TheSpace - Episode 4 - Matt Travis

Identifying a Systemic Injustice by Biblical Standards

Nothing matches better than vanilla and chocolate. Still somehow racial harmony eludes us. Views on race relations are just fascinating.

You're about to watch a conversation I had with Matt Travis. Matt Travis has a couple of ideas on how we can really determine the difference between actual justice, you know, defined biblically. So, you know, God is the standard of justice.

He tells us what's right from wrong is. If you want to know what right from wrong is, you look to the scriptures because that is where we find that out for sure. You know, we all believe, all Christians anyway, that the heart is desperately wicked.

It's not trustworthy. So what we think sounds like justice might not be. We got to compare it to the scripture. And so Matt has three, actually four different ways that we can determine the difference between social justice defined incorrectly and justice defined scripturally.

Anyway, I hope you find this helpful. Give this video a like, share it, and go ahead and check out Matt Travis on his social media and websites as well. Enjoy. All right. So I am here with Matt Travis.

Matt's the writer of the blog, thekingsrights .com. And he wanted to talk, he had an idea to talk about what do you know, social justice, and I thought it was a good idea. So Matt, good to talk to you.

Yeah, good to see you, man. All right, so I'm going to share my screen because I thought this would be a good place to start. So let me just do this really quick. I found one of the most official news sources that you could find in Vermont anyway, and that is benandjerrys .com.

Yes, the ice cream people are absolutely in the social justice movement. What do you know? So I just wanted to start here because I thought this was pretty helpful. Matt wanted to talk about, correct me if I'm wrong, Matt, you wanted to talk about how do we know if something is a systemic injustice or institutional?

Well, why don't you tell me what you want to talk about? I want to get this right.

Defining Systemic Injustice and the Problem of Undefined Terms

Yeah, definitely. I mean, the main thing is how do we know something is an actual systemic injustice? And I'm talking about specifically systemic injustices because that's what the social justice crowd is alluding to whenever they talk about social justice is that there are these systemic issues that are injustices.

And I don't know, did you want me to jump into some points about just particularly what I think, how do we know if something is a systemic injustice.

Or would you like to? Let's read the first paragraph of this article because I think this will help us. So this is from benandjerrys .com. So it starts off like this. It wasn't too long ago that a lot of people were talking about a post-racial America.

We had elected a black president for the first time and then we went ahead and reelected him four years later and the country was feeling pretty good about itself. Let me just stop there. Not everyone in the country was feeling pretty good.

You know what I mean? Barack Obama's presidency was indeed a profound and meaningful mark of true progress. Racism, of course, never really went away. The presence of a black president or a hockey star or a movie franchise superhero, however welcoming and exciting, cannot reverse centuries of racial injustice.

And then the article goes on to talk about how what systemic injustice is, or in this case, what systemic racism is, is racism at every level of society, okay? And what I thought was so interesting about that is that I think people who would deny that there are rampant systemic racist issues in our country, I don't think they would deny that there probably exists someone somewhere at every level of society that is in fact a racist.

Would you agree with that? Absolutely. Right, okay, so I mean, you know, I thought this article is so interesting because I'm like, okay, well, every level of society, fine. It goes on and it says, systemic racism persists in our schools, offices, court system, police departments, and elsewhere.

Why? Well, think about it. When white people occupy most positions of decision-making power, people of color have a difficult time getting a fair shake, let alone getting ahead. We all have to do a better job of calling out systemic racism.

Here are seven ways that we know it's real. And what happens, and I'm not gonna read the rest of this, but as you can see, what it basically does is what essentially everybody does. This is typically what happens when you ask about systemic racism, when you ask for evidence.

They'll start to point out these disparities. So in this case, it's a wealth disparity. So white people have 90 of the wealth, even though they're only 77 of the population. Employment disparities.

African Americans are twice as likely to be unemployed. Education, criminal justice, housing, surveillance, healthcare, whatever it is. I mean, there's a bunch of them. And I think we were just talking before we started recording, Matt, and I would say that I personally don't find the need to have to dispute the numbers.

I don't think that that's really where the issue lies. I mean, what are your thoughts when you see these kinds of disparities?

Well, whenever I see these, my first thing that comes to mind is, I'd say they do a decent job of defining what they're talking about and being specific, and in these particular infographics. But generally, when people bring up income inequalities, and even whenever I look at these infographics, I still, to some extent, don't know what they're actually calling the injustice.

Because by this standard, are they saying that everybody has to have an equal amount of things in order for there not to be an injustice? Or are they saying that there's some arbitrary number of the percentage of money that I'm supposed to have versus what you're supposed to have?

So that's the first thing I think of, is that they're defining their terms, kind of, but not really, because they're not telling me what the injustice is. They're just giving me some broad thing that's going on, and I'm supposed to assume it's an injustice.

Empathy, Sin Nature, and the Need for Reasoned Compassion

Yeah, I think you're right. But I will say this, Matt, that there is sort of a, I don't know if intuitive is the right word, but there's something that sounds right when you say, well, if African Americans are 13 of the population, they should have 13 of the wealth.

That just makes sense to a lot of people. And so I'm trying to think, what is it about that that just automatically sounds right to us? Because I'll admit, when people say, well, blacks are 13 of the population, but they're 50 of the people in jail or whatever it is, I don't know if that's the real number, but there's something about that that sounds unfair to people when they first hear that.

Why do you think that is?

Man, I think it's, I don't know. I don't know why it sounds unfair to people, to be honest. I think a lot of it has to do with just an inability to rationalize, to use logic to figure out why things are the way they are.

People immediately jump to somebody must be a victim. I think that's just part of our sin nature, is to jump to, I'm a victim. And so therefore, whenever we see an incident of inequality, we think of ourselves at a time whenever we were unequal in some way, whether it be because of income or because of a job, whatever, or anything.

And so we immediately think, well, we have empathy, essentially. Like Ben Shapiro talks about this, how empathy is a horrible way to go about doing public policy. And I think our natural inclination is to either have disgust for someone or to have empathy for a certain group.

But both of those are wrong. Neither one is actually helpful. You have to have compassion combined with reason.

Yeah, that's interesting that you say that because, and you kind of connected it to the sin nature. I'm sure that triggered a lot of people because that's really personal because it's like, I remember for the first time a pastor kind of, I don't remember if this was in person or if this was in a video, I can't remember, but we were reading a passage about the rich and the poor and there's tons of stuff in the Bible that compare and contrast the rich and the poor.

And I remember the pastor said to me, if you're in this room right now or you're listening to this podcast, you're not in the poor category. You need to understand that. You know what I mean? And I remember that was jarring to me, but the minute I thought about it for another second, I was like, yeah, he's exactly right.

Why did I just assume I was in this other class? Yeah, I was talking. Go ahead.

No, sorry, man. I thought you were done. No, I was. I was just gonna say, I was talking to my boss actually today about, I just realized I have the wrong camera. Oh, well, I was talking to my boss today and he's a conservative and he's not a Christian but he's conservative.

So we talk about social justice from time to time. We come with some pretty interesting conversations. And you talk about your pastor saying that we're not in poverty. We were looking at some stats on something and poverty was brought up, that there's an equal amount of poverty today as there was 50 years ago or something along those lines.

It wasn't exactly that, but something along those lines. And I remember pointing to him and telling him, I don't even know how to take that step because if we looked at the standard of living 50 years ago today, it would be equal to the poverty standard of living today.

So I'm like, I don't even understand how we get to that conclusion that there's an equal amount of poverty, in which case it depends on how you're defining poverty, I guess. So yeah, I would agree with your pastor in that there's not really poverty, at least not in America.

There's not, I mean, there is poverty in America, but it's nothing compared to the rest of the world and nothing compared to 50, 100 years ago. So when we're looking at income inequality as an injustice in America, whenever you're not really that bad off if you're, you know, if you have low income, yeah, if you're poor, it's kind of an absurd notion to call it an injustice because that would mean that there was some level of injustice with like 90 of the population 50 years ago.

So it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but.

Abortion as a Clear Example of a Systemic Injustice

So yeah, so let's talk about, you know, what is a systemic injustice? Because I think, so the kind of the caricature of people like me is that I don't believe there's any injustice in the world and I don't believe in, and people even say, we were talking about this earlier, people even say, we don't really even believe in total depravity if we don't agree with this stuff.

And so, but I think that most people that would be on our side of this issue would say that there are injustices, obviously, and potentially are open to the idea of systemic injustice. So why don't you tell me, I mean, I know you have a few notes on this.

I mean, how do we determine what a systemic injustice is? Or, you know, because I would imagine that you would agree that they do exist and have existed in the past.

Yeah, yeah, and they don't just exist in the past, but they currently exist now. Right. And there's actually quite a bit of systemic injustice going on. It's not the ones that people like to talk about because people like to sound like they're empathetic, like we mentioned earlier about, like I had mentioned earlier about empathy versus hostility and how our sin nature kind of makes us, our immediate reaction is to lean either way.

People tend to want to be empathetic. So, and this is, I've talked about this issue before with Jacob Brunton and Cody Leibel about how people don't seem to, and Jacob actually brought it up, I think, in one of your, brought this point up in a podcast that you did with him and a few other guys on social justice, that people seem to not understand that, or not that they don't understand, but they don't want to be, or no, I guess that they don't understand that they're responsible for what they believe, which is kind of a weird notion for, I mean, a weird thing for a Christian because the entire basis of our salvation is based on the fact that we're responsible for what we believe.

But the reason that I say that is because if you look at, there are a number of issues that if you look at, like police shootings, that people tend, and income inequality, that people tend to favor the poor.

They shouldn't just show partiality to the poor when it comes to these things. And they don't seem to understand that we should not, and this is what I think they're doing, and I don't like to speak to people's intent a lot, but this is the only sense that I can make of it.

What I think that they might be doing is, is, oh, how do I word this? Basically, they're just erring on the side of caution towards the poor, right? But that's not taking responsibility for what you believe.

So like with the instance of Michael Brown, the hands up, don't shoot thing, they just kept running with that narrative. And the reason that, and you would bring up that it's not true, and they'd be like, well, the overall narrative about police shootings is true.

And they'd be like, well, the statistics show that that's not exactly true. And they'd still be willing to give the benefit of the doubt erring on the side of the poor, rather than the police, rather than the rich when it comes to income inequality and whatnot.

And I think that's a big problem. And I think you see that problem whenever it comes to their, not inability, but their, them not defining justice correctly. So a few ways that I've looked at, I'm interrupting at any time.

If you wanna throw something in. Well, let me just say this, you brought it up, so I'm gonna mention it. But from my perspective, Michael Brown, that whole situation did more damage to the minority community than anything.

And what I mean by that is that's always the sort of the turning point that's cited by people. Lots of people cite that as one of the turning points for their own thinking and becoming a social justice advocate.

And honestly, that was one of the most bizarre things to me because out of all the shootings that were very broadcast and everything, that one was the most very clear cut, obviously justified shooting in my opinion.

Now, I would argue that some of the other ones, there were some nuances and some people think that they were justified, some people think they weren't. And I fall on the non-justified side on a number of ones where my friends don't.

But it's like the boy who cried wolf. It's like, if you're saying that this Michael Brown thing is unjust, then how can I believe anything you're saying?

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree, I agree.

Anyway, but I think you're right. I mean, if we're not able to define these things and we're able to identify the factors that make it a real injustice, and instead we're just kind of like, well, I'm just gonna err on the side of the disenfranchised, that does the truth a disservice.

And so clearly it does everyone a disservice.

And it shows a willingness. One of the first, I guess taglines you would call it that I had for my website was truth matters. And it was actually, I came up with that before I think the whole Black Lives Matter thing started.

And that's how I see a lot of this willingness to err on the side of taking care of the poor or taking care of the minority or being on the side of the marginalized, right? I see this as a rejection of truth.

It's that me being cautious is more important than me knowing the truth or me being cautious is more important than me telling what I truly believe is the truth. But I don't know, I don't wanna get too deep into that because I don't think that, I think a lot of these people are sincere in their belief that these things are injustices.

And once I start getting too deep into that, then I might start questioning their intent entirely.

Yeah, I'll say this too, though. I mean, and this is just kind of a side note, we can move on. But if, and again, I'm gonna refer back to the Michael Brown thing. If you're willing to sort of just kind of err on the side of whatever the injustice and put such a little thought into actually just determining, is this an injustice or is it not?

I don't think it's a surprise that also the supposed solutions to these injustices, there's a lot of, there's not that much thought that goes into those either. It ends up being what just kind of looks good rather than what actually is good.

And so it's like, it's kind of lazy thinking to be perfectly honest, in my opinion. I'm not gonna put those words in your mouth, I'm saying it. But lazy thinking doesn't lead to good things, you know what I mean, ever.

Anyway, let's move on. You had something you wanted to get into.

So I guess, I mean, I don't know. I guess you can jump into how I would define something as an injustice. And I think this is a relatively objective standard. And there's three main points that I have for something, if I'm gonna call it a systemic, I should be very more specific, an actual systemic injustice, not just an injustice, because there's a difference.

Because we can look at individual police shootings and say that was an injustice, but also deny the idea that there's a systemic injustice as far as racial based police shootings.

And I think that some people would say you can't do that. So if, but I would agree with you. I think most reasonable people would say that you can say there's an injustice, but not have it be systemic.

So I would, sorry to interrupt, but I think that that's worth saying that some people would say you can't actually do that.

Three Criteria for an Actual Systemic Injustice

Yeah, and that's kind of what my three points here deal with. So the first one I've kind of already mentioned is that you have to be specific and definable. So for instance, when you say income inequality, that doesn't mean anything to me because I don't know what you really mean.

Do you mean, when you say income inequality is an injustice, do you mean that anyone having more money than anyone else is an injustice? Or is there something more specific that you're turning to, pointing to?

But I kind of went over that a little bit already, and that's kind of self-evident. In my example that I give, the example that I normally use, because every Christian agrees with this, I think even the majority of the social justice side agrees with this, that abortion is an injustice, and it's a systemic injustice.

And the reason we agree with it is number one, because we can all define it. We all know exactly what we're talking about. When I say abortion, I don't mean anything except the killing of an unborn offspring of a human.

I mean that every time I say abortion, right? And we can go further than that and call it murder and whatnot. But if we're just giving a simple definition, if I give that definition, everybody knows what I'm talking about.

And with abortion too, I don't even have to give that definition. They already know what I'm talking about whenever I say abortion. So if I say abortion is a systemic injustice, we may disagree whether it's a systemic injustice, but we don't disagree on specifically what I'm talking about, and we don't disagree on the definition of abortion.

Right? So that would be the first point.

We kind of went over a little bit of that earlier. Yeah. So in other words, what you're saying is first thing you need to do out of the gate is make sure we all understand what we're talking about. We all understand, we're all using, either we're using the same language or we at least know what the language means.

And all of that. Yeah. And that's a problem even when it comes to stuff that's more specific that the social justice side talks about. But anyway, I'll move on to my second point because we've kind of hit that pretty good.

The second point is that it must, if it is a systemic injustice, and this is where I think a lot of the discussion needs to happen in reformed circles and in Christian circles. If it is a systemic injustice, we must be defining that using the Bible.

It must be both defined by and or not contradictory to biblical justice, right? So what the Bible lays out as injustices, right? What the Bible says are injustices and the principles behind why those things are injustices must line up with what we're calling a systemic injustice.

So the example with abortion would be that, that abortion is sometimes defined by the culture as a systemic injustice. And sometimes it's not. It depends on where you live and at what time you live and whatnot.

But the Bible clearly says that thou shall not kill. The Bible clearly says, I think it's in, there's actually a passage in Deuteronomy, not Deuteronomy, Exodus, Exodus 21. I think Exodus 21 where it talks about if you strike a pregnant woman and her child dies, if there's no harm, no foul, essentially no harm, then there's no punishment.

If there is harm, then eye for an eye. Right? So there are actual passages in the Bible that we can point to and say, look, the Bible defines this as an injustice. So now we can all agree, right? We don't even really have to look much further than that.

But I would also add on that the Bible cannot contradict that it is an injustice. So for instance, the Bible doesn't, the Bible contradicts the idea that income inequality is an injustice. Right. So for instance, I'll pull, I actually have a passage I was reading earlier today that pertains perfectly.

In Matthew 20, the labors in the vineyard passage. Well, I'll just go ahead and read the whole thing. Yeah, read it. For the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

I don't know why I keep saying vineyard. That's how it's spelled. Yeah, that is how it's spelled. After agreeing with the laborers for denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. Oh, I always did it again.

And going out about the third hour, he saw they're standing in the marketplace. And to them, he said, you go into the vineyard too. And whatever is right, I will give you. Right, and that's crucial. So he says, whatever is right.

Right, in a parable may not be something that actually happened, but everything in the parable is true. Like it wouldn't be true. Jesus wouldn't be giving this as a parable if it wasn't true. So the concepts in it wouldn't be true.

So I think that's a crucial point too. And to them, he said, you go into the vineyard and whatever is right, I will give you. Right, and then we get to the end. And what does he say was right? He says, so some of the guys are complaining about getting paid less or getting paid the same, even though they worked more.

And a lot of people at that point might look at that and say, well, that's a point for Marxism. Because it's saying that from each what they were able to do and to each what he needs, right? Like these guys couldn't find work.

So they ended up coming to work later, right? Because they finally found work, but they still got paid the same. Sure, so that's the point. But it's contradicted whenever it says later on. So it says, and on receiving it, they grumbled at the master of the house saying, these last worked only one hour and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden on the day of the scorched heat.

But he replied to one of them, friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? That what belongs to you and go, oh, take what belongs to you and go, sorry. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you.

Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? So first of all, it's a private property rights argument. It's this belongs to me, which contradicts the idea of income inequality. Because if we own our private property, if the Bible says we own private property and I own more than you, then how can that be an injustice?

But also he says, am I not allowed to do what belongs to me or do you begrudge my generosity? So then that comes back to the argument that we've heard made several times throughout this debate over the past couple of years of confusing justice and mercy.

That it is in his generosity that he's giving more. He's not obligated to do it. And then also another very important sentence is, did you not agree with me for a denarius? Which shows that the just amount that we're supposed to see, so the just income that we're supposed to see is what we agree with somebody that they are gonna pay us.

And the labor that we're supposed to provide is what we agree with somebody that we are going to provide. So there's clear indications in the Bible that income inequality in and of itself, if you're defining it in its literal sense, that differences in income between people is not an injustice.

So there's things in the Bible, going back to my point, there's things in the Bible that contradict the idea that income inequality. So that's why I say income equality is not an injustice,.

But abortion is. Now to all my social justice followers, which there are some people who watched a lot of my videos that really don't like my opinions. And that's great, I'm glad that they do. I would say that, and I think, I don't wanna speak for you Matt, but I think you would agree that just because an income inequality isn't an injustice does not mean that something happened that caused that income inequality that could be an injustice.

But we have to be careful to make sure that we're actually looking at the right thing. So this Ben and Jerry's thing that I shared, here we go. This Ben and Jerry's thing that I shared, it doesn't go the next step.

All it shows is the inequality. So if there's a wealth inequality, that's fine. That's nice information to have. There could be something that led to this that we would want to say, okay, well, we need to take a look at the injustices there or whatever.

Maybe there is, maybe there isn't though. And so the problem is, from a biblical perspective, we gotta go with what the Bible defines as an actual sin or as a crime or whatever it is, or what actual justice is, not the results of it.

Because the results of it may or may not be sin. Like you said in that example from the vineyard. Yeah, exactly. There was an income inequality there. Some people made a lot per hour.

Some people made a little bit per hour, but it was totally fair. They're putting it Into a sphere based on a voluntary transaction.

Based on a voluntary transaction, right. And so anyway, so yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I would agree with you, Matt, that at least at this stage in the game, the majority of the debate and conversation inside reform circles has to be in this area.

Because we haven't gotten to this point yet. We really just haven't.

Clear Evidence, State Sanction, and the Role of Statistics

Exactly. And that brings me to my next point. So this is the third point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That brings me to my third point. And this is why these kind of all to go together, and you have to have all three.

If you don't have all three, then you don't have, or you don't have what appears to be a systemic injustice. The next point is that we have to have clear and direct evidence that the injustice is actually occurring.

So for instance, income inequality, I say that that's not an injustice. Well, somebody might say, like you said, well, but the reason that there's income inequality is because of an injustice. Well, okay, that might be.

But in order to know, for me to know if it's a systemic injustice, and therefore for me to be justified in fighting against that systemic injustice, rather than just erring on the side of the poor, you have to give me direct evidence that it is sanctioned by the state.

And sanctioned is kind of a weird word. So let me explain what I mean by that. I don't necessarily mean, like, so for instance, abortion may not be sanctioned by the state in every definition of the word sanctioned, right?

But the way that I'm using sanction, that's the best word I could come up with. I'm thinking there might be a better word, and that might be something I need to work on. But what I mean by sanctioned is that either the state is doing something that is a systemic injustice, or the state is not stepping in when they have an obligation, like we said in our last point, a biblical obligation to step in and stop an injustice that is occurring on a large scale.

Yeah, and I would say that the key word there is biblical, because when I spoke with the brothers at the Native Speaks podcast, one of the things that we got, we got into it towards the end when we didn't have a lot of time.

So unfortunately, this was where I wanted the conversation to go, but it didn't get there till the end. But what we were debating was where it's okay and where it's not okay for the state to step in. And so I was making the point that the state was wrong to not do anything about the man stealing that was going on during the slave trade.

That was wrong. And the correct thing for the state to do would have been to persecute the man stealers and the death penalty for people who kidnap and things like that. That would have been just. But then they kind of were saying I was inconsistent because I was saying it wouldn't be correct for the state to step in and say, well, this restaurant, I know you don't like Latinos.

And so you don't wanna have Latinos there. I think that the state would be wrong to step in and say you have to have Latinos at your restaurant. I think that that's not correct because I don't think that, I think that oversteps the state's bounds, even though it is a sin.

And if someone was in my church and owned a restaurant and didn't allow Latinos, I would excommunicate them if they didn't repent. And it's a sin and you will go face your maker for that. It's not a crime.

And so there's, when you talk about biblical sanctions by the state, like there are certain things the Bible gives the state the ability to do and other things that the Bible does not give the state the ability to do.

And that's another key aspect of this debate, in my opinion.

Well, I would say that comes into play with the difference between an obligation to God versus an obligation to man. And things that are a matter of systemic injustices are at least as far as I can think are always gonna be obligations that we have to man.

Not that every obligation to man would be able to define whether something is a systemic injustice or not, but everything that is a systemic injustice is gonna be an issue that's an obligation to man.

Yeah, and that's not to say that there are other things that as Christians, we owe the Lord. We owe the Lord a lot of things that we don't owe man to man. Exactly.

Right, okay. Exactly, when it's something that we owe the Lord, which is we owe the Lord charity, right? We owe the Lord that we help our brothers and sisters out with charity. We owe the Lord that we do not, like you were talking about earlier, we do not discriminate against people based on race or ethnicity or class or whatever.

But, yeah. Okay, so number I think you made, yeah, you made an excellent point there.

So number three is basically, evidence that the systemic injustice is actually happening and is sanctioned, even though that might not be the best word. I know what you mean by that. I think it's a good word.

It's a good word, but I see why you say it's not the best. Sanctioned by the state. Yeah. I would agree with that. And I think your example, again, if we're gonna stick with the abortion thing, clearly the state allows for abortion.

So they allow for that injustice, which biblically defines an injustice. They allow for it. And I think it's clearly sanctioned by the state.

Yeah, in the verse we talked about earlier in Exodus 21, where if you strike a pregnant woman and she dies, that's a perfect example. Or not strike a pregnant woman and she dies. If you strike a pregnant woman and there's harm to the child, then the punishment is eye for an eye.

That's a perfect example of a biblical standard that shows that the state has an obligation, has a biblical obligation to punish the wrongdoer who murders an unborn child. And you won't find So that's where our biblical standard is.

Right, and you won't find a similar verse with a similar prescription for a punishment for some of the things that are called systemic injustices today. Yeah, exactly. And so, and that's, I always say this in my videos, and I don't know if you'd agree with this or not, but if you could find similar things with similar sanctions prescribed by the scripture, I would join the cause.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I was going back and forth with somebody on Twitter today about that very thing. Like, if you provide me direct evidence, if you provide me evidence that this is sanctioned by the state, yes, I will absolutely be on your side.

Yeah. And one, so, oh yeah, another point, as far as evidence goes, is just to show a contrast, between a couple of things. So for instance, abortion, the contrast, well, you know what? I'm gonna jump into a fourth point that I had, that I was kind of playing with, but I don't know if it really helps to define what a systemic injustice is, or if it more so just helps to define what should we really be concerned the most about.

Sure. And so my fourth point was that it's important to recognize whether the supposed injustice is a statistically significant issue, not rarely or never occurring, right? So this would be, for instance, and abortion is a perfect, the reason I thought of it is because abortion is a perfect example, what in the world did I do here?

The perfect example of something that is statistically significant and not rarely and never occurring. So we have the evidence, as we talked about in our third point, we have the evidence because we literally have statistics.

We have statistics that show how many babies are murdered in the womb every year. Right. We have statistics showing that. And not only do we have statistics, but we can believe the statistics because they're coming from the people doing the murdering who are perfectly fine with putting them out there because they know they aren't gonna get in trouble for it.

Right. So there's statistics and we can believe the statistics and the interpretation of the statistics is extremely easy. And it's roughly 850 ,000 per year if you average over like the last 10 years.

That is a statistically significant issue that is not rarely or never occurring. Like, so it's whenever, and the reason I bring that up too is because you'll hear a lot of people say, well, every time I bring up social injustice, and particularly when they're talking about who we should vote for, like, is it okay to vote for a pro-choice candidate, essentially, Democrats, but that's essentially what amounts to.