It's time we take environmentalism back from the lunatics, atheists, and pagan Mother Earth worshippers. Environmentalism should be, once again, led by conservatives and Christians around the Creator's commands to "subdue" and "rule" the earth.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. Happy Earth Day. Feels like Earth Day is not really a big deal anymore. I didn't really think about it leading up to it. I'm not going to spend time here talking about the founder of Earth Day, how he murdered
his girlfriend, stuffed her in a trunk in his closet for about 18 months before the neighbors started to notice. Not going to do that here. Doesn't seem appropriate or necessary or edifying. On my San Diego show for the last maybe 15 years, we've done an Earth Day tradition, and that is to share the story about how you should not recycle.
Recycling is a giant waste of time, money, and energy. It actually hurts the planet, and you should immediately stop doing it. We also, over the years, have thrown in there a little more about how the Great Barrier Reef is not dying, it's not being bleached, and there's no such thing as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And generally, all these things together speak to a larger hysteria that people like to have. They cling to things and there's a conversation here about the concentric circles, how conservatives,
their concentric circles, they start in the middle with the person, the self, and then family, community, nation, world. And liberals, progressives start from the outside. They start from the world and then work their way in, if possible, to get to the middle.
Conservatives start from the middle and work their way out. I think that's a better way of ordering everything, starting with yourself and then working out. It's actually better for the world that way. Progressive start with the world, but even that wasn't far enough away. So progressive start with like another concentric circle of, of the health of the planet forever in the future.
Like that's like there, it like, it's just pagan. It's the pagan worshiping mother earth is what that is. But so we go to bigger conversations like that. Don't need to do that here. We did that on the radio. We've done it on the radio every year for 15 years. I want to share this story instead. And for a bigger reason, the other day, just a couple of days ago, someone walked down the streets of LA with a chainsaw, cutting down trees, dozens of trees,
in the city streets. So you got the street and then the sidewalk, and these are trees intermittently planted and been there for a long time. Along the sidewalk there, beautiful trees, important trees for the neighborhood,
and just cut them down. And that made me angry and sad and I think it's probably some progressive person who did that it's not a it wasn't someone in a MAGA hat going down with a chainsaw I'll bet you money on that one probably someone on the left that's interesting isn't it and we'll find out they don't know who did it yet. Obviously we can't have this person walking around.
This person can't be trusted in any aspect of their life. And it's okay, we have places for people like this where we send them so they can stay away from the rest of us. Stay away from chainsaws and trees. Who knows who they're gonna use that chainsaw on next. So we mentioned this on the radar today because I got thinking like this really interesting that it's probably a lefty who did this
and why did it bother me so much? I just started the other day reading this book, I don't know why, it's by Eric Sloan, it's called American Barns and Covered Bridges. It's beautiful, stunningly beautiful book. It's an ode to wood.
He said, because he started, did I mention this yesterday? I may have mentioned it yesterday. He was dismantling or renovating a barn and he was just amazed at how well built this thing was being hundreds of years old. And he got thinking, who were the Americans who built this thing? Who were these men? And he went on this whole adventure about barns and covered bridges. And he made the point that we think of symbolic things of America, we think of wheat or gold
or steel. He says we should also think of wood. It was just 20 years after the pilgrims barely made it through the first winter in America. 20 years later, they were exporting wood as far away to Madagascar on ships built with American trees. And it was so ingrained in our culture from the very beginning in America that if a man was strong or weak or honest or dishonest, he was likened to some sort of tree.
Now I'm a conservative and I think to strengthen our conservative movement, I think we need to go back to not only our founding fathers fathers but our founding grandfathers and to learn that our founding grandfathers loved wood so deeply, so profoundly. It just drove home again that environmentalism should be a conservative issue. So add this one to the list. There's all these different issues, just these last couple of years now, this realignment,
this political realignment that conservatives have taken from the left. I don't know if the conservatives have taken them or the left has dropped them and we've just picked them up. I don't know, but it's good. And this is one of the geniuses of Trump is that he's taken some of the issues that the left was right on, like being pro freedom of speech, anti-war, fair trade, for the working class.
These ideas that the left has had for a long time, Trump just, yoink, thank you very much. These are now ours. And this is another one, we talked about one on the radio today, with child labor and how many illegal aliens came under the Biden administration
and hundreds of thousands of children working 12 hour shifts in our country right now. And how we had no way to keep up with this. And this was done by the left. The left did this. So the left you would think would have hung their hat in the past on being against child labor. And here we are conservatives coming in and be like, I don would think, would have hung their hat in the past on being against child labor. And here we are, conservatives coming in and being like, hmm, I don't think we should have children working in coal mines anymore.
So it's like, okay, that's now ours. Thank you very much. And one of those issues also that we should take now is environmentalism. We have let the left have environmentalism for far too long.
It's ours now. I would like to take it, take it back, in fact. My neighborhood, the development, my favorite street is this beautiful street, kind of has a hill to it. It's like a bending hill. The road kind of goes down and to the right there. Massive trees on either side and it covers the whole street.
It's a canopy the whole way. And it's the one part of the neighborhood where as the street bends away, the houses are actually set back from the sidewalk and from the street quite a bit. And there's another row of trees
and it's just a beautiful little street. I go out of my way as I leave the development to drive through this street. And as you get further and further back in the development where the newer homes have been built and the trees get smaller and smaller until you get to our street where the trees are. It was like a year or so old since they've been planted.
And you look up, it's not as nice back here. This is a wait in 10 years. It'll be beautiful, but not not there yet. Trees are good. We need more trees to go back to this Eric Sloan book. He said American kids knew all about trees. And they could tell you what it was just by its smell. And they could tell you what they were used for. Black gum was for plow shares. Oak for framing and pegs. Apple for saw handles. Chestnut
for barrel hoops. Cedar for pails. Pine for kindling. Oak for heat. Even the plainest carpenter knew that a rocking chair needed at least four different kinds of wood. Each wood did its specific job. There was pine for a soft seat, hickory for a springy back, walnut for strong legs, and oak for the fastening pegs. Just love how connected we were to trees and also how we use them. That speaks to the word subdue. We'll get to that in just a moment. But one more thought in my ode to tree. Just yesterday I was running around with Grace in a park. We call it Creek Park in the neighborhood.
This is a little Creek that rolls through and there's trees on either side. And then put a little playground, a little small little playground in the corner there. And Grace likes to run around and, know, like a foot diameter or something. So they were, they were significant. And I got sad.
And I think, why am I sad? Just a tree. Well, first it was more beautiful when they were there, but is it just the aesthetics I care about? Is that it? Not that that's nothing, something, but it took a long time for those trees to grow that
tall. I don't know what that speaks to. Should I have hugged the tree? If I hugged the tree, would they not have torn it down? Oh, this reminds me, do you remember the tree, just read this the other day, they tore a tree down. Tore sounds dramatic, they cut it down,
they removed, removed the tree that was planted by Andrew Jackson at the White House 196 years ago. Does that make you sad? It kind of does for me. Should we have hugged it? Maybe they wouldn't have cut it down then. I would like to introduce an argument that conservatives and Christians should be environmentalists.
There's lots of different views on the environment. The greenies think it shouldn't be touched at all. They've elevated the environment above man or even above God, very pagan mother earth, and man is a parasite on the planet. Many I'd say most Americans have that view actually. They may not be able to articulate it like that,
but they've been influenced by people who have that perspective, that man is a parasite and that the earth is the most important thing. And we need to go back to the natural state of the planet. Others view the environment as something to exploit,
just a very materialistic perspective. That's not right either. I don't know what the Buddhist or Hindu view is on the environment. I'm guessing, I'm just totally making this up, I'm guessing they talk a big game
about being one with nature. But if you look at the rivers in Buddhist and Hindu countries, doesn't look like people who say they're one with the planet. So there needs to be a better answer here. Doesn't look like people who say they're one with the planet.
So there needs to be a better answer here. And I think we need to be the people who have a biblical view of the environment. And I would say that this biblical view needs to be centered around the words, subdue and rule. Subdue and rule, because that's what it says in Genesis 1, to subdue and rule in line with the creator, to promote human flourishing and glorify God.
Something like that. So let's talk about these words. Let's read it. Genesis 1, then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth we saw a hawk what kind of hawk Cooper Hawk a
Cooper Hawk landed when Grace and I were in that park ten feet away from us Wow look at that thing verse 27 so God created man in his own image, in the image of God, he created him, male and female, he created them and God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. People know that part and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the rule, the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Subdue and rule over the animals and plants. Subdue and rule. Those words seem to have negative connotations. I
think that leads people to think, oh we can exploit it then? No, no. It means we're a steward over it. Our authority to subdue and rule comes from the ultimate ruler, from God. So we have to steward the earth the way that God would. If God's the president, we're the employees, we're the governors, and we're to work in the way he would want us to. It doesn't mean to waste or exploit or abuse.
It's not a license to abuse, not even close. We have to use the environment as God would have us to use it and take care of it and tend to it. Now, you may have thought, I haven't mentioned this word yet, but global warming. When you talk about environmentalism these last 10, 20 years
that it's been connected with global warming, but that's not, we got to decouple those decouple global warming and environmentalism. Global warming is not true. And God already told us he's going to burn up the earth and everything in it. He's going to make a new heaven and a new earth. So don't worry about that.
I think actually that speaks to the paganism of the global warming idea that they would take something that is in the Bible and then make it their own earthly thing, like worldly thing. Second Peter 3, 7 says, by his word, the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. All right, I can go on. Here's my, my goal of this Earth Day. Conservatives should be environmentalists. Environmentalists who view God's creation
as something to be subdued and ruled over as a steward, given authority from our creator. We need to decouple environmentalism from global warming, two very different things. Let the atheists, let the pagans, let the left have global warming.
We will have true environmentalism. And also we should take back environmentalism from the atheists. John MacArthur quoted Aldous Huxley. So Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World, his grandpa, Thomas Huxley, did not know this, was Darwin's right-hand man. So all this has a connection to evolution and all that. 1966, Huxley wrote a book called Confessions of a Professed Atheist.
He said this, I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning. Consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He also concerned to prove that there's no valid reason why he should personally not do just what he wants to do.
For myself, as no doubt for many of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument for liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously a liberation from a certain political and economic system, and a liberation from a certain system of morality. And we objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. How about that for a confession? A lot of the environmentalism we see from atheists is trying to fill a God-sized hole in their heart. They gotta believe in something.
We believe in morality. We believe life has meaning. We believe in creation. We believe life has meaning. We believe in creation. We believe in the creator. And we should take seriously God's command to subdue and rule the earth. We can work on the details as time goes on. But I believe Earth Day today, 2025, is a good time that we conservatives and Christians take environmentalism back from the lunatics, the atheists, and the pagan Mother Earth worshippers. Mike Slater dot locals dot com. Transcript commercial free on the website Mike Slater dot locals dot com.
