MikeSlater
Politics • Spirituality/Belief • Culture
Politics By Faith Podcast, May 20, 2023
Why We Believe The Mindless Narrative
May 19, 2023

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We have a media today that is fueled not by truth, but by clicks. And a media that will make up the most absurd stories (Trump with prostitutes in Moscow) and people run with it assuming it's true. Today we'll share two viral tiktoks to prove this point and bring it back to the false prophet Hananiah to prove there's nothing new under the sun.


Welcome to Politics by Faith. I'm Mike Slater. Friendly reminder that the transcript of every podcast we do is on MikeSlater.Locals.com. If you're new to the podcast, what we do is we take something in the news that is causing anxiety and we don't like anxiety. I don't want anxiety. So to get rid of it, we talk about the story, then we get down to the root of what's really going on in the story. Like, what is the root sin, basically. Then we give some historical perspective and a biblical story, some biblical piece to help that anxiety go away, and then something that is in our control.

0:00:36
So I saw two very disturbing TikTok videos. I don't have TikTok, but they went viral outside of TikTok. And I think it says a lot about where we are. First, this one's in London. Three younger, I don't know the ages, I don't know if they're in high school, maybe just out, 20, something like that. Three younger black guys. By the way, the race doesn't matter. This is all behavior of the underclass. I cannot recommend enough a book by Theodore Dalrymple, it's called Life at the Bottom, and it's about the underclass of England, race is irrelevant.

0:01:14
So there's this TikTok guy who makes viral videos and the game is walking into random houses. Now it's worth noting that in London, no one has guns. So you could play that game over there. So he's walking down the street with, it looks like two other guys. He got three guys in total. And there's a woman outside of her house, in the front, in the garden. So these three guys just walk into her house.

0:01:45
And she's outside like, what are you doing? And she's like, James, or whatever his name is, or James, James! And he's downstairs, and there's a couple of little kids downstairs with him, and here's what happens. Get inside the house, let's go. Hey, Adam. ♪ I'm trying to go, but I can't go ♪ James? James?

0:02:10
James? James? James? James? Hi. You man come. Hello James. We need to speak to James. James. Hi. Hi. Oh. Is this where the study group is? No. No. What the hell is this? No. Now, what happens? Come on, come on, come on.

0:02:31
We're just in the study group. We've got kids, man. Oh, you've got kids on the phone. Oh, I thought this was a study group. I actually thought. And it's a study group. Now, fortunately for everyone, they just walk away. And that's the end of it. Now, again, there's a very high likelihood that if this happened in Texas, he'd be shot. Now, think about that, too, by the way. What if he did, or what if the guy happened to have a knife in his hand and he stabs the TikTok influencer star?

0:03:03
We do like a Daniel Penney situation. He'd be charged with murder. Could you imagine the headlines if a 40-year-old white guy shot three black teenagers? No other facts would be relevant. It wouldn't matter that they walked into his house. None of that would matter. Or even if this was in London and he just had a knife. If a white guy stabbed a black teenager, oh, he was just looking for something to eat. The facts would not matter. Just like the second story. Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.

0:03:35
A woman, employee of the hospital, she's a physician's assistant, six months pregnant, by the way, the original New York Post story was that she leaves work and steals a bike from a young black man. Now in New York City they have these bikes, they're called city bikes that you can rent CITI, like the bank, and the bikes, they're locked up in these stalls and you pay with your credit card or your phone and then the bike unlocks and then it charges you until you put it in some other stall, wherever you're going, right?

0:04:06
So the claim is that a young black man took the bike out and she stole it from him and luckily he got it on video and here she is screaming and crying about it, acting like a Karen. New York Post headline, NYC hospital Karen denies trying to steal city bike from young black man. So here's the video that that young black man took. Oh, I took it. Oh, You're not buying you're not crying.

0:05:14
I got you up in here. Where? You pulled it out? There's a very popular guy on Twitter. He said a suspected white supremacist woman that's the lead tried to steal a city bike from a black kid after he paid for it. None of this is true. And when him and his friends wouldn't allow her to steal it she went through all the Karen tactics to try to get the black youths hemmed up. Screaming for help, fake crying, mayo babbling. Did it sound like at the end of that video did it sound like one of the guys said the baby's gonna come out retarded? I think that's what I heard. So this whole thing is framed as she stole his bike and it took about a day or so before her lawyers released her receipt that showed of course she was the one who paid for it. But for whatever reason they decided to come up to her and video it all and try to ruin her life.

0:06:53
She was placed on leave by the hospital because people thought she was a white supremacist. She was in the New York Post as a white supremacist. Jeez. All right. So, we have two things going on here. We have in the second story people believing things immediately without any evidence whatsoever, but believing it so easily because it fits a narrative. And in the first story we have some sensationalism. We have a show. We have watch this, click this. And I want to make the argument here that this is nothing new. There's nothing new under the sun. And there's something pretty darn close to this in the Old Testament, which always blows my mind how everything's in the Bible. So that's the goal. We'll see if it works.

0:07:39
In my head it's great. I'll see if I can make sense of it with words. But what's really going on here? So we got pride involved, we have people doing deceitful things thinking they're invincible. In this case they may be right actually. I'm sure none of these videos is the complete disregard for truth, of course, and proper boundaries, but this added element of doing it for views. So we're going to toss to the wind. We're going to completely throw away and disregard proper civilized behavior for views because Because what these guys did, they themselves put online for people to watch and laugh at and get more followers and this creates this mob mentality.

0:08:36
We talked about mobs earlier in the week and the importance of avoiding the mob. But with social media, everyone creates their own mob even if it's just like a made up one in their head. But they're putting it online so it's like we're cultivating a mob of followers wherever we go, and that causes people to do things that they normally wouldn't do, because now they're egged on by their so-called fans. And we, for a decade or so now, we've just been acting in extra irrational ways.

0:09:07
I don't think those three guys in London would have done that if they weren't filming themselves for views. And I don't think these, maybe five guys or so, and I think it was five guys in New York City, would have done that if they weren't filming it for laughs either. Social media has made people act out of their minds even more than usual. You know what I think of it like, so I don't like birds.

0:09:30
Let's see if this makes sense. I don't like birds. Birds have these beady little eyes and they have no souls. So, they're scary to me because they don't care. From far away, they're fine. Oh, they're beautiful birds, whatever. But a bird up close, I don't like them because they have no moral compass. A friend of mine, here's what I mean.

0:09:53
A friend of mine, his two-year-old son was crawling into a chicken coop and he got stuck headfirst inside of a chicken coop. And the chickens started pecking at his head and they almost pecked his eyes out if dad wasn't there to scare the birds away and pull his son out. If dad wasn't there those birds would have pecked out the kids eyeballs and not even cared. They wouldn't have felt bad. The chickens weren't thinking, well this innocent little boy might need these eyes. This is not proper behavior. This is not becoming of a bird. They just would have eaten his eyeballs and then they would have gone back to eating the bugs off the ground. You wouldn't know that.

0:10:35
I felt like birds and you could see him in the eyes. You look in their eyes you're like oh you don't have a soul and I feel like social media has turned people into equally mindless and immoral zombies. You're like oh I'll just eat this person's eyeballs out. We'll get me views. Great, done. And we've all been made zombified by phones or we've seen it. Hey kids, can you come here for a second? Yeah, yeah, yeah, dad. It's great.

0:11:03
No, I love it. Yeah, yeah. You want, oh yeah, be right there. Right? Or you've done it yourself, right? You're stuck in your phone. It's bad enough when a phone distracts you so much that you go from being a moral, present person into being an absent-minded, amoral person, but it's worse when it goes even a step further into social media making you an immoral person.

0:11:29
You do evil things, and your conscience is so seared you don't even care. You don't even know. You're just like, will this get me views? Okay, great, I'll do it. Let's lament this for a little bit, and then we'll give some history and some biblical examples, because this actually is nothing new, which is supposed to make the anxiety go away, but I do think it's worse now.

0:11:58
But let's lament. It all makes me very uneasy. We're just not able to live together as human beings anymore. On my local radio show the other day, there's a town in San Diego that voted to no longer open up their city government sessions with a prayer. And my first thought was, I'm shocked they even still do that. But it's just a shame that we're not a Christian country anymore. It's a shame that we don't have shared values. By the way, that's why I'm so grateful for the Public Square app, if I may. This is actually a perfect time to talk about it.

0:12:39
We do not live amongst each other with shared values. We just don't. And our founders are very worried about that. I lament it, but I'm also not going to continue to give my money to people who have not just different values, but antithetical values, hate my values and have the opposite one. I can't do it. I'm not going to give my money to Adidas and they're just going to have men in women's bathing suits. I can't. I'm not doing it.

0:13:08
So Public Square is my way out. They have curated businesses across the country and near you, restaurants, coffee shops, banks, clothing, makeup, whatever, everything, you name a thing, cars, whatever. And the owners of the businesses have to agree to five values in order to be featured on the app. And you can rest assured, you can have confidence and a joy in knowing that you are spending with people who share your values. Public Square app, totally free to download.

0:13:41
And you go to publicsq.com, you can read those five values on the website. Just scroll way down to the bottom. Public Square app, totally free download. And I'm grateful it's here. I lament that we need it. Because we just don't have a similar worldview anymore. And we don't all need to agree like lockstep, but if 70% of people had a biblical worldview, we'd be a thriving unified nation. John Adams said our Constitution was only made for a moral and religious people.

0:14:11
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. I came across this Dwight D Eisenhower quote the other day. George Weigel, he wrote a great piece called Ike's Insight in First Things Magazine. So this was 1952. It was right before the inauguration and he was speaking at some event. It just won World War II and he said, our form of government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith and I don't care what it is. Like, now, I do care what it is chaos. It's this pluralist diversity is our strength nonsense that's gonna kill us. Let me quote George Weigel here. Authentic religious faith reminds us that this world is not all there is and our obligations extend beyond me. Now, one of the things that social media is it's all about me, me, me, me, me. The idea that a camera can be turned around and constantly focused on me all the time, that's new. So Christianity and authentic religious faith, again, there's more than just the here and now and my obligations are beyond just me. He says, what does any of this have to do though with our form of government? A great deal, I would suggest.

0:15:38
As even a cursory historical survey confirms, self-governance is not the norm in human affairs. One or another form of authoritarianism is. You say, oh, but Slater, we don't have an authoritarian government, we have a democracy. Okay, well, here's the deal. Germany, prior to World War II, created the Weimar Republic. It's because the new government was not formed in Berlin, but it was formed in Weimar. This new government was formed by some of the finest minds of the time.

0:16:06
The designers got the mechanisms of democracy right. Separations of powers, regular elections, independent judiciary, etc. But when the Great Depression brought unbearable pressure to bear on that new democracy, the Weimar Republic crumbled. Then Hitler's third right came into power in an election that wrote the obituary for interwar Germany's brief experiment in democratic self-government. The crucial lesson to be drawn from that debacle is that democracy is not a matter of institutions and procedures alone. So they had the ingredients, they had the separation of powers, they had this, they like on the surface it looked like they had all the parts, but that's not all it takes. It also takes a critical mass of citizens, critical mass. That's why I was talking about like a 70% earlier.

0:16:49
I don't know what the percentage is, but it's more than we have now. It takes a critical mass of citizens living by certain virtues and the convictions that undergird them to make a democracy work so that the result is individual human flourishing and social solidarity. I love that so much. All of the things we take for granted, rule of law, which we talked about last week, free and fair elections, to just treating each other decently, decently like you don't just walk into someone's house randomly, you don't steal things from people and video it to try and ruin their life.

0:17:25
These are all things that we've taken for granted. They're not normal. Like the old way of living in America, the one that you grew up in, that was not normal. That was an anomaly. You have to work to get that. And I lament that it's like we've given up or forgotten and now we're in a very different place. All right, let's get to the history. I just thought of a Ben Franklin quote.

0:18:00
Let me share it at the end of the episode here. So, let's start with history and then we'll get to the Bible. Again, we have two things going on here. We have the sensational video. Look at me, I'm going to go into someone's house for views. And then the second story is the lying about something and us just believing it so quickly because it appeals to a preconceived notion like, oh, clearly the nurse or the physician's assistant, the pregnant physician's assistant stole the bike from the five black kids, five black young men.

0:18:35
Clearly that's what happened. Like, what? Why would we believe that? So we're putting those two things together here. And I think of yellow journalism. Okay, why have I been thinking about that? You know the Durham report, right? This idea that Donald Trump was a Russian asset, Russia collusion. Remember 2016 to 2020, all we heard about was Russia collusion, Russia stole the election.

0:18:56
And excuse me if there's any kids listening right now, but the claim was that the Kremlin had video of Donald Trump urinating on prostitutes in Moscow. And because of that, they were able to control Trump and steal the election for him in 2016. That was the, that is insane. That is absolutely insane. But the media ran with it and would not quiet about, would not hush about it for four years. And the Durham report came out and said, oh yeah, that's a lie. Like that, none of this ever happened.

0:19:35
And the Washington Post and the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for it. A Pulitzer Prize back in 2018. Here's what they said, For deeply sourced, relentless, that's for sure, reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation's understanding of Russian interference didn't happen in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the president-elect's transition team, and his eventual administration.

0:20:01
All of it completely made up and they still want a Pulitzer for it. New York Times had no comment when asked if they're gonna return it and the Washington Post said, the Post stands by its reporting. Let me quote John Nolte. He said, you gotta understand what has happened to the left in this country, which includes the corporate media.

0:20:17
To them, the goal of an American living under centralized government fascism is so moral that anything done to further that goal is moral. What they want is so good to them, so righteous, so moral, they will do anything to get their even lie. And they won a Pulitzer Prize for it all. But then it got me thinking about Pulitzer. It's named after Joseph Pulitzer. This is the main guy behind yellow journalism. Do you remember that term from eighth grade social studies class?

0:20:54
This was an era in American media, late 1800s, led by Joseph Pulitzer, also Hearst, kind of an East coast, West coast battle, but the accusations were that these guys were making up wild sensationalist, completely unproven claims to get more readers. Sound familiar? We haven't changed a lick. Social media today is no different. Breaking news! Oh look at this Karen! She's crying! She's sobbing! She stole a bike from black people! Wild sensationalist unproven claims for clicks. Back then there weren't clicks but sales, today clicks. And now people with social media have taken that upon themselves.

0:21:43
Look at this wild and crazy thing I'm gonna do for views. And it's made everyone lose their minds. But the problem is because of broken human nature, it works. So when Pulitzer took over the New York World newspaper, it was a failing newspaper, they were losing money, they had 15,000 readers, and in a very short amount of time they were the biggest newspaper in the country with 600,000. They went from 15,000 to 600,000.

0:22:06
I've told the story a lot here of Woodrow Wilson, the very short of it. In 1919, Woodrow Wilson had a stroke and they kept it a secret for a year. And they kept him hidden for a year. But Louis Seibel did an interview with Woodrow Wilson, wrote this big long article about how wonderful he is and healthy and vibrant. And he's never been sharper and clearer and healthier. And he now has like a new lease on life and a new understanding of what's really important.

0:22:28
He's actually a better president now than before the stroke and he won a Pulitzer Prize for it and it was totally made up. He made up the whole thing. Woodrow Wilson was in awful shape. You could barely get out of bed. He couldn't put sentences together and he made up the whole thing. Lewis Seibold won a Pulitzer for it. He won a Pulitzer Prize and it was in the New York World newspaper. It was in Joseph P. Olson's newspaper. But you just think today how many stories are we told that just are not true at all. The Durham report, Russia collusion never happened. The Republicans in Kentucky just nominated for their governor, I think he was the Attorney General of Kentucky, who did not go after the police officers for killing Breonna Taylor.

0:23:15
Well, we were told that these police officers shot Breonna Taylor because they went to the wrong house. And it wasn't the wrong house, it was the right house. And they were looking for her in the right house and there was a guy inside who shot at them first. But you didn't hear the true story. I'm thinking of, because we're talking about Trump Charlottesville, the very fine people on both sides, lie, like this stuff never happened. But isn't it all just the same yellow journalism that Joseph Pulitzer was famous for?

0:23:43
Buys, reads, clicks. And today, everyone's in it for the clicks. Everyone's in it for the views. Everyone's in it for the follows. And we just go with it, especially if it fits what we really want to hear. Let me give you the biblical example. So I'm reading through Jeremiah and it's just amazing to me how relevant this is for us. These are a people who turned away from God and who are being punished for it. And this is what Jeremiah is warning them about. So Jeremiah was an Israelite priest who lived in Jerusalem and he was the prophet that God used to warn people, the people of Israel, to obey God or else God will punish you by the Babylonians coming from the north and taking over Jerusalem.

0:24:35
And he was right, of course. Israel broke the covenant with God. They were worshipping other gods, Canaanite gods, everywhere. Their leaders became corrupt. They abandoned the Torah. They were engaged in child sacrifice to Baal. It was like awful stuff. So in chapter seven, God says that the enemy from the north is gonna come. Well, God tells Jeremiah, and Jeremiah says that the enemy from the north, Babylon is gonna come and take us over.

0:25:00
Let's jump forward to Jeremiah 28. So at this point, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon put a puppet king in charge in Judah. So a few years go by, and the people of Judah thought that it was now time to rebel against Babylon. Jeremiah in chapter 27 says no don't do that don't rebel you need to just serve the king of Babylon wait and whatever you do do not listen to the false prophets for they are prophesying lies to you. It says 28 verse 15 I have not sent them declares the board they are prophesying lies in my name therefore I will banish you and you will perish both you and the prophets who prophesy to you." That was Jeremiah's message. Enter Hananiah. So Hananiah was a false prophet and he thought that Jeremiah's message was a real downer. So he claimed to be a spokesperson from God. That's what prophet means, he's a spokesperson. He was not. He comes in and says, thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel saying I have broken the yoke of the king of Babylon within two full years I will bring back to this place all the vessels of the Lord's house the Babylonians took everything out of the temple I will I will return I will bring back all the vessels of the Lord's house that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon took away from this place and carried about one and I will bring back to this place the son of the king with all the captives of Judah who went to Babylon for I will break the yoke of the king of Babylon." Now, Jeremiah, the true prophet, in chapter 27, said that they will be under the yoke of the king of Babylon. And Hananiah says, no, no, the Lord says, I will break the yoke. Which of those two messages do you think was more popular to the people of Judah? Which one do you think would have gotten more clicks? If each of these guys were running a church today, which one do you think people would go to? If each of these two guys had a TV show, which one do you think people would watch? Well, Hananiah has had a very popular message. It just wasn't true. Bible commentator F.B. Mayer, he says, men who follow simply their own thoughts or are deeply dyed with the spirit of society around them, are apt to prophesy smooth things, to such as live selfish and worldly lives." In other words, people want to hear what they want to hear.

0:27:28
Just like with the media. If someone says something that fits the narrative, no matter how insane it is, we are quick to believe it, if it fits the narrative, if it fits what we so desperately want to be true. So, of course, who did the king of Judah believe? Jeremiah saying, nope, keep going under the yoke of Babylon. Or did the king choose Hananiah? So, Jeremiah's response was, and this is all done in public, right? So, Jeremiah's response was, listen, I hope you're right. I wish you were right. And then Jeremiah says, but look at the prophets who came before me, Joel, Amos, Micah, Nahu, Habakkuk. They all spoke messages just like I'm speaking now from God and they were right.

0:28:12
But still they didn't believe him. Then there was a cool scene. So Jeremiah, to prove his point, he had a prop. He was actually wearing a yoke around his neck. So Hananiah goes over and he breaks it. And then he gives this big speech. He says, thus says the Lord, even so I will break the yoke of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon from the neck of all nations within the space of two full years. So, he goes over, breaks the yoke and Lord's like, see, this is what I'm gonna. So, not only do they have the nice, smooth words, he put on a nice show. Just like our media often does. It all looks very fancy.

0:28:48
Then, God, this is later, then God spoke to Jeremiah to go tell Hananiah and said, you have broken the yokes of wood, but you have made in their place yokes of iron. I have put a yoke of iron on the neck of these nations, that they may serve Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and they shall serve him. In other words, nice try. Nice try, Hananiah. You can't beat God. But don't worry for Hananiah. It ended up okay for the false prophet.

0:29:23
Then the prophet Jeremiah said to Hananiah, The prophet, hear now, Hananiah, the Lord has not sent you, but you make this people trust in a lie. Therefore, says the Lord, behold, I will cast you from the face of the earth. This year you shall die, because you have taught rebellion against the Lord." So Hananiah the prophet died in the same year. It did go badly for him. So to relate this to today, Hananiah told the people what they wanted to hear. He did not want to consider the reality of the situation. He did what was right in his own eyes and he did it in a flashy way, in a way that deceived people from what was true.

0:30:12
Those two social media videos just made me think of this story as everything is so sensational, everything is so convenient, all just fits perfectly. People aren't asking questions, and people are acting out of their minds, not using a dose of common sense, or even wanting to. It's just what makes me feel better. All right, Slater, what's in my control? There's this term going around. I heard it first from Albert Moeller. He was referencing an article in the Wall Street Journal called a diet of darkness, a diet of darkness that the article in the Wall Street Journal is TikTok feeds teens a diet of darkness. A recent study found that when researchers created accounts belonging to fictitious 13 year olds, they were quickly inundated with videos about eating disorders, body image, self harm, and suicide. Of course they were it's a Chinese spyware weapon of war. This is what China was intentionally sending to 13 year olds.

0:31:17
Another article this week in the New York Times, how do you actually help a suicidal teen? It's a dark time for therapists treating adolescents in despair. Gallup poll from this week, US depression rates reach new highs. I think there's a lot of things going on here. But one of the major problems is social media. We've got to protect our kids from this stuff. It is changing our kids, it's changing all of us.

0:31:39
It's changing our nation. It's changing the soul and character and behavior of our nation. It is bad news. And it's such a bummer. And I'm sorry, I hate it. If you happen to have raised your kids in this era when we didn't really know better, I was raised just before it. So I, for the most part, escaped it. Although I have my own temptations as a young adult now. My kids, fortunately, are being raised when we have enough knowledge and wisdom to know it's dangerous, so I'll be able to protect them from it.

0:32:11
I just mourn for the kids who got caught up in it. So that's the first. We need to think of social media as just a deadly poison. It is a deadly poison. Boys and girls, I beg of you, keep your kids off of it. Going back to that author of from First Things magazine, we need to make sure we're feeding ourselves spiritual nourishment, because that will help us better detect the lies and even more crave the truth. George Weigel wrote, as C.S. Lewis observed, our spiritual natures demand nourishment.

0:32:55
Denied healthy food, they will ingest poison to the detriment of both authentic religion and democratic public life. We need to feed our spiritual life with true eternal things. Next week's morning motivations are about growing in grace. And the conclusion, I'll give you a little sneak peek, once we set the groundwork for the fact that we need to grow in grace, then do we want to grow in grace? And then how do we grow in grace?

0:33:20
It's pray, read the Bible, self-examine. That's it. Got to pray, got to read the Bible, self-examine. And you know, you'll be growing in grace. One of the signs is you will take more interest in spiritual things every year. So your desire, you just need spiritual nourishment every day and then the silliness of life will decrease. Like your desire for the silly things will go down. And JC Rao makes the point, he's like, listen, not all the amusements in life are inherently sinful, right?

0:33:57
And you don't need to condemn people who engage them to hell, right? but they just take less and less of a hold over your life and you seek more eternal affections That's a sign that you're growing in grace. That's a beautiful thing So we need to do that and the more you feed yourself spiritual truth spiritual nourishment The more you need of it, and that's great. And then, just to reiterate that point, the more spiritual nourishment you have, you'll be better to see the lies, and it's less likely that you'll be tricked by the false prophets of today.

0:34:40
All right, so how do we end here? What are you gonna leave me with? Well, Exodus 23 says, do not spread false reports, and do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. Right, that's it. I should have come out with that. Do not spread false reports. Don't lie. That's what the guys in the second video did and do not follow the crowd in doing wrong.

0:35:00
That's the first video was they were a part of the crowd. Maybe they were leaving the crowd, but same idea. They were doing wrong and they're doing it with a crowd amidst the crowd, with their own mob. Exodus 23, do not spread false reports. Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. But I want to leave you with this Ben Franklin quote that I just came across. Let me pause here for one second. Let me go get it. All right, here it is. I'm back. This is James Madison writing about what Ben Franklin said in 1787. So Ben Franklin, this is the Constitutional Convention and things weren't going that well. He stood up and said, Mr. President, the small progress we have made after four or five weeks, our different sentiments on almost every question, is, me thinks, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the human understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those republics which have been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed modern states all around Europe, but find none of their constitutions suitable to our circumstances. In this situation, it's like feeling hopeless.

0:36:25
In this situation of this assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. We prayed and it worked and you know it.

0:37:03
To that kind of providence, we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national happiness. And we have now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? Gosh, can't you relate to that in your life too? I was thinking about, oh, the NICU, we were praying every day and now, oh, we're good now. I have lived, sir, a long time. And the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice? Is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this.

0:37:51
And I also believe that without his concerning aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. We shall be divided by our little political local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war, and conquest. I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business." Benjamin Franklin.

0:38:36
How beautiful is that? We have to pray the same for our country. We have to pray for the same in our lives. To go back to Exodus 23, God, I don't want to spread false reports. I don't want to follow the crowd in doing wrong. I only want to know the truth. I only want to know more about you. This podcast is brought to you by Patriot Gold Group, PatriotGoldGroup.com. Last week on the TV, we did a special on the war on the US dollar and it was fascinating. We talked about the central bank digital currency, CBDC, and just that is the ultimate tool of tyranny. And we talked about the dollar no longer being the reserve currency of the world and what that means for you and me and what that means for gold.

0:39:17
Consider gold, see if this makes sense for you and your family. The bottom line for me, the reason I bought gold is I don't trust the people in charge at all and they're gonna blow it. Because you know what, they're not doing what Ben Franklin suggested we all do. They're not praying to God for wisdom. They're relying only on their own human understanding and it will fail.

0:39:38
And all of us are gonna be hurt by it. So I bought gold as a hedge against them. One eight at eight, six one seven, 61 22. And then well, who do you buy gold from? Pitcher Gold Group, it couldn't have been easier. Jack's awesome, the CEO. It's like shockingly easy. This gold, like the FedEx man delivers gold to your door. 1-888-617-6122. That's physical gold and silver.

0:40:07
And you can also ask about how you can have a no fee for life IRA where your IRA or 401K is in physical gold and silver as well. And they are the consumer affairs top rated gold IRA dealer six years in a row and counting. 1-888-617-6122 for a free investor guide or patriotgoldgroup.com. or patriotgoldproof.com.

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Fox & Friends

We were on Fox & Friends talking about all of the train robberies in CA. It's so bad the train company says they may have to ride right THROUGH Los Angeles entirely and never slow down lol. What a joke this state it.

https://archive.org/details/FOXNEWSW_20220122_110000_FOX_and_Friends_Saturday/start/5640/end/5700

That link is a bit odd, I've attached a short video to get the gist.

In short, The rich get richer, the poor get the handouts and the middle class gets out of town.

This causes these progressive politicians to get even more entrenched.

We haven't hit rock bottom yet.

00:00:32
Boys to men, girls to women

How do you do it? Advice please!

Dean Abbott,
"Why contemporary relations between the sexes are so messed up. The problem starts with men because men lead, the masculine pursues and initiates, and problems always start at the level of leadership.

Most men aren't taught that a relationship with a woman means accepting responsibility. No one tells us that a woman represents not only pleasure, but obligation.
The fact that having a relationship with a woman means responsibility and obligation never enters many men's minds.

When these men enter into a relationship with a woman, they are overwhelmed by her needs, her feminine communication style, and her emotions.
Moreover, he unconsciously resents her for having needs at all since he has been conditioned to see her solely as a source of pleasure.
When her anger and disappointment over his irresponsibility gets intense enough, he splits in search of another woman.
He mistakenly believes the problem wasn't his attitude nor that it is a ...

00:07:55
Surly this will be kicked off twitter eventually
00:06:34
Morning Motivation, April 21, 2023

I found a way to easily transcribe the podcasts, so I will post them here first before they go out to iTunes and the rest.

Good morning. Welcome to The Morning Motivation, brought to you by Public Square and Patriot Gold Group. I'm grateful you're here. I was reading a sermon by the great Puritan preacher John Owen in the mid-1600s. I'm so fascinated by this time period, 1600s, early 1700s. We focus a lot on our founding fathers. I think that the Tea Party movement and just conservatism in general has focused a lot on the founding fathers, and that's amazing, but I'm very fascinated by our founding grandfathers or great-grandfathers, the people who created the culture that our founding fathers were raised in.

0:00:44
Isn't that a fascinating era? We got like 1776, like that's great, I love it, I want to know more, I don't know nearly enough. But what about the 1720s? What was going on there? Or the late 1600s? What was going on in America at that time? And you know, we've all heard of the Puritans, but you ...

Morning Motivation, April 21, 2023
Inflation and ANGER

I am angry and frustrated. With our Rulers. For getting us in this terrible economy. It doesn't have to be this way.

How could they never learn from past mistakes! This is ANCIENT history, stop printing money...yet, after COVID, we never printed more. Amazing.

Please leave a 5-star review on Itunes. We have a ton of momentum, this is about to break through! Thank you!

Also, I haven't done any lives anywhere becauase we're hosting a daily TV show "Road to Misterms" on thefirsttv.com, and it's taken all of my extra time. And my wife is giving birth any day now, so...it's been a lot around here. But after the midterms, time will free up.

Inflation and ANGER
Politics by Faith: Parkland and the Death Penalty

I've gone back and forth on the death penalty many times over the years. I've recently come down on the other side.

Should the Parkland murderer have gotten the death penalty or life in prison?

Please leave a review on iTunes! We need to get to 1k :-)
www.thefirsttv.com/mikeslater

Btw, we're getting the momentum we need, more downloads every day, THANK YOU!

Politics by Faith: Parkland and the Death Penalty
November 26, 2025

Baptized Brethren contest with each other AND against The Church, calling “Lord, Lord” (Mt 7:21-22, 25:11; Lk 6:46), in the Devil’s disunity, whilst the enemy has breached the Gates and is welcomed at and obliged at the most august Court. “Lord, Lord.”

Faith of our Fathers. Jer 6:16; Mal 3:6; Heb 13:7-9; Jam 1:17; Gal 1:6-12; Jude 3; 1 Pet 5:5

THE CODE OF CATHOLIC CHIVALRY

The knight receives as his law the knightly Code of Honor, which is the expression of his absolute fidelity to God:

I. The Knight battles for Christ and His Reign.
II. The Knight serves his Lady the Blessed Virgin Mary.
III. The Knight defends The Holy Church unto blood.
IV. The Knight maintains the Tradition of his Fathers.
V. The Knight fights for Justice, Christian Order and Peace.
VI. The Knight wages war without truce or mercy against the World and its Prince.
VII. The Knight honors and protects the poor, the weak and the needy.
VIII. The Knight despises money and the powers of this world.
IX. The Knight is humble, magnanimous ...

November 19, 2025

You were terse and dismissive in this morning's 7:25 Eastern time call with the Man with four step children applying for Naturalization from his Naturalized U.S. Wife of Philippine descent. You should be more considerate of history about America's relationship such as with the Philippine People, which is quite notable with intrinsic factors which should have favorable weight in consideration the Filipino propensity to immigrate and become American Citizens.

"The Resident Commissioner of the Philippines was a non-voting member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1907 until the Philippines gained independence in 1946. This role was established under the Philippine Organic Act of 1902, allowing the Philippines to have representation in Congress, similar to current non-voting members from U.S. territories."

Don't be so apparently xenophobic and stop misrepresenting American (and Christian while you're at it) History in omission through culpable ignorance.

The Philippines, 1898–1946
...

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November 11, 2025

Happy Veterans' Day.
Support our Troops. Before. During. After.

St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, Confessor, Soldier of the State, Soldier of Christ
November 11
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/lives-of-the-saints/volume-xi-november/st-martin-bishop-of-tours-confessor

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Neil Gorsuch Is A Coward
Politics By Faith, July 29, 2026

I can't believe Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch could be so ignorant about our founding. I can only assume he's "just" a coward. I'm always happy to defend the Christian roots of our country.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. It's where we take the news of the day, we bring it to the Bible, so we can walk away with peace and perspective. There's new headlines every day, but Ecclesiastes says there's nothing new under the sun. So thanks for being here to get the true story, the story of the day -to -day Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch denies our founding. Here's what happened. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was on PBS. 

This clip is just totally ignorant about our nation's founding. This is very sad. It's very disturbing that someone could become a conservative Supreme Court justice and get this so wrong. It's bad enough that like a Sotomayor or a Justice Jackson gets it wrong. You expect that out of them. You would think at least we can rely on a conservative justice to get this right. 

And he's not even close. And he's oddly giddy and confident about it. If you can see this clip we're going to play here, if you're watching on our YouTube page, which by the way, youtube . com slash apolitics by faith, you can see not only him, but pay attention to the person interviewing him, Margaret Hoover. If you see the clip, she's like, oddly aroused by this. It's weird. 

She loves what Gorsuch is saying. She loves it. She loves when he says that we are not founded as a Christian nation. It's very, very weird. So here's Neil Gorsuch, conservative Supreme Court justice. You make the point also that there is no common religion or cultural heritage of Americans. 

Yes. We are a creedal nation. Creedal because we believe in the creed, we believe in those three founding ideals which you mentioned previously. That sentiment, particularly as expressed by you, has received some criticism from conservative circles and drawn backlash, where people have said how wrong you could be about this. But how would you respond to those who say, we absolutely had a common cultural heritage and religion? 

Well, first of all, did you know that there is a Catholic signer on the Declaration of Independence? Charles Carroll. Right? And we were founded in a lot of our colonies for religious pluralism, right? And the opportunity to practice your own faith in your own way. And we were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion. 

It was about those ideas. Those things are perfect ideas that speak to every human heart and that unite us all. Is there a revisionism in, as we tell our story now? We're not just a creedal nation. We have a creed, sure, but we are a real actual place made up of particular people who came from a particular place, who created a nation based on particular values, based on a particular culture that they came from. We are seeing now more than ever, that there are other peoples from other places with different values based off of different cultures from different places. 

And they're not the same. And you can't snap your finger and become an American just like that. All of our founders, all of them, rejected this idea that you could just magically become an American all of a sudden. All of them rejected it. But now Neil Gorsuch knows better. And his proof of religious pluralism, the problem with that is it opens up the door for Muslims. 

which are totally foreign to our founding fathers and still to our country today should be. And he's opening up the door to this religious pluralism talk because of Charles Carroll, because he was Catholic. Come on, Neil. I don't want to stop it again. Let me just finish the end. We've always been a white Christian nation. 

I just don't see it that way. I mean, Charles Carroll, right. From Maryland. Catholic. Right. When he went to sign his name, they kind of poke fun of him when he went to sign his name on August 2nd. 

and said, Charles Carroll, that's like John Smith. The British will never figure out who you are. So he added of Carrollton, his hometown, so that everyone would know exactly who it was. And America is supposed to be about those ideas. And America is available to each and every one of us. And it's up to each and every one of us to see that those ideas continue to flourish. 

But you refute the idea that we came from the same heritage and the same religion. Well, I mean, it's demonstrably not true that we came from the same religion. I mean, think about the Amish who came here in the 1600s on a handful of rickety boats, a third of them dying along the way for their freedom and populating much into Pennsylvania and down into the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and now throughout the rest of the country. What, they weren't part of the American experiment? Of course they were. The Quakers, same story? 

Of course they were. And so America was not found, I mean, we have a First Amendment for crying out loud. No established religion. Everybody has the freedom of religion. Everybody has the freedom of speech. We are all equal under law, okay? 

Now, you cannot believe in those ideas. Fair enough. Then we have a problem. But those three ideas are something all of us can unite behind. Yeah, we got a problem all right, Neil. His point of bringing up Charles Carroll is so ridiculous. 

Charles Carroll was from Annapolis, Maryland. Back then it was pronounced Maryland because it was a colony that was originally founded as a safe haven for persecuted Roman Catholics. Now, Puritans then took over the government and it became less of a particularly Catholic colony. Of course, its influence was still there. And also they, of course, still allowed Catholics to positions of prominence. But to take that religious freedom, and then extrapolate that to Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and pagans and Wiccans. 

That is suicidal, Neil. Absolutely suicidal. You think you're a good person. You think you're so pluralist and open and blah, blah, blah. That is suicidal to our nation. Our religion in this country is Christian. 

That is how we were founded. And then as other evidence are the Quakers and the Amish. Our religion is Christian. I'm more than happy to go over the religious tests of every colony and then state. that they had to run for office, a religious test, a religious test that was so fundamentalist that most Christian churches in America aren't as stringent as like the state of Delaware. Like to join a church today, you barely have to proclaim these truths. 

Like you used to have to run to be the dog catcher. The, uh, we'll go Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, 1776. I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be given by divine inspiration. That's your oath of office in Pennsylvania. Delaware said, I do profess faith in God, the Father, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, and in the Holy Ghost. 

By the way, if you're a Muslim, you couldn't do that. You couldn't say that because you don't believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. And in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forevermore. And I do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are given by divine inspiration. That's Delaware. Maryland? 

The law says that as it is the duty of every man to worship God in such manner as he thinks most acceptable to him. Ooh, does that mean Muslims? Here's the rest of it. All persons professing the Christian religion are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty. Christian religion, Neil! That's our founding. 

New Jersey said, there shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this Providence. No, see, that allows Muslims too. And it goes on, and that no Protestant inhabitant of this colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right on account of his religious principles, but that all persons professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect shall be capable of being elected to any office of prophet or trust. " This was never about protecting Muslims and their right to hold office. My goodness, Neil. Does he not understand that the First Amendment is not about, it's about create, it's about not creating a national religion. 

But the reason why our founders didn't want to create a national religion and didn't want to give the federal government the power to do that is because every state already had their own religion. It wasn't because they hated religion. It's because they loved theirs so much of their own state. They didn't want a federal government mandating it for theirs. How can Neil Gorsuch be so ignorant about that? That is so sad. 

Our special this weekend, give you a little sneak peek. is about the consequences of sin. And one scripture I want to go over is Proverbs 14, 34, which says, righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. And this fact is true for people, it's true for individuals, for families, for towns, for countries. And I love this analysis from Charles Bridges, early 1800s. He said, no nation is so low as not to sink even lower under sin. 

The strongest nations are given an indelible blot if they're overcome by sin. Check out this line. What an enemy. an ungodly man is to his country. He may talk eloquently about his patriotism, but even if God should elevate him in his work, he will only bring disgrace on his people. " Wow. 

That's amazing. All right. So what's broken in this story, what Neil Gorsuch did right there, my producer gave a kind assessment of Gorsuch, more kind than I wanted to give initially. We'll go, we'll call it a charitable take that Neil Gorsuch, he's less of a fool, more of a coward. Maybe that's more charitable. Maybe he's not. 

He's a coward. Let me show you this quote from William Bradford. He was the governor of the Plymouth colony. He came over to Mayflower. He's talking about the courage that it took to come over to America. And he said, and surely it could not be thought, but the very hearing of these things could not but move the very bowels of men to grate within them and make the weak quake and tremble. 

He says even hearing about how difficult this journey was going to be made people afraid. And then he went over all the excuses that people made not to come to America, that it was too expensive. It was going to cost too much once we got here. So many people failed before us. Other colonies didn't make it. He said when the Pilgrims went to Holland, that was hard. 

And that wasn't that far away. Imagine how hard it's going to be. to the new world. So what did we do? He said, it was answered that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. It was granted the dangers were great, but not desperate. 

The difficulties were many, but not invincible for though there are many of them likely yet they were not certain. Amazing. He said, yeah, it's going to be hard, but we're going to be courageous. He went on to say, we're going to plan the best we can, but why are we going to survive? We're going to survive because it's what he said. Their condition was not ordinary. 

Their ends were good and honorable. They're calling lawful and urgent. And therefore they might expect the blessing of God in their proceeding. Yay. Though they should lose their lives in this action, yet might they have comfort in the same and their endeavors be would be honorable. So it's sort of like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, their real names, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. 

As they said, even if we die. We still love God. And that's what the pilgrims are saying. Even if we die, it doesn't matter. Our effort is noble and worthwhile and honorable and righteous. Our cause is righteous. 

What cause? What cause, Neil? The cause to preserve a pure church and live faithfully under Christ. The reason for crossing the ocean and starting a colony, which eventually became the United States, was for the glory of God. To worship God according to the Bible. You know, most of the men who are on the Mayflower, weren't pilgrims, they were sailors that were here to help us get us over here. 

And when we got here, there was some animosity, the whole journey, but there was animosity between the pilgrims and the sailors. The sailors were ready to take over, maybe even kill the pilgrims. So William Bradford was able to come up with what today we know as the Mayflower Compact. It starts off with, in the name of God, amen, is the opening line. But then it says, we, whose names are underwritten, having undertaken for the glory of God an advancement of the Christian faith, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation. It's right there, Neil. 

It's right there. The pilgrims having undertaken this mission for the glory of God, not Allah, not Buddha, not for the glory of money, but for the glory of God. I will always defend our Christian founding from the pagans and from the useful idiots and the cowards. Let's end here and tell the story of the faithless spies. Moses sent spies to scout Canaan. This is in Numbers 13. 

And the spies came back to Moses and Aaron and told them everything. Numbers 13, 27, we came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. These are giants. 

They went on to say that we're like grasshoppers compared to these people. And the people who heard this, the Israelites, they wept. They wept. And then everyone complained and grumbled against Moses. This is when they said, Oh, if only we just stayed and died in Egypt. You know what Moses said? 

Moses said, if the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us. A land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord and do not fear the people of the Lord. for they are bred to us, bred for us. Their protection is removed from them and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them. 

God can do anything. Why are so many elites? Why are so many intellectuals? Why are they afraid of our founding? Why are they ashamed of him? We are not. 

YouTube . com slash at politics by faith. I'm going to go take care of the kids right now. Tell them to quiet down, even though the podcast is already over. YouTube . com slash at politics by faith. 

Spread the word.

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The Fauci Diaries: Pride Before The Fall
Politics By Faith, July 28, 2026

Somehow, Rand Paul published Tony Fauci's diary. The contents of the diary prove, of course, that he lied, but it also reveals a fact about human nature: people like to be exalted by men. But we all know what happens after Pride...

Welcome to Politics by Faith. It's where we take the news of the day, we bring it to the Bible so that we can all walk away with peace and perspectives. New headlines every day. Ben Ecclesiastes says there's nothing new under the sun. So thanks for being here to get the true story, the story of the day today. My Fauci, the hero. 

Fauci's diary has been released. That's a very funny sentence. I don't know. I really don't know what that means. Like did Rand Paul find it under Fauci's bed? I don't know how this, I don't know how they found it. 

I don't know how it got released. But we'll try to talk to Rand tomorrow or the next day and we'll get to the bottom of like, what did he hand it over? Is that Gabe Hughes diary? Or was it like, wasn't there someone, what was the diary that had something to do with Hunter Biden? Or was it like, was it maybe like Joe's daughter or something that had a diary that she was in a halfway house and then she left. And then the person who came to the halfway house after found it underneath and tried to sell. 

There's some weird story like that. So did Fauci sell a house and the new owner found the diary and handed it over to the Rand? What happened there? All right, a couple of things that we learned from this diary. He lied a lot, all thinking he knew better. January 26th, 2020, Fauci wrote in his diary, dear diary, now we know the market was not the source, it was the amplifier. 

Again, this was January 2020, where the wet market was already taken off the table, even though we were told that's how it all started. Related to the lockdown, in many interviews, he said, I didn't recommend locking anything down. I have a diary entry here that says I spoke with Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, and convinced him based on what I was hearing. publicly in my conversation tonight, to close the New York City schools. I went on to tell him that we should close the bars and restaurants of New York City. He said that he would base this on my recommendation. 

I had a similar call with Anne O 'Leary of Gavin Newsom's office. Anne said that based on my TV appearances today and yesterday, the governor has decided to close the schools in California as well as the bars and restaurants. We'll throw this in here. When I left the White House and crossed Pennsylvania and 17th Street, several cars honked their horns and shouted, thank you out the window. We'll get back to that one later. So he's out here saying I had nothing to do with me. I didn't know. 

I didn't recommend shutting anything down. Meanwhile, he's saying, dear diary, today I shut down New York City and all of California. He was a hero. People thanking him for it. And so this clips out there of him saying, I mean, I didn't know. I didn't recommend we shut down the schools. 

And here he is writing in his diary. I recommended to everyone that we shut down the schools. This is a noteworthy one too. This is the day that Trump knew he was hoodwinked on the whole thing. This is April 23rd, 2020. Fauci wrote in his diary, after the presser, Deb Burks texted and then called me saying it was good that I was not there since after the press, the president called her into the Oval and started yelling at her saying, you and Fauci have destroyed the country and the economy. 

I should have never listened to you. You have completely destroyed us. He kept saying this over and over again and was yelling at her. I encouraged her that we are okay and at the end of the day, she and I will be loved by the people we care about. She was relieved and after wrote me a text sincerely thanking me. stolen from him in 2020. 

His presidency was stolen from him, but really it was stolen from him eight months earlier with COVID. Fauci told Larry Kudlow that the economy wouldn't crash, but he also wrote in his diary, the stock market dropped by 3000 points, the biggest percentage drop in history. XOXO, love me. He didn't write that last part. Bigger theme though of this diary release, again, weird sentence, is from 2019, end of 2019 to early 2020, how excited he was to be the center of attention. I got a hunch that this was true, but now we see it in his diary entries. 

May 21st, 2020, he wrote in his diary, big front page article about me appeared in the Washington Post, very flattering. The situation with my national and international fame is explosive and really unimaginable. It is not hyperbole to say that today I am the most famous and talked about person in the country and one of the most recognizable person in the world. Felt so good writing that. He wrote about in his diary, he wrote about a correspondence with Barbara Streisand and how Barbara Streisand wrote her a letter, wrote him a letter thanking him for his constant guidance, patience, and reassurance. He wrote in his diary that they kept in contact and they would speak over the phone and that Barbara Streisand reached out to Fauci directly for medical advice, including on whether or not she and her husband should get COVID -19 boosters. 

Now here's what's important about this part of the story. One aspect of human nature is how desperately people want to feel special. Now there's good versions of this, right? It's, it's, someone may say, I want to be admired by people. Jack was just playing the piano a second ago. I want to be admired by people as a great piano player. 

Okay. Now a better goal is to just be a great piano player or to play this Beethoven piece well, to have a goal that's not dependent on other people's perceptions of you. because you can't control other people's perceptions. So that's a silly goal. The goal should be what you are in charge of, and that is playing this piece well or not. So there's something weird about wanting to be special for something great that you do, like ambition. 

But I think what I'm trying to get at here is something more than wanting to feel special, more than wanting to be admired. It's this desire to feel like you're just the VIP. You are very, very important. I got a taste of this early on in my career. A dear friend of mine was running Glenn Beck's book tour. This would have been, I don't know what year, 2010, maybe? 

And I got to go on a few stops on Glenn Beck's book tour. And they gave me the t -shirt, like the official t -shirt, and they gave me a lanyard with a plastic pass on it. And I distinctly remember the feeling of all these people lined up like chumps waiting in line to talk to Glenn Beck, but I could go under the rope. I could go anywhere I wanted. I could go in the front of the line, more than the front of the line, but why? I didn't need a line. 

I could go behind the line, like I go behind the ropes. I could go where regular people weren't even allowed to go. Regular people had to stay behind the rope, wait in line all day. I, with my lanyard, I could go under the rope and behind the scene. I could walk around like I owned the place. And I'm sure I did. 

I was 23 years old. I felt very important. So imagine you're Tony Fauci. This time it would have been 79 years old from Brooklyn, okay? You're a nobody. No one knows you. 

You've never been interviewed. No big deal, you're just some scientist who, yeah, you achieved the top of your game at the what? The National Institute of whatever that no one cares about. You're still generally a nobody. But then all of a sudden, Barbara Streisand calls you? Fellow Brooklyn native, same age as you? 

Barbara Streisand calls you, asking for your advice? Just imagine that scene for Tony, for Tony Fauci. He's sitting on his couch and his wife says, Tony, Tony, you're not gonna believe who's on the phone. Barbara Streisand. Abs is on the phone for me, are you kidding me? Okay, okay, okay, okay. 

Hello, Ms. Streisand. Yes, how are you? Yes, wonderful. Just wonderful. Oh, thank you, Ms. Streisand. It's an honor. 

No, no problem at all. You can call me anytime you'd like, Ms. Streisand. Yes, a booster. Yes, a booster's a very good idea. Absolutely. You're welcome. 

No, no, no, it's, it's, It's a scary time for everybody. These are scary times, but we'll make it through together. Miss Streisand, together. If everyone does their part, of course. Now, it's no problem at all. Miss Streisand, you call me anytime you need me, Miss Streisand. 

Thank you. You too. Thank you. Barbra Streisand, he and his wife like jumping up. Barbra Streisand called me. Me, she called me. 

Oh, I hate COVID so much. That'll mess with someone's head. Mess with their heart too. I got a list here of all these movie stars. This is, he wrote in his diary, I did a zoom call with a whole host of movie stars and athletes organized by Kim Kardashian. Here's the list. 

And he went down Michael Buble, Ariana Grande, Kendall Jenner, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Gwyneth Paltrow, James Corden, Dwayne Wade. Oh my goodness. Let's see, who else do I know here? Orlando Bloom, Chris Rock, Katy Perry, Eric Stonestreet, the gay guy from Modern Family. Oh my goodness. are listening to me. 

It's amazing. You're gonna start to think a lot about yourself. So let's go to the Bible. Let's talk about pride. Proverbs 16, 18. Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall. 

Many examples of this. One that I think about is Daniel 4, starting verse 29. Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was walking on the roof of his royal palace of Babylon and the king answered and said, is not this great Babylon? which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty. While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken. 

Kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men. and gives it to whom he will. " Verse 33 says, immediately the word was fulfilled against Nebuchadnezzar. He was driven from among men and ate grass like an ox and his body was wet with the dew of heaven till his hair grew as long as eagles feathers and his nails were like birds claws. Pride. God humbled him. Turned him into a beast. Verse 34, at the end of the days, I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven. At the end of the seven year period, lifted my eyes to heaven and my reason returned to me. And what did he do? I blessed the Most High. and praised and honored him who lives forever." Love that story. One of my favorite verses on this point, and I love this so much because the Bible is the opposite of the world. And there's a couple of these that are so beautiful. 

It makes that point very clear. 1 Peter 5, humble yourself, God will exalt you. James 4 .10, humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. Luke 14 .11, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Just sit on that one for a second. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. 

The way to not be prideful is to acknowledge that all good things come from God, that we are capable of nothing on our own. All gifts come from Him. If we think that we are capable of things on our own, we will be humbled. You're humble, and only then will God exalt you. I want to leave you with a final point from our preacher this weekend. He made the point that your purpose is almost never about you. 

It shouldn't be about you. Your purpose is to make disciples and glorify God. And if you're not doing that, whatever you are doing, it's not your purpose. You may be doing it, and it may be fun or whatever, but it's not your purpose. It's not the purpose God gave you. Your purpose is to make disciples and glorify God. 

Your purpose is not to exalt yourself, for sure. Joseph is a wonderful example of this. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers. It was his older brother Judah's idea to sell him into slavery instead of kill him. So they got sold into slavery years ago by, you know, the whole story. If you don't, you should get reading Genesis 37. 

It's an incredible story. 22 years after he was sold into slavery, he becomes the number two guy in Egypt and his brothers come back and there's this beautiful reunion. But check out this insight. Why did God do all this? What's the point of that story? Genesis 45, 7, Joseph's talking to his brothers, telling them that he's not mad at them. 

And Joseph said, God sent me before you to preserve life. He goes on, God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. And if you read the whole story and you realize everything that Joseph went through, realize what an incredible sentence it is. But check out this insight. Not there yet. 

Here's the real part. Genesis 49, Jacob, the dad, doesn't bless Joseph. Jacob blesses Judah. Joseph wasn't point of the story. Joseph wasn't the reason. Joseph wasn't the promise. 

Joseph protected the promise. Matthew 1 starts off with the genealogy of Jesus, son of David, son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac, the father of Jacob. Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers. Jesus came from the line of Judah. 

That's why Jesus is called the Lion of Judah. Because in Genesis 49, Jacob blesses Judah, again, who Joseph protected, blesses him and talks about him as like a lion. I still have this idea that Joseph wasn't promised. He wasn't the main character. I don't understand. He was the main character of the story in the sense that he was the most talked about, but he wasn't the purpose of the story. 

Judah was, who ultimately, it was Jesus. So my point of this all is, if you exalt yourself as Fauci did, bad things will happen. The Bible says so. If you humble yourself, then God will use you to spread the good word and spread the gospel and to glorify him. And that is the best purpose in the world. youtube . 

com slash at politics by faith. If you listen to the show, I'm super grateful if you just follow us on the YouTube that helps our algorithm and we can spread over on the YouTube as well and reach more people youtube . com slash at politics by faith.

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Another Black Man Shot And Killed By Police
Politics By Faith, July 27, 2026

Will the media make this story another George Floyd? It depends on how much it helps Democrats. It will have an effect on the Wisconsin governor's primary coming up in 3 weeks. But more importantly, how should we react to this police shooting? This...JUSTIFIED police shooting.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. It's where we take the news of the day, we bring it to the Bible, so we can walk away with peace and perspective. We do this because there's new headlines every day, and that can get exhausting. It can cause anxiety, but Ecclesiastes says it's not the new under the sun. So thanks for being here for the true story, the story of the day today. Another black man murdered by police. 

Here's what happened. When I first heard about this story, an old friend of mine, I haven't talked to him in 25 years, but I'm still friends with him on Facebook. I saw a post they put, and It was a picture of a memorial and the caption said, one tased him, two others pinned him down. A fourth police officer fatally shot a black man in Madison, Wisconsin. So one tased, two pinned him down, and then another shot him dead. And you have this visual because there was a picture of the vigil, not of the shooting or the interaction itself. 

So you get this image of just like execution on the street. That was the first I heard of this. I said, Oh, I wonder what happened. So I looked it up. Someone called 9 -1 -1 because there was a suspicious looking person checking parked cars, peering through windows, trying to get into cars. So we had an anti -social, some anti -social, not even anti -social, anti -civilization behavior. 

So normal productive people in Madison, Wisconsin called 9 -1 -1. Police arrived as they're supposed to. They tried to detain him. He resisted. They tased him. Looks like it didn't work. 

Somehow, he then pulled out a knife and injured an officer. at which point another officer shot him three times. He attacked police officers in the middle of this tussle. He, I don't exactly know the injuries, so either cut or stabbed a police officer. Case closed. What are we even talking about? 

This will keep happening for one very simple reason. People don't want to go to jail. I've said this a billion times, I guess we'll say it a billion more. Until jail is Disney World, no one will want to go. Now he's been in jail already. He didn't want to go back. 

Did he not want to go back enough to not break into cars anymore? But what he really wanted to do is keep breaking in cars and not go to jail. So we have to decide if we want to allow that behavior. He had a criminal record of drug possession, theft, resisting, or obstructing an officer, the whole thing. So he didn't want to go back. That's what happened. 

So we have two stories here, two side stories. First, body cameras. Madison, Wisconsin police don't have body cameras. Now, body cameras are really interesting. Black Lives Matter activists, they don't want them anymore. They did want them. 

One of their demands during George Floyd and that whole riot, that whole whatever, one of their demands was we want body cameras on all police officers. Now they don't because all these videos were coming out where Black Lives Matter activists would say, oh, police shot an unarmed black man. And then the video comes out and the unarmed black man is running at the police officers full speed with a knife in their hand. There was one story in particular, I forget where it was, but a black man was murdered by police officers and they demanded answers, right? And how could police do such a thing? My baby would never, he's a great, my baby's amazing and he would never do something bad. 

And then the body camera, no, you know what this was? This was, ah, this was a, like a road rage incident. And these two guys got out of the car And the white guy who was an off -duty police officer murdered the black man. That's what happened. Then a dash camera footage came out and the black man pulled out a gun. That's when the police officer, the off -duty police officer shot back. 

So when the camera came out, the footage came out to the family's credit, their lawyer backed down, the family apologized and said they were shocked that their son would do such a thing. They never would have believed it and we're sorry. And he, and he, he was in the wrong and the whole thing was over again to the family's credit for doing that. But there are few who are as humble as that, even in the face of video evidence, which this shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, there is. Apparently there's three different videos from different angles. So anyway, but let me be clear. 

Black Lives Matter wanted body camera footage. Now they don't. Normal black people do want body camera footage. Black Lives Matter activists don't. Also progressive white women don't. They don't want it. 

They don't want body camera footage for the same reason that they don't want voter ID. And that's because they think black people don't know where the DMV is, or they're too stupid to understand what an ID is, or they can't afford to go get an ID. So progressive white women, they don't want body camera footage either, because that's their way of being nice to vulnerable oppressed black, their little black babies that they need to take care of. So you got normal black people, they want body camera footage, but Black Lives Matter activists and white women in Madison do not. So the body camera footage is a side story. Politically, there's another story here. 

I don't know how much of an influence this story is going to have nationwide. This may be the first you're hearing about this story. I don't know how much the media is going to run with it. They got to kind of test it for a little bit and see if this is a political win for the Democratic Party or not. Remember, the lamestream media, they're just an arm of the Democratic Party. So if they think this will help them in midterms, then this is going to be another George Floyd. 

If they don't think it will, then they'll abandon the story immediately. Locally, though, in Wisconsin, this will have some implications. So Democrats, their primaries in three weeks. Democrats are down to their current lieutenant governor, No, so sorry, it was their current lieutenant governor and their former lieutenant governor. The current lieutenant governor dropped out. So we got the former lieutenant governor, who's a black guy. 

Then you have the Milwaukee County executive, who's another black guy. He actually dropped or he suspended his race, but then the current governor endorsed him. So he got back in. Never heard of that happening before. So we got these Democrats in Wisconsin. It's a purple state. 

They can't seem to get their act together because the front runner is a communist. She's a state representative, Francesca Hong. She's a Mamdani -endorsed DSA communist. If you listen to this podcast, you know all about him. Abolish ICE, public grocery stores, public banks, defund the police, right? Like the whole thing. 

So full -on DSA, Democrats, Socialists of America, communists. But Manhattan is different than Wisconsin. Maybe. We'll see. I hope it is. Denver's not different than Manhattan. 

Denver nominated a communist. We'll see if the entire state of Wisconsin will. So is this story going to energize her base to get her across the finish line in their primary? I don't know. If she does win, you would think that'd be better for the Republican candidate, Tom Tiffany. But in my policies, it's a bad idea to play with fire. 

I don't want communists getting anywhere near the possibility of winning elected office. So three weeks. So you got body camera footage and the politics of this. We'll put those aside. Let's get to some biblical points here. First, thou shalt not steal. 

Second, you should obey police officers when they tell you to stop. We can go on with all these obvious points that you would think are obvious, but maybe they're not. There's a lot of people out there who think that police shouldn't exist at all. So third point, people want to talk about the overreaction of police officers. They killed a man and yeah, it's terrible. Remember these officers, I'm sure they're distraught about this all. 

They didn't want to go to work that day hoping to be a part of all this. But the police are there to secure law and order. And we can't live in a society where we just let people roam the streets stealing stuff from people's cars. We've got to stop that behavior. It's anti -civilization. But don't be tricked into thinking that they killed a man because he was stealing stuff from cars. 

It's not it. Because the activists are going to say that. They'll be like, oh, you shouldn't get the death penalty for stealing stuff. No, they shot him because he had a knife. And he already injured a police officer. And would have killed him. 

Maybe. There's nothing just. There's nothing righteous about living in chaos. So like, let's think of their progressive vision of government, like no police, right? So he just gets out a knife and stabs a social worker or what? And what are you talking about? 

Forget even the socialist utopia. Let's just, let's pretend that these police officers acted as these communists maybe would prefer them, or the activists would prefer them to act, be nice and kind or whatever. The guy pulls out a knife. So first you just want to let him go. Okay. So what's that? 

And then let's say you're like, no, you got to come with us, man. And he pulls out a knife. Just let him stab you in the face. Let him stab you in the heart. Austin Metcalf died with a knife, like two and a half inches long. Or again, maybe it's just a minor flesh wound. 

And then he runs away, ready to steal again tomorrow. And it's just chaos. What are we talking about? And then people don't go downtown. People don't go to businesses. The town suffers. 

And you end up in the ghetto like Chicago the other day where seven grocery stores are now closing down. Seven save -a -lots. Who are we going to let run the show here? My fourth point is there's a total disregard for human life. His family's distraught, you know, mom crying on TV. Police are criticized for having a disregard of human life, but what about the people around him? 

And not only his family, but because I understand people can be very mentally ill and family has to let the person go, right? But what about our institutions around us that let homeless and mentally ill people just roam the streets? I don't know much about Corey. Corey Ruiz is his name or Ruiz. Ruiz is the guy's name. I don't know what his deal is. I don't know if he's just straight up criminal or mentally ill, or he's a drug addict out of his mind. 

But either of these three require different interventions that we don't take, because we don't really value human life. If we did, we would help people like this, even if it's against their will. That has been the big concern for like 50 years now. Oh, we can't do anything against their will. Their will is out of their mind. They don't have a will to take the person against their will. 

All right. Well, their will is to steal money, to get things, to get money, to get high. That's their will. So yeah, we got to do stuff against their will. Getting help, getting them better is against their will at the moment, but we can't do it. Got to be nice. 

So the real disregard for human life. Again, you're going to hear that the police officers have a disregard for human life. That is wrong. The real disregard of human life. Let me flip it around. The real regard for human life should have been to focus on this person a long time ago. 

Let's go to the Bible. Admit something here that I don't like. I'm becoming callous. My parents, they grew up in Long Island and they worked in New York city. When I was growing up, they would tell me a story about this woman who had elephantitis. I want that for a name. 

I don't know what the new politically correct term for this disease is, but I'm sure it's not elephantitis. It's a severe swelling of their body parts. Like, I don't know. I don't know what swells like their tissues. I don't know. But like their legs are huge, enormous, and just disgusting covered with sores and all this stuff. 

It'd be like, it's like kind of like our modern day leprosy, like a biblical leprosy. And this woman, she would lay there on the subway platform. and everyone would step over them all day long. My parents told this story to me growing up a lot. I heard about this person often and I look back on it like, man, how terrible. How sad for that person, of course. 

but then for the rest of us who get calloused. We get calloused to this human suffering. We become hard -hearted. Now, hard -hearted in the Bible is more like stubborn, but I mean it more like the opposite of having a soft heart. And I don't like it. When a homeless person or addict like this gets shot by police officers, they're so far down a very bad road, and there are so many places along the way where things could have gone differently. 

but we don't really care for the oppressed when they cry out. We instead, progressives have come up with this policy to let them stay oppressed in the name of compassion. And then they spiral deeper and deeper. I think the first thing we can do, and they keep doing, is to pray for the people who have a tender heart for the homeless and the addicted. There's a lot of people in California I know who, well, let me do the negative first. I know for sure that there's people in California in particular who are in this for the money, believe it or not. 

There's a lot of money in the homeless industrial complex. But there's also a lot of great people I know who are doing it for the right reasons, and they're doing good work. They're saving lives and they're saving souls. The saving soul part's an essential part of it. We need to pray for those people because they're doing God's work. Jesus said the poor will always be with us, which is a really interesting sentence. 

Why? Now it's not to say, nah, you know, whatever. Don't think about them. Don't care about them because no matter what you do, they're going to be with us forever. They're going to be poor people. So whatever. 

That's not what Jesus means by that. Charles Spurgeon gave a wonderful sermon on this. It's called the duty of remembering the poor. And I really like the sermon a lot because it speaks to my callousness, which I don't like. So I make a couple of points here. First, why does God allow there to be poor people? 

He could make everyone rich. I was talking to the kids today about creativity and beauty, and God could have made, we were driving through this beautiful back country road with hills, and I said, God could have made the whole earth flat. Sorry, I was going to do a flat earth story here. That's not what I mean. He could have made the whole earth just bland, gray, desert, just blah, the whole planet. But he didn't. 

Look, kids he made this beautiful rolling hills with green and lush and it's just stunning and all these different variety did everything right god could have made everyone rich one reason that there are poor people is so that people can be grateful for the blessings they do have charles spurge said oh ye discontented ones so people who are whining you who are always murmuring at your households because all kinds of delicacies are not provided for you oh i just wish my life were better people whining it would do you good if you could sit down for a while to work house fair And sometimes eat a little less than that and fast a day or two to find your appetites. So quit your whining. You can eat like a lot of other people who don't have nearly what you have. So one reason why there's poor people is so that you can be grateful for what you have. Second reason is to get us to see that the real comforts of life aren't in the physical comforts of this world, but in the gospel, the good news and his promises for eternity. Spurgeon said, when we find some that have not where to lay their heads and yet can say, still will I trust in the Lord. 

When we see someone with nothing but bread and water who's still glorying Jesus? When we see them wondering where the scene shall end, seeing that every day new straits attend. Every day is horrible. Every day is difficult. And yet having faith in Christ, what an honor it reflects on the gospel. Check out this from Spurgeon. 

Grace is tested in the poverty of believers. This is no doubt one reason why God puts his people in poor circumstances. There, says the architect, this building is strong. Aye, sir, but it must be tested. Let the wind blow against it. There's a lighthouse out at sea. 

It's a calm night. I cannot tell whether the edifice is firm. The tempest must howl about it, and then I shall know whether it will stand. And so with religion, if it were not on many occasions surrounded with tempestuous waters, we should not know that the ship was strong. If the winds did not blow upon it, as they do on our poor, tired brethren, we should not know how firm and secure it is. " It's beautiful. 

Spurgeon's wonderful. So we've got to be grateful for what we have. Second, to get us to see that the real comforts of life are not in the physical comforts of the world, but of heaven and eternity. We all need to know that. 3 to be an inspiration to all of us. For those who are going through difficult times and can still trust the Lord, it's a beautiful thing. 

But I'll leave you with this one. It's what I really wanted to share. The Lord, Spurgeon says, has poor people in the midst of us for this reason, that he determines to give us opportunities of showing our love to him. Now, we show our Christ in love when we sing of him and when we pray to him, but if there were no poor people in the world, we should often say within ourselves, oh, how I wish I could one of Christ. I wish there were one of Christ's brethren that I could help. 

I should like to give Christ something. I should like to show my master that I loved him, not by words only, but by deeds too. And if all the poor saints were clean taken away and we were all well to do and had abundance, there would not, there'd be none to acquire any assistance. And I think we might begin to weep because there were no poor saints to help. So let us look upon it, not as a mere duty, but as a delight and a privilege. For if we were not able to give something of our substance to Christ, We should have to go down on our knees to ask him to give us some opportunity of showing our love to him. 

I say all this to remind us that there are good people doing good work to help those who are in need and want it. If you have the heart for that work, God bless you. You're a wonderful person. If you don't personally have that calling, pray about it and maybe give out of our abundance and out of our gratitude to local charities that help people who need it. And if people need help, but don't want it, that's a political thing. It's a political solution. 

We need to force them to take it. They need to go to prison. They need to go an addiction center. They need to be in a mental health hospital. If we had this attitude towards the poor, who will always be with us, we could then hopefully prevent situations like this person in Wisconsin from getting to this point. And more importantly, save souls in the process. 

Let's pray we don't grow even more calloused towards human life.

 

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