Respect for Marriage?, Beck and Shapiro Realize Their Error, Trump vs. Pence

Hey guys, welcome to Conversations. I'm at a podcast. I'm your host John Harris. I have been working today on an essay that I hope was going to be done, but it's not.

And it's on the propositionation in Christian nationalism. And it's a take that I don't think you've heard from anywhere else, at least

I haven't. And I think it's going to be beneficial. I think it's going to show you what the root of this actual disagreement is over quote -unquote

Christian nationalism. And one thing that struck me today, which is one of the reasons I wanted to give you a short podcast tonight, is that I think

Mike Pence and Donald Trump are on two different sides of this. And I'm not saying Christian nationalism per se on the surface.

I'm saying the root issue here, which is I think the root issue is whether or not America or any nation in particular should define themselves by any religion.

Christianity in this case, but whether that's fundamental to national character.

And then whether or not religious views should be then administered to the rest of the population, even those who don't hold those religious views personally.

But because they're part of or live in the boundaries of a country or a nation, or in this case the

United States, they are subject to those laws, those requirements. And I think there's one group saying that no, we don't need that.

We want universal principles because that's what America is. It's this idea. It's an abstract notion.

It's liberty. It's freedom. It's equality. That's what America is. And it's an idea.

That's really what it is. And then on the other side, I think you have people saying, no, it's rooted. It's tangible. You can feel it.

It speaks a language. There's a lineage involved. There's all these different aspects that make up what a nation is.

And when you combine them all together and you look at them, religion is going to play a part in this.

Now, I've said before, that doesn't mean every single person is necessarily a Christian. It just means there's a tone set. Laws are based upon a certain foundational moral structure that comes from a religion.

It means that social mores—I mean, we still see this at Christmastime.

People who aren't even Christians, well, they acknowledge Jesus, that you still hear Christmas carols that acknowledge

Jesus, at least in some places. And so, anyway, that's fading.

But I think what the Christian nationalists, quote -unquote, are saying is that, hey, religion is a fundamental, essential element of a nation.

And you can't escape it. And we want it to be Christian. It's going to be either Christian or something else. So we don't like the secular humanism, woke stuff.

Let's do Christianity. It's going to be better for everyone, even people who don't actually believe in Christianity. And so that's the disagreement you have.

One side being more rooted, something tangible, something traditional, something that is been—we can point to examples going back to the full lifespan of our country's existence, and we can say, this was, in effect, this definitional.

And then you have another side saying, no, it's all abstract concepts and freedom, and that's kind of malleable.

It can change. Now, of course, it's same -sex marriage, as we'll look at today. So I'm going to examine, if we have time, we'll see how far we get.

But I'm going to examine some Trump -Pence stuff, because Trump just announced he's running again. I listened to the whole thing. Pence has been making his way around doing

CNN town halls. Why is he on CNN? That should give you a clue, honestly, that maybe this guy—yeah.

But also on talk radio. And he's saying something that's different from Donald Trump, but I don't even think they would recognize the difference, possibly, between them.

And it actually, though, is a difference, and it's a pretty fundamental one. But they were able to serve in the same administration.

They're in the same party. They have a lot of the same policies, probably. And at one point, they definitely did.

So what is it that separates them? And I think this—it's becoming more and more of a dividing line, whether or not you believe in the proposition nation or you believe in a very rooted, tangible, traditional kind of America.

And this will become more clear. I think the fog will lift when I'm able to get the essay out and show you some of these things.

I was reading a Bush speech today and an Obama speech and looking at how, wow, they both believed in this and they used this concept to push a different set of policies.

But anyway, I do digress. We're going to look at some stuff. First, I want to start here with what's in the news.

This is a story from the Salt Lake Tribune. This legislation provides important protections for religious liberty measures, which are particularly important to protect the religious liberty—or freedom, sorry—of our faith -based institutions.

This legislation provides certainty to many LGBTQ Americans, and it signals that Congress and I esteem and love all of our fellow

Americans equally. Now think about this. There's a bill. 62 to 37 have voted to be in debate.

12 Republicans are already supporting this, apparently. And they want to make sure that religious liberty is protected.

But think about it this way. Let's say it wasn't same -sex marriage. Let's say it was something else.

Let's say it was interracial marriage, let's say. Would that make sense and say, well, look, if you have a religious exemption, you don't need to participate or recognize this because you have an excuse or you have a reason, a valid reason.

If it really is, in the words of Mitt Romney, showing esteem and love for all Americans equally to vote for this, then wouldn't that mean that people who did not recognize same -sex marriage did not love all of our fellow

Americans equally? You're literally saying—Mitt Romney's quote here is basically saying we want to give an exemption for some institutions to hate.

We want to make sure that religious institutions can still go on hating because they don't love all our fellow

Americans equally, and that's their right to not love them. Well, why is it their right and not the rights of other—so if you have a religious exception, that's the only thing?

I mean, this is kicking the can down the road in the worst way. In the worst way. It doesn't make pragmatic sense because the activists aren't going to like Mitt Romney for this.

They're going to still vote for the guy to the left who says, no, I'm going to force the churches, I'm going to force the bakers, bake the cake.

They're not going to—and this should just be a freedom of association thing. It shouldn't even have to be said, but that's another story.

We're down the road, unfortunately, on this, and it should just be—we don't provide services for people we don't want to provide services to.

I know, I know. I'm getting into a different territory here going this direction, and I'm sounding like an old -school

American, I guess, but we're in this situation where if it's a fundamental right, you have to provide the service, and okay, so how do we protect religious institutions?

Well, give them a pass to hate. So that's where we're at, and this isn't going to stand.

Obviously, there's going to be another bill as the country gets more and more progressive, if you want to be

Marxist. They're going to end up making sure that religious institutions don't get that exemption.

I don't see another way. So this is the—here's the thing that makes no sense.

Well, it does, but it doesn't. I didn't realize it would be moving this fast. That's the amazing thing to me is how fast things are actually moving here.

This is a story, Fox News. Mormon Church comes out in support of federal law protecting same -sex marriage.

I'll minimize myself here so you can see it. In an unexpected move, the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints gave its support Tuesday to a proposal federal law that would recognize all legal marriages and codify marriages between same -sex couples.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Support for the Respect for Marriage Act. It's called the Respect for—can you believe that? It's the Disrespect for Marriage Act.

It's literally good, evil, evil, good. It is under consideration in Congress and the Church's latest step to take a more welcoming stance toward the

LGBTQ community while holding firm to its belief that same -sex marriage relationships are sinful. Okay, you can't have the two.

The bill is trying to have two things, religious liberty and sexual anarchy. And it is—look, it's not sexual anarchy,

John. How else would you frame it? I mean, it is not between a man and a woman, and we threw out the definition, which is what you have to do.

It can be anything at this point. It really can. There's nothing to prevent it from going in other directions.

Why not—why two people? Why does age difference matter? As long as there's consent, that's the standard, then, you know, any consent should be acceptable.

Can't animals even get their consent? I mean, this is kind of—sounds ridiculous now, but it won't as things move—keep moving along.

And we said this. I said this. Even in 2015, this is going to open Pandora's box, and we already see it with the transgender issue.

Okay, so support for Respect for Marriage Act. That is going through, and I don't see anything politically that's going to be able to stop it at this point.

I mean, that's just the way it is. You need, like, a super majority in the House to—and they already passed, you know, a version of this.

They just have to pass the Senate's edits or amendment to it. So, amazing that Utah and the

Mormon Church have caved on this. And, you know, we can personally be against it, but, you know, we support the bill.

We think that, legally, they should have the—if legally it's recognized, then how come the church gets a bigot pass?

That would be my question. Because that's what—that's how—you're buying into their complete paradigm when you do this.

You have to be. They believe that it's bigoted to oppose same -sex marriage.

It's wrong, in their mind, morally speaking. Now, I can make a great—the argument

I've always made consistently is that, no, actually, there's a creative design here. God put it in place. He designed marriage for one man, one woman, for life.

And procreation's certainly part of this. It's definitional to it. There are—just like people have medical conditions that prevent them from, you know, running or walking or talking or doing things that a normal human body should be able to do, there are couples who can't have children.

There's couples who are infertile. There's couples who are past the age of bearing children. Doesn't mean they don't have a marriage.

But fundamentally speaking, the marriage itself, definitional to marriage, is the intention behind it, other than being a picture of Christ in the church, in the natural world, is to produce children.

And so it's not something that can just be—it's not just an institution of man that they're trying to show.

I saw this thing with Joe Rogan and Matt Walsh a few weeks—maybe it was a week ago. Maybe it was a few days ago now.

I don't know. Things are running together. But essentially, Joe Rogan's trying to make this point. He's hammering Matt Walsh on it and saying, yeah, can it be just an institution that man developed to promote relationships that are special, to showcase how special this person is to me?

And if you want to do it that way, then sure. Okay. If that's true, why not 10 people? Obviously there's a pattern in creation.

There's something God created in its families, and marriage is the basis for this. And anyway,

I'm not really saying anything that most people in my audience don't already agree with. I'm just trying to point out that there's a consistency that we have.

Those of us who believe what the word of God says and who can look with our eyeballs and see what happens in the natural world, it's not something that's a mystery to us.

This is late -stage, empire -falling stuff that we're engaging in here. And it's not going to go good for the

United States. The farther down this rabbit hole we keep going. Degeneracy is already abounding. And by the way, it can get a lot worse.

If you don't think it's bad now, or you think it's bad now, it can get a lot worse. And it will. So how's that for a positive message?

Just being honest. These are Republicans, though. Mormons. A Mormon. Oh my goodness.

This is crazy. Now, speaking of Mormons, this was interesting to me. So I was, let's see here, listening to some stuff.

Let's get rid of this and this. Maybe we'll get to this. This is not related to the same -sex marriage stuff.

So we will go, okay. Here. Okay, I thought this was interesting.

Now, by the way, Votie Bauckham did a great job on this interview, in my opinion.

Great job. He just, he hit it out of the park. I thought Glenn was asking some very personal questions by the end of this that weren't even necessarily political.

It was just he wanted to know because he respects Votie Bauckham. And Votie did talk about repentance and faith, the difference between law and gospel.

I mean, he was able to mention things. Glenn didn't really take the bait. Glenn just, maybe,

I don't know. I don't know what the deal is here. But I actually emailed Votie Bauckham, though, and we'll see.

Maybe he'll give me some behind -the -scenes. Because I'm just curious. I'm like, Glenn Beck certainly has a respect for Votie.

Is there a curiosity about Christianity, true

Christianity? I don't know. Anyway, Votie did a great job. Here's, though, what Glenn said, and this surprised me.

This surprised me. I said on the air when we were debating same -sex marriage, to me, as more of a rights person,

I don't, what do you do in your life? Do not force my church to do what you want.

And I won't force your church to do what you want. You know what I mean? Or what I want. But I said, this opens up the door.

You can't say, man and a woman, and then not say, man, woman, woman, or woman, woman, woman.

Everything is going to change, and you will see pedophilia will start to be normalized. And they said, how dare you ever say that?

Right, right. And then we say, no, that's not what we're arguing for. That whole slippery slope argument, that's not what we're arguing for.

We're just arguing for this, not that. But the implications are clear, and there was a case in New York.

So, okay. And Glenn goes off more about kind of how bad this is.

But the reason I'm surprised is because here's Glenn from nine years ago. You can't find a lot of honest brokers on the left.

You really can't because they can't handle debate. You can, when you want to talk about gay marriage, let's talk about gay marriage for a second.

Let's just talk about this. I have, I don't care if somebody gets married. I really don't.

If you get married, just don't destroy my marriage. Don't destroy my church.

I don't care. I don't judge you. I don't, I doesn't, I don't want to be in your bedroom. And believe me, you don't want to be in my bedroom.

No, that's true. It's really, my wife doesn't want to be in my bedroom. Nobody wants to be in my bedroom.

I don't want to be in yours. I don't care what you do. However, try to find somebody that will stand up for my,

I'll stand up for your right. You want to, you want to, I have gay friends. We have gay employees.

It doesn't matter to me. I'll stand up. I'll defend you. But will you defend me?

Will you defend my belief? That's the problem. The answer to that is no.

Is no. Do you know, do you have gay friends? No, yeah. I have gay friends.

Do you hate them? Okay, so let's stop here. Glenn says, I remember listening to a show, and he said stuff like this all the time.

So did Bat and Stu. And it's essentially, though, what's, the law that's being passed right now, it's essentially the same thing.

What they're saying. I mean, this law is meant to be a protection,

I guess, in case the Supreme Court decides, hey, we did the Roe v. Wade, let's overturn Obergefell or something like that.

So it's an extra security measure in place. But as, and I, I sense a difference here.

Glenn Beck is, I don't remember him talking about, hey, why can't it be, why can't it be more than one person?

Why can't it be whatever you want it to be? He is concerned, and this was when he was calling himself a libertarian,

I don't know if he still does that, was that, that he didn't want the church force to do anything.

Well, that's what this bill says. The church, hey, the church can be the bigots, I guess. The church doesn't have to recognize this.

They have their religious freedom, but people are, same -sex marriage is recognized federal, on a federal level.

So that would be, you would think that would be exactly what he's advocating here. But when he's talking to Votie Boncombe, it's a little bit, it's different.

And I thought this was interesting, because he's, he does say,

I, initially he says, at the time I was saying you can have your rights, but, and then he really made a big deal about, if it can be anything, then it's, it's, it's anarchy.

And that's just crazy. And we shouldn't, if you watch the whole thing, he talks about how crazy things are going and how bad it's getting, and same -sex marriage would be one of the evidences of this.

Okay. Sounding like a different person. Guess who else is sounding like a different person? Here is Ben Shapiro.

This is from November 16th, so today. But put aside the rule of construction. The thing that's really amazing to me is that it is now apparently the law of the land and societal rule that the only rationale that you would possibly have for saying that a marriage is between a man and a woman is because you're a

Christian or a Jew or a Muslim. That's really the only reason at all. That the only reason, we'll allow you to have these crazy beliefs so long as you can show that they're crazy beliefs, so long as you can show that the reason that you believe that marriage is between a man and a woman is because you read it in a book and because you really believe the book.

They keep saying sincere religious belief. I don't even know how you measure sincere religious belief. Are we going to like now monitor how often you go to church or to synagogue, whether you keep kosher or whether you take communion in order to determine your sincere?

I mean, the same media that declares that Nancy Pelosi is a sincere religious believer who's just for the mass abortion of unborn children.

A little clear that you, Matt Walsh, are not actively in favor of the things that you're in favor of.

You're just a religious bigot. You're a bigot, right? And your religion is a cover for your bigotry. I'm highly annoyed by the constant derogation of nonreligious arguments, interreligious arguments.

And this is what the left loves to do. They like to say you're pro -life. The reason you're pro -life is because of your crazy religion. And so maybe we can respect your crazy religion along those.

That is not the argument for marriage. The argument for marriage has literally nothing to do with religion. You could be a visitor from Mars and you could see that all of human procreation relies on man, woman, child.

This is not particularly difficult stuff by essentially boxing in the argument in favor of traditional marriage into, well, if you're a crazy religious believer, maybe we'll let you have that.

But if you're baking it, if you're a cake baker, then we're not sure about that. Right. I mean, we're not sure how far this religious liberty thing extends.

What you're really doing is you're setting the ground game at same sex marriage and traditional marriage are completely the same thing.

And if you object to it, the only reason that will even allow you to do that is because of this crazy thing called religion. OK, so very down on this bill that because he doesn't like that exemption that is purely religious because he doesn't think it's it's an obvious thing.

It shouldn't necessarily be unique to a religion. Now, this was Ben Shapiro six years ago.

Marriage is silly because I don't think that there's societal benefit to gay marriage. If you're going to make the argument that government should be involved in marriage at all, which is not even an argument with which

I agree at this point. But it's the way it's the way it is right now. Right. Let's just go from that. OK, so that base. So before I get there.

Yeah. One quick point. The reason I want the government out of the business of marriage is because now that the government has enshrined gay marriage, the next step is going to be going to religious people and telling them they have to engage with same sex weddings.

So as a religious person, this is problematic to me. I want a society in which I can do what I want and I don't have to care what you think and you can do what you want and you have to care what

I think. Right. It doesn't mean you get to come into my synagogue and get married. It also doesn't mean that I have to go to your gay wedding. Right. See, that's an interesting place to.

OK, I want to just say this. Both of these guys are not getting down on them at all. But this is the argument that helped take us here to this point we're at now.

And I think now both of them are like, oh, no. What have we done? What's they can see now where this is actually going?

And this is after a few years of transgender athletes business. And I mean, all the sexual anarchy that we've been seeing with transgender, you know, library or drag queen library hour and all the rest.

And I think they're seeing now this is the brave new world that six years ago, that nine years ago, we were we didn't expect to happen as this this soon.

And at the time, I'm just telling you, those of us who were consistent Christians reading our

Bibles, we could we could have told you easily. John MacArthur's been preaching on this since like the 80s or 90s.

He uses sermons. You can go back in the archive where he's talking usually like Romans one. He'll be talking about it's a degenerate fall.

Once you accept this form of evil, it opens the door for the next kind of evil. And this is why giving up on marriage in 2016 for conservatives, political conservatives, was a terrible idea.

Now that there's a bill being passed that will enshrine it on a federal level and give just a religious exemption for people who institutions that don't want that in there.

You know, they don't want to hire someone, let's say, who disagrees with their fundamental beliefs or something like that. And now all of a sudden they're realizing, wait a minute, this is a problem that's not going to hold up forever under these circumstances.

This is a tension that's going to have to go one way or the other. And and they're not sounding as libertarian today as they did.

I mean, they're making arguments now from creation design. Both Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro are talking about the way things actually are, the way things are designed to be.

And if you deviate from that design or that definition, then it's open.

It's anarchy. It opens the Pandora's box. It's obvious. Marriage should be obvious. They did not sound like that six years ago, nine years ago.

They did not. I listened. I know. I mean, it's one of the reasons. So it's just it's fascinating to me because I know like the

Blaze and the Daily Wire last or earlier this year were congratulating their official accounts on social media, congratulating

Dave Rubin for surrogate, having a surrogate child.

And just, I mean, that was an endorsement on a certain level. I mean, they've already gone down this path pretty far.

And it's and now I think some of them are seeing it and they kind of want to reel it back. That's how

I'm interpreting this at least. And so I find it interesting. And it's not a see, I told you so moment. It's more of just a it's recognizing,

I think, that look, Christians who are reading their Bibles, who are consistent, who could see three steps down the road. We should listen to them.

We should listen to those who are right. Think about those in your life who are telling you at those times if you had people telling you that this was going to be a disaster and that would open

Pandora's box. Whether you believe them or not, now you should recognize they knew something and they are to be believed or at least give them a higher level of trust than the talking heads on the media who aren't

Christians, who seem to be making these secular arguments and libertarian arguments.

And now they have to retreat from those because they're now living out the implications of those arguments and they don't like it.

Okay, well, let's see. I wanted to get to this, get rid of the

Ben Shapiro stuff here in Glenn Beck. Okay, let's, I don't know where I'm gonna drop in on this to be honest with you.

I really don't. So I'm gonna just kind of randomly drop in. This is, oh no, these are people talking about Trump's speech.

I don't want to hear people talking about Trump's speech. I'd rather, yeah, let's get out of here.

That's not what I wanted. Let's see. I know

Fox News had the full speech. Okay, I think it's here.

So let's, I don't know where I want to even jump in. Let's jump in towards the two -thirds through this and just let's hear a little bit of Donald Trump's announcement for running for 2024.

And then I'll compare what Mike Pence is saying and I'll share with you some of my thoughts. This total breakdown of law and order.

It was a total breakdown of law and order. I will restore public safety in American cities and other communities that need our help.

And if they don't want our help, we're going to insist that they take our help this time. Because, you know, the

Democrat governors, these are all Democrat cities. The governors and mayors are supposed to ask for the help and they would never ask for the help.

And yet people are being shot and killed at random like nobody's ever seen before. And we sent in the

National Guard in Minneapolis and in other places. In Seattle we went in.

Okay, I want you to just listen to how Trump talks. So you say, well, John, I've heard Trump talk before.

Yeah, but just listen to it with fresh ears. How does he conceive of the world? And this is, if you listen to the whole thing, it's very fascinating to me.

No matter what issue you pick that he talks about, it could be family stuff. He is so rooted and tangible with the way he talks about it.

We're going to do, we're going to help people is really his message. We're real life people who are living, trying to make a living in the

United States. We want them to succeed. And these are the things we're going to do to help them succeed in the real world. 500 people with the drugs they sell, not to mention the destruction of families.

But we're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.

He's willing to kill people over that issue because they're hurting people. Again, it's very tangible.

Election and election process. And I'll get that job done. That's a very personal job for me.

I take that very personally. All right, I'm going to stop here because there's so much we could talk about.

But it's really basic stuff. It's almost an hour. Actually, it's over an hour. And it's Donald Trump talking about how and using metrics.

Sometimes he's not exact with his numbers or anything, but he's telling you, this is what I want to do for people, for real life people in this country.

I love this country. I love the people here. These drugs are hurting them. We're going to stop that. We're going to stop the trade deficits killing their jobs.

I want them to be successful. I want them to be able to provide for their families. We're going to stop that. We're going to do all these things.

So I want you now to think about one last thing with this, with Donald Trump.

I'm not going to play it, but he says, we're going to do this for America. We're going to make it prosperous again and this and that and the other thing.

And then, of course, leading up to we're going to make America great again. That's the thing with Donald Trump.

His slogan, I think he really believes that, is America is.

It's a place. It's a people. That's what America is to Donald Trump.

And to make it great again is to we're going to help the people in these tangible ways.

It's really as simple as that. That is different, though, from any other president in my lifetime and how they've campaigned.

I was thinking about it, George W. Bush included. They talk about, okay, I'll tell you what they talk about after we do this.

All right, here's Mike Pence being asked about, this isn't probably even the best clip, but Mike Pence, he's tripping over himself saying one thing in particular over and over and over in this whole town hall.

And so he says it here as well. It was a great honor for me to be a part of the

Trump -Pence administration. And in four short years, we rebuilt our military. We revived our economy.

We unleashed American energy. We appointed conservatives to our courts at every level.

But in the end, our administration did not end well. And I write about that in my book.

But as I've traveled across the country over the last year and a half, one thing I've heard over and over again, whether it's at the grocery store in Indiana or traveling around the country, is people want us to get back to the policies of the

Trump -Pence administration. They want to see America strong and prosperous and advancing the policies that we advanced that left

America more secure and 7 million American jobs created.

But the other thing that I've heard consistently is that— Okay, so he kind of tips his hat to the

Trump stuff a bit. People want to go back to the prosperity. But even as he talks about it, it sounds fake because he's talking about, well, a lot of politicians do this.

When I was at the grocery store in little Norman Rockwell town or something, that's how they give you the feeling of they're just one of you.

They're a regular Joe. Trump doesn't have to do that. Trump just is. He doesn't have to talk about being at the grocery.

Because we know Trump's not at the grocery store, right? Someone else is at the grocery store for Trump.

I guarantee it. So Trump doesn't have to throw these things out there. But Pence is still like a typical politician throwing that kind of stuff out there.

And maybe he does go to the grocery store. I don't know. But it's supposed to, I think, inside of you, make you think of small -town

America, Americana -type stuff, and make him less distant, more personable, more relatable, all that.

So this is where the switch happens. See what happens when

Mike Pence starts talking about what's really important to him here. The American people are looking for new leadership, leadership that will unite our country around our highest ideals, leadership that will reflect the civility and respect that most

Americans have for one another. You know, once you get out of politics, you learn pretty quickly that while our politics is very divided, the

American people actually get along pretty well every day and treat each other with kindness and with decency and with respect.

And so I think in the days ahead, whatever role I and my family play in the

Republican Party, whether it's as a candidate or simply a part of the cause, I think we'll have better choices.

Better choices. Okay. This is something he said on Sean Hannity when I was listening to the interview with him.

He kept saying ideals all the time, and it hit me. So Mike Pence, when he's talking about respect and ideals and all these things, that's what lights him up.

And he recognizes, yeah, there's policies that are hurting people, but what people really want is they want someone who's going to embody these ideals.

And look a certain way and act a certain way and present themselves a certain way.

And this, I think, gets to one of these divisions that Christian nationalism is bringing up.

It's not Christian nationalism per se, but it's this proposition nation stuff.

And this isn't 100 % directly related, but Mike Pence is talking like someone, and he definitely was using this language on Sean Hannity.

Who believes in this proposition nation business, where America is a set of ideals.

America is this very, think of like Plato's Republic and this world of forms.

Like America is this perfect form that has yet to realize. It hasn't yet to come into itself really, but you get glimpses of it every now and then.

At the shopping center, you can see it. You can see it in the people, this glimpse of what

America really is. These high ideals. And politics is just so bad.

It's so corrupt. We all know it. But what we need to do is inject it with those ideals and everything will be fine.

Now, first of all, this is a Norman Rockwell world figment at this point. Maybe in some small towns, but where are you talking about?

People are divided now on the local level, in school board meetings, in churches, they're divided.

So what Mike Pence is talking about does not conform to reality. And people will treat each other with respect. I mean, I guess in most towns they're not shooting each other, but in the cities they are.

So he's trying to hearken back to something that I think nostalgia is going to pull you towards in a way.

But it's not something that's a tangible. There's no metric that you can really use for ideals.

It's very hard to use a metric for that. It's not something that you can measure and it's not something that in and of itself brings success to Americans or makes their families more secure or helps parents pay for their children's college education or the very tangible things that Trump talks about throughout his entire speech.

Trump doesn't talk about ideals. He doesn't talk about abstractions. He doesn't even think of America in those terms in that way.

He thinks of America as the people and the place and making that place as good as he possibly can, making the people as successful and prosperous as they possibly can.

And Mike Pence, I think, thinks of America more as this noble ideal, this shining city, this place that it needs to.

It's not like that, unfortunately, right now in the political realm and it needs to be brought into this.

And so he's going to be the one to conform it to the ideal. And so it's not something that's measured.

He's not looking at America, I think, so much as a place and a people. People are part of it, but insofar as people embody the ideal.

That's what makes them true Americans. That's what makes them part of America is when they show this dignity and respect.

And you hear leftists talk about this. Obama did this all the time. He talked about ideals in these very high and glowing language.

But when he talked about it, it was mostly equality that he was talking about, egalitarian equality. Those were the noble ideals.

And for Republicans, it's generally freedom or liberty. Those are the terms they use. But either way, they're talking about conforming everything to this very vague abstraction that you can't use.

Like I said, you can't use a metric on it at all. Trump isn't even in that lane.

Not even close. He doesn't talk like it, really. It's all very particular for Trump.

And so I think that this is going to be made more clear once I show you what

I've been working on, an essay I've been writing on this whole issue. But it is, if you get these two categories in your mind and you realize, okay, there's some people who conceive of America differently than others, and Trump is a deviation from the presidents that we've had in the way he views what

America is and how to help America as a result of how he defines America, then

I think it will make more sense why the whole Republican establishment is going to be lined up against him.

And they were in 2016 as well. And the Democrats. I'll put it this way.

It is awfully convenient when you can conflate the purpose or function of a nation and then the definition of a nation, which is what this essentially does.

If the purpose of a nation or the function of a nation is to embody these ideals, and you can conflate that with the definition of a nation, which is its people and its place, then those who fail to participate in a national cause, whether it's going to war or eliminating poverty or something like that, or a virus, their very identity then hangs in the balance.

It's contingent on their compliance to the government. So an American is someone who values equality and obeys orders or values dignity or values freedom and obeys orders.

It makes your population more, I think, docile. And then authentically, national characteristics, and this would include religion, that's where Christian nationalism comes in, but lineage, ownership, experience, language, tradition, all of these things are able to be cast aside when conflicts arise between them and politically driven national purposes.

So we need to import this large group of people. Hold on, but we have people here, right?

That doesn't matter anymore because America is not a lineage has nothing to do with it.

A people group has nothing to do with it. It's all about equality or it's all about liberty and extending that as far as you possibly can.

So we need to let these people in, right? I mean, under this logic, you could have a country in the

Middle East that takes, you know, accepts American form of government, democracy, or a

Republican form of government. And, you know, now there we've planted, we've nation built, we've planted democracy there, but they don't, we don't think that they cease to be

Iraqi or they cease to be Afghani or any like the people there that now they're real

Americans, but we treat them sort of that way. We, we think we need to plant America over there. That's what they need.

They need what we have, right? They need our ideals. They need our, our system built on these principles.

That's, what's going to, that's, what's going to really help them out. And, and so, and we're willing to sacrifice to that, to these ideals.

So Trump doesn't think that way. That's why his foreign policy is different. That's why like every single, it just, it's clicked in my mind.

Like every single aspect of the way he thinks, he, he's not like these guys. He's not in this high and mighty idealistic world.

He's more pragmatic and he's more, just more of a realist, I suppose. All right.

So I figured I'd share with you that eureka moment that I had realizing,

I kind of all knew this for a while, but I was, it was just as I'm writing about it, it's making more and more sense to me.

All right. Last but not least, someone wanted me to talk about this. Pastor Jamal Bryant fully dismantles

Herschel Walker. So this is a social justice, you can even see the fist in the, in the picture here.

This is a social justice pastor. Let's see what he has to say. And citizens in Georgia should not vote for Herschel damn

Walker. Here it is. Ladies and gentlemen, when the Republican party of Georgia moved

Herschel Walker from Texas to Georgia so that he could run for Senate, it's because change was taking too fast in the post antebellum

South. The state had been flipped blue and there are some principalities that were not prepared for a black man and a

Jewish man to go to Senate at the exact same time. So they figured that they would delude us.

There's, there's no sources for any of this. This is just pure. I mean, even though the language he uses is so purposely chosen post antebellum.

Okay. Well, I guess that's every, every moment since the end of the civil war, I guess you could, okay, whatever.

Post antebellum. And, uh, and you're getting into the motives.

He questions motives right away here. That's, you know, such a, you expect that from social justice advocates.

That's they go right for the jugular most times. Uh, and, but he just doesn't have a source for this. Uh, let's see if he gives one.

It's because change was taking too fast. So they figured that they would delude us by picking somebody who they thought would in fact represent us better with a football than with a degree in philosophy.

They thought we were so slow that we were so stupid that we would elect the lowest caricature of a stereotypical broken black man, as opposed to somebody who was educated.

This is kind of racist. I mean, I wouldn't, if a white guy said this would, that'd be it. Right. I mean, uh, the, the lowest character is a black guy throwing a football.

Like that's, that's so that's inferior. That's what he's saying. This is inferior. What he did with his life, uh, is it's not, it's, it's inferior to someone like a

Warnock who has a degree. Oh my goodness. And I mean, you could flip this though. I could see a pastor saying like, we want, we want the guy who throws the football because the guy who got the degree,

I mean, he went through the white man's system and he learned the white man's books and he did. I mean, I've heard that kind of thing before.

So it's, it's very, it's just so funny. Like either it doesn't really matter what the scenario is there.

Social justice warriors can find an angle to somehow make it, uh, racist or oppressive or something.

And the erudite and focus y 'all ain't ready for me today. Since Hershel Walker was 16 years old, white men been telling him what to do, telling him what school to go to, where to live, where to eat, where to buy a house, where to run, where to sit down, where to sleep, where to pay for abortions, where to buy a gun.

You think they not going to tell him how to vote. Okay. So Warnock literally went to university though.

I mean, it was, is that, I thought, I thought that that was considered, uh, the,

I better not say what I, what I'm thinking. I just thought that there was a, uh, an angle on that, that, that, that would have been looked upon in, in, in certain aspects of the black community as, uh, that was, that would have been a stain on him or a

Mar on him, or we would have had to look at him with suspicion for pursuing, uh, that kind of thing.

Maybe that's changed in certain. I don't know, but I just, it's weird to me that like, so throwing a football means you're controlled by a white person, but getting a degree doesn't.

Why that's, that's what I'm trying to get at here. Like, what, what's the difference here that In 2022, we don't need a

Walker. We need a runner. We need somebody who gonna run and tell the truth about January six.

We need somebody. Okay. All right. So it's, it's, uh, it's working up the crowd now, but, um, I mean,

I, I would think that getting a degree that's with your mind, I mean, throwing a football, it's physical, right? So he, he, on the one hand, he's saying

Walker's so dumb. You know, how dumb do they think we are? I want to vote for this dumb guy. And then on the next, uh, and then he's saying that, uh, the, the he's controlled.

So he's, so I guess that means he's dumb. So he's dumb. He's controlled by other people. So we want the guy that has an education that has a degree because that somehow means he's not controlled.

But I would think throwing a football would be physical and that you could still have a mind and think for yourself.

Uh, whereas if you go to college, you're getting your mind filled for you with concepts. So, uh, it doesn't seem to,

I don't know. This isn't very interesting to me. Let's see if we can get ahead and let's see if there's any other, uh, anything else here.

This is, look, this is a show. This is a left -wing show. It looks like they play an interview from this particular pastor.

So let's see if we can go to that. And statistically the church was losing members.

Uh, I brought all of my frailties and flaws to ministry.

Um, where a lot of preachers use the pulpit for witness protection. Uh, say that again.

Weakness protection. He said, preachers use the pulpit for weakness protection.

And I will go a step, a step deeper. Many Christian evangelicals, including politicians, they utilize their faith for weakness protection.

They're actually weak on the inside. They're cowardly at their core. Give you some information about pastor

Jamal Bryant. Okay. All right. All right. We're not going anywhere else on this. So I just find it interesting.

Like this would be considered that's church, right? And that's fine. That's totally political, but there's not a concern about Christian nationalism here.

There's not a concern about separation of church and state. It's fine. Fine to have a pastor do this from the pulpit to completely get into partisan political politics and then turn around and the news anchor accuses the evangelical church of being weak, which, you know, probably yes, but not in the way he probably thinks of it because they're weak because I guess they're not engaging in social justice enough or something.

That would mean they're strong, but I don't know how, how much strength does it take to cater to the powers that be?

Not much. I mean, you're going to get the applause of the world. So anyways, someone sent that to me, wanted me to comment on it.

So there you go. I don't really have much else to say. It wasn't, it was your standard fare,

I suppose, but that's what's going down in Georgia. All right. Well, that's it for the podcast today.