Fighting Critical Race Theory on the Local Level

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We are going to get practical today.

I get emails or messages every once in a while and they'll say this, John, I appreciate your research.

I enjoy the podcast. I just don't know what to do with the information you give me. How do I fight this on the local level?

Whatever it may be. I mean, we focus on different topics and the hot topic for the last year that seems to be what a lot of people are talking about is critical race theory.

But of course, I know that that's just one slice of the pie in the social justice paradigm.

But I think it's a good question and that's something that only you can answer in your specific context.

I think it's our responsibility to stand for the truth, stand for Christian ethics, stand for the truth of the gospel.

I do think that critical theory does threaten both those things. It threatens Christian ethics because it has a completely different understanding of justice.

It's a redistributive justice instead of equality of opportunity.

And I should actually more accurately say equality before the law, which is really what the picture you see, especially in the

Old Testament, the word mishpat, it is a inequality of outcome. And you have that going.

And then you also have, when it comes to the gospel, you have a false secular gospel, a man -made gospel that is actually a gospel competitor.

That's probably the best way to look at it because it's kind of like a Christian heresy. It's got an Augustinian framework. It's got repentance.

It's got forgiveness. It's got sin, original sin, which is the white privilege.

It's got this whole framework that you have to work out. And when I say forgiveness, it's not a forgiveness that's lasting like in Christianity.

It's kind of like a temporary absolution to keep your stay at purgatory,

I guess, diminished or something. It's not a final forgiveness. But there is some element of, you know, we'll leave you alone if you do what we say.

Anyway, all that to say, we've gone over that so, so much and in great detail.

So I'm going to spare everyone who listens to this regularly my spiel on that. I think it is good to every once in a while have some reminders though.

So I'm going to go through some reminders today on the nature of critical race theory. But I'm going to give you an example of something that I kind of stumbled into that ended up,

I think, or it will end up helping the local political situation of my state. And I didn't realize that I would have helped so much.

So this is something I thought when this happened, I'll explain to you what it is.

I thought this is something that anyone can do. If you have a little bit of a knack for research, even if you don't, even if you just want to go and you know how to use the internet as far as search engines and digging up information to some extent, you can do this.

You can do what I did. And that's what I want to encourage you in is doing some research that will help your local area, your state, even your church.

And what I'm finding is that, it's a shock to me in some ways, but what

I'm finding is that people who you would think know something about critical race theory or critical theory in general or social justice or fill in the blank, sometimes they don't.

The other thing is they don't always, if they do know those things and what they mean and the implications of them, they don't always know how to apply them to various situations.

For instance, a political candidate, or you could even think of a pastoral candidate. Someone's candidating at your church to be the next pastor and have people really done their homework.

And of course, if you do your homework and you find out, hey, this isn't really a great pick and you share that information with the search committee or something, maybe you won't be the most popular person.

But on the other hand, maybe you'll be the person they think. Either way, you're not doing it for them. You're doing it for God.

And you're doing it because you care about, if you go to a church, you care about the leadership of that church. You care about if you have children there, what it's going to mean for them, what it's going to mean to your friends who are at that church.

So it should be out of a motivation for love that you do this. But I'll just share with you what I did and kind of what's transpired.

So I, some of you may know this, last week did an episode on a candidate for the gubernatorial race here in Virginia.

And we haven't had the Republican primary yet, but when that happens, one of the candidates named

Glenn Youngkin is running as a MAGA, America First conservative. But more than that, he's running as a

Christian. And he touts that. He wears it on his sleeve. He talks about it all the time. I'm a Christian. I give to my church.

I give to Christian charities. And so this is something he's very proud of.

And I hear advertisements all the time for him that he's a conservative, that he's someone that Trump really likes because there's like one clip of Trump saying something positive about the company that he used to be a joint

CEO with. And so he just plays this over and over and you hear this all the time. And so I, some of you know,

I did some research and I just found out that his church that he goes to is a woke church.

And he, there was a controversy over a letter that he had signed last year with the

Carlisle Group, which he's a joint CEO with someone else in, his name was on it, this letter, where it was basically a woke letter just saying that, you know, there's racism, there's systemic racism, et cetera.

We need racial justice. Here are the groups that I'm giving to. One of them was a Southern Poverty Law Center. One of them was the

Equal Justice Initiative. And I didn't actually talk about that a whole lot, which

I probably should have last time around, but you know, I was sharing so many things. But the

Equal Justice Initiative is bad news as well, akin to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I mean, I know he is, Glenn Youngkin has said in interviews that, well, he missed that the Southern Poverty Law Center was part of, you know, this letter, but the

Equal Justice Initiative was on there as well. So anyways, I digress. Either way, not a great letter, not a great company, not a great organization to give money to.

And he did this, and then the way that he tries to kind of slip out of it is, but I'm a

Christian, I give to my church, and I don't like the Southern Poverty Law Center, I've never personally given to them, even though his company encouraged giving to them.

So okay, fine, whatever, you know, I don't know how comfortable people feel about a governor who misses things like that when they sign their name to something, but okay, he missed that the

Southern Poverty Law Center was on there. But there's other things that are very problematic. The whole narrative is problematic. And what

I thought was the worst element of this whole situation is how he used his church.

Because when I looked up the church, I found out they're a woke church. And I give you several examples, I mean, just one out of a hat here, you know,

Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and the church celebrated, they put their flag at half -mast, but they celebrated the fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a champion of justice, and gender equality.

Gender equality. So it gives you an idea, I probably don't even have to comment on it, of the kind of church he goes to.

Well, this has created a bigger stir than I thought it would.

I went to Richmond this morning, and I was on a radio show, the John Frederick's Radio Show, and I stayed on there for about two hours, and we talked about Yunkin, we brought up,

I have a few things here that I can show you. His NRA score, the NRA says that he's probably either indifferent or outright hostile to sportsman's rights.

He's the only candidate with a question mark by his name. I found this quote,

I didn't share this the last time I talked about him, and I realize for you in Virginia, this is relevant, for people outside of Virginia, maybe not as much.

But these are just examples of things that, like literally, I just typed his name into YouTube and this came up.

Like, you can find this stuff, and sometimes the people you think are on top of this, like maybe the other campaigns or radio shows who are covering this, they don't know anything about this.

And that's what I discovered this morning. This quote that I'm about to read to you, the people on this radio show that I was on this morning didn't seem to even know that Glenn Yunkin had even said this.

And so here's what he said. This is at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2019, he said, there will be times when the consumers consume less and GDP grows slower and central governments are going to have to take action to address that.

This is the entire globe integrated. The slowing of Chinese growth is impacting the world. Now, number one, you can see a

Keynesian approach here. You know, when growth slows and everything, you got to, central government's got to take action. So this guy's a statist.

Okay. Then he says this, the concept of reengineering supply chains away from China completely and having two isolated behemoths go about their business independently is just not realistic.

And in fact, both countries are going to absolutely need economic success, economically, globally.

And so therefore, we are going to be mutually dependent. Now, so he's talking about China. He's saying we at the United States need to be mutually dependent on China.

We need to depend on China. They need to depend on us. This is, this is globalism.

Now, to some extent, maybe you might think this is just realistic, like we live in a global economy, there's global trade.

But think about the time that he said this, 2019 is when he's saying this. Think about who's in the White House. And the emphasis you would think should be for national security reasons, especially, and because of the growing threat of China, to try to be less dependent on China.

But he is saying pretty much the opposite of that, that we can't go that route. This is undermining

President Trump's rhetoric, at the very least, and his policies. And I pointed out on this radio show that President Trump himself has gone to Davos.

He's spoken at the World Economic Forum, and he's basically rebuked them. He's touted nationalism. He's talked about how it's the age of sovereign nations, and people need, and governments need to look out for their own people.

He's basically bucked up against everything that they believe. Glenn Youngkin goes there and agrees with them.

That's the difference. He went there talking about globalism. Trump went there talking about nation states.

And this can't be missed. This is something that I think if you're running against Glenn Youngkin, if you're one of these other candidates that I listed here, if you're

Kirk Cox, Pete Snyder, Amanda Chase, or Serge DiLapena, you would think that this would be something they would be talking about.

But I've come to find out no one really knows about this. Or if they do, they're not publicly talking about it.

And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there is someone out there who's said something about it. But at least this morning, my experience was this was a shocking quote to the people that I was being interviewed for on this radio show.

And this is just an example of what even you can do in your own communities on the local level. It doesn't even have to be the state level.

But you have someone running for office, maybe just go check out. What church do they go to? It's not to invade their privacy.

But if they're publicly touting, this is the church I go to. If they have public videos, if they have public statements they've made, like Glenn Youngkin's statement here about China, why not bring that to the attention of those who have the power to do something about it?

Who have the power to either question this individual or stop this individual from getting into office?

Because what's happening in the church is happening in politics. This gentleman, Glenn Youngkin, makes out like he's such a conservative, like he would never believe these things.

And yet when you see what he's actually putting his name behind and what he actually believes, he's a progressive

Democrat. At least five years ago he would have been. So this is something

I think people can do in their local communities. It's a need that I didn't realize was there. But I guess not a lot of opposition research is happening on a local and state level in some cases.

And that's where you can step in. I mean, you only have an hour and you can find some of this. I think in total, all the research

I did on Glenn Youngkin probably took me a little over an hour. It didn't take me that long. And of course,

I know a little bit more what I'm looking for, but all that to say, it doesn't take that long. And sometimes you can change the outcome of an election or another circumstance.

Some other things I found that I didn't see before on Holy Trinity Church, because I was just looking at them this morning.

I'll mention this one. They recommend racial unity resources, Jamar Tisby, Austin Channing Brown, and LaTosha Morrison.

This morning I decided on the way there, I listened to LaTosha Morrison's book, Build or Be, I think it's called

Be the Bridge. And it's critical race theory. It's basically a pop version of critical race theory packaged for Christians.

And I'll tell you this much, it is packaged very well. I mean, I'm impressed with how well LaTosha Morrison packages her message, and it is critical race theory.

I'm going to show you that later in the week, because I realized after seeing how many ratings it had on Amazon, this is what a lot of churches are using to train their people into quote unquote racial reconciliation, and it's critical race theory.

There is no doubt in my mind, that's exactly what it is. And so I'm going to show you the parallels later this week.

You'll see that, and hopefully that'll help those who maybe are in a church where that's been recommended. But all that to say,

Glenn Youngkin's church recommends that book, as well as Jamar Tisby.

I mean, the whole thesis of Jamar Tisby's book is that racism never goes away, it just changes forms. So I mean, what's the point then?

If it never goes away, I mean, that's just hopeless at that point.

And that's obviously also a sort of an understanding that critical race theory would have. It's just normative, it's always there, it's on the

McDonald's menu. It's, you never get away from it quite. It's like Al Mohler said, it's a stain that the

Southern Baptist Conventional won't be able to get rid of until heaven. So let's talk about critical race theory real quick.

Because one of the things I realized being on this radio show was that we had some politicians, some local and state, actually they were state politicians calling in.

We had like three, I think at least, call in three or four while I was there in the studio.

And at least two of them mentioned critical race theory without any prompting.

They just mentioned it. One of them said it's the greatest threat the state of Virginia is facing, is critical race theory, because it indoctrinates the children.

They grow up and it'll change their whole entire perception. And their voting pattern is included in that.

So that's the route that socialism is going to take. That's how we're going to get there is by critical race theory.

Now one of the things that I realized though is some of these politicians calling in did not, and I don't know,

I don't want to speak out of turn, but I don't know that they understood or they had read a book or even one book on critical race theory.

They didn't seem to understand the basic premise. What they understood was it just vilified white people for their skin color.

And that's bad and it creates division. And okay, right, that's good. But what I was able to do on the radio was

I asked, I said, have you on the show, has there ever been anyone who's come on and just like defined it?

Because I hear a lot of talk about critical race theory. The listeners hear a lot of talk about it, but they don't, do they really know what it is?

And so this is what I read. This is, I took this from Richard Delgado, his book on critical race theory, an introduction.

And this is, I included this in the book that I'm writing now on social justice, but here are the seven elements of critical race theory.

And then I'm going to simplify it. I'm going to boil it down into two elements. And then I'm going to show you how one simple statement from Glenn Youngkin, or at least one that he endorsed has these two elements.

So are these two categories. So here are the seven elements. And then we'll talk about the two categories here.

Seven elements. Number one, racism is normative. Racism is normative. It's everywhere.

It's just, it's the default setting. You can't get away from it. You can't escape it. It's just, it's normal.

You hear a lot of Christians when they bring this up, they'll try to smuggle in kind of this original sin and human depravity into this, especially if they're reformed.

And they'll say, well, you know, what do we expect? Race, of course, racism's everywhere. Alan Moeller has said that it is in every institution in the

United States. So it's just, it's normal. And of course that's, that's ridiculous.

Would you say that about any other sin? I mean, there might be some, you would say, like, you know, there there's categories of sins, like, like stealing or lying.

But you'd probably say that, yeah, you know, every person has probably lied at some point in their life, when they were young or whatever.

But would you say that that's the, that characterizes every American institution? Maybe today you would.

The media, academia, politics, maybe you would say that. It's just, it is, it does characterize the

United States. So I can maybe give you that one. But, but the thing is, you're going to be able to cite for me concrete example after example, after example, after example,

I would think. And that's the only way you can make that statement. You couldn't certainly apply it to every person. You couldn't say every business is like that.

But you could say that, yeah, it's pervasive. There's a lot of lying that goes on. Okay, what about something like,

I don't know, take another sin. Homosexuality, something like that, or any sexual deviancy.

Could you say that, that is across the board, something that's just normative?

Well, no, you couldn't say that. And if you said that, someone would probably ask, well, provide evidence for that.

Or pedophilia, you know, something even more in our culture, something more rare.

You know, is that something that you can look at and say, well, that's just across the board normative. No, you couldn't say that.

And I think the same is true about racism. Yeah, is, you know, are humans partial?

Yeah, humans can be partial. Can humans, are they capable of any sin because of the hardness of their heart and the sinfulness of their heart?

Yes. Does that mean though, that it characterizes everything around you?

That it's just, it's the water you swim in, it's, no. And the reason that critical race theorists can say that racism is normative is because they look at everything as a power dynamic, a power relationship.

And because power relationships are infused into just about everything, racism would be part of that.

So that's the first thing. And it's, this is a, you know, it's a metaphysical assumption. And it needs to be challenged.

Okay, provide the evidence, show me, you know, not just stories, but let's look at even, let's look at stats.

Usually they don't want to go into that when you talk about police shootings and stuff. The stats don't support the claims that they try to make.

So they have to appeal to stories, usually stories with spin on them. All right, second, race is a social construct created in order to allocate privilege.

Social construction thesis, that's what that's called. So race is not something that's organic.

It's something that is a social construct, something that is artificially created, manufactured.

Now this just doesn't comport with reality. We don't treat race that way. We treat race like it's something more organic, like it's something, and in fact, it is.

It's something that is, it's part of genetics. It's, you know, your mom and your dad pass on their genetics to you and you look kind of like them, that's race.

So in a genetic way. Now, if you want to broaden that to the definition of race that preceded

Darwin, that is still used somewhat, that race is just a people group, then you're talking about not just genetics.

You're talking about other things. You're talking about geographical location. You're talking about food. You're talking about culture.

You're talking about religion sometimes, habits. So those things are very organic.

They change with time. They're not always, you can't always get a five, you can't get a three by five card and write down all the elements of, you know,

A, B, and C. These things define what this culture is because sometimes it escapes definition.

You know it when you see it. In critical race theory and in Darwinism, they want these very kind of like rigid kind of defined categories.

For Darwinists, it's all based on genetics. For critical race theorists, it's all based on power relationships and where you fit on a social structure.

So they both reject this organic approach. And so I would argue for the organic approach to race and to people groups and say that it's not, it's more complex than that.

And they say, well, you know, race is more complex than just a genetic thing. Okay, say, I agree. And it's more complex than what you're making it.

It's more than just a power relationship manufactured by the hegemony, which means, you know, the ruling elites in society or the ruling culture or whatever.

It's something that, you know, whether those people are there or not, there's still going to be habits and culture and ways of life that people share that make them kinsmen with each other and make them similar to one another.

Number three, white privilege maintains white dominance. That's the third element here.

And that's the idea that there's white, you know, the reason that white people are dominant is because of this kind of magic fairy dust they have called white privilege that gives them an edge over everyone else.

And so this, to me, this one is probably the hardest one to maintain today.

It actually surprises me that people like Robin DiAngelo are still able to talk about this and get some kind of traction going because you have so many people that have broken barriers that are minorities to be sports, you know, sports team players, to be athletes and musicians and singers and leaders in business and politicians, all those kinds of things.

Those barriers have been broken in so many instances. And in many cases, I mean, let's be real on the ground here.

In most instances, especially where in cities, in metropolitan areas where there are more opportunities for higher paying jobs and influence and power, et cetera, it's almost to your advantage in most companies to be a minority of some kind because companies are trying to prove that they are sensitive and empathetic and all these kinds of things.

And so there's, it's almost like a benefit to the company. You get scholarships, you know, if you go to certain schools, there's more scholarships available to you based on those kinds of external factors.

So this one I think is one of the most flimsy ones to try to prove today, but it is still an element of critical race theory.

The fourth element is that color blindness keeps minorities in subordinate positions. So if you try to view everyone as just a person and not view them by the color of their skin, but to judge them on the content of their character, this is bad because you're not making up for the fact that minorities are discriminated against.

So you got to do something extra to platform them. That's the idea behind that. And it'll keep them subordinated if you don't do something extra to platform them.

Now, if you think about it, that's kind of racist because what that's actually teaching is that they cannot compete.

If you are a minority, you cannot compete with majority culture people. And to be honest with you, that should be insulting if you are a minority, because to be honest, obviously you can see the shade of my skin, if you're watching, is probably two shades less than a white sheet of paper right now.

I mean, summer's coming, it'll darken up a little bit. But right now, especially with the light that's on me right now, you can tell that I am fairly fair in my complexion.

That being said, I know enough about history and about what different minority groups have had to go through, whether that be

Jews who overcame persecution in the Holocaust, whether that's black folks in America who are the descendant of slaves who had to overcome all that was entailed in that, whether it's

Chinese people who came over and became immigrated to the

United States and had to overcome the low -paying jobs that they had or the

Japanese building the railroad, the Irish had barriers that they had to overcome when they came over, same with the

Italians. There's pretty much every group that's come over has had some kind of a barrier to a greater or lesser extent of some kind.

Even my ancestors, I know that's hard to believe. I know that's against the way that we're all taught now, but some of them were fleeing persecution in Great Britain.

Some of them were indentured servants. So there's all kinds of barriers. And I think those things in my own heritage, but I think also in the heritage of those who are minorities, those things are things to be proud of, that look where we came from and look where we are now.

Look what we overcame. Look what my grandfather, whatever, he was the first one to go to college.

Maybe I was the first one to go to college. Look how proud his parents were, her parents were.

Those are the kinds of things in family histories that end up being sources for pride. And you look back and you're grateful and that's what it produces is thanksgiving.

But not in critical race theory. In critical race theory, you are always perpetually, if you're a minority, in a subordinate position and you can't escape it.

And I think that's offensive. I think it's offensive. So fifth, majority groups tolerate advances for racial justice only when it benefits them.

This is called interest convergence. It was forwarded by, or first postulated by Derrick Bell.

And this is the idea that like the civil rights movement, et cetera, the white people who helped get the laws passed in the 60s were only doing it because it benefited them.

So it's impugning their motives to try to make them out to be these villains. And again, that's just, that's an accusation.

It's a theory that by default accuses pretty much everyone who was involved in that of not really having pure motives and still being racist.

So they can't even escape being accused of racism even though they were behind the efforts to dismantle segregation.

Sixth, voices of color have access to special knowledge. Standpoint epistemology. This is such a key point in this because this is the postmodern element.

This is the idea that if you are a minority or you're oppressed, that gives you extra knowledge.

And I should probably explain why that is. If you are oppressed, the idea is that you not only have to understand the assumptions of your culture and your standpoint, but you have to understand the standpoint of the majority culture that you are required to serve in some way.

So you have to understand two different dynamics, two different cultures, two different standpoints, two different points of view, which means people in majority culture can be lazy and just understand their own culture and get by, but you have to understand two different standpoints to get by.

So your knowledge is increased. And that's the idea behind that, that lived experience, you have two lived experiences.

Majority culture people only have one lived experience. That's the assumption behind that. Of course, this destroys any idea of objective truth because once someone who has the lived experience talks about something, then it is not to be questioned.

You can't question it with facts. It's impervious to scientific scrutiny or reason.

So this destroys any kind of common ground that you may have.

And the only posture that someone in quote unquote majority culture can take is that of a listener.

And I mean, this is just also not biblical. I mean, you never find this in scripture that, well, in order to understand the

Bible, you really ought to get some Canaanites together too because their unique perspective is gonna help. No, of course not.

That makes no sense. No, it's actually objective and it's accessible for all.

I mean, as long as you understand the laws of language and the grammar, et cetera, and you try to understand the context, but these things are things that can be investigated and learned.

They are not things that are just lived experience that lived experiences that only attach to some groups and not others.

Seventh, history should be reinterpreted according to minority experiences. This is memory studies.

This is revisionism. Some people used to call it the idea that we gotta take what a present victim group thinks about history and read that back into the narrative.

This totally destroys objectivity because the whole point of going back into the historical record is no longer to find out what happened.

It's to find out how it's remembered, how someone thinks about it. Think about this in your own life.

If your wife or your husband or a friend of yours, you had an argument about something that happened in the past, and instead of going back to find out what actually happened, checking records, et cetera, instead, the only thing that mattered is who was oppressed in the situation, as long as you can agree on that, and finding out what they thought because it's all about their memory.

I mean, that's how subjective this would get, and it would destroy the fabric, the understanding of truth. All right, so here's the two basic teachings.

When you blend it all, when you break everything down, there's really two things going on here, and that's that the theory's basic teaching is that racism is systemically embedded within the fabric of society and can only be addressed by first interpreting the world through the lens of minority experience.

All these other elements come from these two basic teachings, systemic racism and standpoint epistemology, systemic racism and standpoint epistemology.

So those two things, if those two are present, I am comfortable saying that there's at least some rudimentary form of critical race theory going on, and there's like 15 different variations of critical race theory now, and the nerds will tell you that.

I'm very against trying to be the nerd and figure out what every single person believes on it and who takes what spin.

All the different versions of it out there really come down to these two things. So when you look at someone like a

Glenn Youngkin, what you're gonna see is, and there's multiple examples of this.

I'm gonna give you one. He believes in both these things on some level. Here's a statement.

I showed this last week to the church, from the church he goes to, Holy Trinity Church in McLean.

I believe they, by the way, I couldn't find this when I looked this morning. I couldn't find any of the woke stuff that I found before.

I'm not sure if they scrubbed their website or not, but I still have a copy of it. So here it is. It was there last week. It talks of, it condemns racism in all its forms.

Now that your antenna should go up. You should have a yellow flag in all its forms. What forms? What are you talking about? Does that mean systemic?

Does that, what does that mean? And then it says that racism did not end with the election of a black president in 2008.

We are heartbroken, angry, afraid, ashamed, and confused. We, because we recognize racism has not ended.

So they, that's, I mean, someone who's confused. I mean, someone who's like, it just dawned on them that racism is not over.

That's someone who's undergone some kind of a conversion experience. They're having an awakening of some kind. Otherwise they wouldn't be confused, ashamed, afraid, and angry and heartbroken, right?

They're realizing, so they got woke is what happened. They're realizing that racism is still around despite the fact that a black president was elected.

And of course we can understand that in a certain way, a particular way and say, well, yeah, racism's always, you know, as long as there's humans, there's probably gonna be at least one human somewhere who has sins of partiality that attach themselves to external factors like race, right?

Well, we know that though, given the climate in which the statement was made, which was last year during,

I think it was June of last year. And we know the way critical race theorists think in a language they use.

The most logical conclusion is that that's what this is talking about. And the next sentence we see, the church says, we believe that racism in all its form and degrees is sin and contrary to the teachings of Christ.

And that Holy Trinity Church must stand together to make positive change. And so here's the thing. What's the positive change that needs to happen?

What, so if racism's around, what is it? And this will clue you into whether or not they believe in this systemic racism that's just everywhere that's normative.

What kind of change needs to happen? Does the law need to be changed? What needs, did we need to go hunt down all the racists, you know, expose them all?

Or is it something else? And sure enough, it's something else. This church, I would doubt it.

I mean, if they have Klansmen coming to the church that are, you know, propagating their Klansmen ideology or neo -Nazis or something, you'd think, you know, okay, that's, you know, maybe that's a problem that you have a governor.

I mean, Virginia's already got one governor, right? That has some attachments to that.

You'd think, you know, that that's probably not what's going on here. That's not probably the church Glenn Youngkin's coming from. He's probably coming from a church that now thinks that, wow, we have racism at this church because it's just normative and embedded in everything.

We have these special goggles now that show us that because there's disparities or because of cultural things, like we sing these old

English hymns, things like that, that now, you know, that's racist or something like that, right? So here's what they're doing to address it.

With critical leadership from the Racial Unity Committee, our congregation and staff members of color and a handful of others carried the burden for raising these crucial issues.

There it is, their standpoint theory right there. Now you may say that's veil, it's vague. Maybe it is a little bit, but they had to mention it's the staff members of color who carry the burden for raising these issues.

And the way to address these issues that they found apparently at their church is to have this Racial Unity Committee.

And what they're gonna do is they're going to read, the family, the church is going to read,

Be the Bridge, Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation by LaTosha Morrison. Glenn Youngkin is the first name on this particular list for signing the statement.

Glenn Youngkin endorses Be the Bridge and I'm assuming has read it. If you read

Be the Bridge, which I'll talk about more later this week, you will find out it's got pretty much every element that the seven elements of critical race theory are,

I'm gonna have to check, maybe there's six that are represented. I'm pretty sure all seven are in that book. Certainly the two major categories there are in that book.

It wants criminal justice reform in the sense of the disparities that exist, incarceration levels, those kinds of things.

It has something to say about the monument issue, that's a big thing in Virginia. It's basically the

Democrat platform on issues of racial, quote unquote, justice. Glenn Youngkin has endorsed that book and it's the standpoint theory, it's all of it.

And so I was able to just put this together to just, with some simple internet searches, find out this is who this candidate is.

And this has been, for some, kind of revolutionary. They didn't know that this was who Glenn Youngkin is and they're waking up to it.

And I know there's a number of people who have already said, I can't vote for him now that I know this about him. And this is not something that I was expecting to do, it's something

I stumbled into, but it's something I wanna encourage you in because you can do this too. You can expose the deeds of darkness.

You can, things that are hidden, that people are trying to hide because it's inconvenient for them, because it won't help them at all, especially if they're running for a

Republican primary. You can bring these things up. You can contact the other campaigns or if there's someone that you support, you can contact them.

Or if you're, I don't know what the situation is. It could be hiring someone. It could be the church that you go to.

But this is something that if you just do a little research, I'm figuring out not a lot of people do that.

And so that is, I think, something that's in demand. And it does take a little work. Maybe that's why a lot of people don't do it.

But you can do that and it can help. And I've seen even this last week how just my little bit of research has helped a lot of voters in Virginia who are going to the

Republican primary and voting. And I'm hoping Youngkin doesn't get in. But if he does, then

I know that's in the Lord's hands. But I've done what I can and that's all we can do. So I hope that encourages you.

Last but not least, I wanted to say while I was in Richmond today, I did go to Monument Avenue.

Monument Avenue is a stretch that has, oh, I want to say at least I passed four monuments.

There's probably more the other direction because I know there's a number of non -monuments in Richmond that were vandalized.

Some of them were not even Confederate monuments. They were for other things. But the mob doesn't care.

It was sad. I'm just gonna tell you straight up. It was very sad to see just the lawlessness, the graffiti, the...

Well, let me play this for you. This is a video that I took while I was there.

And I'll play this and then I'll talk, just give you a few final thoughts and we'll close the show out.

Hey, everyone. John here in downtown Richmond, Virginia in front of the Robert E. Lee Monument or what's left of it.

It's very badly graffitied up, as you can see, probably from this video. And there's some damage at the base of the statue.

The city has put up some fencing, but not until, of course, a lot of damage looks like it was done.

And a lot of profanity, a lot of anti -police slogans and pictures, et cetera.

I actually just walked up from what was the Jeb Steward Monument. Now there's just a base there for where the monument used to be.

The city's removed that. The Robert E. Lee Monument is still here. But it's interesting.

I walked down a few of the side streets. There's some historic homes that are absolutely beautiful. A lot of them say things like, with signs that say

Black Lives Matter or Take Lee Down. A lot of other leftist sloganeering.

I'm not sure if that reflects the area or if that's just the people who have those beliefs feel a little more bold in expressing them because of the temperature of the political climate.

I actually just saw some people earlier come by giving the thumbs down to the statue, taking pictures, an elderly couple.

It's interesting because it's actually a weekday and it's in the middle of the day. So it's a time when

I wouldn't think a lot of people would be out. Maybe if you're working, you'd be at lunch. But there are quite a few people that have come by taking pictures.

I saw actually someone with a, it looks like a news camera. I'm not sure who they were interviewing or what that was for, but still very much a controversial thing here in Richmond, whether or not to take down this monument.

And I just want to remind everyone that this is not acceptable behavior.

What you're seeing, writing profanity all over the sidewalk, all over the base of a monument.

Even if you want to take a monument down, this is just not the way to do it. At least it has not been the way, has not been an acceptable way until it seems like very recently.

And Robert E. Lee is one of an American hero, not just a

Southern or a regional hero, but he's an American icon who has been respected for years in both sections of the country for his

Christianity, for his honor, for the decision he made to surrender when it was probably a hard decision to make at that time for the people he was leading, for his character.

I mean, even if you look at what he's being disparaged now for, his views on race, they were very progressive. At least they used to be characterized that way, like 10 years ago, that he had more progressive views of slavery at the time.

He thought it was a bad institution. He did not fight for those kinds of things. He fought because he believed his home was worth protecting and that was his home was

Virginia. And Virginia, of course, seceded, not because they wanted to enshrine slavery or anything like that, but because Lincoln had mobilized an army and they did not want to live in a country where one part of the country would invade the other part of the country.

And so they seceded for that reason. That was the thing that at least pushed them over. And then they fought a war of defense and Lee led the army of Northern Virginia.

And he's still a hero to many people in this region of the country. He's still a hero to many

Christians and many Americans. Unfortunately, his story has been somewhat distorted.

A lot of sources that were not taken seriously until about five minutes ago were all of a sudden deemed credible about him supposedly beating slaves and being a wicked man.

Those reports are at best disputed. And for any historical historian worth their salt, looking at primary sources, they would have to not take them seriously, but they've been taken seriously now.

And that's the only thing Lee is remembered for in the minds of some. And unfortunately, I think that's what's that narrative that the only thing that Lee believed was in racism and slavery.

And those are the kinds of things that this monument supposedly stands for, that you can find none of that language on the monument.

Those are the things that are being used to characterize Robert E. Lee. And I asked the question, when will the founding fathers be taken down?

When will World War II vets be taken down? You think about those in the Pacific theater, especially first ever atomic bombs, nuclear bombs dropped on a minority population by United States standards, internment camps, racist language, segregated army.

I mean, these are the kinds of things. And just that's off the top of my head that you could easily use to completely vilify

World War II vets. And I would hope that wouldn't happen to a World War II memorial. But sadly,

I think we're entering a time when this kind of narrative is going to be thrown over all of American history.

And this is the low hanging fruit. It's starting here. So if you are interested in defending the monuments, telling the true story about why they were erected and why they have a place, why characters like Robert E.

Lee and Christopher Columbus and Thomas Jefferson have a place of honor in American history, then

I would encourage you to go to laststandstudios .org and donate to our project, which is

American Monuments. We're doing a documentary. We're gonna talk about these monuments and we're going to tell the truth about them and not the misrepresentation that has gone out in the mainstream media and on the internet.

So I'd appreciate your support. I appreciate all of those who have already donated to the project. If you wanna see something about the film quality that we put out there, the quality of our production, then you can go to laststandstudios .org

and check out our first documentary called Paint the Wall Black. And it's about 50 minutes long.

I think you'll enjoy it. We're gonna apply the same standard of excellence to this next documentary on American monuments.

God bless you all. And thank you once again. Well, there you have it. I actually got a parking ticket because I parked on the wrong side of the street and you're not supposed to be there between a certain time on Tuesday specifically.

It's a two hour period or three hour period. And I was like off by like 10 minutes. I didn't notice it.

I get a ticket. Like, so I didn't see any police officers anywhere and clearly they weren't able to protect their own monuments, but I was able to get a ticket very speedily.

Not that I'm resentful or anything, but anyway, that's about the long and short of it.

I don't really wanna go back there anymore to Richmond, but I will if I have to. I don't think

I will for the monument documentary, but it was enough for me to see what's happening there.

And it's just start, it's the contrast. You just can't, you see all these profane, horrible things.

I mean, just some of the worst things written on the base of this monument. And then above it all is the statue of Robert E.

Lee. And I did wanna say this before I close out because I had mentioned some things in that little video that I did not mention in, that I did not go into more detail on.

But just concerning Robert E. Lee, because I know there's questions about him now. There didn't used to be, but now there are.

And one of them, I wanna dispel something because there was a piece in the Atlantic that I know was very popular.

I saw a bunch of Southern Baptist professors even and people like that liking this article in the Atlantic.

There's an article to counter that one called Robert E. Lee vs. Twitter Historians by Brian McClanahan, link is in the info section.

I'm just gonna read for you two paragraphs. Both Sewer and the Twitter Brigade, Sewer's a historian, also claim it to be a fact that Lee had at least three slaves whipped and their wounds washed with brine to inflict pain.

Well, that's pretty bad. Sewer goes on, goes so far as to believe that Lee was at the whipping and ordered a more brutal job.

This is at minimum debatable and probably a lie. In 1866, a former slave named

Wesley Norris gave an interview to the National Antislavery Standard where he described the substantial bounty.

According to Norris, Lee ordered them whipped and tortured before hiring them out further South. The story was initially picked up by the abolitionist press in 1859.

And then again, after Norris gave his interview in 1866. The first articles appeared in the

New York Journal in June, 1859, just a few months before John Brown raided

Harper's Ferry. Lee publicly refused to answer the charge against him and did not directly comment on it privately, telling his son that the whole business has left me an unpleasant legacy.

If Lee was so vindictive, why would it be an unpleasant legacy? Pryor did not include this last statement in the discussion of the event, but even she suggests that these journal articles were exaggerated.

She, Pryor, is a historian. I almost hesitate to use that word now, in the historical field that currently exists.

Of course, I think she's actually, I think she's passed away now, but she wrote a book called Reading the Man before she did about Robert E.

Lee. Anyway, she certainly believes Norris, however, and asserts that every part of his story can be verified.

Not quite. Norris gave the interview to, in Pryor's words, dispel the notion that Lee was a kind and humane slave owner.

She thinks Norris had nothing to gain by the interview. This may be true, but the newspaper that published the story in 1866 absolutely did.

Historians, not just lost cause neo -Confederates, quote unquote, have long questioned the validity of abolitionist accounts of slavery, particularly when a slave interviews were filtered through abolitionists who could take liberty with the information.

They were often purposely sensationalized and written for a sympathetic audience and were by no means nonpartisan.

The Norris account was published on the one year anniversary of Lincoln's assassination, certainly as an attempt to draw attention to Lee's character and to validate the righteous cause myth of the war.

Pryor even contradicts herself by admitting that the whipping itself cannot be validated and that Norris carried no scars from such a violent event.

And Lee twice denied it happened in life. Whom are we to believe? Why would Lee lie in a private letter to his son in 1859 when he had nothing to lose?

Either case, it is not a definite fact as either Sewer or the Twitter Brigade claim that Lee either had the slaves viciously whipped and tortured or that he was there for the event.

If it happened at all, to claim either as a fact is to distort the record for purely partisan reasons, something the

Twitter Brigade constantly chirps against when Lee is described as a Christian gentleman, but is more than willing to do if it supports their position.

This is from a piece, it's a longer piece, I just read for you two paragraphs from this piece by Brian McClanahan, who is a historian.

I consider him the real kind of historian and this accusation against Robert E.

Lee is just spurious. It's just, it's a terrible accusation. I mean, it's like if someone, you know, wanted to know what, you know, some bully who was jealous of you, you know, when you were young or something and what they said and they're gonna take that as fact.

I mean, it's even worse than that, to be honest. But that's, I just wanted to read that for you because I had mentioned that in the video that I made.

And then here's some quotes for you. This is from a piece that just, I'm gonna put the link in the info section again, that just came out,

I think yesterday, by a classmate of mine named Jake Starbuck. And he has some quotes.

This is from Robert E. Lee. I just wanna read this to you. Robert E. Lee said this, the forebearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman.

The power which the strong have over the weak, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly, the forebearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it will show the gentleman in a plain light.

The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him.

He cannot only forgive, he can forget. And he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character, which impart sufficient strength to let the past be but the past.

A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others. It's quite a quote from someone who is accused of being such a vicious, horrible abuser who just probably got pleasure from whipping his slaves and getting their backs bare.

I mean, it's not the kind of quote that would come from a man like that. You wouldn't think, right? Seems out of character and leaves consistent character from those who knew him.

Read the biography by Douglas Southwell Freeman, especially,

I mean, I've read a number of Lee biographies. Some of the newer ones are not as good, but read a good

Lee biography and you'll find that the people that knew him, his character tested over time in the worst circumstances in the battlefield was stellar.

And that's what made him the kind of man that people would wanna build a monument to. Here is his biographer,

Douglas Southwell Freeman on him. He said this, over his movements as a soldier, he hesitated often, but over his acts as a man, never.

There was but one question ever, what was his duty as a Christian and a gentleman? That he answered by the sure criterion of right and wrong and having answered, acted.

Everywhere the two obligations went together, he never sought to expiate as a Christian for what he had failed to do as a gentleman or to atone as a gentleman for what he had neglected as a

Christian. He could not have conceived of a Christian who was not a gentleman. That's someone who spent a lot of time reading

Lee's words. So I wanted to leave you with that. He's an inspiring man to look into.

That's the reason, one of the reasons that we're making this documentary on the monument situation because we think men like him and others are getting unfair treatment and being lied about and we wanna expose it.

So if you go to the info section, you can find the link to donate if you are so inclined to the

American Monument Project. We would definitely be happy to get that donation and it will propel us into some of our travels that we're gonna be doing here soon in different parts of the country.

We're going to the Pacific Northwest. We're looking at some things there. We're gonna be going South, looking at some things and in the

Northeast as well. So we actually did shoot briefly something in the Midwest. So we're trying to cover as much as we can of the country but I think it's gonna be good and if you've seen our documentary on the

Nimi's Deli situation, you know the quality of our work. Anyway, that's a wrap. I hope it inspired you.

At the very least, where you are, wherever that is, you can stand for truth.

Don't compromise. Speak the truth in love, of course, but never compromise it and shine a light on the deeds of darkness.