Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 247 | Gaslighting, Virtue-Signaling & Social Justice

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

Gaslighting, virtue-signaling, and social justice make up the concoction of choice for the modern leftist ideology, and we're seeing it imbibed daily. Today we discuss what these terms mean and look like, how they're damaging, and why Christians should avoid them altogether. Today's Sponsor: Objective Wellness offers targeted solutions — like better sleep, firmer skin, or a healthy immune system! Go to https://www.objectivewellness.com/ with promo code 'ALLIE' to get 20% off your first order!

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relato-Wall. Happy Wednesday. I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. We've got a fun. I think it's fun. I mean, talking about politics is fun for me. So I think this is a fun episode today. We are going to be talking about two trends, very prevalent. in our current political and news-centric conversations, and that is gaslighting virtue signaling and how these things go hand in hand and how they relate to social justice and leftism as an ideology in general. And then we will talk about how we as Christians in our behavior and the things we pursue and the way that we act should oppose these things that are not only divisive

and destructive, but are also sinful. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality.

We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty overhyped. and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show

right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Okay, so gaslighting, virtue signaling, social justice. What to all of these things have to do with one another? Why are we talking about these things? Why is it important? Well, I am going to tell you, first, as we always do, let us define our terms.

So to gaslight, if you are on Twitter, which God bless you if you're not, honestly, every day I debate whether or not I am going to delete my Twitter because it is such a cesspool. But it's also a good tool to be able to stay in the know and to be able to state your opinion and to insert your voice into the public arena. And hopefully you're hoping against hope that maybe you are making some kind of difference by putting out what you believe to be truth. but for the most part it truly is cesspool which drags you down into the dregs of its misery. And this term, Gaslight, is a turn that is used a lot on that site. And what it means is it is making someone feel crazy for feeling a certain way by telling them that they have no reason to be angry or upset or frustrated when in fact there is in reality a reason for them to be angry. and upset and frustrated. So let me give you an example of this that has nothing to do with politics in the news. So for example, this is what abusive boyfriends and girlfriends often do to their

significant others. So because most of you who are listening and watching are women, I will use the scenario of a guy doing this to a girl. So say a guy is cheating on a girl and as girls, you probably have friends who have been in this scenario. He starts doing things that the girlfriend finds suspicious. He is staying out late without texting her back. He's keeping his phone with him at all times, like won't let her even touch his phone acting despondent in their conversations. Generally, he has changed his attitudes and behavior and whatever. And as it turns out, behind the scenes, he is actually cheating on her. And the girlfriend is picking up on these behaviors and she starts to wonder, hey, is he being unfaithful? So maybe she starts asking questions.

maybe even she comes right out and says, hey, are you cheating on me? And the boyfriend, rather than just denying it, he does what is called gaslighting. He says, oh my gosh, babe, you're so paranoid. You're so crazy. You're psycho. I don't have any suspicious behavior. I'm not doing anything different. That is gaslighting.

To take an example of how this is happening right now in the news, and this is not the subject that we're spending the entire, the entire, episode on today, but this is just an example of gas lighting. This is happening with the Kavanaugh versus Joe Biden coverage debate that's happening online and in the news. So as we have talked about a few times now, the media feverishly and without discretion cover the Kavanaugh saga as if Blazy Ford's accusations were absolute fact. Much of the same media are now tiptoeing around the issue. Not every journalist, but a lot of journalists are tiptoeing around the issue like the Washington Post, the New York Times, and they are giving Biden the benefit of the doubt, writing headlines

about conservatives' reaction to the accusations, casting doubt on Biden's accuser, calling for due process, demonstrating all of the hesitants and the investigative skepticism that they should have been using during the Cabot confirmation. That is the point that conservatives are trying to make. Not that we should automatically believe Biden's accuser, but that we should have the same standard of skepticism for all accusations. So conservatives have pointed this out that, hey, this is a double standard. This is pretty obviously a double standard. And then we get this lovely tweet from a journalist Kirsten Powers of CNN. She's a columnist also for USA Today. She says, as I point out in my column today, there is no double standard. And the way Kavanaugh was treated versus Biden, a few Dems called for

immediate withdrawal of nomination, but the prevailing view was that the accusations should be heard and investigated. Same should be done with read. Now, this is just not true. This is what not only do we call gaslighting, and I'll explain that, but it's also what you call a memory hauling something. So if you have never read 1984, we are going to read it in my women's book club that I have online, but also you should just read it whenever you can. You should pick it up if you've already read it, and just give yourself a refresher. There's something called a memory hole in 1984. They shoot, they shoot newspapers down this memory hole, never to be seen again.

So you don't know what the news was yesterday. So if yesterday you thought you read in the newspaper that we are at war with your Asia, the next day the headline could say that you are at war with East Asia and you would have no idea whatsoever, no history book, no literature, no newspaper to tell you otherwise. and so you really never know what was reality yesterday versus what is reality today. So that is something that a lot of journalists, unfortunately, including Kirsten Powers, is attempting to do with its whole Kavanaugh thing. They are trying to memory whole what the reaction was so they can say they're not holding a double standard now.

But the truth is that every single Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee at the time of the whole Kavanaugh thing, and most Democrats beyond that committee, both in the House and the Senate, immediately called for his nomination to be. revoked. They immediately and unconditionally believed not only Christine Blazy Ford, not just gave her the benefit of the doubt, not just said, hey, you know, it's probably rare that a victim is going to falsely accuse someone, especially this publicly. They didn't just say that. They completely unconditionally believed her, but they also believed the accusations of Julie Sweatnik, who took back her own accusation, and Deborah Ramirez, whose story of Kavanaugh flashing people at a party when he was in high school was never corroborated

and was even contradicted. They ran with these stories feverishly full esteem ahead. Kiersen Powers, this woman who wrote the tweet that said there's no double standard. She herself wrote for USA Today in 2018 that while Kavanaugh should be forgiven, he shouldn't be on the Supreme Court. She said, if the person who sexually assaulted me and my friend turned into an outstanding citizen, good father and husband do i think that he should be put on the supreme court no i don't kirsten power says we should send teenage boys the message that they can we should we cannot send teenage boys the message that they can sexually assault someone and as long as they eventually become good citizens we will elevate them to one of the most important positions in our society we cannot send the

message to teenage girls that attacks on their bodies don't matter because the perpetrator is young like them. She then wrote on May 1st, 2020 for USA Today, regarding the Biden allegation, you can believe, read, that's Tara Reid, and vote Biden. All right, so let's try to square this. Her reasoning for Kavanaugh not sitting on the Supreme Court was that we need to make sure that teenage boys get the right message, that they know that their actions matter, and that teenage girls know that they should be respected. So why doesn't that same reasoning extend to Biden? According to this logic, By staying that by staying in the race and by voting for him, would we not be telling men that as long as they're powerful and it happened a long time ago, that they can get away with whatever they want and run for president with impunity?

And are we not telling women by Kirsten Powers's logic that their stories aren't to be believed if they're perpetrator as a Democrat? or is for some reason. Tara reads story less believable than Blazy Fords. For reasons that honestly escape unbiased logic, this is what is called a double standard. Just own that. She also reportedly deleted all of her anti-Cavanaugh tweets. If there wasn't a double standard, then why would you need to delete them?

This is what gaslighting is. Gaslighting is making you feel like you are crazy or wrong. wrong for your reaction by telling you the thing you're reacting to doesn't actually exist when in fact it does this is a tactic unfortunately it does happen on the right and the left but it is so prevalent on the left because this is what the ideology is built on and we'll get more into that in just a second now that you know about it you will see it more and more so here's another example of this happening as you know conservatives and republican governors who are most of them are in in favor of strategically reopening the economy.

So people can get back to work and provide for their families and can get the kind of non-COVID related medical treatment that they need. They are being accused. We as conservatives are being accused of sacrificing people. Sacrificing people for a 401 case, sacrificing people to get a haircut, sacrificing the elderly.

The Washington Post wrote a story titled, Many Parts of America have already decided to sacrifice the elderly. The article argues that states that have lax rules or are opening parts of their state back up are sacrificing old people. The Atlantic had a similar piece titled Georgia's Experiment in Human Sacrifice talking about Governor Kemp starting to strategically and slowly allow businesses to open back up. And just a reminder, none of these governors, none of these government leaders are forcing businesses to open up or forcing individuals to go outside. It's about, okay, we've got to have some level of mutual trust here in order to function as a society and in order for you to be able to provide for your family. That's what is happening here.

But all over liberal media and Twitter conservatives are being accused of being heartless, of not caring about the most vulnerable because we believe in strategically opening things back up while still practicing or while still protecting the elderly and the vulnerable. It's like saying this is a form of gaslighting because it's like saying you are crazy for wanting to open back up. You are completely irrational. You're illogical for wanting to do this. Don't you see you're a bad person for wanting to sacrifice all these people? But the reality is, again, that we're not. Abuse is up. Suicide is up.

Depression is up. Loneliness, anxiety. Like I said, people can't get their surgeries and cancer treatments. People can't provide for their families. People need work for both provision and purpose. lockdowns have fatalities too. So we're not crazy. Of course, we care about the vulnerable and the sick and the dying and I think that people should take responsibility and still distance and all of that. But none of the people, by the way, calling us crazy, can tell us what the actual solution is. What will an indefinite lockdown do? When do we open up? And why do we open up? What exactly are we waiting for?

So if not right now, since the curve is already flat, the hospital system is not overwhelmed. In fact, lots of nurses have been laid off furloughed because hospitals around the country are across the country are empty. People can't stay inside until a vaccine is developed. We don't even know if that's going to be effective. We don't know when that's going to happen. It could be two years from now. But the people that are saying that we are crazy, that we are irrational, that we are heartless and lack compassion. don't have a solution themselves. This is just a way to gaslight, to make you feel immoral and insane

and yes, to virtue signal, which we will get to that in a second. All of this, by the way, brought to you by the same people who are for abortion and assisted suicide. So I'm not really interested in taking cues from people who think that you should be able to dismember a defenseless baby inside the womb on compassion, not taking cues on compassion from those people. Meanwhile, And this is just another part of this. Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo of New York issued an order on March 25th, according to the New York Post, that elderly coronavirus patients still positive with the virus must be accepted into nursing homes. That has been disastrous and absolutely deadly for the New York elderly population. According to the New York Times, at least 14 New York nursing homes have had more than 25 virus deaths. And that was reported mid-April, but no conservatives who want to slowly and strategically open things back up for the sake of people's lives and livelihoods.

We are the ones who are heartless and are sacrificing the elderly on the altar of our 401K. Right. Here's another example of this gaslighting that is just so prevalent right now. John Favreau of the Favro, I don't know how you pronounce his last name, of the left wing, angst podcast, Potsave America, tweeted this the other day. He said, I can't imagine being in a political party. I just can't even say this without laughing. He said, I can't imagine being in a political party that has an entire propaganda network at its disposal.

Do GOP staffers even prepare their bosses for Fox interviews? No hard questions, no gotchas, no follow-ups, nothing even remotely challenging. Oh my goodness. So this is a form of gaslighting making you a conservative feel crazy for thinking democrats have propaganda networks when in fact according to this person it's the republicans that do and democrats apparently apparently are all alone out there in the big bad journalistically rigorous world of mainstream media he goes on to say in a little tweet thread

that if msnbc is considered a democratic propaganda network he wants a different one okay great well you've got a wide array of choices here john favro you get to choose from a few. You can have CNN. You can have ABC who are totally ready to and willing and actually are right now bowing down to any part of the Democratic platform. Or I could interest you in some newspapers like the New York Times or the Washington Post. There's some online outlets like the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, like if you're feeling fun, or you could take a magazine like the New Yorker or Time or maybe you're looking for like a whole social media platform. Maybe you're looking for Twitter or Facebook or you can just go ahead and take all of Google. That includes

YouTube. Great. And just for good measure, you can have all of Hollywood do your bidding as well. So if you don't have the propaganda networks that you like, if MSNBC is cutting it for you, you've got a wide array of options to choose from. But no, apparently conservatives have one mainstream network that is somewhat sympathetic to Republicans and conservatism and it's labeled a preposterous propaganda machine. Okay, got it. So that is him trying to make you feel crazy for thinking that the media is biased towards the left, which of course, in fact, you are not. That is like the cheating boyfriend that we talked about at the beginning of this, accusing his girlfriend of cheating, of her being the one of cheating, when in fact she is not. That is this

form of gaslighting. And we see this kind of stuff constantly. being accused of the very thing the other side is doing it, being accused of overreacting or reacting or reacting wrongly altogether when our reaction, not all the time, but so many times, especially in the last few months, is in fact justified. This is exactly what happens when outlets like the Washington Post report, quote, conservatives pounce rather than on the thing on which we are pouncing, which is the actual story. So gaslighting is inextricably intertwined with virtue signaling, what is known as virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is a phrase that I hear a lot, but I'm not sure if everyone knows what it means.

It often can be the same thing as gaslighting, but it is slightly different. A virtue signal signal virtue. You're over there and you're standing up on the hill and you're like, I'm virtuous. You're signaling that you are virtuous. but there's no real virtue behind it. You were just saying something to make you look awesome, to make you look like a good person, but you saying it doesn't accomplish anything,

does it mean anything? There's no substance or action behind it, or you stated something really obvious that no one disagrees with and or maybe you don't even really truly agree with it and your actions actually belie your virtue signaling. So some examples, the U.S. women's soccer team refusing to go to the white, house after they won the World Cup. Virtue signal. That's not brave. It didn't accomplish anything.

It didn't actually do anything. That doesn't make anyone moral or virtuous. Sure, that's their prerogative and that's totally fine. But it wasn't courageous. It wasn't virtuous. It wasn't moral. They did it to signal their supposed virtue to the left wing world. There is a form of virtue signaling that is also not just meaningless, but totally hypocritical. So putting on a show of virtue while contradicting that show with their actions. So this hilarious thing happened with Andrew Cuomo. You might have heard on the news last week that, wow, New York City is doing this awesome thing. They're sanitizing the subways. And the media put this out there. Like we're all supposed to applaud, but we're kind of like, good? Maybe you should have done that. I don't know.

Maybe you should have been doing that for the last forever, but you especially should have done it eight week, eight weeks ago, six weeks ago, come on. Like, okay, and so now there's this picture of Andrew Cuomo. He is going out there and he is spraying down the subways with sanitizer. And the media is like, wow, this is the leader that we need. The left is like, gosh, Trump would never do this. Cuomo was a man of the people. This is amazing.

This is a virtue signal because it's not virtuous. He doesn't have to go out there and actually spray down the suburb. what would have actually made a difference is if he had allocated some funds and issued a directive to have that happen, I don't know, eight weeks ago, that would have made a huge difference. They should have been doing that every night. New York City never shut down the subway. And they're wondering why cases keep occurring, not to mention the fact, which we talked about in episode title Little Tyrants everywhere, their hospital system is a complete mess. The state of New York is a complete mess because of Cuomo's corruption, because of his lack of integrity, because of his mismanagement of the budget, and he is using this crisis as not just PR for his own reputation, but also to try to get as much federal money as possible to make up for the $4 million budget hole that he had created with his own irresponsibility, not to mention Mayor Bill de Blasio, the most incompetent mayor in the entire United States of America.

not to mention his own corruption and his own lack of leadership and his own total incompetence. We haven't even talked about him targeting the Jews because he is, I'm sorry, I don't know how to say this, but an anti-Semitic scumbag. The guy is just a scumbag. So virtue signaling. This is what Andrew Cuomo is doing by making, sanitizing the subways, this PR opportunity, this photo opportunity, when really, that's not virtuous at all. That looks virtuous, but in reality, what you should have done was have the subway sanitized a long time ago and you should have continuously had them sanitized. I mean, that's just crazy. And the leftist media just falls all over this guy. Here's another one. So she should have been included in our tiny tyrants or Little Tyrants Everywhere episode,

but I didn't know about this then. So Chicago mayor, Mayor Lightfoot, she does a speech and she says, If you have a party, we are going to arrest you. If you even talk about having a party, we also might at least track you down. Here is a little video for saying that. And this is how it's going to be. We will shut you down. We will cite you. And if we need to, we will arrest you and we will take you to jail, period.

There should be nothing unambiguous about that. Don't make us treat you like a criminal. But if you act like a criminal and you violate the law and you refuse to do what is necessary to save lives in the city in the middle of a pandemic, we will take you to jail. So she wants to seem really tough while by the way, so a mayor of Chicago, by the way, their gun death numbers are up from last year. So I'm wondering if she could maybe focus a little bit more on that. And here's just icing on top of the virtue signaling. cake for her because this is what she's doing. She's trying to seem really strong and virtuous. She went out and got her hair done a couple weeks ago. You know what her excuse was when media

thankfully reported on this? She said, well, you know, I'm a public figure and I need to look good and I take hygiene very seriously as opposed to all you peons who are just coughing and sneezing in people's faces. She takes her hygiene very seriously. This is what a virtue signaling is. It is also a little bit of a gaslight, making you feel crazy while she is the one that is doing crazy things. This is what it means to virtue signal. It is both meaningless and it is hypocritical. Bernie Sanders, this is another example. Anytime he talks about that capitalism is evil and rich and you're a bad person if you don't agree with that. Meanwhile, he has two more houses than most of us do and a lot more money than most of us do. He says things that don't have any formidable

principle underneath it and yet he gets thousands of likes on social media because twitter loves empty virtue signals they don't care at all about virtue and here's a great one here's a great example of virtue signaling from this week courtesy of representative ilhan omar she tweeted she tweeted she tweeted this that we should cancel rent and mortgage payments no stipulations no qualifications for that? No caveats. We should cancel all written mortgage payments. This is a huge, ginormous virtue signal because it is meaningless. It is worthless. It is counterproductive. It's not even actually virtuous or virtuous sounding. It is meant to signal compassion, but it's not compassionate at all. Let's think about this. This is what's required of virtue signals.

Let's put our thinking caps on for just a second. Ilhan Omar, a congresswoman for the United States of America, okay? Not a state representative. She's a congresswoman in D.C. She says that we should cancel all mortgage and rent payments. No conditions, no qualifications, no stipulations that she put on that. This is supposed to be compassionate. Does she realize? I don't know if she realizes this or not. She might not realize that very often tenants are richer than their landlords. There's this communistic idea and you'll see it a lot on Twitter that landlords are leeches, that they're evil. Well, that's a very big of a generalization. Landlords are, probably representative of the rest of the population, which there are some good and generous people

and some selfish and not good people. I don't see why landlords are any different than that. But this is this weird communistic idea that rent is evil and that therefore landlords are evil. It's real weird. Millionaires, here's the reality. And they should understand this because they're all about hierarchy and oppression. Millionaires who rent a $10,000. $10,000. a month apartment in New York City. I don't even know because I don't live in the city, but really expensive apartments in New York City, they shouldn't pay rent to their landlord who probably takes home a lot less than their tenant does. If you make $60,000 a year and your landlord takes home 40K a year, why is it compassionate for you to screw him over by not paying your rent?

Does that sound right to you? Is that compassionate to you? If you're paying a mortgage on your house and you and everyone else you know stops paying your mortgage, the bank that gave you that loan is going under. And that bank teller, that single mom at that bank trying to provide for her family on 35K a year, if that is now out of a job. Does that sound compassionate to you? Of course it doesn't because that's not fair. That is unjust. And this, of course, is why virtue signaling is wrong and why social justice, which we'll get to a little bit more in a second, sounds good but is wrong because it never looks at the other side of the equation. It is always doing what sounds good trying to even the playing field and to create equal outcomes at the expense of another group that they subjectively perceive as privileged,

landlords, people who are requiring payments when those people aren't necessarily privileged and even if they were privileged doesn't mean that they should be punished by you not paying your rent or mortgage. Does that make sense? So this is why whenever you see something like this, whenever you see a suggestion that sounds virtuous and you're being gaslit by being told, hey, you are a bad person for wanting to open up the economy, you're a bad person for wanting to collect rent or for believing that other people should pay their rent or pay their mortgages. You're a bad person if you believe that the rich shouldn't pay more in taxes. every time you see this virtue signal or this gas lighting that sounds really good and makes you feel like a bad person for not agreeing with it, you got to think.

You got to think a little bit more deeply about the consequences of it and if any of it even makes sense. So you hear this a lot like cancel all student loan debt, cancel all mortgage and rent payments, make the rich pay their fair share, free health care for all, abolish ice. It's time for racial reparations or in the form of politicians making particular promises like Elizabeth Warren. saying that she is going to get a trans kid to help her pick her head of Department of Education, or when Joe Biden promises to pick a woman as his VP, these are all nothing more than empty, hollow, meaningless signals of virtue that when looked at carefully,

when thought about critically, are meaningless, and to be frank, they're stupid. Why? Because they're not economically feasible, they're not effective, they're not beneficial to society. Canceling student loan debt puts the cost of college on the taxpayer who didn't choose, who, many of whom didn't choose to go to college and who may actually make less money than the parents of the kid going to college or even some of the people who are

in college. Is that fair? Making the rich pay their fair share is built on a false premise. What is fair? The rich already paid the vast majority of taxes in this country, whereas the poorest pay nothing and actually can make money from the government. Free healthcare for all means less choice, lower quality. We've done an entire podcast episode on this because the profit margins for hospitals will be almost non-existent, which means laying off nurses and doctors, but also stymie the motivation for innovation. That's not to say that our health care system doesn't have problems, but forcing people off of their private health care that they like and forcing them on to government-run care, which just like all government-run programs will be both inefficient and ineffective is not compassionate. It's also a not just considering that you will be forced to subsidize things to which you are morally opposed, like abortion and gender reassignment surgery, for example. Abolishing ICE only makes the country less safe. Racial reparations are impossible to calculate. Choosing a woman as your VP, rather than the most qualified person, just makes you a discriminatory sexist, not virtuous. So if you poke at

the holes of these things that sound good that is currently building, what is the new and what a lot of people would say is improved ideology of leftism. If you just prick it just a little bit with your pain of critical thinking, it falls apart. I've heard Dan Crenshaw say in a speech, leftism works as activism, not governance. It sounds good, but it doesn't actually work. And this is why I talk so often that social justice is not justice. It is what Thomas Sol calls cosmic justice. Social justice sounds good. It even sounds good to the Christian because you think that you are helping the least of these.

But here's the problem. I just did a Prager You video that just came out. It's my second Prager You video that I've done. And I'm really proud of how it came out. And it's about why social justice is not justice. It is subjective. It is not based on truth. It is not based on reality.

it is about these contrived rules of the game in order to try to achieve equal outcomes, which is impossible. It's just impossible to achieve equal outcomes without absolute tyranny to force people into mediocrity in order that they will be equal. So I did a video on that and I got a comment from someone who was very respectful of no problem with this person's comment. She said that she was very disappointed in the video. and that I should, I think she recommended, no, this was, I got this from someone else recommending Tim Calder's book,

generous justice, which I just totally disagree with the premise of his book, but she talks about how people are born into certain kinds of families, and they have certain disadvantages that they didn't choose. And so social justice is about showing these people mercy, not handouts. But the problem with that is that who gets, what is mercy? who gets to decide what that mercy is, who gets to decide who gets that mercy and why? What are the qualifications for the mercy?

What's the mercy? And who gives it? Who gets to decide all of that? That's why social justice being not blind and being weighing the intersectionality points and the oppression point of the people that it is allocating so-called mercy to, that's why it is inherently unjust. It is built on nothing more than gaslighting and virtue signaling, telling you that you are crazy for not believing the set of totally subjective and brand new virtues that so many of the people that purport these virtues don't actually fall behind.

Quest for Cosmic Justice is a book. It's also a speech by Thomas Sol. He is the amazing economist who has so much good work out there, but he talks about the inherent injustice of social justice. I highly recommend you read Quest for Cosmic Justice. And what he talks about is that people who want social justice, they want equal outcomes rather than equal opportunities, and they try to contrive certain scenarios in which everyone will be equal and end up with the same. But it's just impossible.

People are different. People have the same backgrounds, have different outcomes in their life. And when you try to make everyone have the same results in their life, you end up suppressing innovation, you suppress success, you suppress motivation, you suppress people's willingness to work, and it ends up in tyrannous ruins. This is just the case.

He talks about this in his speech, Quest for Cosmic Justice, and I just want to read you some of that. He says, traditional concepts of justice or fairness, at least within the American tradition, and boil down to applying the same rules and standards to everyone. This is what is meant by a level playing field, at least within that tradition, though the very same words mean something radically different within a framework that calls itself social justice. Words like fairness, advantage, and disadvantage likewise have radically different

meanings within the very different frameworks of traditional justice versus social justice. A fight in which both boxers observed the marquee of Queensberry rules would be a fair fight, according to traditional standards of fairness, irrespective of whether the contestants were of equal skill, strength, experience, or other factors likely to affect the outcome, and irrespective of whether that outcome was a hard-fought draw or completely one-sided beating. This would not, however, be a fair fight within the framework

of those seeking social justice. If the competing fighters came into the ring with very different prospects of success, especially if these differences were due to factors beyond their control, presumably the vast ranges of undeserved inequalities found everywhere are the fault of quote society according to social justice advocates and so the redressing of these inequalities is called social justice going beyond the traditional justice of presenting each individual with the same rules and standards in a sense proponents of social justice are unduly modest

what they are seeking to correct are not merely deficiencies of society but of the cosmos what they call social justice encompasses far more than any given society is causally responsible for. Crusaders for social justice seek to correct not merely the sins of man, but the oversight of God or the accidents of history. What they are really seeking is a universe tailored made to their vision of equality. They are seeking cosmic justice. He goes on and I won't read the entire thing, but he talks about how social justice advocates want to destroy the entire rule of law and the idea of the traditional idea of fairness and equality. He says, ironically, the quest for greater economic and social equality is promoted through a far greater inequality of political power.

If rules cannot produce cosmic justice, only raw power is left as the way to produce the kinds of results being sought. In a democracy where power must gain public acquiescence, not only must the rule of law be violated or circumvented, so must the rule of truth. However noble the vision of cosmic justice, arbitrary power, and shameless lies are the only paths that even seem to lead in its direction. As noted, the outset, the devastating costs and social dangers which go with these attempts to achieve the impossible should be taken into account. So like what I was saying, it is impossible to achieve the ends of social justice. which is equal outcomes without absolute tyranny.

And those who fight for equal outcomes, you notice that it's always equalized downward rather than upward. So success is made into mediocrity rather than mediocrity being made into success. And that's why it always ends so disastrously. Every communist, every socialist regime has started out with the premise and the goal of social justice. Higher literacy rates, more success, more. success, more food, more equality. And it ends with destruction. It ends with suffering. It ends with starvation because the goals of socialism and this leftist contrived social justice, it goes against

human nature. And human nature is that there will be always unequal outcomes. America is based on the premise that we should have equal opportunity, but not equal outcomes because we know that it's impossible without absolute dictatorship. And that is what the argument is. And social justice is not based on any kind of impartiality or unbiased truth. It is based on trying to create new rules to lift one group up that someone that the social justice advocates see as oppressed and hold another group down that the social justice advocates see as privileged. And that inherently is unjust. That is why we Christians care about what are. definitions are. That is why we as Christians care about seeking truth and seeking true virtue and

seeking true justice and not seeking false accusations that come with gaslighting, not seeking virtue signaling that is completely hollow and meaningless and not can and not pursuing a type of social justice that has no true just outcome. All of these are the makings of modern day leftism that when you tap it with just a little bit of weight of critical thinking completely crumbles under the weight of human nature and reality and the necessity of a democratic governance. Micah 6-8 tells us to seek justice to love mercy to walk humbly with our God. The question is, what is actual justice? What is actual truth? What are the things that we should really care about. Should we be gaslighting and memory-holing stories that we don't want to be true? Should we be

making other people feel crazy for the things that we are doing or that they do have a justified reason to be crazy for? Should we be signaling virtue in a way that doesn't really mean anything? Should we be pursuing a justice that the secular world tells us is just but isn't actually? Justice, according to God, is a impartial. Leviticus 1915, you shall do no way. justice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor. God's justice is also be based on evidence and truth throughout Deuteronomy as God is laying out his rules and statutes for the people of Israel. We see his desire for due process to see if someone is guilty. Israel is too told to inquire, to search

diligently to find proof that someone is innocent or guilty. Guilt is not assumed. Social justice as Thomas Soul says is not about the rules of the game it's about it's not about an even playing field it's not about equal opportunity it is about subjective rules based on some subjective idea of intersectionality and oppression and that does not fit the biblical definition of what justice is and neither does gaslighting and virtue signaling in all of these attempts that the left makes in order to in order to force their ideology onto people so that you feel morally obligated to be a leftist, that doesn't fit God's qualifications for what is virtuous, for what is true and right and good. 2 Peter 130 1 3 through 11 says,

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine, nature, having escape from the corruption that is in the world because of simple desire, for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue and virtue with knowledge and knowledge with self-control and self-control with steadfastness and steadfastness with godliness and godliness with brotherly affection and brotherly affection with love.

For if these qualities are yours and increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so near-sighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fall. For in this way, there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is true virtue.

It has substance. what truth looks like. It's the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what justice really is. It's what God says is good and right and true. It is impartial. It is based on evidence. It is based on the author of truth, which is God himself, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so if you've got any question about what is true, if you are being gaslit, feeling crazy about something that you know is right. If you are seeing virtue signals and you feel guilty about not buying into these virtue signals and doing the same kind of virtue signaling, if you are being told that you need to be a social justice advocate, just remember that if you need to know what is true, if you need to verify

what is right and good and what justice is, you have an objective standard and that's the word of God. You don't have to be swirling around the cesspool of Twitter in order to know. what is true. There are headlines and there are tweets and there are lots of different directions that the news can pull you. But ultimately at the end of the day, we have a God who created virtue, who created justice and who created truth. And we don't need to borrow secular standards of morality. We don't need to borrow secular terminology in order to inform our worldview or our vocabulary regarding what justice is. Okay, that's all I have for you today. We will be back here on Friday. Hey, this is Steve Day.

If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day Show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.