 1966, roughly since then, the evidence from science, from various disciplines in science, has been absolutely clearly pointing to the existence of a creator to the point where it's an open and shut case.

00:50:11.280 You can hate the idea, but science has been steadily pointing more and more clearly to the idea that there is zero chance that everything emerged randomly, that the Earth just happened to be perfectly tuned for life, and that the first cells emerged 4 billion years ago.

00:50:32.060 A cell is an unbelievably complex thing.

00:50:34.500 The idea that it emerged out of the random sloshing of the primordial soup, we now know enough from science to know those things are preposterous.

00:50:43.580 So the question is, what do you do with it?

00:50:45.360 Well, I bumped into a scientist in Houston, where I'm going tomorrow, actually, and he gave me yet another piece of information on this.

00:50:54.780 And I said, you know what, I've got to write a book, because people can't believe that we haven't been hearing this information.

00:51:02.300 It's been piling up like snow overnight.

00:51:04.720 You're sleeping, and you wake up, and you can't even open the front door.

00:51:08.300 It's drifting.

00:51:08.980 It's just, it's unbelievable.

00:51:11.800 And you've been sleeping.

00:51:12.620 And I feel like we've been sleeping in this secular dream, forgetting that, first of all, science was never the enemy of faith.

00:51:22.200 It was Christian faith in the 16th and 17th centuries that led to the rise of modern science, which is a great irony. 0.97

00:51:29.600 And suddenly, there's all this information from science.

00:51:32.580 There's been outrageous evidence from the world of archaeology that points to the historical accuracy of the Bible.

00:51:39.580 And it piled up so much, I said, I've got to write a book.

00:51:42.980 And I thought, you know what, the question now is, is atheism dead?

00:51:46.960 Because I will say, I will answer and say that atheists may insist that, no, we're not dead, we're here.

00:51:54.960 Well, I'm here to tell you, flat earthers are also here.

00:51:58.140 But it doesn't mean that the theory of flat earth is not dead. 0.60

00:52:02.960 And if you want to be an agnostic, if you want to say, listen, I hate Christians, I hate religion, I don't like it, that's fine. 1.00

00:52:11.760 That's, it's a free country.

00:52:13.060 But to make the statement, there is no God, and to be a committed atheist, based on what's in this book, and of course, much else, but I say it is intellectually untenable.

00:52:24.360 The science has, over the last, let's say, five decades, piled up quietly, people haven't looked at it, they bought the thesis that God is dead, and they just moved on.

00:52:35.100 They said, you know, even when evidence comes up, and I make the case later in the book, that those atheists who look most rigorously, unflinchingly, at the idea of atheism,

00:52:48.300 both ended up coming to faith in God, which to me is a gigantic headline, and no one has ever heard about it.

00:52:56.920 And when I discovered it, I fell out of my chair, I said, this is, this also has to go in the book, because it tells you everything.

00:53:02.900 You mentioned archaeology, one of the most exciting to me, because I'm interested in space, and the technology of imagery from space, particularly when the cameras are trained on the Middle East, in particular.

00:53:21.620 For there to be the, and we'll call this the possibility, of Sodom having been discovered, fitting in the place where the Bible suggests it would be.

00:53:40.920 Also, the ark, now there is a very real possibility that they have discovered the actual ark.

00:53:48.360 I know that there have been claims before, but this has the rigor of science and technology and imagery to back it up.

00:53:58.440 It is a very promising find.

00:54:00.920 And suddenly, there are a number, I would say at least a half dozen, of these examples to support your view on the evidence that is becoming significant,

00:54:14.920 and perhaps compelling to the point of conclusion, that, my gosh, the book is actually throughout, far more than allegory and metaphor,

00:54:28.420 there is demonstrable evidence of the events and places that occurred in the Bible.

00:54:36.680 I mean, that's exciting.

00:54:37.920 I dare anyone to look into it.

00:54:42.120 They will be stunned.

00:54:45.000 Just in my book, the middle section is on archaeology, and of course, I don't list everything.

00:54:50.140 But first of all, the discovery of biblical Sodom, there is zero question, zero.

00:54:56.320 When you look into it, there was an article in Nature, 21 scientists analyzed the data from this site.

00:55:03.440 It is simply open and shut.

00:55:07.380 So to say that we found something from 1700 BC that's talked about in the Bible, and 21 scientists were so astonished that in a peer-reviewed,

00:55:16.180 you know, probably one of the most prestigious, certainly one of the most prestigious academic journals on the planet,

00:55:22.880 they refer to Sodom and the destruction of Sodom because it's so uncanny that they have to mention it.

00:55:29.700 When I discovered this, and then, you know, first you're shocked because, I mean, I really looked into it with skepticism.

00:55:36.940 And then I said to myself, and not only is this true, no one knows this.

00:55:42.040 This is, there's no headlines.

00:55:43.360 There's no, I said, this is gigantic news.

00:55:48.140 And the same thing is true of, Christopher Hitchens was asked once, what's the strongest argument for God?

00:55:53.400 And in a very rare moment of candor, honestly, he said, oh, the fine-tuned universe.

00:55:59.580 And the argument for the fine-tuned universe that the more science discovers about the nature of the earth, the nature of the universe,

00:56:08.400 the more science discovers that if anything were ever so slightly different, just a tiny, tiny bit different, no life would exist.

00:56:20.180 And this is discovered daily, more and more.

00:56:24.200 In other words, the more science discovers, the more it points to the idea that there's zero chance this was not created by some infinitely intelligent designer.

00:56:36.500 This narrative has not been out there.

00:56:39.260 And that's why I wrote the book.

00:56:40.280 I said, we've got to get people to look at the facts.

00:56:43.200 You don't have to agree with everything, but boy, you're going to be surprised.

00:56:47.260 You'll probably be shocked, frankly.

00:56:50.600 Eric, we thank you for being with us.

00:56:53.860 We thank you for writing the book.

00:56:55.580 We recommend your book to the audience wholeheartedly.

00:57:00.680 The book is, is Atheism Dead?

00:57:05.880 Atheism is Dead?

00:57:08.760 Question mark.

00:57:10.680 It's terrific.

00:57:12.060 And we, again, recommend it to you.

00:57:15.520 We thank you so much for being with us, Eric.

00:57:17.380 And here's our custom.

00:57:18.400 Sam, you get the last word here.

00:57:21.820 Well, first of all, I do want to say again, you are a treasure and I have admired your work for years.

00:57:29.080 And I'm just so grateful for you.

00:57:30.660 And I'm thrilled you have found this new medium and honored that I get to be on it.

00:57:35.340 And I just want to say that the title of the book is Atheism Dead really postulates that we have been living with a narrative.

00:57:45.260 And that narrative leads to socialism and Marxism, the idea that we can get rid of God.

00:57:52.700 And we all have to discover that it cannot work.

00:57:59.260 It simply cannot work.

00:58:01.820 It won't work.

00:58:02.680 We can try and try and try and try.

00:58:04.680 It doesn't work.

00:58:06.000 What works is a free market with virtue.

00:58:11.040 What works is a republic of self-governing individuals who have virtue.

00:58:16.140 That is what the founders, by the grace of God, were able to give us.

00:58:21.620 And so many people died for that.

00:58:24.280 And if we have to get to this level of wokeness and madness, you know, the build back Brandon, you know, theme that we're just going to destroy everything and we're going to start afresh.

00:58:40.100 I think, ironically, the opposite is happening.

00:58:43.640 People are waking up to the things that, you know, we took them for granted.

00:58:48.640 Well, now we realize we better not.

00:58:50.420 So, as I say now, I said in the beginning, I am cautiously but very seriously hopeful for this nation, not least because of folks like you.

00:59:03.180 So, thank you very much, Lou Dobbs.

00:59:05.180 Very kind, Eric.

00:59:05.920 Thank you so much, Eric Metaxas.

00:59:08.140 We thank you and all of you listening.

00:59:12.260 I would just like to say we'll see you next time and God bless you all.

00:59:16.920 Join us again tomorrow for the Great America Podcast.

00:59:20.680 Stay in the fight.

00:59:21.640 Truth, justice, and the American way will prevail against all enemies, against all odds.

The Great America Show - November 11, 2021

IS AMERICA WOKE OR AWAKENING？

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