August 7, 2026 • 33 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. Michael
Verishow is.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On the air. Any attempt to restrict drinking and driving
here is viewed by some as downright unders in.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
A great American tradition that Anti Scalia says, it is
not the role of the government to take money from
you and give it to someone else that is not Christian.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
That is socialism.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
And he points out socialism is incompatible with Christianity. Socialism
is communism. It's communism light, but it always ends in communism.
Socialisms a little more palatable. That's why most of the
Democrats socialism of America today don't call themselves communists, although
some do, and even within the last few weeks we've
(00:56):
had them when asked by other Democrats, Hey, what are
you doing.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Well, we're a big tent.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
We've got capitalist and communists in our ranks. That's the
mayoral candidate in Denver who has said that. Well, it
hearkens back to a story by the way, communist countries
shut down churches, they drive out the Christians. And the
reason is because communism is the religion. It's the religion
(01:21):
of the state. The state will solve your problems, not God.
So there's a great story about Davy Crockett. My youngest
son is named for David Crockett's my favorite Davy Crockett story,
even more favorite than the Alamo. And you can go
to the Mesa's Institute and they wrote the story up
and I'll read it too. One day in the House
(01:44):
of Representatives, a bille was taken up appropriating money for
the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer.
Several beautiful speech has been made in its support. She's
a widow, he's a naval officer, she's penny less. Let's
give her some money. Davy Crockett stood up. He said,
mister speaker, I have as much respect for the memory
of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings
of the living, if suffering there may be as any
(02:06):
man in this house. But we must not permit our
respect for the dead of or our sympathy for a
part of the living, to lead us into an act
of injustice to the balance of the living. I will
not go into an argument to prove that Congress has
no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity.
Every member upon this floor already knows it. We have
(02:28):
the right as individuals to give away as much of
our own money as we please in charity, but as
members of Congress, we have no right to appropriate a dollar.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Of the public money.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the
grounds that it is a debt doe the deceased, mister Speaker.
The deceased lived long after the close of the war.
He was in office to the day of his death,
and I have never heard that the government was in
arrears to him. Every man in this house knows it
is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption,
(03:01):
appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We
have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as
a charity. Mister Speaker, I have said, we have the
right to give as much money of our own as
we please. I am the poorest member of this House
of Representatives. I cannot vote for this bill. But I
will give one week of my pay to the object,
and if every member of Congress will do the same,
(03:23):
it will amount to more than the bill asks. So
he said, hey, look y'all are trying to use the
government treasury to give the widow of the naval officer
he passed away to give her money.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
He didn't pass away in the line of duty, by
the way.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
So what I'm saying is it's not our power to
give the people's money for what is clearly charity. We
don't owe her a debt. This is charity. And all
of you want to do it. Well, here's what I'm saying.
We shouldn't give the people's money. That's wrong. We should
give our own charitable money. I will give one week
(04:00):
of my pay. I ask everyone else to do it.
None of them wanted to do it. So then he
told the story when he was asked, why'd you do that?
You're a turn in the punch bowl, Crockett, when' I
just when I just give the woman some money, We've
got it, And he told the story. He said, you know,
I won't read the whole thing, but you can go
find it yourself. He was traveling around his district the
(04:21):
last election cycle and feeling pretty good about himself, and
there was a farmer who refused to speak to him,
and he said, hey, fella, is there something wrong. I've
done something wrong? He said, no, no, you're going about yourself,
but I'll never vote for you again. And the fellow said, well,
what's the problem. He said, well, you gave money for
a fire in Washington, d C. You gave the government's money,
(04:43):
my money that I pay hard work. But nobody gives
money to the fire in your district when it burns
down here. And the reason is because y'all are all
in Washington, d C. And y'all look at that church
and it burned down. So you say, oh, let's give
some money to that church. Us people out here, that's
our money that you're given to that church.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
But when our church.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Burns down, the members of Congress don't know about our
church out here in Middle Tennessee. So we just suffer.
We just raise the money amongst ourselves. We don't get
the government's help. What you did was wrong, But you
go on and do that. Just know that I'll never
vote for you. And David Crockett said, I will commit
(05:24):
to you that I will never do that again.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
If you'll commit to me you'll vote for me one
more time. And the fellow said that's fine, Yeah, I'll
do it.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And so he made a commitment to this man that
was so important to him. And then here came another opportunity,
and you know. I'll tell you I served six years
on the Houston City Council. There would be people who
were prominent in the community. There would be people who
were politically connected. There would be people who could help
you get elected, and when they needed money for their cause,
(05:57):
the Houston City Council invariably appropriated. But if Joe Blow
came along and said, hey, I'm struggling.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Over here, I like, no, no, no, we don't give money
to things like that. We watched this happen every day.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
We watch your money be sent in billions of dollars
to Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Ninety nine percent of Americans would never go to Ukraine, but.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
We're told that's patriotic and it's good. Whose pockets does
it really lie? Do you think it pays for the war?
Do you think Zelensky, their leader, got rich, which he
has very rich, he's a billionaire. You think he got
rich off his salary as the leader of Ukraine. But
Joe Biden sent all your money over there, and there
(06:41):
are lots of Americans involved over there, and I dare
say some of them ended up with some of your money.
Why are we sending money to Ukraine when you've got
need in your own neighborhood where your money was sent
to DC and then it was sent to Ukraine. You
could have paid, you could have charitably given, you could
have built new businesses, you could have hired people, you
could have innovated. But they take your money and they
(07:04):
send it to Ukraine, and they send it to Africa,
and they send it to Latin America, and they send
it to Haiti, and who knows how much of it
ends up in the Clinton's back pocket, And they send
it for wars in Nicaragua or Cambodia or Vietnam, or
Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan. And your boys go and fight,
(07:28):
and some of them die for twenty years in Afghanistan.
And when the war is called, did we win?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
No? Nobody will win.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Read what Rudyard Kipling said about the white Man's war
in Afghanistan. The Russians were slaughtered, the English were slaughtered.
And I dare say we didn't win the war. I
don't know what you would do to win the war?
Would you install a government? We tried, We paid off
a lot of people. Why why not save our money
(07:59):
for our I know that's old fashioned, but that's what
Scalia's talking about. It's not Christian for government to provide
health care and all these other things, because in order
to do that, it had to take the money from you.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
I don't do anything but common shence miter Michael Berry.
I don't do rocket scientry.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
To go back to Anton's Kalia's speech, and if you
just tuned in, this is my favorite Supreme Court justice
of all time. And at a time when socialism versus
capitalism has been put back on the table, give it
left credit. They are questioning the very basis of every
pillar of American society. You're not a Christian nation. Christians
are evil. You're not a good people with a good history.
(08:42):
You're evil. You're not open and free, You're evil. Capitalism
is evil. So we go back to the words of
antonin Scalia in a speech he gave to Christians in
twenty thirteen, addressing the question of is socialism or capital
more in line with Christian virtue? And here is the
(09:05):
argument that the Christian left. These are the James Tallerricos,
the people who will tell you that it's Christian, it's
christ like for government to take over everything, as if
Cuba was the ultimate Christian nation. See, because christ was
a healer, so government should take over healthcare. That's their mindset.
(09:25):
And this argument did not come from a theologian or
a preacher. It came from a Supreme Court justice. The
attraction of socialism for Christians is that it means well,
It appears altruistic. It promises cradle took grave provision, Cradle
(09:46):
took grave problem solving. Capitalism promises nothing but the opportunity
to succeed or to fail. Adam Smith pointed out, without apology,
that the bay makes bread not out of the goodness
of his heart, but in order to make a prophet.
And it is in the pursuit of that prophet that
(10:09):
he makes better bread and more bread, and hires people
to help him make that bread, so now they have
dignity in jobs. Scalia's response to this is two words,
how uninspiring, And then he turns it Christ said, he
tells this group of Christians listening to him that you
(10:29):
should give your goods to the poor, not that you
should force someone else to give his. The verb is active,
the subject is you. The charity is personal, or it
is nothing. When you compel people to be charitable, that's socialism.
(10:50):
You take non money and give it someone else. That's
not Christian at all, that's coercion.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
The allure of socialism for the Christian, I think, is
that it means well, it is or appears to be altruistic.
It promises assistance from the state for the poor and
public provision of all the necessities of life, from maternity
care to geriatric care, and from kindergarten through university. Capitalism,
(11:22):
on the other hand, promises nothing from the state except
the opportunity to succeed or fail. Adam Smith points unabashedly
to the fact that the baker does not provide bread
out of the goodness of his art, but to make
a profit. How uninspiring. Yet if you reflect upon it,
(11:48):
you will see that the socialistic message is not necessarily Christian,
and capitalist message not necessarily Unchristian. The issue is not
whether there should be provision for the poor, but rather
the degree to which that provision should be made through
the coercive power of the state. Christ said, after all,
(12:12):
that you should give your goods to the poor, not
that you should force someone else to give his. Bear
in mind that in this discussion I am not arguing
about whether socialism is good or bad as a system
of government. If private charity does not suffice to meet
the needs of the poor, or if we do not
want the poor to have to regard themselves as the
(12:35):
object of charity, or if we even wish to go
beyond merely assisting the poor and want to redistribute the
wealth of the rich to the middle class, socialism may
be a better way to meet those particular worldly needs.
So what he's talking about here, which I think is perfect,
(13:01):
is when a Christian, sorry, when a socialist says, this
is a mean government. We need to give people free stuff.
You ever notice he never gives himself. When Davy Crockett said, hey, guys,
if y'all want to give the widow of the old officer,
(13:24):
y'all want to give her money, We'll give her our
own money, not the people's money, and I'll start. I'll
give her a week of my paid no one joined
him in that, because they don't want to give their own.
They've been all sorts of studies done of how much
charitable giving socialists do.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
They don't give their money away. They want to give
your money away. You know, you hear the phrase a
chicken in every pot. You've heard that before, And I
know you probably think that comes from Herbert Hoover, who
never actually used the phrase. By the way, in his
nineteen twenty presidential campaign, it was credited to him, but
he never actually said it. He wasn't the one who
(14:06):
coined the phrase. It was actually King Henry the fourth
of France. Interestingly enough, but as Scalia's notes, Christ never
said a chicken in every pot.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
But that can be decided on the economic and secular
merits of the matter. The question I am asking is
whether Christian faith must incline us towards that system, And
the answer I think is no. Christ did not preach
a chicken in every pot or the elimination of poverty
(14:46):
in our time. Those are worldly governmental goals. If they
were his objectives, he certainly devoted little of his time
and talent to achieving them, feeding the hungry multitudes only
a couple of times, as I recall, and running away
(15:08):
from the crowds who wanted to put him on the throne,
whereas would have had an opportunity to engage in some
real redistribution of wealth. His message was not the need
to eliminate hunger or misery or misfortune, but rather the
need for each individual to love and help the hungry,
(15:31):
the miserable, and the unfortunate. To the extent that state
takes upon itself one of the corporal works of mercy
that could and would have been undertaken privately, it deprives
individuals of an opportunity for sanctification, and deprives the body
of Christ of an occasion for the interchange of love
(15:55):
among its members.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Must be losing a bush.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
The state of Texas has a big election, just a
little over sixty days, I guess seventy days now, early
voting will begin. Texas has not sent a Democrat to
(16:19):
d C as a US Senator in a very very
long time, almost four decades. And the Democrats have tried
every different angle, and eventually they're going to win one.
The demographics have changed, illegal immigration, racial voting.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And cheating.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
But what they're doing this time is they have put
this little weasley, white guy named James Talafrico. He's never
been married, he's thirty seven, he lives with his mother,
very weird, and he preaches a sort of Christian socialism,
and it's this.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Idea that government should be kind. You know, Christ was
a healer, we should heal well. Socialized government is not
christ like healing. So what I decided to do because
socialism is taking root across our country, there's no doubt
about that, and that is people who don't understand what
(17:21):
makes America great. And it's partly my responsibility to remind
people and to give you the tools to remind people.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So we go back to a speech by my favorite
of all time, Supreme Court Justice Antoniscalia, that he delivered
in twenty thirteen to a Christian group. They asked him
to address the issue is socialism or capitalism more likely
to result in Christian virtue? Antonyscalia grew up with the
(17:52):
same thing I grew up with.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
The idea that a man.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
The idea that a man should have opportunity, that we
should protect his opportunity, not the outcomes. If you determine
before the game who's going to win, you lose the
ability for somebody to change the direction of the game.
If you determine ahead of time how much everyone is
(18:20):
going to make, then you don't give the super achiever
the opportunity to do anything special. And I believe that
there was an expression used about a lazy person he
thinks the world owes him something and it was an insult.
(18:42):
What has socialism done led people to believe that someone
owes them something? This is the term entitlement.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The governmentalization of charity affects not just the donor, so
the recipient. What was once asked as a favor is
now demanded as an entitlement. When I was young, there
used to be an expression applied to a lazy person.
(19:14):
My parents used it a lot. He thinks the world
owes him a living. But the teaching of welfare socialism
is that the world does indeed owe everyone a living.
This belief must affect the character of welfare recipients, and not,
I suggest, for the better, or at least not for
(19:36):
the better. In the distinctively Christian view of things, Christ's
special love for the poor was attributable to one quality
that they possessed in abundance, meekness and humility. It is
humbling to be an objective charity, which is why mendicant
(19:57):
nuns and friars used to beg The transformation of charity
into legal entitlement has produced donors without love and recipients
without gratitude. It has also produced a change in the
product that is distributed. Most particularly and most relevantly for
(20:22):
purposes of the present discussion, social services distributed by the
state in this country at least cannot be intermingled with
Christian teaching or even increasingly with Christian morality. They do
not say the Angelus in public orphanages, there are no
crucifixes on the walls of public hospitals, and the Ten
(20:45):
Commandments are not posted in public schools.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
You know, Intidouscalia identifies what I believe is the most
underappreciated cost of the expanding state. What it does to
children when children go to public schools paid for by
the taxpayer, and they are taught by those teachers that
(21:14):
they are owed a meal, they are owed money per month.
What is a universal basic income other than the idea
that you shouldn't have to work, You should have food
and housing and transportation and clothes and entertainment. It should
(21:37):
just be given to you. Why it's never been given
to you throughout humanity throughout history, not humanity throughout history.
What good could possibly come to giving things to people?
Don't you remember when you left home and all of
a sudden your parents didn't give you anything. You had
(21:57):
to work for it, or maybe you had a job
before for that, and even a few dollars that you
earned yourself. Those dollars were special because you earned them,
and that's what made them special. This is going to
be clip number seven seventeen. Ramon this right here. What
socialism does depriving children of their Christian moral formation?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
I think this is the most important thing he says
in the whole bit.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Perhaps the clearest effects of the expansion of the state
accompanied by the contraction of the church are to be
found in the field of primary and secondary education. A
relatively small proportion of Americans are nowadays educated in religious schools.
Catholic schools are much less numerous than they were in
(22:45):
mid century. As the costs of primary and secondary education
have risen, it has become very difficult for churches to
run a system competitive with the tax funded public schools. Simultaneously,
litigation has caused the public schools to eliminate all religiously
doctrinal materials from their curriculum. That is good and proper
(23:09):
under our American system, which forbids the official establishment of
any sect but the non sectarian states, increasing monopoly over
primary and secondary education can hardly be considered beneficial to Christianity,
Whereas such overtly religious texts as The Pilgrim's Progress over
(23:30):
the Pilgrim's Progress were once the staple of the American
school child's education. Religious instruction nowadays, if received at all,
is obtained one evening a week. In confraternity classes are
on Sunday. In more recent years, as society has become
(23:52):
more and more diverse in its views of morality, not
just religion, but morality, the state's control of education deprived
children not only of Christian doctrine, but even of essentially
Christian moral formation. Schools distribute condoms, provide a vice on
birth control and abortion, and teach that homosexual conduct must
(24:14):
not be regarded as sinful or even abnormal. Again, it
is not my place or my purpose to criticize these developments,
only to observe that they do not suggest that expanding
the role of government as socialism does, is good for Christianity.
Speaker 5 (24:34):
The first I've been destroying the black community is to
dismantle the black family.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
Why don't we ask missus Willie Brown if Kamala Harris
cares about black families?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
I'll have to talk fast here because I want to
a couple more bits of this speech by Anton Sclea.
I want to share why am I playing a speech
at thirteen years old from a thirteen that's thirteen years
ago from a Supreme Court justice that passed away and
is no longer serving. Because he gets back to the basics.
It's important that we understand why we are capitalists and
(25:06):
not socialists. It's not our team versus their team. I
watched the media this past week cheer for Anthony Fauci
refusing to answer for why he killed so many people,
not because they thought him killing so many people was great,
but when the Republicans questioned him, they took the other position.
That's not intellectually robust, that's not honest. That's what we
(25:31):
are here. So socialism or capitalism, we're having to answer
that because the socialists are on the rise, and make
no mistake, they are on the march, and they are
winning battles across the country. We've seen it again and
again and again. So now let's turn to antonin Scalia
talking about something. There are two sentences he delivers here
(25:59):
that I want on a plaque somewhere. The cardinal sin
of capitalism is greed. The cardinal sin of socialism is power.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Finally, I may mention that even even the seeming Christian
virtue of socialism, that it means well and seeks to
help the poor, even that seeming Christian virtue may be
greatly exaggerated. It is true in the United States, and
I believe it is true in all of the Western democracies,
(26:35):
that the vast bulk of social spending does not go
to the poor, but rather to the middle class, which
also happens to be the class most numerous at the polls.
The most expensive entitlement programs social Security and Medicare, for example,
overwhelmingly benefit those who are not in dire financial straits.
(26:58):
So one may plause the argue that welfare state democracy
does not really have even the Christian virtue of altruism.
The majority does not say to the rich, give your
money to the poor, but rather give your money to us.
Just as I believe the left is not necessarily endowed
(27:20):
with Christian virtue, so also I believe the right is
not necessarily bereft of it. Let's say, fair capitalism, like socialism,
speaks to the degree of involvement of the state in
the economic life of the society. Like socialism. Also, it
does not speak to the nature of the human soul.
(27:42):
There have been greedy and avaricious capitalists, but there have
also been generous and considerate ones, just as there have
been altruistic and self deprecating socialists, but have also been
brutal and despotic ones. Sin of capitalism is greed, but
(28:04):
the cardinal sin of socialism is power. I'm not sure
there is a clear choice between those evils.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
It's important to understand that socialism is not an economic theory.
It is a manifestation of power. Here is justice.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Antonin Scalia talking about the fact that it says they
went to a question answer.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
At this point in his speech.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Someone asks him why, if he is so persuasive and
so logically rigorous, he cannot persuade his liberal colleagues, And
he gives the honest answer.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Here's what he says.
Speaker 5 (28:46):
You are so persuasive and logical, why aren't you able
to persuade your liberal colleagues.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
But on most of these issues on which we disagree,
it's fundamental stuff. I mean, it's about whether you think
the Constitution bears its original meaning or you think it changes.
(29:24):
All my colleagues have thought about this for years. I'm
not going to change their mind on those fundamental questions.
If they think it's a morphing constitution, that it means
whatever they think it ought to mean today, they're not
going to change that. What my god, they know, yes, originalism?
Why didn't I think of that before? We don't even
(29:47):
talk about the fundamental stuff like that. Don't even talk
about it. These guys have had their philosophy for you know,
thirty years at least. I'm not about to change their
basic philosophy now. You know, on most of the real
law cases, you know, most of what we do believe
it or so. Sometimes people don't say, Justice, Glee, why
(30:08):
do you have to be a lawyer to be on
the Supreme Court? The Constitution doesn't say so, it doesn't
because they think. Most of the time, you know, we're
contemplating our navels. Should there be a right to die?
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Should there be a right to abortion?
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You know, you know something that Joe Sixpack knows the
answer to as well as I do. It has nothing
to do with anything you learned at Harvard Law School,
nothing whatever. But in fact, most of the time we
are not doing that garbage. Most of the time we
are doing real law. I hope that makes sense. And
(30:46):
the last question of the night, they asked him, and
by the way, I'll put a link to the entirety
of the speech if you want to share it or
listen to it and take notes and really give it
some thought. And I understand for a lot of people
you are like Michael, that's nerds stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I don't care. This is important stuff. This is why
we believe what we believe.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
And so the last question of the night, he was asked,
what is the greatest miscarriage of constitutional justice you've witnessed
during your tenure.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Oh, I.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Can tell you an area in particular, the area of law.
I wrote this before I became a judge. Even I
said that the most disreputable area.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Of our law is the establishment clause.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
And it has remained that we are Our opinions just
in that field make no sense. They still don't make
any sense, and we don't seem to be able to
bring any any coherence out of them.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
But the non lawyers into group.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The establishment clause. Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion. It's the clause that's always invoked when
people want to tear down a cross that's been put
up on public land, or remove a crash that's in
the in the city square or whatever, or take down
(32:11):
the Ten Commandments so forth. There are two religion clauses.
One is that the other one is the free exercise clause.
And there's no doubt that when your free exercise has
been affected, you should have standing to complain. But a
violation of the establishment clause that does not affect your
free exercise. There is no reason why you should have
(32:34):
standing any more than you should have standing to complain
about the federal government acting in areas where it has
no constitutional authority to act. Unless it hurt you, you
don't have standing. But we have made one enormous exception
to that, which is the establishment clause. And that's how
we get into all these I think silly cases. I mean,
(32:58):
why did not have these cases until the middle of
the twentieth century we didn't have cases about it was
because you know, until then, we didn't give standing. Anyway,
that's the area that is really the worst ring answer.
And youngman Ellis has left for good Thank you, and
(33:19):
good night.
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. Michael
Verishow is.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
On the air. Any attempt to restrict drinking and driving
here is viewed by some as downright unders in.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
A great American tradition that Anti Scalia says, it is
not the role of the government to take money from
you and give it to someone else that is not Christian.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
That is socialism.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
And he points out socialism is incompatible with Christianity. Socialism
is communism. It's communism light, but it always ends in communism.
Socialisms a little more palatable. That's why most of the
Democrats socialism of America today don't call themselves communists, although
some do, and even within the last few weeks we've
(00:56):
had them when asked by other Democrats, Hey, what are
you doing.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Well, we're a big tent.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
We've got capitalist and communists in our ranks. That's the
mayoral candidate in Denver who has said that. Well, it
hearkens back to a story by the way, communist countries
shut down churches, they drive out the Christians. And the
reason is because communism is the religion. It's the religion
(01:21):
of the state. The state will solve your problems, not God.
So there's a great story about Davy Crockett. My youngest
son is named for David Crockett's my favorite Davy Crockett story,
even more favorite than the Alamo. And you can go
to the Mesa's Institute and they wrote the story up
and I'll read it too. One day in the House
(01:44):
of Representatives, a bille was taken up appropriating money for
the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer.
Several beautiful speech has been made in its support. She's
a widow, he's a naval officer, she's penny less. Let's
give her some money. Davy Crockett stood up. He said,
mister speaker, I have as much respect for the memory
of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings
of the living, if suffering there may be as any
(02:06):
man in this house. But we must not permit our
respect for the dead of or our sympathy for a
part of the living, to lead us into an act
of injustice to the balance of the living. I will
not go into an argument to prove that Congress has
no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity.
Every member upon this floor already knows it. We have
(02:28):
the right as individuals to give away as much of
our own money as we please in charity, but as
members of Congress, we have no right to appropriate a dollar.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Of the public money.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the
grounds that it is a debt doe the deceased, mister Speaker.
The deceased lived long after the close of the war.
He was in office to the day of his death,
and I have never heard that the government was in
arrears to him. Every man in this house knows it
is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption,
(03:01):
appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We
have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as
a charity. Mister Speaker, I have said, we have the
right to give as much money of our own as
we please. I am the poorest member of this House
of Representatives. I cannot vote for this bill. But I
will give one week of my pay to the object,
and if every member of Congress will do the same,
(03:23):
it will amount to more than the bill asks. So
he said, hey, look y'all are trying to use the
government treasury to give the widow of the naval officer
he passed away to give her money.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
He didn't pass away in the line of duty, by
the way.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
So what I'm saying is it's not our power to
give the people's money for what is clearly charity. We
don't owe her a debt. This is charity. And all
of you want to do it. Well, here's what I'm saying.
We shouldn't give the people's money. That's wrong. We should
give our own charitable money. I will give one week
(04:00):
of my pay. I ask everyone else to do it.
None of them wanted to do it. So then he
told the story when he was asked, why'd you do that?
You're a turn in the punch bowl, Crockett, when' I
just when I just give the woman some money, We've
got it, And he told the story. He said, you know,
I won't read the whole thing, but you can go
find it yourself. He was traveling around his district the
(04:21):
last election cycle and feeling pretty good about himself, and
there was a farmer who refused to speak to him,
and he said, hey, fella, is there something wrong. I've
done something wrong? He said, no, no, you're going about yourself,
but I'll never vote for you again. And the fellow said, well,
what's the problem. He said, well, you gave money for
a fire in Washington, d C. You gave the government's money,
(04:43):
my money that I pay hard work. But nobody gives
money to the fire in your district when it burns
down here. And the reason is because y'all are all
in Washington, d C. And y'all look at that church
and it burned down. So you say, oh, let's give
some money to that church. Us people out here, that's
our money that you're given to that church.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
But when our church.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Burns down, the members of Congress don't know about our
church out here in Middle Tennessee. So we just suffer.
We just raise the money amongst ourselves. We don't get
the government's help. What you did was wrong, But you
go on and do that. Just know that I'll never
vote for you. And David Crockett said, I will commit
(05:24):
to you that I will never do that again.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
If you'll commit to me you'll vote for me one
more time. And the fellow said that's fine, Yeah, I'll
do it.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
And so he made a commitment to this man that
was so important to him. And then here came another opportunity,
and you know. I'll tell you I served six years
on the Houston City Council. There would be people who
were prominent in the community. There would be people who
were politically connected. There would be people who could help
you get elected, and when they needed money for their cause,
(05:57):
the Houston City Council invariably appropriated. But if Joe Blow
came along and said, hey, I'm struggling.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Over here, I like, no, no, no, we don't give money
to things like that. We watched this happen every day.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
We watch your money be sent in billions of dollars
to Ukraine.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Ninety nine percent of Americans would never go to Ukraine, but.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
We're told that's patriotic and it's good. Whose pockets does
it really lie? Do you think it pays for the war?
Do you think Zelensky, their leader, got rich, which he
has very rich, he's a billionaire. You think he got
rich off his salary as the leader of Ukraine. But
Joe Biden sent all your money over there, and there
(06:41):
are lots of Americans involved over there, and I dare
say some of them ended up with some of your money.
Why are we sending money to Ukraine when you've got
need in your own neighborhood where your money was sent
to DC and then it was sent to Ukraine. You
could have paid, you could have charitably given, you could
have built new businesses, you could have hired people, you
could have innovated. But they take your money and they
(07:04):
send it to Ukraine, and they send it to Africa,
and they send it to Latin America, and they send
it to Haiti, and who knows how much of it
ends up in the Clinton's back pocket, And they send
it for wars in Nicaragua or Cambodia or Vietnam, or
Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan. And your boys go and fight,
(07:28):
and some of them die for twenty years in Afghanistan.
And when the war is called, did we win?
Speaker 1 (07:34):
No? Nobody will win.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Read what Rudyard Kipling said about the white Man's war
in Afghanistan. The Russians were slaughtered, the English were slaughtered.
And I dare say we didn't win the war. I
don't know what you would do to win the war?
Would you install a government? We tried, We paid off
a lot of people. Why why not save our money
(07:59):
for our I know that's old fashioned, but that's what
Scalia's talking about. It's not Christian for government to provide
health care and all these other things, because in order
to do that, it had to take the money from you.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
I don't do anything but common shence miter Michael Berry.
I don't do rocket scientry.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
To go back to Anton's Kalia's speech, and if you
just tuned in, this is my favorite Supreme Court justice
of all time. And at a time when socialism versus
capitalism has been put back on the table, give it
left credit. They are questioning the very basis of every
pillar of American society. You're not a Christian nation. Christians
are evil. You're not a good people with a good history.
(08:42):
You're evil. You're not open and free, You're evil. Capitalism
is evil. So we go back to the words of
antonin Scalia in a speech he gave to Christians in
twenty thirteen, addressing the question of is socialism or capital
more in line with Christian virtue? And here is the
(09:05):
argument that the Christian left. These are the James Tallerricos,
the people who will tell you that it's Christian, it's
christ like for government to take over everything, as if
Cuba was the ultimate Christian nation. See, because christ was
a healer, so government should take over healthcare. That's their mindset.
(09:25):
And this argument did not come from a theologian or
a preacher. It came from a Supreme Court justice. The
attraction of socialism for Christians is that it means well,
It appears altruistic. It promises cradle took grave provision, Cradle
(09:46):
took grave problem solving. Capitalism promises nothing but the opportunity
to succeed or to fail. Adam Smith pointed out, without apology,
that the bay makes bread not out of the goodness
of his heart, but in order to make a prophet.
And it is in the pursuit of that prophet that
(10:09):
he makes better bread and more bread, and hires people
to help him make that bread, so now they have
dignity in jobs. Scalia's response to this is two words,
how uninspiring, And then he turns it Christ said, he
tells this group of Christians listening to him that you
(10:29):
should give your goods to the poor, not that you
should force someone else to give his. The verb is active,
the subject is you. The charity is personal, or it
is nothing. When you compel people to be charitable, that's socialism.
(10:50):
You take non money and give it someone else. That's
not Christian at all, that's coercion.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
The allure of socialism for the Christian, I think, is
that it means well, it is or appears to be altruistic.
It promises assistance from the state for the poor and
public provision of all the necessities of life, from maternity
care to geriatric care, and from kindergarten through university. Capitalism,
(11:22):
on the other hand, promises nothing from the state except
the opportunity to succeed or fail. Adam Smith points unabashedly
to the fact that the baker does not provide bread
out of the goodness of his art, but to make
a profit. How uninspiring. Yet if you reflect upon it,
(11:48):
you will see that the socialistic message is not necessarily Christian,
and capitalist message not necessarily Unchristian. The issue is not
whether there should be provision for the poor, but rather
the degree to which that provision should be made through
the coercive power of the state. Christ said, after all,
(12:12):
that you should give your goods to the poor, not
that you should force someone else to give his. Bear
in mind that in this discussion I am not arguing
about whether socialism is good or bad as a system
of government. If private charity does not suffice to meet
the needs of the poor, or if we do not
want the poor to have to regard themselves as the
(12:35):
object of charity, or if we even wish to go
beyond merely assisting the poor and want to redistribute the
wealth of the rich to the middle class, socialism may
be a better way to meet those particular worldly needs.
So what he's talking about here, which I think is perfect,
(13:01):
is when a Christian, sorry, when a socialist says, this
is a mean government. We need to give people free stuff.
You ever notice he never gives himself. When Davy Crockett said, hey, guys,
if y'all want to give the widow of the old officer,
(13:24):
y'all want to give her money, We'll give her our
own money, not the people's money, and I'll start. I'll
give her a week of my paid no one joined
him in that, because they don't want to give their own.
They've been all sorts of studies done of how much
charitable giving socialists do.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
They don't give their money away. They want to give
your money away. You know, you hear the phrase a
chicken in every pot. You've heard that before, And I
know you probably think that comes from Herbert Hoover, who
never actually used the phrase. By the way, in his
nineteen twenty presidential campaign, it was credited to him, but
he never actually said it. He wasn't the one who
(14:06):
coined the phrase. It was actually King Henry the fourth
of France. Interestingly enough, but as Scalia's notes, Christ never
said a chicken in every pot.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
But that can be decided on the economic and secular
merits of the matter. The question I am asking is
whether Christian faith must incline us towards that system, And
the answer I think is no. Christ did not preach
a chicken in every pot or the elimination of poverty
(14:46):
in our time. Those are worldly governmental goals. If they
were his objectives, he certainly devoted little of his time
and talent to achieving them, feeding the hungry multitudes only
a couple of times, as I recall, and running away
(15:08):
from the crowds who wanted to put him on the throne,
whereas would have had an opportunity to engage in some
real redistribution of wealth. His message was not the need
to eliminate hunger or misery or misfortune, but rather the
need for each individual to love and help the hungry,
(15:31):
the miserable, and the unfortunate. To the extent that state
takes upon itself one of the corporal works of mercy
that could and would have been undertaken privately, it deprives
individuals of an opportunity for sanctification, and deprives the body
of Christ of an occasion for the interchange of love
(15:55):
among its members.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Must be losing a bush.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
The state of Texas has a big election, just a
little over sixty days, I guess seventy days now, early
voting will begin. Texas has not sent a Democrat to
(16:19):
d C as a US Senator in a very very
long time, almost four decades. And the Democrats have tried
every different angle, and eventually they're going to win one.
The demographics have changed, illegal immigration, racial voting.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
And cheating.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
But what they're doing this time is they have put
this little weasley, white guy named James Talafrico. He's never
been married, he's thirty seven, he lives with his mother,
very weird, and he preaches a sort of Christian socialism,
and it's this.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Idea that government should be kind. You know, Christ was
a healer, we should heal well. Socialized government is not
christ like healing. So what I decided to do because
socialism is taking root across our country, there's no doubt
about that, and that is people who don't understand what
(17:21):
makes America great. And it's partly my responsibility to remind
people and to give you the tools to remind people.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
So we go back to a speech by my favorite
of all time, Supreme Court Justice Antoniscalia, that he delivered
in twenty thirteen to a Christian group. They asked him
to address the issue is socialism or capitalism more likely
to result in Christian virtue? Antonyscalia grew up with the
(17:52):
same thing I grew up with.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
The idea that a man.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
The idea that a man should have opportunity, that we
should protect his opportunity, not the outcomes. If you determine
before the game who's going to win, you lose the
ability for somebody to change the direction of the game.
If you determine ahead of time how much everyone is
(18:20):
going to make, then you don't give the super achiever
the opportunity to do anything special. And I believe that
there was an expression used about a lazy person he
thinks the world owes him something and it was an insult.
(18:42):
What has socialism done led people to believe that someone
owes them something? This is the term entitlement.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
The governmentalization of charity affects not just the donor, so
the recipient. What was once asked as a favor is
now demanded as an entitlement. When I was young, there
used to be an expression applied to a lazy person.
(19:14):
My parents used it a lot. He thinks the world
owes him a living. But the teaching of welfare socialism
is that the world does indeed owe everyone a living.
This belief must affect the character of welfare recipients, and not,
I suggest, for the better, or at least not for
(19:36):
the better. In the distinctively Christian view of things, Christ's
special love for the poor was attributable to one quality
that they possessed in abundance, meekness and humility. It is
humbling to be an objective charity, which is why mendicant
(19:57):
nuns and friars used to beg The transformation of charity
into legal entitlement has produced donors without love and recipients
without gratitude. It has also produced a change in the
product that is distributed. Most particularly and most relevantly for
(20:22):
purposes of the present discussion, social services distributed by the
state in this country at least cannot be intermingled with
Christian teaching or even increasingly with Christian morality. They do
not say the Angelus in public orphanages, there are no
crucifixes on the walls of public hospitals, and the Ten
(20:45):
Commandments are not posted in public schools.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
You know, Intidouscalia identifies what I believe is the most
underappreciated cost of the expanding state. What it does to
children when children go to public schools paid for by
the taxpayer, and they are taught by those teachers that
(21:14):
they are owed a meal, they are owed money per month.
What is a universal basic income other than the idea
that you shouldn't have to work, You should have food
and housing and transportation and clothes and entertainment. It should
(21:37):
just be given to you. Why it's never been given
to you throughout humanity throughout history, not humanity throughout history.
What good could possibly come to giving things to people?
Don't you remember when you left home and all of
a sudden your parents didn't give you anything. You had
(21:57):
to work for it, or maybe you had a job
before for that, and even a few dollars that you
earned yourself. Those dollars were special because you earned them,
and that's what made them special. This is going to
be clip number seven seventeen. Ramon this right here. What
socialism does depriving children of their Christian moral formation?
Speaker 1 (22:20):
I think this is the most important thing he says
in the whole bit.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Perhaps the clearest effects of the expansion of the state
accompanied by the contraction of the church are to be
found in the field of primary and secondary education. A
relatively small proportion of Americans are nowadays educated in religious schools.
Catholic schools are much less numerous than they were in
(22:45):
mid century. As the costs of primary and secondary education
have risen, it has become very difficult for churches to
run a system competitive with the tax funded public schools. Simultaneously,
litigation has caused the public schools to eliminate all religiously
doctrinal materials from their curriculum. That is good and proper
(23:09):
under our American system, which forbids the official establishment of
any sect but the non sectarian states, increasing monopoly over
primary and secondary education can hardly be considered beneficial to Christianity,
Whereas such overtly religious texts as The Pilgrim's Progress over
(23:30):
the Pilgrim's Progress were once the staple of the American
school child's education. Religious instruction nowadays, if received at all,
is obtained one evening a week. In confraternity classes are
on Sunday. In more recent years, as society has become
(23:52):
more and more diverse in its views of morality, not
just religion, but morality, the state's control of education deprived
children not only of Christian doctrine, but even of essentially
Christian moral formation. Schools distribute condoms, provide a vice on
birth control and abortion, and teach that homosexual conduct must
(24:14):
not be regarded as sinful or even abnormal. Again, it
is not my place or my purpose to criticize these developments,
only to observe that they do not suggest that expanding
the role of government as socialism does, is good for Christianity.
Speaker 5 (24:34):
The first I've been destroying the black community is to
dismantle the black family.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
Why don't we ask missus Willie Brown if Kamala Harris
cares about black families?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
I'll have to talk fast here because I want to
a couple more bits of this speech by Anton Sclea.
I want to share why am I playing a speech
at thirteen years old from a thirteen that's thirteen years
ago from a Supreme Court justice that passed away and
is no longer serving. Because he gets back to the basics.
It's important that we understand why we are capitalists and
(25:06):
not socialists. It's not our team versus their team. I
watched the media this past week cheer for Anthony Fauci
refusing to answer for why he killed so many people,
not because they thought him killing so many people was great,
but when the Republicans questioned him, they took the other position.
That's not intellectually robust, that's not honest. That's what we
(25:31):
are here. So socialism or capitalism, we're having to answer
that because the socialists are on the rise, and make
no mistake, they are on the march, and they are
winning battles across the country. We've seen it again and
again and again. So now let's turn to antonin Scalia
talking about something. There are two sentences he delivers here
(25:59):
that I want on a plaque somewhere. The cardinal sin
of capitalism is greed. The cardinal sin of socialism is power.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Finally, I may mention that even even the seeming Christian
virtue of socialism, that it means well and seeks to
help the poor, even that seeming Christian virtue may be
greatly exaggerated. It is true in the United States, and
I believe it is true in all of the Western democracies,
(26:35):
that the vast bulk of social spending does not go
to the poor, but rather to the middle class, which
also happens to be the class most numerous at the polls.
The most expensive entitlement programs social Security and Medicare, for example,
overwhelmingly benefit those who are not in dire financial straits.
(26:58):
So one may plause the argue that welfare state democracy
does not really have even the Christian virtue of altruism.
The majority does not say to the rich, give your
money to the poor, but rather give your money to us.
Just as I believe the left is not necessarily endowed
(27:20):
with Christian virtue, so also I believe the right is
not necessarily bereft of it. Let's say, fair capitalism, like socialism,
speaks to the degree of involvement of the state in
the economic life of the society. Like socialism. Also, it
does not speak to the nature of the human soul.
(27:42):
There have been greedy and avaricious capitalists, but there have
also been generous and considerate ones, just as there have
been altruistic and self deprecating socialists, but have also been
brutal and despotic ones. Sin of capitalism is greed, but
(28:04):
the cardinal sin of socialism is power. I'm not sure
there is a clear choice between those evils.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
It's important to understand that socialism is not an economic theory.
It is a manifestation of power. Here is justice.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Antonin Scalia talking about the fact that it says they
went to a question answer.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
At this point in his speech.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Someone asks him why, if he is so persuasive and
so logically rigorous, he cannot persuade his liberal colleagues, And
he gives the honest answer.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Here's what he says.
Speaker 5 (28:46):
You are so persuasive and logical, why aren't you able
to persuade your liberal colleagues.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
But on most of these issues on which we disagree,
it's fundamental stuff. I mean, it's about whether you think
the Constitution bears its original meaning or you think it changes.
(29:24):
All my colleagues have thought about this for years. I'm
not going to change their mind on those fundamental questions.
If they think it's a morphing constitution, that it means
whatever they think it ought to mean today, they're not
going to change that. What my god, they know, yes, originalism?
Why didn't I think of that before? We don't even
(29:47):
talk about the fundamental stuff like that. Don't even talk
about it. These guys have had their philosophy for you know,
thirty years at least. I'm not about to change their
basic philosophy now. You know, on most of the real
law cases, you know, most of what we do believe
it or so. Sometimes people don't say, Justice, Glee, why
(30:08):
do you have to be a lawyer to be on
the Supreme Court? The Constitution doesn't say so, it doesn't
because they think. Most of the time, you know, we're
contemplating our navels. Should there be a right to die?
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Should there be a right to abortion?
Speaker 2 (30:26):
You know, you know something that Joe Sixpack knows the
answer to as well as I do. It has nothing
to do with anything you learned at Harvard Law School,
nothing whatever. But in fact, most of the time we
are not doing that garbage. Most of the time we
are doing real law. I hope that makes sense. And
(30:46):
the last question of the night, they asked him, and
by the way, I'll put a link to the entirety
of the speech if you want to share it or
listen to it and take notes and really give it
some thought. And I understand for a lot of people
you are like Michael, that's nerds stuff.
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I don't care. This is important stuff. This is why
we believe what we believe.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
And so the last question of the night, he was asked,
what is the greatest miscarriage of constitutional justice you've witnessed
during your tenure.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
Oh, I.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Can tell you an area in particular, the area of law.
I wrote this before I became a judge. Even I
said that the most disreputable area.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
Of our law is the establishment clause.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
And it has remained that we are Our opinions just
in that field make no sense. They still don't make
any sense, and we don't seem to be able to
bring any any coherence out of them.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
But the non lawyers into group.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
The establishment clause. Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion. It's the clause that's always invoked when
people want to tear down a cross that's been put
up on public land, or remove a crash that's in
the in the city square or whatever, or take down
(32:11):
the Ten Commandments so forth. There are two religion clauses.
One is that the other one is the free exercise clause.
And there's no doubt that when your free exercise has
been affected, you should have standing to complain. But a
violation of the establishment clause that does not affect your
free exercise. There is no reason why you should have
(32:34):
standing any more than you should have standing to complain
about the federal government acting in areas where it has
no constitutional authority to act. Unless it hurt you, you
don't have standing. But we have made one enormous exception
to that, which is the establishment clause. And that's how
we get into all these I think silly cases. I mean,
(32:58):
why did not have these cases until the middle of
the twentieth century we didn't have cases about it was
because you know, until then, we didn't give standing. Anyway,
that's the area that is really the worst ring answer.
And youngman Ellis has left for good Thank you, and
(33:19):
good night.
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