This is not a sign of a healthy nation. How can we reverse the trend of more people relying on the government dole and return to the way God wants us to help each other?

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. 42 million Americans are on food stamps. That's not a sign of a strong, healthy country. We talked earlier today about creeds. AOC gave a speech where she talked about how there's countless creeds in America. 

The immigrants and people who speak hundreds of different languages. And I'm like, that's not good. The crowd was cheering. There was a Zohan rally. And they're like, oh, it's amazing, 100 different languages. And I'm like, hmm, that sounds like the Tower of Babel. 

Yay, we can't communicate with each other. Yay, none of us believe the same thing about important principles of life and governance. Yay, I think. That doesn't sound good. So then we read from this thing called the American ethos. It was about 100 years ago. 

This person says, the American ethos, I do not choose, excuse me, the American creed, I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be uncommon if I can. I seek opportunity, not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me. I want to take the calculated risk, to build and to dream, fail and to succeed. I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence, the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia. 

I will not trade freedom for beneficence, nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat. It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid. to think and act for myself, to enjoy the benefit of my creations, and to face the world boldly and say, this, with God's help, I have done. these 42 million Americans. And I don't want to be cruel. 

I don't want to be mean. But this is not good. One in eight Americans are on food stamps. Now I'm taking a pretty moderate approach here. I'm not saying we got to get rid of entirely. Maybe one day it'd be great if we could get, and I used to make this argument, it'd be great if we could get to the utopian ideal, which is where when someone's down on their luck, first you go to family. 

If you don't have any, you go to friends. And if you don't have any, then you go to church. And if that doesn't work or whatever, then there's other charities, faith, you know, Christian based, like rescue mission, stuff like that. And then like way down the list would be food stamps, but it wouldn't even exist at that point. It wouldn't be necessary. I think one reason why people don't want to go to church is because church requires a relationship and people don't want relationships because the person giving the charity may say, Hey, maybe you should stop doing drugs, or maybe you should make these other changes in your life. 

And people don't want to hear it. They just want the anonymity of getting the free money. So you can continue to live in this way that's clearly not going well. Another benefit of having church be the main means of charity is you don't just get regular water. You get a water where you'll never be thirsty again. People want government cheese. 

When if you go to a church, you'll get a lot more than your regular old bread. Charity through a church is a blessing for everyone. And food stamps are a track for everyone. But people don't want to go to a church because again, relationships, accountability, better to just get it for free in the mail. Better for what? 

Of course. 

So I'm taking a pretty middle of the road approach here. And I think for the next few decades, probably, we should limit food stamps to the elderly, the disabled, and people with an IQ under 80 who can't hold a job. IQ under 80, Jordan Peterson talks about this a lot. You can't fold a paper into thirds to put it in an envelope. That's what that IQ is. 

And everyone else, you gotta get to work. It's probably 60 % of people on food stamps is a combination of fraud and able -bodied adults who can work but don't. Probably 60%. So we'll say 20 million Americans are elderly, disabled, and otherwise unable to hold a job. 20 million. That's a pretty... 

Am I a horrible person for saying, I only want to give food stamps to 20 million Americans? I think if we do that for a while, then maybe, and we change a lot of other things in our culture, in our country, then I think maybe we can start to get to that ultimate ideal. But right now we're nowhere even close. Now we did talk on the radio. And we're going to do more on this tomorrow because someone sent me a article written by John Stuart Mill, or an essay written by John Stuart Mill in 1861 about universal suffrage. And it's very funny because this is 1861. 

This was 60 years before women had a right to vote. So this John Stuart Mill, very progressive guy, says, no, everyone should have a right to vote. Everyone should be allowed to vote. Women, laborers, low -income people, everyone should be allowed to vote. Unless, of course, you're on welfare. If you're on government dole in any way, then no, like definitely. 

And he also said, unless you can read, if you can't read, then obviously you can't vote. He went through all these exceptions that would pretty much accept, exempt or remove everybody's right to vote in America. He said, if you've ever been, if you've ever had bankruptcy, you can't vote. If you're in debt, you can't vote. So like no one in America would be allowed to vote. today if this progressive John Stuart Mill had his way a long time ago. 

But we presented this question of if you, just in an effort to shake this up and try to turn the ship around, if you're on specifically food stamps, you can't vote in federal elections. Again, I know there's problems, there's pros and cons to this, and I get it. I mean, you're still human, you're still a person, you're still all these things, you're still a citizen, but you can't vote in federal elections. So we brought this up as just something to think about. And then John Stuart Mill said the exact same thing back in 1861. But here's what I want to talk about on today's show on Politics by Faith, different than what we do on the radio. 

One last thing, someone wrote on Twitter, they said, my mom is disabled, 78 years old. She would die without food benefits. Oh, wow. Do you hear yourself? Your mom would die without food stamps? Your 78 year old disabled mother would die without food stamps? 

Feed your mom. Feed your mom. Honor your parents by feeding them goodness. All right, here's what I'm talking about here. Isaiah 58. Last night, I was reading a sermon by Jonathan Edwards on Isaiah 58. 

I'm not done with it. So maybe we'll do a part two of this when I'm done with Jonathan Edwards' words on it. But let's run through Isaiah 58. It's fascinating. It's about hypocritical religious observances versus true God -pleasing worship and action. That's what Isaiah 58 is about. 

And this opening section here is entitled, Why Do Our Prayers Go Away? And one of the reasons why our prayers go unanswered is because of our own sin. Isaiah 115 says, When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. This is God talking. I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. 

Your hands are full of blood. Isaiah 59 verse one, behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save or his ear dull that it cannot hear. He's like, well, I'm able to do whatever I want people. Don't don't. I'm not answering your prayers because I'm not able to don't be fooled. But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. 

Adam Clark in 1823, he said, how can any nation pretend to fast or worship God at all or dare to profess that they believe in the existence of such a being? while they carry on the slave trade, and traffic in the souls, blood, and bodies of men. O you most criminal of knaves, and worst of hypocrites, cast off at once the mask of your religion, and deepen not your endless perdition by professing the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, while ye continue in this traffic. " Of course, this applies to abortion today. The fasting in Isaiah 58 that's hypocritical is a fasting that You know, you're fasting to hurt your enemies, or you're fasting for selfish needs, or you're fasting to, the scriptures say, make your voice heard on high so to glorify yourself. This is no good. 

So what's true worship? Verse six, is this not the fast that I have chosen, colon, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry? and that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out when you see the naked that you cover him and not hide yourself from your own flesh? Loose the bonds of wickedness. Don't oppress others. 

Undo heavy burdens. Break every yoke. So stop oppressing others, but then actively love others, right? So stop doing the bad things and then share your bread with the hungry. So I know, hopefully you sense the pivot here. So my opening of this podcast is about, the receivers of the welfare. 

And now Isaiah 58 is talking about the givers of charity. And what happens when you serve others? First, it should be done for its own sake. But then when you do serve others, then your light shall break forth like the morning. Your healing shall spring forth speedily and your righteousness shall go before you. The glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. 

Then you shall call and the Lord will answer. How about that? So why are my prayers not going answered? Well, here's why. Okay, fine. What if I do that? 

Well, then you shall call and the Lord will answer. You shall cry and he will say, here I am. If you take away the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, if you extend your soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light shall dawn in the darkness and your darkness shall be as the noon day. It's great. The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul in drought and strengthen your bones. You shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. 

Those from among you shall build the old waste places. You shall rise up, raise up from the foundations of many generations. You shall be called the repairer of the breach. the restorer of streets to dwell in. Wow. If we fast and pray and live a life of righteousness and love, then our prayers will be answered. 

And of course, if you're living that life. then your prayers will be in line with God's will. But I love this line, last part, those from among you shall build the old waste places. So if you do all these good things and you will build the old waste places. Wow, we need a lot of rebuilding today. It's a broken world. 

There are breaches all over the place, but you shall be called the repairer of the breach. There's brokenness, broken homes, broken hearts, a lot of waste places. We need to rebuild a lot. It needs to be a lot of rebuilding. There used to be protections. around sacred institutions or aspects of our life, the family. 

And those have been, protections have been torn down. Therefore the institutions have been torn down. We need to build up the protections again. We need to reclaim these waste places. And I'll leave you with two more scriptures that are convicting to me to be more generous. 1 Timothy 5, 8, anyone who does not provide for their relatives and especially for their own household has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 

Whoa. In Proverbs 19, 17, whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord and he will reward them for what they have done. MikeSlater . Locals . com for the transcript of this episode and no commercials. MikeSlater .

The Atlantic wrote a hit piece on Pete Hegseth, calling him a Holy Warrior. She said his introduction of Christian principles is a departure from how previous military leaders have led the military. She's wrong. And if he can lead an organization of 3 million people this way, we have no excuse.

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Thanks for being here. I want to expand on something we talked about in the show this morning. Actually, something we're going to do next week. We'll talk about gambling, sports gambling. It was an incredible hour of the show. 

We briefly mentioned the sports gambling scandal with the head coach of the Trailblazers and all that stuff. But I quickly wanted to pivot into sports gambling and how prevalent this is among people and how dangerous it is. And I don't think it should be allowed because I don't think laws Laws, well, here's the question. Are laws here to protect our freedom or are they here to promote human flourishing? Think about that. Let's table that till the weekend, till next week, over the weekend. 

Are laws here to promote freedom or to protect freedom or promote human flourishing? It's an important question. It'll lead us to two, down two very different paths. Gambling does not promote human flourishing. Let's leave that there. So we'll chat more about that one next week. 

But it was a great hour because we had all these people call in who were gambling addicts, lost everything. And they all said they weren't. Here they are years later and they're not upset at the money they lost. Although hundreds of thousands, one person was a million bucks in gambling. It's not the money they lost, it's the time. And I asked one guy, you know, what's a thing you miss that you regret? 

He said, the birth of my daughter. It was a powerful moment. This forced gambling is a bad thing. So we'll talk about that next week. I want to share this first. The Atlantic wrote an article about Pete Hexeth called Holy Warrior. 

Pete Hexeth is bringing his fundamentalist interpretation of Christianity into the Pentagon. I love this. The fundamentalist interpretation. It's like THE interpretation. I guess it's opposed to the LGBTQIA plus trans -inclusive interpretation of Christianity that exists. But by fundamentalist, she means what the Bible says. 

So she went to a sermon that Doug Wilson gave and Pete Hegseth was in the front row. Although Wilson's Christ or chaos approach to spirituality is interesting enough, I like that Christ or chaos. That's great. The reason I'd come this morning is that I wanted to better understand what Hegseth saw in him. Unlike the 72 year old preacher, Hegseth heads a force of 3 million service members and civilians whose mission, a secular mission, is to keep the nation secure. So she believes that in no way are Christians allowed to introduce their ethos into their profession. 

or leadership or organizations that they run. But the left must. The left must infuse their religion into everything. And it is all a religion over there on the left. Black Lives Matter, trans, whatever it is. It has to be inserted into every single thing. 

They taught transgenderism to kindergartners for the love of Pete. We saw what they did. We're onto them now. And now we're doing it. And there's no holding back. The point I would like to make here is that Christianity has always been a part of our war department's ethos. 

This is the key to her whole article here. She goes into a bunch of examples of how Pete Hegseth is a Christian. All of this is a departure from how previous US presidents and military leaders have understood the intersection of faith and duty for generations. Although America's armed forces have always made space for religion, going back to the Battle of Bunker Hill, that place is a circumscribed one, entrusted primarily to several thousand chaplains responsible for attending to troops of their own faith and facilitating observance by those of other traditions. Prayers may be abundant in the foxholes, but commanders typically do not dictate matters of spirituality. 

" Totally wrong. By the way, she said religion is a circumscribed one. I mean, something's restricted within limits, but like outside of a circle circumference, it's outside of, right? So like we'll allow it, but it's severe, strict limits outside of what we're really here for. Totally not true. Now she brought up the battle of Bunker Hill. 

So I'm going to go as my evidence that this is wrong to the battle of Bunker Hill. There's a book written by J . T. Hedley. He's a historian. He wrote this around the hundredth anniversary of America. 

So 1876, it's called the chaplains and clergy of the revolution. Let's read a couple things here. As before hostilities commenced, there was scarcely a military muster, military gathering, at which the clergy were not present, but they were very circumscribed and kept under strict limits as to what they were on some occasion saying, behold, God himself is with us for our captain and his priests with sounding trumpets to cry the alarm. That's second Chronicles 13 12. It was to be expected when war broke out. They would be found in the ranks of the rebels, that's us, the colonists, urging forward what they had so long proclaimed as a religious duty. 

The first outbreak at Lexington and Concord gave them no opportunity to exhibit their zeal officially. It happened too fast. So some shouldered their muskets and fought like cocks. 

soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill. 

Among these were, and then he lists a couple ministers, who showed that clergy could fight as well as pray. It's great. I didn't bring up Bunker Hill. She brought it up. So here I am telling you about what happened with the tightly, very strictly, tightly circumscribed preachers, clergy at Bunker Hill. Yeah, right. 

They were deeply, intimately, profoundly involved. The militia troops were also religious. and their respect for the opinions of the clergy unbounded. To avoid the expense of chaplains, the clergy in the neighborhood of the camp near Bunker Hill were invited by Congress to perform divine service, 13 of them every Sabbath, a request they punctually complied with. Three or four chaplains, however, were attached to the army and prayed with the troops every morning on the common. " I love that. 

Like, hey, listen, we're not going to spend money on chaplains because we're kind of broke here, but why don't you just go grab some local preachers from all the churches nearby? Just knock on the door of the churches and have them come out. And they all did. Some of them grabbed guns and fought. One of the most important chaplains was David Avery. Washington saw in him the embodiment of all those qualities he wished in a chaplain, intrepid and fearless in battle, unwearied. 

And again, just to go back to the Atlantic article, what Pete Hexeth is doing is very, very different, a sharp departure from what the secretary of the military has always been, the total return. Intrepid and fearless in battle, unwearied in his attentions to the sick and wounded, not only nursing them with care, but faithful to their souls. as though they were members of his own parish. With a love for his country so strong that it became a passion, cheerful under privations and ready for any hardship, never losing in the turmoil of war. camp that warm and glowing piety, which characterizes the devoted minister of God. He rode with George Washington, ate meals with George Washington, close friends with George Washington. 

He's Pete Hex, that's Doug Wilson, David Avery. And he wrote in his journal, again, I didn't bring this example up. She could have mentioned any other time in history. She mentioned Battle of Bunker Hill. David Avery wrote in his journal, early in the morning, the enemy attacked our entrenchments, but was driven back. After repeated trials, they succeeded in dislodging the troops. 

In the retreat, many of Colonel's men were killed. My dear friend, Dr. Warren, was shot dead. I stood on a neighboring hill, the name of that hill was Bunker, with hands uplifted, supplicating the blessing of heaven to crown our unworthy arms with success. This is the reliving of Exodus 17 .8, when the Amalekites and the Israelites were battling and Moses was holding his arms up in the air. And as long as Moses' arms were in the air, the Israelites were winning. So Aaron and Hurrick came over and held up his arms and Joshua went on to defeat the Amalekites. 

This is what David Avery was doing. To us infantile Americans, unused to the thunder and carnage of battle, the flames of Charlestown before our eyes, the incessant play of cannon from their shipping from Boston and their wings in various cross directions together with the terror of the field, exhibiting a scene most awful and tremendous. But amid the perils of the dread encounter, the Lord was our rock and fortress. Oh yeah, but no, a military never had any religious tradition, ever. Only now after Pete Exe. Robert E. Lee. 

an incredible man. He would always attend prayer services, always attend church, no matter what. And he said to his troops, he said, soldiers, let us humble ourselves before the Lord, our God. By the way, just imagine if Pete Hexeth said this. I mean, he probably would, and maybe already has or will, but just imagine when this happens and the left would just freak out. Let us humble ourselves before the Lord, our God, asking through Christ the forgiveness of our sins. 

beseeching the aid of the God of our forefathers in defense of our homes and our liberties, thanking him for his past blessings and imploring their continuance upon our cause and our people. Allahu Akbar. All praise the monkey God. No, no, no, not that last part didn't happen. It was praying to God in the name of Jesus. I love this from Washington Post. 

Talks about what Pete's like behind closed doors. Several people told me that he's talked about having prayed over personal decisions. He's praying about personal decision. What a weirdo. And once called for a group prayer before an airstrike. Love it. 

This reporter then said, Hegseth has invoked George Washington as a kindred spirit. Washington was famously private in his faith, and rather than infusing the American government in its infancy with his beliefs, he stood for religious freedom. That's not true. George Washington's farewell address. Again, she brought up these examples. I'm not cherry picking anything. 

This isn't a random letter that George one time sent to his wife. This is his stinking farewell address. Everyone in school always talks about entangling alliances. In his farewell address, he said, I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you in his holy protection and that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another. and for their fellow citizens of the United States. And finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the divine author of our blessed religion. 

That's God. And without a humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation. He's talking about Jesus there. Yeah, George Washington here never said the word God. He's a divine author of our blessed religion. He's not talking about Hinduism. 

And he never said the word Jesus. Not in the farewell address. But he's talking about the humble invitation. That's Jesus. Farewell address. But he was very private about it. 

George Washington was not private about his faith. That's a lie we've been told to get us to be quiet about our faith. The Muslims want to blast their call to prayer across America five times a day. 

That is not quiet in their faith. 

But we're expected to be. Not anymore. Thank you to Pete Hegseth for being an example. Her point was, can you believe he's doing this in an organization of three million people? All the more encouragement to the rest of us. If he can do it in an organization of three million people, it's ours. 

MikeSlater . Locals . com. Transcript commercial free on the website MikeSlater .

Charlie was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on what would have been his 32nd birthday. His wife said 5 profound statements in about 40 seconds. We break them down in today's episode. 

Welcome to Politics by Faith. Oh, I was on vacation last week and I had big plans to record episodes and I didn't. A lot of high hopes, always on vacation. Alas, we're back. I want to play this clip of Erica Kirk at her husband's Medal of Freedom ceremony. I think in this 40 second clip, there are five profound truths that are worth knowing. 

Charlie often said that without God, freedom becomes chaos. and he believed liberty could only survive when anchored to truth. And I remember in one of his speeches, he told the audience that the opposite of liberty isn't law, he said it's captivity, and that the freest people in the world are those whose hearts belong to Christ. But what's so powerful is that Charlie had the ability to communicate so brilliantly across all generations. And he reminded us that in a world that tells us freedom is doing whatever you want to do, the real freedom is the power to live freely and to do what is right. And in one of his journal entries, he wrote that he wanted everyone to know that you can't have liberty without moral responsibility. 

Freedom divorced from faith eventually just destroys itself. 

It's incredible stuff there. Incredible truths there. Without God, freedom becomes chaos. The opposite of liberty is not law, it's captivity. The freest people are those whose heart belong to Christ. Freedom is not doing whatever you want. 

True freedom is the power to live freely and do what is right. You can't have liberty without moral responsibility. and freedom divorced from faith ultimately destroys itself. Again, going back to chaos. Our founding fathers knew these things. I'm so grateful that Charlie brought them back to the forefront. 

It's our job to take them and run with them and live, live them and share them with as many people as we can. John Adams knew that the American system of government was designed only for a moral and religious people. And if you live a life of the flesh, With your mind set on things of the flesh, you will do things of the flesh and it will lead to death. It will lead to a bad life. You'll become a slave to those things here on earth, not to mention what will happen to you for all of eternity. But our founding fathers knew that true happiness did not come that way. 

And they knew that a country can never survive if people were living in the flesh. This idea that the opposite of liberty is not law, because that's the idea is like, Oh, you can't tell me what to do. I'm gonna do whatever I want. You can't make a law to tell me. It's like, all right, fine, but you're going to go down this road and it's not the law, but it's going to be captivity. It's going to be chaos and captivity and destruction and slavery. 

You're going to become a slave to the flesh, a slave to your sin. John 8, 34, Jesus says, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. Romans 6, 16, to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey. You are that one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. 2 Peter 2, 19, they promise them freedom. but they themselves are slaves of corruption. 

For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. " I want to read a few more quotes here from this book I've been going through, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers. I've got like three quotes here that I think echo what Charlie had said and Erica is going to continue to say, and we need to know. This is Noah Webster of the dictionary. And of course, to prevent crimes, war, and disorders in society, no human laws dictated by different principles from those in the gospel can ever secure those objectives. 

All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible. These are our founding fathers. For instruction then in social, religious, and civil duties, resort to the scriptures for the best precepts and most excellent examples of imitation. Reverend Sam Cooper gave a sermon. He preached in front of the governor of Massachusetts, one John Hancock, also preached to the Massachusetts assemblymen at the time. And this was on the very beginning of the Massachusetts constitution in 1780. 

And the preacher man said this directly to the leaders. He said, our civil rulers will remember. that as piety and virtue support the honor and happiness of every community, they are particularly requisite in a free government. Virtue is the spirit of a republic. for where all power is derived from the people, all depends on their good disposition. That's such a good point. 

If power comes from the people, power to the people, power from the people. If that's where the power comes from, you better make sure they're good people. If they are impious, factious, and selfish, if they are abandoned to idleness, dissipation, luxury, and extravagance, if they are lost to the fear of God and the love of the country, all is lost. Having got beyond the restraints of a divine authority, they will not brook the control of laws enacted by rulers of their own creating. You think they're going to, if they disobey the laws of God, you think they're going to obey the laws of man? Having got beyond the restraints of a divine authority, they will not brook the control of laws enacted by rulers of their own creating. 

They elect these fools. They're going to listen to their own laws. And now we live in a society where those people don't even enact laws. And we have judges that just let people free after they break the law. I'm going to look up. Two words here. 

Dissipation, I want to make sure I get that one right. Dissipation, scattered attention, a dissolute, irregular course of life, wandering from the object to object to object in pursuit of pleasure. Oh, that's a good idea. They're abandoned to idleness, dissipation. Oh, there's lost. A course of life usually attended with careless and exorbitant expenditure of money, indulgence in vices, which impair or ruin both health and fortune. 

Very good. And then I wonder what the old time definition of brook is. Having got beyond the restraints of a divine authority, they will not brook the control of laws. They will not brook, bear, endure, support. I never heard that used before. 

I'll give you one more. 

We'll go back to Benjamin or Noah Webster. The Christian religion is the real source of all genuine Republican principles. It teaches the equality of men as to the rights and duties. And while it forbids all oppression, it commands due subordination to law and rulers. It requires the young to yield obedience to their parents. and enjoins upon men the duty of selecting their rulers from their fellow citizens of mature age, sound wisdom, and real religion. 

" Check this out. Real religion. Men who fear God and hate covetousness. It's Exodus 18, 21. The religion of Christ and his apostles and its primitive simplicity and purity, unencumbered with the trappings of power and the pomp of ceremonies, is the surest basis of a Republican government. Those men who destroy the influence and authority of the Christian religion. 

Oh, the sentence right here. Those men, and we've had decades of these men and women, those men who destroy the influence and authority of the Christian religion, sap the foundations of public order, of liberty and of Republican government. We see the chaos. Noah Webster was totally right. Completely right. We've had decades now of people of influence and authority sapping the foundations of public order. 

We have on the SiriusXM show tomorrow, a lot of stories about crime. And there's two things that will stop crime, the law and God. The law is there for when you get caught. There's the law, you break it, there's proper punishment. We have breakdowns all throughout that, which we'll talk about more tomorrow, but you know it all, right? Just letting people, people have been arrested 30 times for violent crimes, letting them back on the streets. 

That's a breakdown. But those are all the things that we see. But do you know, we only solve about 44%. The last time we had these numbers was in 2023. It's worse now, surely. We solve 44 % of violent crimes. 

What percent of murders do you think get solved? If you asked me, I'd be like, oh, like 98%, 99%, 57 % of murders. And I've heard some numbers as low as 45. Obviously, it depends where you are too. That means there's some cities probably where maybe 30 % of murders get solved. So what do we do with that? 

The law is there for when you get caught. But what about when no one sees what you do? I should say, what about when no one sees what you do? He does. God does. He sees everything. 

And going to hell is a pretty good deterrent to stop people from doing bad things. But we've replaced God with Santa Claus and his naughty list. It's one of many reasons why there's so much crime today. No more idea of hell. But to bring it back to Charlie Kirk, freedom is not the point. Freedom is not the end of the story. 

Freedom is the beginning. Virtue is the goal. Freedom is only good if it directs people to virtue. If freedom leads people to sin, that leads to death. You know, the suspect of the LA Palisades fire was captured. This fire he started destroyed 6 ,000 homes, killed 12 people. 

A month before he lit the fire, he told a family member that he burned a Bible. He said, I literally burnt the Bible that I had. It felt amazing. I felt so liberated. Liberated. I'm so free. 

I can do whatever I want. And he did. He went on to do whatever he wanted. And what he wanted to do was to start a fire that destroyed a community. Freedom.