Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 273 | Winning the Culture War

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

As cancel culture ravages our country, we analyze and dispute the perpetuated opinions that are dominating the discussions right now, such as irrational claims over racism, genderphobia, white supremacy, and the push of a Marxist ideology. How should conservatives react to disagreement over such fundamental truths? Today's Link: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Today's Sponsors: See how much you can save on your car and homeowners insurance. Go to https://Gabi.com/RELATABLE  Hydrant creates flavored electrolyte packets you mix directly into your water to make hydrating your body easy and delicious. Go to https://DrinkHydrant.com/ALLIE and enter promo code ALLIE.

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 Relatable. Happy Friday. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week. I cannot believe that we are already in the second week of July.

That's crazy. That's crazy. This year has just gone by so fast, but at the same time, it's been like crawling by. with everything that has happened. This past year has been just such a reminder for all of us that we cannot predict the future. Even a little bit, that verse in the Book of James that talks about rather than saying, you know, I'm going to do this tomorrow, I'm going to do that tomorrow. We need to be saying, if the Lord wills, we will be doing X, Y, Z.

Well, I used to think, okay, maybe that's not really necessary to say, of course, we're deferring to God's sovereignty in all things. And I think I've talked about this on the podcast before. but now I've really started thinking that way even more and I think that's a good thing. There are very many wonderful blessings in the midst of all of this craziness and one of them I think is that God is not just calling us to himself but calling Christians who are already with him more deeply into his word and actually applying it because we are realizing the urgency of the moment.

Today we're going to talk about a lot of things that inspire urgency and concern inside of us. But I'm going to finish on a very, I think, encouraging and motivating note before I get into talking about culture wars, which we started talking about on Wednesday with Black Lives Matter. And we're going to continue to talk about today as well as the deconstruction of language and the ignorance of objectivity or the purposeful abolition of objectivity and what all of that Orwellian nonsense means for us and how we can combat it before we get into all of that. I would love for you guys if you love this podcast to leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That would just mean a lot to me. You don't have to write a whole lot, although I love when a lot of you do. But if you love this podcast, please give me a five star review. It helps our show out a lot.

And we have several, we have several thousand, I think, at this point, reviews. And it really does help our show when I really appreciate it. So thank you guys so much. Okay. So today we are going to talk about the parts of the culture wars that are particularly problematic and counterproductive to having any kind of unified or thriving society. We talked about on Wednesday how BLN, the organization has infiltrated all sectors of society, corporate America, social media, news media, academia, the entirety of the Democratic Party.

This right now is kind of the center of the culture wars. They are controlling these sectors of society to the point where people are getting bullied for their beliefs online, fired for their political opinions, docked and ruined for not falling in line with the orthodoxy. And they do this by collapsing two categories. Racist, that's one category and disagreeing with Black Lives Matter. So if you disagree with Black Lives Matter on ideological grounds like, I and a lot of other people do on both sides of the aisle. By the way, you are considered by the cultural powers that be a racist. And no one wants to be a racist. That's the worst thing that you can be in America in 2020 or be associated with racist. So you've got a lot of bullying. And because of that, also a lot of capitulating as just a way of self-preservation for a lot of people. And if you bring up the fact that, hey, Black Lives Matter wants to break up the nuclear family according to their website, They call themselves trained Marxists. The founders have loudly supported the communist regimes that have ravaged Venezuela.

They're anti-capitalism. They're pro-abortion. They ignore the thousands of lives taken by other black people every year and focus on the few instances of black people. Tragically, by the way, being shot and killed by the police. We talked all about that in detail on Wednesday. So if you haven't listened to that, I encourage you to do so. If you bring these things up, even if you agree with the phrase Black Lives Matter, which I think everyone agrees with that sentiment, even if you too care about injustice,

if you want police reform, if you care about racism where it exists, but you just believe that the organization BLM is counterproductive, then you are considered by, again, the cultural powers that be a racist. So people are fired for saying things like All Lives Matter. Grant Napierre was an NBA announcer who tweeted that All Lives Matter, not even as a disagreement to the phrase that Black Lives Matter, just saying all lives matter every single one. He's an older guy. I highly doubt he knows that some people who use All Lives Matter are using it as a counter to Black Lives Matter, but he was fired for that. He apologized, but his

apology was not accepted, of course. Now, I personally, just to make a note on this, I personally don't go around saying All Lives Matter as a response to Black Lives Matter because it seems to be, and I say this sincerely triggering and I don't desire to trigger people for the sake of triggering no matter what my haters might think. And I understand the logic. I do. If one group is disproportionately hurting or treated unfairly, you saying that all hurt matters or all lives matter, they would say people who argue against saying all lives matter would say that it's a way of saying that we shouldn't focus on those who are being disproportionately affected by injustice. Now, of course, the question is, which we're not really allowed to ask and we're not really allowed to debate,

is who doesn't actually believe that Black Lives Matter as much as other lives? And can we empirically see that Black Americans value is diminished, but other kind of Americans value is not? Of course, we talked about that again on Wednesday in a little bit a few weeks ago in the episode title, Does the Truth Matter? So we won't get into that debate today. So that said, I understand why if you have a particular perspective, you don't like the phrase All Lives Matter, but I also understand, at least for the majority of people who use it, that the sentiment is simply to say that All Lives Matter equally, including Black Lives,

either way, either way, no matter where you stand on that phrase or no matter what, where you stand on this debate, should someone be fired for saying that all lives matter equally. Reagan Escuday, I think that's how you pronounce her last name, is a Yonge. woman who was fired from her job after the social media censorship mob came for her saying basically that, hey, how the world handled and is handling the George Floyd tragedy isn't going to bring peace, but Jesus will. That's a summary of what she said. She was fired for that. A Hispanic man was fired from his job for making what is allegedly the white power symbol, which it's really not. it's the three fingers up in the circle with your pointer finger and your and your thumb that people

have all of a sudden decided because I guess a few people maybe did this at one point. It's a white power symbol, but most people just know it as okay. But apparently when anyone does this, it's secretly a dog whistle of white supremacy. Well, this Hispanic man wasn't even making that sign. He was cracking his knuckles and someone saw him do that and found out where he worked, called his employer. This is just a middle class, working class, Hispanic man, and he got fired from his job. There's no evidence whatsoever that this person is a white supremacist. In fact, I think it's pretty clear that he's not. Well, he was canceled. His life ruined. And who knows

what's happened to him and his family since then for literally cracking his knuckles in a way that offended someone. Churches of all stripes. This is part of the craziness that's happening. People have just lost, lost their mind and their ability to actually engage in any kind of substantive way. Churches of all stripes are pushing ridiculous resources like white fragility by Robin DiAngelo. Robin DiAngelo is a radical fraud. I don't know how else to say that, who is making literally millions of dollars off a conversation that is supposed to be centered on black people. Now, I will respect a little bit if she takes all the money that she is earning from the thousands

of dollars that she earns every time that she goes to speak to a group about racism or all of the proceeds from her book, which I'm sure is making her millions of dollars because it's been on bestselling lists for several months now. I would respect a little bit if she gave that money to the communities that she is saying are so disproportionately and consistently affected by racism and white supremacy. I have not seen her do that. I have a feeling that she is cashing those checks and that she is pretty proud of herself for all of the money that she is making off of anti-black racism. I've read parts of the book and reviews of the book from all across the aisle, all across the aisle and all different ethnicities reviewing this book. It's a book that uses

self-flagellation as a means of self-congratulations. And I know that that sounds paradoxical, but that's exactly what it is. It argues that all white people are racist from birth, no matter what, and that pretty much everything we do and think and say is racist without even knowing it. And that the only way to work against our inherent endemic racism that we are just born with and that we have from the moment that we enter the earth, that we come on the earth stage, is to work against it, to realize and to take responsibility of our inevitable racism and constantly defer to the directives of people of color no matter what they are. And even that, she says, is not necessarily going to make you not racist.

It will just help you fight the racism that is always going to be inside of you and is always going to therefore affect all systems. Jonathan Church wrote a good short critique in Arc Digital title, Dear White People, please do not read Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility. He says this. The theory is designed as a Kafka trap, whereby any day, denial is interpreted as evidence of guilt. If you object to any insinuation that you are racist because you are white or that you have or that you have something or that what you have said has racist connotations, you are failing to come to terms with your racism and exhibiting white fragility.

A Kafka trap, like he said, is a rhetorical trick that says if you defend yourself, you're guilty. So it's kind of like the Salem witch trial. Same thing happened there. So you're put into this terrible position by this book and by all of these proponents of this book, you're put in this terrible position of not being able to even say that you're not racist or that something that you said wasn't intentional racism or didn't have any kind of racist motivation behind it, even if you know that it didn't. And even if you know that you're not racist, because if you say that you're not a racist, apparently according to Robin DiAngelo and all of the people who ascribed to this philosophy, it's just evidence that you are.

That is what this book is. It is also an example of what Voddy Bakum calls ethnic Gnosticism, that you have this special knowledge because of your ethnicity and that you get to tell other people what racism is, but they're not able to defend themselves. They're not able to say, no, I'm not racist because only people of certain perspectives can say what racism is. There is no objective definition of it, and there is no ability to defend yourself. Again, because if you defend yourself, well, then it just means. that you're a racist. 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. So this Kafka trap, which says that if you defend yourself, then that just

means that you're fragile. That just fragility is the new, is one of the new terms. I would say the right does this to both sides, like have these terms and words that become popular and they constantly use them, but that's especially true on the left, and I'm actually going to show you proof of that in just a second, but fragility is one of them. Anyone who disagrees with this narrative that all white people are irrevocably and inherently racist, no matter what they've ever said or not said, no matter what they've ever done or not done, people who push back against that they're accused of being fragile or people who are conservative or accused of being fragile. Anyone who goes against the leftist narrative is accused of being fragile. That is,

that's the new term, de jure. I've heard several progressives on my page and on social media say that they're racist, that we all are, that all white people are white supremacists, and we just have to recognize that and take responsibility. It's hilarious to me that the people who are saying they're racist are apparently considered less racist than the people who are saying that we're not racist. It doesn't make any sense. This review by Jonathan Church goes on to say a third problem with the theory of white fragility is that it relies on the vague idea of whiteness as an all-encompassing, all-powerful ideological thread running its way through every part of the social fabric. Every instance of racial disparity is interpreted as evidence of whiteness in action,

i.e. as evidence of racism. As Ibram X. Kendi says, when I see racial disparities, I see racism. Ibram Kendi is the author of another book that is being promoted by a lot of churches called How to Be Anti-Racist. The problem with this statement just alone and part of the argument of white fragility, when I see racial disparities, I see racism, is that it's just not objectively or provably true and at least not necessarily. And that is exactly what the entire idea of systemic racism is built on, the fact that disparities exist. and therefore the reason for them must be discrimination. But that is a logical fallacy. It's a fallacy that doesn't actually try to look at why disparities exist. It assumes that racism is the sole or the primary cause of all disparities. When the assumption behind disparities

and crime rates or incarceration rates or unfatherlessness rates or graduation rates is always racism, that's a problem because we fail to be able to talk about and offer real to real problems. If you read, once again, I think I have probably encouraged you guys to read this on every episode for the past two weeks, but it really is just so enlightening. If you read discrimination and disparities, that's what this entire book is about by Thomas Soul. You'll read the proof behind the fact that disparities can, but they do not always unconditionally equal discrimination. To assume that racism is always an unconditionally the cause of disparities is a fallacy. It's a myth. Indian Americans and East Asian Americans, as we've talked about, have higher graduation rates, higher test scores, higher median incomes, and lower fatherlessness rates than white Americans. That's a racial disparity. Is that also racism? Are Indian Americans and East Asian Americans oppressing white people? I think that we would all say no. And yet there are racial disparities that show that Indian Americans and East Asian Americans are doing better than white people. And so if racism is the cause for all disparities,

then what's the cause of that disparity? Is it also racism? I don't think so. Both the NBA and the NFL or majority black organizations. That is a racial disparity. Is that racism? And let's apply that logic of disparities always equal injustice or discrimination to other things.

If you look at the gender breakdown of certain jobs in America, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for example, 87% of those who make up the nursing profession are women. That's a huge gender disparity. Is that sexism? 94% of all pest control workers, exterminators, are men. That is a big gender disparity. Is that sexism?

In all maintenance and construction jobs, there are very few women, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and child care, cosmetology, housekeeping, there are very few men. Is that disparity because of discrimination? Is the patriarchy oppressing women so that they don't think that they can become a carpenter, for example? there are lots of reasons people of all types of, that have disparate outcomes or there's a reason why people of all types have disparate outcomes in their lives. And discrimination may and is, it may be and is sometimes one of the factors in these disparities.

But to say that it is the only and unconditional and always the factor that is driving these disparities, like I said, is a fact. it is just not factual. But many of the conversations that we're having today are simply not factual at all. And if you try to bring up facts or statistics or logic or even just another side of the argument, then you were accused of being racist. If you question this very nebulous and almost undefined idea often of systemic racism in this vague term of white supremacy or this unreachable idea of anti-racism, if you just ask, hang on, what do you mean by that? Can we please define our terms, where does this come from? What are you basing this on? What's the end of all of this stuff? Then you are assumed to be insufficiently compassionate, insufficiency understanding.

You're not a true ally. If you question anything, you'll notice that a lot of the people that are very angry if you bring up, if you bring up another perspective when it comes to these social justice issues, they are very quick to make a lot of assumptions. They say you're rich, you're privileged, you just don't know, you're, you're, uneducated, do better, like all of these cliches, I don't know if they realize just how uniformed they sound. They're all repeating the same things. And they stack emotional argument off emotional argument to try to make you feel bad about yourself. But they're not actually coming back, typically, not always, coming back with any kind of factual counter points. Because

that's not their goal. The goal isn't factual analysis. The goal isn't logic. The goal isn't logic. because that is emotionally unsatisfying and that is not where their argument lies. The argument is really that pushing back against a narrative, pushing back or questioning the nebulous idea of systemic racism, for example, that that is rude, that that is mean. And if that is your argument and if that is your only argument, then facts don't really matter. There's no reason to have any kind of fact. based dialogue if your only problem with someone's argument is that it's mean and that you don't like it. You're told that you're not a true ally if you question anything, despite the fact that

there are many black people across the aisle who push back on Black Lives Matter on the idea of systemic racism, the movement of so-called anti-racism, the social justice bullying that is involved in these conversations, the virtue signally that has no real impact, cancel culture, white guilt. John McWhorter, Glenn Lowry, Coleman Hughes, for example, are not Republicans. Marcellus Wiley, not a Republican. Terry Cruz, not a Republican. Jason Whitlock, he's, you know, considered more conservative, but these are not guys who are out there. And this is, they're, they're not stumping for Trump every day. A lot of people accuse, um, black people who disagree with the liberal narrative of just being, you know, they call them all kinds of terrible names and

basically accuse them of not thinking for themselves and they accuse them of, you know, trying to align themselves with Trump or whatever. Well, that just cannot be said of a lot of the black Americans that are pushing back against these narratives. These are all black men that I just listed who have pushed back against the identitarian language and evasive phraseology in Marxist movements who are not considered necessarily Republicans. And they're not even alone in that. Of course, you have more conservative black voices. You've got Thomas Sol. You've got Jason Riley, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Alan West, Carol Swain, Daryl Harrison, Virgil Walker, those two I've had on my show, Voddy Baccom, and they're not alone. The funny thing is,

if you repost something that one of these people wrote or said, white liberals will still call you a racist and claim that you are only reposting black people who affirm your views. So what do you think it is when a white liberal only repost black people who affirm their views? So why is the former tokenism, but the latter isn't? The latter is just empowering and elevating black voices. In fact, many, not all, not all, but many that I've encountered and seen white liberals do not care whether it is a black person talking about the subject. They're willing to promote Robin DiAngelo, for example, and pay her thousands of dollars to talk about racism. They would listen to Robin DiAngelo talk about what it's like to be black in America before they would listen to Thomas Sol or Larry Elder. or Voddy Bacom talk about what it's like being black in America. As Thomas Soule says, the reason so many people misunderstand so many issues is not that these issues are so complex, but that people do not want a factual or analytical explanation that leaves them emotionally unsatisfied.

Someone like Robin DiAngelo or other white liberals offer an emotionally satisfying Marxist argument. People like Thomas Soule or Vody Bacom or Larry Elder or Alan West or Jason Riley, their analysis of these issues are going to leave someone who thinks in strictly emotional terms emotionally unsatisfied. Emotions aren't bad, by the way. We should have passion. We should have compassion. We should have sympathy and all of these things are very important. But our emotions always have to be verified by and subject to facts. If our emotions that are not based on facts are the basis of policy and are the basis of cultural movements, then we are going to

lead the country in a very bad place. And of course, I do believe. that is what's happening. The way to be able to healthfully balance all of this is to be able to talk about personal experiences, but distinguish personal experiences from objective definitions and systemic reality, to be able to define words using finite and clear definitions, to be able to detach ourselves, all of us from narrative and to look at the facts, look at the data, look at the real problems, the real cycles that are happening in particular communities, and have a discussion and debate around those things. This is not, this conversation is not, A, to diminish real racism. It is, in fact, an argument for talking about racism where it

exists to define racism. But in order to do that, we have to be able to believe in objectivity and to have finite definitions of words. And we cannot do that if the definition, we can't have these conversations and talk about what real racism looks like if the definition of racism is simply anything and anyone that someone doesn't like. And this conversation that we're happening is also not to be diminished people's real experiences or emotion surrounding racism. If you have experienced bad treatment because of your skin, you're going to be upset about that. And of course, that's normal. And we can talk about those things. But we have to be able to subject our emotions and our experiences to objective truth. If we are going to be talking about.

policy solutions and solutions that affect a wide array of people. But discussion and debate, which are necessary for talking about real problems and solutions, cannot happen if you are saying that everyone who is disagreeing with you is threatening you or that words are violence, or you are canceling people for having different ideas or liking tweets that you don't like or following people that you don't like canceling people for their social media behavior that is not abusive. And I do want to make a distinction here. I do believe that people should be held accountable for the things they say. We know that God is going to hold us accountable for the things we say. Jesus says that we're going to be held accountable for every single word that we speak.

And so before a cancel culture, before all of this craziness, before social media, people were still held accountable for the things that they said in the political arena, in the professional arena, and the private arena. Of course, there is accountability for the things that we say, and we do own and take responsibility for the things that we say. I'm not talking about holding people accountable who say abusive or terrible things. I am talking about canceling people for expressing legitimate political opinions, not being abusive, but simply saying, hey, I've got a question about the ideology of Black Lives Matter. Hey, I'm not a Marxist. Hey, are the problems that they're pointing out real problems, are the solutions that they're

pointing out real solutions. Those are legitimate questions that if we really cared about caring about black lives, like if we really cared about vulnerable communities, we would not only allow people to ask those questions, but we would be answering those questions. We would be digging deeper and we would be having respectful dialogue about these things. If you learn about our founding, I think we, when we think back to, you know, at the beginnings of America, we think everyone was united in their love for liberty and that the disagreements that they had were very minute. They were very insignificant. But America and our founding is based on compromises between people who very viciously disagreed

with one another, who had very disparate visions of what the country was going to look like. And thankfully, because they did have the shared foundational principles of liberty and self-governance, they were able to come to compromises. but this country is built on disagreement. The difference between then and now is not that we have more disagreements than we had then. It is that, A, we have more fundamental disagreements than we had then. Like, we're questioning very basic things like what is truth, what is good and bad? What is science?

Like, is a woman a woman? And it's a man, a man, is an unborn child, really a life? All of these questions that have been answered for millennia all of a sudden, they're up in the air and we don't know about them. So we have very basic and fundamental disagreement. That's one reason why we are so far apart. And the other reason is because of this, because we are unable to have debates and discussions with someone on the other side without being told that we're a terrible person simply for raising questions and disagreeing and offering a different perspective.

A communications manager at Boeing, this is another example of cancel culture, just resigned because of an article he wrote 30 years ago, 30 years ago, arguing that women shouldn't serve in combat. someone found it, called him a sexist. He apologized and said he was so embarrassed and he resigned. That is, by the way, as an aside, a totally defensible position. Women shouldn't be on the ground in combat. We just can't, we don't have the same makeup as men. We can't carry as much weight and simultaneously run as quickly. We have lower muscle tone. We have lower bone density, will lower anaerobic and aerobic capacity, not to mention we simply think differently than men do in

most cases. The military is not a social experiment. It's about lethality. Like, you're just not egalitarian on the battlefield. You're just not. And while women may be very useful and a lot of roles on the grounds combat just isn't one of them. So this is a very defensible position. But there was no conversation about this. He never said in his apology, hey, new data has come out and actually women should be in combat. I was wrong. There was nothing like that. There was no conversation about whether or not what he was saying is true. Like there was no debate about that. It was just that, okay, what I said then, even though it might be factual, doesn't fit into the popular social narrative of today. And so I'm embarrassed. And everyone just said, oh, yeah, okay, it doesn't fit

into what we think about egalitarianism between the genders today. So yes, you should resign. That's ridiculous. Like we didn't even have a conversation about whether or not what he's saying. is actually factual. So people have lost their ever-loving minds, and there is this unfortunately destructive instinct that is a lethal mixture of total depravity and Marxism that drives people to ruin the lives of those that they find threatening just because they express ideas that they don't like. Another example of this is J.K. Rowling, a lady of the left. She has been under fire for a while for saying the very scandalous and problematic. reality that women are women and men are men and that saying that some men can be women by way

of declaration actually erases women, which is just, of course, logically true. Now, this is someone who believes in the validity of transgenderism. So she believes that someone can transition and that they can identify as a transgender woman or a transgender man. She simply doesn't believe in collapsing those categories of transgender woman and biological woman because then you are forced to seeing biological women to compete against and to share private and vulnerable spaces with biological men who, no matter what you think, are always going to be biologically different and biologically stronger than biological women. So that is part of, that's part of the issue here, not to just, not even to mention the total illogic and the anti-science philosophy

that's behind the idea that you can just become a woman by saying that you're a woman. It's ironic because that objectifies and diminishes what womanhood is and so many feminists are simply willing to go along with it. I encourage you if you haven't already to listen to Monday's episode that I did with Abigail Schreier. She dives more deeply into this in her book and that's what we discussed. Well, J.K. Rowling, of course, is being canceled for all of this. She has a lot of people coming after her and sending her very nasty, nasty messages and mail simply for saying a biological reality. And I disagree with her still on her idea of transgenderism and who can say that they're what and all of that. I mean, like I said, she is ideologically on the left,

but at least she is pushing for a biological reality. Like at least she's quote red-pilled in that way. There's another young woman, Megan Murphy, who has written about this a lot. And because she talked about on Twitter, she got kicked off Twitter and she hasn't allowed to come back on. Another example of this crazy world that we can't actually have debate about very normal things and good things to debate about. Like there's a lot to debate. There's a lot to question. But because someone has declared that it's mean, we can't even talk about whether or not these things are true. There was this letter called Harper's letter that a bunch of people who are on the left, like Noam Chomsky and J.K. Rowling and other people who are on the left, they did this

open letter together calling for the preservation of free speech and open dialogue and debate. And I really appreciate that. Unfortunately, the first half of the letter is spent trying to win over their comrades on the lap who are against free speech by talking about how the right are the people who are the demagogues. They're the people who are canceling people. They're the censorious ones. Well, that's not true.

I'm not saying there's no one on the right who wants to censor certain ideas. but that is not a tenet of conservatism, at least not in the past several decades. It's just not true. And so they try very hard to castigate the right for something that in general the right is not guilty for in order to try to gain some kind of credibility with the people on the left that they're really appealing to, to be able to say, look, I'm one of you. And in so doing, they really pleased no one because the people, their comrades on the left who are against free speech, were not at all persuaded by this. And the people on the right don't like to be called. mindless demagogues who were censoring people when we're not. Like, we're the people who are accused

of being obsessed with debates because we want to have dialogue about important issues, but they had to put that in there to pander to their previous base or what would be their base. But they do make good points that the right has been literally saying for years. This is part of it, and this is the part that I agree with. This stifling atmosphere of talking about stifling free speech and canceling people simply for saying that a woman is a woman or something like that or, hey, capitalism has slashed global poverty in half in the past 20 years. This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurt those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.

The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion. not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other, which is absolutely true. I saw another tweet and I don't have it so I can't give credit and I'll have to paraphrase it, but I saw it floating around on Instagram that even if you live in a society

where the government is not restricting free speech, which you could argue in places like California and New York, they are by trying to find you for, quote, misgendering someone. There are cases where the government is trying to compel speech or limit your speech absolutely. But even if you live in a society that the government is not doing that, then you have First Amendment rights. If you live in a society that is repressive in the private realm that tries to censor you and to deplatform you and cancel you and even ruin your life because of things that you say, then you do not live in a society that. upholds free speech. You don't live in a free society at all if people are able to exert their social power to ruin your life because you said something that you don't like. And if we don't have

that ability to speak freely and to have these dialogues and to say these unpopular things, well, then we're not going to be able to progress at all. We're not going to be able to have any kind of functioning society at all. And I think it's important to note because the pushback is always, well, you shouldn't be able to say things that are hateful. That is what the First Amendment is for. That is what free speech is for. Like the principle of free speech isn't to protect popular speech because no one wants to censor that. Free speech, the protection of the First Amendment, which should have private implications as well, at least in our own minds and how we can conduct ourselves and interact with one another. I mean, that is, that's the great

thing about America. It has been a great thing about America. And there have been different sides throughout American history who have tried to censor people right now. It is decidedly the left that's doing that. But the way that America has advanced in the way of civil rights, in the way of equality and liberty and justice for all is through free speech, is through allowing people with dissenting opinions to be able to speak up. I mean, that is how, for example, the end of Jim Crow happened. That is how desegregation happened. That is how all civil rights movements have happened. People speaking up and being willing to say the unpopular thing, not always in every situation, the thing that the right agrees with or the thing that the left

agrees with, but the person in the minority who is willing to say the unpopular thing has always moved the needle. And if we don't have that, if we don't have that, then we have tyranny. And that is kind of the society that we're living under right now. We are technically free, but we're living under tyranny of the mob where people aren't willing or just aren't able out of fear to say the unpopular unorthodox thing that goes against, for example, the ideology of Black Lives Matter because they're afraid of losing their jobs and they have to fight for their families. That is exactly what the far left wants. That is the nature of leftism.

That is the nature of communism and socialism. Like I've said before, you're not going to find a communist or socialist society where there's freedom of religion and freedom of speech. you're just not because it has to concentrate power. There can't be any dissent. There can't be any source from which you find your values or you find your principles except for the state. And so they have to silence all dissent.

And they have to do so and will do so, by the way, through violence. And if they can't do so through violence, because still in the United States, for the most part, it's illegal to do that. They'll find other means and they will try to ruin your life. And they simply believe it is all. all under the guise of compassion and love, intolerance, and inclusion that they are trying to silence ideas that they don't like because to them, facts and opposing ideas are very offensive. Of course, in the midst of all of this, when we say, okay, we're not going to, for example,

talk about the biological, the physiological, the psychological implications of pushing hormone treatment on young girls and boys. We're not going to talk about the effects of Marxism. We're not going to talk about what systemic racism is. We're just going to accept all of these things and move forward without any kind of critical thinking because we're scared of dialogue and debate. What is at stake is objectivity itself. There is a very interesting tweet by someone who describes herself as an educator named Brittany Marshall, and this was going around. And she says in reply to a conversation that included Nicole Hannah-Jones, who is the lead essayist in the widely debunked,

19 project. She says, nope, the idea of 2 plus 2 equaling 4 is cultural, and because of Western imperialism and colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing. What? What? Let's read this again. The idea of 2 plus 2 equaling 4 is cultural. And because of Western imperialism and colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing, and this is an educator. What is that orwell quote from 1984 that in the end the party will insist that two plus two equals five because it is the inevitable outcome of their philosophy which seeks by way of thought police and accusations of wrong think and newspeak to not just limit our language but limit consciousness limits any knowledge of objective reality that is what we are seen in real time and it's absolutely true that this is the outcome of

the philosophy that says that facts aren't mean, that facts shouldn't be discussed, that we shouldn't have logical conversations, that objective reality is, is somehow a system of oppression and bringing up statistics is somehow bigoted. That is, this is the end, that two plus two might not equal four and that all truth is objective. There was a very interesting piece by Rod Dreher. I'm not totally sure how to pronounce his last name, but he is great. He wrote an interesting book called The Benedict Option. It's a very interesting writer. And he wrote something in the American conservative called the Kumpf of the woke. Comf, obviously, is German for struggle. He talks about the micro bubble of the media. And it's how it's created this echo chamber

that is really pushing the ball down the field for leftism, just this small minority of journalists in Washington and New York. who have no understanding of what life is like outside of their little bubble. He calls it pack journalism. They're short on time. These journalists, they've got to get things out there that will get clicked. So they just kind of imitate one another. They kind of echo one another.

They regurgitate or rewrite each other's thoughts. One person says it and that it becomes a thing. And then you've got every headline in NBC, Washington Post, New York Times, all writing about different variations of the same argument. For example, taking down Mount Rush. Rushmore that was not a thing a few years ago. And then it became a thing that's true about so many leftist ideas. You say it. And then the Overton window keeps moving over. Zach Goldberg had a tweet thread last year where he went to Lexis Nexus, which is an online database that tells you how

many times a phrase was used in a news article over time. All the woke phrases that we know today, white privilege, diversity and inclusion, whiteness, critical race theory, unconscious bias, systemic racism, diversity, training, discrimination, social justice, marginalized, people of color, racism, white supremacy, intersectionality started to be used, started to be used. At or after 2010, that's only 10 years ago, guys. These words and ideas were not part of the public consciousness or dialogue 10 years ago. Ask yourself, are we really better off right now than we were 10 years ago? Are we really more? United right now than we were 10 years ago. Some of them even later than 2010, they were almost completely unused before that. All of the ideas that we're talking about that, again, are very nebulous and not really grounded in any kind of objective definition. It's just whatever the powers that B want them to be able to use them as tools to bludgeon you. If you disagree with them, all of these ideas are very new. They are very novel. And we are being told that if you don't buy into what these gender studies professors came up with yesterday, then you're the bigot,

then you're the radical. And I always like to remind people that you're not the radical for believing in biological sex. Like, you're not the radical for believing in free speech. You're not the radical for being anti-Marxist and for being pro-capitalist. You're not the radical for believing in God and believing that as the creator of the heavens and the earth, that he has the moral authority to tell us what is and what is it, what's true and what's false and what's good and what's bad. These are things that people who are a lot smarter than us believe for thousands and thousands of years. And just yesterday, five minutes ago, the multicultural studies PhD, Robin DiAngelo, says that, oh, no, these things aren't true anymore. And all of the sudden, the mob has just sicked themselves

and anyone who disagrees with them and tells us that we are the biggest of the radicals. They are the radicals. And just because they say that they are the ones on the right side of history does not make that true as we read that Booker T. Washington quote in the last episode, someone's saying that something is true, doesn't make it true. Someone's saying that something is right, doesn't make it right, no matter how many times you say it, no matter how hard you try to convince someone. And we just have to remember to be grounded in that reality that we are not the radicals for believing the things that people accepted for thousands of years before two seconds ago. And again, what we're seeing is that while Obama was president, how many times? I mean, have we talked about this? Have we walked

through the studies that show that the left moved farther to the left while Obama was president during those eight years and they had the previous 25 years on things like welfare, on immigration, on race, that Pew Research Study from October 2017 that we analyzed that. It says in 1994, 39% of Democrats and 26% of Republicans believed that, quote, discrimination, is the main reason black people cannot get ahead. 39% of Democrats, 26% of Republicans. By 2010, it had reached a new low. 28% of Democrats and 9% of Republicans believed that by 2017.

After eight years of Obama in office, 64% of Democrats believed that discrimination is the main reason that black people can't get ahead. That percentage jumped by 36% among Democrats while Obama was president. All time low in 2010. We're measuring 1994 to 2017. All time low in 2010 among Democrats, all time high by far in 2017. Now, we should ask ourselves, did America really get more racist while Obama was president? Did America get more racist during a time that a black president was elected by a landslide twice? Did discrimination really become worse during those eight years or more than that since 1994?

Like, have we become more racist since 1994? Is there evidence of that? And yet, the perspective on racism and discrimination has changed drastically and changed the most drastically while Obama was president. And it is because partly, part of it is just shifting cultures, but it's partly because Obama pushed racial identitarianism his entire time that he was in office using every instance that involved people in different races to drive the narrative that racism is worse than it's ever been. And the radical leftism that has been pushed on college campuses for decades has begun to trickle into the political and cultural arenas. And now we are starting to see the fullness of its manifestation in places like Chaz, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. We are seen in real time,

really the manifestation of this ideology, not just in places like Chaz, but everywhere. The breakdown and the pushback of the very idea of objects. and truth, the silencing of people who have counterpoints that are based in fact or even just counterpoints that are based in feelings or opinion, you are not allowed to say if your ideology depends on tyrannical censorship and the ruining of people's lives if they challenge it, then you might need to question the strength of your ideology. Now, here's the question. The question is, what do we do about all of this? What do we do about a feeling, like we are being, like unpopular views are being marginalized more than ever.

Like they are being pushed down and canceled simply because they are unpopular. Is there anything that we can do? Like can we do something in our HR departments? Can we do something in our private and public life? Is there any way that we can push back on this kind of stuff? There was a really good tweet thread by a woman who is in STEM who talked about her company wanting to put out a statement about anti-racism. social justice and how she very effectively changed the statement, helped change the statement

from something that was filled with all of this kind of nonsense, these words that just started being used in the past five years to mean something to a statement that actually had grounding in reality. And the way she did that was she got involved in the writing of the statement. And she picked apart the first draft of the statement by asking questions. That's something that we need to do. we need to demand or ask very persistently and kindly for people to define their terms when we're talking about racism, for people to offer examples, for people to be very clear and to be very specific in what we mean. For example, pastors who are talking about racism, which I think, you know,

is fine. We know that no one can love God and hate their brother, so hating someone for any reason is wrong. So if the pastor wants to talk specifically about someone hating someone because of the color of their skin. Okay, I think that they need to be very specific in that. We've got a lot of pastors, a lot of influencers who are just saying words because they've heard other people say them, but they can't actually give specific examples of what that looks like. If a pastor thinks that his congregation is racist, then he needs to point out to them specifically what that means and specifically what they need to repent of. But these very nebulous conversations that just this bubble and this echo chamber of a regurgitation of either facts that are missing a lot of

context and are missing the counterpoints or these just social justice narratives that don't actually have any definable reality. They're not helpful. They're just not helping anyone. They're not moving us towards progress, but they are moving us towards more censorship. But here's where I think that there are. is where there is hope. One, like I said, asking questions, poking holes and things, asking specifically what people mean by things, asking specifically, can you tell me, you know,

what I said that was racist and, or what someone did that is racist or what is racist and being able to offer counterpoints to that or just to have a conversation about that. So asking questions, not being afraid to ask questions, making people define their terms, and also just being, willing to say the unpopular thing. And I understand for common folks that you're scared of losing your job and that's totally understandable. But that is why, that's why we need politicians to be speaking out. Like that is why we need all of these Republican senators and congressmen who have not said anything about the toppling of, for example, the statues of founders and Frederick Douglass and Union soldiers who aren't saying anything about the cultural revolution that is clearly happening.

the rioting and the mobs and the looting and the increased violence that we're seeing because of calls to abolish the police who are not speaking out against this Marxist revolution because they're scared of the mob themselves. Shame on them. Like you are elected officials. You are representatives of the people in your district, in your area that you represent. And it is your job to say the things that they're too scared of saying because they're scared of losing their jobs and having their life. lives ruined. Like it is up to the politicians and the pastors and the people of influence, not just conservative commentators like me, to say what's true and what's not and to push back against dark ideas by offering the right ideas or offering different ideas. When people in power do that, when people in power are willing to represent and talk about criticisms against the mainstream, against the Marxist ideologies that we are seeing run rampant right now, it gives common folk cover. They feel like, okay, this is more mainstream.

Politicians are talking about this. Commentators are talking about this. Pastors are talking about this. There are a lot of people with influence who are representing my views. And the more of these things are talked about, the harder it is for an employer to say, wow, you're radical and extreme. You've got a really out there idea because there are so many people talking about it. So to those of you who are scared, you don't understand the effect that your words,

even though you might feel like you don't have a lot of influence, have on the conversation and on the culture of free speech in general. There is a really interesting study by the scientists at Rinsselaer. I don't know how to pronounce that. Rensselaer Polytechnic. They're members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center. They used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion.

physical review E in an article titled, oh, it's in physical review E in an article titled social consensus through the influence of committed minorities. And this is what they found. In general, people do not like to have an unpopular opinion. They're always seeking to try to locally, they're trying to seek to locally come to consensus. We set up this dynamic in each of our models that S-C-N-A-R-C research associate in corresponding paper, author submit S-S-R-R-S-R-R-S-R-R-S-R-R-S-R-E. is done. To accomplish this, each of the individuals and the models talk to each other about their opinion. If the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the listener's belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it. It moved on to talk about another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief. As agents of change start to convince more and more people, the situation begins to change. people begin to question their own views at first and they completely adopt the new view to spread it even further. If the true believers just influence their neighbors that wouldn't

change anything within the larger system as we saw with percentages less than 10. But if the percentage of a country or society believe something, just 10% is just 10%, then things can change. If you're willing to talk about it, if you're willing to have conversations. And I understand that it's difficult because we're up against a lot. You've got the left that is controlling the entire entertainment industry. Most of the news media, all pretty much of main social media sites. You have them controlling academia. You have them controlling public schools. And so people are just indoctrinated with this anti-American Marxist nonsense constantly. And it is very hard to feel like you have a voice, but you don't know which flap of the butterfly wing is going to make a difference.

You just don't. If only 10%, there's a lot more than 10% of people who are against Marx's ideology, who are against this nebulous social justice nonsense, who are against cancel culture and who are for free speech. There's a lot more than 10% of us. There's half the country at least who believe these things or who believe at least a portion of these things. If we all said something and we all just stopped giving in to the cancellation culture, like if companies just stop saying, you know, I'm not going to fire. I'm not going to fire my employee because you saw him crack his knuckles and you thought that maybe he was a white supremacist even though he's Hispanic. If corporations just stopped making statements and apologizing for things that they're not sorry for, if people stopped resigning for things that they said 10, 20 years ago that were perfectly legitimate arguments.

Like if people would stop saying that they're racist when they know that they're not racist, if they would stop apologizing again for things that are not apology, I'm not against people apologizing for things that they should actually apologize for, but if we just stopped capitulating to the ever-changing demands of the mob, and we focused on loving God as Christians and loving other people, doing our best to cultivate the world around us and to allow people to be free, even those that we disagree with, allow people to express their opinions, even those that we disagree with without coming for them,

then we would be a lot better off if we would just treat other people how we want, to be treated. I know that's a novel, a novel idea, then we would be a lot better off, even if we don't ever agree. But as we are right now, I'm just going to be honest. Like, I don't see a way forward. I don't see a way forward for a unified country. If we are unable to say, you know what, here are our foundational commonalities. Like, we might disagree on policy. We might disagree on social issues, but at least we believe that all men are created equal and should be treated equally under the eyes of the law. We all believe in liberty and justice for all. We all love our country, and we all want it to be better. Instead, we have people like Joe Biden, who is saying that

when he becomes president, that he's not just going to try to improve the country, but, quote, he is going to transform the country. And he's already talked about getting rid of school choice, trying to get rid of charter schools. He is going to try to limit free speech, limit freedom of religion, everything that you hold dear and that you see as good in your life, especially as a conservative Christian. The administration of Joe Biden is going to try to get rid of because he's just going to be a lame duck president that the far-left ideologs try to use to push their far-left views. And we have Ilhan Omar as another example.

saying she's the congresswoman from Minnesota. She said that we need to, in order to move forward, dismantle the U.S. economy and political systems, which are tools of oppression. Now, Ilhan Omar is an immigrant from Somalia, who came here as a refugee. And America gave her family refuge, and she was able to not just build a life with her family here, where she has become very successful, but she has also become a congresswoman with one of the leading voices on the Democratic side of Congress. And she believes that America is inherently oppressive and unfair. I mean, I don't know a better example of America giving liberty and justice for all than Ilhan Omar. Not only is she a refugee, but she also hates America. Like she talks to it. She wants to dismantle

America, and yet we have placed her in a position of power and given her every opportunity in the world. I mean, she's a really good example that America really does allow not just freedom and equality of opportunity, but also that we don't even punish you for hating the country. And people want to talk about this country being fascist and limiting people. I mean, that's just insane. There are, there's example after example of people defeating all odds and making it in America that disprove this narrative that America is irrevocably and systemically and endymically, this oppressive place that only allows certain people to get ahead.

Again, white people aren't the most successful group in the country. So you're going to have to come up with a better argument than that. But again, we're not allowed to have that conversation. We're not allowed to have that debate and dialogue because you're just silent for it. But again, my encouragement to you is to speak up when and how you can, even if it's just poking holes and asking questions and making people define the things, that they believe because you only need 10%. You only need 10% of society that is willing to speak up and say something before things actually change, saying no to cancel culture, refusing to play by

their rules, refusing to virtue signal, refusing to repeat their mantras, refusing to just buy into things without thinking about them. You have to know who's driving the bandwagon before you hop on it. Refuse to hop on the bandwagon and critically think and ask questions. and engage in the debates that even people don't want to have. Okay, that is all for today. We will be back here on Monday. 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.

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