Mega Edition: Montage Reaction, Some Civil War Stuff, and Equipping the Persecuted

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter Podcast. My name is John Harrison. Woo, we got a lot to talk about today, don't we? Needless to say, I was in New York for four days and those who were praying for me, I got like this nut-shaped cartilage thing on my Achilles and I might need to have it surgically removed.

It's been rough because I can't run. I used to love to run, but one of my income streams comes from driving and I wouldn't be able to drive if I had the surgery. So I was up in New York for that. I was also visiting family.

I appreciate your prayers. I trust God, he'll provide, but just want to throw that out there. Needless to say, though, I noticed there was, if you're on Twitter, you know what I'm talking about. The Twitter mob was out in force over the last few days and calling me a white supremacist.

I think, I think they want, I mean, I could be wrong about this, but did you catch that Bernie Sanders, one of his campaign managers was caught on camera advocating for work re-education camps for people in this country that need to be reprogrammed?

I have a feeling the woke crowd, they may want me to become part of that work education camp, right? Maybe I'll share a cell with Doug Wilson, right? Maybe that would be nice, but hey, wait, is that slavery, a work education?

No, it can't be because the woke crowd isn't upset about it. People who are Christian that support Bernie Sanders, they're not in trouble for that, so that must not be slavery. Anyway, I digress, but needless to say, yeah, I took a hit from the Twitter mob, and it's because of this montage that I put out there.

I put out a montage about Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and if you haven't seen that, you need to go watch it. I know there's many new subscribers in the last few days, probably because of the video, but if you haven't seen it, go watch it.

If you know people in the SBC, send it to them. You can send it in the raw footage form, or you can send it with my commentary, I don't really care, but it's really, it's interesting because it shows, it proves that standpoint epistemology, critical race theory, liberation theology, they're all being taught on some level at this school, and no one wants to deal with that.

I predicted this about three and a half hours before I dropped the video last Saturday. I said, and I had the screenshot, I said, no one's gonna wanna deal with this content. What they'll do is they'll do an ad hominem.

They'll attack my character. They'll say I'm sexist, or they'll say I'm racist, and sure enough, that morning, the racist thing got started. John's a racist, that's what motivated him to make this montage.

Now that's ridiculous. Anyone who knows me knows that's ridiculous. It's laughable, it's absurd, but it works on Twitter, and a side note about Twitter real quick. Twitter, it's number one, terrible place to have a conversation about anything.

You're limited in what you can say. It's public, anyone can jump in, and a rabbit trail can form. Any of the other social media platforms are better for a discussion, but the other thing about Twitter is there's more leftists on Twitter for some reason, and I think it's the talk show radio dynamic.

The reason people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are popular is because people listen to them as they're working. They're for the working class person, and radio is what resonates with them, and I think it's the same in this dynamic.

If you look at YouTube, if you look at all the various places this montage has been posted, it's well over 8 ,000 views already. Now compare that, get a sense of proportion. I wanna say this to conservatives who are depressed on Twitter.

If you look at Twitter, what are there, 300, 500, 600 people upset at me, people that never would have liked me anyway, never would have been fans, and now some of them are going after Doug Wilson and John MacArthur.

They never would have been fans of those guys. Compare that to the thousands of people, the working class people who, they don't have time to have an argument on Twitter that's probably on a third grade level and is all moral posturing and virtue signaling.

They're listening because they can pop a YouTube video on while they're plowing or while they're doing whatever their blue collar job is. So all that to say, don't get discouraged that there's a Twitter mob, and they're very angry and very loud.

Yeah, they have no sense of humor. We realize this. I went back and forth with a few of them. There's no point with most of them. There's just, you cannot have an actual nuanced discussion. It's just gonna be name calling.

You're a white supremacist. And now it's gotten to the point where, I saw Danny Akin doubled down, said Walter Strickland's teaching is good. He's doing good work on Twitter. And I noticed some people told me this, but some SBC trustees are saying that you can't trust that montage to people who posted it because, well, it came from someone who's a white supremacist.

Two things. Number one, this is whataboutism, all right? Because there's the same crowd that hates whataboutism when it's used to defend Trump. They will use it at the drop of a hat when they don't wanna deal with something inconvenient.

They'll say, well, what about the fact that he's a white supremacist? Well, what if I am? I'm not. I'll tell you real quick. My experience with white supremacy is very narrow. I met a guy in Michigan last year who was a white supremacist.

It was like the first time I'd met someone really out there white supremacist. I corrected him on the spot. There was a guy who was saved out of the alt-right. He had some white supremacist leanings.

Told him he needed to confess them. He repented. He's a Christian. Praise God. When I was in New York, I'm not gonna go through the story, but there was a group of men that I worked with and some of them had some definitely racially insensitive views.

That's kind of the extent of my experience with actual white supremacy. And I hated it every time I saw it. It's absolutely disgusting. I grew up in a multicultural church. I love the people that I grew up with.

They love me. Anyone who knows me knows that's an absolutely ridiculous charge to level against me, but it was leveled, all right? It's whataboutism, all right? Number two, it's standpoint epistemology, which is what I was warning about in the montage of those at Southeastern who were promoting this stuff.

Standpoint epistemology, and this is rudimentary. I'm gonna have a professor come and talk about this soon, but basically says that your social group has its own truth and it cannot be questioned, and you take that.

So that's why there's a black experience, right? And there's a white experience, and there's whatever your social group is. Your level of oppression plays into it. Intersectionality makes it more complicated, but you have this experience you bring to things, and that's what determines truth.

So if people say that I'm a white supremacist, what they're saying is that my editing skills in a montage were motivated by white supremacy, and so you can't trust it because those particular edits are white supremacist.

No one has made an argument for this. No one's going to the videos, watching them, seeing where I took the clips from, and then making an argument that, well, I could see how someone who has white supremacy would take that out.

It's an absurd argument. It's ridiculous. And standpoint epistemology, we may be too late with some of these guys. I mean, I saw this from the seminary level, but it's horrible. It's a horrible, anti-biblical understanding of truth.

It's postmodern, and this is what we've come down to now. And so they're using whataboutism, they're using standpoint epistemology, and there's part of me that's like, who cares? It's just the Twitter mob.

But I also thought, this is a good teaching opportunity, I think. Number one, I think, to be encouraged, to see like, guys, I'm not backing down. I would be satisfied being canceled and scrubbing toilets.

I'd be satisfied being the face of the movement. I don't care. What I care about is that this heresy, and I'm willing to call it that, some of these guys have been given way too much benefit of the doubt.

They're no good, some of them. This heresy, though, that's being promoted needs to end. And that's where I'm at. I care about the church, I care about the word of God, I care about truth. And so that's what motivates me to do what I'm doing.

And right now, we have a situation in which there's a supply and a demand issue. I think if there was a really good, godly, man's man, right, who ran for office, we may not have a Trump, because that guy might have gotten the position.

But we don't really have that. We have that there is a demand issue, because there's not enough of supply of really godly men who have a backbone, who are willing to stand up against this stuff. And to Tom Askell's credit, he retweeted my video.

I don't know if he, maybe he wouldn't do that now, I don't know. But we've never had a discussion about white supremacy or slavery or any of that stuff. But Tom Askell sees that there's some truth in this montage and it needs to be answered, he's concerned.

That's a man who's gonna do that. I really do think it is, because he's got a platform. And people are already trying to put me around his neck as a weight and say, well, if you endorse John, and he's a white supremacist, you're a white supremacist.

And the things they're saying about him are frankly disgusting. It's slander, it's lying. But it'll work on a lot of conservatives. A lot of conservatives with platforms are deathly afraid to be called names by the left.

And Trump was not. And I think that's why Trump is where he's at. And in the SBC, there's a similar dynamic going on, there just isn't a Trump. And we don't want a Trump, right? But we do want a Christian man who's willing to stand up and say, I don't care if I'm called sexist or racist, you can try to cancel me, I'm gonna stand upon the word of God and I trust him.

And it's one of the reasons I respect Robert Oscar Lopez, to be honest with you. He could have stayed where he was at, drawing a paycheck and settled down and not said anything, and he didn't, because he knew that the word of God should not be compromised.

And he doesn't know what he's gonna be doing for work. And I think we're gonna see the Lord provide. And that's the exciting part of all this. And you need to be encouraged. When people persecute you and it's unjust, scripture says to rejoice.

And that's what we ought to do, we ought to rejoice. And that's hard for us sometimes. I mean, for me, at first I was like, come on guys, really, you're gonna go that direction? I kind of knew they would, but I was like, ah, come on.

And as things progressed, I just started having fun with it. You can look at my Twitter, some of the things I said that were jokes. And then I just didn't take them seriously, which makes them more mad.

And then I think just thanking God, I actually took a walk and I just said, Lord, thank you, thank you for this. That people are lying about me. And it's because I'm trying to take a stand for the truth here.

And it's because I love Christ. And so I love the word. And those are the things that you wanna be persecuted for, if you're gonna be persecuted, right? So this is a teaching opportunity though. And one of the reasons I wanna talk about this is because social justice warriors do not make distinctions.

They have a very hard time with that. And even if you don't care, I'm gonna get into a little bit. I can't say everything I wanna say, but I'm starting the process at least of putting out some material on the monument debate, the history debate.

It's not just gonna be the Confederate stuff. It's because I'm seeing it now. I live in Virginia. I'm seeing attacks on Jefferson and Washington. And the low hanging fruit is going first, but it's gonna affect everything in American history.

If the South is in stage four cancer, as far as getting rid of icons, heroes, et cetera, the greater population of the United States is in about stage two. The founding fathers are being canceled. We're just at the beginning of it.

So not everyone's aware yet. But I think we need to start the discussion of this because you may not care about the Southern monuments. Maybe you live in Minnesota, but you need to gear up for the debate that is coming your way.

I remember Mark Dever. This was, I think a year and a half ago now. Well, maybe it was two years ago now. It was at the T4G two years ago. He said, from the stage, in front of everyone, he said, and I thought, isn't anyone gonna call him on this?

He goes, you know, George Washington, that guy probably wasn't a Christian. And the reason he said he wasn't, now that's not, that's okay. You can talk about that, whether Washington was a Christian or not.

I happen to think he probably was. And there's arguments people on both sides use. But that's neither here nor there. The reason Mark Dever said he probably wasn't a Christian was because, well, he owned slaves.

Couldn't be a Christian if he owned slaves. Now I have to ask, all right? Now think about this for a minute with me. And if you have to pause this and pause it and think about it, does that disqualify someone from being a Christian, owning slaves?

Does that disqualify someone from being a Christian? Think of all the folks in the Bible, biblical characters in the Old Testament, biblical characters in the New Testament, who would be disqualified if that truly was a disqualification.

And yet they were not. They were heroes of the faith. They were commended in many instances by apostles. So you need to be careful when making such grandiose statements like that. I think some people have good motivations.

They haven't thought through it. They have good motivations. In their mind, they come up with an image of like, it's like a Southern slaveholder whipping someone. And that's horrible. Anyone who would do that and advocate it can't be a Christian.

And I would say, yeah, that's true. Like if you think that's morally right to abuse someone, then yeah, you're probably not a Christian. Or at least you can't do that for long. You need to repent at some point, right?

But you can be an error. Corinthians were an error. You can be an error for a long period of time, but you're gonna have to repent eventually. But slavery in and of itself though is not a disqualification for being a Christian.

And I know I may sound like I'm a broken record right now, but it's important to realize that before I get started with the discussion that I'm about to commence here. So here are the things that I got in trouble for.

Here are the things that were used, I should say, to try to get me in trouble, to create a diversion so people wouldn't look at that montage. Number one, I dressed up in a Confederate uniform when I was 12 years old and it wasn't actually a Confederate uniform.

People were saying it was, it wasn't. At the Virginia Military Institute, they wear the same uniforms today. They wear the same uniforms back then. And I happened to have, I'm gonna just tell you the story.

I happened to have a guy in my church I really looked up to who went to VMI. And we had just seen him in this parade. He had dressed up in his VMI uniform and it was just awesome. I just remember thinking like, man, I wanna go to VMI.

I just wanna be a soldier, you know? And I didn't have a thought about who was right in the Civil War at that time. I just, I was just, I just liked heroes and guns and fighting. I was a typical boy. And my parents and I and my brothers went to the Battle of New Market and there's a display in there, the National Park Service had put up where you could play dress up.

So it was for kids. And you could put on a VMI uniform. It's not a Confederate uniform, it's a VMI uniform. But you could stand in front of, to get your picture taken, that's where the pictures were, in front of this Confederate naval jack.

And it's because during the war, they took kids from VMI to go fight in the Battle of New Market. And they're commended as heroes, they're local heroes. Well, that was when I was 12. So we're talking 18 years ago that this picture was taken.

I'm sure that display is not there anymore. But it happened to be on my Facebook. And so I think I know the person who did the deep dive on me, who tried to find all these things to create this narrative.

And it's actually someone I feel very sorry for. Another person who doesn't, their life is small. I think they don't have a great sense of humor. But anyway, this was released as, look, he must be a white supremacist.

Now, I just, I'm gonna put this out there. How many of you when you were a kid dressed up? I mean, I dressed up as a pirate, right? It's actually worse. Like you're actually, by definition, someone who's stealing and robbing and raping.

But for some reason, we're okay with that. But I dressed up as a pirate. I dressed up with every uniform. I've dressed up as Yankees. I've dressed up as Confederates. I've dressed up as Revolutionary War soldiers.

I've dressed up as World War II soldiers. You name it, I had the uniform. I had my coon skin cap. I loved hats. I loved uniforms. That's who I was as a kid. And of course, those pictures, they're just skipped over.

None of that stuff. And so, how many of those pictures do you have of yourself? When you were a kid? I mean, they're coming for Confederate monuments today, but it's not, they could come for the Union monuments soon, guys.

I don't think you realize this. Some of you, at least. I don't think you realize they could come for the Revolutionary War monuments. Are you gonna get in trouble because you dressed up as a reenactor or dressed up as a kid?

That's one of the reasons I wanna talk about this, because I know this doesn't just apply to me. This is gonna apply to you guys. People are gonna try to cancel you because of things you did that were innocuous, that you weren't trying to harm or offend anyone.

You didn't even think about it. Maybe you're just trying to honor your ancestors and not the negative aspects, but just the positive aspects. Not gonna be allowed to do it anymore in the minds of the minority, but they're growing on Twitter and on the left.

The other thing is I had a blog, and this was from my late teens. I had started, I was, I don't know, 16, 17. I started a blog that was dedicated to Southern history, specifically Confederate history.

It's because I was getting, at that point in my life, I was getting very interested in history. And here's the thing. I actually had seven blogs at the time. I know, I was one of these guys where I felt like I had, I was OCD about organizational stuff, and I couldn't just have one blog where I put all my writings.

I had to have seven of them where I put different topics. So I had one on vacations. I had one on, like two on guitar. One, like this is how crazy I was. I had one for worship guitar and one for country music guitar.

And I would put videos and tabs I made and stuff. I had a blog for worldview. I can't even remember all of them, but I had all these different blogs. Well, one of them was called The Rising Seed. And I had, and it's after a quote by Jefferson Davis.

He said, truth crushed to the earth is still truth. And like a seed, it will rise again. And what he was talking about was the truth that secession is a constitutional right. Okay, you can disagree with that.

I'm fine with that. I'm gonna talk about that in a minute. But this is my reasoning. I just want you to hear what I was thinking when I was 17 years old. I really, I had an internship in Albany. I was interested in politics.

I lived in New York at the time. And I actually, I was very close to going to Liberty Law School. I was, I really, I had some issues at my college. I went to school, went to college early. And I had ADF got involved.

And I just really, I knew there was a difference between some states and others. I was born in California, raised in New York, had a lot of family in Ohio and Mississippi. And I knew there was a difference in Ohio and there was a difference in Mississippi from California and New York.

And I just thought, man, I really wish, this was like my dream. If Mississippi, let's say, could secede from the Union, or Ohio, whatever, and create a place in which babies could be safe. No abortions in Mississippi anymore, right?

Because they're gonna take a stand. And some of that you see is already starting to happen. But at the time it wasn't. And I thought that would be my dream. And the other thing I was concerned about was I think the Department of Education and the public school system is, they're moving this country in a terrible direction.

I think schools should be, there should be parental involvement, it should be local. The more local, the better. And so my dream was, I wanna become a lawyer, I wanna become a constitutional lawyer, I wanna eliminate the Department of Education and I want to outlaw abortion.

And I think that a way to do it is to either nullification or if the federal government threatens a state, you secede. But here's the problem with that, obviously. And I think I was more idealistic back then.

I'm not on the same, I mean, I guess I believe that same principle, but I realize all the things that stand in the way of that. People are naturally conditioned to think that's not an option because of the way they view the Civil War.

So if you think that secession is unconstitutional, it's illegal, you can't do it, it's wrong, you'll never do it. You'll never stand up for the unborn babies in your state because you think it's wrong to do that.

It's illegal. And so this was the thing that bothered me. And so I thought, well, somehow, someone needs to show people that secession, and I come to this conviction through some of my own study. I mean, I went to, look, a very liberal college.

So I knew well the Marxist line and all of this stuff. But I'd done some of my own study and I had come to the conclusion that no, secession is justifiable. And I need to now convince people though that the Civil War does not disqualify a state from taking that and going that direction.

I wanted to protect the right of secession and I knew re-educating people on that topic would be necessary. Now, one of the things, when you're talking about the Civil War, is people think it was all about slavery, right?

Most people, where I grew up in New York, everyone thought that, just about. And so that's the barrier that really, the moral barrier people have in their head for, well, secession can't be right because that means slavery.

They just like, the two are integrated. And so on some of the articles that I had written at that time, I had tried to show that not only is secession constitutional and it doesn't really have anything to do with this moral question of slavery, but even at the time, in context, the war itself was not really about slavery.

Now, having said that, I recognize the slavery debate, meaning the political debate over slavery and the extension is the word used at the time, but really it was more the enumeration of slaves being proportionately put into the Western territory.

That was a huge debate that led to the Lower South seceding. That was a big part of it. The tariff had something to do with it as well, but I don't shy away from that at all. I know that was a big part of the reason for secession, but the reason for the war itself and the reason for the Upper South secession too was not that.

And so I tried to argue for this. Well, anyway, you're not allowed to hold that view anymore. That blog doesn't exist. I think I deleted it and a bunch of others a couple years ago. That's why I know the guy who did this.

That's why I think I know who it is. They did it a couple years ago. They would have had to to find those screenshots. And so what they tried to do was show, they tried to paint me as somehow being a supporter of slavery, which means I'm a white supremacist.

And so if you take the picture of me, the blog, you can paint me in such horrible ways. And then there was the tweet. This is the tweet that was heard around the world. And this is what I said. Some people were getting onto me and this is where people, I don't even know, there's probably like 400, that's probably liberal, maybe 300 people that were really angry about this.

I said, I defend the biblical position on slavery because someone was asking me about that. I said, I'm glad Chateau slavery, which was often justified by ethnic superiority and rested on man capture is gone in the US.

It's a rabbit trail to think that the moral question about that is what inspired the North to invade the South. And then I said, I think it's dangerous to go after slavery as a sin in and of itself. Now, remember, remember, I'm stopping.

Remember what I just said a few moments ago about the patriarchs and about Philemon and the teaching on slavery in a pagan system that Paul gave us. Remember that. There's biblical instruction on this.

So that's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking I'm reasoning with a Christian here. I think it was someone who called himself a Christian, but so I said, I think it's dangerous to go after slavery, dangerous to go after slavery as a sin in and of itself and paint men like Lee, Washington, and Edwards as sinners simply because they participated, assuming they obeyed God's regulations, concerning the practice.

We have to go back to scripture. Now I'm gonna spend a good portion of this video explaining this to you, explaining why I said exactly what I said in this tweet, but I don't back down from any of that.

I do think we have to go back to scripture and scripture gives instruction. Paul has given us instruction on for slaves and for masters in a pagan slave system. I mean, think about that for a minute. Look, people will talk about American slavery being race-based, that's the word they usually use, and based on man capture.

Those are usually the two things that are used to say, well, anyone who participated is just evil. And look at the Roman system with me for a moment. The Roman system was based on citizenship from Rome.

You couldn't be a slave and be a citizen of Rome. The Roman system was, a lot of the slaves that they got were from conquests. Rome would literally go out. They were capturing people. This was war, but they would capture people and sell them into slavery, the non-Romans.

And look, I don't remember, correct me if I'm wrong, you can send me the picture if there is something like this, but I don't remember gladiatorial arenas in Alabama, right? Rome had them, Rome had them.

Incredibly abusive system. And that doesn't mean it was always abusive, but sex slavery was also a big part of it. There were slaves that, it was very common practice. If you look through any of, on like the book of 1 Corinthians or even Ephesians, a lot of the commentaries will talk about the culture being men typically had a wife and then they had a slave for sex.

They had sex slaves. That was absolutely wrong. But they actually had, at least in the South, when that kind of thing happened, it was absolutely wrong. It was a damnable offense, but it wasn't something that was condoned by the whole, like a whole population didn't say, oh yeah, like that's your sex slave.

In Rome, they did. In Rome, boys were even part of that. So I'm not gonna go into too much detail on this, but if you really do some digging and you really compare the two systems, you'll realize that the Roman slave system is at least as bad, okay?

And Paul gave instructions for slave owners in that system. He gave instructions for them of how to be godly, to treat your slave in a kind way, not to abuse them, to practice Christian charity. And so the question really is, did Lee, did Edwards, did Washington exercise those things?

Did they follow what scripture says about this? That's really the question we should be asking. You can't ask that question anymore. Can't ask that question. I'll ask you this. Do we ask that question about prison guards, right?

Prison system really isn't biblical. There's no way for restitution. It's slavery, really. I mean, a lot of people are saying this now. And then finally, the 13th Amendment is now viewed as that's the, because you can be a slave in prison.

That's fine. Well, yeah, yeah, you can. And you can make license plates and you can do all sorts of things and your labor belongs to the government. And that's not really a righteous system. If you steal something, you should be able to make, you should be able to recompense that.

My grandfather-in-law is a prison guard or was, he retired. I am not willing to say that my grandfather-in-law was sinning because he was a prison guard. Were there times he probably sinned as a prison guard?

Yeah. I'm not gonna say because he was a prison guard, he's partaking in this evil system. I've known some social workers who are Christians. I am not prepared to say, because listen, so the welfare system in this country, especially on the national level, it is not biblical.

It is not, if a man doesn't work, he shouldn't eat. And we have a system that is based on not working. It is the opposite of that verse. It is a wrong system. And it behaves a lot like slavery, to be honest with you.

There's generational welfare and people who live in it, the conditions that they live in and the conditions that they're giving their children, in some, there's some circumstances in which it's almost worse.

They don't even have the dignity of work. And there's obviously situations in American slavery that were far worse too and far more abusive. I'm not saying that welfare is worse than slavery. I'm not making, because I know someone's gonna take that out of context.

I'm just saying it is a wrong system. I'm not prepared to say, though, that those who are social workers, that are Christians, are in sin. I could go on, I could go on. I'm not prepared to say that someone who shops at Walmart is in sin.

Yeah, there's sweatshop labor that goes in in foreign countries. It's basically slave labor, guys. It's on that level. The conditions are on that level. I'm not prepared to say that, well, that's a sin for them to go and shop there.

We have to be biblical people. And we're not accustomed to thinking about the things I just mentioned in that way. We're not accustomed to thinking, well, okay, I participate in the American tax system.

I pay taxes. Some of that goes to Planned Parenthood. I guess I'm a sinner, right? No, you're not necessarily a sinner. Because someone else in the system, because it's an evil system, you can work to abolish that system or to reform that system, and you can still be a salt and light in that system.

That's the example that we're given from Paul. That's the New Testament example of how to deal with these things. And I'm not prepared to say that the Bible was not sufficient for men in the 17th and 18th century and 19th century.

It is sufficient, and it was sufficient for them back then. It gave them guidance in the situation that they found themselves in, just like it does for us today. And I'm afraid a lot of these woke folks have not thought too deeply into this subject.

They are very quick to condemn someone like Jonathan Edwards, and they haven't bothered. I've read everything Edwards, it's not much, has said about slavery. I'm not prepared to condemn the man. I really am not.

Was he perfect?

No.

But the question is, the burden of proof is on them. Can you prove that they were disregarding the biblical commands on this? All right? So hopefully that's opened your mind a little bit for the rest of what I'm gonna share with you.

All right, I am back. Sorry about that. This is gonna be a long episode, I can tell already, because there's just, and I can't cover everything I wanna cover, but if you need to listen to this in bits, then go for it.

We were talking about cancel culture and MLK days this weekend, and thinking about this, Southern Baptists love MLK now. I mean, I talked about this last year. Seminaries are promoting him. Send Network is doing a day of service in honor of him.

And MLK had some real problems, right? Rape, running around on his wife, plagiarism, bad theology. But Southern Baptists don't really seem to care about those things as much as far as platforming. They'll still platform him.

But I don't think that we should take down MLK signs, right? Because we're honoring him for his civil rights contributions, for the I Have a Dream speech, which is a great speech. And that's how we think of him.

But that same grace that I'm extending to MLK, and most Americans do, is not extended to someone like Jonathan Edwards, who there's no evidence he abused his slaves, but because he participated in this wicked system, he should be canceled.

And I just, I don't go along with that. MLK, civil rights leader, icon, that Southern Baptists now are looking to, he didn't go after Confederate or Southern symbols, or a general American symbol. He wasn't going after Washington and Jefferson.

Up from slavery, Booker T. Washington, there we go. That's a great book, by the way, you should read it. But Booker T. Washington actually thought that putting up these Confederate monuments was a symbol of reconciliation.

And so if they can be okay with these things, I don't know why we can't. I do know why, but I'm making a point. The attack on these symbols, Southern symbols, and now broadening out to American symbols and figures, has really started since the civil rights movement, like after it ended.

Now, I know some of you think it's still going on, et cetera, et cetera, but after segregation was actually ended, you had even Hollywood, which has really left. You had Dukes of Hazzard, and you had in the music industry all sorts of artists like Lynyrd Skynyrd, who would use the flag and symbols, and Bill Clinton used it with Al Gore in their campaign in the early 90s.

But something happened in 1989. Critical race theory got started. And in a decade, in the 90s and 2000s, when actually race relations were getting better, somehow those symbols became under fire. Now, why is that?