Be careful out there. Anything you say or do might have "fascist resonances". Don't be pro-family! Don't go being pro-marriage! Don't think people should raise children. The fascists maybe thought that too. You might have "resonances" with them.
Welcome to Politics by Faith, brought to you by the Patriot Gold Group. Thanks for being here. The other day we were talking about a Pew survey about the difference between Biden voters and Trump voters, and there's a huge discrepancy. But there was one question in particular where there was not that much of a discrepancy, and that is, should a society prioritize marriage and having kids?
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And it was good for society to prioritize marriage and having kids and only 19% of Biden voters said yes, just mind-boggling. But like also disturbing is it was only 56% of Trump voters said yes. They got like a good percentage of Trump voters. Trump supporters like marriage, kids, whatever. Maybe it's not that important.
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What people, if we're not the ones who are promoting marriage and kids, they're not obviously. Okay well if let's say this if marriage and having kids is not good for society or we shouldn't prioritize that for society what is good for society? Increasing our personal happiness, increasing our ease, our comfort, our GDP. Give me something else that should that's more important for a society? What's a better priority if not marriage and kids?
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Unless those Trump voters are saying, you know, glorifying God is the highest priority, like that, that, that'd be all right, but I don't know if they are, but even then marriage and having kids falls under that umbrella. Very concerning. So I know we talked about this the other day in a podcast episode, uh, I went on drudge report the other day, which you shouldn't do a place.
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What happened? I'd love to know one day what happened to the George report. But they linked to an article in the New Statesman. The headline is, Pro-Family Rhetoric, that's me, Das, Pro-Family Rhetoric, and it's, Fascist Resonances. That's so good.
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Resonances. sort of rhymes a bit with things fascists have also said. So good. Uh, traditional gender roles have propped up authoritarian regimes in the past and Republicans' views on women, the echoes are clear. So if you're pro family, pro marriage, pro traditional gender roles, I guarantee the people who criticize that idea of a traditional general have never read
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Proverbs 31. But apparently that's fascist. It has fascist resonances. We haven't talked about this yet on the satellite show, so maybe we'll hold off. But there's one element of family that I want to encourage here. I read an article in the Atlantic about the dinner table.
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My family made it a priority, my parents made it a priority growing up to eat dinner around the table. I don't know if, I gotta talk to my mom about it, I don't know if it was like intentional, like no, it's important, blah, blah, blah, blah, I don't think it was that, I don't know. Or it was just like, it's what we do. We always did.
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I'd get home from swim practice late, my swim practice was like 40 minutes away from the house. So we'd have dinner at 8, 8.30 at night, many nights. Families are so frazzled. There's something every single night nonstop. It can be hard to eat together, but if I may suggest that it's essential and should be
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a priority. So the Atlantic had an article about how homes no longer have dining rooms or even dining tables. And right when I read this article, a reel popped up on Instagram where this home renovation girl, a woman, she took a dining room that was right off her kitchen
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and turned it into a pantry. She took the dining room and turned it into this huge pantry. So instead of a place where families go to eat, they turned it into a place just to keep the food. But there's no place to eat. There's no formal dining room and they just have like an island. But that's becoming more common that the houses they're building, certainly the apartments,
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they don't even have dining rooms, they don't have dining tables. So it's not even an option even if you wanted to eat at a table. And eating at the kitchen island is just not the same. Now, because everything has to be racist, this Atlantic article talks about the genesis of the dining room and how the genesis of the dining room is slavery. Because the family wanted to be separate from the slaves and where they ate.
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And even after slavery, because of traditional gender roles, the men needed to be different from the women who were working in the kitchen. Everything's got to be run through that prism. Whether it's true or not, it doesn't matter. The reason why there are so few dining rooms today in apartments is because of government building codes.
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Here's what the Atlantic says, in most US cities, building codes mandate double loaded corridors or two rows of apartments along a hall, making larger units difficult to build. When you can only build small apartments with one wall of windows, rooms will naturally disappear he said. Nobody wants a dining room without a window. Interesting, so government building codes
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have made it less likely for dining rooms to appear. So smaller apartments, they have no room for a dining room table, let alone a dining room. But I would say if it's a priority for people, then people would find a way. I mean, Japanese have little spaces,
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and they have dining room tables, even if they sit on the floor when they do. One of my favorite books, I recommend you buy it, Theodore Dalrymple, it's called Life at the Bottom. It's about the British underclass. He wrote it in 2001.
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And he spent his life working with what he calls the underclass, he was a prison psychologist and doctor, worked in the poorest of neighborhoods, did a lot of house calls, stuff like that. And a couple things he noticed about the poorest neighborhoods, first, trash everywhere, litter everywhere.
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But related to this, he said, I tell the doctors that in all my visits to the white households in the area of which I've made hundreds, never not once have I ever seen any evidence of cooking. The nearest activity that I've witnessed is the heating of prepared and packaged food,
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usually in the microwave. By the same token, I've never seen any evidence of meals taken in common as a social activity. This is not to say that I haven't seen people eating at home. No, on the contrary, they're often eating when I arrive. They eat alone, even if other members of the household are present and never at the table.
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They slump on a sofa in front of the television. Everyone in the household eats according to his own whim and timetable. Even in so elementary a matter as eating, therefore, there's no self-discipline, but rather an imperative obedience to impulse. That's such a good point. Gosh, that's such a good point. So it's not, I got to wait till six or wait till seven or wait till we're all eating.
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If I'm hungry, eat now. It's immediate, boom, got to impulse, meet it. Needless to say, the opportunity for conversation or sociality that a meal taken together provides is lost. But he said the homes of Indian immigrants, just as poor, are stocked with fresh ingredients and there's tons of cooking going on,
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but the homes of poor whites have nothing. They're both poor, money's not the difference. He says it's the cultural view, the view that a meal is an important social and familial occasion that imposes obligations and subordination of personal desire, builds habits that often result in Indians rising up the social ladder."
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Very interesting. So Theodore Dalrymple has said he's traveled the world as a doctor and he's seen the worst of the worst material poverty, fathomable. Patients with heart failure walking 50 miles in the blaring sun, panting swollen legs just to get treatment, ulcerating, cancer, just horrific cancers that have consumed people. Men with tetanus from the sand flea that lays eggs between their toes, tuberculosis that has reduced people to
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skeletons. Children mauled by leopards. A leper with his face rotted away. Just horrific things that he's seen in the third world. And just like, just chaos. It was in Tanzania and a man was killed by the ruling party because his wife refused to sleep with the party leader in the area. Just horrific stuff.
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But then Theodore said this, he says, Yet nothing I saw, neither the poverty nor the overt oppression, ever had the same devastating effect on the human personality as the undiscriminating welfare state. I never saw the loss of dignity, the self-centeredness, the spiritual and emotional vacuity, lack of thought, or the sheer ignorance of how to live that I see daily in England. I and the doctors from India and the Philippines have come to the same terrible conclusion. Here it is, that the
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worst poverty is in England and it's not material poverty but poverty of the soul. Well, it gives a dramatic way perhaps of just making a friendly suggestion to rededicate to some family dinners and get those in the routine as much as possible. I read a lot recently about getting rid of phone-based childhoods and having more neighborhood-based childhoods, getting back to the stickball, capture the flag, stuff like that. That's great, but let's go even closer.
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Eating dinner together around the table childhoods. Maybe it's a form of hospitality, right? That's what the Bible commands. Hospitality with strangers, hospitality with friends. It's hard to invite people over for dinner, and I'm talking to myself. We've gotten out of the habit since we moved. We moved and all of our stuff burned in the move and kind of used that as an excuse and just the chaos of moving and also we had no table at
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all. But now we got plenty of stuff and we're centered now. We got everything back. And we still haven't had people over yet for dinner and that's not right. It's been a year. It's been a year, been a year. And it's hard but once you get in the habit it's easy and it's always good. It's good for you as the host, keeps your house clean, it's encouraging to your visitors, it's great for the kids to see that this home isn't just for selfish
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indulgence, the thing that we open up for other people to come in, that's very important. Keeps people away from and you away from doing bad things. I guess in the ancient world, inns were like brothels. So we had to invite other Christians in to keep them away from those bad places. There's an element of that today too, right? What else would you or these other people be doing if we weren't doing this instead very encouraging, edifying thing together as the Bible commands? And the Bible commands it many times. Hebrews 13, let brotherly love continue. Do not forget to entertain strangers for by so doing some have unwittingly
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entertained angels so we can have strangers over more distant friends close friends gosh maybe we need to get back to basics just having our own family over for dinner but what do I know Hitler and other fascists probably ate food too so you know can't be for hospitality can't be for eating. It has fascist residences. Mike Slater dot locals dot com.
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You can listen to this podcast with no commercials. Mike Slater dot locals dot com and the transcripts there as well. Mike Slater dot locals dot com and the transcripts there as well. Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Have a great weekend.
