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Welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're going to talk about upside down world today.

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That's right, upside down world. That's the only term I have to describe what I've seen, not just in the news, but over the past week with my own eyes as I've traveled everywhere from Auburn, Alabama to Seattle, Washington, and some places in between.

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It is amazing to me how cultures so different, people that think so different about things can exist in the same country.

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As things become more centralized, are effectively governed by the same central authority.

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If one side, one culture controls that central authority, they impose their will on the other side.

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It doesn't quite go as much that way from the other end. Conservatives don't tend to impose quite as much.

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They tend to want to be left alone and have less government. We're entering a time now where,

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I don't know if we want to call it post -conservative. I'm not even sure what we want to call this. It's certainly post -Christian, but we're losing pretty much everything that grounded us as a people.

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I think back to what George Washington said in his farewell address. He talked about the United States being, despite the differences between North, South, and Mid -Atlantic, having a common cultural heritage.

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They're the same people. They all come from England, just about. Of course, there were exceptions, but in general, that's the kind of English traditions,

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English value systems existed within the United States and govern the United States. These ruling assumptions were from the people who came here and set up the governments that were in the original 13 colonies.

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He talks about having a common religion. They're all Christians, just of one stripe or another, and of course, common customs and traditions.

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Well, whether or not that was true at Washington's time could be even debated to some extent. The South and the

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North were certainly quite different, and many observers had noted those differences. Many of the founders were aware of them, but that being said, the differences today seem to be far larger than they were at that time, and despite that, we are all still subject to this same central authority if you live within the borders of the

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United States of America. I want to talk about how this situation that we are living in now has just created chaos.

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We live in upside -down world, and we could probably put an incredible amount of examples to demonstrate this.

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I'll just give you a few that I've just observed quite recently and demonstrate that, and then

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I want to talk about where's the hope? Who do we look to? What do we look to? Where can we find stability, not just as individuals, but as communities?

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I don't know that it's in the Republican Party. In fact, I should say, I probably do know that it's not.

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That cannot be the place, and it doesn't mean that we shouldn't work towards political ends.

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We should. We should be more involved in political things, I think, than we have been as conservatives, both politically and theologically, and the

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Republican Party is certainly a vehicle to do that with, but the Republican Party at best is a pragmatic institution that is not, by and large, concerned with, at least as I see them today on a national level, concerned with many of the conservative principles that many of the people that are voting for them would care about, and there's been a number of things that has made, including the gubernatorial election here in Virginia, have just made me well aware of that.

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Basically we have two people running right now for governor of Virginia, or we will have two soon.

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Both of them are effectively Democrats, only one's honest enough to actually be registered though as one.

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The other one is running as a Republican, but his views have been very progressive, and of course now he's being endorsed by all these conservative groups because he's a

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Republican and he's talking like he's more conservative, trying to run a little bit more to the right, but he was preparing even in the primary for the general, and there's nothing, just doing a little bit of a study on him just leads me to believe this guy's not really a conservative, but I see people who just, they hunger for someone to lead them out of this woke nightmare that they're in, and they think this is the guy to do it, and he's not.

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But the Republican Party has become more pragmatic, more about winning, and political parties should be about winning.

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That should be part of who they are, that's for sure, but there should be a desire to win, to advocate certain ends, certain principles, certain things that need to be achieved or need to be defended to make civilization and culture continue to exist, and I don't know that those things are characterizing much of what

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I see in the modern Republican Party. So this isn't to bash the Republicans, it's just I want to give for you some of my observations that I've seen over the last week or so, and I'm going to play for you as well the trailer for Last Stand Studios' next project, which

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I encourage you all, please contribute to this. If you don't like what you're seeing, this is something that you can do.

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This is something I think that's very beneficial, and I'll explain why after I play it.

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But it's on the monument situation here, which Republicans seem to have abandoned the field on for the most part, and they're worth defending, and it's not because of the granite.

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It's not because of material. It's because of what they represent, and what they should continue to represent, and what it means for our civilization when they come down.

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So we're going to talk about that a little bit. But to start out with, I'm just going to say welcome to Upside Down World.

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I had a pleasant experience a few weeks ago. I got to visit the D -Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia.

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Here's some pictures I took while I was there. You can see those who created these monuments just did an amazing job.

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It's so, I mean, you'll tear up going there, I think, if you just, especially if you're alone and you're just reflecting on the sacrifice that many of these men made.

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Not perfect men by any stretch. They were men. But certainly fighting against something that we believe to be evil on,

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I think, very, we have good reasons to believe that. The Nazi regime would have been very bad if they had won for freedom and for, and not just for an abstract kind of freedom.

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I mean, they would have actually eroded many of the cultures and countries, and certainly when it comes to religion, they would have, it would have been very bad for Christianity had they have won.

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And of course, D -Day being one of the major turning points of World War II in the

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European theater, many of the men who fought were from Bedford, Virginia. They were part of the Stonewall Jackson Brigade.

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And the lesson learned was that you don't put men from the same region in the same groups because they, if they all die, then you've devastated that population.

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And that's kind of what happened in Bedford, Virginia. A large percentage of the men that went to war did not come back, which is why they put the

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D -Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia. But you get a sense for the moment. You know, look at this soldier, if you're watching, you know, climbing this fortress that's supposed to be around what looked to be like they represent bunkers and just the struggle that they went through.

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And the thing that, you know, we honor is not, it's not just these abstract things like freedom and liberty and equality and democracy, which, you know, those are the things that more progressives want to talk about, but it's actually, we honor men who defend, in their minds, were defending their homes, were exerting much energy and sacrifice and bravery to do so.

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And these are the kinds of men that we want to cultivate in our culture today. We should want to cultivate at least.

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Not that they were perfect, but we want to see those kinds of attributes, the sacrifice, the heroism, the desire to fulfill one's duty, the toughness to withstand the possibility of death, to go through major mental, physical, emotional exertion.

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I mean, we don't have men that are like this as much anymore. It is a dying breed, but it lived in that greatest generation.

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And not to idolize them, I'm not at all. If anyone thinks that, they're reading me wrong.

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But we know that there are some attributes that we are missing that used to be in larger supply. And that's one of the takeaways from the

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D -Day Memorial, I think. And there's many memorials like this. Well, as you know, what's going on in our society, though, is these men who exhibited these traits are being ripped down all over the place.

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Men who are significant to, in whatever the field may be, to exploration, to theology even, to demonstrating the attributes

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I just talked about on the battlefield. Thinkers who were very instrumental in the formation of our country or our local area, regional area.

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These are coming down and other things are going up. And I'll give you just some examples that are fairly recent that I just had on my phone.

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Just screenshots I took when I saw them. I thought, you know what, I might use that for the podcast later. I mean, just very recently.

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Here's one. And I don't know all the circumstances of all of these, but Westminster Seminary, West, there was a plaque there bearing the name of J.

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Gresham Machen, and it has been covered. I don't know why it has been covered.

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I'm not sure what the motivation behind this, but it certainly fits what we're seeing in other areas with men who made significant contributions to,

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I mean, Machen, I mean, come on. This is Westminster. This is someone who built the institution. The institution would not be there had it not been for Machen.

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And from the post from a gentleman named Daryl Dow, it seems to be something related to Machen had said some things about segregation that seemed positive in a personal letter, and I have not read that letter.

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But those are the kinds of things used to disqualify people, cancel people. I mean, you can think about, you know,

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I often think it this way. Think about your own parents or your grandparents. Think about some of the views that they hold. Do you agree with everything your parents believed?

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You probably don't. In fact, there's hardly any child who would agree with everything his parents believed, and there's hardly any parents who would agree with anything that their parents believed.

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I mean, things do change over time, and people learn from the mistakes of people before them.

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They also learn from the triumphs, and hopefully they retain the triumphs in their tradition, and they're able to look at the mistakes and not to completely condemn their parents.

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They wouldn't be here without their parents. They owe much to their parents. They're committed to honor their parents, but they don't have to necessarily copy everything their parents did.

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And we're in a situation now where we want to rip down those who built the institutions in this country, those who were behind.

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You can look at this one. All Northern Virginia City, I'm sorry, the Northern Virginia City of Falls Church has renamed schools honoring

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Thomas Jefferson and George Mason, founding fathers who also owned slaves. There you go. George Mason and George Washington must, or sorry,

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George Mason and Thomas Jefferson, they must come down. These men owned slaves, therefore it disqualifies everything else they did.

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Forget the fact we wouldn't be here without them. Forget the fact we wouldn't have our founding documents. Probably it was certainly with Thomas Jefferson, but George Mason played major roles.

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We wouldn't have much of what we enjoy. The luxury to even rename these places would not probably have existed without them, very likely at least.

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And yet here they come falling down. Virginia Military Institute, I'm not gonna read through this whole thing, but this was an email sent to alumni someone had forwarded to me, and it's just, it's horrific.

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I mean, they're not just taking, they have not just taken down their statue of Stonewall Jackson, the marker that honors

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Stonewall Jackson, they're reconfiguring everything. They're museums. They're contextualizing everything.

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They're taking things out. They're, I mean, they're gutting what this institution once stood for.

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And I've pointed out before, Stonewall Jackson was a man who, in Roanoke, Virginia, there's a whole shrine almost, if you wanna call it that, but a dedication to him in a black, historically black church, because the man who formed that church was one of Stonewall Jackson's students.

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Stonewall Jackson taught a black Sunday school, taught them how to read when it was not legal in Virginia to do so in a school.

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So he had a Sunday school to do it, and he did it. He was quite a man. He should be a hero for multiple reasons, but that wasn't the reason they had a statue of EMI.

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It wasn't because of his all black Sunday school. It really had nothing to do with that. It was because of his bravery in battle, his sacrifice, his genius.

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He is a military genius. And this is Virginia Military Institute. They have a legacy of being the school that Stonewall Jackson taught at.

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And when they rip down that legacy, what is there to be proud of? Why go to Virginia Military Institute?

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I mean, you could go there to learn some things, I guess, but there's not much pride left in the school.

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The heritage isn't there. And you're now led to feel ashamed. I mean, should you start ripping down the school itself?

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When was it built? Hey, did slaves participate in any of that? Did the people who built it own slaves?

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I mean, these are the kinds of questions that you're opening the can of worms for everything to come down, and you're not focusing on the reason that his statue was there, the reason that legacy lives on, the reason that the students from VMI went out and fought in a battle, which traditionally every year has been reenacted in some way, or at least not reenacted, but it's been honored by the students.

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And now I don't even think that's happening anymore. But the field of lost shoes,

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I mean, is that just that's not in Virginia Military Institute's heritage anymore? I mean, what is there to be proud of anymore?

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What is there to have an identity in? What is there to look to as a role model for any of these characteristics? He wasn't there because he fought for the

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Confederacy. It wasn't that relationship that made him the legend, Stonewall Jackson of Virginia Military Institute, it was because of what he did at the school and what his students did.

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And yes, that was in the Confederacy, but it had nothing to do with anything connected to political politics, really, or slavery or issues connected to that.

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It was purely, here's a brave man who is a military genius. But we're recontextualizing everything.

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Here's something going up. Gabriel Hughes posted this on Twitter, I think, from the

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Smithsonian. A oracle, a 20 foot tall, 15 ,280 pound bronze sculpture, depicts a person or deity with an enormous head who sits majestically on a throne.

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And this is going up in the Rockefeller Center to honor African culture. And it's,

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I don't have a picture of it here, it's called cover, they're about to unveil it, I guess. But it's essentially an idol, unlike the statues that are coming down in other areas, which are to men generally, to explorers like Columbus, to military geniuses like Robert E.

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Lee, to founding fathers like George Washington, men who are on a human scale, seen as men.

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I mean, this is the thing. Some people on the left want to say, well, this is just where you're honoring your gods.

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These are idols. They're not idols. You want to see idols, go to Soviet Russia, go to, see the statues, and I'll show you one in a minute, that are created beyond a human scale, that make these people look like towering gods.

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They're divine entities. That's not been the case in American, with American monuments.

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They have been to men, and they are generally the size, or maybe just a little bigger than a man would be, sometimes even smaller, but it's on that human scale of this, as you're looking at this, you're supposed to see a man here, an exemplary man, a man who stood above us a little bit, perhaps, on a pedestal, but still a man.

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Go to Soviet Russia, and you'll see the difference, or go to the Lincoln Monument. The Lincoln Monument is the one monument I can think of in the United States that's out of human scale, as well.

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You might be able to see Mount Rushmore, could be in that category, as well.

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I think of Mount Rushmore a little differently, because it's naturally carved out of a mountain, but at the very least, the

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Lincoln Memorial is certainly, I mean, it's so big, it gives Lincoln a godlike status.

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It's a temple that he's basically in, as well, and I do see that as a little different, but that's still not quite what you see in Soviet countries, or communist countries, where you have the government, or the leaders of the revolution, become god.

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Here's another thing going on right now that's on the statue front, we'll loop around back to that, but Amazon has blocked some books, as well, and I believe this means listings for them, so if you go to Amazon, it'll show maybe a book that is like the one you're looking at, or one that you can,

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I'm pretty sure that's what that means. Here are some of the books that they've blocked from being listed, Hillbilly Elegy is one of them,

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The Virtue of Nationalism, The Politics of Virtue, I mean,

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Mere Christianity by C .S. Lewis, Twelve Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, a number of books, and here's

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Chris Buskirk says, Hillbilly Elegy by J .D. Vance, among many books by Christian right of center authors have suddenly vanished from Amazon, let

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Amazon know what you think, don't retreat, let them hear you, and I think since this has been posted on the 15th,

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Amazon has said, if I'm not mistaken, that this was a mistake, but look, if it's a mistake, why in the world did you go after all these books, you're not going after books on the left.

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This is the world we're living in, guys, and it's time for us to, if we haven't yet, wake up to this fact.

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My days may be numbered on YouTube or wherever you're listening to me, and I've thought about trying, you know, what are the alternatives, that's why

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I'm on Gab, that's why I'm on a number of social media platforms, MeWe and WeSpeak and I don't even remember all of them,

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Parler, it's because of this, it's why I try to upload my videos not just to YouTube, but I will upload them as well to Rumble, and we are getting pushed more and more, just those who are even just kind of center -right are getting pushed more and more into these ghettos, cultural ghettos, this,

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I mean, it reminds you of things that happened in, honestly, I hate to say this, but leading up, just because I've studied it some, leading up to World War II in Germany, it reminds you of the ways that the limitations, it wasn't like overnight how the

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Holocaust happened, there were gradual steps of limiting what kinds of businesses that Jewish people could be involved with, what kind of financial decisions they were allowed to make, what kinds of identifiable markers,

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I mean, you think of the mask situation or the vaccine situation, New York has an app now for certain businesses, you scan your app if you want to go in, showing that you had the vaccine,

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I mean, this is kind of where we're going, we're creating two classes of people on that issue, we see on these ideological issues, some ideas are just not permissible, you will be canceled,

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Mike Lindell is canceled from about everything right now, his only way at just about to communicate is you can talk to him through email, not him personally, but his business, you can go on his website, you can order things, he can't advertise on Vimeo or Facebook or the places that he used to do so, and this is a disturbing, disturbing trend, and we certainly need conservatives to form organizations for marketplaces, just basic marketplaces where you can sell your goods and not be worried about being canceled, and if that's selling to other conservatives, sell to other conservatives, but this is the kind of world that we're entering, and it's scary in some ways, and there are some conservatives thinking this direction, but we're generally late on a lot of things, and I may talk about that a little more in the future, because I know of someone right now who's trying to build something,

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I don't think it's quite ready yet, I mean it's why we're trying, why we have discerningchristians .com

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too, it's why we're trying to come up with here's churches, there's a need for this kind of thing, now going back to my trip,

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I could not get all the pictures from it, because I left the card with the camera guy, and he's going to mail it to me, but I had taken this on my phone, this is a statue of Vladimir Lenin, and unfortunately you can see the seats next to him, if you want to see human scale, imagine a human sitting on one of those seats, this is a big statue, this is very tall, and this is,

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I mean taller than what we see here in the United States for like a

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Jefferson Memorial even, I mean this is quite large, quite masculine, quite big statue, and it's actually on a three way corner in Washington, where,

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I mean there's a lot of traffic there, we were there, there was a lot of traffic, and I know the hand is painted red,

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I'm not sure what that means, I think it's been that way for a while, but there's no outward marks of vandalism, nothing related to this man murdered people, no, just Vladimir Lenin, right there in Seattle, and I thought this was interesting, in Seattle, Washington, vandalized were a

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Confederate Memorial, which you had to, it was in the middle of a cemetery, you had to go to the top of this hill, walk to the cemetery, and find it, and destroy it, and that's what people did, and I saw some newspaper articles online, local papers, trying to say, you know, people have a problem with the

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Lenin one, but it's on private property, they can't do anything, well that's not true, because it did not hold them back from destroying the

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Confederate Memorial, they did not hold them back from vandalizing a Washington statue at the university there, but for some reason, no fences around Lenin, it's fine, and this is,

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I'm just telling you, the culture there, the people there that are on the social justice side, which want to take down our history, this kind of thing does not concern them, communism, it does not concern them, and this is evidence of that, they're not going after this statue, but they have gone after these other ones, because of connections,

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I'm assuming, to slavery in their minds, they ignore what those statues are actually there for, here's a number of screenshots that I've taken,

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I just want to give you, this is overwhelming in a way, and I could have added more, but I just want to show you, here's what's happening, this is,

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I mean, look around you, just in the past, I think most of these are from around the past week or so, you have the

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Golden Globes was canceled, Tom Cruise returns his awards at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, reels from race and corruption scandals, and you read this article in Breitbart, and it shows how there's all these celebrities speaking out against the

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Golden Globes, because they're too white, that's the main thing, they're too white, they're not diverse enough, and you have someone like Tom Cruise giving back awards he's earned,

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I mean, do you think that's a legitimate gripe, or is this just a strategic political move? It seems insane, but that's the reason, too many white people, not enough minorities on the, whatever, the

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Foreign Press Association, you have Newsweek, actually, let me get to that in a minute, you have

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American Idol, Caleb Kennedy, who was on American Idol, I don't watch it, but apparently, he withdrew from American Idol, he was one of the finalists,

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I guess, and the reason was because of some silly video he made while he was, the age,

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I believe, was 12, he's 16 now, it was four years before, so he was 12, and he had a friend of his,

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I guess, that had put on a white hood that made it look kind of like a Klan costume, and they joked, that was it, there really wasn't anything more to it, kids do that, they dress up, they joke, they dress up as bad guys, they dress up as good guys, at 12 years old, and no longer on American Idol, and we've lost, there's no capacity to forgive anymore, this is an unforgiving religion that we are entering here, this is not

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Christianity, there is no forgiveness, there's no redemption, it is the cruelest judgment, and it's just, you know, this is gonna just kill everything,

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I don't know, there's always gonna be something that doesn't go along with the narrative, and if you're fine now, five years, just wait five years, you have this,

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I saw this posted somewhere, a popular, semi -popular group on Twitter had, they just put a poll out there for this,

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I don't even remember the name of the gentleman here who was the perpetrator, but there was a black defendant,

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I'm reading it, was at work, a white customer called him the N -word, the defendant knocked out the customer, and the customer died, and how are you voting, and he asks, you know, he's guilty because he killed him, or not guilty because of the

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N -word, 71 % of the people who responded said he's not guilty because of the N -word, he said the employee is facing a murder charge, which makes no sense, well, it does make sense, this man was called a name, and that used to be, you know, you're called a name, and people were mature enough to kind of deal with that, but now that should be fine, you should be able to kill someone if they call you a name, if it's a certain name, if it's against a certain class of, quote unquote, oppressed people, and this is how some people in this country think, how do you have a justice system and coexist with people who think this way, that's the big question right now, how are two different countries essentially, or probably more than that, but two basic ways of thinking, how are they supposed to coexist together, you can't when you're so fundamentally in disagreement, here's

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Newsweek, black men have lower cognitive skills than white men, NFL asserts in brain injury lawsuits, so testing some of these

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NFL players years later, their cognitive abilities, the NFL is, you know, paying some of these people, you know, for what they went through, but they're doing it with different standards, if you're black, you have a different cognitive ability standard that you have to meet, which is much lower than a white person, because black people apparently have lower cognitive skills, now if that doesn't sound classic white supremacist,

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I don't quite know what is, but here's the thing, this is all done under the guise, this is being motivated by critical race theory assumptions, not white supremacist, you know, actually, that's not even a word

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I want to use, they both have a hint of a quote unquote white supremacy, if you want to call it that, but it's just not on the basis of a scientific racism, even though it sounds like it, it's on the basis of this theoretical junk that people are believing now, and it's getting, it's upside down world, the people who are complaining the most and say they hate white supremacy, quote unquote, are saying things like this, are assuming things like this, well, you know,

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Golden Globes, Foreign Press Association, you know, it's just, they must be racist, they, a black person can't get into those roles, because they're, you know, it's just, it's the racism that's keeping them out, or they're not capable in some way, you know, 12 year olds who make silly videos, they gotta be banned, you know, justice system, well, that, we need to consider the roles of oppressor and oppressed, so there's no equality before the law anymore, you know, lawsuits against the

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NFL for brain injuries, well, we need to use a different standard, because black people are, have less cognitive skills, according to the

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NFL, you have BLM co -founder, Cullors, rail against white supremacist housing market, weeks after splashing out millions on real estate, so this is, so basically, the long and short of it is this

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BLM co -founder, Patrice Cullors, can buy a house, that's, you know, multi -million dollar house, in very, quote unquote, white area, because that's part of social justice, she's trying to go to these areas, because, you know what, the housing market has been white supremacist, this is an over, this is correcting that, and so she can do this,

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I mean, forget the fact that the people she's supposedly advocating for live in ghettos, and she's not putting in, you know, the money towards that, she's buying herself this kind of house, it smells of hypocrisy in so many different ways, this is, you know, black lives matter, but you're, really, this is how you're gonna fight white supremacy, is by buying multi -million dollar houses, and living there,

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I mean, I really think, yeah, the white people in the area, I'm sure, are so, you know, upset about this, that, you know, you've really smashed their white supremacy,

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I mean, come on, but the justifying, outright selfishness, and, or just, and it's not selfish to buy a multi -million dollar house, but if you're

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Patrisse Cullors, and your whole shtick, is that there's this oppressing, the people are being oppressed, this is a horrible, horrible thing, and you're going to get rich off of people making donations to help against that oppression, that's where the hypocrisy comes in, and then to justify it by, well,

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I'm just smashing white supremacy, that's, that's where the hypocrisy comes in, and then you have a Space Force unit commander removed from his post for decrying

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Marxism in the military, so you have a Space Force commander, who went on a podcast, and basically said, made comments against critical race theory, now he's being removed, so you can't, you can't decry

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Neo -Marxism, buying a house, though, in a very rich area, while you say that you're trying to advocate for these poor, oppressed black people, is apparently advocating for a poor black, black people, being against white supremacy, but believing that black people have lower cognitive skills, is apparently okay,

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I mean, I'm just going through, we are in upside -down world, we're in upside -down world, and no one can find a foundation right now, if you're in the secular world, you don't have a foundation, you're not finding one, you're not finding stability, it's not in tradition, you can't figure out the changing ground underneath your feet, where it's going to be tomorrow, most people are coming from broken households, it seems like now, so there's even more instability, it is a confusing world, and this is the world where Christians have an opportunity, and the true church has an opportunity to step up, and to provide stability, we have answers to so many of these things, we have forgiveness, we have actual sins that we can identify, say this is a sin, this is not a sin, we have equality before the law, we have justice, example of a justice system that worked, that was ordained by God, we have so many answers to these things, and yet, what

32:19

I see is churches either being quiet, if they're prominent, or going along with for the most part, and that's a sad thing, so I wanted to share, kind of just to wrap this up, just some,

32:33

I made some notes, I just want to share some observations that I have culturally, and then

32:39

I'm going to show you the trailer, and talk a little bit about that, but observations on where we are headed, because I think in going from, you know, in the morning in Auburn, Alabama, at night,

32:50

I'm in Portland, Oregon, I see our future, because we're being pulled more and more towards the

32:57

Portland, Oregon, we're being pulled more and more in this progressive, progressive, they call it progressive, but it's this Marxist postmodern direction, and you see a lot of beautiful areas in Oregon, and Washington, absolutely stunning,

33:09

I mean, they have mountains that aren't around in Alabama, that's for sure, but you look at the people, not a lot of smiles, not a lot of families, a lot of mental health issues,

33:18

I probably saw in like half an hour of being at a park in Portland, five people talking to people who weren't there, lots of graffiti everywhere in Portland, barbed wire fence around a food truck area,

33:30

I went out walking, and high walls, barbed wire fence, I mean, it's not the kind of thing you'd see in Auburn, Alabama, but it's the crime, there's crime, you know, more so in Portland, the people look androgynous, it's just interesting to me to watch so many people in their 30s and 40s without families, walking around, but sometimes you have to, is that a boy, is that a girl, even if it is a girl or a boy, the way they're dressed is so androgynous, so individualistic, there's one,

34:06

I remember I saw a girl, I was like, she actually, she looks like a girl, really, and then I looked and her boyfriend, I guess, was with her, and he also kind of looked like a girl, and I just thought, what, the confusion that this must, for someone who is born into that, the confusion there must be, the insecurity that must create, and you're seeing it with the drugs, with the mental health issues, with just the depression, that just, it hangs in the air, despite the fact that it's incredibly beautiful.

34:39

In, outside of Seattle, we went to a, just a little, like, sports, I guess it was a sports bar, the person at the hotel told us it was a steakhouse, we got there, and we just, we sat away from the bar, and we got some, you know, burgers and stuff, but it was a comedy night, and we didn't know until the food came out, and we were,

34:55

I wanted to wait, I wanted to get the food, but it was some of the raunchiest things I've ever heard in my life, in this comedy club, it wasn't a club, it was just a comedy night, and I would have left,

35:06

I, you know, you keep thinking, like, okay, we gotta wait, the food's just about here, let's get this over with, it's, hopefully it'll get better, let's leave, it never did, it just kept getting worse, but no one was laughing, and the things that they were saying, it's just shock value stuff, it's just, but it wasn't shocking to any of them, that's where we're going,

35:25

I think, that's where we're so desensitized, that we don't, you don't feel anything, you're numb, you're looking for drugs and other things, heightened sexual experience, if you can find it, to try to get some kind of happiness, and it's just, it's interesting, we were walking in Auburn, and just, people are happy, they're out, they don't have masks, that was the other thing, they're laughing, they're having a good time, it is so different, and they're, and they're dressed, you know, the girls dressed like girls, a certain way, at least there's gender norms there, the guys dress like guys, different world, different world, there was ignorance, so we went to the former

36:06

Chaz area, it's not Chaz anymore, but it's, you know, a lot of people on the left are there, a lot of, it looks that way, and the people are that way, and we started, we tried to get some man on the street type interviews, it was very difficult, we kind of gave up after about an hour, because we asked so many people who

36:22

George Washington was, and what they thought of his statue, so many of them did not know who he was, they live in Washington state, named after George Washington, all the highways have a profile of George Washington, they didn't know who he was, many of them, or they were not, they just didn't know enough about him to really know anything about him, not one fact that they could name about him, the ones who did know who he was, said very raunchy things about Washington that were not educated at all, and also, you know, that he was a colonizer, that he owned slaves, it's about a, and he wasn't, but he wasn't a colonizer, that's all they knew, that's it,

37:01

I guess he's a colonizer because he's a white person that lived in Virginia, but that's what they knew, that's it, and not one person wanting to defend him that we talked to at all, complete ignorance,

37:16

I mean, this is a culture, a society that can be so easily taken over, and by the amount of people

37:22

I saw outside in the open air, not even around people wearing masks, it just, it further showed me that, okay, these are people who they don't, who do they trust, they're scared, they're blindly kind of going along, because there's ignorance there, hyper individualistic, you can see this with the styles, there was a guy there,

37:44

I remember with, there's a guy there with piercings, and there really wasn't a whole, there weren't a whole lot of places left to put a piercing,

37:52

I mean, gauges, multiple gauges in his nose and his ears, tattoos everywhere, metal plate installed on his forehead, but some of you might have seen that between the skin and the forehead, and just, and he says to us, we were trying to interview him, he didn't want to go on camera, that last year, when the

38:13

CHAZ zone had formed, that there were some really weird people there, really weird, and the guy

38:19

I was with, and I just kind of looked at each other, and we're kind of like, if, this is the guy who's telling us that these people are weird, and really talkative people, that's the thing about them though, a lot of them were very talkative, you could talk to them, but clearly a history of brokenness, not having a foundation, and this, and the thing that I realized is the new counterculture is adhering to gender roles and in your dress, and not wearing masks, and being happy, that's the counterculture, having families, that's revolutionary now, it's not revolutionary in the traditional way we use the word, but it's so against the grain of where we're going, and that's one of the reasons why

39:12

I really would covet your support in a way for this project that we're doing, because we think that there are things that are true, and valuable, and beautiful, pieces of public art, heritage, things that make the landscape not so bare, they infuse meaning into where you live, attachment to place and land, which creates a willingness to want to preserve and treat right place and land, that's another thing

39:44

I noticed, the people who are the most environmentalist in Portland and Seattle are some of the most messy, the litter, the graffiti, and yet you look at a and you don't see that stuff as much, it's cleaner, you don't see their graffiti, there's more respect, and yet they're not the environmentalist, but the ones up in in Seattle are, it says something guys, it says something, the best way to preserve the environment, to in a conservation type way, is to be responsible in your own individual life, to have families,

40:19

I think this is why Jordan Peterson's so revolutionary for so many young men, when he says make your bed, I mean this is something many young men haven't been forced to do, they haven't had a dad telling them about honor, and respect, and duty, and these are the kinds of values that the statues represent, many of them that are coming down, those are the kinds of things that they were intended to evoke when they were put up, they weren't put up there for slavery, white supremacy, did some of those people have views that are very out of step with today's egalitarian view of equality, yes, very much so, but those weren't the reasons they were put up, the reasons they were put up was to show you this is a model of someone who really had bravery, this is a model of someone who really had courage, and these are the kinds of things we want to emulate, and so here's the trailer, and I hope you enjoy it, and I'll talk about it,

41:11

I'll be on the other side of it to talk about it a little further, here we go. Monuments have been important for not just centuries, but millennia, it is the way that human beings can mark something or someone as important, it's actually a biblical idea, right, that you have to remind yourself, because we tend to forget.

41:43

These statues are symbols of the past, and as the saying goes, he who controls the past controls the future.

41:52

If you can paint American history as nothing but slavery, nothing but oppression, and erase those symbols, and make them dirty in the eyes of young Americans, you have disconnected them with their roots, their

42:08

Christian heritage, the patriotism of the past, their heroes of the past, and you can then start to reshape them.

42:20

When people start actually tearing down valuable, beautiful, ancient, or venerable monuments, it's a bad sign in the culture that says that we don't value history, we want to rewrite history.

42:35

You've got churchmen supporting this ripping down of statues. You know, we finally got the statue of Lee taken down in Lee Park, and have gotten the name of churchmen falling over themselves to prove how anti -racist they are, and how they're so ashamed of the founding fathers, and all of these things.

42:52

What that Confederate monument was doing was bringing closure to the families who are living here who lost loved ones during the

42:59

Civil War. It was not a statement of the South will rise again, you know, or nonsense like white supremacy.

43:09

It was simply to help those families bring closure to a war that was very devastating.

43:15

Consider those losses. Consider if we were in a war today where we had five percent killed. How do you think we would react?

43:23

It was certainly natural that they wanted to honor those men, fathers, sons, brothers.

43:29

These men did their duty. You know, these states called their sons to serve them, and give their lives if necessary to defend them, and many of them fell, and they did give their lives, and those mothers didn't get their darling sons back.

43:42

And for a veteran to be disgraced, it seemed like the most wrong thing, and that was the

43:49

Vietnam lesson for me. There's none of us who doesn't have some sin or some mistake that we made.

43:58

If you're defining somebody by that, that ultimately is a very dark, destructive way to live.

44:05

It's just graceless. It's wrong. We can look at history to see why it's wrong. People have very little courage, so I think if you have courage, you have an obligation to stand up and to say, no, we're not going to let this happen.

44:18

But I really do think that a lot of the people in leadership in this country, they haven't seen how bad things can go.

44:26

They kind of think like, we'll be fine if we tear down some statues. Historically, if you understand history, you know that always ends in bloodshed.

44:52

If you would like to contribute to American Monument, please go to the info section. There is a link there.

44:58

You can go and you can contribute to this documentary. I think it's going to be beneficial.

45:04

It's just one thing. There's so many things, so many things we can do, but this is just one thing that I think it's important to preserve, and it's important to explain because people don't know.

45:15

They haven't thought through it. So many of them are just following their cultural leaders because they don't have leaders.

45:22

They don't have a local history. They don't have parents passing tradition down to them, so many of them. And this is to really to help people start asking those questions, to explore their local area, to explore the people that they're benefiting from, really the people who created the world, contributed so much to creating the world that they live in.

45:44

And so I appreciate it, guys. I don't want to just lament these things, what's going on in our culture.

45:50

I want to get back to a standard, and that standard is not in the Republican Party, I'm convinced.

45:56

I want to show you one final thing here. This is a post that I made just recently, and I'll read it to you.

46:07

The left, government should mandate masks. Republicans, yes, last year, but not now. The left,

46:13

Biden was legitimately elected president. Republicans, yes, but there was some fraud, and there wasn't enough to sway the election. The left, the legacy of slavery and segregation are impacting race relations today.

46:23

Republicans, yes, but it's the Democrats' fault. The left, we must take down statues to white supremacy.

46:29

Republicans, yes, but only confederate ones. The left, the Constitution reflects the views of men who believe in racial and gender hierarchies.

46:36

Republicans, yes, but it was intended to somehow overturn their personal views decades and centuries after they authored it.

46:42

The left, Bruce Jenner is a she named Caitlyn, but she's also a transphobic elitist because she disagrees with trans sports and dislikes homelessness.

46:50

Republicans, yes, she's Caitlyn, but she's not transphobic or elitist. And you can keep doing this, et cetera, et cetera.

46:56

I mean, I could have put something about same -sex marriage up here, you know, the left, you know, same -sex marriage is a constitutional right.

47:06

Republicans, yes, but we believe in family values too. I mean, that's kind of where we're going.

47:11

And I put the quote from Robert Louis Dabney. It says this, American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition.

47:19

It remains behind it, but never retards it and always advances near its leader. That was a quote from,

47:26

I believe it was 1870s when Dabney said that. And it remains true today. That's what we see.

47:31

American conservatism and the Republican party being the, I guess if you want to call it the institution on a national level, most

47:38

Republican strategists and spokespeople, they just follow whatever the revolution is. They're liberals driving the speed limit.

47:45

And the other is a difference between the parties, but that difference is one of so often one of speed.

47:52

How fast are we going to go over the cliff? And I encourage people to be involved in their

47:57

Republican party, definitely change it as much as you can, but we need to, and I'm encouraged by some people

48:03

I've seen on social media, we need to get back to some firm things, principles, biblical principles, the ways that tradition has shaped and taken some of these principles and applied them in different areas.

48:21

We see this in common law, but there's so many areas that we see it in that we're not even aware of. We live in this world that was passed down to us.

48:29

And so many of the good things that have come to us come from our families, come from our local communities.

48:35

And we're just used to them. We don't see them. But when you go from Auburn, Alabama to Seattle, Washington, you start seeing them.

48:41

You start realizing what was different. I think cross -cultural, I think experience is really good to just be aware of some of the things that maybe you didn't notice before you thought was just normal.

48:53

And you realize, well, not everyone does it that way. And then you can appreciate some of the good things. And that could even be an architecture.

49:01

I mean, architecture communicates something. It's human scale, grandeur.

49:08

It's so many things. I mean, that's why Soviet -style architecture, that boxy stuff, or postmodern architecture is depressing.

49:15

It evokes a certain mood because it communicates too. And the world is rich with meaning if we can only open our eyes and see it.

49:25

And I fear that when we start taking that meaning away, to replace it with something else, to replace it with...

49:35

Because right now I think we're starting that replacement process to put up things like this

49:41

Times Square statue and other things, the stone wall,

49:46

National Park. There are things starting to go up that it's a refounding.

49:52

It's these are the values that we hold now. These are the things. And sometimes you can put,

49:59

I mean, you can put up things to valuable, to people that made contributions, but it doesn't mean you have to rip down the old.

50:07

And some of the new things that are being put up aren't to things that we should, that are really all that valuable sometimes.

50:15

I mean, if you really, I'll put it this way. If you really want to honor people who are black in the

50:20

United States, why not put up things to George Washington Carver or someone who made some great strides in an area that has benefited all

50:30

Americans? I mean, that can really be someone that everyone can look to and say, this is the kind of, we want to be like that person.

50:37

That person achieved something. That person saved the South with peanuts. But we're not doing that.

50:45

We want to take the best that culture has to offer and not just sideline quote unquote, majority culture, whatever that is, the hegemony, the people that mostly were responsible for creating where we live and who we are forming that because you don't, it's like Chesterton's fence.

51:06

What do you have to replace it with? It's going to be a naked landscape. It's going to be a world where there are no attachments.

51:14

There is only the individual and then above the individual and all encompassing government that is totalitarian.

51:22

And that is God in the minds of the subjects. That is the world we're entering.

51:28

And we want to stay away from that. So one of the things you can do is support the documentary that we're putting together.

51:33

We'd appreciate it. I hope this was encouraging somewhat. I know this is, this is a little bit of a dismal report in some ways, some of these observations, but I can't be dishonest about the,

51:44

I have to be honest about where the times we're living in and that, that is where we're living. And it's an exciting time to be alive because it means that the light shines even brighter and you get to demonstrate that light.

51:56

Don't hide it under a bushel, keep shining it. And you'd be surprised how many people around you either agree with you or realize you have something that they're lacking.

52:05

Sometimes even just living your life, even if you think you're not making a big contribution, raising your family can be such a difference.

52:12

It can be such a, I mean, especially if you do it in a place like Portland, right? It can be such an example of as hard as it might be, what life can be like and how doing things by God's design, it works a lot better when you just acknowledge that there are men and there are women and their design is to get together and have children and raise those children up to be responsible and to, you know, have certain character qualities and it makes for a more happy life.

52:39

So there you go. I hope that, I hope that helped. I hope if you're able to, you can support the