American Thought Leaders - Honoring Those on the Front Lines: Singer Five for Fighting on Writing Music With Morals

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Sponsor special: Up to $2,500 of FREE silver AND a FREE safe on qualifying orders - Call 855-862-3377 or text “AMERICAN” to 6-5-5-3-2John Ondrasik, also known by his stage name, Five for Fighting, is a Grammy-nominated recording artist who released several number-one hits in the early 2000s, including his single, “Superman,” which became widely known as a 9/11 anthem.“You know, silent majorities become silent minorities if nobody speaks up,“ he says. ”For me, making a record was really how you made a statement.”Mr. Ondrasik is back in the spotlight for his songs about the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israel.“Many in the music business, particularly with Israel, have historically shamed our industry for all time because they’re afraid to speak out with common sense, moral clarity,” Mr. Ondrasik says. “One thing that I think folks don’t realize, especially on the right, is how critical the arts are to changing culture.”We dive into his songwriting and look at how his music took him to war-torn Ukraine and Israel. We also get an exclusive, unplugged performance of two of Mr. Ondrasik’s hit singles.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

You know, silent majorities become silent minorities if nobody speaks up. And for me, making a record was really how you made a statement. John Androsik, also known as Five for Fighting, is a Grammy-nominated recording artist who released several number one hits in the early 2000s, including a single, Superman, which became known as a 9-11 anthem. Recently, he's come back into the spotlight for his songs about the 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the Hamas October 7th attack on Israel.

Many in the music business, particularly with Israel, have historically shamed our industry for all time because they're afraid to speak out with common sense, moral clarity. One thing that I think folks don't realize, especially on the right, is how critical the arts are to changing culture. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Janja Keller. Before we start, I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsor of our podcast, American Hartford Gold. As you all know, inflation is getting worse. The Fed raised rates for the fifth time this year.

And Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is telling Americans to brace themselves for potentially more pain ahead. But there is one way to hedge against inflation. American Hartford Gold makes it simple and easy to diversify your savings and retirement accounts with physical gold and silver. With one short phone call, they can have physical gold and silver delivered right to your door or inside your IRA or 401k. American Hartford Gold is one of the highest rated firms in the country, with an A-plus rating with a Better Business Bureau and thousands of satisfied clients. If you call them right now, they'll give you up to $2,500 of free silver and a free safe on qualifying orders. Call 855-862-3377, that's 855-862-3377, or text AMERICAN to 65532.

Again, that's 855-862-3377 or text American to 65532. John Andrasik, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you for having me, Jan. You've written songs about Afghanistan and the withdrawal, about Ukraine, the war in Ukraine, about October 7th. But back in the day, you wrote the song that I remember that you wrote was Superman Yeah Which kind of became a 9-11 anthem of sorts Yeah

It's surreal, you know, sitting here in New York City across the street from Madison Square Garden You know, whenever I come to town, I flash back to the concert for New York My career was a fluke I'm a 15-year overnight success. I grinded in the music business for a long time and when we released Superman nobody wanted to play it. It was a piano song, it was a ballad, this was the age of Lilith Fair, boy bands, grunge music, and it was an anomaly. It wasn't

1977 with Billy and Elton. So Superman was kind of a miracle to begin with, just that it kind of caught on. And then of course, I was actually in England on 9-11 and like everybody else, you know, I called everybody I knew in New York. I sat there for 10 days, no planes were flying. I landed in O'Hare. I literally kissed the tarmac to be back in the United States. And I didn't realize what Superman had became, particularly in New York City and D.C., recognizing the heroes of 9-11. And still to this day, I keep in contact with many of the firefighters and their families. But I think it showed me at a very young age why music can matter. You know, we talk about fame, fortune, hits, tickets,

but across the street that night when I played the concert for New York and I saw The Who blow the roof off Madison Square Garden and give all of those people who'd been down at Ground Zero digging through the rubble an avenue to release, to cry, to sing, to scream. I saw that night, like, okay, that's why this, it was seeing how music can move mountains, move messages, give people solace in a way nothing else can. So, you know, maybe 25 years later, you know, seeing that song and other songs still connect that way.

I think as a songwriter, it's very humbling. Well, I listened to Superman several times. I think on YouTube, at least one of them has 100 million. So there's clearly still some resonance here. Yeah. There's a lot of songs about Superman. I didn't realize how many there were until I wrote it and put it out. But in my song, Superman doesn't want to be Superman.

He doesn't want to be everything for everybody. I think sometimes my song, Superman doesn't want to be Superman. He doesn't want to be everything for everybody. I think sometimes in life we feel we have to be the rock. We have to be everything for everybody. But at the end of the day, we're human. And we all have fallibilities. We all have issues. But that's what makes us beautiful.

When Superman came out, the record company called and said, John, something really weird is happening with your song. Adults are buying your song. I'm like, what do you mean adults? They said, old people are buying your song. People in their 30s and 40s are buying your song. Old people? Uh oh.

But what they meant was, it wasn't kids buying Superman. And to realize that, look, at the end of the day, you have to take care of yourself first before you take care of everybody else. I think that common thread has lasted these 25 years. And as well as the fact that was the only song that put my two-year-old to sleep at night. So, parents, you're welcome. That's amazing. You know, we were just talking earlier.

You alerted me that that five for fighting actually comes from hockey. Yeah. So you were a hockey fan. You were in Toronto in 1993 when I think that was one of the few times that the Toronto Maple Leafs made the playoffs. I remember that. That was my first year of university. And it was a big deal. Yeah.

Wayne Gretzky and Doug Gilmore, one of the greatest series of all time. And in 1999, the record company said, as I said, you know, the age of the singer-songwriter was not happening. So they wanted a band name. And I sarcastically said, how about Five for Fighting? Because I went to a hockey game and there was a fight. And Marty McSorley and Bob Probert expecting to hate the name. And they're like, we love the name. I'm like, you're crazy.

It sounds like I should be opening for Metallica. What's going on here? And to be honest with you, Fight for Fighting is probably more appropriate now, fighting some of these cultural battles with these songs. When I look at your choices of causes, I guess, they don't fit neatly on the political spectrum. We kind of expect them to these days, don't we? Yeah, I mean to me the latest three songs, every time I write one I hope it's the last one, they're moral messages. They're not political messages. Blood on My Hands, the song about the Afghan withdrawal, it's basically you don't promise somebody to have their back and you abandon them to terrorists. You don't leave your citizens to terrorists. To me that's

not a political message, it's a sane one. With Ukraine, when Putin invades Ukraine, we are America. We're supposed to stand for those fighting for their freedom against tyranny. October 7th, when people massacre, rape, pillage, desecrate innocent people, that's a bad thing. There's no but. So to me, these are moral messages. And the fact that they're taken politically for many is understandable in this tribal world we live in. But that's how I look at it. Before every song in my concerts, I kind of give a little context.

When I talk about Blood on My Hands and I talk about the withdrawal, I say, look, if a Republican president did the same thing, the song would remain the same. Only the names would change. But in this tribal world, of course, it's a bit of an anomaly. How do you see yourself in this crazy world where everything is hyper-polarized? I just look at myself as a person with a worldview that happens to write songs for a living. We all have opinions. And to be honest with you, Jan, it's a bit of a tightrope for me because I've

always had a bit of a disdain for celebrities who get on their soapbox and lecture us about politics as our moral betters, which so many in Hollywood like to do. But there's also this tradition in songwriting and music to write about the world around you, the protest songs of the 60s, of course. So in a way, I guess I look at myself as in some weird way as a modern day kind of protest songwriter, which I never aspired to. But seeing some of the response to our culture to these issues and seeing the fact that many in the music business, particularly with Israel, have historically shamed our industry for all time because they're afraid to speak out with common sense, moral clarity.

I think that also gives me some energy to say something because so many are not. Well, yeah. So does that not make you sort of ultra canceled or something? Oh, yeah. Yeah. When I wrote the Afghanistan song, virtually everybody said, you cannot put that out. It's cancel culture. And I thought twice about it. And to be honest with you, if I was 30 years old trying to make a career in the music

business, I don't know if I would have put that song out. I'm fortunate to be on the end of my career. I have some security. I've never been part of that crowd anyways. But I wrote a song, geez, before Superman called The Last Great American 30 years ago. And it was really about John McCain and his decision when they said, you can leave Vietnam, you're prison selling. He said, no, that guy was here first. So when I put out Blood on My Hands, there was some pushback a lot, but I also got many emails from our veterans, thousands of Afghan veterans,

who felt gutted by the withdrawal, some suicidal. And that song gave them a voice. It let them know they were heard, similar with Israel. Millions of Jewish people around the world feel abandoned, betrayed, because they have been. And especially in the arts, when there's nobody standing up for them or saying anything with moral clarity, but then they hear a song like this and they go, okay, people feel what I feel. They understand my point of view. And music does that in a way like nothing else.

For me, whatever flack comes my way, and I have to say, when Israel shared my video of OK or Not OK, I very quickly understood in a small way what it's like to be Jewish. I'm not Jewish. In my mind, you don't have to be Jewish to condemn Hamas. You just have to be sane. Or just October 7th in general. Yes. This was the subject. Right. And that's really what the song's about. We're not okay. Something's really broken in our society when we can't make simple statements, when people are afraid to say, release the hostages without some fear of backlash. So I think my song, even though the surface is Israel and the Hamas, it's really about

civilization and those who want to tear it down. What you're talking about is cancel culture where everybody's so paranoid to say anything. Something's really broken in America. We see that in the media, of course, as well. I often hear a lot of the negative side, and sometimes overly focus on that. I want to kind of bring out these people that are contacting you, like the people saying, hey,

you've given me a voice, for example, like the veterans. Tell me about those people that have been reaching out. Look, the honor of my career has been to perform for our troops. Me and Gary Sinise, my pal, we'd go on the USO tours, and we wouldn't be sitting here without our military families and our veterans and our active military. So I had a lot of friends that were gutted, disgusted after our withdrawal and talked to so many after the song came out. It got so crazy that I started getting calls from people trapped in Afghanistan.

So I embedded with many of these amazing Green Beret NGOs, Save Our Allies, Project Pineapple, Project Exodus Relief, who were literally saving people. So through that, I met a lot of these heroes. And on these operations, I didn't go to Afghanistan, but I was, you know, liaising with people on the Hill and getting to know them. And when they saw General Milley and General Austin come out and say, hey, what a great success Afghanistan was, that broke a lot of hearts. It broke my heart because we expect presidents to do things that can be a little crazy, a little political. But we always thought that if it got really bad, the adults in the room, our generals, would say the right thing. They'd be honest with us.

And when they didn't, I think that shattered a lot of hearts and a lot of minds. And thousands of emails from Afghan veterans, from veterans in general, I still talk to many people on the Hill. Mike Waltz, you know, the Green Beret congressman. Tulsi Gabbard, I had a lot of talks with her about what can we do for these people who are hurting. So when you have an impact for that and you see you're helping these heroes, true heroes, it gives you energy and it gives you satisfaction and whatever else comes your way and people scream at you, it's kind of irrelevant.

You know, going to Ukraine, playing with the Ukrainian orchestra in a blown-up airport outside of Kyiv in front of the symbol of independence for Ukraine, the Maria, their airplane, to sit there and talk to these Ukrainians, see them feel energy that here's this American that came from halfway around the world to sing with us about freedom. That stuff is so powerful

that the negative stuff, in a way, it just kind of rolls off your back over time. Often you'll have a conflict like Ukraine be kind of reduced to, you know, Russia, Ukraine, to be reduced to the kind of the big, the geopolitics of the situation by political way, but it's actually very much real people. Yeah. And your point is, I think here, that they're, these are people fighting for their freedom. They're fighting for their survival.

I mean, one thing we're trying to do through the arts, and the arts, I think, is critical in this civilizational culture war, and that's really what it is. It's not Hamas versus Israel. It's civilization against those who want to tear it down. Look, the UN is as much of a problem as Hamas, Iran, China, Putin, they're all connected. So one thing we're doing is we're putting together collaborations between Ukrainian artists, Israeli artists, Iranian dissidents, Palestinian dissidents, Taiwanese

dissidents, Chinese dissidents, to really kind of make the point that this is all one thing. I mean, you go back to Reagan and it's the access of evil. It's still the access of evil. If we try to compartmentalize it, we're not doing ourselves a service. It's evil actors really trying to tear down our Western way of life and the freedom and liberty that we love. And typically with music, you know, you have many artists writing about the world around them and you can look back in time and listen to them and kind of get a sense of the history. You listen to the music of the 60s, you get a sense of the history. Perhaps the fact that nobody's writing about these issues

says something about what's happening right now. And the fact that many Jewish icons are afraid to say anything about October 7th says something about where we are. The fact that so many kids have been indoctrinated on TikTok and many artists are spouting the oppressor, woke, genocidal propaganda. Maybe that does say something about where we are. As someone with two kids in their 20s and look at the world they're going to grow up in, that's another reason for me to at least be one voice, having one point of view that hopefully will give others

some strength to speak up. Maybe it's just because of my age, but I remember the music of the 60s, the 70s, of the 80s, but it kind of roughly ends there for me with a few exceptions. First of all, is that the case in general, or am I just an old guy that's living in the past, right? Well, we're both old guys living in the past. I think typically the music that you take with you through your life are the songs that you love as a teenager or some in your 20s. You know, I love the songwriters from the 70s. I love Led Zeppelin. I love Queen because that's kind of the music I kind of grew up on. So I think part of it is just that, that we love the music that we found early in life. And that kind of is what keeps, you know,

70s on 7 on Sirius in business, right? But I do think music has changed in a way that when we were kids, there were kind of two options. You'd buy a record, you'd go to the record store, you'd turn on 11 channels on TV, and you'd listen to the radio. Now with video games and the internet, TikTok, there's so many things coming at kids. I think music is something they appreciate, but I think there's a lot of people that consume music, but very few music fans.

And of course, the business of music has changed a lot. The days of tour support, developing artists, people forget Bruce Springsteen broke on his third record. I mean, that doesn't happen anymore. And I think we're really in kind of a very short time frame mentality. Very few people make records anymore. And we know what records are. You know, if you're under 40, you may not. But these days, people just release singles. They want the instant gratification. And for me, making a record was really how you made a statement. So I just think it's a different approach. And on the other hand, it's my job as someone who's had some success and now kind of on

the back side of his career to be a curmudgeon and talk about the good old days when we were making music and having hits. But it's certainly different. One thing that I think folks don't realize, especially on the right, is how critical the arts are to changing culture. We talked last night on the phone about my old buddy, Andrew Breitbart, who always said, you know, politics is downstream of culture. So if you don't include the arts, which I call soft power, in the culture war, you're going to lose. And I think we're seeing that. I think we're losing the culture war because

so many on the card left and many kind of the young artists who have kind of been indoctrinated by this oppressor, this oppressive wokeism, they have big voices and they have big platforms. And when nobody's countering that narrative, and that's all the kids here, it's not surprising that many of them have kind of fallen under the spell. So I know you brought your guitar, or I guess it's your daughter's guitar here in New York, right?

Yes. Why don't we do a little nostalgia here? Let's go back to the future. Okay, yes. My daughter, Olivia, who is actually in London as we speak, so she allowed me to hang in her apartment, and she has this beautiful little... This little tailor. Of course, Superman was written on piano,

but sometimes it's interesting to hear it on a different instrument. So here's a little bit of Superman. I can't stand to fly I'm not that naive I'm just out to find A better part of me I'm more than a bird, more than a plane More than some pretty face beside a train It's not easy to be me

Wish that I could cry Fall upon my knees Find a way to life But a home I'll never see It may sound absurd, don't be naive Even heroes have the right to bleed I may be disturbed, won't you conceive Heroes have the right to dream It's not easy to be me

And up and away from me Now it's alright You can all sleep sound tonight I'm not crazy, or anything I can't stand the light, I'm not that naive at night Man, one man to ride The clouds between their knees I'm only a man in a funny red sheet

Digging for a crypt tonight on this warm red street Only a man in a funny red sheet Looking for special things inside of me We don't need a plan, funny red sheets Looking for special things inside of me Inside of me Inside of me

It's not easy to be me. Wow. This is going to sound really funny to you, but I've heard the term unplugged a lot over the years when it comes to music, and it only dawned on me what it really means. It means this. Yeah. So we have here Andrasik unplugged. Approviding unplugged, yep. Oh, that's great. You know, one line that really struck me was, I think it was,

heroes get to dream too or something along this line, right? Yeah. Interesting. So tell me a little bit about how it is that you got to, you know, end up in Ukraine during the war. It was kind of a wild experience actually. When Can One Man Save the World, which is the song I wrote for Ukraine, came out, I wanted to do something, frankly, for Poland.

Because Poland, as you know, had rescued, taken in four million refugees. So I had a friend who's very connected in the Hill and in the State Department. And I said, I got this idea. Why don't we go to Poland and let's sing Can Women Save the World with the Polish Orchestra? She called back in a few days and she said, how would you like to go to Ukraine and sing the song with Ukrainian Orchestra? And my first thought was, what? And I said, how could that work? She goes, well, a million things have to happen, but we could get the orchestra to key for three days. Let me work on it.

Start writing the arrangement. And so I did. And she said, and don't tell anybody. You can tell your wife, but no one else. We need operational security. This has to be like a mission. So me and my guitar, me and my quartet MD, violin player, were in the back of the van traveling the country and scribbling in the back of the van and our laptops, arranging Can One Man Save the World? And in the last show, I came off stage and got an email with a plane ticket to Krakow for the next day. And so I had a long talk with my wife that night, and I'm very grateful she let me go.

And off we went. Flew to Krakow, got a car to take us to the border. The guy drove 200 miles an hour getting us there. Didn't speak a word of English. Pushed me and two veterans who were part of the production team off. We didn't know what to do, so we started kind of walking the mile to the border. And everybody's coming this way. Nobody's going that way. And got through the border. We're supposed to get a car.

That wasn't working because all the gas was being used by the military. Eventually, we got to Lviv and boarded a train with some U.S. congressmen, Dan Crenshaw and Brian Fitzpatrick. They let us board their train, which I'm so grateful. And we got to Kiev. And typically, you're supposed to play underground. You see people performing in the subways because of all the air raids. But we were informed that there's a chance

you can perform at the Antonov Airport, which hangers the Maria, the symbol of Ukrainian independence, which is an airplane, flew during COVID, flew the Soviet space shuttle. It's on their army patch. And eventually we're allowed to do that. We put the quartet, you know, in front of this plane that had been destroyed by Putin in the outset of the war. We put me in puddles of jet fuel, blown up tanks, frankly still some things there that probably I won't talk about because kids may be watching. We performed this song and shot this video outside of Kyiv and every member of that orchestra had either had a family member killed, missing, or were on the front lines.

My interpreter was an 18-year-old girl who six months earlier was a bartender. Now she's in the Army. They had this fortitude, this stoicism, and the final point that kind of brought it all together with me was as we were running takes of the song, I noticed out of the corner of my eye an entourage coming over of people in military garb. Turns out it was the general who approved us to be there. He said, thanks for coming.

And the orchestra got very moved because he was kind of like their Schwarzkopf, like their kind of guy that was the face of the war, through an interpreter. And then he said something I'll never forget. He said, let me hear the song and you saw the orchestra stiffen and kind of be moved and and he was surrounded by these kind of big Rambo dudes with AK-47s hair down to here and you know sunglasses and so we started to play in this setting in this blown-up airport and they played with vigor. They played with honor. They played with fight. They played with freedom. And halfway through the song, you could see some of these big

Rambo guys, you know, putting on their sunglasses because they were starting to cry. And the general and I lost it. I kind of just got very emotional. And at the end, when we stopped, there was this silence that probably was four or five seconds, but it seemed like four or five months. And you felt the weight of the moment. You felt the weight of what these people were going through. You felt the power of this collaboration. So tell me about the Hostage Square performance. Hostage Square was wild, too.

I was on another tour, and I had six days off, and since this OK, we're not OK song has really become, in many ways, an anthem for Jewish people around the world, I've been getting a lot of requests. Well, when are you going to come to Israel? I've been doing a lot of Israel press, a lot of American press, and so I had five days. And I talked to some friends at the AJC. I've met and I've kind of become pals with many of the Jewish organizations, stand with us, just amazing folks. And we were able to arrange a trip to Israel. Initially, it was about going to meet some of the IDF soldiers at Sheba Hospital, which we did. It was also about meeting with hostage families, which I'd been talking to some. It was to do that. But there was really no plan about performing at Hostage Square.

But on a Thursday night, there was this little event for one of the hostage families that they do a little jam session. And they asked if I'd go play a few songs. And I did. And it turned out that the leader of the hostage forum, who runs the whole kind of hostage square outreach for the hostage families, was there. And she said, you know, we're doing this thing Saturday night. We do it every Saturday. It's broadcast across the country. And would you consider playing for that? And I said, of course. And just briefly tell us where it is, what's happening around there. In the middle of Tel Aviv, there's a big square that they've turned into an outreach forum for the hostage families,

in many ways a shrine and a stage for the hostage families to speak every Saturday night. Thousands of people come. It's broadcast on television. There's exhibits. There's even a kind of tunnel that is an example of a Hamas tunnel, what the hostages would feel. And you walk through the tunnel and there's this screaming. So they have all this really powerful, moving, scary, important stuff. Right before I performed, they made an announcement that I'd never heard before, Jan. The announcement was, in event of missile attack, everybody please take cover, find a safe shelter, and cover your heads. There were 10,000 people there. And I was like

ready to run to my hotel and hide under my bed. Nobody left. And so I performed Superman. I performed okay. It was very moving. Reminded me of the concert for New York, frankly. Literally, from me to you, people holding signs of their children who are hostage. It reminded me of looking out in Madison Square Garden of those family members who lost loved ones. And when I came off and was hugging some hostage families, the hostage foreign person said, hey, by the way, you need to be in your hotel by 11 o'clock because they're closing the airspace and it's very likely Iran's going to attack.

And this is about 8.30. and my son was with me, too. I said, hey, you guys, you heard, right? They're like, yeah, we heard. I go, let's go, let's go. We've got to go to the hotel right now. True story. The one guy, David, said, but John, we have a dinner reservation. I've waited two weeks for this dinner reservation.

And that's who these Israelis are. They have a way to find joy in the darkest of times. They have this fortitude where things that would make us cower kind of rolls off their back. And so I'm like, well, maybe can we at least have dinner at the hotel? So we go to the hotel, they're all drinking, talking, and I'm looking at my watch. I run to my room at 1030. I tell my son to get in the room. And, of course, at 11 o'clock, I ran a tax. And I call them. I'm like, all right, guys, you know, they're tacking.

I'm in the safe room. And they're like, the drones will take eight hours. We're at the bar. I'm like, that's who they are. So that whole experience really was powerful for me to see kind of the fortitude and attitude and strength of the Israelis, similar to the Ukrainians. And I think Americans, we could learn something from these folks.

I think we've lost a little bit of that. Well, let's hear OK then. Let's hear OK. OK. I'm going to need my capo. Thank you. Awesome. All of a sudden the capo magically appears. Nobody will even notice. This is a time for choosing This is a time to mourn. The moral man is losing. Forbidden, lost, forlorn.

I don't understand. I don't understand. How you can look yourself in the mirror I don't understand, I don't understand How did that love fill up your heart We are not We are hurt, we are not okay Hey yeah, hey yeah, hey yeah You hide behind your babies You hide behind your kin

The harbiters have rabies They'd holocaust again I don't understand, I don't understand How you can lock yourself in the mirror I don't understand, I don't understand How does that blood spill from your eyes And we, we are, we are not We, we are, we are not okay Hey, yeah, hey, yeah Evil's on the watch, evil's on the watch Time to face the test at hand

Evil's on the watch, evils on the march Meet every good woman, every good man So stand up, stand up Stand up, stand up, we are, okay, okay. So, where did you find the words? Actually, the words were partially inspired by a speech that Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, gave very early after October 7th when he came out and said, you know, something's really broken. We're not all right when 24 hours after these atrocities, thousands of people are celebrating in Times Square. But I really didn't think about writing a song until as the months went by, we saw the collapse of the media

that became, in many cases, Hamas propagandists. Certainly the mobs on our college campuses, which we still see today. And it's not just our country, it's the world. It's not just Jewish people who are not okay. It's all of us. And if we don't take steps to address that, silent majorities become silent minorities if nobody speaks up.

I mean, people look at OK and you see the video, they think, well, it's a pro-Israel song. And I say, you know, the hero in my video, one of the heroes, over the words, need every good woman, is a Palestinian woman calling out Hamas for stealing the aid. I think if you really care about Palestinian people, you understand there's no hope while they're under the yoke of Hamas. But I think we've gotten so lost in these memes and these tribal sides and kind of forgetting simple things of good versus evil and right versus wrong. I know they sound silly.

They sound kind of cliche. But sometimes it's that simple. Hamas wants to maximize Palestinian casualties as well as Israeli casualties. And if we all understood that and would stand up to that, it probably wouldn't happen. But there's this this paralyzation and this kind of moral kind of collapse in so many institutions that I think it'll take every one of us to to fight back and course correct. John, this has been absolutely fantastic. Thank you for coming to visit us. But a final thought as we finish,

you know, I think not to go fanboy on you too much, but I appreciate your guys' mission and not just kind of pick whatever partisan piece is going to grab your likes that day. I think that really is something that is critical for our nation to get back to a place where we are okay. We're not perfect. We'll never be perfect. But we're certainly not okay, and we need to get back to where we are okay. We're not perfect. We'll never be perfect, but we're certainly not okay. We need to get back to where we are okay. I think your mission is an honorable one. Well, John Andrasik, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you.

Thank you all for joining John Andrasik and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.