October 29, 2025 • 49 mins
A farm-town promise met a ledger full of losses. We open with the hard math of tariffs and trade wars: higher equipment costs for growers, soybean sales to China evaporating overnight, and a puzzling turn to importing Argentinian beef just as America’s cattle herd hits historic lows. Add four packers controlling most of the beef market and record profits at the top, and it’s fair to ask whether “America First” ever reached the people it named.
Then we step onto the hardwood, where legalized betting meets its predictable shadow. A head coach and a starting guard now face federal charges tied to illegal gambling and alleged match fixing with mafia links. We connect the dots between sports books in your pocket and the oldest playbook in organized crime. Why did we become a culture that loves the antihero? From The Godfather to prestige TV, our fascination with the villain has a cost: when corruption looks like drama, outrage dulls and lines blur.
That thread pulls through government policy as well. When states bankroll budgets with lotteries and tax gambling revenue, the mandate to restrain harm flips into a search for more of it. We argue that systems built on unearned gain corrode communities, and the NBA scandal is a mirror: you cannot feed a vice and expect virtue to grow. The conversation turns pastoral and urgent on Gaza, challenging church silence with the historic call to speak for the oppressed and to prefer costly truth over comfortable neutrality.
We also unpack a Senate vote rebuking unilateral tariffs, a constitutional reminder that Congress shares trade powers—and that tariffs act like taxes paid at the register. To rebuild a vocabulary for sanity, we draw on Robert George’s account of the human person as a rational animal, capable of truth-seeking and moral choice, set against modern habits that reduce reason to serving desire. Closing with new data showing a sharp decline in trans and nonbinary identification among students, we hold two commitments at once: biology is stubborn, and every person bears unshakable dignity.
If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review telling us where you think integrity should draw the line next. Your voice helps others find conversations that take truth and compassion seriously.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:48):
First, uh you know, uh we created uh tariffs.
Farmers are taking it on thetune with higher costs, just
like everybody listening tothis.
So number one, the tariffsthemselves.
Um then he starts a trade warwith China and soybean from
number two is the trade warleading soybean sales to go to
(01:09):
zero.
Farmers are taking youngchildren.
Uh China was the largestpurchaser of U.S.
soybeans, and literallyovernight they stopped buying
soybeans, leaving bins full andfarmers going bankrupt.
And now, because he likes thepresident of Argentina, or at
least that was the basis that hegave, he's going to not only he
(01:30):
gave them$40 billion, as amatter of fact, the first$20
billion went out, and the firstthing Argentina did was lower a
tax and sell soybeans to China,and now he turns around and says
I'm going to buy their beef.
So it's really, you know, uhmany of the ranchers, uh, we
have uh folks on our staff andin our network farmers that
raise cattle.
(01:51):
And you know, it's it's abetrayal.
Uh they had expected uh theprices have been going up.
They're finally making somemoney after about a decade of
losses.
Uh our cattle herd is thesmallest it's been in since the
50s.
And uh they're finally now havea chance to recover and put more
puffers in uh to be breedingstock uh for cows.
(02:13):
And the president says, Oh,beef's too high at the grocery
store, so I'm gonna import morebeef.
He's just got it wrong.
It won't work.
There's no guarantee that thebig properties, four companies
control 80% of all the beef inthis country.
So you go to the grocery store,it's an illusion that there's
that much choice in that beef.
Uh fore companies control thebeef in this country, and
(02:36):
there's nothing the president'sdoing that to money by the
buyers.
They'll get cheaper meat, andnothing guarantees the consumer
will see a like lower price.
As a matter of fact, we've beenmaking record profits uh during
this time of high beef prices.
You know, they can stand tolower some of that, continue to
pay the farmer what they need,the rancher, and uh and and uh
(02:58):
provide the consumer with a fairmarket price in the grocery
store.
SPEAKER_00 (03:03):
So listen, he's giving us a list, right?
And I just want you to analyzeeach of these elements based on
Trump's claim that he would beabout America first.
Make America great again.
Number one, tariffs.
What do the tariffs do?
Well, the tariffs immediatelyincrease costs to the farmers of
both equipment and in some casessource of materials.
(03:26):
And then they have to pass thosecosts on.
That makes what they are sellingless attractive.
That's not America first.
Trump says, Well, we'recollecting all of this tariff
money.
Yes, you're collecting thetariff money from American
companies, not America first.
Number two, trade war with Chinawith regard to the effect on
soybeans.
Soybean sales to China have goneto zero for American farmers.
China's fine.
(03:47):
China has made a deal with anumber of other countries,
hilariously, includingArgentina.
So China's got their soybeansupply.
The countries selling China thesoybeans, they're pretty happy,
but it is the American soybeanfarmers that lose.
That's not America first.
And then number three, Trumpsays, well, we're gonna start
bringing in Argentinian beef.
Is that good for Americanranchers?
(04:08):
It is not.
So we should really judge Trumpby the promises he made.
You all know I'm from Argentina.
Argentina has been in aneconomic calamity for at least
35 years, and every president umhas uh has been unable to uh
resolve that or even remotelyimprove it.
But if we are to judge Trump,right, we should judge the
Argentinian leadership for thepromises they make and whether
(04:29):
they keep them.
But if we are to judge Trump forhis claim that he is America
first and it's all about theUnited States of America, well,
none of these things are goodfor the United States of
America.
They're not good for Americanbusiness, they're not good for
American farmers, they're notgood for American consumers.
China's fine.
China's charted a new path, andthey're they're going to be able
to weather this with relativelylittle impact.
It's in the United States thatthe problems are being caused.
(04:50):
We've been focused on farmersbecause the farmers have been
willing to speak out.
It is not the only industry thatis being economically crushed by
Donald Trump, but it is one thatis being significantly crushed.
And importantly, the otherreason we talk about there's
really three reasons we'retalking about farmers.
Number one, more and morefarmers are going on the record
to tell us what is happening andwhy it's happening.
Number two, farmers relate tofood.
This is something we can allidentify with and relate to.
(05:10):
Uh, and number three, um, thishappened in the first term.
And so it's another one of theseyou fool me once.
Oh, I wish do I have it?
Do I have the Bush fool me once?
Oh, every time I look for it, Ican't find it.
Wait a second.
Wait a second.
Oh no, that's Trump sayingChina.
Okay, I don't have it.
Anyway, that thing Bush said,you fool me once.
You fool me twice, you can't getfooled again.
(05:32):
Anyway, this happened in the inthe first term.
So that's another reason whyit's highly relevant.
We expected it to happen, andhe's doing the exact same thing.
SPEAKER_02 (05:39):
So we have to talk about something that I normally
do not even talk about on theshow.
We're gonna talk aboutbasketball a little bit.
We're gonna talk about sports,and I have to get to the NBA's
worst nightmare.
Just walk right through thefront door wearing handcuffs.
Chansey Willoughs, head coach ofthe Portland Trailblazers, and
(06:02):
uh Terry Rosier of the MiamiHeat are now facing federal
charges.
The rap sheet is illegalgambling, rigged poker games,
and yes, match fixing tied tosome of New York's most infamous
mafia families.
Now let's think about that for asecond.
These aren't French figures.
(06:24):
This isn't some low-levelassistant stats at the end of
the bitch.
This is a head coach, a startingguard, names kids look up to,
names fans trust, and they arenow tied up in a plot that
sounds like a story that is uhbasically could could could be
on HBO.
(06:45):
And this is the collision thatyou get when you marry pro
sports to legalize gambling.
Integrity was actually the firstcasualty.
Once the league decided to makebetting part of its business
model, you didn't have to be aprophet to see where this was
going to be ending up.
(07:06):
The cash flow is actually toobig, the temptations are too
strong, the system is toomassive, and the mafia the mafia
they've been waiting for thismoment since the ink dried on
Adam Silver's 2014 op-ed callingfor sports betting to be
(07:27):
legalized.
Now the Bible actually does warnus that the love of money is the
root of all kinds of evil, andwe're watching that play out at
the center of the court now.
What was once the joy ofcompetition is now a racket, a
rig table, a con job on thefans, and the arrogance is that
(07:51):
anyone thought they couldregulate human greed.
You can't, because you can'tregulate sinfulness.
You can only feed it or starveit.
The NBA chose to feed it.
But let me zoom out here.
Because beyond the headlines,beyond the FBI press conference,
there's another layer here, andthat is Americans' obsession
(08:14):
with organized crime.
The mafia is both real and myth.
It's blood, it's bullets in thealley, and it's box office goal,
the Godfather, the Goodfellas,the Sopranos.
We've actually turned thesecrime families into a pop
culture royalty.
And here's the paradox.
We hate what they do, but welove watching them as they do it
(08:39):
on screen.
We romanticize the cogs thatthey keep, the loyalty, the
suits, the cigars, the order,while forgetting the broken
bodies left in the wake.
Why do we care so much?
I I'm gonna postulate this.
There's two reasons.
First, because organized crimerequires that very word
(09:01):
organization.
It's evil dressed up withdiscipline.
And that fascinates us as humanbeings.
To run a criminal empireactually takes uh hierarchy.
It takes rules, it takesloyalty.
Ironically, the same thing ittakes to run a legitimate
business.
(09:22):
The mafia just applies thatorder to the vice instead of the
virtue.
Second, we are drawn to crimebecause it brushes against the
edge of what we know weshouldn't touch.
Evil has that type of allure.
Watching the bad guy is moreexciting when they're clever,
when they're ruthless, when theyalmost get away with it.
(09:44):
Deep down we like the drama.
But as a Christian, we have tounderstand that fascination with
evil is a dangerous indulgencebecause if you stare too long
into it, it actually starts tostare right back at you.
The FBI actually once denied themafia even existed.
Then they came they they came tothe realization they had to
(10:08):
admit that it did, especiallywhen the 1960s came around, and
the Senate hearings, theindictments, the takedowns, the
families then had to gounderground, but the mafia never
left, and here they are again in2025, sitting courtside in the
MBA's latest scandal.
So the question isn't just whydoes organized crime exist, it
(10:33):
is why do we keep inviting itback in.
Through gambling, through statelotteries, through the constant
chase for easy money.
Every time we loosen the reins,the mob doesn't just sneak in,
they strut right through thefront door.
SPEAKER_01 (10:48):
Here's a strange thing about this NBA scandal.
The headlines say mafia, andinstead of pure outrage, half
the country thinks of moviequotes.
Because we don't just fearvillains, we admire them, even
celebrate them.
Think about it.
Every era has its anti-her.
The mafia boss in The Godfather,Tony Soprano, Walter
Whitecooking Meth in his RV.
Even the ones meant for kidsLord Boldemore and Harry Potter,
Darth Vader and Star Wars end upwith their own fan clubs.
(11:09):
We cosplay as the villains atComic Con.
We print their faces ont-shirts.
Somewhere along the line, evilstopped being just the bad guy
and started becoming the star.
It makes sense at leastpsychologically.
The villain is powerful,fearless, willing to do what the
hero won't.
The anti-hero bends the rules,cheats the system, and whines at
least for a while.
That's compelling to watchbecause deep down we all feel
the weight of rules we wish wecould break.
(11:30):
But here's the danger whenentertainment makes the villain
charismatic, our moral compassstarts to wobble.
We stop rooting for justice andwe start rooting for cleverness.
The mob boss becomes thephilosopher, the drug lord
becomes the underdog, the darklord becomes relatable, and that
shift doesn't just stay on thescreen, it bleeds into culture.
So when we hear the Machias backin the NBA, it doesn't just
register as corruption, itregisters as drama.
(11:50):
Part of us leans in fascinated,almost entertained, because
we've been trained to love theanti-her.
Evil is always dressed upattractively, that's what
temptation is.
Sin rarely shows up lookingboring.
It shows up looking powerful,thrilling, maybe even
sympathetic.
That's why our culture loves themob story.
That's why we can't quitwatching Darth Vader force joke
his way across the galaxy.
But here's the warning if we letourselves get too comfortable
(12:12):
with evil as entertainment,eventually we'll start treating
it as normal in real life.
And that's what's happeningright now.
The mafia isn't just a Netflixbinget's fixing games, rigging
tables, and praying on the weakin real time.
These are fictional villains,they are flesh and blood, and
they just showed up courtside.
So let's bring this home.
We've talked about the NBAscandal.
We've talked about the mafia.
We've talked about our culturalobsession with villains, whether
(12:34):
it's Darth Vader, Walter White,or Tony Soprano.
Now here's the uncomfortabletruth.
Our fascination can turn intocomplicity.
Because evil doesn't stayconfined to fiction.
The anti-hero we cheer for onscreen teaches us to look at
real corruption with curiosityinstead of outrage.
(12:55):
And that's how you end up withheadlines like these organized
crime families woven into theNBA, and instead of a gut level,
this is unacceptable, peoplesay.
Wow, this is just like themovies.
That's a dangerous place for asociety to live age scripture
warns that sin rarely shows uplooking ugly.
It comes dressed as desirable.
Adam and Eve didn't eat thefruit because it looked rotten,
(13:16):
they ate it because it lookedgood.
That's temptation's power.
It makes evil look fascinating.
The Christian worldview insiststhat work is good, labor is
honorable, reward for effort isjust what it condemns is greed,
exploitation, and the love ofunearned gain.
Gambling, organized crime,corruption, these are all
(13:38):
systems built on the promise offast money without honest work.
And when a culture baptizesthose systems, whether through
state lotteries, casinos, orlegalized sports, and let's not
forget, government has aGod-given mandate.
Romans 13 says rulers areappointed to punish the evildoer
and reward the good.
Government is supposed torestrain sin, not monetize it.
(14:00):
But that's exactly what'shappening when states run
lotteries and cash in ongambling revenue.
They're preying on the weak.
They're making their budgets offaddiction.
That is not just itsexploitation with a tax stamp on
it.
Betting Get isn't justtolerating sin.
It's profiting from it.
This NBA story isn't just aboutChauncey Billlops or Terry
(14:23):
Rozier.
It's a mirror.
It shows us the logical end of aculture that loves its villains
more than its heroes, thattrades integrity for
entertainment, that choosesquick profit over long-term
good, the hard truth.
You can't glamorize organizedcrime for fifty years and film,
normalize gambling as harmlessfun, and then act shocked when
(14:45):
the mafia shows up in yoursports league.
We invited them.
We made room for them, and nowthey're here.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves us with a soberingreminder.
If you build systems that rewardsin, you will reap corruption.
If you glamorize evil longenough, you will tolerate it in
real life.
We can enjoy a story about adark lord or a mob boss's
(15:08):
fiction, but we'd better keepour moral compass sharp.
Because the moment we stop beingoutraged by real corruption,
we've already lost more than thegame we've lost our sense of
right and wrong.
And when that happens, the mafiadoesn't just own the poker
table.
They own us.
The Church's Silence in Gaza, amoral failure and prophetic
shame, Darrell McLean Jewel, 28,28, 25, let me speak plainly.
(15:32):
The Church's silence on Gazaisn't just disappointing, it's a
sin.
And not just any sin, but thekind that wreaks of complicity,
cowardice, and a betrayal ofeverything Christ taught us
about justice, mercy, and truth.
When bombs fall on children,when hospitals are turned to
rubble, when entire families areburied beneath the dust of drone
strikes and the pulpits remainquiet, that silence speaks
volumes.
And what it says is chilling,your lives do not matter enough
(15:54):
for us to risk our comfort.
This silence is deafening anddeadly.
Where is the church that marchedfor civil rights?
Where is the church that stoodagainst apartheid?
Where is the church that onceclaimed to be the voice of the
voiceless?
Today, while Gaza weeps, thatchurch is whispering behind
closed doors, issuing vaguestatements about both sides, and
(16:14):
hiding behind the cloak ofneutrality.
But neutrality in the face ofgenocide is not Christ-like.
It is cowardly.
Jesus never played neutral withinjustice.
He flipped tables.
He called out corruption.
He touched the untouchable.
He healed the broken andcondemned the violent systems
that broke them in the firstplace.
And you want to tell me Jesuswould look at Gaza and say,
let's stay out of politics.
(16:35):
This isn't politics.
This is people.
The gospel demands more youcannot preach Christ crucified
while ignoring childrencrucified by missiles.
You cannot claim to follow thePrince of Peace and stay silent
while war crimes unfold on yourwatch.
You cannot sing about grace onSunday and ignore genocide on
Monday.
I'm not here to massage yourcomfort.
I'm here to remind you of yourcalling.
(16:56):
Because if the church cannotspeak for the oppressed, then
what good is the church?
The moral cost of silence, somesay we don't want to divide the
congregation.
Let me tell you something.
If your unity depends onignoring the suffering of
others, it was never built onChrist to begin with.
Others say we don't know enoughabout the situation.
Then re listen.
There are Palestinian Christianscrying out for help your
(17:17):
brothers and sisters in Christ,and you won't even learn their
names.
Every day the church stayssilent, it loses a piece of its
witness.
And the world is watching.
The youth are watching.
The oppressed are watching, andthey are not fooled.
A prophetic wake-up call, if youhave a pulpit, use it.
If you have a platform, speakup.
If you have a conscience, let itburn with righteous anger.
(17:38):
Because silence is not love.
Silence is not peace.
Silence is betrayal.
And let me be crystal clear, Godis not silent.
(19:40):
God is with the children inGaza.
God is with the mothers who burytheir sons.
God is with the oppressed, notwith the powerful who bomb them.
So ask yourself, church, whereare you standing?
Because if you're not standingwith the oppressed, then you're
standing against the gospel.
Conclusion.
Let the church be the churchagain.
I don't say this to condemn, butto awaken.
(20:01):
There is still time to find yourvoice.
There is still time to repent,not just in prayer, but in
action.
There is still time to be thechurch the world desperately
needs.
But time is running out, and theblood of Gaza is crying out from
the ground.
Will the church listen?
Or will it keep its deadlysilence?
The choice is yours.
SPEAKER_02 (20:19):
Article written by Darome McLean in July of 2025.
SPEAKER_01 (20:24):
Alright.
Alright, a listener hit me withthis one.
The Senate just passed a bill torescind tariffs on Brazilian
imports.
Five Republicans crossed overand voted yes.
The House likely won't touch it.
And even if it did, thepresident says he'd veto.
So what message are lawmakerssending this administration?
Good question.
And it cuts right to the heartof how politics and economics
(20:44):
stands together.
The Senate's move is symbolicbut sharp.
It passed with a bipartisanmajority, including names like
Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins,Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, and
Tom Tillys.
That's not the radical fringethat seasoned players.
By voting to rescind tariffs onBrazil, they weren't just voting
on soybeans, ethanol, or steel.
They were voting on theprinciple of whether the
president can declare a nationalemergency and unilaterally tax
(21:06):
imports like he's swattingflies.
This was a constitutional flaregun.
Hey, trade authority belongs toCongress too.
So what message did they send?
1.
We don't like being cut out.
Tariffs aren't supposed to be aone-man decision.
You're hitting Americanbusinesses and consumers in the
pocketbook.
Tarifs sound tough on paper,protect the worker, punish
foreign competition, but inreality, they raise costs on
(21:27):
U.S.
farmers, car makers, and anyonebuying imported goods.
3.
Even your own party isn't sold.
When McConnell himself signsonto a rebuke, that's not just
noise.
That's institutional musclesaying.
Don't push us too far.
This isn't the first timeCongress has stepped in on trade
fights.
Back in 1930, Herbert Hooversigned the Smoot Holly Tariff
Act, thinking it would shieldAmerican workers during the
(21:48):
Depression.
Instead, it kicked off a globaltrade war and worsened the
downturn.
Congress eventually learned,over reliance on tariffs burns
more bridges than it buildsfactories.
Fast forward to RonaldReaganister.
Free trade himself he still usedtariffs here and there, but even
he had to defend them in frontof skeptical lawmakers who saw
the economic fallout.
Same with George W.
Bush in 2002.
His steel tariffs lasted just 21months before the World Trade
(22:11):
Organization and Congress forcedhim to roll them back.
So today's Senate vote fits thatold pattern.
Presidents swing the tariffhammer, and eventually Congress
says, ease up your breaking thefurniture.
So let's land the plane.
The message here isn't thattariffs are dead.
Both parties have constituentswho like them farmers,
manufacturers, unions, themessages about power.
Don't sideline Congress.
(22:31):
Don't pretend emergency powersare a trade policy.
And for ordinary people,remember this tariffs are
attacks you don't see on yourW-2, but you feel it every time
you shop.
Lawmakers are reminding theWhite House that even tough on
trade politics has a cost, andvoters can only stomach so much
before the blowback hits home.
So the Senate just told thePresident, we'll tolerate your
fire, but not if you burn downthe kitchen.
(22:52):
And that's what this littleBrazil vote really was a smoke
alarm going off in the middle ofthe night.
SPEAKER_02 (22:57):
When it comes to conservative thought, Robert
George, Professor Robert Georgeto be exact, is one of the
people I regularly go to.
He is, if not the mostbrilliant, one of the most
brilliant uh thinkers onconservative thought.
So on our blast from theintellectual past, we're gonna
(23:20):
go to Professor Robert George onthe question of what is a human
being in our blast from theintellectual past today,
Professor Robert George.
SPEAKER_05 (23:32):
What is a human being?
A human being is a rationalcreature.
A rational animal.
We are animals.
Excuse me, I'm not a biologist.
SPEAKER_04 (23:40):
I I can't answer that question.
Keep going because I think thisis an important.
SPEAKER_05 (23:45):
Yeah, we're we're rational animals.
Uh that's our nature.
Uh we are creatures with arational uh nature.
Um we are not God, we're notgods, and yet we possess an
immaterial power or set ofpowers that is quite literally
godlike.
(24:06):
And those are the powers ofreason and freedom, the power to
envisage states of affairs thatdo not yet exist, to grasp the
intelligible point, the value ofbringing them into existence,
and then to be able to actfreely on the reasons we've
grasped to bring that state ofaffairs into existence.
(24:26):
Not acting on mere impulse orinstinct like a brute animal,
but acting rationally.
This, I think, is the essence ofthe biblical teaching affirmed
by Jews and Christians, thathuman beings, man, although
fashioned from the mere dust ofthe earth, material stuff that
will die and dissolve, isnevertheless made in the very
(24:49):
image and likeness of the divinecreator and ruler of all that
is.
That's what it means to be ahuman being.
And as rational creatures, Eric,we are truth seekers.
Our fulfillment depends on, inpart, there are other things as
well, but a key element of ourfulfillment is the pursuit of
(25:10):
truth, the affirmation of truth,the revision of our thinking
when we discover that we're inerror.
And then, of course, the effortto live a life authentically in
line with what we best judge,fallible though we may be, to be
the truth.
The truth is all about being intouch with reality.
(25:31):
Whether it is natural reality,what we do in the natural
sciences, social reality, westudy that in the social
sciences, um, spiritual reality,what we study in theology and uh
and religion.
It means being in touch with theway things really are, not
living with illusions, notliving with wishful thinking,
but being in touch with the waythings actually are.
SPEAKER_04 (25:53):
It's interesting that you bring that up because
uh in the last few years I'vebeen talking a lot about where
we are in the culture and how umit seems to me that things have
gotten so crazy that if you'reon team reality, as I put it,
we're on the same team.
(26:14):
We don't have to agree oneverything, but if you agree
that there's something calledreality and you want to live or
try to live in accordance withit, we're on the same team.
We can have a conversation.
There are many people that arehostile to reality, and so they
want to live in a fantasy, orthey want to say that there is
no reality and I willsubjectively create my own
(26:39):
reality, it's like my own truth,whatever.
And it doesn't matter whetherit's consonant with anything
external to me, you know, whichtakes us back, I guess, to
Rousseau or to the the idea thatwhat I feel trumps anything
external and that there is noreality beyond my feelings.
(27:00):
Where did that idea come in?
Because in the book you talkabout faith and reason, and I
want to talk about faith andreason, but where did that come
into history, this idea that youknow my sense of things is
potentially more important thananything else?
SPEAKER_05 (27:18):
Well, I'll say a word about that, but can I pause
just to commend my old friendRichard Dawkins?
Because Dawkins recently uh insocial media has taken a lot of
heat for insisting that wecannot define ourselves or
others as being male or female,depending on their or anybody
else's feelings.
(27:39):
That our sex or so-called genderis a matter of objective
reality, a matter of truth, notmy truth or your truth.
It doesn't vary with how youfeel or how you self-identify or
anything like that.
And Dawkins has taken a lot ofheat for doing that, but he
stood up for it because hebelieves that it's true.
This is an example for me ofworking with anybody who's
(28:04):
willing to speak the truth,especially those who will speak
it courageously and at a cost.
Uh, we don't have to agree oneverything.
Dawkins and I have lots ofdisagreements about religion and
ethics and other things, but Ireally do commend him for
speaking out courageously whenit's difficult, on the question
of gender ideology.
And I welcome him uh to themovement to try to return to a
(28:29):
kind of sensible understandingof sex and the relationship
between the uh sexes.
And he is actually a biologist.
SPEAKER_04 (28:35):
He is actually a biologist.
So maybe he can answer that thatuh question that you were asking
me earlier.
Which is a human being and weneed to get him get him on the
phone later.
SPEAKER_05 (28:44):
Um But you asked me about some of where these ideas
uh come in, yeah.
Um As I said, uh, when we talkedon your uh radio show, when it
especially when it comes to badthings and bad ideas, once you
start tracing them back, thenext thing you know, you're in
the Garden of Eden and there'sthe serpent and uh and and Eve.
Uh so I don't want to go all theway uh back there.
(29:05):
But you mentioned Rousseau.
Obviously, Rousseau was afounding father of the Romantic
movement.
And that's a very importantmoment uh in our history.
We're talking about the 18thcentury, we're talking about
Europe, obviously, uh, in whichthe idea begins to gain
credibility that um we we get atthe truth of things when we uh
(29:27):
throw off the so-called shacklesof uh historic civilization,
Christian civilization,biblical, Judeo-Christian
civilization, and uh we live asif we were noble savages because
human beings are naturally good,and therefore we can trust our
instincts, um, our feelings, ouruh emotions.
(29:47):
It's a very, very bad idea.
It leads to catastrophicresults.
It leads to the FrenchRevolution, the beginning with
the French Revolution, with theterror, with the guillotine.
Uh so it's a very, very badthing, but that's a key moment.
But um we can't, uh those of us,especially like myself, who uh
(30:07):
uh uh give a lot of credit toAnglo-American thinking, to
English and American thinking,we can't just blame those
continentals.
Uh these ideas in a more politeuh form uh are entering into
Anglo-American thought, Englishthought in the first instance,
(30:28):
British thought, uh, also in the18th century and even earlier.
I'm thinking of David Hume, whouh famously declares that reason
is and not only to be the slaveof the passions and may pretend
to no office other than to serveand obey them.
That's the idea that we can'tactually adjudicate rationally,
we can't reason about what towant.
(30:51):
Our wants will be brute givens,given by our desires.
All we can reason about is howto get to what we want, how more
efficiently to get what we want.
Now look at the implications ofthat.
Hitler wants to murder a lot ofJews and Slavs and others.
Mother Teresa wants to rescuepeople on the care for them on
(31:11):
the streets of Calcutta.
According to the Humean view,not that Hume himself embraced
any such thing, but his own, theimplications of his view are is
that Hitler can't reason, or wecan't reason, about the genuine
truthfulness or desirability ofwhat Hitler wants.
He wants what he wants, andthat's all that can be said.
(31:33):
All reason can do is to help himmore efficiently to to achieve
his ends.
We can't judge Mother Teresa'swants to be superior or
inferior.
All reason can do is tell MotherTeresa how to be more efficient
in caring for people on thestreets of Calcutta.
And it doesn't, as I say, evenin the English tradition, in the
uh English Anglophone tradition,begin with with Hume.
(31:57):
Um a couple of generationsearlier, Thomas Hobbes had
written that the thoughts are tothe desires, as scouts and spies
to range abroad and find the wayto the thing desired.
But that's not reallyproscriptive, is it?
He's just describing what hesees in the prescriptive in this
sense.
He's indicating what is possibleand what is not possible.
(32:20):
And his argument is all that ispossible is to reason about how
to get what you want.
It's not possible to reasonabout what to want.
Okay, so that so it's arejection of two streams, the
two streams that really formedthe West.
One stream, of course, thebiblical tradition.
Jerusalem.
(32:40):
The other stream, the classicaltradition from Greece and Rome,
Rome, figures like Plato andAristotle and Cicero, who are
nowhere near the idea that allreason can do is tell us how to
get what we want.
Both of those traditions, theJudeo-Christian tradition and
the classical tradition, arefundamentally interested in
(33:03):
trying to adjudicate between ourwants in a way that's rational,
getting at the truth is is whatMother Teresa wants the right
thing to want, or is what Hitlerwants the right thing to want.
They both can't be okay.
SPEAKER_04 (33:16):
And by the way, just for the for the sake of the
conversation, I'm going withMother Teresa.
It's interesting how cynicalthat view is.
That, you know, when you talkabout Hume and Hobbes, maybe you
know enough about them to saywhether they were so cynical.
SPEAKER_05 (33:35):
Uh Hobbes, I think I can explain somewhat.
Uh he's writing in the contextand wake of the Great Civil War.
Uh the British Civil War,English.
And, you know, it wascatastrophic.
And uh the carnage was profound.
And human beings looked to himto creatures who would do this
(33:58):
to each other looked to himbasically like just brute
animals driven by desire.
And I think the cynicism grewout of that experience.
It's parallel, Herrick, to thecynicism, I think, of um Oliver
Wendell Holmes, the greatAmerican jurist.
Um profoundly cynical person.
Uh great jurist, uh, but aprofoundly cynical person.
(34:21):
His cynicism grew out of hisexperience with the American
Civil War, serving in the Unionforces in that war, seeing the
carnage.
It was really horrific.
Uh and wars can take people indifferent directions.
The experience of war can takepeople in different directions.
It can inspire in our hearts adeep desire to do the right
(34:44):
thing so that some somethinglike this will never happen
again.
In others, it will lead to thiskind of cynicism.
And I fear in Hobbes, as inHolmes, it led to that cynicism.
SPEAKER_04 (34:55):
I uh some months ago interviewed um a Plato scholar
and was talking to him about howit's fascinating to me as a
Christian to think that um uhpeople like uh Plato or or
Socrates or Cicero that theywould have somehow intuitively
(35:15):
grasped that it's possible toreason your way in the direction
of something called truth.
In other words, that they werethat they had an innate sense
that there there was somethinglike truth and that we could
reason toward that.
And I was asking him, and I'llask you now, what do you suppose
it is?
Because we can talk about thecynicism of uh Oliver Wendell
(35:37):
Holmes or or of Hobbes, but whatdo you suppose it would be that
would make uh somebody in let'ssay Socrates have this innate
sense that um the unexaminedlife is not worth living, as we
say uh at almost every Socratesevent, and that it's worth
examining life, it's worththinking deeply, it's worth
(35:59):
trying to reason our way towardssomething.
I mean, I would say that thatcomes from whether we know it or
not, that we're made in God'simage.
But it's fascinating to me thatthese folks, centuries before
Christ, had that sense, and theyof course had no uh you know
conversations with the with theHebrews.
(36:21):
Uh they weren't aware of thewritings of Moses.
SPEAKER_05 (36:24):
Let me begin with two points in response, Eric.
Uh, first is that this is not anew view.
Uh people have been asking thesame question going all the way
back to early Christianity.
Second, you're in very goodcompany because some of the
great early Christian thinkersasked themselves the question,
(36:46):
how could Plato have known whathe knew?
And there were two bits ofspeculation, both of which were
ultimately rejected, but theywere at least toyed with in the
minds of early Christianthinkers.
One was, could Plato have hadsomehow access to the Hebrew
(37:06):
revelation?
Did he get a scroll fromsomewhere?
And then the second speculation,also in the end dismissed, not
embraced, was that God had givenhim a private revelation of some
of the essential content of theHebrew uh uh scriptures.
Now, both are rejected, but thefact that they were entertained
at all uh means that yourquestion occurred to them uh as
(37:30):
well.
Now, my answer, I think, is verymuch in line with uh your
answer, and here we can go toanother great Jewish thinker,
Saint Paul.
Um, and Saint Paul tells us uhin his letter to the Romans that
um there is a law written on thehearts even of the Gentiles.
Who are the Gentiles?
They're the people who don'thave the law of Moses.
(37:50):
There's a law written on thehearts of the Gentiles.
It's not written on scrolls likethe like the Bible, uh written
on the hearts of the Gentilesthat is sufficient for them to
be held accountable.
It enables them to know basicright from wrong.
So a great figure like Socrates,uh like Plato, uh I would add uh
(38:11):
Aristotle or Cicero, uh, I thinkis someone who is deeply
exploring with a good heart,with a good intention, that law
written on the heart.
That law we call these days thenatural law.
Martin Luther King invokes it inhis famous letter from the
(38:31):
Birmingham jail, when he'scriticized for breaking the law,
which he did, breaking the humanlaw, breaking the positive law
of the state.
How can he justify that?
Especially when they said tohim, his critics said to him,
Dr.
King, you yourself called forobedience to law when the
Supreme Court handed down itsdecision in Brown versus Board
of Education, ordering thedesegregation of the schools in
(38:55):
the southern states, and whenthere was resistance from the
white majority, you called forobedience to law, but now you're
breaking the law.
And King says, well, that'sbecause there are two types of
law.
There's the human law, but thenthere's the higher law.
There are two types of law inanother sense: there's unjust
law and there's just law.
(39:16):
An unjust law is a human lawthat is in violation of the
natural law, the moral law, thelaw written on the hearts.
That's what an unjust law is.
A just law is a law that's inline with the natural law, in
line with the moral law.
A law that's in line with themoral law uplifts what he called
(39:37):
in the letter the humanpersonality.
In other contexts, he called thehuman spirit.
By contrast, an unjust law, alaw that's out of whack with the
natural law, degrades the humanbeing, both the victim of the
wrongdoing and the wrongdoerhimself.
Well, that's pretty good.
And we can understand that law,at least to some extent, at
(39:59):
least in principle, as Platoshows, as Aristotle shows, as
Ciceroso shows, even if we don'thave the revealed truth of the
scripture.
SPEAKER_04 (40:09):
Um, yeah, I think that that's uh that's exactly
right.
It is uh it's fascinating to methat the ancients, uh all the
way back in antiquity, got this,and that many moderns who've had
the benefit of living, you know,um, many centuries uh after the
(40:35):
New Testament was written couldget to a point where they would
would argue with that.
SPEAKER_05 (40:39):
It does undermine the progressive view of history,
doesn't it?
Yes.
That we keep getting better andbetter and better and smarter
and smarter and smarter.
Things are a lot morecomplicated than uh the
neo-agelians uh would have usbelieve, who think that history
moves forward in a positivedirection and we're always
making progress.
No, we're not.
We can make progress in somedomains, like in the domain of
(40:59):
science, and yet regress, loseknowledge when it comes to moral
truth or spiritual truth.
SPEAKER_01 (41:08):
Friends, sometimes the news is more than just
headlines, it's a mirror.
And this week, the mirror isshowing something we weren't
supposed to see.
A new report from Eric Kaufman,a politics professor in England,
backed by surveys from theCenter for Heterodox Social
Science and published in UNHeard, tells us something
stunning.
The rapid rise in transgenderand queer identification among
young Americans has just asrapidly collapsed.
(41:30):
In 2022 and 2023, nearly 7% ofundergraduates identified as
transgender or non-binary.
Today, barely 3.6%.
At Phillips Andover Academy, anelite high school in
Massachusetts, 9.2% of studentsonce said they were neither male
nor female.
Today it's 3%.
Brown University, one of themost progressive IVs, saw the
(41:51):
number of non-binary studentsdrop from 5% to 2.6%.
That's not a drift.
That's not slow correction.
That's a cliff.
And here's the key word Kaufmanuses to describe it fashion.
Now, fashion is a dangerous wordin this conversation, because
we've been told again and againthat gender identity is innate,
immutable, locked in like DNA.
But if that's true, how do youexplain numbers collapsing in
(42:13):
two years?
DNA doesn't shift by semester.
Peer culture does.
Fashion explains why emo bangswept through high schools in
the 2000s, why every man in 1995wore a baggy suit, and why
nobody does now.
Fashion explains why mulletsdied and heaven help us why they
came back.
But unlike clothes, thesefashions get written onto flesh.
Chest binders.
(42:34):
Or mon surgeries.
So when Kaufman says fashionsare changing, that should both
sober us and alert us.
Sober us because this isn't justharmless dress up.
Alert USB because even thesecular left is now admitting
identity can be a trend, notjust a truth.
What do sociologists call it?
Social contagion.
Ideas spread like coals.
(42:55):
Especially among teenagers.
You've seen it.
One friend buys Doc Martin,suddenly the whole group stomps
around like they're in anineties grunge video.
Now apply that same dynamic toidentity.
And the numbers back it up therise in transgender
identification wasoverwhelmingly among young
women, adolescent girls.
Clusters of friends subtlycoming out together.
Not because chromosomes hadchanged overnight, but because
(43:16):
peer pressure and belongingcarried weight.
This is where Kaufman is mostdirect.
The whole non-binary wavebehaves exactly like a trend
cycle.
It rises fast.
It fades fast, and then out ofnowhere, here comes Richard
Dawkins.
The famed atheist, the scourgeof religion.
He's never been gentle withChristians, but on this, he is
crystal clear.
He says there is no non-binaryin nature.
(43:39):
None.
Cells don't lie.
You've got sperm or egg, male orfemale.
Those are the reproductivecategories that drive evolution.
Full stop.
The chance of a third optionexisting, he writes, is
precisely zero.
He mocks the idea that declaringI'm a woman could transform a
man's body the way magic turnspumpkins into carriages.
His words sting, but his pointis simple.
Biology is stubborn.
(44:00):
The human imagination canstretch, but it can't rewrite
chromosomes.now, zoom out.
Because Kaufman isn't the firstto notice fashion's rise and
fall.
In the 1920s, divorce wasscandalous.
By the 1970s it was common.
In the 1950s, nearly allAmericans opposed same-sex
relationships.
By the 2010, support forsame-sex marriage was
(44:21):
mainstream.
In each case you saw peershifts, vibe shifts, cultural
contagion.
But the transgender way wasdifferent.
It was faster.
It was more extreme.
And it reached into the mostbasic reality of human
existence, whether we are maleor female.
That's why its decline is sosharp.
When you tamper with bedrock,you can only suspend disbelief
so long before crack showed outhere's where I want to be
(44:42):
careful, because it's easy totreat this as a scorecard.
Our side is winning.
Their side is losing.
That's too shallow.
Every percentage point in thosesurveys represents real people,
young people who were swept upin something confusing, maybe
painful, and for some,life-altering.
This is not the time, for I toldyou so.
This is the time for dignity.
Christian theology gives us abackbone and a heart.
(45:04):
The backbone says, yes, male andfemale, he created them.
Those categories are not socialfads, they're creation truths.
But the heart says, every personis made in God's image, even the
one struggling with identity.
We tell the truth, but we neverstrip dignity.
Why did Gen Z swing so hard andthen snap back?
My theory is this.
For a teenager or a collegestudent, figuring out who you
(45:26):
are as male or female is anexistential question.
It's not peripheral like am IDemocrat or Republican.
It's central.
So when culture offered anescape hatch, you don't have to
be male or female at all, a lotof young people tried it.
But biology is loud.
Reality presses back.
And slowly, kids discovered thepromise didn't deliver.
That's why Kaufman's fashionlanguage feels so devastating to
(45:48):
the activists.
Because if it's fashion, thenit's not destiny.
Kaufman calls this postprogressive.
In other words, the train ofhistory doesn't always run one
way.
The left has long believedhistory inevitably bends toward
their causes.
Divorce, abortion, gay rights,same-sex marriage at all look
like a straight line, leftward.
But the sudden collapse intransgender identification, that
(46:09):
throws off the script.
It doesn't mean the culture waris over, but it does mean
momentum can change.
And when momentum changes,opportunities open for truth
telling, for compassion, and forresetting cultural sanity.
But hear me on this hourresponsibility isn't to gloat.
Our responsibility is to carefor those who got caught in the
storm.
That means if a young person inyour life tried on a non-binary
(46:31):
identity, don't treat them as apunchline.
Treat them as a person.
If someone carries scars ormedical choices, they don't need
your score.
They need your support.
If the culture moves past thisfashion, let's not leave behind
the kids who wore it yesterday.
The Christian task is harderthan just saying we were right.
The Christian task is showinggrace to those who were wrong or
who were hurt because Christ didthat for us.
(46:52):
So what do we take away?
Fashion fades.
Truth remains.
Baggy suits come and go, Imobangs rise and fall.
Identities constructed in amoment of pure contagion can
collapse in two years.
But male and female made in theimage of God that endures.
The numbers from Kaufman, thebiology from Dawkins, they don't
erase the need for dignity.
(47:12):
They underscore it.
Because people caught in afading fashion still carry
eternal worth.
So as this cultural fashioncollapses, let's be the ones who
hold both sides of the truth.
God's design is real, and everysoul is valuable.
Truth without love crushes.
Love without truth eceps.
Only together can they heal.
And that, friends, is where wehave to stand.
First, uh you know, uh we created uh tariffs.
Farmers are taking it on thetune with higher costs, just
like everybody listening tothis.
So number one, the tariffsthemselves.
Um then he starts a trade warwith China and soybean from
number two is the trade warleading soybean sales to go to
(01:09):
zero.
Farmers are taking youngchildren.
Uh China was the largestpurchaser of U.S.
soybeans, and literallyovernight they stopped buying
soybeans, leaving bins full andfarmers going bankrupt.
And now, because he likes thepresident of Argentina, or at
least that was the basis that hegave, he's going to not only he
(01:30):
gave them$40 billion, as amatter of fact, the first$20
billion went out, and the firstthing Argentina did was lower a
tax and sell soybeans to China,and now he turns around and says
I'm going to buy their beef.
So it's really, you know, uhmany of the ranchers, uh, we
have uh folks on our staff andin our network farmers that
raise cattle.
(01:51):
And you know, it's it's abetrayal.
Uh they had expected uh theprices have been going up.
They're finally making somemoney after about a decade of
losses.
Uh our cattle herd is thesmallest it's been in since the
50s.
And uh they're finally now havea chance to recover and put more
puffers in uh to be breedingstock uh for cows.
(02:13):
And the president says, Oh,beef's too high at the grocery
store, so I'm gonna import morebeef.
He's just got it wrong.
It won't work.
There's no guarantee that thebig properties, four companies
control 80% of all the beef inthis country.
So you go to the grocery store,it's an illusion that there's
that much choice in that beef.
Uh fore companies control thebeef in this country, and
(02:36):
there's nothing the president'sdoing that to money by the
buyers.
They'll get cheaper meat, andnothing guarantees the consumer
will see a like lower price.
As a matter of fact, we've beenmaking record profits uh during
this time of high beef prices.
You know, they can stand tolower some of that, continue to
pay the farmer what they need,the rancher, and uh and and uh
(02:58):
provide the consumer with a fairmarket price in the grocery
store.
SPEAKER_00 (03:03):
So listen, he's giving us a list, right?
And I just want you to analyzeeach of these elements based on
Trump's claim that he would beabout America first.
Make America great again.
Number one, tariffs.
What do the tariffs do?
Well, the tariffs immediatelyincrease costs to the farmers of
both equipment and in some casessource of materials.
(03:26):
And then they have to pass thosecosts on.
That makes what they are sellingless attractive.
That's not America first.
Trump says, Well, we'recollecting all of this tariff
money.
Yes, you're collecting thetariff money from American
companies, not America first.
Number two, trade war with Chinawith regard to the effect on
soybeans.
Soybean sales to China have goneto zero for American farmers.
China's fine.
(03:47):
China has made a deal with anumber of other countries,
hilariously, includingArgentina.
So China's got their soybeansupply.
The countries selling China thesoybeans, they're pretty happy,
but it is the American soybeanfarmers that lose.
That's not America first.
And then number three, Trumpsays, well, we're gonna start
bringing in Argentinian beef.
Is that good for Americanranchers?
(04:08):
It is not.
So we should really judge Trumpby the promises he made.
You all know I'm from Argentina.
Argentina has been in aneconomic calamity for at least
35 years, and every president umhas uh has been unable to uh
resolve that or even remotelyimprove it.
But if we are to judge Trump,right, we should judge the
Argentinian leadership for thepromises they make and whether
(04:29):
they keep them.
But if we are to judge Trump forhis claim that he is America
first and it's all about theUnited States of America, well,
none of these things are goodfor the United States of
America.
They're not good for Americanbusiness, they're not good for
American farmers, they're notgood for American consumers.
China's fine.
China's charted a new path, andthey're they're going to be able
to weather this with relativelylittle impact.
It's in the United States thatthe problems are being caused.
(04:50):
We've been focused on farmersbecause the farmers have been
willing to speak out.
It is not the only industry thatis being economically crushed by
Donald Trump, but it is one thatis being significantly crushed.
And importantly, the otherreason we talk about there's
really three reasons we'retalking about farmers.
Number one, more and morefarmers are going on the record
to tell us what is happening andwhy it's happening.
Number two, farmers relate tofood.
This is something we can allidentify with and relate to.
(05:10):
Uh, and number three, um, thishappened in the first term.
And so it's another one of theseyou fool me once.
Oh, I wish do I have it?
Do I have the Bush fool me once?
Oh, every time I look for it, Ican't find it.
Wait a second.
Wait a second.
Oh no, that's Trump sayingChina.
Okay, I don't have it.
Anyway, that thing Bush said,you fool me once.
You fool me twice, you can't getfooled again.
(05:32):
Anyway, this happened in the inthe first term.
So that's another reason whyit's highly relevant.
We expected it to happen, andhe's doing the exact same thing.
SPEAKER_02 (05:39):
So we have to talk about something that I normally
do not even talk about on theshow.
We're gonna talk aboutbasketball a little bit.
We're gonna talk about sports,and I have to get to the NBA's
worst nightmare.
Just walk right through thefront door wearing handcuffs.
Chansey Willoughs, head coach ofthe Portland Trailblazers, and
(06:02):
uh Terry Rosier of the MiamiHeat are now facing federal
charges.
The rap sheet is illegalgambling, rigged poker games,
and yes, match fixing tied tosome of New York's most infamous
mafia families.
Now let's think about that for asecond.
These aren't French figures.
(06:24):
This isn't some low-levelassistant stats at the end of
the bitch.
This is a head coach, a startingguard, names kids look up to,
names fans trust, and they arenow tied up in a plot that
sounds like a story that is uhbasically could could could be
on HBO.
(06:45):
And this is the collision thatyou get when you marry pro
sports to legalize gambling.
Integrity was actually the firstcasualty.
Once the league decided to makebetting part of its business
model, you didn't have to be aprophet to see where this was
going to be ending up.
(07:06):
The cash flow is actually toobig, the temptations are too
strong, the system is toomassive, and the mafia the mafia
they've been waiting for thismoment since the ink dried on
Adam Silver's 2014 op-ed callingfor sports betting to be
(07:27):
legalized.
Now the Bible actually does warnus that the love of money is the
root of all kinds of evil, andwe're watching that play out at
the center of the court now.
What was once the joy ofcompetition is now a racket, a
rig table, a con job on thefans, and the arrogance is that
(07:51):
anyone thought they couldregulate human greed.
You can't, because you can'tregulate sinfulness.
You can only feed it or starveit.
The NBA chose to feed it.
But let me zoom out here.
Because beyond the headlines,beyond the FBI press conference,
there's another layer here, andthat is Americans' obsession
(08:14):
with organized crime.
The mafia is both real and myth.
It's blood, it's bullets in thealley, and it's box office goal,
the Godfather, the Goodfellas,the Sopranos.
We've actually turned thesecrime families into a pop
culture royalty.
And here's the paradox.
We hate what they do, but welove watching them as they do it
(08:39):
on screen.
We romanticize the cogs thatthey keep, the loyalty, the
suits, the cigars, the order,while forgetting the broken
bodies left in the wake.
Why do we care so much?
I I'm gonna postulate this.
There's two reasons.
First, because organized crimerequires that very word
(09:01):
organization.
It's evil dressed up withdiscipline.
And that fascinates us as humanbeings.
To run a criminal empireactually takes uh hierarchy.
It takes rules, it takesloyalty.
Ironically, the same thing ittakes to run a legitimate
business.
(09:22):
The mafia just applies thatorder to the vice instead of the
virtue.
Second, we are drawn to crimebecause it brushes against the
edge of what we know weshouldn't touch.
Evil has that type of allure.
Watching the bad guy is moreexciting when they're clever,
when they're ruthless, when theyalmost get away with it.
(09:44):
Deep down we like the drama.
But as a Christian, we have tounderstand that fascination with
evil is a dangerous indulgencebecause if you stare too long
into it, it actually starts tostare right back at you.
The FBI actually once denied themafia even existed.
Then they came they they came tothe realization they had to
(10:08):
admit that it did, especiallywhen the 1960s came around, and
the Senate hearings, theindictments, the takedowns, the
families then had to gounderground, but the mafia never
left, and here they are again in2025, sitting courtside in the
MBA's latest scandal.
So the question isn't just whydoes organized crime exist, it
(10:33):
is why do we keep inviting itback in.
Through gambling, through statelotteries, through the constant
chase for easy money.
Every time we loosen the reins,the mob doesn't just sneak in,
they strut right through thefront door.
SPEAKER_01 (10:48):
Here's a strange thing about this NBA scandal.
The headlines say mafia, andinstead of pure outrage, half
the country thinks of moviequotes.
Because we don't just fearvillains, we admire them, even
celebrate them.
Think about it.
Every era has its anti-her.
The mafia boss in The Godfather,Tony Soprano, Walter
Whitecooking Meth in his RV.
Even the ones meant for kidsLord Boldemore and Harry Potter,
Darth Vader and Star Wars end upwith their own fan clubs.
(11:09):
We cosplay as the villains atComic Con.
We print their faces ont-shirts.
Somewhere along the line, evilstopped being just the bad guy
and started becoming the star.
It makes sense at leastpsychologically.
The villain is powerful,fearless, willing to do what the
hero won't.
The anti-hero bends the rules,cheats the system, and whines at
least for a while.
That's compelling to watchbecause deep down we all feel
the weight of rules we wish wecould break.
(11:30):
But here's the danger whenentertainment makes the villain
charismatic, our moral compassstarts to wobble.
We stop rooting for justice andwe start rooting for cleverness.
The mob boss becomes thephilosopher, the drug lord
becomes the underdog, the darklord becomes relatable, and that
shift doesn't just stay on thescreen, it bleeds into culture.
So when we hear the Machias backin the NBA, it doesn't just
register as corruption, itregisters as drama.
(11:50):
Part of us leans in fascinated,almost entertained, because
we've been trained to love theanti-her.
Evil is always dressed upattractively, that's what
temptation is.
Sin rarely shows up lookingboring.
It shows up looking powerful,thrilling, maybe even
sympathetic.
That's why our culture loves themob story.
That's why we can't quitwatching Darth Vader force joke
his way across the galaxy.
But here's the warning if we letourselves get too comfortable
(12:12):
with evil as entertainment,eventually we'll start treating
it as normal in real life.
And that's what's happeningright now.
The mafia isn't just a Netflixbinget's fixing games, rigging
tables, and praying on the weakin real time.
These are fictional villains,they are flesh and blood, and
they just showed up courtside.
So let's bring this home.
We've talked about the NBAscandal.
We've talked about the mafia.
We've talked about our culturalobsession with villains, whether
(12:34):
it's Darth Vader, Walter White,or Tony Soprano.
Now here's the uncomfortabletruth.
Our fascination can turn intocomplicity.
Because evil doesn't stayconfined to fiction.
The anti-hero we cheer for onscreen teaches us to look at
real corruption with curiosityinstead of outrage.
(12:55):
And that's how you end up withheadlines like these organized
crime families woven into theNBA, and instead of a gut level,
this is unacceptable, peoplesay.
Wow, this is just like themovies.
That's a dangerous place for asociety to live age scripture
warns that sin rarely shows uplooking ugly.
It comes dressed as desirable.
Adam and Eve didn't eat thefruit because it looked rotten,
(13:16):
they ate it because it lookedgood.
That's temptation's power.
It makes evil look fascinating.
The Christian worldview insiststhat work is good, labor is
honorable, reward for effort isjust what it condemns is greed,
exploitation, and the love ofunearned gain.
Gambling, organized crime,corruption, these are all
(13:38):
systems built on the promise offast money without honest work.
And when a culture baptizesthose systems, whether through
state lotteries, casinos, orlegalized sports, and let's not
forget, government has aGod-given mandate.
Romans 13 says rulers areappointed to punish the evildoer
and reward the good.
Government is supposed torestrain sin, not monetize it.
(14:00):
But that's exactly what'shappening when states run
lotteries and cash in ongambling revenue.
They're preying on the weak.
They're making their budgets offaddiction.
That is not just itsexploitation with a tax stamp on
it.
Betting Get isn't justtolerating sin.
It's profiting from it.
This NBA story isn't just aboutChauncey Billlops or Terry
(14:23):
Rozier.
It's a mirror.
It shows us the logical end of aculture that loves its villains
more than its heroes, thattrades integrity for
entertainment, that choosesquick profit over long-term
good, the hard truth.
You can't glamorize organizedcrime for fifty years and film,
normalize gambling as harmlessfun, and then act shocked when
(14:45):
the mafia shows up in yoursports league.
We invited them.
We made room for them, and nowthey're here.
So where does that leave us?
It leaves us with a soberingreminder.
If you build systems that rewardsin, you will reap corruption.
If you glamorize evil longenough, you will tolerate it in
real life.
We can enjoy a story about adark lord or a mob boss's
(15:08):
fiction, but we'd better keepour moral compass sharp.
Because the moment we stop beingoutraged by real corruption,
we've already lost more than thegame we've lost our sense of
right and wrong.
And when that happens, the mafiadoesn't just own the poker
table.
They own us.
The Church's Silence in Gaza, amoral failure and prophetic
shame, Darrell McLean Jewel, 28,28, 25, let me speak plainly.
(15:32):
The Church's silence on Gazaisn't just disappointing, it's a
sin.
And not just any sin, but thekind that wreaks of complicity,
cowardice, and a betrayal ofeverything Christ taught us
about justice, mercy, and truth.
When bombs fall on children,when hospitals are turned to
rubble, when entire families areburied beneath the dust of drone
strikes and the pulpits remainquiet, that silence speaks
volumes.
And what it says is chilling,your lives do not matter enough
(15:54):
for us to risk our comfort.
This silence is deafening anddeadly.
Where is the church that marchedfor civil rights?
Where is the church that stoodagainst apartheid?
Where is the church that onceclaimed to be the voice of the
voiceless?
Today, while Gaza weeps, thatchurch is whispering behind
closed doors, issuing vaguestatements about both sides, and
(16:14):
hiding behind the cloak ofneutrality.
But neutrality in the face ofgenocide is not Christ-like.
It is cowardly.
Jesus never played neutral withinjustice.
He flipped tables.
He called out corruption.
He touched the untouchable.
He healed the broken andcondemned the violent systems
that broke them in the firstplace.
And you want to tell me Jesuswould look at Gaza and say,
let's stay out of politics.
(16:35):
This isn't politics.
This is people.
The gospel demands more youcannot preach Christ crucified
while ignoring childrencrucified by missiles.
You cannot claim to follow thePrince of Peace and stay silent
while war crimes unfold on yourwatch.
You cannot sing about grace onSunday and ignore genocide on
Monday.
I'm not here to massage yourcomfort.
I'm here to remind you of yourcalling.
(16:56):
Because if the church cannotspeak for the oppressed, then
what good is the church?
The moral cost of silence, somesay we don't want to divide the
congregation.
Let me tell you something.
If your unity depends onignoring the suffering of
others, it was never built onChrist to begin with.
Others say we don't know enoughabout the situation.
Then re listen.
There are Palestinian Christianscrying out for help your
(17:17):
brothers and sisters in Christ,and you won't even learn their
names.
Every day the church stayssilent, it loses a piece of its
witness.
And the world is watching.
The youth are watching.
The oppressed are watching, andthey are not fooled.
A prophetic wake-up call, if youhave a pulpit, use it.
If you have a platform, speakup.
If you have a conscience, let itburn with righteous anger.
(17:38):
Because silence is not love.
Silence is not peace.
Silence is betrayal.
And let me be crystal clear, Godis not silent.
(19:40):
God is with the children inGaza.
God is with the mothers who burytheir sons.
God is with the oppressed, notwith the powerful who bomb them.
So ask yourself, church, whereare you standing?
Because if you're not standingwith the oppressed, then you're
standing against the gospel.
Conclusion.
Let the church be the churchagain.
I don't say this to condemn, butto awaken.
(20:01):
There is still time to find yourvoice.
There is still time to repent,not just in prayer, but in
action.
There is still time to be thechurch the world desperately
needs.
But time is running out, and theblood of Gaza is crying out from
the ground.
Will the church listen?
Or will it keep its deadlysilence?
The choice is yours.
SPEAKER_02 (20:19):
Article written by Darome McLean in July of 2025.
SPEAKER_01 (20:24):
Alright.
Alright, a listener hit me withthis one.
The Senate just passed a bill torescind tariffs on Brazilian
imports.
Five Republicans crossed overand voted yes.
The House likely won't touch it.
And even if it did, thepresident says he'd veto.
So what message are lawmakerssending this administration?
Good question.
And it cuts right to the heartof how politics and economics
(20:44):
stands together.
The Senate's move is symbolicbut sharp.
It passed with a bipartisanmajority, including names like
Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins,Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, and
Tom Tillys.
That's not the radical fringethat seasoned players.
By voting to rescind tariffs onBrazil, they weren't just voting
on soybeans, ethanol, or steel.
They were voting on theprinciple of whether the
president can declare a nationalemergency and unilaterally tax
(21:06):
imports like he's swattingflies.
This was a constitutional flaregun.
Hey, trade authority belongs toCongress too.
So what message did they send?
1.
We don't like being cut out.
Tariffs aren't supposed to be aone-man decision.
You're hitting Americanbusinesses and consumers in the
pocketbook.
Tarifs sound tough on paper,protect the worker, punish
foreign competition, but inreality, they raise costs on
(21:27):
U.S.
farmers, car makers, and anyonebuying imported goods.
3.
Even your own party isn't sold.
When McConnell himself signsonto a rebuke, that's not just
noise.
That's institutional musclesaying.
Don't push us too far.
This isn't the first timeCongress has stepped in on trade
fights.
Back in 1930, Herbert Hooversigned the Smoot Holly Tariff
Act, thinking it would shieldAmerican workers during the
(21:48):
Depression.
Instead, it kicked off a globaltrade war and worsened the
downturn.
Congress eventually learned,over reliance on tariffs burns
more bridges than it buildsfactories.
Fast forward to RonaldReaganister.
Free trade himself he still usedtariffs here and there, but even
he had to defend them in frontof skeptical lawmakers who saw
the economic fallout.
Same with George W.
Bush in 2002.
His steel tariffs lasted just 21months before the World Trade
(22:11):
Organization and Congress forcedhim to roll them back.
So today's Senate vote fits thatold pattern.
Presidents swing the tariffhammer, and eventually Congress
says, ease up your breaking thefurniture.
So let's land the plane.
The message here isn't thattariffs are dead.
Both parties have constituentswho like them farmers,
manufacturers, unions, themessages about power.
Don't sideline Congress.
(22:31):
Don't pretend emergency powersare a trade policy.
And for ordinary people,remember this tariffs are
attacks you don't see on yourW-2, but you feel it every time
you shop.
Lawmakers are reminding theWhite House that even tough on
trade politics has a cost, andvoters can only stomach so much
before the blowback hits home.
So the Senate just told thePresident, we'll tolerate your
fire, but not if you burn downthe kitchen.
(22:52):
And that's what this littleBrazil vote really was a smoke
alarm going off in the middle ofthe night.
SPEAKER_02 (22:57):
When it comes to conservative thought, Robert
George, Professor Robert Georgeto be exact, is one of the
people I regularly go to.
He is, if not the mostbrilliant, one of the most
brilliant uh thinkers onconservative thought.
So on our blast from theintellectual past, we're gonna
(23:20):
go to Professor Robert George onthe question of what is a human
being in our blast from theintellectual past today,
Professor Robert George.
SPEAKER_05 (23:32):
What is a human being?
A human being is a rationalcreature.
A rational animal.
We are animals.
Excuse me, I'm not a biologist.
SPEAKER_04 (23:40):
I I can't answer that question.
Keep going because I think thisis an important.
SPEAKER_05 (23:45):
Yeah, we're we're rational animals.
Uh that's our nature.
Uh we are creatures with arational uh nature.
Um we are not God, we're notgods, and yet we possess an
immaterial power or set ofpowers that is quite literally
godlike.
(24:06):
And those are the powers ofreason and freedom, the power to
envisage states of affairs thatdo not yet exist, to grasp the
intelligible point, the value ofbringing them into existence,
and then to be able to actfreely on the reasons we've
grasped to bring that state ofaffairs into existence.
(24:26):
Not acting on mere impulse orinstinct like a brute animal,
but acting rationally.
This, I think, is the essence ofthe biblical teaching affirmed
by Jews and Christians, thathuman beings, man, although
fashioned from the mere dust ofthe earth, material stuff that
will die and dissolve, isnevertheless made in the very
(24:49):
image and likeness of the divinecreator and ruler of all that
is.
That's what it means to be ahuman being.
And as rational creatures, Eric,we are truth seekers.
Our fulfillment depends on, inpart, there are other things as
well, but a key element of ourfulfillment is the pursuit of
(25:10):
truth, the affirmation of truth,the revision of our thinking
when we discover that we're inerror.
And then, of course, the effortto live a life authentically in
line with what we best judge,fallible though we may be, to be
the truth.
The truth is all about being intouch with reality.
(25:31):
Whether it is natural reality,what we do in the natural
sciences, social reality, westudy that in the social
sciences, um, spiritual reality,what we study in theology and uh
and religion.
It means being in touch with theway things really are, not
living with illusions, notliving with wishful thinking,
but being in touch with the waythings actually are.
SPEAKER_04 (25:53):
It's interesting that you bring that up because
uh in the last few years I'vebeen talking a lot about where
we are in the culture and how umit seems to me that things have
gotten so crazy that if you'reon team reality, as I put it,
we're on the same team.
(26:14):
We don't have to agree oneverything, but if you agree
that there's something calledreality and you want to live or
try to live in accordance withit, we're on the same team.
We can have a conversation.
There are many people that arehostile to reality, and so they
want to live in a fantasy, orthey want to say that there is
no reality and I willsubjectively create my own
(26:39):
reality, it's like my own truth,whatever.
And it doesn't matter whetherit's consonant with anything
external to me, you know, whichtakes us back, I guess, to
Rousseau or to the the idea thatwhat I feel trumps anything
external and that there is noreality beyond my feelings.
(27:00):
Where did that idea come in?
Because in the book you talkabout faith and reason, and I
want to talk about faith andreason, but where did that come
into history, this idea that youknow my sense of things is
potentially more important thananything else?
SPEAKER_05 (27:18):
Well, I'll say a word about that, but can I pause
just to commend my old friendRichard Dawkins?
Because Dawkins recently uh insocial media has taken a lot of
heat for insisting that wecannot define ourselves or
others as being male or female,depending on their or anybody
else's feelings.
(27:39):
That our sex or so-called genderis a matter of objective
reality, a matter of truth, notmy truth or your truth.
It doesn't vary with how youfeel or how you self-identify or
anything like that.
And Dawkins has taken a lot ofheat for doing that, but he
stood up for it because hebelieves that it's true.
This is an example for me ofworking with anybody who's
(28:04):
willing to speak the truth,especially those who will speak
it courageously and at a cost.
Uh, we don't have to agree oneverything.
Dawkins and I have lots ofdisagreements about religion and
ethics and other things, but Ireally do commend him for
speaking out courageously whenit's difficult, on the question
of gender ideology.
And I welcome him uh to themovement to try to return to a
(28:29):
kind of sensible understandingof sex and the relationship
between the uh sexes.
And he is actually a biologist.
SPEAKER_04 (28:35):
He is actually a biologist.
So maybe he can answer that thatuh question that you were asking
me earlier.
Which is a human being and weneed to get him get him on the
phone later.
SPEAKER_05 (28:44):
Um But you asked me about some of where these ideas
uh come in, yeah.
Um As I said, uh, when we talkedon your uh radio show, when it
especially when it comes to badthings and bad ideas, once you
start tracing them back, thenext thing you know, you're in
the Garden of Eden and there'sthe serpent and uh and and Eve.
Uh so I don't want to go all theway uh back there.
(29:05):
But you mentioned Rousseau.
Obviously, Rousseau was afounding father of the Romantic
movement.
And that's a very importantmoment uh in our history.
We're talking about the 18thcentury, we're talking about
Europe, obviously, uh, in whichthe idea begins to gain
credibility that um we we get atthe truth of things when we uh
(29:27):
throw off the so-called shacklesof uh historic civilization,
Christian civilization,biblical, Judeo-Christian
civilization, and uh we live asif we were noble savages because
human beings are naturally good,and therefore we can trust our
instincts, um, our feelings, ouruh emotions.
(29:47):
It's a very, very bad idea.
It leads to catastrophicresults.
It leads to the FrenchRevolution, the beginning with
the French Revolution, with theterror, with the guillotine.
Uh so it's a very, very badthing, but that's a key moment.
But um we can't, uh those of us,especially like myself, who uh
(30:07):
uh uh give a lot of credit toAnglo-American thinking, to
English and American thinking,we can't just blame those
continentals.
Uh these ideas in a more politeuh form uh are entering into
Anglo-American thought, Englishthought in the first instance,
(30:28):
British thought, uh, also in the18th century and even earlier.
I'm thinking of David Hume, whouh famously declares that reason
is and not only to be the slaveof the passions and may pretend
to no office other than to serveand obey them.
That's the idea that we can'tactually adjudicate rationally,
we can't reason about what towant.
(30:51):
Our wants will be brute givens,given by our desires.
All we can reason about is howto get to what we want, how more
efficiently to get what we want.
Now look at the implications ofthat.
Hitler wants to murder a lot ofJews and Slavs and others.
Mother Teresa wants to rescuepeople on the care for them on
(31:11):
the streets of Calcutta.
According to the Humean view,not that Hume himself embraced
any such thing, but his own, theimplications of his view are is
that Hitler can't reason, or wecan't reason, about the genuine
truthfulness or desirability ofwhat Hitler wants.
He wants what he wants, andthat's all that can be said.
(31:33):
All reason can do is to help himmore efficiently to to achieve
his ends.
We can't judge Mother Teresa'swants to be superior or
inferior.
All reason can do is tell MotherTeresa how to be more efficient
in caring for people on thestreets of Calcutta.
And it doesn't, as I say, evenin the English tradition, in the
uh English Anglophone tradition,begin with with Hume.
(31:57):
Um a couple of generationsearlier, Thomas Hobbes had
written that the thoughts are tothe desires, as scouts and spies
to range abroad and find the wayto the thing desired.
But that's not reallyproscriptive, is it?
He's just describing what hesees in the prescriptive in this
sense.
He's indicating what is possibleand what is not possible.
(32:20):
And his argument is all that ispossible is to reason about how
to get what you want.
It's not possible to reasonabout what to want.
Okay, so that so it's arejection of two streams, the
two streams that really formedthe West.
One stream, of course, thebiblical tradition.
Jerusalem.
(32:40):
The other stream, the classicaltradition from Greece and Rome,
Rome, figures like Plato andAristotle and Cicero, who are
nowhere near the idea that allreason can do is tell us how to
get what we want.
Both of those traditions, theJudeo-Christian tradition and
the classical tradition, arefundamentally interested in
(33:03):
trying to adjudicate between ourwants in a way that's rational,
getting at the truth is is whatMother Teresa wants the right
thing to want, or is what Hitlerwants the right thing to want.
They both can't be okay.
SPEAKER_04 (33:16):
And by the way, just for the for the sake of the
conversation, I'm going withMother Teresa.
It's interesting how cynicalthat view is.
That, you know, when you talkabout Hume and Hobbes, maybe you
know enough about them to saywhether they were so cynical.
SPEAKER_05 (33:35):
Uh Hobbes, I think I can explain somewhat.
Uh he's writing in the contextand wake of the Great Civil War.
Uh the British Civil War,English.
And, you know, it wascatastrophic.
And uh the carnage was profound.
And human beings looked to himto creatures who would do this
(33:58):
to each other looked to himbasically like just brute
animals driven by desire.
And I think the cynicism grewout of that experience.
It's parallel, Herrick, to thecynicism, I think, of um Oliver
Wendell Holmes, the greatAmerican jurist.
Um profoundly cynical person.
Uh great jurist, uh, but aprofoundly cynical person.
(34:21):
His cynicism grew out of hisexperience with the American
Civil War, serving in the Unionforces in that war, seeing the
carnage.
It was really horrific.
Uh and wars can take people indifferent directions.
The experience of war can takepeople in different directions.
It can inspire in our hearts adeep desire to do the right
(34:44):
thing so that some somethinglike this will never happen
again.
In others, it will lead to thiskind of cynicism.
And I fear in Hobbes, as inHolmes, it led to that cynicism.
SPEAKER_04 (34:55):
I uh some months ago interviewed um a Plato scholar
and was talking to him about howit's fascinating to me as a
Christian to think that um uhpeople like uh Plato or or
Socrates or Cicero that theywould have somehow intuitively
(35:15):
grasped that it's possible toreason your way in the direction
of something called truth.
In other words, that they werethat they had an innate sense
that there there was somethinglike truth and that we could
reason toward that.
And I was asking him, and I'llask you now, what do you suppose
it is?
Because we can talk about thecynicism of uh Oliver Wendell
(35:37):
Holmes or or of Hobbes, but whatdo you suppose it would be that
would make uh somebody in let'ssay Socrates have this innate
sense that um the unexaminedlife is not worth living, as we
say uh at almost every Socratesevent, and that it's worth
examining life, it's worththinking deeply, it's worth
(35:59):
trying to reason our way towardssomething.
I mean, I would say that thatcomes from whether we know it or
not, that we're made in God'simage.
But it's fascinating to me thatthese folks, centuries before
Christ, had that sense, and theyof course had no uh you know
conversations with the with theHebrews.
(36:21):
Uh they weren't aware of thewritings of Moses.
SPEAKER_05 (36:24):
Let me begin with two points in response, Eric.
Uh, first is that this is not anew view.
Uh people have been asking thesame question going all the way
back to early Christianity.
Second, you're in very goodcompany because some of the
great early Christian thinkersasked themselves the question,
(36:46):
how could Plato have known whathe knew?
And there were two bits ofspeculation, both of which were
ultimately rejected, but theywere at least toyed with in the
minds of early Christianthinkers.
One was, could Plato have hadsomehow access to the Hebrew
(37:06):
revelation?
Did he get a scroll fromsomewhere?
And then the second speculation,also in the end dismissed, not
embraced, was that God had givenhim a private revelation of some
of the essential content of theHebrew uh uh scriptures.
Now, both are rejected, but thefact that they were entertained
at all uh means that yourquestion occurred to them uh as
(37:30):
well.
Now, my answer, I think, is verymuch in line with uh your
answer, and here we can go toanother great Jewish thinker,
Saint Paul.
Um, and Saint Paul tells us uhin his letter to the Romans that
um there is a law written on thehearts even of the Gentiles.
Who are the Gentiles?
They're the people who don'thave the law of Moses.
(37:50):
There's a law written on thehearts of the Gentiles.
It's not written on scrolls likethe like the Bible, uh written
on the hearts of the Gentilesthat is sufficient for them to
be held accountable.
It enables them to know basicright from wrong.
So a great figure like Socrates,uh like Plato, uh I would add uh
(38:11):
Aristotle or Cicero, uh, I thinkis someone who is deeply
exploring with a good heart,with a good intention, that law
written on the heart.
That law we call these days thenatural law.
Martin Luther King invokes it inhis famous letter from the
(38:31):
Birmingham jail, when he'scriticized for breaking the law,
which he did, breaking the humanlaw, breaking the positive law
of the state.
How can he justify that?
Especially when they said tohim, his critics said to him,
Dr.
King, you yourself called forobedience to law when the
Supreme Court handed down itsdecision in Brown versus Board
of Education, ordering thedesegregation of the schools in
(38:55):
the southern states, and whenthere was resistance from the
white majority, you called forobedience to law, but now you're
breaking the law.
And King says, well, that'sbecause there are two types of
law.
There's the human law, but thenthere's the higher law.
There are two types of law inanother sense: there's unjust
law and there's just law.
(39:16):
An unjust law is a human lawthat is in violation of the
natural law, the moral law, thelaw written on the hearts.
That's what an unjust law is.
A just law is a law that's inline with the natural law, in
line with the moral law.
A law that's in line with themoral law uplifts what he called
(39:37):
in the letter the humanpersonality.
In other contexts, he called thehuman spirit.
By contrast, an unjust law, alaw that's out of whack with the
natural law, degrades the humanbeing, both the victim of the
wrongdoing and the wrongdoerhimself.
Well, that's pretty good.
And we can understand that law,at least to some extent, at
(39:59):
least in principle, as Platoshows, as Aristotle shows, as
Ciceroso shows, even if we don'thave the revealed truth of the
scripture.
SPEAKER_04 (40:09):
Um, yeah, I think that that's uh that's exactly
right.
It is uh it's fascinating to methat the ancients, uh all the
way back in antiquity, got this,and that many moderns who've had
the benefit of living, you know,um, many centuries uh after the
(40:35):
New Testament was written couldget to a point where they would
would argue with that.
SPEAKER_05 (40:39):
It does undermine the progressive view of history,
doesn't it?
Yes.
That we keep getting better andbetter and better and smarter
and smarter and smarter.
Things are a lot morecomplicated than uh the
neo-agelians uh would have usbelieve, who think that history
moves forward in a positivedirection and we're always
making progress.
No, we're not.
We can make progress in somedomains, like in the domain of
(40:59):
science, and yet regress, loseknowledge when it comes to moral
truth or spiritual truth.
SPEAKER_01 (41:08):
Friends, sometimes the news is more than just
headlines, it's a mirror.
And this week, the mirror isshowing something we weren't
supposed to see.
A new report from Eric Kaufman,a politics professor in England,
backed by surveys from theCenter for Heterodox Social
Science and published in UNHeard, tells us something
stunning.
The rapid rise in transgenderand queer identification among
young Americans has just asrapidly collapsed.
(41:30):
In 2022 and 2023, nearly 7% ofundergraduates identified as
transgender or non-binary.
Today, barely 3.6%.
At Phillips Andover Academy, anelite high school in
Massachusetts, 9.2% of studentsonce said they were neither male
nor female.
Today it's 3%.
Brown University, one of themost progressive IVs, saw the
(41:51):
number of non-binary studentsdrop from 5% to 2.6%.
That's not a drift.
That's not slow correction.
That's a cliff.
And here's the key word Kaufmanuses to describe it fashion.
Now, fashion is a dangerous wordin this conversation, because
we've been told again and againthat gender identity is innate,
immutable, locked in like DNA.
But if that's true, how do youexplain numbers collapsing in
(42:13):
two years?
DNA doesn't shift by semester.
Peer culture does.
Fashion explains why emo bangswept through high schools in
the 2000s, why every man in 1995wore a baggy suit, and why
nobody does now.
Fashion explains why mulletsdied and heaven help us why they
came back.
But unlike clothes, thesefashions get written onto flesh.
Chest binders.
(42:34):
Or mon surgeries.
So when Kaufman says fashionsare changing, that should both
sober us and alert us.
Sober us because this isn't justharmless dress up.
Alert USB because even thesecular left is now admitting
identity can be a trend, notjust a truth.
What do sociologists call it?
Social contagion.
Ideas spread like coals.
(42:55):
Especially among teenagers.
You've seen it.
One friend buys Doc Martin,suddenly the whole group stomps
around like they're in anineties grunge video.
Now apply that same dynamic toidentity.
And the numbers back it up therise in transgender
identification wasoverwhelmingly among young
women, adolescent girls.
Clusters of friends subtlycoming out together.
Not because chromosomes hadchanged overnight, but because
(43:16):
peer pressure and belongingcarried weight.
This is where Kaufman is mostdirect.
The whole non-binary wavebehaves exactly like a trend
cycle.
It rises fast.
It fades fast, and then out ofnowhere, here comes Richard
Dawkins.
The famed atheist, the scourgeof religion.
He's never been gentle withChristians, but on this, he is
crystal clear.
He says there is no non-binaryin nature.
(43:39):
None.
Cells don't lie.
You've got sperm or egg, male orfemale.
Those are the reproductivecategories that drive evolution.
Full stop.
The chance of a third optionexisting, he writes, is
precisely zero.
He mocks the idea that declaringI'm a woman could transform a
man's body the way magic turnspumpkins into carriages.
His words sting, but his pointis simple.
Biology is stubborn.
(44:00):
The human imagination canstretch, but it can't rewrite
chromosomes.now, zoom out.
Because Kaufman isn't the firstto notice fashion's rise and
fall.
In the 1920s, divorce wasscandalous.
By the 1970s it was common.
In the 1950s, nearly allAmericans opposed same-sex
relationships.
By the 2010, support forsame-sex marriage was
(44:21):
mainstream.
In each case you saw peershifts, vibe shifts, cultural
contagion.
But the transgender way wasdifferent.
It was faster.
It was more extreme.
And it reached into the mostbasic reality of human
existence, whether we are maleor female.
That's why its decline is sosharp.
When you tamper with bedrock,you can only suspend disbelief
so long before crack showed outhere's where I want to be
(44:42):
careful, because it's easy totreat this as a scorecard.
Our side is winning.
Their side is losing.
That's too shallow.
Every percentage point in thosesurveys represents real people,
young people who were swept upin something confusing, maybe
painful, and for some,life-altering.
This is not the time, for I toldyou so.
This is the time for dignity.
Christian theology gives us abackbone and a heart.
(45:04):
The backbone says, yes, male andfemale, he created them.
Those categories are not socialfads, they're creation truths.
But the heart says, every personis made in God's image, even the
one struggling with identity.
We tell the truth, but we neverstrip dignity.
Why did Gen Z swing so hard andthen snap back?
My theory is this.
For a teenager or a collegestudent, figuring out who you
(45:26):
are as male or female is anexistential question.
It's not peripheral like am IDemocrat or Republican.
It's central.
So when culture offered anescape hatch, you don't have to
be male or female at all, a lotof young people tried it.
But biology is loud.
Reality presses back.
And slowly, kids discovered thepromise didn't deliver.
That's why Kaufman's fashionlanguage feels so devastating to
(45:48):
the activists.
Because if it's fashion, thenit's not destiny.
Kaufman calls this postprogressive.
In other words, the train ofhistory doesn't always run one
way.
The left has long believedhistory inevitably bends toward
their causes.
Divorce, abortion, gay rights,same-sex marriage at all look
like a straight line, leftward.
But the sudden collapse intransgender identification, that
(46:09):
throws off the script.
It doesn't mean the culture waris over, but it does mean
momentum can change.
And when momentum changes,opportunities open for truth
telling, for compassion, and forresetting cultural sanity.
But hear me on this hourresponsibility isn't to gloat.
Our responsibility is to carefor those who got caught in the
storm.
That means if a young person inyour life tried on a non-binary
(46:31):
identity, don't treat them as apunchline.
Treat them as a person.
If someone carries scars ormedical choices, they don't need
your score.
They need your support.
If the culture moves past thisfashion, let's not leave behind
the kids who wore it yesterday.
The Christian task is harderthan just saying we were right.
The Christian task is showinggrace to those who were wrong or
who were hurt because Christ didthat for us.
(46:52):
So what do we take away?
Fashion fades.
Truth remains.
Baggy suits come and go, Imobangs rise and fall.
Identities constructed in amoment of pure contagion can
collapse in two years.
But male and female made in theimage of God that endures.
The numbers from Kaufman, thebiology from Dawkins, they don't
erase the need for dignity.
(47:12):
They underscore it.
Because people caught in afading fashion still carry
eternal worth.
So as this cultural fashioncollapses, let's be the ones who
hold both sides of the truth.
God's design is real, and everysoul is valuable.
Truth without love crushes.
Love without truth eceps.
Only together can they heal.
And that, friends, is where wehave to stand.
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