We need to be unashamed in what this nation is. For far too long we've let the enemy define us. It's time we reclaim where we came from and who we should be. Woe to the nation that does not.
Hello, welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. Back from our trip to DC with the whole family. We'll get to that in just a moment. I want to play this clip here from this group called Jubilee. I don't know much about them.
I've seen a couple of clips from this group. There's one I saw in particular of Michael Knowles, and they'll have Michael Knowles, like a conservative, and then in a big circle there's like 30 progressives, and they go and they debate them one at a time. And the clips are kind of interesting. Here's one where you have a progressive
in the middle and I guess like 30 conservatives around them. I haven't seen the whole video, but this clip is making the rounds and. They should play it here and talk about it.
What's the problem with xenophobic nationalism? Do you think that's better for Americans in general? Like xenophobic nationalism is better. We should have a coherent culture. Everyone should be a part of the same culture. We should have assimilation Which do you get to choose what the culture is? We already have a dominant culture
What is a dominant European and Christian values and identity that is the dominant white Christian in European? Identity white so you so your argument is that has been the dominant culture just to be clear We're not letting people assimilate to that We're saying you should keep your culture and this is why our culture is so divided now.
Your argument is that Trump is good for those who want a dominant white European culture.
I mean that is what America is. It's rooted in European identity and Christian values. That's what it has been. Would you really disagree with that? What is it then if that's not the identity of America?
Well I think the identity of America...
For the majority of time America's been a country. You don't think that's been the identity? Well, actually, no.
I think actually the the the identity of America has been, you know, for better or for worse, a melting pot in that regard.
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe since like the 1960s, even then, like even we had this idea of a melting pot literally means assimilation to it means melting. It means you're assimilating to the dominant culture. Is that not what melting means? And now instead we're saying there's something wrong with xenophobia.
No, I mean look I got to be honest with you like I you and I have a fundamental disagreement we will never see eye to eye on this. It's a choice and people I think what you're expressing though is really what the Trump movement at its heart is about.
We actually talked about this on the show today after we did an hour on this guy from, I guess he's from Palestine, and he's here on a green card. And he was a graduate student at Columbia University. He was the leader of all those pro-Hamas protests that were happening on Columbia's campus, also campuses across the country, last year. And Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, in his confirmation hearing.
And after that was very clear that the state department is going to go after all the visas, in his case, a green card of everyone who supports Hamas. And you're going to get deported. And this guy was, or is in the process of that happening. So we had an interesting debate about his right to a green card,
his first amendment rights, his freedom of speech rights, or should we just kick this guy out? And we did the back and forth and, and, uh, I think we'll leave it there. I don't know if we need to go into more detail here, but someone called in at the Ann Maria from Massachusetts
and she said, we don't want this guy here. He's not assimilating to our culture. He doesn't want to be a part of this culture. He wants to be something very different. And the green card exists as a sort of trial run for your citizenship.
Yeah, yeah, we'll let you come here for a while and we'll see how it goes. And we get to decide if we want you to be here anymore. We went over the law, and there's a lot of Supreme Court precedent on this, and the law of the Nationalization Act has nine different reasons why a green card could be revoked, and one of them is if you support terrorist groups.
So it's within the bounds of the law, but I believe more than that, it's even within the bounds of what is right. This is our nation. We decide if we want you here or not. Now if you're a citizen, that's totally different, but if you're a foreigner, then we get to decide.
So anyway, we had that conversation, then we played afterwards, wasn't planning on it, but we ended up playing this clip because of Maria's phone call. And it just speaks to who we used to be, and now we have to have a conversation about
whether or not this is, if this is who we want to still be. It is a fact, and I don't know this girl at all, I don't endorse her, I don't know anything about her, but it is a fact that we were founded as a nation in Western European culture and Christian values. There's no other interpretation possible. We were not founded by Chinese people and we were not founded on Islamic values. There's no other option than Western Europe and Christianity.
That's it. Now, you cannot debate that. We can debate if you think we should still be a country rooted in those values. I think we should. You can say we shouldn't. Okay, we can have that debate, but there's no debate about whether or not that is our founding, and in fact is.
You also heard the word melting pot in there. I don't like that term anymore. Maybe it meant something or it was helpful in the past. I just don't think it's helpful anymore. And this idea of like a salad, the salad bowl or the melting pot, nah, I don't,
I just don't, I don't wanna, I'm not gonna use it anymore. I just don't think it's a very helpful expression. It's too loaded now and it means different things to different people and I don't even wanna like bother defining it the right way. I just think we get rid of it.
I think we need to be more clear about just who we are. Just say it, just say the thing. We are a nation that is rooted in the West. You can just say Western civilization, but I'm going to say we're a nation that's rooted in specifically Western European culture
and Christian values, period. I don't think you need to come up with any cutesy melting pot, like that's who we are. We are rooted in Western European culture and Christian values. I just got back from Washington DC, spent a couple days there with the whole family and all the kids and it was awesome.
We had a wonderful time. And it was, for me it was basically an architecture tour. And we just take in all the stunning buildings and the Capitol building is unbelievable and the temples that we built. Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, the Smithsonian Castle, stunning work of art. And then there's some blight around too, like the African American History Museum. It's like, what is this disgusting building you guys littered on the mall here? It's awful.
There's a couple other buildings, which is ridiculous. But you have like the art museum, maybe? It's just the Pantheon. It's like exact replica of the Pantheon in Rome. My favorite one though is the Library of Congress. It's right behind the Congressional Building, the Capitol Building. It's one of the most stunning buildings I've ever seen. Every square inch of it is detailed, mosaics, the marble engravings, the frescoes, paintings,
everything.
They started building it in 1897 and these were people, this is well after our founding fathers, 100 years plus later. These are people who really cared about this nation and the buildings we were building, it really meant something. It was very important and it was very important to prove that we and this nation are a direct descendant of, in particular, Greece, Rome, and Jerusalem. If you go to the main reading room in the Library of Congress.
Stunning building, huge dome. And again, every square inch is detailed. But one of the details that stood out is all around the dome on the inside are paintings representing different countries and what these countries brought to the world.
And you have Judea for religion, Greece for philosophy. It literally says the word Greece. I guess it's not super insightful, I just looked. Greece, there's a painting representing philosophy. Italy represents the fine arts. Germany represents the art of printing,
at the printing press. Spain represents discovery. England represents literature. And then also all around the room are all these statues to the great contributors of Western civilization. Michelangelo, Beethoven, Columbus, Shakespeare,
Moses, Paul, Newton. And we're honoring these people. This is again 1897. We're honoring these people because all of these people together culminates into the West and also into America. And that's who we are.
We take all that has come before us and all that is righteous and good, and we created this new place deserves stunningly beautiful buildings and the symbolism is everywhere and it is very obvious that our founders and the people after it, for a hundred years, were saying to the world, this is who we are. We are the culmination of all these great civilizations. We are the combination and culmination of it.
This is the height of Western civilization. And for a long time we've been at the very least strict, if not lied to, that we're not this. And therefore we're nothing. We're just a melting pot, as if a melting pot just is, you throw everything together and it melts away into nothing.
It's just a very nihilistic thing. And if anyone ever said, oh, well, we're a Western nation with Christian values, like, oh, that's racist. Like, who are you to say, like, oh, an American? It's really weird if you're, if you're something else and you want to
preserve your culture, you're, you're, uh, you know, so brave. But if you're an American who wants to preserve a culture, you're xenophobic of other cultures. Isn't that interesting? My fear is that for a long time, people have been tricked, at the very least, into saying, oh yeah, I guess I shouldn't say anything about who we are as a nation.
Oh, I guess we're just nothing. And then the barbarians come in and they define who we are. And we come from something too good to let that happen anymore. So let's take a turn here. Here's my biblical point is we need to get back to God if we want to save this nation. And here's my proof of it. If you go to the Jefferson Memorial, which is my favorite memorial in DC,
there's three different inscriptions on the side wall. And one of them says, and this is about the education of slaves, but the principle is the same.
Jefferson said,
the God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Wow. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever. Meaning of that is, the curse of God will come if we keep treating the slaves like this.
Now if you go down the street to the Lincoln Memorial, there's another speech of Lincoln's up on the wall, also about slaves. This is during the war. He's talking about how people in the North and the South both praying to the same God with different prayers. And both can't be answered, he said.
And Lincoln said, the Almighty has his own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. That is Matthew 18, 7. He goes on, if we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through his appointed time he now wills to remove and that he gives to
both north and south this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense shall come we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believer and a to him. So he's saying we are going against God's will here. It's amazing. It's amazing that we're going against God's will. Woe to us. Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if the kids are off school, that's you hear Jack singing, yet if God wills
that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn for the last shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three hundred years ago. So still it must be said, the judgment of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." And then he went on and gave the line that most famous for in this speech, he said,
with malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right. The beautiful. But I think that's the part before it, it's even more beautiful. So I share both these together
because we have Thomas Jefferson saying, God is just and he will curse us for how we treat, in this case, slaves. In 1781, he said that. And then we have Lincoln here in 1865, 84 years later at the Civil War saying,
this is the curse. Right, Thomas Jefferson said, God is just. And there's gonna be a curse. And here's down the street, Lincoln saying, there it is, it's the curse. Both those inscribed in the memorials, not far from each other. Let's go back thousands of years, Deuteronomy.
It's a warning from Moses. This is Deuteronomy 28. And he starts off with blessings. And Moses said, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all his commandments, which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth and all those blessings all
these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you because you obey the voice of the Lord your God and he goes on and gives a bunch of different blessings it's great but then there's a much longer section if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe carefully all his commandments and statutes which I command you today that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. And it's a big long list. And one of the curses
is the alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you. Very interesting. The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you but you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head and you shall be the tail. The idea with the he shall lend to you is because he has more power than you, he has more financial power, he's better off than you.
There's nothing you can lend him. You don't have any means to do that. He shall be the head, you shall be the tail. I find it interesting that one of the curses from God is that if you don't follow his statutes, the foreigner will rule over you. I believe that it is okay to have an interest in our nation and the people of this nation.
God speaks of blessings and curses to nations. I believe it's beyond just the Israelites. Psalm 33, 12 says, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. And then it goes on and there's parts of the Bible where there's curses, Nineveh and Babylon. I think it's true of all people. Now, this is not saying, I'm not saying we need to exclude all foreigners from this nation in
every circumstance all the time. I'm just saying we need to start with the principle that we decide and then we decide accordingly, but it's we decide. For far too long, our policy has been everyone else decides what our immigration policy is. And why would it be any other way? Because we're nothing anyway. We're just a melting pot of nihilism, if not an evil force entirely. But why would we decide we're not good anyway or we're not anything at all?
No, we are something actually. Well, who are you to say? What, are you going to force it on us? You're going to force your values on me and on the rest of us, so you shouldn't say anything." And that's worked for a long time, but I don't think it should work anymore. It is okay.
In fact, I believe we must get back to our understanding that we are a nation rooted in Western European culture. You can just look at our founding fathers, the founding documents, go look at the architecture from a hundred years later in Washington, D.C. We are a people rooted in Western European culture and Christian values. It's not just okay that we understand these things. That last part especially is essential.
Woe to the nation that does not. Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Transcript commercial free on the website. Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Mike Slater dot locals dot com. at locals.com.
