The Politics by Faith podcast is available anywhere, but only on Locals, ad-free, a day early and with the transcript. Thank you for your support!
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.
