Welcome to Politics by Faith, where we take the news of the day, we bring it to the Bible, so we can walk away with peace and perspective. It's new headlines every day, but Ecclesiastes says there's nothing new under the sun. So thanks for being here. And if you could please subscribe to our YouTube page, our quickly growing YouTube page, appreciate that, youtube . com slash at politics by faith, hit subscribe, help us with the algorithm. So the story of the day is Thomas Massey's big primary day.
As I'm recording this, Results are just coming in. And it looks like the challenger is doing pretty well. Now, I can't stay up all night to record this. I apologize. I got to get to bed eventually. So it looks like Massey is going to lose, but I'm leaving open the opportunity that we get some late results coming in for Massey and he indeed wins.
It does not change the main point that I would like to make here in today's episode. So this seat in Northern Kentucky. Thomas Massey's held it for seven terms. It's 14 years. Trump doesn't like Massey anymore because he's annoying. I think I think that's what he would say.
Politically annoying. He's just a no vote all the time for things that the president really wants. And when the margins are tight, like a one seat Republican majority in the House, every single vote counts. So he would say no on a bill and then no matter what. And then Speaker Johnson would have to go to another or a moderate RINO Republican in New York. And then they would leverage their vote for some pork or for some dramatic change in the bill that benefits them in their district.
And then the whole bill's worse. And if Massey just voted yes, then at least it'd be something. And now it's that thing but worse because he voted no. It still ended up passing, but they had to give some favors out in order to get it across the finish line. So Trump wanted him gone.
I don't remember all the back and forth drama exactly but Trump warned him a bunch of times and Massey stood strong and didn't budge and kept saying no and here we are. And this is why we have primaries. As my dad always said, that's why they play the game. An underdog would win and he would say that's why they play the game. And this is why we have primaries. No big deal.
I feel like there's a lot of unnecessary drama there has been with this race building up to it. And I know the sport of politics is fun and we talk about it and stuff like that. But I don't think we need to make any more out of this race than it is. Whatever happens tonight with the results. The bottom line is he's a libertarian and he's in the Republican Party and he doesn't vote enough for Republican things and doesn't support the Republican president and the Republican president's agenda enough. And the Republican Party isn't going to support him anymore.
I don't know. What do you expect? That's that's sufficient of an analysis right there. There's, uh, I might be on Piers Morgan show tomorrow. Not quite sure yet, but this would be the topic. And I don't know what I'm going to say.
Like when they first asked me, I was like, now I'll do a segment. And they're like, no, it's an hour. What? Hour? What are you talking about for an hour? What sort of debate?
He's a libertarian in the Republican party. He's not voting for Republican things anymore. So they challenged him. Now I will bring it to some other topics. Um, I said, this is why we have primaries. Okay.
So that's the first thing. Um, libertarians are not conservatives. They're not the same thing. and I speak this as a former libertarian. There's some overlap, for sure, but there's also a lot of overlap between the far left and libertarians. Libertarians and conservatives are not the same.
In my experience, having been a libertarian for a long time, it was a great place to cut my teeth. It was a great start, but I think libertarianism lacks the depth of wisdom that's necessary to govern well, and it's missing the next step. I'm having trouble finding the right word for it exactly, but it's missing morality. It's missing wisdom. I think that's it.
It has principles for sure. It's great, but it's missing wisdom. The example I gave on the radio show this morning was Solomon. could have asked for anything he wanted. And he asked for wisdom, but we may not know the rest of the quote, the rest of what he said. So God said, you can have whatever you want.
And he said, give your servant therefore an understanding mind. It's great. There's the wisdom, understanding mind, but to what? Why? An understanding mind to govern your people that I may discern between good and evil for who is able to govern this, your great people. So Solomon didn't just ask for wisdom for wisdom's sake.
He asked for wisdom so he could govern his people well. And how do you govern well? By discerning between good and evil, right and wrong. And libertarianism, I believe, is missing that essence. And they write it off to just don't hurt me or do whatever you want. Doesn't matter.
And that, that ain't it. Again, libertarianism is a great start. If I can make a church analogy. When I look back on me becoming a Christian, I went to a lot of churches in the beginning. of the process of the sanctification process. And there are a lot of cool churches that I went to early on, you know, the cool church with the cool name and the cool pastor and the cool music.
And then I wanted more and I don't go there anymore. So, and it's easy for me to be like, ah, you go to a cool church, but maybe they serve a role early on in someone's faith. Maybe. And I think it's similar with libertarians. Great place to start.
Cut your teeth on some great libertarian writers and thinkers. Learn about liberty, learn about freedom, but then you got to add the most important ingredient. And that is an understanding of human nature and an understanding specifically of original sin. Charles Murray, he wrote in his book, what it means to be a libertarian. He said, an adult making an honest living and minding his own business deserves to be left alone to live his life. He deserves to be free.
That's great. But there's other people around too. And other people who aren't as good as you. There's a blast radius, if you will, to the libertarian concept of freedom without morality. And you need that morality. And people don't have that morality, which means you need guardrails, and government has to impose those guardrails.
There's other ways to put guardrails. There's cultural guardrails, of course, too. But we need government ones as well, and that's okay. George Washington said, virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. Most people don't have those, and I believe it's okay for the government to legislate morality. Ooh, it's a common libertarian reference.
You can't legislate morality. Of course you can. Of course we do. Now, libertarians get offended to this very much because they say, well, I'm a moral person. I'm sure you are. It's not you I'm worried about.
It's your perception of everyone else that's wrong and therefore dangerous for everyone. Liberty is great. And I want everyone to learn about liberty and know what it means and to want it. But liberty is not the end. Liberty is a means to the end. The end is maximum human flourishing.
That's my goal. It's not just everyone do what they want. My goal is human flourishing. Libertarians put liberty at the end. But without any order, it all crumbles. Order is necessary for societies to thrive.
And order can come from within. It does come from within. That's the conscience. And it also comes from outside family, culture, and the law. And if there's no order, then there's no peace or justice or harmony or flourishing or thriving or anything good. I'll give you a common libertarian example would be legalizing drugs.
This is my take. I was for the legalizing of all drugs, all the drugs. And my argument was, well, if, uh, if they legalize cocaine today, would you go dig cocaine? And he says, no, of course I wouldn't just go use it. Therefore legalize it. That was my argument.
That was the depth of my argument. But was that wise? Was that a wise argument to make? Did I consider fallen human nature in a broken world. No, I did not. I said I wouldn't use cocaine if they legalized it.
But some people would and people would sell it more openly and more people would use it because it would be more accessible and it would ruin so many lives and neighborhoods and schools and communities and families would all break down all because we legalized cocaine because freedom. And once you think it through, you're like, oh, yeah, actually, cocaine's a terrible thing that we should not allow. And we saw it with marijuana. We did legalize marijuana in many places around the country, legalized marijuana. And it's been awful. And I was I made the arguments a lot.
I was in California when they were legalizing and I said, oh, we should legalize it because it'll end the drug cartels. So stupid. It brought the drug cartels into California. in an unprecedented way. And way more people use marijuana now than ever before. I forget the real numbers, but let's say 5 million people were using marijuana before it was legalized.
And now there's 50 million people using marijuana. So people will say, oh, the war on drugs has failed. I'm like, well, I don't know. Has it? It hasn't eliminated drugs, sure. But we legalized marijuana, and now you have 10 times as many people using it as before.
So I don't know. If you were those 45 million people who weren't using it, it seems like the war on drugs was working pretty good for you, actually. But now that it's legal and everywhere more accessible, yeah, a lot more people do use it, and that's not good. That doesn't maximize human flourishing. It maximizes freedom, but it doesn't maximize human flourishing. So which are you in the business of?
I want to maximize flourishing. Prostitution is another one. I always said prostitution is great. Consenting adults, what's the big deal? It doesn't bother me. I won't do it, so fine. It should be legal.
That is an example of libertarians have more in common with the very far left in America than they do conservatives. And that's not our tradition in this country. We don't have a libertarian tradition in America. We don't. In American history, adultery was illegal. And now libertarians say they want all sexual relations to be allowed.
And I don't think it should be. I'm open for having a conversation about adultery being illegal again. Because strong, stable marriages without adultery, it's in the Bible, as this is not a good thing, thou shalt not do it. And that's what we used to do. We used to legislate morality. Like, oh, the Bible says you shouldn't do it.
Well, let's make it illegal. Oh, didn't stop everyone from committing. Okay, great. But look at the divorce rate today. So maybe it was actually good that we did that because I'm for human flourishing for families and towns and cities and the country. So yeah, I'll law it.
Oh, that's not very libertarian. of you. Yeah, I'm not one. So my point is libertarianism, it's a great start. It's sort of like capitalism, right? Capitalism is a great start, but I don't worship at the altar of capitalism.
Capitalism is at the end. Capitalism is a means. So, and that's a good one too. Libertarians, they're for totally free markets, right? Maximum efficiency, which means Companies can move overseas to China and Mexico, and who are you to tell a company that they can't do that? They're not allowed to do whatever they want with their money and their company.
Okay, great. Thanks for your principled stance. It came at what cost? What cost to families and towns? So I think libertarians got to think it through a little more. One more thing I shared this morning, and then we'll go to the Bible.
Just this idea of legislating morality. Libertarians are big on this one. Like, you can't legislate morality. Of course you can. Of course we always did. I'll always go back to this.
I'll read this all the time because it's a perfect example and I could do many more, but this one speaks to me because it's pretty extreme. 1808, there was a law in Connecticut. This wasn't a law, this was the law. I'll read it. And be it further enacted that if any person within this state, having been educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion, shall by writing, printing, teaching, or advised speaking, deny the being of a God or any one of the persons in the Holy Trinity to be God, or shall a certain maintain that there are more gods than one, or shall deny the Christian religion to be true, or the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be of divine authority, and thereof lawfully convicted before any of the superior courts of the state, shall for the first offense be incapable to have or enjoy any office or employments, ecclesiastical, civil, or military, or any part of them, or profit by them. And offices, places, and employments employed by such persons at their conviction shall be void, and such person a second time
convicted of the aforesaid crimes, shall be disabled to sue, prosecute, plead, or maintain any action or information in law or equity, or be guardian of any child, or executor of any will, or administrator of any estate. So if you two times in the state of Connecticut in 1808, if you two times deny that God is real, the Bible is true, Jesus is the son of God, the Holy Spirit exists, if you do any of those things two times, then you are not allowed to have children. That's how serious they were. Oh, you can't legislate morality. We used to be a Christian nation. Maximum human flourishing.
That was our goal, not just also libertarians. You can go down this road if you keep going down it where you reject all civic authority, civil authority. government authority. But the Bible doesn't do that. The Bible speaks of governments and obeying government leaders who God puts in power. So my goal is to look for the truth and advocate for what's best.
And libertarianism doesn't do that because it's all about all just freedom, right? It's like, oh, you do what you want. I'll do what I want. And, you know, leave me alone. And that's not advocating for the truth. I want to play this clip here.
This is this preacher guy's name is Nicholas Bolling. I just saw this today. He's a street preacher. and he's at a pride parade, and someone comes up to him and says this. Can I give you something? Can you give me something?
There's a church out there giving out these stickers, and I think the message is really important. God's love is unconditional. Did you know the rainbow, it represents even God's faithfulness? After what happened with Noah and the ark, God put a rainbow that he was promising that he would never flood the earth again. I mean, yeah, that's one point of view. I know that that's what the Bible says, but...
I don't think that there's any definite way to tell that that's what a rainbow signifies, but I don't have any problem with you believing that. Like I said, there's a church down there with a similar message that wants to, I'd assume, spread the same scripture that you're trying to spread. And I think that they'll have more luck getting people to listen to them because they approach from a position of allies rather than foes. That was someone screaming at the camera. That's a classic progressive, as she is, and libertarian point of view. You have your point of view.
You can think what you think. I'll think what I think. I'll believe what I want to believe. Your church believes what it wants to believe. My church will believe what it wants to believe. Your church says one thing.
My church says another. You think you think. I'll think my thing. I don't think that's sufficient. I think there is truth and we should talk to each other and work with each other to convince each other of the truth and then to live the truth. And by that, I mean to organize society the best we can around the principles of the truth, using God -aligned morality, like you can't kill.
There are societies, there have been societies, of course, where you can kill. In a Christian society, you can't. We made it illegal. And we have always in this country legalized morality based upon the code of Christian ethics. Libertarians don't have that. And I believe it all breaks down eventually because there's no moral standard that we're all striving for.
It breaks down, it's self -destructive. And people say, oh, our founders envisioned a country of vast diversity. No, they didn't. They didn't. Look at the 1808 law in Connecticut. And every colony had their own oath of office related to affirming that Jesus is the son of God and affirming the Trinity and all that.
Every state had their own official religion. So libertarians and progressives have this big problem, very problematic overlap of you do you, I'll do me. And that's how what Christians should think. We as Christians should be salt and light and be talking about what is true. Not you do you, I do me, but hey, here's the truth. Let's do this together.
And that made me think of Ephesians 4, 17. Just on the point that there is a morality that you should live by and also you can have a new life, a new you, new heart. And we should have the goal of bringing others to it. Here's what Paul says, Now this I say, and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
But this is not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. To put off your old self. which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. Here it is. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. You do you, I'll do me.
Let's just not hurt each other. I think we can do better than that. youtube . com slash at politics by faith youtube . com slash at politics by faith if you could subscribe that would be fantastic and we can get in that algorithm and together spread the word
