Pints With Aquinas - Ab0rtion is Healthcare ... and other INSANE ideas w/ Steven Rummelsburg

Episode Date: May 7, 2022

Me and Steve will discuss Roe vs Wade, the insanity of being for child slaughter and how we got here. Join Us on Locals (before we get banned on YT): https://mattfradd.locals.com/ Hallow (Three Month's FREE!): https://hallow.com/mattfradd Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/matt CITY OF TRUTH! Steven's Upcoming Newsletter: https://cityoftruth.lpages.co/join/ Book on John Dewey: https://www.amazon.com/John-Dewey-Decline-American-Education/dp/1932236511/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 Steven is looking for Teachers: [e-mail] https://bostoncatholic.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6EvTqZ9MWm3Llum Rewire the West: https://www.youtube.com/c/RewiretheWest Homeschooling Resource: https://homeschoolconnections.com/

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How's it going? Matt, Brad, I just want to invite everybody right now just to show Elizabeth Warren some love by giving us a thumbs up, you know? Or if you don't care about how angry Elizabeth Warren is, I don't care, give us a thumbs up. And if you do care, give us a thumbs up. And subscribe and subscribe.

There's Elizabeth Warren and Elizabeth Warren. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. So what do we know? Shayla go what's happening in the country with Roe versus Wade. There was a leak from the Supreme Court to Politico of a draft, a majority draft from Justice Alito that the Supreme Court is probably going to overturn Roe v. Wade. Suck it. It's unbelievable. So that would make

abortion banable at the state level at all through all stages. Right. So that would make abortion banable at the state level at all, through all stages. Right. It would return the authority to the states to decide the question of abortion, correct? Yeah, that's right. If that happens. That's correct.

And what's the reaction? Insanity. Insanity. There's so much to say about this, and I feel like I'm in a dream. Have you ever had those dreams where you're trying to move but you can't because it's through quicksand? Yeah. And this should just be a slam dunk and we can't even have an authentic, honest conversation

about it because of people like Elizabeth Warren. I thought it'd be great to look at what she said in response to this and Just to see whether or not there's sense behind her words. That'd be fun. Yeah, is that something you could pull up? Mm-hmm. We'd also chat for a bit until you find it. Well, I'm just gonna drag and drop it Oh We're gonna play it. Here we go live television. Listen to these words carefully Listen up It looks good I can see it but like will we hear it or you hear it you might headphones carefully. Listen up.

It looks good. I can see it. But like, will we hear it or you hear it in your headphones? All right, here we go. She's angry. for decades now and we are going to fight back. Help me! I am angry because of who will pay the price for this. It will not be wealthy women who get on their plane. They can fly to another state.

They can fly to another country. They have to get to the protection they need. This is full of the worst women in our country. This is full of the worst women in our country. This is full of the worst women in our country. This is full of the worst women in our country. This is full of the worst women in our country. This is full of the worst women in our country. Who are already struggling to work free jobs, to be able to support their children. She's nuts I understand this. I understand this. Here we go.

I have seen the world where abortion is illegal. Oh God have mercy. What does that look like? We are not going back. Oh bless her. Not ever. No. So stand with me.

We are not going back. We are not going back! Yes you are, sweetheart. What a word. Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever!

Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever!

Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Not ever! Oh my gosh. Here's the scariest thing in the world about that. Either you recognize that she's insane morally and intellectually, or that makes sense to you. That's what terrifies me, that there is a overwhelmingly

large group of people for whom what she just said actually makes sense. And then there's a group of people who understand that was sheer idiocy, beyond the pale. I wish I had the words, I don't have the words to describe the idiocy that was, but we should look at our words. Yeah.

That's the ground for beginning to understand there are two divided camps here with an ever expanding chasm between them. An ever expanding chasm between them, and not only because we're using words differently, but because one side is believing lies and the other isn't. If you think it's okay for big strong people to slaughter little weak innocent people,

you're a bad person. Absolutely. Reprehensible. Evil even. Evil to believe that that's an okay thing, much less that it's a right, much less it is a thing that's an advancement. Yeah. Evil to believe that that's an okay thing, much less that it's a right, much less it is a thing that's an advancement. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, healthcare, I mean, where do we start? Where do we start with the abuse of speech, just in that little clip, not to mention the entire movement? I think abortion. Let's take the word abortion. The word abortion is problematic.

Very, very. It literally means, if you wanna be fair to both sides, I think you can say the abortion is the willful termination of the fetus in the womb. Even the word termination, it stops, it willfully stops it. I think we should continue to use ugly words for ugly behavior.

Well, de facto, it's murder. Yeah, well, is it? I think murder is more of a legal term. So maybe it will be considered. Slaughter. Slaughter. Killing. But slaughter and killing of an innocent person

is murder, de facto, and that's legal, but it's also moral. It's also moral, as opposed to killing in battle. Fair enough. Which is different. So there is a difference, but what does the word mean? I was trying to be fair to both sides. You say, listen, can somebody who is pro-abortion say

that it's the willful termination of a life in the womb? Can they say that? Can they admit that? I think so. They can't not say that. No. Or do they still say that's not a life? Again, I think that logic can only grow

within soil. And it doesn't seem like there's much soil in the brains of people who are addicts or who have willfully believed lies. So I don't even know if that's probably some of these folks like Elizabeth Warren are interested in logic. Yeah, there's no ground. So I mentioned on this show before, I think, in the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, they had this display with all these hanging trees, and they were all cut off at the roots and in the air. Interesting. And they had no roots,

and it reminded me of what you just said. It's a wonderful example of people like Elizabeth Warren, and anybody who can say something like, abortion is healthcare. Neither one of those terms are understood by the moral idiot who says abortion is healthcare. It's mind-numbing and I think I would get in trouble for saying what I just said, but I don't care about that.

I care about whether or not it's true. Abortion is healthcare. The absurdity and the insanity and the immorality in that statement is so far beyond my ability to comprehend. And I wish I weren't the only one. I wish we weren't the only ones. And what's funny is I threw up a short today, like a little video where she was saying that.

And for a moment I thought, well, what if I put like a slaughtered fetus at the end of this video? But YouTube would ban me. Yes. And fair enough, I mean, they have standards, they don't wanna present violence, but the same people would also say

that abortion isn't violent. So it's contradictory. You can't put up images of violence, however, abortion isn't violence, it's healthcare and ought to be celebrated. Yeah. Does anyone say it's not violence? What do you think Elizabeth Warren would say?

If you said, don't you think it's a violent act? She would say something like, it's a violent act, not to allow it or some such nonsense. Yeah. What's interesting is this like Foucaultian idea that it's not about truth. It's just about power. Yeah.

It really applies to her and her ilk because she isn't interested in logic. She doesn't believe in it. It doesn't seem so. She just resorts to shouting and being angry and using emotional arguments. Yeah. I love how she began with anger and end with anger as if the emotions was the highest thing. Right. You're just totally right.

There's no ground of truth there. You just really want to, even saying something like, this is the culmination of what the Republicans want for the last several decades. So? It's simply not true anyway. Well, no, we have a lot of terrible Republicans. Yeah.

Maybe they didn't want this, right? But even if that is a true statement, why is that bad? Suppose it is the culmination of what many Republicans have been fighting for. Okay, but it's the argument. Even if that were the case, granted. Even if it were, yeah, and we're not putting up with it, I guess. But you have to show why it's wrong.

So maybe the Republicans want something that's evil and now it's culminating. Okay, what's the argument? Right. Well, the argument seems to be that this is that poor people, this will fall on them and rich people will be able to fly elsewhere to pay someone to kill their child. And she also said mothers who are taxed, women who have been raped. Yes. Yeah.

It is the peer-fou-coul power politics arguments arguments that aren't grounded in truth or reality. Yeah, let me suggest a syllogism. Not that those of Elizabeth's ilk are interested, I don't think, in a syllogism, and I just said it before, but it's always wrong for big, now you could phrase this syllogism a lot more, I don't know, simply,

but there's a bit of rhetoric in it. It's always wrong for a big, strong person to kill a little weak, innocent person. But abortion involves a big, strong person killing a little weak, innocent person, therefore abortion is always wrong. If you want to deny that premise, if you want to say that's just not true, you have to either take aim at one of the premises and say one of them or both of them are false. You have to say where I'm equivocating on one of the terms or that the logic doesn't

follow but since the logic does follow, what will you do? And so it doesn't, I mean, it doesn't really matter how angry you get over a syllogism. It stands or falls on that. What do you think? And Elizabeth Warren contradicts herself by saying, in the case, we willfully want this big strong person to be able to murder the innocent person and the people that don't want that

are picking on little innocent people who won't have access to abortion. It doesn't hurt the powerful rich people, it hurts the little innocent people. So we need to kill innocent little people to protect little innocent people from Big Brother or whatever she, it's just a complete set of contradictions. And I don't think there's any sense to it at all.

Yeah, we should rejoice right now. Here, let's let's rejoice. I mean, it's fine. Like we should rejoice. We should also mourn the fact that this country has permitted such a grave evil to take place every day. And it continues to. Yes.

But you know, you got to take your victories where you can. Absolutely. You brought up something to me that I just, oh, there's also bourbon. Yes. But you know, you got to take your victories where you can. You brought up something to me that I just oh, there's also bourbon. I don't know what you want. I should have asked you. You can give that to one of them and you can just drink bourbon out of the bottle. Can I have the bottle? You could drink bourbon out of that bottle and still make more sense than Elizabeth. I am so tempted. Native American war. If I could just forget we're on camera, I would grab that bottle right now.

Hand this glass. We'll just go get there's a glass. Yeah, just don't hit the camera and just walk around it. And then you drink that. OK. Do you see that pile of dishes there? All right. They're all clean. Mm hmm. Glory to Jesus Christ. Use a small glass. No, this is a moment, in a way, to celebrate. If it's true, what are the odds that this is not true?

What do you guys think? I mean, it seems to be a draft from a majority of the Senate. That being said, I haven't been, I mean... The court? What? The court, not the Senate. Court, sorry. sorry court Supreme Court It seems to be a draft from the majority of the Supreme Court that being said I haven't followed before too many Supreme Court

Justice yeah issues that they've changed that they've you know Enacted and so I don't know how the process is and I don't know if things like you know media attention Yeah, like and also this is unprecedented in this document being leaked in the way that it's been right to my knowledge. Yeah, mine too. But yeah. And I think that, you know, I don't know how people how the justices will react to the reaction, the public reaction to it. Like, I don't know if they're, you know,

how what's the word vulnerable they are to just public opinion swaying their opinion. Yeah. I mean, they are elected. I see. Who knows? Well, let's say this. If for some bizarre reason that the Supreme Court returns power to the states on this issue, that is a step in the right direction. Yeah. And that we should rejoice. Yeah. So how about this to life? To life and to Elizabeth Warren's sanctity and that she would be given the grace to repent.

Pray for her soul. Pray for her soul. Yeah. You know, I gave a talk recently at St. Gregory, the great academy, and you helped me with that talk. And you you made this suggestion to me, which was the kind of central point of the talk that I gave. And that was that good Catholic education or forget Catholic good education would have

us come to know what is true. You know, love that thing and then serve that thing. Did I have that in the right order to know love and serve? This is what the Baltimore catechism says. No to love and serve the logos. Right. Yes. And then you pointed out that what often happens through public school education

or indoctrination through television or media is the exact inverse. That hierarchy of knowing, loving and serving is inverted so that instead little Lizzie Warren as a six-year-old girl maybe was told that abortion is very good for women and we should want what's good for women. Right. And she was basically, and I'm using her as a, as a punching bag, but let's say anyone, right. They're given this ideology and they're taught first to serve it. Yes.

Not to know what's true, but to serve it. That's right. You know, this is why you'll chat with kids and they might tell you that transgender ism is good and that sodomy is good and right. Because they've been told to serve this thing. They haven't really been given the option. They haven't even been giving an argument for it. They've just they serve it. If you serve something long enough, you come to hold a particular affection for that thing. And that might be because you feel that you're on the right side of history or in the in

group or on the side of the oppressed. You come to sort of identify with this thing. Then the final step is you come to quote unquote, know it. Now you can't know what is false, but you can in the sense of accepting it as true, but you can rationalize it. And I think that's what we see when we chat with a pro abort like Liz Warren. We're seeing somebody who has the hooks of an ideology into her, and she's not actually interested in truth.

That's why I said earlier, it's not merely a matter of we're using different languages. You're not interested in the way things are. That's right. Your thoughts. That's right. No. And when you invert that order, those three things change meaning. So to serve the agenda, not just abortion, but all the LGBT, all the agendas to serve them and to come to love them isn't love. It's a kind of a self-arrogation that we see in virtue signaling. It's really that kind of thing. When you know first then love, that kind of love is a humility that says,

I acquiesce to the nature of reality and I give into truth in my love that this thing is worthy of love, as opposed to I arrogate to myself and thereby virtue signal the agenda I support because I get human respect for it as opposed to respect from God the other way around and as you mentioned this knowing is a kind of not just rationalization it's a false kind

of knowing so I guess rationalization is the right word but the love also is a Stockholm syndrome and then the knowing becomes a knowing about Stockholm Syndrome, which turns into this weird little myopic self-referencing subjective self-love, as opposed to the opposite when you know the Logos, know Christ, love Christ, and serve Christ. It's worshipping the objective will of truth. And that's such a radically, radically different thing. And if you look at the public schools, and you start with John Dewey,

and you look what they've morphed into, it truly is serving the agenda, loving what you're serving out of self-adulation, and then thinking that you know something that you don't. And that's exactly why people that are deluded like Liz Warren can say, I know this issue. And she's completely wrong about nearly everything she says because she's saying she knows something that she doesn't know at all. And she truly appears

to love it, right? I really want all women everywhere to be able to slaughter their unborn children. That's literally what she's saying. Yes. So this inversion is I think absolutely key, not just for this conversation, but to get begin to say, hey what's going on with public schools? What kind of education did we receive? We were all in this and if it didn't envelop us, we can thank our families and our churches for mitigating the damage that this kind of inverted order does when you serve love and think you know a thing. And I think that's the big divide.

That's the big divide. Yeah, no, I think that's spot on knowing, loving and serving. Yeah. Yeah, this is why it sometimes feels when you're chatting with somebody that that person like just isn't interested in what's true, because if you put forth an argument like the one I just did, what you're met with is the fallacy ad ignominium. That is to say, an appeal to shame.

How could you write or an appeal to pity like women who are raped? What are they going to do? These are literally logical fallacies That's right. It's not even so if you want to make an argument feel free But since you don't have truth on your side, it makes sense why you would appeal to anger Yeah, the passions and appeal to shame You know and victimization. Yeah, it's identity politics. It's it's right. And victimization. Yeah. It's identity politics.

It's all it is. And you made me think of, you made me think of something I just forgot, but you made me think of something really, really important here is that this, even worse than saying that you know, even worse than using those fallacies is they say, Matt, we're saying the same thing. This is what I get most when I argue with pro-death people and tell them abortion is wrong. They end up saying something like,

we're saying the same thing. And it's just so bizarre. And that's what happens when you abuse speech so much that words essentially don't really mean anything. Yeah, I want to take a pause for a moment right now and invite people who are watching this to join our community on Locals. Would you mind putting matphrad.locals.com below? I run a daily podcast over on locals. So every morning it's called morning coffee, we get together and have caffeinated conversations

about theology, philosophy. And the reason I'm over on locals is that it's a free speech platform that is not going to ban me for saying abortion is murder, transgenderism is crazy. Uh, the things that everyone said five minutes ago, but now have become secular dogma and so to speak against them gets you, uh, excommunicated. That's right. Right out of the fold. That's right. And it's like, you don't know when it's going to happen. It might happen today after this video, just because of the truths that we're saying. So if people want to go over to locals, you can watch these podcasts that we do

for free. You just have to sign up on locals like you would have to sign up on Twitter in order to engage with that kind of content. So matfrad.locals.com. There's also a bunch of bonus content that we're putting out there frequently. So it would really mean a lot to me if you would go and, uh, and join over there because man, what do you think about the sensorialness of the left? I've had this idea for a while now that people are beginning to view the however you want to define them or label them, the left, the woke, the progressives

were beginning to view them the way people viewed Christians in the 50s, rightly or wrongly. But there was this sense in which those Christians are censorious. They're preachy. They're boring. They don't think for themselves, right? They're uninteresting. Right.

Now, maybe there's some truth to that. Maybe there wasn't. I didn't live in the 50s, 60s, 70s when people were, you know, commenting on these things. But that is the accusation that seems very kind of apropos of the left right now, such that you even have people like Elon Musk who are recognizing this and even stating it outright. And so what was I going to say? Yeah, just this. I completely agree.

What's what's the sensorialness? What does that say about their inability to refute an argument? It's dogmatism. It's materialistic dogmatism. It's its own religion. Materialistic dogmatism. Somebody go start a podcast called that.

That's what it is. Could you look up John Dumpy? He wrote an article on the humanist. How do you spell his last name? D-U-N-P-H-Y. John Dumpy, he wrote an article on the humanist. How do you spell his last name? D-U-N-P-H-Y. John Dumpy. And he has this really interesting quote that I really think fleshes out what we're dealing with here. I can try and look it up. Okay, John Dumpy, he's a school teacher and he said, he's making the claim that this new humanism is a new religion. Oh, for sure. And the new pulpit is the classroom

and that the new the new army of religious preachers from the left, you gotta look up the quote it's actually really really important. All right are you looking up to? We'll have a contest. Do you have it? I have the battle for, this is John, that's it, that's it. The battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith, a religion of humanity, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to carry humanist values to whoever they teach. Keep going. There's a little bit more that's very important that follows that.

I've got to click through the link here. Oh, sorry. Well, that was a good start, but you have the end. The classroom must and will become the arena of conflict between the old and the new, the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils and misery and the new faith of humanism.

Okay, that's the quote. That is a really great quote. That's a really great quote. Write that open for us. And what year was that written? quote that is a really great quote. That's a really great open for us Yeah, and what year was that written was that in? 1983 1983 that was written and here's the thing if you read that quote No one would agree or admit that that's what's going on the public classroom, but I can assure you that's exactly the dogma underlying

modern public education Whether or not people embrace it openly or not. Those are the foundational roots of their intentions. And you can drive those roots all the way back to John Dewey, the experimental psychologist, up through Benjamin Bloom and all the other architects of the modern school. This really is about the religion of humanism,

secular humanism. And they really do view Christianity as a rotting corpse of evils. And that's just where that's very religious. And- I think look at the religious fervor of Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, look at her. She's like public school teachers

that I've worked with the last 30 years. Honestly, if you approach them with an alternative to the narrative, there is no discussion, but there's a ton of name calling. Like I've said this on here before. Yeah, you've told me that. You said that in an interview, didn't you? You're an onward terrorist, yeah.

Yeah, tell us, I mean, if you don't mind sharing that experience. Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, last time I was here, I talked about the fact that I went to an administrator's credentialing program and I did it in solidarity with my lovely wife, Faith. And it was just such a nightmare, and I knew it would be. And without me even saying anything in class,

I got called to a meeting where they said they were very disturbed by my use of the word objective truth. As they told- It's a disturbing thing. It's a very disturbing thing. Especially if it hits you in the face. Yes, yes, and they literally accused me

of white supremacy, being a racist, being a bigot, and all these ridiculous things. And it's so bald-faced right now. And what I wrote was, they were telling me, you're gonna be uncomfortable in this class. And I just wrote, I don't mind being uncomfortable in the face of truth, I do mind being uncomfortable in the face of non-truths.

And I know the difference between what's true and what's not true. So I won't be humiliated or shamed by something that's false and that they found very problematic But I think it's more problematic to say that if you are a white person in this class You're gonna be uncomfortable and you should be ashamed because you're a racist and that's what they told us Point in saying link. It's so insane. Yes, and their response when they got pushback from my wife Was you need to read white white fragility? Oh, yeah, which I hear is a garbage It's it's it's a garbage heap that people can take seriously if they show into liking love

Yeah, and no, you can't if you know love and serve you see it for the ridiculousness It is just like even X Kendi the guysendi. The guy's at, where is he? At Boston University or Boston College? I don't remember. But he's written, I read his book called Stamped. And he has a bunch of other books or works on, what do they call it? Anti-racism. And if you serve, love, and know,

those books are very appealing. If you know, if you If you know love and serve, then you see the books for the ridiculousness that they are. Contradiction. He's at Boston University, by the way. Boston University, yeah, Boston University. I mean, he says something like, to fix discrimination in the past,

we have to have discrimination now that will have a different kind of discrimination in the future, something like that. That's not a quote. But just asinine statements like that, double standards standards double speak victim ideology and really an inversion of what they mean, so they'll say you're privileged When they're really saying I want me to be privileged if you're watching this right now, and you haven't read the book

1984 please read that book have your kids read that book and explain to them the insanity of transgenderism. Explain to them the ugliness of sodomitic relationships. Explain to them the propaganda that we were fed when they were trying to push through same sex marriage. They would say, hey, be on the right side of history. Right. Because what I'm finding as my kids get older is they're actually smart. I've shared this a bunch on the show, but when my kids were really young, I was really afraid. How were they going to live in this culture?

But what I did was continue to have conversations with my kids, point out the insanity of Disney doing certain things, and my kids have come along for the ride. Honestly, it's the rebellious position to take today. Like, if you want to be a rebel, you just have to be a Christian. You just have to stand up against the secular dogma that's been bullhorned at us. That's right.

I've done the same with my kids. My oldest is 26, my youngest is 20, and they have the same reaction. I guess it's the rebellious point, but because we brought them along with us in these conversations, they haven't fallen for it. They just haven't fallen for the hype, and I'm very grateful for that.

It's a grace from God that they are moving like that. I know I've said this with you earlier, but I suspect we are gonna see a pendulum swing. Yeah, you mentioned that today. I just don't believe we can keep this up. What do you think that's gonna be like, the pendulum swing? I don't know, what do I, I mean, I'm just, if I had to spit ball, I said to my wife the other night,

like maybe in 50 years, we Christians will have to speak out against the errors of Netflix's puritanism because we might fling so fast in the other direction that Christians are going to have to. Well, you know, it's funny I say that, but there's a sort of puritanism now. I mean, are people having sex? I don't know. Or are they just like looking at porn? You know, so we are the ones now talking about the beauty and the goodness of things called humans, the beauty and goodness of that beautiful human act appropriate only for marriage.

That's right. But it felt like maybe we had to speak against that in a day and age where I don't know. There was people were more overt when they would say things like sex is bad or I don't know there was people were more overt when they would say things like sex is bad or I don't know if anyone ever said that but but you might be right I mean the truth is this Chris I have a lot of hope that's my point you're hopeful right like how many people do we have watching this little channel right now we're almost 400 people who haven't thrown up maybe

they have but they're still watching what people are interested in these conversations I hope they are. It's really important. Like whatever you think of Daily Wire, whatever you think of Ben Shapiro, whatever you think of their politics, no doubt we all have disagreements. Maybe some large, some small. But look at their explosion. Yeah, they are huge. Look at CNN's live streaming service that lasted as long as my Brita filter, you know?

Mm-hmm. Which is to say it didn't last. I don't follow this. Yeah. Or to quote Parks and Recreation. Wait, should I change my Brita filter? Um, yeah, like it's, it's, it's interesting to see. Very interesting. Like Daily Wire just put a hundred million dollars into Daily Wire kids. They're going to start creating children's programming. Wow. So the point is to canonize daily wire, or Ben Shapiro who's a Jew obviously. The point isn't to do that.

The point is just to say there is a sizable counter reaction to this reaction. Yeah, like you said, there's 400 people listening that would like to invert the order of what we've been conditioned in. That's a great sign. But all of this really does go back to education and its role in shaping future culture, doesn't it? Who's the great soul who said,

whatever happens in the classroom of today is the politics of the next generation? I think it's been misattributed to Lincoln, but I'm not sure who said it, but there's a lot of truth to that. And so this generation is looking at what was cultivated in Dumphy's generation. truth to that. And so this generation is looking what was cultivated in Dumpy's generation. You know, this new religion of secular humanism is just second nature. So it is kind of exciting that there are people that are kind of waking up to the wokeness. You know, 1984 says, now how many am I holding up? And he's holding up four and he's supposed to say five. Well, literally today in math classes you can say that two

plus two equals five. And if you give the right reason, you can pass that. Is that a true statement? That's a true statement. You wouldn't like even when speaking about the errors of my lie or I might be wrong, but I'll tell you what you look up San Mateo, San Mateo School District in California. They have a manual about that thick about how modern mathematics in America is racist and one of one of the racist tenants is that white people expect right answers that's literally one of their things look it up San Mateo County I've reached out to the guy who wrote that manual asked him to have a conversation with me but I haven't heard back from him. Have

you heard of the racism of low expectations? Is that what they call it? Yeah, of course. Like the idea that what people of color aren't interested in right answers? They don't care about what's true? Are they idiots? Is that what you're saying? No, that's not what I'm saying. That's what they're saying. No, no, no. That is definitely what they're saying. I don't mean you. I mean those people. Yes. Definitely.

Oh, definitely. It's such a racist program. I mean, even when I was a few decades back even, they were doing this thing about culture where you were supposed to have different expectations of behavior from people of color than you were of white people. And it was the racism of low expectations. And it's in books. I can't remember the names of it.

Just terrible books that our school districts made us read So it's a very very real thing that this this this rampant racism being called Anti-racism is is cuckoo as Liz Warren that's really where we're at right now You know I don't think it's true that if you put a frog in water and increase the temperature that it'll just sit there I think that's a a wives tale or the point in analogy, right? Yeah. Yes. But it's a great analogy.

It's a great analogy. Because today you're going to have people in the comments section who are like, okay, like maybe the church is wrong on this. They really want to adjust Christian doctrine because they've become spineless or they've become just they've been preached at long enough that they can no longer accept what's true. But you know, my thought is there's probably going to be some people that out there who are like, OK, calm down, Steve, like all this negativity about public schools. But 50 years ago, if you had have said to them, here's what will be happening in most public schools, they would be outraged. Yes. But today they're not.

Right. But that's only a sign that they've been conditioned, not that they shouldn't be outraged. That's right. It's an irony of scientism that it may be true that the frog literally will jump out. And I think I've heard, I've actually had somebody tell me that, but the truth, the frog really will jump out. And I think I've heard, I've actually had somebody tell me that, but the truth,

you know, they would, the frog really will jump out, but that doesn't change the analogy. That's my point. The truth is we're talking about the spirit here, the soul here is that as things increasingly devolve into stupidity in the public schools, we're more and more accustomed to it's very apt and to put onto the point where I would say today, the majority of people who accept what they've learned in the public schools are suffering a kind of soul death. What I would see in the classroom over the last 30 years is what I called an educational coma. The kids are comatose and that's a defense mechanism and I'm impressed by that. But if you continue in that state of comatose and automatonically go after materially the things the school turns you towards,

you are that frog in the pot that sat there till its soul died. And the heating water, of course, is the culture. Heating water is the thing to be able to accept something like, abortion is healthcare. I mean, in the 50s, I don't think that would have flown, would it? Maybe it would have, I hope not. And the asinine things said today are just unbelievable

So I want to say this unless Warren we should leave that poor woman alone. She's a mess. We should pray for her She's an utter She's a mess But the main point there is the word life Our founding fathers said we have the inalienable right to life. They said that today. What does that mean? Liz Warren would say that means we have the right to kill murder, destroy. We have the right to kill.

We have the right to death is literally what Liz Warren would have to say, but she wouldn't agree to it because she doesn't have the grounding to understand that that's what she's saying. Right? So, so it's beautiful. If the Supreme Court it to the states, then they can leave in the hands of the states whether or not to be pro-life or pro-death, but at least it's not the entire nation. So with that in mind, I just wanted to recover that one point. It's not just life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We literally promote this frog in the boiling water, soul death. We promote death we promote a self-imposed slavery that they literally call freedom and we promote the pursuit of serious unhappiness Serious and yeah, that's an important point that often when I was writing my book on Thomas Aquinas and happiness This idea like Aquinas understands happiness is the perfection of human nature. It's not a subjective feeling of contentment It's actually something objective right so you should pursue happiness right and that means become perfect. That's right You know, that's exactly right and you said nature. Yeah, that's another word equivocated So when the modern world of Liz Warren types say nature they mean something like trees

Yeah, when Thomas says it he means that principle of motion and rest, the essence, the formal cause of a thing, the thing that is to be perfected, the thing that is to be fulfilled. And it's absolutely true that objectively, virtue fulfills a nature and viciousness tears it down. That's something you can't say in the modern school today. Yeah, that's really good. Virtuous, perfects a nature, human nature, viciousness tears it down.

That's right, every time. And it's as plain to see as just looking out in the world today. Look at a person who holds a vicious value. I'm never gonna mention Liz Warren again after this, but Liz Warren, the things she says are so vicious and she's so angry she has no idea, but what a broken soul. What a sad pathetic example of a human person to say the things she says and to be arrogantly proud of it. And to believe the

things she says. Oh, to believe it. Not just believe it, say this is what I'm hanging my hat on this is what I'm going forward with It's so pathetic and so sad if we did anything we really should have pity for her. Let's Ask everybody watching right now. Maybe you're not Catholic. And so if you're not I respect your Decision of course to not do this with us, but maybe we could offer a Hail Mary Oh in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Blessed Mother, we pray that you would lead Elizabeth Warren to your son and that she would be given the grace of repentance. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. I mean, what's difficult is like living in a social media landscape where we don't agree on what's true and what's not right. So people can go on to their social media platforms and say true things. Like we probably shouldn't be killing innocent people for no reason, which actually there's no never a reason to kill innocent person.

But no matter how sophisticated or slick or rhetorically, whatever crafty your statement is, it's it doesn't seem that's the frustration of it, isn't it? That's a frustration. We're talking at a wall. Yeah., that's the frustration of it, isn't it? It's like we're talking at a wall. Yeah, and that's perennial. With the serve, love, and know, you inevitably have to abuse speech to believe the things that are not true.

You have to abandon the ground. I do want to mention one book though. This is so important. This book has the potential to change your life if you know how to read and basic true comprehension and you take the words for what they mean. Joseph Pieper wrote a book called Abusive Language, Abusive Power. And it's an explanation about what is the nature of language, which is a purpose and nature. It's so beautiful because he gets

it from Thomas Aquinas. Joseph Pieper is a Thomist and he says, nature is to, I mean language, the nature of language is to convey the truth in the service of others. Those are two vital requirements to the nature of language. And if you began to understand that, then you could frame up how even the things we say are things other people say, why are you saying them and do they convey truth? We have to return to one thing to make sure that we do our best to make sure that our words convey truth and then make our question about what's being said is asking whether or not it's true. That's the vital question. Augustine says it all over the place in his works. He says, when a teacher speaks, the students job is to listen and ask the question, is that true? And if it's true, to accept it and to applaud. Who said this? Augustine. Augustine said

that. Yeah. Augustine also said, who is so stupidly curious as to send their kid to school to learn what the teacher has to say? Wow. Which says that the teacher's job is not to say what they think. The teacher's job is to discover the truth and convey it in the service of his scholars. It felt like maybe back in the 80s and 90s, it was in vogue to be an epistemological relativist. Well, there's different cultures, they have different opinions.

We really can't know what's objectively true or not. Or at least if we can know some truth, so maybe we're not epistemological relativists, but we're moral relativists, right? Oh, sure, sure. But it we're not epistemological relativists, but we're moral relativists, right? Oh, sure, sure. But it's very strange because these moral relativists seem to have evolved into people like Liz Warren, who are very dogmatic.

Objective truth exists, and that is that abortion is a good thing. But if you asked her to give us the ontological basis for such a belief, she'd yell at you or say how angry she was again. She'd have no idea. She had no idea. I don't know what kind of person that is. So now epistemological relativism is now epistemological skepticism.

It's a bizarre thing. And you're right. I don't think she'd agree that there's objective truth, but she would claim that abortion is a right as it is, as it's an objective truth. Yeah. I don't think she would admit that there's objective truth. Do you? I guess it depends on how you phrase it. We should ask her. We should. Do you believe in objective? You say absolutely not. It's objectively true that there's no, she seems like a smart educated person. I mean,

not during that clip and not because of many of the things she says, but she's clearly an educated woman Well abusing that word education. Sure. This is good. Yeah, tell us about education versus conditioning Very good. What's the opposite? What is education sum that up real quick? And then what's the opposite sure that the Latin root educare means to lead forward and we must agree, I hope, that an educated person has left the darkness of error and entered into the light of truth.

So you have Plato in the Republic who would have what's called the divided line. And there's the world of appearances, and above the divide line, there's the world of intelligibility. And so the idea of educating a pedagogue would lead the child from the world of intelligibility. And so the idea of educating a pedagogue would lead the child from the world of appearances, the bottom of the cave, up into the light of truth,

objective truth, to the world of intelligibility. And it would be the most basic thing about education to say that intelligibly, intellectually, conceptually, when the mind converges with reality, a person knows what a thing is. That's the bare minimum. It's what Aquinasinas says the union of thought and thing. That's right Right and the adequacy of the mind to know the thing. Yeah, and this is where the modern educator says listen You can't know objective truth. That's an objective truth claim, but that's what they say

Yeah, and you don't know this maybe maybe maybe you do know this but everything in education is below the line It's all in the realm of appearances because of materialism because of material I don't know this, maybe you do know this, but everything in education is below the line. It's all in the realm of appearances because of materialism, because of material scientism. That's it, it's all down there. So it's really interesting. I don't know, I don't ever think I could say someone like Elizabeth Warren would be educated,

not based on anything she's ever said in public. Now she might be educated and she might be playing a role. I don't know. But her words demonstrate very clearly that she doesn't know what things are. And I think it's a contradiction to say somebody who doesn't know what things are can be an educated person. So this is very dangerous. No one would agree with that today in the public schools. They would say, they would say that you don't even know what you're talking about because they don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah. But I can say this, to be educated, we must begin by saying, at least we know

what things are in reality. Yeah. We have, we have the ability to know things. Yeah. We can know truth. Yeah. Truth exists and we can rely on that truth. So yeah, I think it's an abusive speech today to say, I mean, you'd have to look at the person speaking, but we can hear someone talk and say, is that a fruit of education or is that a fruit of indoctrination or as you call that conditioning. I think the majority of people in the public sphere today are exhibiting artifacts of conditioning definitely not of education. That is excellent. I love that you called me on my abusive speech there because that's what it was When we use the word educated today what we usually mean is she went or he went to a good whatever that means Another piece of another abusive speech, right?

What do you say a School that is considered good good. Yeah. But what you're saying is if you don't come to know what things are, you're not educated. I think it's a ground floor to some degree. You can probably still know what things are and still not be educated. I think it was Aquinas is often

attributed to saying this, that you can spend your whole life and not understand the nature of a fly. You can't exhaust the nature of a single fly. Tell us why that is, because it sounds like we're kind of going we're kind of vacillating here. Right. Right. You have to be able to know things nature of a fly. You can't exhaust the nature of a single fly. Tell us why that is, because it sounds like we're kind of going,

we're kind of vacillating here. Right, right. You have to be able to know things, to be educated, but you can't know what a fly is. Well, that's not what he's saying. He's saying that, he doesn't say you can't know what a fly is. He says you can't exhaust the essence of a single fly,

which is completely different to say, can you know what a fly is? Yeah, we can know what all kinds of classes of flies are. I see, yeah. What you can't have is perfect knowledge of the fullness of truth on this side of heaven. So we can know all these things, but we ought not to delude ourselves

and think that we can know the fullness of essences. That's formal causality. Gotcha. Well, we can know almost, and we can't even know the fullness of material causes. When you consider prime matter and consider how form and determinate form and matter composite form exists. It's really beautifully complex. It's not impossible to know, but it is impossible to exhaust,

meaning to become omniscient about a thing. We've got some questions here from our beautiful, gorgeous, attractive local supporters. And we're going to put some setting up on Patreon too soon. So if you're a locals member or a patron, send your questions in soon. Mitchell says, while being a rebel in today's culture means upholding Christian values, hasn't the last two years proven that humans more often act like sheep and will comply far more than they will rebel? My daughter was born four days ago and my son is two years old and the greatest comfort I have for my children is that the martyrs get automatic entrance through the pearly gates.

When I see the insanity of the left and how far we have got to go to reestablish Christendom, I believe that there will be a generation of martyrs between then and now. Question for you is, is he being hyperbolic? Is he just exaggerating? Should he just calm down? What's your honest opinion on that? Don't calm down. What more care could you put into the lives

of your children? No, I think he's quite right. Yeah, I think it's very simple. There's the ostrich in the sand syndrome, and I think he's right, that most people are sheep right now, and they follow along. My entire, not my nuclear family, but my extended family is unbelievably optimistic about dreadful things, and I think that's hugely problematic. I mean, I think Liz Warren is very optimistic. They will not quit fighting for this.

They will not go back. They will not return to virtue. So now I think I think he's quite quite right. Neil, would you mind in on Patreon making a post that asks for questions? So if you're watching on your Patreon, you can shoot one over. Wesley Novak says, What do you think will be the backlash to this? Do you see this driving people away from the right? So if you're watching right now and you're a patron, you can shoot one over. Wesley Novak says, "'What do you think will be the backlash to this? "'Do you see this driving people away from the right?'

These terms have always been very interesting to me, left and right. Is he talking about the Rovers and the Wade decision? What's he talking about? I think so, yeah. He's talking about that. Backlash. Oh, there's gonna be,

I really wanted to talk about that, Wesley. There is gonna be maniacal backlash. I think, I think mostly from the left. I don't know what the right would have to do with this, but the indignation that, that, you know, like the Florida law that they wouldn't teach kindergarten to third graders about LGBTQ and transgender issues. That backlash is really interesting because you're saying, Hey, let's protect the innocence of children. And these maniacal deformed soldiers saying, no, let's not. They say, let's help them. Let's pervert them. Right. They say it's child abuse. If you don't teach them about LGBTQ sex and transgenderism to five-year-olds, I mean, and transgenderism to five-year-olds. I mean, that's insanity. I just can't even fathom how somebody could be so deluded that they think that would be okay to talk to little

children about that. Keep going, Wesley. Yeah, backlash. I don't know what backlash, the right, yeah, and the terms are so confusing, right and left. I think the Catholic Church is always going to find itself in need of being on the golden mean between the two extremes. And I think the Republican Party left the Catholic Church, well, probably never, but it certainly is speeding away from it on many issues. And the woke left is, of course, spiraling into no man's land. Is that? I forget what superhero movie this was. It's probably Spider-Man where he jumps on the train track

and because he's trying to prevent the train from going off. And he grabs it and he's kind of like the wooden beams he's standing on keep buckling under him and he gets pushed gradually over the edge and he's hanging on. I think that's the Incredibles. The Incredibles? My favorite kids movie. Yeah, I think maybe it is.

It's a great kids movie. But that is what modern conservatism is like. There's this leftist train barreling down the road and conservatives keep getting pushed back and they keep conceding ground and saying false things. Like speaking about an abusive language, I love your take on this. I live the opinion that we shouldn't,

well, maybe I haven't thought this through enough, but I feel uncomfortable when people use the term biological male. To me, that's a little like saying traditional marriage. There's just marriage. There's not, I mean, you can call it traditional marriage to now distinguish that from the false thing. You can say biological male, I suppose.

But I think that's, is that conceding linguistically, do you think? That's that, just push it back on the train tracks. Yeah. What do you think? It's a, when did you stop beating your wife question? Explain that for people. Yeah, you know, I love that. I love that question, but I'm afraid people will think that I'm beating my wife.

No, I think it's a really important question, but all these questions that all these new names of things are so diabolically clever. You say something like, black lives matter. The very name itself asserts that the people for which it's written don't value black lives. So it really is a, when did you stop beating your wife question and saying, you don't value black lives. So let me tell you this, black lives actually matter. And if you said, I know they do, they'd say, no, you don't. Black lives matter. And the fact that you say that you do shows that you're right.

Right. And that's a microaggression, I believe. But all these names. So in Florida, they have this law. Hey, why don't we protect the innocence of five year olds to eight year olds and not talk about all the sexual stuff? And they're like, that's the don't say gay bill. It's like you're just trying to, they're accusing us of doing what they're doing. You're just trying to abuse speech and you're harming people as you do. And the same thing with what you just brought up. It's the same kind of thing. It's the when did you stop beating your wife?

A biological male, are you, it doesn't need to be said. I guess it does need to be said, but either you are male or female. Isn't that called the fallacy of a complex question? It's something like that. I don't know that fallacy. I mean, it might be more of a colloquial kind of fallacy, but the idea is you can't easily answer that question. When did you stop beating your wife?

Yeah. You can't say, I never, what? Right, right. It's just, it's a sub-refuge. It muddies the waters. So what happens is, here's the thing. There are defects, and this is really touchy because people take great offense to the word defect, but we live in, in scientistics, a scientism, you can say that we have conditioned ourselves into saying, taking a defect or the exception to the rule and using that as the rule. Yeah. So I mean something really interesting, we say the number of

people who are not xx, xy chromosomes is very negligible, it's very small, and it's worth considering, but it's not worth considering as the norm, it's very small. And it's worth considering, but it's not worth considering as the norm, because it's not normal. It's a defect. And it's one we ought to take seriously. It's one we ought to be very empathetic

and sensitive about. But because there are certain genetic defects, like the XXY or there's other certain chromosomal defects, these are very serious issues, but they're not rules. They're not the norm. So to say biological male is almost giving into saying, well, this type of thing has now become the norm.

And it's really interesting because 20 years ago, if you did a survey, they would say 1.7% of all people identifies LGBTQ. Well that's increased over the years as a result of all this conditioning and propaganda. And today with Generation Z, I hear it's something like 21% identify is LGBTQ. And so it's just be, I mean, imagine the rationalizations they have to make

to explain why that is, you know, they say, oh, well now everybody's being honest as opposed to, or they might say, or finally they can be themselves, or finally, yeah, it's just, it's an, that serve, love, and know thing, the know part of that is just insurmountable. You can't get beyond it, but here's the truth. Male and female, he created them.

It's not just revealed truth in the Bible. It's kind of self-evident. No, it's completely self-evident. You know, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, you could go into any room and with 100% accuracy, identify who was what. Nowadays, just because of conditioning and social changes and the marvels of modern medical technology, you just never know anymore, right? So, biological male is one of those things to push you back the tracks Yeah, and you have said when you say that you're asking you're giving in

And do we have to? Do we have to give in no No, we don't don't have to Jacob Cooley says, where do we go from here? What's the what is next for our fight against abortion? And should we expand fostering and adoption services? Beautiful. Well, I would say that. These are kind of two different issues. I can say that abortion is intrinsically evil and also say I have no interest in adopting or fostering anybody.

Now, that's not the case. I'm potentially open to those things, but the fact that I may not be or that you may not be is not an argument against abortion being evil. Do you see what I mean? Oh, it is the pro-aborts would say that absolutely. You know, there's this it's kind of a trope. They say those who are pro-life don't care about anything after birth. That is that is a non sequitur.

It does it really doesn't matter birth. That is a non sequitur. It really doesn't matter. Jacob obviously is a good soul and it is a really good thing to consider adopting unwanted children, but the two aren't necessarily related. They're not really not related at all. They're both moral issues,

but they're completely separate. So you can say, I'm pro-life and you don't have to concern yourself with other aspects of a child's life after birth. But the fact the true fact is this is that those who are pro life generally are concerned very, very concerned. Whereas those who are pro death kind of generally aren't concerned. You should have got an abortion or contraception

break. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I have an aunt, I literally have an aunt, Jacob, I was adopted by my aunt, Aunt Carrie. And she sat with me a couple of years ago and she said, you know, she said adopted children. It's just not a great idea. We should abort unwanted children. She told me this and I think she knows I'm adopted, but. How did that, how old were you?

It was, I was in my forties or fifties. It was recent. Did that sting or? Well, I know it's just, it was like talking to Liz Warren. It was just that kind of thing or 50s. It was recent. Did that sting or? Well, I know it's just it was like talking to Liz Warren It's that kind of thing. Yeah, it's a sting. Yeah, I feel I feel bad for no I feel bad for I mean How do you look at something said hey you were adopted your parents didn't want you Wouldn't it have been better if you've been aborted that way you'd be dead now. You wouldn't be having this conversation I just thought was astounding you wouldn't exist to contradict her insane opinions

and that would be helpful. That's right, and you know, I didn't even answer her. I said, really, you think we should murder unwanted children? She said, oh yeah, there's too many of them, whatever. And she's a leftist. Have you suggested that she jump off a bridge? No. I just mean for her, just because you want to respect

where she's coming from. Sure, sure, sure. You don't want her to jump off a bridge. But she's so concerned with so many people that might, I just don't know if she's considered it. Right. I'm just telling you that Jacob the leftist probably care a lot less about what happens after birth

than those who are pro-life. And I think that's really important to consider. And abandon the idea that because you're a pro-life, you have some kind of responsibility to prove to others that you care about welfare or other things after birth because they're non-related. I would also say stop conceding. Stop concedceding, yeah, give that up and cut it off. If you know somebody who's been raped and they conceived, this is obviously a tragic situation

and that rapist, I mean, ought to be, I mean, I have opinions on what should happen to rapists, but maybe we don't need to go into them, but they should be thrown into jail. Can be thrown away at the very least. That's right. Okay. But the idea that you then make a situation better by slaughtering this child. So stop conceding, stop saying things like abortion in cases of rape and incest. No, no, it's not.

It's completely not. No. And then when somebody says, are you going to die on that hill? Say, absolutely. I'll die on that hill. I'm going to die on every single hill. Absolutely.

Absolutely. But especially that I'm sitting here fantasizing about the way I can just clearly say this. What is wrong with you that you think you can convince a mother to murder her own child in her womb? Seriously, what's wrong with you? I don't have the words to explain how violent is. And here's the thing. There's no such thing as a woman who murders her own child in a room,

convinced or otherwise, manipulated or otherwise, who is not going to suffer in ways we can't fathom. I want to share something a little personal. I don't know if I've shared this on the show before, but it's pretty embarrassing. It's kind of like I'm ashamed of it. But before we do that, I want to give you a keto cup. You ever had a keto cup before? Let's just lighten it.

Let's just lighten the mood for a little bit. Did I get a little heavy? Did I not succeed? I tried to get it out there. Okay. No, it was brilliant what you said. I'm about to go even heavier, which is why we need this pause.

Let's do the keto cup. I don't know what it is. So this is a keto cup. Now, back in the day, when I was eating sugar, right? Which I've been off now for a few, few, four weeks, or so five weeks. Nice, nice. Well, I drink wine occasionally, right, which I've been off now for a few few four weeks or so, five weeks. Nice. Well, I drink wine occasionally, but you know what I mean? Like most sugar. All right.

I went to Whole Foods and I said, oh, keto cups. Gee, that's a bit bloody interesting. And I ate it and wanted to die because it was that bad. I thought that death would be easier to endure than this taste in my mouth for another second. That said, you wanna share this with me. I'm gonna give you one. Wow.

Do you excited? I'm excited. Have you ever had a keto cup? I've not. This is not an advert for them, just in case anybody's wondering. But I need one of those. I'm not selling it well.

But after having been off sugar for a while, I actually kinda like them. Wow. Yeah. So. All right, okay. Now, just actually kind of like them. Wow. Yeah. So, okay. Now, just don't eat it yet. I'm going to do an ad read real quick.

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to read the entirety of Story of a Soul over 21 days. And you can go on and say, I want to be part of this reading or listening group. There's thousands right now waiting for this. My wife and I are gonna do it together. It's awesome, it's got sleep stories, it's got examinations of conscience, it'll help you pray the rosary.

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Hello dot com slash Matt Fradd. And they also are now playing my lo fi music over there. So you can listen to that there as well. OK, boom. Keto Cup. Ready? I'm just not. I'm terrified. Zoom in on his. You can't zoom in. Look at his beautiful face. I'm doing this. Yeah, be his, you can't zoom in. Look at his beautiful face. Oh man. I'm doing this? Yeah, be honest.

Because lying is a sin. Mm. Not bad. Really? I expected it to be worse. I didn't really. I gave up Cigar for Lent though. Do you wanna try some?

I gave up Cigar for Lent. I'd love to. Now that I've built it up. Here. It's not nearly as bad as he says. Thank goodness. Mm. Listen, it's not great.

I really love this. And I would be honest, I would say. You have had one? Yes, I really like these. By mistake? Oh, you like them? Yeah, well, I mean, I used to eat baker's chocolate when I was a kid.

It was good. The point is this. If you want someone to like something, tell them how much they'll hate it for at least five minutes Then give it to them really then they'll surprise you. I don't okay. I Don't love it, and I definitely don't hate it. It's pretty good. Did you want a lot of cigar? Oh, no I'll wait on that okay. I need some more whiskey actually. It's right behind you. Just pull on the table

I'm empty. There's another one right? I'll grab that that one. Did you not see it? I did. I just didn't know what, didn't know. It's the boundaries. No, you can drink all of that whiskey. I don't think you should. Well, I'm about to. I'm so nearly apoplectic about trying to talk about this. All right, so here's the story. Yeah, what's the story?

The story is this, and I want to preface this by saying, I'm, you know, like, I am ashamed of this, but I think, like, I was a product of my culture. Right. So and I've shared. And so if there's any children watching, I doubt it. If you're a parent watching this with like a really young child, like that's probably not cool. So stop stop listening right now. My wife knows about this, so I feel comfortable sharing it. But when I was about 16, I started dating this girl.

God bless her. Beautiful young girl. And we were we started fornicating. And there was a time where she was afraid that she was pregnant. And I remember we were walking back to her house and she brought that up to me for the first time. And I looked at her and I said, well, you just get an abortion, right?

Right. And she looked at me with horror as she should have. Now she wasn't a Christian. She wasn't baptized. She didn't go to church, but she was rightly horrified by the despicable thing that just came out of my lips. Right. That I will take my pleasure from you, but I will not take responsibility for anything that comes from this love.

I've repented of that. The reason I share that. I don't know why I share that. I suppose I share it just to say, you know, we're all sort of products of this society and we sort of soak in the insanity. It's the default, it's the default. It's gonna be your first reaction

where the marital act has not just been separated from marriage, but it's been separated from its primary end, appropriation. And the secondary, well, secondary is unification. The third thing, the pleasure that comes from it has been bumped up to the front, just like that inverted order of to serve, to love, and to know.

It's just been inverted, and it's almost the knee-jerk or the conditioned response. It's certainly not educated. Because it rejected the dignity of that young lady. It rejects the dignity of the act, and It rejects the dignity of the act and rejects the beauty of the new life. Maybe part of the reason I brought that up is if you're a woman watching the show and you've had an abortion, I love you. And I don't mean anything and nor does Steve that we've been saying in here

to to to condemn you. I mean, you know, like if you're a man and you've fallen at your post and you were a loser like me and you said, you know, let's just go get an abortion. This isn't meant to condemn you. It is meant to point out that what you've done is gravely evil and that you need to repent of it. But I guess I share that to say, like, this is not me and Steve, you know, pointing fingers saying, look how pathetic everybody else is except us know we're aware of how pathetic we are

Yeah, like that's the beauty of being a Christian course That's also the beauty of growing in self-knowledge No matter what people say to you in the YouTube comment section it pales in comparison to the truth You already know about yourself namely you're wicked, you know Fallen in you. Yeah. Yeah, so so just You know, you're falling in. You. Yeah. So so just, you know, we how do we balance this? How do we thread that needle with tremendous love and tenderness to people who have been lied to, who have been told that this is something to celebrate?

And there was that still small voice that said, this seems wrong. Yes. But the TV and the college professors and the government and the YouTube ads just screamed at you Yeah, and you were like, okay. I okay. That's maybe that's just whatever a hangover from my Christian parents or something Yeah, no, I was hoping that when I said who is so evil that they could convince a woman Yeah to do that to herself at the cost that it is to her not to mention murdering an innocent I want to mention I I saw this commercial, I think it was right when the Mississippi thing was being discussed, and they showed this woman,

and they said this woman from Mississippi had to move to a sophisticated state where she had access to abortion. Sophisticated. And then when she moved back to Mississippi, she got pregnant, didn't want to to be and this is the bizarre thing I've ever seen in my life, but this woman said It was so evil that I didn't have access to abortion

I couldn't even abort my own child when I needed to and other people are deciding for me and right next to her was sitting her seven year old son She said well, I'm glad he's here now, but I really needed that abortion or something. It was just, I was, I watched this thing in horror. And you know who was the victim is that poor lady who was convinced that she should have claimed her right to abort that beautiful child sitting next to her, whom she undoubtedly loves in ways she can't even explain. Right? And she could sit there and be convinced that she should say, if only, gosh, if only I could have aborted you. I know you're here, this is great, but man,

I wish I could have aborted you. That's what the commercial was. And to me it's just, I just sunk. I feel sick. So I'm pretty sure Satan's responsible for this and that men and women that participate in this, it's just sad. It's just pathetic. So I don't want to indict or condemn anybody who's been in this slowly heating water like me, my goodness. Yeah, it's the same exact thing.

And just to kind of round that story out, my girlfriend wasn't pregnant and didn't have an abortion just to be clear. But God bless her, man. God bless her. And. God bless her. And I'm so sorry. I wrote a letter to her apologizing for being a coward, and just for so many reasons.

I think abortion may be the sin of Adam. Yeah. Really. In some ways. Spilling the blood of Abel. I mean, it's a violent murder. And kudos to those powerful women who stand up and talk about how they

regret their abortion. I mean, that takes tremendous courage. And here's why it takes tremendous courage. If you've done something that's evil. We've all done things that are evil. You then have basically two options. You can admit that it's evil or you can pretend that it wasn't right. Admitting the evil is to admit that you've just killed your own child.

That's a bit of a bill to swallow to say, well, actually it's not bad and really I'm the victim. You know, it's the patriarchy and the Christians that are, that's, that's a lot easier. Yeah. So any woman or any man who acknowledges their sin, that takes great courage and they should be commended, I think. And to be public about it is a tremendous act of humility in service of others. To say something like, don't be deluded like I was.

That's such a beautiful act of humility, isn't it? Yeah. It's very beautiful. I've seen so many people do that. It's tear-jerking for sure. It's very beautiful to watch that happen. I wanted to ask you about, because obviously things like truth, abusive speech

is something you've spoken a lot about and have taught me a lot about. I've learned a lot from you. What's your podcast called that you just started? Oh yes, I'm finally, like you mentioned, I think every other Catholic is doing this, and I think it's a good idea. Human. Every human on planet Earth is doing this. But I have just decided to go public

with everything I've learned over the last 30 years about education, about the nature of truth, and all these things. I've started a podcast called Finding the Lost. And I'm in an organization called the City of Truth. And can I tell you about that a little bit? Yeah. This isn't the Ministry of Truth. No, no, no, it's called the City of Truth. And can I tell you about that a little bit? Yeah. This isn't the Ministry of Truth.

No, no, no, it's not the Ministry of Truth, which we will get to in a minute. But from the first time I came on your show a few years ago, I give out my email address and the first time about five people emailed, it was awesome, beautiful souls, asking about education, and every time I've been on since, that number's growing.

And I just gotta say, I have never received an email from anybody of your audience that hasn't been just a beautiful soul asking real questions, fabulous. I can't even, I don't have the words to say. And I've had a few experiences of, I was in a Houston a few years ago,

or no, last year, and this guy walks up, I'm in Houston airport not wearing years ago or no last year and this guy walks up I'm in Houston Airport not wearing a mask and some guy walks up with a mask and says are you Steve Roblesburg and I saw you hey I sent you an email question and then I said I don't recognize you because he had a mask on right and he took the mask off I still didn't recognize him but it was my friend James Prather and he's in Houston this awesome guy and we had a discussion he's a schoolteacher we had a discussion about, he asked me, can you reform the Catholic schools?

Or, I don't know, can you reform the public schools? And I said no, and we had a great discussion. And then when he recognized me in the airport, we connected again, and it was great. And I want James to reach back out to me, by the way, because I have an opportunity that we can talk about later about teaching in the Catholic schools where maybe we can reform them.

But we'll talk about that in a minute. Anyway, from there, a bunch of other really wonderful souls has reached out. And one of them is a guy named Evan Amato. And Evan Amato was a listener, and he wrote a question on the last podcast we had asking what's your favorite classical book? Totally unfair question.

But he reached out to me by email and said, hey listen, I love what you're doing. I'm an internet marketer. Can I help you? Oh, this is the fellow you were chatting with earlier. This is the guy I was telling you about earlier. And I said, and he said, can I just help you take your message

because I believe it's important. Can I help you get it out there? And I said, that's a great thing. Thank you so much. This guy was so much charity. And I got to tell you, Evan Amato, he has his own program, similar, called Rewire the West. And he sees what we see.

He says, wow, we need to recover the tradition. And he makes these series of videos and they're really good. Like a series on Dante. He has a series, how can reading Dante help you sort out your life today? And you gotta watch them, they're really good. He's a very sharp, intelligent, he's brilliant, and he's doing this great work.

And you can look him up on one of the links. Can you put these links, as Neil, as we rewire the West, and then yours is finding the lost? Mine is called City of Truth. City of Truth. .co. Okay. But the thing is, is that Evan reached out,

and of his own gracious humility and giftedness, he just says, let me just help you. And he advised me on all the things I need to do to look less ridiculous to be to make the content more streamlined get it out there so he's helping me do these podcasts he's helping me he's gonna get me on Twitter Instagram and do these things to start making accessible to good families who want to educate their children what it is we can all do to recover the tradition of truth in the Catholic faith and in truth in education.

So he's helping me get this all out and I'm really grateful for it. And it's all charitable on his end. So. Wow, bless him. Yeah, bless him. Oh, he's in London right now. And he's moving to Italy, but he's a guy that,

he's young, sharp guy, I would look him up, but he's helped me organize a website called thecityoftruth.co. I'm gonna look it up right now as you talk. You can look it up, and I'm doing a podcast called Finding the Loss in the City of Truth, where I'm gonna bring smart souls on and ask them to discuss with me

things that we need to recover. And I wanna tell you where this came from, if it's not drawn out too much. No. When I was a kid, I think I told this story here, but when I was a kid I went to the dentist or I went to the doctor and I had to get my tonsils out and I was in the hospital and my parents brought me a joke book. It's called the grin and giggle book and there wasn't a single funny joke in it. But there was this amazing picture of a picture of this a little kid standing out under a lamplight crying like a baby okay and a man comes up and says hey kid what's wrong he says I lost

my quarter and I'm looking for it and the man helps him look and they're looking all over under the street lamp he said kid are you sure you lost it here and he goes no I didn't lose it here I lost it over there and he points to a dark alley right and there's there's no light he goes so well why are you looking here he goes because there's no light. He goes, well, why are you looking here? He goes, because there's no light over there. Okay, and I think this is profound. Yeah, it's the perfect analogy for today is that under the bright lights of technology,

we are blinded to what is immaterial. And so we're looking under the bright lights of technology for the things that satisfy the soul when truthfully, we need to recover what has been lost in the dark. And that's really the ground floor of my entire career of saying we need to look to the immaterial truths and realities to discover what we've lost, our true treasure. We're not gonna find it with technology.

You're not gonna find it with techniques. And that's what we've been conditioned into, to think that by the knife, by technology, we can fulfill the human soul and you can't. We have to return to that dark spot and find what was truly lost. So that's the point. That's really great.

Yeah, when I first heard seeking the lost or? Finding the lost. Finding the lost. When I first heard that, I thought you were referring to lost souls, which I'm sure in part is what you mean, but you're talking about those lost truths. Yes, just really a principle of truth.

They're lost. In the public schools, they're literally not allowed. And I don't think a public school teacher would agree with that. And it doesn't matter if they agree, it even matters whether or not that's true. The principles of truth, first principles, are not a part of the modern public school.

And I don't know if they're part of the modern public university. I don't think so. That's where we are. Is cityoftruth.co coming up for you? It's not coming up for me. I don't think it's ready yet, so it's upcoming. Oh, it's upcoming.

Well, I have a landing page that I sent you a link to. That if you click, oh, and that's the thing. So here's what I'm gonna do. If you go to the link that Neil puts up there and you send your email address, you'll be put on a list where I will put out a weekly newsletter with suggestions about how to recover a principle of truth

and invite you into a conversation in a community of souls, of like-minded souls, that want to recover the truth, that want to find lost things. And this is really for parents, for the sake of your children, so that you can try to educate them in a way that's going to prepare them for their true end. We probably talked about this a lot last time, but when you say that the public schools cannot be reformed, give us the quick pitch on why that's the case in your estimation.

My estimation, it's because the principles of truth in authentic Catholic education and the principles undergirding the modern public school are mutually exclusive. Okay. Now, the first principles, it's undoubtable. So you say, we have the principle of non-contradiction. The public schools rejects that. But forget that. That's the intellectual life.

The public schools actually reject that man has a true intellectual life. When you say the public schools, what does that mean? Who's rejecting it? It's not like they have one official manual that says the law of non-contradiction is. No, no, no, it's not spoken of. It's not addressed. So something, so for example, Bloom's taxonomy,

you've heard of Benjamin Bloom. I've heard of it, yeah. Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy, you've heard of Benjamin Bloom. I've heard of it, yeah. Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy, this is the gold standard for how we develop lesson plans and how we develop what's called critical thinking skills. And this is hugely problematic. It's a big kettle of fish. But if you look at Bloom's taxonomy,

they are intended to be purely quantifiable, measurable outcomes. Okay. That alone should signal to you that we're talking about the world of appearances, the world of materialism, right? Okay. When we talk about principles of the intellect, we're talking about immaterial things, immeasurable things, qualitative things.

Yeah. There's not a discussion of the qualitative in the modern school, unless the word qualitative is abused and turned into something materialistic. Now it's ironic because the modern school, including John Dewey, he talks about things like conception. Which is- Do us a favor and just like destroy John Dewey

for us in five minutes, because you keep referencing him. I wish I could, I wish I could. But look, there's a book written by Henry T. Edmonston. If you could post that, you want- It sounds like all this goes back to John Dewey. It sounds like that's what you're saying. Well, what I usually try to say is that John Dewey is like the clearinghouse for all modern errors. So he took all the errors from the 11th century up to the, really from Plato's age up sophistry up to the modern age. And he's all of those things.

He's the synthesis of all modern intellectual errors or educational errors. He's the poster boy. He was a materialist atheist. He was a experimental psychologist. He believed more in animal psychology than human psychology, but he still had some of the nomenclature vernacular of things like, like I said, conception.

But John Dewey didn't believe man had a soul and a material soul, or if he did believe that, he didn John Dewey didn't believe man had a soul and a material soul. Or if he did believe that, he didn't care. It didn't matter. So for John Dewey, he said, what's the purpose of the school? The end of the school is for the sake of society. That's the grounding principle for John Dewey.

We say the end of the school is for the sake of cult and perfection of the human person, of arriving at truth. That's a radically mutually exclusive end. So if that's his aim, if he has a materialistic conception of metaphysics and nature, the authentic Catholic school can't share those. Does that make sense? And so, authentic Catholic education is mutually exclusive from the principles of John Dewey But here's the thing John Dewey is not the same thing as what's happened what people have done with Dewey

Modernists have taken Dewey and reduced that even more and made it a shadow In fact, Dewey might not even appreciate what they've done with what he's done Dewey Dewey is known as America's favorite philosopher and I urge you to read his books But listen Henry T Edmondson wrote a book you urge people to read Dewey's known as America's favorite philosopher and I urge you to read his books, but listen, Henry T. Edmondson wrote a book. You urge people to read Dewey's books? Oh sure. Well, if you know how to read, yes. I'd urge you to read first, Henry T. Edmondson's book. He's read all of Dewey. He takes quotes and he explains what you asked me to do in three minutes, which I can't do, but it's worth reading that book because Hank T. Edmondson,

amazing professor from University of Georgia, he wrote this great book explaining Dewey's thought, which is very difficult to get. If you read all of Dewey's work, he's all over the place. It's very ambiguous. So it is difficult to read his stuff because he's so floaty, but it is worth to read a couple of his works. And if you want me to reference those later, I can find out the three that I would recommend to kind of get to know his thought. but I'm not sure it's worth it unless you really wanna know the deep roots of what's wrong with modern public education

and outcomes-based education. I was reading one of the Psalms today. I forget which one. It was within the first 20 Psalms. I'm a good Catholic. And it said something like, if the foundations are destroyed, how will the righteous something?

How will the right, you know? It sounds like that's kind of what you were saying about the public schools. Like the foundations has been destroyed. Therefore it's in principle, one might squeeze through the cracks, but in principle, it's just not possible. If you follow the theory.

To rejuvenate, I mean. Oh yeah, theoretically it's dead in the water. Something interesting happens though. Practically good people come and get involved. Even though you deny and reject humanity Oh yeah, theoretically it's dead in the water. Something interesting happens though, practically good people come and get involved. Even though you deny and reject humanity through this modern system, humanity still comes in. And it's ironic how even this bankrupt system relies on people's goodwill, even though they reject free will. They believe in determinism, but it still relies on the goodwill to sit in that chair and act like a sheep all day.

Yeah. Right. And then they also run on the intellect just enough to acquiesce to the false principles they're trying to get you to serve. When I first started homeschooling our kids and you know there's a lot of pressure on parents, especially from their parents. If they sent you to school. I mean, the language we kind of got from well-meaning relatives was- Caustic. It was essentially you're abusing your children.

That's right. That's right. But I'm not asking you to lie or exaggerate, but you've met my kids. Yeah. Aren't they cool? They're beautiful. They're just like interesting. We got to spend a day with them. I mean, but that's my point.

They'd be like bleary-eyed, brain dead. They'd be zombies if you had put them in the public schools. Whereas today, my son Peter was like taking you out to see the beehive and just sits down right by the bees because he knows they won't hurt him because they've gotten to know him and he's really gentle with them. And that's glorious.

We did a lot more than that. We surveyed every plant in the yard. We checked out the bees. He's not scared at all. He got three different bugs and fed them to a Venus flytrap. That's amazing. The last one was a daddy long-legs tree.

My son has two Venus flytraps. How cool is that? He got three of them fed. Did you see the clothes on it? Yeah, oh, they're clothes on them now. You go home and look at the plant. It's three bugs are in it being eaten right now. Because I wish I could go back to my younger self and just be like it's okay

Oh, you do is just like the kids and like them and love them and when you don't like them try to you know It's not always within your control to like people who might be annoying you maybe because of your own selfishness That's usually the case with me. That's right. Yeah your first show You asked me Can you talk about some of the lies the public tells about homeschooling families? And the reason you said that is because there is a concerted movement.

I wish I could. It's so immense, but here's the thing. I believe that the modern public school theoretically is abusive to the human person. And this abusive program says that everything but itself is abusive to the human person. That's just their mantra. And they've convinced, I mean, remember we had that talk

with that law, about that law professor from Harvard who recommended that they make it against the law to homeschool. Yeah. Homeschooling's a threat to the Luciferian agenda. And therefore they've had all kinds of myths. Somebody tweet that right now. What did you say?

That was good. I can't remember. Yeah, it was so good. Homeschooling is a threat to the Luciferian agenda. Hashtag points of the coin is right now. Tweet that out. Hashtag points of the coin is at Elon Musk. Go.

Exactly. Freedom of speech. So I missed the hashtag part, but look, the whole program, honestly, in the public schools is meant to put a divide between the family and the child, the parents and the child. It's designed for that because to meet the social ends doesn't always line up with what parents value.

So there's literally a concerted effort from Dewey on to inculcate the values of the state such that the children belong to the state and no longer to the parents. So that's Luciferian. To take children away from that natural bond of family, which is the gold standard for the building block of civilization, that's evil. And they do it on purpose. You can, I mean, look at what Dumphy wrote. That's meant, I can't, countless times have I known about teachers that divide children in terms of value from their parents. The secret transgender program, you know, that you don't have to tell your parents, you can get this, you know, doing all these things at school. They do surveys at school, socially emotional learning. That's what this is all about. It's absolutely insane. And we're not even allowed to say it because when

you do, you get attacked and then now parents and you know this because of all the abusive things society has gotten to say to homeschooling parents people are scared to do it. People aren't sure if they can't they don't think they can but but the first line I said on this show is if you stayed home and did nothing with your children but just stare into their eyes that would be infinitely better than sending them to the public schools. And if you look at your family, it's a glowing example of how you guys will not allow

the public school agenda to harm your children. And like you said, they're delightful. They're a joy to be with all the time. And that's what I've experienced with most homeschooling kids. They're so good. They're good kids. They're so good. They're good kids. They're so good, I love them. And when I think that they're not good,

it's cause of my selfishness. It really is. That's fair. That is what we do. I think we project through our selfishness and complain about children. We complain about them on airplanes. We complain about them keeping us up at night.

We say all sorts of horrible things about them. But what we should be pointing to is our horrible selfishness that leads us to talk about anyone that infringes on our, you know, quote unquote freedom, yeah. Yeah. No, it's a wonderful thing. I do hope to amass a community of souls

that wants to reinvigorate their children. And I'm the hugest advocate of homeschooling right now. And here's the thing I'm most surprised about. During the COVID scam, whatever this thing was, the public schools were piped into the homes. This was a satanic mistake. This was a mistake on Lucifer's part. Because when he piped it in the homes,

parents had a chance to see the kind of garbage they were indoctrinating their own children with, right? And I think that led to a huge decrease in public school attendees, but not as much as I thought it would. If you sat at home with your kids and you watch what the public schools are teaching and you weren't horrified,

then maybe it's a lost cause. But I was just kind of overjoyed when they piped all this into the schools. And remember, it came out in the news, some guy was like, we should make a deal with parents that parents when we pipe our Public school agenda into the home that the parents won't watch it. They won't comment on it. Did you see that go to hell? Yeah Exactly, and who acquiesce only a sheep could acquiesce to that. I trust you with my children public schools

No way, it's it. It's torture. So. It's probably a good time. We had a super chat a bit ago. Oh, nice. From, let me find the name. Mitch Herbig, who's. You wanna speak in, is that Mark picking you up? Yeah.

So we got a super chat, 25 bucks from Mitch Herbig. Thank you. Thanks, Mitch. He's asking for recommendations for homeschooling curriculums. That's a loaded big question. That's a really good question and really important. One, I mean, you might not agree with everything they're pumping out.

I don't know, but I would definitely point people to homeschool connections. I think it's dot com because there it's very relatively cheap. And my wife is paying right now and she's going through some classes with Avala. But you've got people like Joseph Pierce teaching you the Lord of the Rings or literature. You have people like Trent Horn teaching Catholic apologetics. And so you kind of get to pick what you want if you're looking for that extra help.

Cause I think that's very intimidating to a lot of parents. Like, okay, all these books, this is, you don't understand. I don't know how to do this without shouting at my child. And you know, like do what you can. And I think places like Home School Connections can be a really helpful way of introducing your kids to other talking heads saying true things. Sure, sure.

Can I add to that? Yeah. I would, right now Mitch, I would not give you a specific anything because we're so hung up on what do we do, what do we do, what do we do. I would suggest that we revert back to how are we to be and then we ask different kinds of questions.

The entire purpose of getting this group together in the city of truth, finding the lost is that we ask questions like not which homeschooling program should I use, but look at a homeschooling program and say, what is this? If you have a homeschooling program with great content, but the same form as the modern school with outcomes-based education, then you're just substituting good content for bad content,

which is a bonus, but it misses the point. So I would say this, together we ought to get together and discover an authentic education that is not materialistic, that is not grounded in scientism, that is grounded in truth, and checks off all the boxes for what an authentic Catholic education ought to be. And I think that's the ground from which we should start. Ask questions, what kind of program is it, what's their method, what's their pedagogy, those are the things we need to recover. So instead of saying particular

programs, I would rather discuss those aspects of an authentic education. And that's precisely what I'll be doing over the next few years. I think one of the things that makes it so difficult to talk about the things we're talking about is we want to say things boldly, and we want to say them pointedly and accurately. Yeah. But we don't know who we're talking to. And so we don't just want to preach to the choir here. Right. Right. Well, I mean, if we were preaching to the choir, why are we even saying

what we're saying? Why don't we just go home? So presumably there are many people watching right now who are thinking, you know, this is easy for you to say, or you don't understand, or how do we, how do we convey this message that you want to convey, but in a compassionate way that takes into account, and I'm not saying you're not being compassionate, I'm just how people hear things is different, right? Sure, sure. How do we share these truths in a way that people can actually hear and not get immediately

defensive about? Because homeschooling is bloody difficult. Parenting is bloody difficult. It's difficult being tired and waking up tired and being in a house that maybe not be, may not be as ordered as you'd like it to be. And then to do this with children who have different temperaments,

some of them are more stubborn than others. True. What do you say to parents who are putting up some resistance here or some people who are about to be parents who are about to realize how difficult it is? Yeah, no, I have two comments on that. First of all, I definitely preach to the choir because at the moment the choir doesn't know how to sing.

So we really have to preach to the choir. And here's the other thing. If there's a family without faith, without a belief in the transcendent reality of creation, the order of the cosmos, that makes it exponentially more difficult to clue into what we're talking about here. So I don't wanna be un-compassionate or non-sympathetic at all,

because yeah, I really would like to, I'd like to preach to not just the choir. Yeah. But the choir right now needs to learn how to sing. And so I'm really worried about the choir. And I'm worried about the choir first. And then the choir together, we can figure out how to be compassionate to those outside of the choir.

I know that sounds terrible. I think it sounds terrible. I would like to answer specific questions and I hope I didn't come off as rude to Mitch. I thought Mitch's question was awesome. Come off rude at all. I hope not I wouldn't lie to you because I think lying is a sin. I'm trying to be direct what I know and I'm being direct too but I like sometimes it's like I don't know I see this on YouTube right where people come out and and they just say it and They don't seem to care how people hear the thing they're trying to say. And so the thing that appears so important to them

isn't ever heard because they come, we come off. I might come off. That's certainly I do too abrasive, you know? Same here. Yeah. All night I've been saying, oh my gosh, the first time I came here, my wife's best advice was when you're on the Matt Fradd show, don't speak.

Just don't say anything. That's going to be the least offensive. That would have been terrible. It was good advice. Cause I was like, wait, should I say that? Because it's my, I mean, it's my, it's the most common thing in the world that I try to say something to,

and it will offend somebody who's been conditioned in the serve, love, and know. It'll be offensive. Well, I think, unless you wanted to finish your. Yeah, no, I just want to say that. I always think about how to say things clearly and I'm not good at it. I'm a school teacher who knows I'm not a good school teacher, but at least I know that.

Most school teachers who are not good don't know they're not good. To me, that's devastating. So, I am so with you and I wish I were more talented or more articulate or more educated myself. I was brought up in the Alquin's based education. I'm as deformed as the next guy. I just believe God gifted me with a revelation of truth about the womb of a triv- education, which is love.

And so the only people in this age who I think really even have a chance are parents who understand how they love their children. That womb of love is the key to it all. Amen. Is that better over here? I'd be interested to see the growth in homeschooling over the last year or two.

I would too. It's gonna be cool. Guys? We can look it up. Please. No, I think it's grown. I'm sure it has. That's my point.

Why are you smoking this cigar? You told me to get you a cigar. When do you plan on smoking that? I'm very soon. I'm this close. I am this close. Isn't that a good cigar that I just shared? Neil, do you like it or no? I do, I love it. All right, so I wanna, next time you're mon smoking that? I'm very soon. I'm this close. You're just getting ready. Is that a good cigar that I just shared? Neil, do you like it? All right. So I want to, this is not an advert here.

This would be, this is not an advert. It really isn't. The I don't know these people at all, but this is my favorite cigar. For those who are wondering, it's a new group called Southern draw. And it has all, it says, uh, all glory to God. Is that what that means? Solely solely only the glory to God, only glory to God or Is that what that means? Solely, solely, only the glory to God. Only glory to God. Oh, to God be the glorious. I know that.

Anyway, it's beautiful. These are my favorite cigars. Southern Draw. Southern Draw. I'm smoking Jacob's Ladder, but they're all really, really the best I've had. Awesome. So come on.

Yeah. Well, do you have a monologue in front of you where I can try to light this? Oh, is that what you want to do? I'm just gonna grab that. Okay, you got it. monologue in front of you where I can try to light this? Oh, is that what you want to do? Hey, grab that. Okay, you got it. All right, and let me tell people about Exodus 90, which is a 90-day ascetical program for men

that will help you be a really better Christian, a really better Christian. See my great education coming to bear. Exodus90.com slash, Matt Fred? Always forget. It's in the link, yes, so forget. It's like this is awesome. Basically, for 90 days, you take on a bunch of ascetical practices that you usually wouldn't and probably don't want to.

Things like taking cold showers, not snacking between meals, not having alcohol. OK, but you're doing this with a small group of men. And it's hard, man. I'm not going to lie. It's really hard, but it's terrific. Exodus 90 dot com slash Matt, And it's hard, man. I'm not gonna lie, it's really hard, but it's terrific. Exodus90.com Slash Matt. Slash Matt. Click the link in the description below

and check that, check them out because they're terrific. They also have like week Exodus 90s. If you just want to kind of kickstart your spiritual life, check them out. They've got a great app and they're doing great work. Exodus90.com slash Matt. Was that long enough? This is great.

Now we just need a smoky room. Thank you so much. That was that was essential. When I when I when I when I say when I build the studio, when I paid somebody to build the studio, I wanted it to feel like a pub. Yeah. Like a little nook. Yeah, it does. It's kind of just fun. It does. It's great. This is fun.

I love so much better than virtual. Oh, it was fine. But this is better. This is this we've done a bunch of? It does, it's great. This is fun. I love being here. This is so much better than virtual. Virtual's fine, but this is better. This is the- We've done a bunch of virtual. It's human. Yeah, yeah. It's human, right? Yeah, those weren't nearly as fun as this. This is a thousand times better.

No, the setting's great and having Neil and his girlfriend here. Neil and his girlfriend. Neil and Shayla. Shayla. Neil and Shayla back there. I think you meant- I didn't want to get it wrong.

You meant Shayla and her boyfriend. Shayla and her boyfriend. That guy behind the computer. Yeah. Yeah. The better half. Brian Ahern asks, and this is a great follow-up to questions about curriculum.

What's the plural of curriculum? Curricula. Curricula, thank you. Do you know of a resource that lists good books for children of different ages? Here it is. I do. Here's your freaking resource. I do. It's going to be a clip for the ages.

Can I can I start? Oh, yeah, because your answer will be far better than mine and no doubt more lengthy. And you're going to want to keep that. Go ahead. So Mother Goose? No, not Mother Goose. What? Grims.

Well, Grims, for sure, I'm going to get there. But what's the kind of like is that I get the name right? I think so. Grims, for sure. I'm going to get there. But what's the kind of like? Is that what I dig at the name? Right. I think so. Mary Mary. Quite contrary. Yeah. Mother Goose.

Start with mother goose for your little kids, even for your little older kids. You start there. It's beautiful. Yeah. Little Miss Muffet. That sort of stuff. Start there. Sure.

Right. Then move on to the Grims Brother fairy tales. These are fantastic. Don't get the edited versions. Get the version that when you're reading it, your wife looks at you with tremendous concern and wondering if you should not stop because it's way too violent. And you just look at her and whisper, submit

and then you keep reading. No, sorry, I'm just joking. But yeah, no, I definitely, yeah. It's so good. You're on the right track. And this is really good, Brother Grimm's fairy tales. It's joyful tales, aren't they? So start there, start there with kids.

Why should people read the fairy tales? Start with the fairy tales, fairy tales. As Chesterton said, it's better to read tales told by a people than tales told by one madman. That alone is worth the price of admission. These folk tales, and there's all kinds of them. I have this great book called The Monk's Tales.

The Monks wrote it, I don't even know who wrote it. But it's a hundred tales that are just, they're just really all good. Have you ever read Russian fairy tales? No. These things are crazy. That there, that plate there is a plate of a firebird and a Russian fairy tale.

These are nuts. They're beautiful. All the culture's folktales are beautiful. I'm gonna read you one before you leave to California. Please, I can't wait. No, I love them. There's so many folktales to read. And I love the myths.

I like the Greek myths, the Norse myths, all those great myths. But before you read them, you better learn how to read a myth. Before you read the read them, you better learn how to read a myth. Before you read the fairy tales, you better learn how to read a fairy tale. So I do have- Why?

Why not just read it? Oh yeah, no, just read it. Not just three glasses of beer. Here's why you should learn to read myths before you read myths, is because the modern world has so much disdain and disrespect for mythology, to the point where they don't even know

what the word myth means. Look up myth in the dictionary, it means like a lie. Yeah. And then ask a sophisticated teacher what's a myth. Oh, it's a story told before they learn something scientific to explain the thing they were telling about. Simply not true. Simply not true. So what's a myth? So a myth, mitos, is the crossroads where the transcendent meets the temporal. And in it, in the transcendent reality of the myth, you can encounter such beautiful and profound truths about the nature of the world and about the nature of the human person and about the nature of human relationships to the transcendent.

Super important. Now to do much better than that, you can look at C.S. Lewis. He wrote a book called An Experiment in Criticism. And in that, he has six profound truths about the nature of myths. Read that alone. If you understand what he's saying there, then delve into the myths with your children. If you don't understand, then let's get a little platform together and understand what he means by that. I really think you ought to learn how to read the myths before you read the myths with a

skeptical modern eye and you think that they're just explaining something scientific. Again, it's that inverted order. I see. When you're talking about myths, you're talking about like Greek mythology. Greek mythology. As opposed to fairy tales. Yeah, fairy tales aren't myths, per se. Yeah.

So people can read the fairy tales, but you're saying, understand how to read the myths. But we ruin the fairy tales in the same way. We reduce the fairy tales to didactic tales, which they're not. Because you're right, just read them to enjoy the story. Just everybody who's watching right now, stick around because at some point we are going to read a fairy tale together. We're going to pull this over and we're going to read one. Or if my battery dies, we're going to make Neil read us a fairy tale. It's going to be fantastic.

Neil Shaler's going to read the fairy tale. All right, so that's good. And here's what I love about the fairy tales too, right? As a father who probably has ADD, who has children, who probably have something like that, I don't know. Or let's just say they're beautiful, energetic children. Okay. A fairy tale is something you can commit to. Right?

Like, I can't tell you how many times I've said, we are going to read the Lord of the Rings. And we actually did that. I read the entire Lord of the Rings to my kids over the course of a year. And I'm proud of that. But more often than not, I'll be like, we are going to read. And then we read for the first night and the second night. Something happens on the third night.

I forget about it. And then we just read it. But if it's like we have dinner and we like, you know, sit down with the kids. My wife brings me a beer, lights and candles. You can read a fairy tale in 10, 20, 30 minutes. You can commit and finish. And the kids love it. And my kids, and look, my kids are just like your kids. Like if I let my kids, they would only watch

stupid superhero movies constantly. Just like your kids. Don't get the wrong impression. I remember before I was into this whole thing, I used to think that people like Scott Hahn's kids probably were kneeling on broken shards of glass while praying the rosary. We're all the same, okay?

But my kids love the fairy tale. And they keep saying, more, one more, just one more. That's right, that's right. So that's what I mean by- And let me just add to that. My daughter, Tommy, who's 20, and my daughter, Kaia, who's 22, literally to this day, when they come home,

we sit down and read fairy tales together. How does that work? Do you suggest it? I might hint at it, they might hint at it, but we'll sit down together, and it's like a magnet. They're like, sit down on either side and we read a tale. You can ask them. That's beautiful.

I'm probably embarrassing my daughter Tommy at Wyoming Catholic, but it's a true story. She's blessed. They love it. They just love it. We still read them. And why wouldn't we? They are captivating.

Shayla, I just realized I didn't offer you a cigar. I'm so sorry. You are welcome to go take one. Would you like one? That's really nice, but I'm okay. Yeah, you can share with Neil. Oh yeah. Yeah. Okay, yeah, sorry about that.

Yeah. But I just, yeah. I do have a go-to. I mean, one of my- Did I say I might have ADD? No. What'd you say? Never came up, Matt.

Never came up. That dog has a fluffy tail. Remember that? Yeah. Now I'm going in the Simpsons. That man is my exact double. That dog has a puffy tail. Hair puff, hair puff.

No? I've never seen that. I don't know, I'm sorry. Well, look at that. I'm glad we're on that topic. The Simpsons. You were talking about fairy tales. No, so, no, I've had a lot of people don't know, I'm sorry. Well, look at that. I'm glad we're on that topic, the Simpsons. You were talking about fairy tales. No, so, no, I've had a lot of people reach out,

and this is great. This last time I was on a lot, dozens, maybe hundreds of people reached out. That's great. That's why I went people off for their email address. I'm like, wait. Yeah, but luckily, they're all good people. And they're all asking basically similar questions.

And one of the big ones is, give me a list of resources. What I, you know, and I hesitate to do that because, like I said, to learn how to read the myths before you read them is important. So it doesn't make sense to read myths with people who are skeptical, modernist, materialist. Well, see, I just had my son read through that big, beautiful book of the Greek myths

or the beautiful illustrations that you suggested. Oh, the dollars. Yes, that's correct. And, you know, my son read them and he was 13, and loved them. So I'm not sure if he should have read a book about how to read them. No, he should have.

No, he should have. No, no, and I'm talking to parents about saying, how do you frame this? How do you invite them in to talk? What kind of questions do you ask about the myth? Because you brought up something earlier, and didn't my son look at you and say, are you referring to the demi-god something?

Yeah, when was that? Today? That was today. But I was like, I have no idea what he's talking about, because my son is better educated than I am. Well, they're into the right things, because years ago you asked, what do I read with them? And then you go to those stores

and buy those great old books. I watched you do it. It's good. Yeah, it's good. Speaking of your son being better educated than you, we have a super chat, which is- From my son? He's probably watching.

No, it's from Christopher T. And they're saying, I graduated from high school four years ago, but I would have loved to have gotten a classical education. Are there any resources for adults wanting to learn? Ooh. Yeah, sign up for my newsletter. That's what it's all about.

Yeah. Because I balk at the word classical education because now there's a neoclassical education movement. They're all guys of goodwill. They're good souls. But what they've done, unfortunately, is they've taken great content and they pushed it into this modern pedagogy of outcomes based education. And this would be something like what I mean about learning

how to do these things before you jump into the right content. I asked you this once upon a time and asked you again, could I pay you I'm going to ask you on the air to do another series of the great books or the good books? Yes. Let's say it's like a five-part series. I that could you do that? I would do that. In fact, I started making well, I made a course called the

reason I bring that up right now is if you want to support us over on locals or patreon will start releasing these whenever you can get them to me. Okay, well, you are so gifted and you have so much to say that I feel bad limiting you to like three minutes I'm up Dewey and why sucks, right? So if we did that then I'll release them to them But then how else can they connect with what's this newsletter? How do they get this newsletter? I think the link that Neil puts up just connects you to newsletter. Well, I will provide kind of weekly Just ideas to think about that's beautiful. Is the link in the description?

Click that link. Click that link. Sign up for the newsletter. Every week I'm gonna send something else and you're welcome to respond to it. It's free. Just get involved in this conversation for the sake of your children,

for the sake of your family. And a while back, Matt, you had me do that course on, I had never made anything with- And that's available on Patreon right now. It's available on Patreon. I'll put it on Locals soon. I'll tell you what though, I was absolutely terrified when I hit record and play on that thing

and I was just paralyzed. I literally called you Matt and I said, Matt, when I hit record, I'm literally frozen. Which is funny because you're terrific, like in live conversation. Well, it's pretty scary, right? I'm an introvert. Yeah, that's so am I.

I want those people to rather die than speak in public. I'm someone who would rather die than be in an elevator with somebody, but I can do this until the cows come home. Oh, really? Yeah. I can't even do this. But when I made those videos, I scripted them out word for word, and they probably weren't bad.

But the delivery was terrible, and I had my eye on it. We'll do it again. We'll do it again. Well, here's what I've done since then. The Scully sisters, they're fabulous. They asked me to make a logic course, a course on an introduction to logic. And it's about a 16-week a course on an introduction to logic. And

it's about, it's about a 16 week program that I made with little videos. And the, the flaw on it is that it was just too packed in. I gave like 30 years of everything I learned in two weeks and it was, it was great. But I started scripting a grammar course, which is exactly what you're talking about. When I say grammar, I mean letters, I mean literacy. I don't mean parts of speech, which is subsumed by grammar, but authentic grammar as a liberal art is truly literacy, and it bleeds into logic and coalesces into rhetoric. So the three liberal arts, the trivium,

grammar, logic, and rhetoric, are a single thing having to do with language. But you have to go back and recover, what is language? What is human speech? You have to answer the question, is language conventional or is it natural? Is it God-given or is it completely man-made? These are really important questions before you can really even discuss literacy. This is what I'm trying to say. So I've been in the process of developing a grammar course that really is about learning

to read the great books. Because now we're to the point where you could read the great books and get nothing from them. Remember that great quote from Screwtape Letters? The Demon Screwtape says, only the learned read great books and we have so dealt with them that they of all people are the least likely to get anything from them. This is the problem. And we are devolved remnants of what the mind molders

have conditions to do. They've conditioned us into illiteracy and that may be off-putting, but I make the contention that most of us are formally illiterate, even if we could read a thousand words a minute with the Evelyn Woods Speed Reading Program. So I really mean that we really need to

go back and discover what's the nature of language? Is it natural? Is it conventional? Is it God-given? Is it man-made? Once you answer that, then you can move on to parts of speech. This is directly tied into Aristotle's categories. The 10 categories are the true ground of the parts of speech. Their nouns and verbs, their adjectives, adverbs, clauses, all those things are implicit in this order of the cosmos that Aristotle would help us see. So I would love to go and finish that course and make it presentable, especially to Matt Fradd fans,

because it's the best audience, right? Which really is. How old were you when you first started memorizing poetry? I'm gonna start next year. That's my plan. Yeah. So yeah. So how old is what I asked?

No, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be getting my ARP card and then- Cause I never, I never memorized it as a kid. Yeah, no, neither. Why would you? Gosh, me neither. So sad. I went to UCSB, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Got a degree in history. And I can say this, I graduated with a degree in history after seven years at university, having never read a single book. You must know some poetry. I'm going to jump right in. You must know a poem. I don't know. You don't. Am I like, no, I didn't mean to just bring this up. This is a very strong, this is public. I want to ask everyone watching to tell me who wrote this poem. Say it. I don't like three or four poems. That's about it.

I really like it's maybe not a great poem, but it means a lot to me because it was one of the first things I memorized and I was about 21 or something. And I don't know who wrote it. And I've typed these words into Google and cannot find it. Let's hear it. Oh, you many unassaulted cities. Have you not longed for the enemy to overtake you Google and cannot find it. Let's hear it. Oh, you many unassaulted cities. Have you not longed for the enemy to overtake you until in hopelessness and hunger you receive him look from your balconies there.

He stands as far as the eye can see and you know, he can hold out longer than you the one who will overtake you is working in silence. Wow. I love that. Who wrote that? I don't know. That's my point. Somebody out there, who wrote that?

Neil? Shayla? I don't know. Someone tell me who wrote that. I will send you a free beer, Stein. The thing though that we've decided is if no one claims the quote in two years, then it's you. It's mine.

That's the thing. I have a lot of things. Here's why I'm at Brad. Here's why I love that quote. And I don no one claims the quote in two years, then it's mine. That's the thing. I have a lot of things. Here's why I love that quote. And I don't know what the author intended by it, but to me, the unassaulted city is the one who has not yet opened himself to God and to divine grace. Right. And the one, and you stand from your balcony there, he stands as far as the eye can see, and you know, he can hold out longer than you have. You not longed to be overtaken, you know, until a out longer than you. Have you not longed to be overtaken, you know,

until in hopelessness and hunger? Like instead of like pretending you've got it all together and running on your own stuff. I love that poem. That's right where I am too. And can I add to this that St. Augustine's City of God is the inspiration for what we're calling now the City of Truth, because you know the City of God.

It's this fabulous book that nobody reads. Yeah, but you're the one who told me to read it. And I read about, I don't know, like 40 pages and it stopped. I was gonna say, nobody reads it. Nobody reads it. But if we knew all of it. I loved what I read, but it stopped.

Yeah, it's so beautiful. Loser. But when you get to books 11, he explains his thesis. It's very short and simple. It's very true. It's so profound. He says, there are two kinds of love, there are two loves, and these two loves form two different cities. Says there's

the city of God and the city of man. In the city of God, the citizens love God to the contempt of their fallen selves, and that constitutes citizenship in the city of God. When you say, I abandoned myself to the will of God, you are a citizen in the city of God. So a woman who finds herself pregnant and chooses to disobey Elizabeth Warren's dogmatism because she knows it's wrong to pay a hitman to kill her child. That's right. She, in a sense, chooses a setback, as it were. It appears such. That's right.

For the good of God and the good of his son. For the good of human life. Whereas someone like Lizzie Warren. Well, let me say the second one. The other kind of love is love of self, such that you inevitably have contempt for God. Yeah. Because God would limit your

And I mentioned this to you over dinner Thomas Aquinas when he talks about the effects of lust one of them is hatred of God Mm-hmm for that exact reason exactly right when you assert yourself as the primary thing. You must have contempt for God because he would have you perfected and Because of your fallen nature you would have yourself vicious. And that's the city of man. Well, that's the city of man. And so I've taken that image and said, can we reduce that to education?

The answer is yes. There are two loves and out of those two loves are formed two schools. The school of truth is where man loves the truth to the contempt of his own opinion. The school of man, the modern public school, is the man who loves himself to the contempt of truth. So if you simply invert that order and make truth your end,

then and only then can you begin to recover an authentic education. Matt, I have some bad news. Uh-oh. The quote has been attributed. Oh really? Yes. Oh that's great. The poet is, let me look for bad news. Uh oh. The quote has been attributed. Oh really? Yes. Oh that's great.

The poet is, let me look for the name. No, that's fantastic. Did you come up with that? I thought that was yours. Somebody in the chat. It was Adrian Mercedes. Adrian Mercedes. Ranier Maria Rilke.

Oh! Who's that? Is he terrible? No, no, is he a German guy? Yeah. Okay, could you find me that poem? I wanna know if I actually memorized it correctly. Can you look that up and- Yeah, I'll write. Okay, could you find me that poem? I want to know if I actually memorized it correctly. Can you look that up? Yeah, you want me to send you a link? Yeah, do it over

slack. And this fellow, if he doesn't have a points with Aquinas beer stein yet, tell him to write to, and not everybody do this, please God don't do this. I don't know how else to give him this beer stein. Write to assistant at mattfrad.com. You can write to our producer, Melanie, and we'll be sure to get you a free beer stone for being so cool. Now, if we get like 10 emails from Adrian or whatever, it's gonna be difficult. So, don't suck people, don't lie.

Adrian Mercedes, that's awesome. You know, to that, while you're looking up that poem, I wanna read this quote because I freaking love it. It's come from Chesterton. There was a time when men believed in the truth and doubted themselves. Now we live in a time where men believe in themselves and doubt the truth. That's the tagline on my email. Is it? If you sign up that will be at the bottom of the email that comes back. Yeah. Yeah, that's it then in that show I'm so pleased that we found the other people who said it before him also. Okay

No, just one of them We'll figure out who said it first no we too late I've already decided I've already told this guy to write I can't just yeah That's on you Neil because you gave me his name first Yeah, so if anyone's got a problem they can blame Neil or they can go to Matt fred dot locals comm become part of our community And we'll just send you a beer stone. Yeah, do that do that. Have you found the poem? Yeah, I sent it to you Oh, sorry. Okay. All right. We're gonna read it read it here. Okay, and then we'll see if it's Listen telephone game, what'd you say? No, it's, here, here. Did you find it? See how close you are. Listen. Telephone game.

What'd you say, Neil? It's in Slack, you've sent it to yourself because you're signed in on here. Oh. Text. Oh, I don't have internet on my phone. So this won't work. You know what's Slack? I have Slack, but you sent me a link.

Can you cut and paste it into Slack? This makes for great live streaming. Yeah, but see the thing is we are like an hour and a half, two hours in now, So it doesn't matter. This one. We have a lot of time. Yeah, they're here with us. If you're here now, you're going to go anywhere. So we're going to hear for at least another hour.

Crack open a beer. Take a seat. Take it easy. You deserve it. Or maybe you don't do it anyway. Put your feet up and you just send it to us. Awesome. All right. So this is very interesting, OK? All of you undisturbed cities, haven't you ever longed for the enemy? Oh, mine's way better. I'd like to see you besieged by him for 10 endless and ground

shaking years until you were desperate and mad with suffering. Finally, in hunger hunger you would feel his weight he lies outside the walls like a countryside and he knows very well how to endure longer than the one he comes to visit climb up on your roofs and look out his camp is there and his morale doesn't falter and his numbers do not decrease he will not grow weaker and he sends no one into the city to threaten. That's right. I remember this bit.

He doesn't come to threaten to promise or to negotiate. He is the one who breaks down the walls. And when he works, he works in silence. So who is this poet? Where's he from? He's German, right? Okay. So I must have been mine must have come from a different translation.

That's clearly the only reason mine must have sounded, it wasn't because of my lack of memory or whatever. That's beautiful. I love that. Yeah, he's a famous poet. I'm trying to remember where I've read his other work. I have one of his books. Do you have a favorite poem,

even if you haven't memorized it? Should I stop pressing against this? Well, unless it's my illiteracy is embarrassing. I've never been- Dude, you can put me on the spot. I never bragged about being literate, but I have discovered that I was illiterate, which really led me down the path

of trying to learn how to read. Yeah. And I have this, I have a, I've said this here before, I think, but a definition of literacy is to take, breathe life into dead words on a lifeless page and bring us, bring the words to life such that you enter into the world of the author.

This is the thing to do. We do the opposite in the world. We drag the author into our world, put him under a microscope and criticize him. It's the height of illiteracy. You become the arbiter and interpreter of truth. That's the opposite of the city of truth. It's the city of man.

It's a really bad idea. So I'm really, really caught up on learning how to read, learning how to listen to what the author is telling you and because he may know something you don't just might. Whereas if you're interpreting it through your own prejudices, you just did to your own echo chamber. Yeah. Hey, I never offered you would you want some one?

Yeah, let's do it. I gave me on my cup. No, because you're drinking whiskey. Yeah, I'm drinking whiskey. Yeah, you take this and just finish it off. We got a question here, Monica. She says, I encourage everyone to read about Bernard Nathanson and particularly his book, The Hand of God.

He was one of the DRS. What's that that led to the success of Roe versus Wade? Doctors, maybe his transition from atheist abortionist to a devout Catholic. I remember listening to this fellow. Yeah, it's harrowing. Let's see what else we got here. That Veronica says, well, changing laws goes a long way. The only thing that will stop the sacrifice of the innocent will be a change of hearts. Yeah. The Lord hears the cry of the poor. Blessed be the Lord. Lord have mercy on us.

Yeah. Gabe says, is there any hope that a non-religious majority of people will be convinced that abortion is evil? It seems like you could justify any action when society or yourself set your moral compass. Yeah, great comments. It's a question too. Yes. Do you think an atheistic majority can come to hold the view that abortion is reprehensible? No, I think I think Monica and Veronica were really getting at it. If we look at the law itself, it's rotten fruit from a rotten tree and it's actually not very valuable for us to try to change a law when we have a root problem. So I think all three are on the right track. You say, listen, we have to change in the hearts and minds of people by, by, by inverting the order of our learning from conditioning to education and

say, we look at the roots. So, so what we're trying to do by changing the laws, we're trying to essentially take an apple tree, take the apple and say, we need at the roots. So what we're trying to do by changing the laws, we're trying to essentially take an apple tree, take the apple and say, we need this apple to be something different. And that's impossible. We need to go to the roots. We need to deracinate viciousness and evil. I don't know what that word means, but I want to.

Oh, deracinate means to take out from the roots. Oh, like roots. Like the word radical. Yeah, we need to go to the roots, deracinate, we just have to pull weeds out. Do you pull up from the roots? And see, the problem is a root problem. That's why it's almost fruitless to say,

well, now that the entire world is conditioned into murdering innocents, it's fruitless to change the law. When the root says, kill innocent people, it's good. But it's not useless, right? Isn't that what you just said, it's useless to change the law? the root says kill innocent people it's good. But it's not useless. Right. Isn't that what you just said? It's useless to change the law. It's not.

Well it's as impossible. If it were useless you wouldn't be cheering. You wouldn't be happy about this potential decision. I think that this decision is a different fruit from a different root. There's no way we're changing the fruit. Look at Liz Warren. I mean how much headway we're going to make with Liz Warren. We had her in a different route. There's no way we're changing the fruit. Look at Liz Warren. I mean, how much headway are we gonna make with Liz Warren? We had her in a room today. If we had a talk, I would be charitable Liz Warren if she were here right now. It wouldn't be a good conversation.

It's gonna be really difficult. But we need to go to the root of the matter, change hearts and minds about life. I agree with that. But also, don't you think that the law is a teacher to some degree and that we should be implementing just laws? Absolutely. Right. So it's not maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it's not useless to institute like I would like to see pornography illegal to be made illegal. Yeah.

But I don't think that's going to happen in a democratic republic where the majority of people think that it's absolutely fine. I don't know if I'm saying useless I'm saying impossible It's impossible to what not useless it changed the law It'll be a reflection of what good souls think like a the law that corresponds to natural law is a good law the law that Contradicts natural laws a bad law. That's just the way it is the law itself is less Less profoundly important than the hearts and minds of souls that have principles of truth. So if you change the law but you have

a populace that is completely disconnected from natural law, then it's just the thing they're going to do subversively. So we're caught up in thinking that we can change a law which says we can change a societal structure. You can't. Mom and dad can form their child such that they have the principles and roots of truth and if enough families do that, the new laws will correspond to natural law.

I'm just saying it's impossible to change a fruit, but we ought to recognize the difference between fruits and roots. And I'm excited that this is happening, but it really is just rearranging the deck of the Titanic. Yeah, I see what you mean. What's tough though is you gotta get down to the- You gotta get down to the roots.

The bottom up, not up down always. Yeah, well, it's Confucius said this. This is amazing. Confucius says, you know, the world thinks that it's the good city that makes the good neighborhood that makes a good family that makes a good man. He says it's the opposite. Oh, it's the good man that makes the good neighborhood that makes the good city that makes the good nation.

That is brilliant. Confucius is brilliant. What a dude. Yeah, what a guy. What a guy. He's yeah, he's you know, he had the inverted golden golden law, golden rule, you know, don't do to other people what you don't want them to do to you. That's profoundly beautiful. And pragmatic. And pragmatic and practical.

So we ought to stop inverting the order of thinking we can change a law when what we really need to do is help a human soul ground themselves in the truth, in virtue. That's it. It's about virtue and it's one person at a time. It's one dad and mom to their children. Exactly, and it seems to be the opposite of what our fear is regarding big government. That's right.

The kind of tyrannical overreach. Well, that's what's happening, but you have subsidiarity that exists as a principle of truth and exists regardless of what everybody says about communism or what everyone says about structural racism or structural, these things are absurd. These things called structural racism

and structural culture, it's just culture. That's all it is. It's the rotten fruit of rotten trees or it's the good fruit of good trees. That's all it is. Right, so we need to get a perspective back on the inverted order of things. Isaiah's woe to him that calls black, white and white, black.

Yeah. We need to stop calling white, black and white, black, black, white. Have to stop that. So, so I'm not saying useless. I'm saying impossible. Well, okay. But and yet you're saying we should try to change laws. Yeah, I'm stoked.

I am so happy. It's just we shouldn't expect that the change of law will result in an immediate change of heart for the majority. Well, you're right. Yeah. I mean the law is going to truly change. The conventional law is going to truly change when we recover the gold standard of the building block of civilization, which is the family. Yeah. Mom and dads love your children. You know, men love your wives. This is what I mean,

I don't know if it was Christopher West's commentary on St. John Paul the Second's love and responsibility or if Weigel had it to say, said this, selling to the effect of. You know, as a family goes, so to goes society. I think that was John Paul II. But you kind of follow it down, right? So it's like, OK, what's the fundamental building block of society? And I don't know if we would say family anymore.

We would. We have to. We would. Well, de facto it is. But no, the modern world would say that. The modern world would say the individual is the building block. So if you would say the family, you would say, well, what's the kind of like nucleus of the family? And it's, well, it's man and wife. And what's that one act that's, you know,

they engage in that would be inappropriate to engage in with somebody else. It's not doing the dishes in their house. It's not even sharing a bed with the person. I mean, there could be certain instances where it's appropriate to share a bed with say one sibling or even as an adult. It's clearly the marital act.

And so if you deform, thwart, pervert the marital act, you've done away with marriage and family. That's what we're talking about here. Which is why there is such wisdom and brilliance in John Paul II's emphasis on this because it is interesting that we're all moral. Well, we all Lizzie Warren is a moral relativist when it comes to things sexual.

But I presume she's quite objective about insider trading and terrorism and other things that don't involve men and women. But when it involves the sexual act, we just, it's like multiple choice. It doesn't matter at that point. But that's the ground floor that you're messing with, that you're destroying. I mean, let's use a moral idiot.

And I want to say that in a- Yeah, and what do you mean by idiot? Because I want people to realize you're not just using a pejorative term. No, no, no, this isn't name calling. This isn't name calling. Idiot, in the Greek term, means somebody who's outside the boundaries of reality.

That's the term that means you are operating, you know, it doesn't have to be relative. It could be skeptical. It could be narcissistic. It could be individualistic. It could be all these things that are not inside the boundaries of reality. We have all this talk about being outside of the box. We really need to get back into the box of reality which would be outside the box for modern society It's a really complicated thing

But I think it's more appropriate to refer to someone like Lizzie as a moral idiot Because they're out not in the name-calling sense. I know that sounds terrible But truly somebody outside the boundaries of the natural law. This is it's Frankensteinian You make your own law you make your own life life. You, you know, Bacon said, conquer nature by applied technology. That was, that was given out in a very faithful age in a real sense compared to ours. And it didn't dramatically affect them

like it does to us today. We literally use technique and technology to create our own realities. That's why you see all the different genders. It's just not possible, but we believe it is because we're moral idiots. We're outside the bounds of reality. Yeah.

I know that sounded bad. No, it doesn't sound bad. But again, it's like, let's not misuse language. Let's not abuse speech. Let's say what we mean, yeah. Yeah. If there was an episode that would get us banned from YouTube, I mean, this is it.

Is this gonna be it? Well, yeah, I think it is. We've kicked like five hornets nests. Abortion, the insanity of transgenderism, sodomy is a sin. Public education. Public education. Is immoral and intellectually bankrupt.

Soul death camps. Let's see how long we've got. Yeah, there's more to talk about, so don't go away yet. I don't know how this show has flown under the radar for so long. I know, you've been great. But because you have honesty and humility. I don't know how this show has flown under the radar for so long. I know, you've been great. But because you have honesty and humility. I don't think that's why YouTube cares.

I don't think it's. They don't care about honesty, but I think you've been charitable. You're not vitriolic. You don't promote your guests being over the top or hyperbolic. But see, over the top is such a relative term. Right, right.

You know, like. But you still don't promote that in the true sense of the word. Yeah. Extremism, for example. We would be labeled extremists by the liberal woke left. But but I don't think that's true. And I don't think you abide in that. I think you search for the golden mean between the two extremes. I hope so.

Yeah. How many people do you think are going to be moving, you know, with COVID and with people working from home, I think more and more people are beginning to kind of move to where they wanna live. Yeah. A lot of people can just work from wherever. That's right. It's gonna be interesting to see how that plays out.

This sort of demographic shift. It's changing. Florida, for example, is seeming to become increasingly conservative. While you're on the topic, you asked for is seeming to become increasingly conservative. Also, while you're on the topic, you asked for homeschooling statistics. Yeah, that's what I wanted to know. 2016, 2.3 million, 2019, 2.5, 2020, 2.65, 2021,

3.7 million. Whoa! People are coming home. Literally, literally coming home. Coming home. And being schooled. The National Home Education Research Institute. Home schooling. I love that. Take that big government. I love that. But how many people will be moving? Yeah, now we're talking about moving states too,

because work has become remote. Yeah, it has. I live in California and I'm moving in June. I'm moving to Texas. How bad is California? Is it as bad as people say right now? Or is it it's a lot worse and not as bad as you? What are you laughing? Well, I just moved here from California. Move to Steubenville, Ohio, from California by their own volition. You know that things that you would be surprised by how many good souls there are in California, you'd be surprised. how many good souls there are in California.

You'd be surprised. I know for sure there are. I used to live in San Diego. Yeah. Good, good. There are a lot of good people. You find the coastlines and the indoctrination camps do a good job of really, really corralling the sheep. But I got to tell you, I know so many good folks. I live in Roseville, California right now and it's shockingly sane compared. I used to work in a school, John Adams Academy, that's shockingly sane. They're trying to recover an authentic education. They use classical sources. They're very respectful of the truth. It's an amazing organization and there are more and more things like that popping up, but it's still difficult because you have the governor who is enacting these insane laws with the homeless with education with covid with all these other things so it's it's pretty bad and we're i love california we're

happy to be moving to texas because we're doing work in education nice and in fact i would like to share one of the visions that the group i'm working with has. We have this, we want to start a school. We want to start kind of a unique school, but kind of not a unique school. We want to have an authentic Catholic, classical liberal arts collegiate university on some land, but we also want to have below that an artisan academy.

We want to begin with agriculture. We want to have below that an artisan academy. We want to begin with agriculture. We want to have animal husbandry. And then we want to have woodworking carpentry certification programs, vocational programs, metalworking, plumbing, electrical, construction, a business program, all grounded in Catholic ethics. And we want, we are, we're trying to put this together to serve good works and to draw people back into community and subsidiarity. So the family's gonna do this.

Do you know who Jacob Imam is? I've heard the name from the air, right? He lives here. I've gotta get you two together these next couple of days. Please connect me with him. Okay, please do. Because you two are really speaking the same language. He started a workshop here in Steubenville.

And he's, I don't know the full story, but he's creating this sort of course where people come in and by the end of the first year, they'll be producing things in order to sell them in order to pay for their education. So they're not going to be going into death or anything like that. And this is somewhat of the idea towards, if you want to read a great essay by CS Lewis, he's called, has an essay called good works. When you know today, I hope, that manufacturing operates on the model of planned obsolescence, right, as a future business model.

And we believe the opposite. So we return to Aristotle, Aristotelian, the notion of economics. Economics means the law of the household. And if you read Aristotle's economics, it starts with the land. On top of that land is a house. In that house is a man and a woman and their biological children. And all wealth comes from the ground. And it's really true and beautiful and good. And

that's what we're going to recover. And I have an advisory board that is out of this world and I can't tell you who's on it right now. We're working and we're- Matt is gonna give us a hint. I'll give you one hint. One hint. One guy is Matt Fratt. He's on my advisory board.

Another hint. Did you know that? Did you know that? Yeah, I knew that. Okay. You knew that you're on my board. I don't know how much advising I can give. You're supposed to contact me every week.

You've kind of laughed a little bit. Am I really? Yeah, yeah. There's no way I'm ever gonna do that. I know. I'll contact you to speak to you as a friend. Well, yeah, yeah, but it's in the contract, buddy. Read the fine print.

Is it? Did I sign it? You did. You promised. Done. It's all right, but that's okay. I'm not worried about it. We're still getting going.

We got time to make this up, so we're fine. What about text? You can text me. We're fine. No, that'll do. In fact, we're close. We're not, you know, every couple of weeks, we're touching base, which is fine.

But the souls we have involved in this including you are just I think the best educational minds in America You don't want to begin with me well, I'm not gonna say anything definitive about that Some other really great people actually know what they're talking about unbelievable great people that know that we're talking about they're actually literate and brilliant not not I'm talking about me You can be one of the one of their names rhyme with Peter Crave. I wish. Yeah, what about Anthony Esseland? I wish.

Their names rhyme with Anthony Esseland. I talked to both of them, but they're very busy. I wanted Anthony Esseland and Dr. Peter Crave to work with me. And I reached out, I asked, I reached out for the best. And what did Crave say? Crave's very honest. He was great.

He said, you know what? He said he would talk with me and offer me the benefit of his great mind. He said he would do that. But, he said I'm not a joiner. And I think that was just really smart. I like that. Someone who would join my club.

I would be very satisfied. Yeah, we might have Craif on the show this month. Oh my gosh! Yeah, do you know that? I told you that. I wanna get him on my little new show called Finding the Lost. Okay.

I don't think it's gonna happen. I'll hook you up. I'm gonna try it, really? Well, you've been in touch with him, so. Yeah, I ask him all, I ask him, well listen, he's already been of great help to me in many things. He's such a great teacher.

He offers his mind. He'll help you. He's so charitable. I've written essays that he's helped me form ideas for. He's fantastic. And Anthony Esselstyn as well. Great guys, just fantastic. But I have other guys I also consider

really up there with those guys. So I'll be tight-lipped about that right now because that's being developed as we speak. I'm working on it every day, and we'll talk more about that later. It'll probably be in that newsletter, right? It'll be, oh, yeah. Everything in the newsletter's a part of this program.

Wouldn't you say? That's quite right, no, that's quite right. We may not have names and dates, but I'm telling you, this is really going to happen. And if anyone's interested in dialoguing about it, I love that. So everyone has my email address and they can reach out. What is a book you've read recently or have at least dabbled in that you've found enjoyable? Oh my goodness. I'm delving into educational sources right now.

So there's Hugh of St. Victor. And I can't even pronounce the name of the book, Didascalion. It's his rendition of explaining the liberal arts. And it's just fabulous. But again, I would highly recommend that I learn how to read first and read well to really pull out of this what the medieval conception of the liberal arts.

Because it's the culmination of the ancient Greeks and Romans as it developed through the Catholic University in the Middle Ages from about 300s on up. Really fantastic. The liberal arts, a recovery of the liberal arts is what we need. So I've been reading books like that. I'm reading a book by Donald Cowan called Unbinding Prometheus. It's a series of his lectures on education. Very interesting. Louise and Donald Callan were involved in forming the education for University of Dallas, had a lot to do with Thomas Moore College in New Hampshire

and a lot of things like that. I've heard great things about both of those universities. Really good schools. What is something you read that's completely unimpressive, but you enjoy it? I think it's completely impressive, but I've reread the Odyssey several times this year because I'm working with some some great kids in Georgia and Mexico We're working through some great books fantastic kids who have reached out and asked me to work with them

And well, that's way cooler than what I was gonna say I was really really insane is it that comic could asterix is that what it could oh? What's that? We are the little the the goals and the Romans the it's like Astrid in something? Obelisk in. Yeah, that one. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. OK, I said the Odyssey. Yeah, I said this comic that my son reads. Astrix and Obelix. Astrix and Obelix.

You ever heard of that? No, that's fun. Never, never. I mean, it was originally in French, but it's just a kid's comic book. OK, I read that the other day. That's wonderful. Well, I read The Lord of the Rings fairy tales. I read the the other day. That's wonderful. I read the Lord of the Rings, fairy tales, I read the Monks Tales this year. I've read the Republic five times this year. I did a course, I did a lecture on it a whole hour long,

but it was so enjoyable. Yeah, yeah, shut up. Have you read any comic books? Recently, I would. I'm not above it. I'm not saying that. I just had a lot of work to do that. Man, that's impressive.

Five times you've read. Had to, I get so hung up on books, five, six, and seven. The funny thing about The Republic is that smart people say that it's the quintessential book on education. In the first 10 times I read, I'm like, how is this about education? As a school teacher, I had no idea. But now after about the 25th time,

I finally realize how this is about education. And I'm a slow learner. So those of you who read the Republic the first time and get it. I think it was in the Republic that Socrates said that education, unlike say sports or athletics or gymnastics. Yeah. Yeah. You shouldn't put too much strain when it comes to education. Intellectual things. Yeah, I think you said let it be more like play. Yeah, well he said you could force people to do athletic things and it's good for them.

Yes. You can't force people to do intellectual things. Yeah. That's counterproductive. Yeah. Yeah, and there's a wonderful book by Joseph Pieprak called Leisure is the Basis of Culture. And leisure in the Greek means school, school,

scola in Latin. But the school itself is supposed to be a leisure place. Now think about it. And leisure in the Greek means school, school, scola in Latin. But the school itself is supposed to be a leisure place. Now think about it. The public schools are all about activity. Do do do do do get it done, get all this intensive materialistic work rather than the leisure time to do the highest thing man can do, which is contemplate truth. That has to be an essential element of an authentic education.

Agreed? Yeah, absolutely. Which is why I'm so pumped about my son going to St. Gregory the Great Academy. Oh my goodness. Raising their animals, slaughtering their animals, eating their own animals. So good. Reading poetry, hanging out. By the way, I recently...

Playing soccer, rugby. Oh gosh. St. Greg's is fabulous. It's one of the finest schools in America. And I reached out to Sean Fitzpatrick, I'm asking him to be on my show. He said, yes. What a guy.

And I reached out to guys like that. He's fantastic. Good souls. Yeah. Yeah, I think they take a lot of their sort of philosophy from John Sr. Yes. And I don't know if it was John Sr., maybe it was,

but I think the basic idea is that the good books have to be an introduction to the great books quite sure before you can read kind of what you said about mythology you want to know how to read a myth before you do it because of how you've been conditioned perhaps right don't just jump into the great books necessarily but begin with the good books why is that the case well I didn't even get to say but the what I was getting to one of the rec one of the things people always ask is can I have a book a list of good books and I don't like to do, but I was getting to one of the things people always ask is can I have a list of good books?

And I don't like to do that, but there is a book I highly recommend. Michael O'Brien wrote a book called The Landscape with Dragons, and it's a commentary on modern literature. And in the back of that, he has hundreds of books that are good, that are worth reading. Landscape. A Landscape with Dragons, Michael O'Brien. That's the shortcut and the better answer than I have, because I would have to get to know somebody,

see how they read, talk to them, and then make specific recommendations. If I got to really know you, I could recommend five books. Michael O'Brien has vetted all these books, and he's excluded books that are grounded in false principles, and he's included books that are good. So I would highly recommend that. And he's more open than I am,

but you might find him very narrow and closed. People criticize him, but Michael O'Brien is a fabulous soul, and he's very discerning. So definitely get your hands on A Landscape of Dragons. Go to the back for every age. He has a list of, I think, hundreds of books, if I'm not mistaken. And that's a better place than asking me what do you read. Well here's a question for you if you had the luxury of taking in an entire month off from all your responsibilities and you could read a book.

Maybe a book you've been hoping to read for a while or maybe book you'd like to read again what what would it be? Suppose next month, you could take next month off. I hate the cliche of this, but it would have to be the Bible. If not, it would have to be something from Aquinas or Augustine. I just, these teachers, they have so much to tell you. I mean, the Bible is another book that we ought to learn how to read before we read it. The Bible has been used to justify everything known to man, but it is the revealed word of God, it's the scriptures. There's no more important book.

But I found great solace and help from Augustine and Aquinas and the other church doctors. There's a hierarchy. So that highest thing is the revealed word of God. That's the highest. Then you have the church doctors and the saints and the great popes. Then you have your local priests

and then you have your parents, then you have children, and then you have the public schools Down there. Yeah, which you should absolutely Ignore when it comes to reading lists. So when it comes to the Bible What do you think often prevents people from beginning to even attempt to read it at the moment? It's the the the utter lack of literacy There's not just biblical literacy, you know in the catechism it says, who's the interpreter of the scriptures? You know, and modern Protestantism says, you are, right? The catechism says the Holy Spirit is the interpreter of scripture. That's a profound truth. If you get in touch with that, you should ask, well, wait, what do you mean when

you say that the Holy Spirit is the interpreter of Scripture? Yeah. And if you could figure that out, and then you read the Bible by the light of truth, interpreted by the Holy Spirit, and maybe aided a little bit by church doctors, you're going to have a wonderful experience. In my experience, I think if I could, I think the biggest obstacle to me for really diving into the scriptures. It's probably that I have. An unrealistic expectation of how I should feel when I read them. Mm hmm. You know. So one thing I've done over the last few weeks is I've got two ribbons in my Bible.

So I began at Psalm one. And then I began at John 1 from the gospel. And so my daily reading is to read at least a Psalm, sometimes multiple, and then to at least read one chapter. It's, I mean, the Bible is like Mount Everest. Like, how do you come at it? Just one step at a time. You can't just bring the whole thing in at once. I know- One word, one word. Yeah, my wife has really enjoyed listening to Father Mike Schmitz's Bible in a Year podcast. She's definitely an auditory sort of,

I get distracted too easily if I listen to somebody read something to me. Sure. Father Mike doesn't just read it. He gives a little interpretation afterwards, which is really one- God bless him. He's done such a- God bless him. Really great- It's the number one podcast in the universe

right now yeah maybe it was at some point for a long time maybe it still is I think it even is it is it check it out is it Neil I believe it is I it's really exciting and it's blessed it's funny you talk about reading distraction hearing we have a very serious question in education about what's primary? Letters of the mind, what's primary? Reading something or hearing something? What's more profound? Which is secondary?

I would just say hearing. Hearing is primary. Oh, is it? Why? Yeah. That's what I would. Well, because if you read something, that's a, okay, so the written word does violence to the spoken word how it reduces it.

When it's written it has to be restored to its spoken form this is I've been I love my favorite translation. Unapologetically is the King James version is because it's beautiful it's because it's beautiful it is beautiful that's not the only reason but aesthetically love it. I like it far more than the Douay-Rheims, which I find awkward and clunky. Kind of difficult. I'm not disparaging it. It's a beautiful translation. It's very esteemed in our tradition and people should read it. But I personally, when I read just leisurely, I like to read the King James and I read it out loud to myself. It's very enjoyable. And there's something about reading it out loud that allows you to hear it Yeah, more than you would hear it if you just read it silently. And there's, reading's wonderful but it's a technology and

technology is dangerous. Technology always holds out the promise that you will be like God. And it's dangerous. People don't realize how dangerous the written word can be. And this is one of the problems with literacy. We are in the mindset inverted order again, that literacy will set you free, that reading will set you free. That's not the case. Hearing that has the potential to set you free, but it's not just hearing, it's hearing and understanding and knowing the source, knowing where the thing comes from and allowing it to penetrate your soul such that it has the capacity to form you or conform you to the truth.

That's the idea. Reading rarely has that effect, but to the one who understands the technology, that can be very, reading can be very, very fruitful, but it's also very dangerous. It's more dangerous than fruitful in this age. Yeah. I really wanna read a fairy tale with you. Let's read a fairy tale. Yeah.

The Father Mac podcast is the number one in the religion category. Oh, the religion category. It was the number one in all categories at some point. And now it's only, okay. Yeah, it goes up and down. Especially around the start of the year. It definitely did. Okay. Right when it starts. Before we read this fairy tale, I want to invite people to please subscribe and click that bell so you don't miss any of this great content that we're putting

out. Most of our viewers aren't subscribers. So it'd be sweet if you would help us out by clicking that subscribe button and that bell button, because then YouTube literally is forced to let you know whenever we put out more Christian propaganda. All right, what is your favorite fairy tale? Let's do it. Oh, my favorite fairy tale is a little too long, probably. Okay.

Did you have a Russian fairy tale that you love? Let's do the Russian one you love because I love the fairy tale, the three golden hairs of the devil. And one of the reasons I just love it is because as I retell it to children, it just brings them to life. They're just captivated. Yeah. If you can tell it in the right spirit. Absolutely. What's your what's your favorite Russian?

Well, honestly, I forget the name of them. I have a collection. I don't think it I think it's here. I was reading them to the kids. Um, fire. This is really good. The firebird, the horse of power and that was the princess I don't know if that's let's see how long this thing is. I do is too long. Is it? Yeah. Okay, but your favorite No, I well again, I forget the title of these different ones because it's been a while since I've read them to the kids

There's so there's so many good ones. Let's ask people watching, what's your favorite fairy tale? Yeah, what's your favorite fairy tale? And listen, Italo Calvino has compiled the Italian Folk Tales. That's a wonderful book of very short stories. They're pithy, they're folky, they're just great. All right, here's a fairy tale which I haven't read before. It's called Spring in the Forest. It's a beautiful name. Yes. And I chose it because it's relatively short.

I haven't read it before. So let's see what we name. Yes. And I chose it because it's relatively short. Haven't read it before. So let's see what we think. Okay. Warmer the sun shone and warmer yet. The pines were green. Now all the snow had melted off them. Drip, drip the falling drops of water making tiny wells in the snow under the trees. And the snow under the trees was melting too.

Much had gone. And now there were only patches of snow in the forest, like scraps of a big white blanket shrinking every day. Isn't it lucky our blankets don't shrink like that, said Marusia. Old Peter laughed. What do you do when the warm weather comes? he asked. Do you still wear sheepskin coats? Do you still roll up at night under the rugs?

No, said Marousia. I throw the rugs off and put my fluffy coat away till next winter. Well, said old Peter, and God, the father of us all, he does for the earth just what you do for yourself, but he does it better. For the blankets he gives the earth in winter gets smaller and smaller as the warm weather comes little by little, day by day. And then a hard frost comes, grandfather, said Ivan. God knows all about that little one, said old Peter, and it's for the best. It's good to have a nip or two in the spring to make you feel alive.

Perhaps it's his way of telling the earth to wake up, for the whole earth is only his little one after all. That night when it was story time Ivan and Marousia consulted together and when old Peter asked what the story was to be they were ready with an answer. The snow is all melting away said Ivan. The summer is coming said Marousia. We'd like the tale of the little snow girl, said Ivan, the little daughter of the snow, said Marusia. Old Peter shook out his pipe and closed his eyes under his bushy eyebrows, thinking for a minute. Then he began. That is beautiful.

Isn't that remarkable? If you can enter that story. Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, that was a gamble. I didn't know what we were going to read. That is just poetry. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's beautiful.

And what can that do to the imagination and soul of a child? If read with the right, right? Now, my favorite, my favorite brother Grimms, just because it's the most gruesome, is, what is it? Beggars, the bride or the. Which one is it? I don't know. You tell us so I don't bore people about your favorite fairy tale while I look this one up. OK, well, my favorite one that I mentioned that I love telling is the three golden hairs

of the devil about this little boy. There's a, there's a, there's a huge kingdom. And in the center of the kingdom is this castle with an evil king and a lovely wife. And the king and the wife are pregnant and in a remote village, far away, very poor village. There's a poor tenant farmer couple who was also pregnant. And there was a prophecy that the little boy born to the poor peasant farmers was going to marry the king's daughter. And the king heard the rumor and just wouldn't have it. He was absolutely infuriated. So the children were born and the king travels to the land of the poor people and disguised as a merchant,

buys the little child for two bags of gold. Mm-hmm. All right? He takes the child, there, yes, he puts the child in a box and chucks it over the bridge into the river. But the box doesn't sink. It floats down the river.

And the miller and his wife, cleaning the laundry the next day, find the child, bring him in and raise him. It's a beautiful, and they raise him to be a virtuous, good young man. I have to read that. Yeah, it's a beautiful story, beautiful. Do y'all have a favorite fairy tale?

Yeah. Or is this like me asking him continually what poems he knows? It's just not gonna happen. I had a teacher at John Paul Catholic who had a course which it wasn't it wasn't like supposed to be in fairy tales but she really liked fairy tales so we read a lot of them and I just remember reading a lot of versions of Little Red

Riding Hood yeah it was really really interesting just to hear all the different versions like the subtext that are just completely lost and modern tellings and things so I really like that one right so I mean let's see if I can find it Robbers Bridegroom. You know that one? That's your favorite now. No, so that one's my favorite, but it's the most gruesome, which is why I like it. Is it short? This is the one where I was reading it and my wife was giving me the eye like, you should stop this.

This is really bad. But I just pressed on like a chain. How bad is it? Let's hear it. Well, am I am I am I boring? Yeah. Are you guys bored? I'm not. Yeah. Are you guys bored? They might be bored. But at this point, I mean, does it matter? This is not about them.

I think I should just do a retelling of it. Yeah. What's the what's the goose? I'm sorry. The message is fine. All right. So just so people know, my sister and I write little horror stories. It's called sibling horror. They can check out the podcast. It's also on YouTube if they type in sibling horror, because I actually wrote a modern version of this and then paid this lovely lady to read it

from a first person perspective. I've heard this yet. I've got to hear it. But yeah, people should check this out. This is terrifying. Like, this is absolutely awful. So let me kind of give you a retelling of it, right? So there's this girl and her father can no longer afford to keep her.

And so he says the next suitable man who comes looking for my wife, my daughter's hand, I will just give her to him. So this fellow shows up and the father agrees. And the girl doesn't like him and she doesn't know why she doesn't like him, but he just gives her a weird feeling. And so she avoids him whenever she can. And one day she's at the market and she bumps into him and he says, my love, we are about to be wedded, but you've never come to see me.

And she tries to get out of it. She says, well, I don't know where you live. And he tells her it's in the middle of the forest and that he will strew ashes on Sunday towards his house so that she can find him. So she wakes up Sunday morning and she follows the ashes to his house. She walks into this house and it's very decrepit and broken down and. No one can be heard, there's no one around.

She just walks into this kitchen with all these very large knives. Am I boring you yet? No. And so she opens this door and it's a staircase down to the cellar. She walks down, she hears something bubbling and she knows there's someone in there and she calls out. No one answers. She walks down and she sees this old woman stirring something in a cauldron. And this woman's eyes are funny.

They've been sewn shut. And we find out that they've been sewn shut so that she can never escape. And while she's standing there and telling this old woman while she's there, the old woman says, Oh, my darling, they will eat you. They are the eaters of man flesh. Now is a really good time to stop this video if you have kids watching, because it's only going to get worse. And so all of a sudden, she hears this commotion above her on the main floor, these heavy boots and the screams of this young girl.

And these three or four people drag this girl down, lay her on a table, force feed her wine and oil and then butcher her, so cutting her body up and she's hiding behind a barrel. You're good. We good. We can still go right. All right. I mean, Elizabeth Warren's allowed to be on YouTube. Talk about butchering people for real. So this is OK, right?

Fine. And so she she's behind this barrel. And while they're butchering this poor girl, one of the fingers flies off and lands right by the girl and she holds on to it. And then they realize, oh, the reason they cut off the fingers, they wanted the gold ring on it. So when the finger comes off, she holds onto it and then they're about to search for it. But the old lady says, Oh, don't do that now. Just eat, you know, she's trying to protect the young girl.

So they all eat the girl and they fall asleep. And then the young heroine helps the old woman out because all the ashes of I think have gone. I forget. And and and she leads the old woman back to the house. Right. Well, the father is so pleased to see her and he hugs her and she tells him what she saw. And he says, well, let's let's not do anything drastic. Let's wait. Let's wait till the wedding day.

What do you mean? You don't want to call off? No, I have a plan. So she knows he has a plan. So after the wedding, this man stands up and he gives a toast. And after the toast, he turns to his new bride and says, don't you want to say something? And so she gets up and she says, yes, I'd like to recount a dream I had. I was walking through the forest.

I found a house I walked in. And then the man starts to sweat a little and she's like, Oh, honey, sit down. It was only a dream. There were these men and they came in and they dragged this poor woman down. She explains everything that happened, right? And he keeps getting really nervous. It's just a dream. They cut off the finger of this young girl and she holds it up.

And here it is. Now, either in my version or the Grimm's version, I'm getting confused, but they hold him down and drive a stake through his face. Wow. And that's how the story ends. That's what we're talking about. That's a good fairy tale.

That's what we're talking about. That's a good fairy tale. That's what we're talking about. What is the reaction from the live stream? I mean how many of- We have a few good ones from people who've just tuned into the show. Wow. Picked a horrific time to join the live stream. That's hilarious. Have you heard something more graphic and vicious than that like what I'm saying. It's worse in the brother grim Yeah, it's it's no it is. It's it's graphic and there's a huge movement to Discredit the fairy tales to say that these things they hurt children They horrify them, but the reality is is what they do is they they help a child

Compartmentalize these horrific things that happen in the real world in the safety of their own homes from a distance and cultivate the virtue to handle them later. This is the real potential of that kind of story. It's not like watching the news where these real things happen. That's actually... It's not like watching Elizabeth Warren try to justify the slaughter of the old woman. Watching Elizabeth Warren justify that is

detrimental to a human soul the Grimms fairy tales Prepare a human soul to encounter the truth encounter real witches real witches real demons real Reality unlike yeah, Elizabeth Warren would well There's just such a difference between the reality of the the fairy tales Elizabeth Warren is telling. But just, and this. Yeah, but see, yeah, I agree with what you're saying. My point is though, and you agree, I'm sure, you learn about witches who want to literally eat children, and then you understand people like Elizabeth Warren. Yeah.

Yeah. Or at least who doesn't want to actually eat children, I presume, but wants to kill them. It's much worse that eating them would be better than encouraging a generation of people to murder their own children in the womb. You gotta, I mean, why? I don't know if that was just a hyperbolic statement. Eat a couple kids, I mean, you know, it's a thing.

Better than millions. Yeah, well, yeah, okay, it was hyperbolic. It was hyperbolic, it was a terrible thing to say. But when you hold that ideology, that ideology of murdering of innocence, it's one of the four sins that cries out to heaven for vengeance. You know, cannibalism isn't on that list, but that's probably, yeah, probably is on that list. It's probably close.

No, it's on the list. Okay, I shouldn't have said it, but it's just so horrific. The fairy tales are a counter example of Elizabeth Warren and would encounter a child well-formed to understand what's wrong with Elizabeth Warren. That would be a child well-formed to understand what's wrong with Elizabeth Warren. That would be a great, great benefit of saying, wow, there really are people in the world that would want to consume children who do terrible things. Right. The consumption of children. Dragons exist. Yeah. It's an irony that you might have the Elizabeth Warren educated people believe that the Aztec sacrifice of children is horrible. They might look down on the Aztecs for that child sacrifice,

missing the fact that the multiple times worse sacrifices that we're making of children. Yeah, so that's what I've tried to get at by that hyperbolic statement. Let's take a few questions from our patrons and local supporters. Gustavo, great name. What's his last name? Ferraria. I know Gustavo and I love him.

How do you say his last name? Uh, Ferrera. That's beautiful. Gustavo Ferrera. Ferraro. Is it Ferrero? Yeah, I love Gustavo. He lives in Canada. He says, sorry, he's a deer soul. What is the right epistemology? I see some values in, I do not know this person V why got ski like out ski is that he's a modern educational psychologist you got see I see some values in the gods for good ski and other constructivists yeah but I believe they are wrong because we must conform to reality and not construct one out of our minds also what is the concept of? Inverted classroom and why is it bad? Okay. I wonder if he's joining late because we did know who's not well Gustavo and I know each other he he's one of these great souls who's reached out to say hey me and my wife want to

Do right by our children and he asked for a book list and we've been in dialogue he's just a good soul and He's asking the right question. So he's obviously highly educated. So he's asking, what is this inverted classroom? And you might even see it, you'll see it as starkly in Canada as you'll see it here, that modern pedagogy and the constructivists and all these guys, they're just the evolution

of John Dewey education. And what would be essentially wrong with him is what would be unseen is these principles we're talking about, the ground floor. So Gustav was asking a question that would take many months to answer, but he's intuitively right. There's something wrong with the inverted order

and he's onto them. So be suspicious of Vygotsky. And there may be some good in his analyses, but the constructiveness in general are just offshoots of this materialism. Okay. Elizabeth Hartman, not Elizabeth Warren, Elizabeth Hartman says, for current or future college professors and scholars, how might we better prepare our minds and hearts to do what we

can to give a life giving education to our students and encourage them to seek these more profound and beautiful things in an authentic education. What are some things we should integrate into our pedagogy to encourage our students to more toward the transcendent reality? Also, what can we do when we run into tension or persecution from administration? My goodness, what a great question. Um, this is the thing to ask.

If you're a school teacher, that doesn't mean de facto you're doing something wrong, but if you commit to the theory and practice of the modern school, then you're probably causing damage to your kids. But when your door closes, you can do the right thing with your scholars. You can do that.

So bring in principles of truth. What I did for the last 20 years is we would have our fairy tale book and we'd put our school approved textbook underneath, we'd be reading our fairy tales. If that door opened, we would just switch and I'd have some ridiculous question that we don't have a can to answer to. And it would always look great.

And you're going to encounter persecution from your administration. One of the last things I heard is my administrator said, why are you reading the Odyssey with your kids? That's abusive. You know, I'd say, well, you know, there's no answer. Yeah, I would just avoid them. If you do the right thing, you're going to be persecuted.

Yeah. That's just going to be the fact. Should people even bother go, should people even bother? Go. Should people even bother trying to teach at public schools at this point? I don't know. I don't know. It's the enterprise is evil. Um, and there's so many good souls in the schools. I, every teacher I've ever met goes into it because they love people and they want to help. The best thing I can say is, yeah, I think there's value to going to a school. What's her name? I forgot her name. Oh, I just, I moved on from the page. Sorry. No, I think there's value in saying,

I'm going to be a beacon of light in this very difficult situation. But on the other hand, I think we should maybe leave the public schools and organize our own schools that are authentic and good. And you can't really do that when you go into the Catholic schools, because unfortunately many of the Catholic schools have followed suit with the public schools and do the same exact thing.

That was supporter Elizabeth Hartman. Elizabeth Hartman, great question. How did you do that? That was very impressive. He's very good. Elizabeth, reach out and email me please. And Hartman, great question. How did you do that? That was very impressive. He's very good. Elizabeth, reach out and email me please and we should have a conversation because you're-

Do you want to do it? Love to. Do you want to give you an email out? Yeah. Do I ever not? I would- You have the email looking for teachers. Yeah, not that many people care about education

so I don't get that inundated. Couple hundred people email me and it's great. What's your email? It's stevenjonathanrc at yahoo.com. But if you go to my email, if you go to that, click on that link that Neil put up. That's what you want to do.

Click that link. That'll go to my email too. So. And you reply to everybody? Yeah. Oh yeah. You are amazing. I reply to everybody. Cause they're all good people like Elizabeth. They ask good questions. They're sincere.

They're honest. And it's joyful that I get more letters because honestly education is not sexy. Let's be honest. It's probably the last thing people care about, but it's really important to cultivate. Jacob Ticoli says, please ask him if his university will accept the GI Bill. What's the GI Bill? You are welcome at our university. If this kind of thing appeals to you, I don't, a GI Bill is the, when you join the armed services.

Oh, okay. And you've completed the fun part of your education. And listen, don't worry about that. We're gonna find a way to make things work. Okay. Yeah. Also, what is his opinion of Hillsdale College? Hillsdale College?

Hillsdale is a fine university. There's a handful of schools that I would even be okay with, people that I love going to, and they're in tiers. Tier one, two, three, four. I do like Hillsdale. There's really a lot of wonderful professors there, and they want to ground their program in truth. They're some of the good guys.

Hillsdale's awesome. I do want to talk about one thing with schools. Let's do it. That we didn't bring up. This is one of the most important pitches I could ever make in my life. Oh gosh. This is so important.

Can you put dramatic music on what he's about to say? I should have said this first because there's something really exciting going on at the archdiocese of Boston. Really? Yes. There's a superintendent named Mr. Thomas Carroll, who is a wonderful man. And there's an assistant superintendent named Colleen Donahue,

who's the director of Catholic identity. And these two good souls have conceived a way to edify the wonderful Catholic schools in Boston and they've organized this small group of cohort called the St. Thomas More Fellowship. And the St. Thomas More Fellowship is an organization where we are going around to colleges like University of Dallas, Thomas Aquinas College, Steubenville, Wyoming Catholic, and Thomas Moore and Ave Maria, and we're looking for well-formed souls that love Christ, that want to lead children to God, and we're asking to them to come participate as a St. Thomas More Fellow to become a teacher

in the the Boston schools of Catholic Boston schools. And I've been hired as the executive director of the St. Thomas More Fellowship. Nice. And my wife Faith and I were working on developing a six week boot camp to help form these teachers in the authentic arts of teaching. Oh, I'm so glad you're doing that.

And we're inviting any young soul called to teaching that would like to be an authentic, faithful Catholic teacher to come join us, a new army of souls to reinvigorate the Catholic schools and reform them to the image that God intends them to be. It's a beautiful idea. And this is our first year. We're just getting started. So if anyone out there, young souls called to teach, please reach out, contact me. Let's talk about becoming a St. Thomas Moore Fellow. And again, they would contact you by clicking that link. Yeah, you can click that link.

Or Neil has another link that has a brochure that explains the program. And you can click on that and go directly to the Archdiocese of Boston. And I would love to talk to you too, if anyone's interested, any young teacher that's called to the authentic Catholic faith. And in this formation program, we're going to recover the authentic Catholic anthropology. We're going to do the authentic liberal arts.

We're going to have practical things like classroom leadership, lesson planning, practicum. We're going to do it all in six weeks and prepare you to be successful in the classroom. Wow. Can I come? Please. I just want to come learn. Come join us.

Yeah, it should be really, really wonderful. You said your daughter was at Wyoming Catholic. Yes. What's your opinion of Wyoming Catholic? Wyoming Catholic is at the very top of my list of favorite schools of all time. Why? I have a thousand reasons, but one thing that's remarkable, they have this outdoors program.

Okay. And they take all their students, and the beginning of the year, they take them on a three week camping trip. The freshmen. The freshmen. But every year, each class goes on one or two outdoors trips, and they become well trained

in first aid and survival, and they do these amazing things. So my daughter went on this three week long trip. It was harrowing. I wanna go. It was incredible. Would they let you and me go? I wish, yeah, we should go on it.

We should do it. We'll ask them. Matt, Brad, Joe, we'll ask them. Can we go? We will promote you if you let me and Steve. I'm promoting Wyoming Catholic. Please take us on one of these peak experiences. We'll just follow in the back.

We won't chat with anybody. We'll do our thing. We just gotta go on this hike. Three, there's no communications. There's no, there's no roads. Out in the wilderness, the Wind River Mountains. It's amazing. My, my Tommy, she got home.

She was, I saw, I didn't even recognize her. She was absolutely weathered, windstorm. She said, dad, this was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. And I'd do it again next week. I'd go today. I'd do it again. It just transformed her. That winter they went to Jackson Hole Wyoming. They snowshoed out, made igloos and stayed out in the wild

for two nights in igloos. That's remarkable. Yeah it's remarkable. And then the next year they went down the Green River in Utah and Wyoming. I've never been to Wyoming. It sounds like a cool place. It is beautiful. Go to Lander, Wyoming. Check out Wyoming. Just north of there. Yellowstone. Close. Well, Yellowstone's in Montana, I think. The show, I'm not even sure where it's filmed, but the Wyoming Lander, where it is, it's right by the Wind River Mountains, just south of Jackson Hole and Yellowstone Park. It's remarkable.

But okay, so that's beautiful, I love that. But the real meat and potatoes, you have Dr. Glenn Arbery and his wife, Dr. Virginia, the president and Dr. Virginia teaches rhetoric and all these other classes. They have these wonderful teachers who teach the authentic, faithful, liberal arts. They do philosophy, theology, church doctors, literature.

It's a liberal arts degree. And if you go on this campus and you meet these kids, then enough will be said. Meet them. They're beautiful. I've met so many good souls there. There are so many signs of hope. Yeah, you're right.

That's true. It really is. That's true. There are so many signs of hope. And these good kids at these good schools with good adults who understand the thing we're trying to form for our Catholic schools. It's almost like it's like when you show if somebody had grown up with counterfeit money their entire life, poor, poorly made counterfeit money, and then they experienced the real

thing. You can then tell the difference. And it's like when these people who are raised in perhaps broken homes or broken towns or whatever, experience the real thing and they taste and see the goodness of truth. That's right. You just want more of it. They can transform a soul. There's an interesting quote my wife read to me today and I can't remember but it's

so important right now is that something about a deformed soul when they're encountered with the truth, it's very off-putting. I think it was Aquinas that said something like this. But I remember thinking when my daughter, Tommy applied to the school and they sent communication out, it was so honest about the program was that most people conditioned in the modern school

would be revolted by it. Yeah. And then you go there and you see it is just as advertised. It's not the spa house of ill-repeated experience you get at most colleges. It's not the spa, house of ill-repeated experience you get at most colleges, it's the opposite. And for me, that's what makes it so beautiful, but the kids love it too. Once they accustom themselves to that inverted order, if that makes sense. And unfortunately, there are very few schools like that. I count Thomas Aquinas College among them.

When I went to UD, the spirit on UD is actually really beautiful. I've heard great things about UD. We went to Steubenville today. What was your experience at Franciscan? Well, I've only been there today with you and then I went with you a few months back. So I haven't been there very much but I loved, we went to that outdoor mass and obviously you got great kids and I met and talked to a couple kids and it was joyful. Joyful. Nothing like a modern public secular university, right? Where an old man goes on campus and you're very suspicious or whatever. The kids today came up to us, talked to us, reached out. Very communicable, very intelligent, articulate.

I love Father Dave. He's at the helm of Franciscan and I got a great deal of respect for him. You know we had Jordan Peterson here recently? Wow. I didn't know that. I went and watched him give a lecture. But Father Dave got up. Well, first of all, here's a funny story about about Father Dave and Jordan Peterson. They were walking to this chapel. Did you ever go to that?

I don't know how they pronounce it. Port, Paunch Port. There's a port. We got the port. It's a replica of the church that St. Francis rebuilt in Assisi. I think it was Assisi. That's not the way we went to. OK, we to the port. It's a replica of the church that St. Francis rebuilt in Assisi. I think it was Assisi. That's not the way to. OK, we didn't go. It's beautiful.

Actually, this one, it's usually has perpetual adoration. OK, we'll go there. So Father Dave is walking Jordan Peterson to this to this chapel. He says we have perpetual adoration here. And what do we mean by that? Well, Catholics believe that, you know, the Eucharist is not just a symbol. And Jordan Peterson stopped him and that? Well, Catholics believe that, you know, the Eucharist is not just a symbol. And Jordan Peterson stopped him and said, Well, what's wrong with a symbol?

And like, I don't know, maybe I would have got a little tongue tied. But Father Dave said, well, maybe nothing. But I think it's a better thing that we could have a symbol of Jordan Peterson here today or we could have we can have you anywhere. Fair point. Oh, my God. Go. But I tell you, Father Dave did such a good job because Jordan Peterson here today. Or we could have you. Or we could have you, and he went, fair point. I was like, oh, that's really good. Excellent, excellent. But I tell you, Father Dave did such a good job because Jordan Peterson gave a lecture, and then there was a little interview back and forth,

and I have never been so proud. He was a priest in the best possible sense. He didn't try to match him in his psychology jargon. He didn't shrink from him like he is the famous guy. He didn't interrupt him. He was very patient as Jordan Peterson gave long good answers. And he also proclaimed Jesus Christ to Jordan Peterson, but not in an annoying like, what are you doing? This is very kind of offensive kind of way.

You know what I mean? The offensive is the wrong way, but like wrong word maybe. But like it's kind of inappropriate to just like start like calling him to repentance in front of people. He didn't do that. But he he he he was a priest. It was beautiful. And then after he had finished, Father Dave invited us,

I'll just kind of extend our hand and offer a prayer. And we had this glorious choir that was singing like, it was polyphony. And we just, we prayed over Jordan Peterson. It was beautiful. That is beautiful. So I love Franciscan. I mean, they have like three masses a day and they're always packed with kids.

Oh, so good. Yeah. Today was packed outside. There were tons of kids packed and then you've got confessions every I think it's Tuesday and Thursday night and good luck. I mean, it's packed. Is it packed? I bring my kids there and we got to line up for an hour just to kind of just to kind of

get there and just to have my kids exposed to these young beautiful people who love Christ. It's really great. That wasn't meant to be an ad for Francis. No, I'll make an ad for it. I get to meet Father Dave tomorrow. Oh, good. I have an appointment and it's the end of the year, busy as can be, and the good man, the good priest took out 10 minutes for me tomorrow and I just contacted him two days ago.

That's how humble he must be. He loves Jesus Christ. Obviously, obviously. When you're with him. That's always a great sign. So I can't wait to meet him tomorrow and get to know a little bit more. He led mass today and it was beautiful.

I got some background into how they dealt with the whole COVID thing. It was beautiful. Just honest and forthcoming. The spirit, the charism is is really vibrant. Yeah So they're that activity day with how many people were out there? Oh, so cool. What was that? So I guess they're about to do exams. Yeah, and so they had a last hurrah So we celebrated Holy Mass and they had a ton of inflatables

ziplines Concert yeah, it's just Zip lines, food, concert. Yeah. It's just beautiful. It was something to behold. Just human. Human, charismatic, holy, faithful, open. I mean, I just thought there were thousands of people.

There's a lot of signs of hope. Yeah, there's a lot of signs of hope. And there's one more school. I find myself becoming accidentally more and more hopeful. Really? I'm not intending to. If anything, I'm intending to become more and more

pessimistic. But I can't help myself. I just see signs of hope everywhere. Well, clearly you haven't been in the public schools. Yeah. No, no, I'm with you. I think you're right. There's such signs of hope. You know the Cardinal Newman Society, they have a list of 15 of these schools, Steubenville's on it, and I think that list could potentially grow. And the list is supposed to be about schools that have a faithful Catholic identity. The more we have of those the better. So I'm hopeful with you Matt. I really am. Cool. Where are we at time wise? We're not just past three hours. We

just beat the three hour period. It's amazing. Okay. All right so how many more do you want to do? I want to do two more and that's it. I draw the line at three more hours. Five hours. In seven hours, we're done. I'm calling it a day. Any, I mean, to those who have hung on to the end here, I feel like we should, we should take a few questions. Yes, anything, anything. I'm ready to wrap it up when you are and. Feel free to.

Yeah, my time with you, Matt, I just feel like I can never, never get enough of just enjoying your good company. I love the way you draw people in and you're're magnanimous and I love that about you. That's nice. It's a real sign of your own virtue that my kids love you. My kids love you. They're like, oh my gosh, Mr. Steve is coming.

They're so excited. I think it's a testament to them. And they're excited about you though because of the right things. They said, we sat down and we had like a three hour conversation about, you take them seriously. It's a three hour conversation about that. You take them seriously. It's a beautiful thing when kids feel they're being taken seriously. It's important to take kids seriously.

They're human. It really is. Absolutely. If you could go back and give young Steve Rommelsberg any parenting advice. I don't know. I don't know your story. You know, your children are older. What sort of what would you say? I mean, I would say when you're five, would you please convert to to the Catholic faith when you're five? Yeah, please. Oh, whatever. I don't if you're zero

I you know become a Catholic not to make you yeah, I would tell myself When did you convert to Catholic I was 40 I didn't know that yes. I did you didn't know that I knew that yeah Yeah, it's a it's a tragic story. It's in a beautiful one It's a testament to God's grace and forgiveness to take in a sinner look. Oh, it's a tragic story, and a beautiful one. It's a testament to God's grace and forgiveness to take in a sinner. A little closer. It's a testament. I mean, it's a miracle.

The thing I'm most grateful for in my life is that God called me. And so if I did it again, I'd be a faithful Catholic man from the beginning. And that would be my advice is embrace the truth. Just seek the truth, embrace the truth, and become a good man. Were you always this optimistic?

Is this just your temperament? Because you really strike me as someone who's very- I was a shockingly unhappy soul till I was 40. Really? Miserable, antagonistic. Is that right? Oh yeah. Did your wife notice a big change?

Oh my gosh, yeah. Was she Catholic? No, we both came into the church. Well, she was a cradle Catholic. And then she just had yearnings to come back the very time God was calling me to come in. God called me from the beginning. I just said no for about 20 years, maybe 40.

But Faith and I came in at the same, I mean, we were at the same mass being confirmed. But she came back to it and I came to it. It was the best thing I ever could have done in my life. And it made me want to become a good husband and a good father. And it absolutely radically changed my relationships with my daughter.

My oldest was 14 by the time I caught a glimpse what a Catholic man ought to be. Said, dad, you did a 360. She thought it was such a radical change. And she didn't like it because I was a cool rock and roll surfer dad. And then when I was a Catholic dad, now we're best friends.

And she's a faithful Catholic, my daughter Kenya, and she's about to have our second granddaughter, and they take little Kailani Grace to Mass every week. And she married a good faithful Catholic man named Brandon, my favorite son-in-law, my very favorite. Only? Yeah, it's my only buddy, my favorite son-in-law, my very favorite. Only? Yeah, it's my only, but I really love him and his family, Steve and Melissa Sanchez, I just love these guys.

So I think the fact that for Kenya, I was a Catholic dad for those years where she found her soulmate, and that the soulmate's good, the family's good, and to me, you can't buy that because the track I'd taken her on was just misery. It was, Susan? Oh absolutely. I ruined my children's lives, God helped me redeem that. And so I can say since becoming Catholic I've increasingly been a better dad and a better

husband and a better man and as bad as I was I give all the glory to God and I'm just so grateful to not be on that track I was as a secular humanist. What's your advice to parents out there who think they've blown it with their kids? Because I don't mean to read too much into what you've shared, but it sounds like you're saying you made a lot of really bad, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of bad mistakes maybe. Yeah. And then how do you, you know, then how do you, as they say, live with that? How do you forgive yourself or how do you seek forgiveness? What advice do you have for parents out there

who are just maybe beating themselves up? Doesn't do you any good to beat yourself up, but 100% count on God. If you count on yourself to make the changes, just forget it, forget it. Have you met you? You're all fucked. Do you even know?

I'm talking to you, I'm giving myself advice here, but I would never rely on myself for anything again. It was such a mistake. And it's weird because my first worry is I thought I had it all together. And now that I realize I don't have anything together, I have it so much more together than I did, even though I have nothing together, I'll let God keep it together. It's just such a joy to let the truth of God guide my life. Yeah, so I don't mean to get too personal because this is about your family,

but how does, how, trying to think of how to phrase this because I don't want to pry, but suppose a parent raises their children in the wrong way, maybe their children, because of that, I mean, you're not solely to blame, but a parent may be somewhat to blame, begins making really bad decisions that you disagree with.

You come back into the faith. How do you love your child? And I don't know your children's story, so I'm not projecting here, but how do you love your children in that? Does that make sense? Yeah. Because I think some parents take the tactic

of always bringing up their faults. Yeah. Always talking about how they need to change. Yeah, that's a huge mistake. And they're not really at peace. Right. You know. It's a huge mistake.

It's really interesting. The work that God has done in my life and the life of my children is exponentially more profound than anything I did or didn't do. And this is interesting. I know a lot of really faithful Catholic parents whose kids have chosen many worse things than my kids.

And I've seen this, so it's almost a form of arrogance to think that you're responsible for the choices your kid makes, but you are responsible for the things you choose. So I think I'd really refrain from judging by appearances. And if you have indictments about yourself, make sure they're about your actions, not about theirs. You can't infer from another person's irresponsible or immoral actions that you've done something

immoral, even if there is a connection. That's that's between you and God. But it's really important to say if I've done something wrong, pray to God to rectify that thing and let God take care of that other person. We live in an age where we think we're morally culpable for the actions of others, we're not. But as parents, we are responsible for forming our kids in truth. And you can only do what you can do. And it's so good.

If you rely on yourself, which I did for many years, it's the biggest mistake. And it leads into all kinds of neuroses and psychological problems How do you know that you are either relying on yourself or God? But can you feel that or is it a miserable you're relying on yourself? Whoa, if you're if you're peaceful, even though you've messed everything up you're relying on God. Oh, it's that simple I think that is so profound. Yeah Jacques Philippe, spiritual writer, I've quoted him often.

He says, before we're Christian, we often want the wrong things in the wrong way. We become Christians and then we want the right things, but in the wrong way. And I think that applies to our parenting very often because we parent our children and we want what's best for them, but we want it in an anxious sort of way. And I just, I know I keep saying this to my, forgive me listeners, if you're getting bored of me saying this, but if I could go back and give young parent,

Matt Fratt advice, I would say, just relax if you can. And I think the way to relax is to come to accept the love of God. Because if I can accept the love of God, then I can accept myself in Him. And then I won't be so uptight and so frantic. So like today, you and I went to Holy Mass, it was outdoors. My son Peter, he's not paying attention, he's playing with the grass. He should be. That's really cool. But I think maybe 15 years ago, I would have been like, kneel down, sit up, listen to what the priest

is saying, because I thought that's what it meant. But I think that that was more of a reflection of my own self-hatred might be strong of a word, but unacceptance or false notion that you're responsible for the actions of others. So to be a good model there, which you are, is more important than getting Peter to do what looks good. That's right. Yeah. So someone was just in here the other day, I forget the guest, but they said, like, let the whole, like, Jose Maria Escobar said something to the effect of let, let, let your family

rosary be like a warm fire that the children wish to come near to. Yeah. So I think for so long in my family, it was I wanting to get it right, damn it, because that's how I'm acceptable to God. Kneel down and we're going to say you're not saying the prayers, say that. You know, I was just just who wants to be with somebody like that? Whereas last night, you know, my wife, she was in it. She was she was in Atlanta.

And so I'm with the kids and I say, hey, we're going to pray the rosary. It'd be great if you could stay for at least a decade. If you want to go after that, that's fine. And it was just very casual. I sat down and I prayed. They stayed for the whole thing. But if they and some of them got up, got drinks of water, it's fine. Sure. Sure. You're just creating this like dad's praying the rosary. Yeah, that's so much more attractive than sit down and bloody pray it. That's right. Yeah, I've had I don't know if this is appropriate, but I've had this fruit. I've known this, the advice I give and I don't follow it, of course, you know, because

we want to control things. But I've done this thing where in the midst of turmoil with my family, I have two choices. I can either try and control it, I can pray about and be the great model. And recently, when I've been able to just get out of my own arrogance and pray about things, I am blown away by the work the Holy Spirit does in the lives of our family. So when I have issues, I pray about these things, I just can't believe what's happened lately.

Letting up like you say, instead of, you know, I really in the beginning was rigid, reacting to my lack of faith by being Wanting the right things in the wrong way, man I did that and my wife let me know and and I needed help from other people to say hey ease up zealot, you know Because it's it's it's a really strong temptation in this world where we think we're in charge of things that we're not in charge of I've been noticing that in my own kind of body L, just I feel that I'm trying to control a situation.

Yeah. And I've become more cognizant of that. That's good. I was having a conversation the other day with a friend who came over and he was saying something very interesting. And then my wife brought up an anecdote that I've heard a thousand times because we've been married a while and I just I don't know I don't I didn't have the time to hear it. Can we hear just I I was a bit rude I don't think I was too rude I don't think anybody noticed but I was like oh that's really that's yeah thank hey what we and I kind of quickly but this this desire to control everything to control how my children behave to control how the house looks all the time right I even noticed it in my posture you know. Interesting. So I've been in a conversation I I don't don't like it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's then you veered off. Yeah. As opposed to sort of giving myself over as it were to this experience. Like going to Holy Mass today and it's outside and I'm kneeling on the wet grass and I can kind of hear the priest, but he's a bit away. And that's OK. There's something about submitting to the providence of God. But I'm saying this as if I know them right right, but I'm really asking your advice Yeah, yeah, you it's so easy for guys like us to commit to the the error of perfectionism or thinking that it relies on us

That's really the key You know giving up giving up the control and just saying for us to be that faithful servant of Christ, that's the best we can do. And whatever that means, it begins with submission to the will of God, right? And when you submit to the will of God, then and only then can you act properly. And that's a state of being, not a state of doing.

So it's really easy to get distracted by the appearances of things. Yeah, it is. And that's what really throws us off. Even the appearance of our children. Yes. I mean, if I if you were to look at me as a 15 year old kid, you'd be like he's lost. Yeah.

And I've got so many friends like this, you know, I've got friends on the same street as me who teach at Franciscan who would do an LSD and were Buddhists and you know, now they're faithful Catholics. You just you can't really judge what the Lord's doing. You can only you can only be faithful and then repent when you're not and then trust in the Lord. But yeah, because I think the opposite is true, too, where. What we want is our children to love what's good, not to act in a way that it makes it seem like they love

What is good like you can fake that? Yeah, but I don't like that the modern system cultivates that kind of faking The automaton response. So I'm doing what dad wants me to I'm doing what teacher wants me to yeah This is a really dangerous thing But but in the prayer life in faith we do that I think we can do that as parents easy Oh, easy, easy, easily. And it's sad because as much as we're saying to give up that control of the environment, there are things that we are called to do as fathers to help lay the groundwork for this kind of growth and formation. So it's really a hard thing to disentangle the things we really ought to do from the things we ought not to do because they're all intertwined. And then also to realize that what we

ought to do, we're not going to do perfectly. That's right. That's right. You know, probably. Yeah, and not hold ourselves to that standard of perfection. That's why it's so difficult because you hear things like if you say something like, you know, you're a father, you've got a bloody responsibility, and then you just lay on the self-hatred, you start flagellating yourself, because you know that even if you try it might go south or pear-shaped and you screwed it up again and that's right that's right but not to let the great be the enemy of the good I suppose. Well it's really tough yeah you know your responsibility as a dad is great you know yeah but ultimately

it's it's submitting to the will of God and doing his will and not your own and I think that's the hardest thing because to do his will is at first to not act, but to be and then to act following submission to his will. And a lot of times I think we wanna act before we submit to the will, even if we're pretty sure what the right thing is. And that gets very complicated, it's very difficult.

But in the end, the only way I've known I've ever done the right thing is by its fruits. It's the only way it's very difficult. But in the end, the only way I've known I've ever done the right thing is by its fruits. It's the only way I've ever known. And we shouldn't judge by appearances. You know, you sent me a text yesterday and it was so beautiful that I wanna read it for people. And I wanna read it for a reason because I think it's so important

that we be encouraging to each other and that we be encouraging to our children. I think anyone listening knows think it's so important that we be encouraging to each other. And that would be encouraging to our children. I think anyone listening knows what it's like to have somebody nag at them to criticize them continually. We also know how unhelpful that is, even to bring about the result that the nagger would have us bring about, you know. But I wrote to you because you were coming to to here and my wife was going to be in Atlanta. Now she gets back tomorrow.

And I was saying to you, maybe don't have your wife come out because I don't want her to come out and Cameron won't be here. It's a long trip and I'd hate for her to feel like it's a wasted trip. Right. All right. And then I wrote to you and I'm like, hey, I really didn't mean I don't want to hear. I just mean I don't want her to be bored. That's right. And gosh, what did you say?

You said, quote, I'm quoting you. I got your message this morning. We took your words in the very spirit you intended them and your beautiful kids are like you. They project their goodness onto the world with the kind of force that can only flow from innocence and grace. So it's beautiful thing to say to somebody. So lovely. I meant it. It's true.

But it just got me thinking because I see the way you interact with my kids while you're here and it's just like just to be encouraging, like how many kids don't have advocates. Right. There are people who demand that they submit to their agendas or they criticize them. And we obviously don't want to just make out. We don't want to make our children just sort of, uh, I don't know. We shouldn't be afraid of conflict. Yeah. Or ambassadors of our, our own parenting, right? I'm not sure what you mean. I think we,

I think we feel like our kids are a reflection of us and they are in a way, but when we care about that too much, we can try to impose on them things. And I spent enough time with can try to impose on them things. I spent enough time with their kids to really understand them. We were in Corpus Christi for a week with them, right? And they, wow, that's when I got to know them. There's no secrets there.

I think it's- It's so important that we be encouraging to our kids. Yeah, I agree. I agree, as brothers in friendship, but it's also important that we tell the truth. And when I said that was true, and people don't need to meet your kids twice to realize that. It's pretty obvious.

Wow. Are we still recording? Oh yeah. We're still on? Oh, it's not over? Okay. Any questions or comments? Not too much.

A lot of strange kind of off topic stuff, but we have one from Rewire the West. Hey, you boy. Oh yeah, that's Evan, Evan Amato. So Evan's asking, for both Matt and Steve, what's one book that you're dying to read but haven't gotten to yet? Oh my gosh.

I'll tell you a book that I wanna say I've read. And this is a line from GK Chesterton. He said, the classics are those books that people wish to say that they've read, but which nobody wants to read. Yes. He's joking, I think. But I try. I picked up. I bought the I bought War and Peace and I read the first

several chapters and very much enjoyed it. Yeah. But stopped. So I don't know. I don't know if I'll go back to that. I have this August coming up and I hope to take the whole month off the internet again. Yeah. And read kind of thinking I want to read the brothers again. Oh really?

Yeah. Oh my goodness. I love the brothers. Okay. Or maybe something else, but I just love Dostoevsky so much. If people are interested, one thing I often suggest to people if they're intimidated by these great authors, is to read some of the short stories, because you feel like you've accomplished something. Right. Get through it.

And I have never been so moved by a book than Dostoevsky's novella, A Gentle Creature. Have you ever read that? I haven't read it. I would strongly recommend people read that book, a gentle creature. It broke my heart. It just awesome. What's a book you haven't read that you want to read? War and Peace.

That's the one you said you read the first seven chapters. Even like sci-fi. I'd like to read Ender's Game. You ever read Ender's Game? Yes, actually. I listened to it. Yeah. Was it any good?

Well, I was realizing as I was reading it that my sister spoiled the whole book for me when I was like... Oh, totally. I remembered it. I remember the whole thing. Well, that she spoiled while I was listening. It's good. It's a good book though. She spoiled it. It's not too long either. Oh my gosh. Well, I have to say, Evan, that's an unfair question just like the last time. If you just come to my house and look at my bookshelf, I could probably point out 100 books

that I wanna read now that I haven't gotten to. I suffer that thing of buying the great books that I'll probably never get to. So I wanna answer that. I've been reading this book by Dr. Burquist on all his collected writings that was gifted to me by a very, very special friend who's one of our advisors on our advisor committee who must not be named at the moment. But Dr. Burskwis

was one of the founders and one of the original writers of the Blue Book at Thomas Aquinas College. And there's profound depth and wisdom in all his writing. So I really want to get through that. I've read the first few essays and I'm trying to get through it. It's like your Doskieski's War and peace. We're trying to all right. Tolstoy more peace trying to get through that. So Evan unfair question. What's another book? There's so many.

Oh my goodness. Can I tell you a book I'm reading right now, which I wouldn't recommend necessarily tell me it's called John dies in the end. That's what's called. It's totally modernist and my cynical and hilarious. John dies in the end. I'm going to play the prologue for you as soon as this is done. Oh, cynical and hilarious. John Doar is in the end. I'm going to play the prologue for you as soon as this is done. Oh, please. And Evan, in the next minute,

could you write down the one book you want to read that you haven't just so we can? I just want to get an idea of a good answer to that question. So. Evan's a great soul. He's he's digging into Dante and all these other great classical authors. He wants to rewire the West to make it traditional. So what a great guy. What a guy. Honestly, what a guy.

Something I keep saying to people is I'm always like introducing people to each other, like I can't wait for you to meet Jacob. I want to meet with Jacob. Jacob doesn't know you yet. When Jacob meets you and chats with you, he will realize that the world is better than he thought it was because he didn't know you existed. And you'll think the same thing. I'll think that for sure. You'll think that when you meet him, you'll be like, wow, the world is better than he thought it was. Cause he didn't know you existed. And you'll think the same thing. I'll think that for sure.

You'll think that when you meet him, you'll be like, wow, the world's better. Oh, good. It's beautiful and beautiful people to meet. There's so many good people. Does he live here and work at Stupenville? You will love him. Okay.

I can't wait. We're gonna get together tomorrow. Oh, we can smoke hookah together. Let's smoke hookah tomorrow. You've never smoked hookah before? I've never smoked hookah before. We're gonna do that. Okay.

We're doing that tomorrow. Yeah, I bought a hookah for just the time of it. Yeah, it's out there. Okay, we're doing it. But I don't ever wanna smoke it on here because I'm afraid people think I'm doing marijuana. Right, and we're not doing that. No.

Good. Yeah, not on set. Not on set. Yeah, or in private. There's no need. All right, well, everybody who is watching, I wanna invite you one last time if you would consider joining our community on locals, locals is a free speech platform

that allows us to say stuff without kicking us off. I do daily podcasts over on locals. Good morning coffee. So every morning at about 830 AM Eastern Standard Time, we chat about theological and philosophical things. Tomorrow morning at 830, I'm going to be pounding espresso and talking about we're going to read from Aquinas's article in the Sumer about whether or not God is self. God's existence is self evident. You don't actually have to pay anything to join locals. Locals is kind of like, say, another social media thing like Twitter or Facebook.

Do you just have to sign up to it to get access to these videos? Of course, you can support us on locals and when you do, you get a bunch of free stuff in return. But I really don't know how much longer YouTube will allow this kind of speak. We'll see. Maybe these big social media platforms realizing that they just can't keep whacking every mole down. And it might be better just to allow decent free speech. So I don't know. But go to click that link to join the community

there because it's really beautiful. Matt frad dot locals dot com. Check it out. Anything and then check out all of Steve's wonderful resources, which are also in the link below. Yes links below Neil put them there. You have a newsletter. I have a newsletter coming out City of Truth a podcast called

finding the lost. I'm looking for teachers for the St. Thomas College. And one more thing I wanted to say is this, to culminate all of this, to look at Lizzie Warren, the real missing link here is that we no longer have civil debate. I love what you're doing with the local thing. We need to sit down and talk with people

who don't agree with us. And it's a really hard thing. I'm actually having a guy on my little podcast who is pro CRT. I don't think he's gonna appreciate talking to me, but I'm gonna try to, he's a professor in Florida, I'm gonna try to bring him in and have a conversation about critical race theory, and I'm gonna try to bridge the gap.

It probably won't work out, but I'm still gonna try. And I think we should. Let me know when that comes out so I can share it. That sounds fascinating. I really wanna try to, I'm gonna have him answer the basic questions, and I'm not gonna be provocative, but I really want him to hopefully help us understand

how we might be able to begin to bridge the gap with civil debate on things we disagree about. I think that's maybe the next step for all of us is, how do we, like you said, how do we talk to people with whom we disagree about. I think that's maybe the next step for all of us is how do we, like you said, how do we talk to people with whom we disagree? I don't know how we talk to Lizzie. I just don't know. But we ought to contemplate how. Yeah, I agree. So you didn't like that cigar? I did. I liked it. It burned out. I was going to light it again. I was just a little, little embarrassed to try it again.

Well, you can, after we end, you can light it and I'll play the prologue to John Dies in the end. Exactly right, that's what we're doing. All right, thanks everybody, God bless. Thank you very much. Thanks Neil, thanks Shayla, thanks.