Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 284 | Burning Bibles & the Hypocrisy of the NBA

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

Rioters in Portland continue to enact their morale justice by burning Bibles over the weekend. The NBA protests against systemic racism in America while they passively take millions and millions of dollars from China, which may be one of the most systemically racist and immoral governments of our time. Orlando Magic's Jonathan Isaac shows bravery to stand during the national anthem while most others kneel. Also, President Trump's interview with Axios did not go well. Allie Beth Stuckey covers it all in this news-packed episode of Relatable! Today's Sponsors: SimpliSafe was designed to be easy to use while protecting your whole home 24/7. Get free shipping and a 60 day money back guarantee. Visit https://SimpliSafe.com/ALLIE 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 Wednesday. I hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far. If you have not listened to Monday's episode with Jeff Durbin, I encourage you to do that. We talked about the in times. And on Friday, we're going to have part two.

and I specifically ask him if he thinks that we are in the end times, and I think that you'll probably be surprised by his answer. As you guys know, I have a pre-millennialist perspective. He is a post-millennialist perspective. This is not a gospel issue. It is a disagreement that two Bible believing and Jesus-loving Christians can have. And so I think that it is very beneficial for you to kind of hear his perspective on that. And the guy just knows so much about scripture. And I just always learn a lot from him. So if you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to Monday's episode. Also have gotten so much good feedback about my, on my conversation with Vodibokam from Friday. You guys love Voddy Baccombe. I've got a lot of Voddy Baccombe fan girls in my audience because

the feedback, the messages that I received from that conversation were just so encouraging. I know that he has been helpful to so many of you, not just on the issues of race, and social justice and things like that. But just giving you the tools to understand why you believe what you believe and defending the inerrancy and the sufficiency of scripture and, of course, the exclusivity and the holiness of the Christian God. So so thankful for him and the conversation that we had. Go back and listen to that or watch on YouTube if you haven't already.

Today we're going to talk about burning Bibles and standing up to the Ma. But if I have time, I'm also going to talk about a recent interview that President Trump gave and give a little bit of my humble, amateur advice from just a regular old conservative voter for President Trump and Trump's campaign. If we have time, if we don't, then I will get into that next week. Before we actually get into talking about that, I do want to remind you guys that in less than a week from today. So next Tuesday, my book comes out. You're not enough and that's okay escaping the toxic culture of self-love. If you're watching this on YouTube, I just realized that I forgot to put it on my table next to me. You typically see it right here. It's a little pink book. But if you guys have not

pre-ordered that, make sure that you do so if you want to. It's ali beth-stucky.com slash book. And there are lots of different places that you can buy it if you're not an Amazon person. You don't have to buy it from Amazon, but if you go to my website and you click pre-order or you click buy this book, whatever button it is, then you can go to Penguin Random House's website and it'll show you all the places where you can click to buy the book. There are a variety of outlets that are selling it. Of course, you can go to your local Barnes & Noble and hopefully your other local bookstores and they will carry it. And if they do not carry it, then you can always request for them to carry the book. And remember, if you are a woman, join Women's Book Club with Ali Stucky on Facebook.

We've gone through a lot of great books this year. We just finished 1984. We read nothing to envy, which is an account of ordinary life in North Korea that was extremely chilling. We read the freedom of self-forgetfulness by Tim Keller. We read screw tape letters by C.S. Lewis. We'll be reading my book and we'll be reading several other awesome books. And it's just a very edifying community. If you are looking for like-minded women to not just analyze books with, but talk about faith with, talk about motherhood with, and feel like you're not alone, that this is a really great group for you. We don't just talk about books, although that is the purpose and the focus of the group. There are people who, you know, share different things that they're going through, even prayer

request, helpful links, resources that have been helpful to them. They ask for advice. And so I have been very edified by this group and I know that you will too. So join Women's Book Club with Allie Stucky. We'll be going through the book together. If you would like a study guide for this book, even if you are not in the book club, then I will make sure to provide that to all of you on social media to ensure that you have that. Or it might actually be, I'll have to ask my publisher. It might actually be via email that you guys can receive that study guide and you can get a group of women and you can go through the book together. So anyway, I'm just so excited.

I'm so excited for the book to come out and for you guys to read it and to let me know what you think and to work through it with you guys. So that's next Tuesday, August 11th, Alliebethstucky.com slash book to be able to purchase it wherever you would like to purchase it. Okay. So today, first, we are going to talk about burning Bibles and the American flag. That is what is happening in a protest at Portland. Portland in Portland. I don't know if you can necessarily call it a Portland. So right now we are at over

two and a half months of rioting, of burning, looting, vandalizing, terrorizing Portland, absolutely wrecking part of the city. This is happening in Seattle as well. There are other kinds of demonstrations that are happening across the country. Remember, the feds came in a couple weeks ago to protect federal property that is absolutely within their rights and within their responsibility. And you had this false narrative being perpetuated by the leftist media saying that the feds or the cause of the violence, that they're actually agitating peaceful protesters talking about them like they're just brainless fire ants or something. Like if you bother them or step on them, then they just go crazy and start throwing Molotov

cocktails. That's absolutely not what happened. The violence, the vandalism has been going on. for the past two months. It was happening for two months before the feds actually showed up. In Chicago, this is not where the demonstrations are happening, but where violent crime has just skyrocketed in the past couple of months, thanks to Lori Lightfoot, the world's worst mayor right next to Bill de Blasio,

neutering the police and basically telling the police in a lot of cases to stand down. She just hasn't been able to get a handle at all on the crime in her city. She actually did accept help from the feds, but there is this false narrative that Trump is sending in these paramilitary forces to terrorize the cities. And that's why there's violence and unrest that is absolutely untrue. We've seen the videos with our own eyes. And one of the latest videos that we saw in Portland were these Antifa protesters, writers, vandals, whatever you want to call them, burning the Bible and the American flag in the street. Now, are you going to tell me that that's the feds? Are you going to tell me that the federal officers agitated them, compelled them to do this? No, of course not. I just want you to remember that all of this

started. They said that all of this was because of George Floyd. You probably remember the videos in Minneapolis, Minneapolis and other places where people were wrecking targets, where they were looting and stealing flat-screen TVs and clothes. And we were all told, well, riots are the voice of the unheard. And we just need to be compassionate and we need to be sympathetic that these people, they're just very angry, basically patronizing them, acting like these people are children, like they have no moral agency whatsoever, that they are just products of perpetual oppression and that they have no ability whatsoever to actually choose things for themselves and just out of sheer grief, they are going out and they are stealing flat screen TVs.

It was all a lie. That's not to say that there were no peaceful protesters who really were protesting because of what happened to George Floyd and because of police brutality. They're absolutely were. They're absolutely were. And I don't want to conflate those two groups of people. I absolutely believe that peacefully protesting is, well, I don't just believe this. it is a fundamental right in the United States of America. It should continue to be so. And there should be no fear of punishment from the government whatsoever when people are peacefully protesting.

That group, the group that was peacefully protesting against police brutality, against what happened to George Floyd are not the same people as those that were rioting and looting. And yet the leftist media basically conflated those two groups by saying, well, the people who are looting and rioting are doing. it for the same reasons as the people who are peacefully protesting. I just don't, there's no correlation. I'm sorry, there's no correlation between the people who are looting a target, who are looting in Amazon store in Seattle, and the peaceful protesters who are saying, hey, I think we can do a better job of executing justice. No correlation between those two groups. No correlation between

the people who are looting and writing and burning and vandalizing and the death of George Floyd. There's no correlation between those two things. And let's not be silly. Let's not be silly and pretending that there is some kind of correlation, especially the things that are happening right now in places like Portland and Seattle, the absolute madness and chaos, in violence, chop and chas, whatever that was that was happening in Seattle, where basically a bunch of far-left radicals. They occupied a certain part of the city. And we were told by Jenny Durkin, the mayor of Seattle, that it was just, it was totally peaceful. This is freedom of expression. Yeah, until a 16-year-old black kid got shot and killed by a member of Chaz. And until the people who were in Chaz,

some of those rioters and Vandals showed up at Jenny Durkin's house, that's when she said, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not have Chaz and Chop. So when it actually affected her, not when the young man was shot and killed. But when it actually affected her and her safety, that's when the mayor of Seattle said, okay, well, maybe this is an unlawful gathering. And yet, the violence, the unrest, the chaos is still happening in Seattle and still happening in protest. This has in Portland. And this has nothing to do with police brutality. And this has nothing to do with injustice. This has nothing to do with George Floyd. It has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with these people wanting a revolution. They want a revolution and they believe that the socialist

revolution, the communist revolution for some of these people, it starts with anarchy. It starts with the destruction of the systems. We played a video for you last week where one of the leaders at these riots was saying, you know, we're not just looking for reform. We're not just looking for change. We're looking for the abolition of the United States as we know it. So they are looking for absolute destruction. That is why they are burning Bibles and the United States because they don't like what these two things represent to them. And according to their ideology, these things represent oppression. They represent the foundation of America. And they believe that America, the freest and the most prosperous and the most equitable country in the world is oppressive and is inherently bad.

It can't be redeemed. It can't be fixed. It can't be reformed. It can't be saved. It must absolutely be abolished. And so that's why they're burning the flag. That's why they're burning these Bibles. They hate everything Christianity represents. They hate everything that America represents. And so this is a symbol of the destruction that they hope to see happen on a larger scale. And yes, Black Lives Matter, not all of them, but some of them are a part of these demonstrations. Absolutely. I mean, we know that the leaders of Black Lives Matter. They are supporters of Chavez. They were supporters. They are supporters of Maduro in Venezuela. They have admitted that they are trained Marxists.

I mean, they have supported violent regimes in South America in the name of a communist revolution. That is who started, who founded Black Lives Matter. Again, I'm not conflating everyone who supports Black Lives Matter with these crazy anarchists in Portland and Seattle and in other cities across the country because I think that's unfair. But is there crossover in ideology? is their crossover in goals, the abolition, the rewriting of the United States, the redoing, the undoing, then the redoing of the United States, there's absolutely crossover there.

There absolutely is. And so I also think it's unfair to completely separate those movements as if they don't have any shared aims and goals because they do. Eric Metaxis is a radio host. He is an author who wrote Bonhofer and Martin Luther and a lot of other great books. He tweeted this. A century before the Third Reich, German poet Heinrich Hein prophesied that where books are burned, humans will soon be burned also. Antifa BLM has chosen the brazenly atheist path of Joseph Goebbels. Let the reader understand. Obviously, Heinrich Hein was correct about that. And I think

that Eric Metaxus is correct, too, wherever books are burned, wherever there is an attempt to destroy old culture and old ideas by way of this kind of physical destruction, there is going to be loss of life as well. History is replete with examples like this. If you look at any communist revolution, any communist revolution, if you look at Paul Potts, Cambodia, if you look at Mao's China, the Maoist revolution, the bringing on of communism, murdered all dissenters and undesirables rid itself of old cultures, old ways, old traditions, the old ways of thought. And of course, we know that tens of millions of people died that way. The same thing in Soviet Russia, everywhere, that communism, that there has been a left-wing

revolution, millions of people have died, have been arbitrarily detained for dissenting in Cuba and Venezuela. You can look anywhere. There has been a left-wing revolution widespread suffering. Mass death, injustice, oppression to a scale that we can't even. imagine in 2020 in the United States. And yet that is what, unfortunately, a lot of these revolutionaries that are allowed to destroy their cities are fighting for. This is just true wherever you see communist. They do not know their ideology does not know how to build. It only knows how to

destroy. That is the nature of a left-wing revolution. Part of the destruction that comes with these left-wing revolutions is old, old value systems that get in their way. They must be taken down. So in this case, Christianity, loyalty to the United States represented by the Bible and the American flag. The flag represents individualism. It represents opportunity, freedom, free markets, all the things that these left-wing radicals don't like and actually consider systems of oppression. So rather than engaging with these things, engaging with these ideas, which they don't have, unfortunately, the intellectual capacity to do, they try to destroy them. It's all they know how to do. These people and their ideology is they're coming for your churches

and they're coming for your schools, not necessarily always through riots and arson, but through the destruction of your mind, the controlling of what, pastors can and cannot say ensuring conformity within the education system. There is already conversation about how the idea of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion are all oppressive ideas that allow intolerance. And so there is this idea of tolerant intolerance where you suppress certain ideas, you suppress certain speech, you suppress certain ideologies and forms of education that the left wing would consider to be intolerant and oppressive. And in that way, they believe and they assert that they are actually creating a freer society, a society that is

free of what they deem bigotry. So that kind of idea is already happening. And it's coming for your churches. It's coming for your schools. We've already talked about several times how there is a force that is trying very hard to decimate to separate the parent-child. relationship. They want to ban homeschools. They want to, they want to ban homeschooling. We talked about how Harvard professor Elizabeth Bartholet has been pushing hard for that for a long time. There are certainly people on the Democratic left who believe that they want to stop the creation of charter schools. A lot of that has to do with left-wing teachers unions, but it's also more of a left-wing philosophical idea that says that the parent-child relationship,

really gets in the way of the state being able to control the way we think and the way we learn and the ideologies that we have. And so there is a sinister force trying to do that. And so these revolutionary ideas that are being manifested in violent ways in some of the cities across the country are going to spread themselves in more subtle ways, in more palatable ways in all of the institutions that we are currently a part of. And we have to be aware of that. Like Voddy Baccombe said, we have to expose and oppose critical theory. If you don't know what critical theory is, go back and listen to that episode or my interview with Neil Shinvi. It will just blow your mind. We have to expose and oppose these things. We have to keep saying no to them. What they want, what these people want

is destruction and revolution. Also, as Voddy Bacom said, that is the end of critical theory. That is the end of social justice is destruction and revolution, even though they don't necessarily admit that. It's not reform. It's not change. If you believe that something like the police is a system of oppression, that you can't reform something that is inherently oppressive. You have to get rid of it, which is why you are hearing that we need to defund the police, even though in all the major cities, eight, probably percent of which are run by Democrats, you are seeing a huge surge in violent crime at the same time that people are saying, we don't need the police. It's impossible to imagine all of this stuff happening at this level, even five years ago, but the left has moved very far to the

left. They moved very far to the left under Obama. We have cited all the research that proves that 's true on every policy position, on every cultural issue. They have moved far to the left. to the point to where they cannot even tolerate living in a free country anymore. Okay, we are going to talk about MBA, the NBA, and they're kneeling for the anthem and their support of China in just a second. 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. Let's talk about the NBA and China.

So NBA, they've started playing their games and Black Lives Matter shirts are being worn. And during the National Anthem at the beginning of the games or before the games, they are kneeling. And they aren't seeing the National Anthem. They are kneeling for the National Anthem in their Black Lives Matter shirts. And on their jerseys, they have now been permitted to wear social justice sayings, like how many more or say her name or something to be. about police brutality and systemic racism. They absolutely have the right to do these things.

100%. If their employer allows them to do so, I do believe that the employer also has the right to say, hey, on company time, this is how I want you to behave. That was my beef with the whole Kaepernick thing. Not that he doesn't have the right to peacefully protest, but if the manager of the team, if the coach, whomever, if they say that you cannot kneel on our time or we want you to stand for the national anthem,

I do believe that the boss gets to say how their employees behave. But he did, of course, have the right under the First Amendment to Neil. And these players in the NBA absolutely have a right to kneel, according to the first amendment. I also have the right to call them out for their hypocrisy. I also have the right to criticize them, not because of the action of peacefully protesting, which I think is very patriotic and very American, but because the premise of their protest is incorrect and because of the hypocrisy that they are displaying while kneeling for the flag of our nation while supporting a hostile regime.

and that's what we are about to get into. So here is my critique. Like I said, the premise of their protest that black Americans are disproportionately killed by the police and that there are right now, that there exists actively today systemic discrimination against particular ethnicities is simply not backed up by the data. We have talked through the data points before several times on this podcast. when you look at the number of police interactions of white versus black Americans and the number of those interactions that end in an unarmed person getting killed by the police, black people are not

more likely than white people to be killed by a cop. That doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist. That doesn't mean that discrimination ever happens. That doesn't mean that there aren't problems with our justice system that disproportionately negatively affects the most vulnerable in our society. there are that doesn't mean that officers don't ever kill people unjustly. They do. Black and white. So I'm not arguing that no one has a reason to protest things that are happening in our country. But when these players are kneeling for Black Lives Matter, they're not kneeling for the thousands of black men, women, and children killed within their own communities every year. They're not kneeling for the millions and millions of black babies who have been murdered in the womb.

They are not kneeling for the black children who are put at a disadvantage because of a lack of school choice. How do I know? Because they're wearing a BLM T-shirt, which as a movement and as an organization is concerned with only one kind of black life. And that is the one that is taken by a white police officer. I don't think that they care about the black Trump supporter. who had he had Trump signs outside of his business and he would stand outside of his business

and he would say, you know, Trump 2020 and have a Trump 2020 sign. He was an elderly man. He was murdered. You don't hear anyone from Black Lives Matter talking about that. You don't hear anyone in the liberal media talking about that, that a black man who obviously went against the grain of his own community because of his political beliefs, he got murdered because of his political beliefs. And that was not picked up by the mainstream media, except for Fox News and conservative outlets. You certainly didn't hear Black Lives Matter talking about that. You certainly didn't hear any of these players like LeBron James talking about that. The only social messages that are approved for the jerseys of these NBA players are ones that have to do with left-wing

causes, specific left-wing causes. So their jersey can't say baby lives matter. Their jerseys can't say school choice now. They can't say free Hong Kong. And that is really the big hypocrisy here. It is not that the NBA has to care about all injustices in order to care about one injustice. It's that the premise of their argument against injustice is based on something that is not true. And it's hypocritical the things that they're silent about, especially when they're silent about

China. Now, if you just think that's random, that I'm just picking a random country with human rights abuses is happening that the NBA needs to stand up against. I'm not. I'm not just saying, hey, you can't care about what's happening here unless you care about what's happening in Saudi Arabia. I'm not saying that. The NBA and China are very closely connected. They make billions in billions from China every year. This is an active partnership that the NBA is actively and voluntarily engaging in because it makes them a ton of money. There are big fans of the NBA in China. They love American basketball. And the NBA knows that and they make a lot of money off of playing their games there, selling their merchandise there.

But China, China is representing all of the things today that these NBA players say that they are protesting in the United States that don't actually exist on a scale that is even comparable to what's happening in China. So as you guys knows, we've talked about the Uyghur Muslims in China. There are millions of Ugar Muslims in China. They are being sent to re-education camps. We've actually seen drone footage of that. They're being enslaved, organ harvesting of these Ugar Muslims in these concentration camps, forced sterilization of Ugar Muslim women, forced abortions, no matter what the gestate, no matter when in the pregnancy it is.

A lot of these women, if they go past to having one child or two children, they are forced to abort their child. There is an article in the National Review that details how babies are ripped from their mothers at birth, and the family never knows what, happens to that child sold into slavery we don't know killed abused we have no idea this is happening right now in china among ethnic minorities you guys might have seen it was reported for a short period of time when it was happening that when the coronavirus had just started to abate in china they were evicting african immigrants from their apartments they were refusing to allow Africans to come

into their restaurants saying that Africans were actually the one spreading the virus when, of course, that wasn't true. Talk about a racist regime. Like, there's probably no more racist regime on earth than China. And yet, the NBA stands up for them. And yet, the NBA is not allowed to criticize them. As you guys know, as we have talked about, they forced the conversion of Christians throughout China, or they try to. They spy on their own citizens. They arbitrarily detained. dissenters. We've also talked about how doctors and scientists who spoke out about the coronavirus and some of the cures of coronavirus and some of the mishandling of the coronavirus in China, how they just disappeared there, that they were murdered or they were detained. No one knows what happened to them.

Talk about Orwellian. Like that's happening right now. But anyway, the NBA has nothing to say about that. On top of all of that, China is colonizing Africa and South America. So they're saying, hey, poor country, Ethiopia, for example, poor country in Africa, we are going to build this railway for you or we're going to invest in your infrastructure and you'll make so much money from this railway that you'll be able to pay us back. We're just trying to help you out because we, China, we're so compassionate to you, poor African countries, knowing that the railway or whatever it is is is never going to generate the money that China is promising that it is. And then poor countries like Ethiopia are caught in what is called a debt trap and they are indebted to China.

And that is how China is trying to take over poor countries in Africa and poor countries in South America by indebting them to China and then being able to hold it over their head and control them like that. So we're talking slavery in China. We're talking about systemic racism. That's what's happening in China. And we're talking about colonization in China that is all happening right now, not to mention and how they mishandled the coronavirus.

All of these things that are happening not just to ethnic minorities, but to all Chinese people, they're under the iron rule of the Chinese Communist Party. All of this is happening right now. All of these things that the left says that they care about that are happening in America, colonization, imperialism, racism, slavery, these things that haven't happened in America in hundreds of years are happening right now in China.

not only just the left in general, not really have anything to say about what's going on in China. It's almost always conservatives that have something to say about that. The NBA, who is making billions of dollars off of China, has nothing to say about it. An interesting ESPN investigation found that at the NBA training camps in China, so NBA has training camps for young people there to be trained in basketball. There are teenagers that go there to be trained. there was rampant abuse of the young teenage players by the Chinese coaches. So listen to this.

Listen to how the NBA is making money from China at the expense of the well-being of these young teenage boys. And they're kneeling with Black Lives Matter T-shirts on to disrespect. I mean, well, I won't say to disrespect, but to refuse to give honor to the American flag while they're actively participating in this. Just listen. American coaches at three NBA training academies in China told league officials their Chinese partners were physically abusing young players and failing to provide schooling, even though Commissioner Adam Silver had said that education would be central to the program, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the complaints. This is according to ESPN.com. The NBA ran into myriad symptoms by myriad problems by opening one of the academies in

Jingjing, a police state in Western China where more than a million Uyghur Muslims are now held in barbed wire camps. American coaches were frequently harassed and surveilled in Jingjiang. The sources said one American coach was detained three times without cause. He and others were unable to obtain how. housing because of their status as foreigners. A former league employee compared the atmosphere when he worked in Jingjing to World War II Germany. The ESPN investigation, which began after Darrell Morey's tweet, which I will explain in just a second, sheds new light on the lucrative

NBA-China relationship and the cost of doing business with the government that suppresses free expression and is accused of cultural genocide. One former coach described Washington. watching a Chinese coach fire a ball into a young player's face at point blank range and then kick him in the gut. Imagine you have a kid who's 13, 14 years old and you've got a grown coach who is 40 years old hitting your kid, the coach said, we're part of that. The NBA is part of that. So Houston Rockets general manager, Darrell, Mori tweeted a few months ago in support of Hong Kong. And the NBA apologized for it. apologized for his offensive comments,

apologized to a hostile communist enslaving regime while they're kneeling for the flag of the country that has afforded them. More freedom, more opportunity, more equity, more money than 99.9% of the world will ever know. It's amazing. It's mind-boggling. Hong Kong protesters, like I said, they understand what America represents. That's why they're waving the United States flag, even while they are being oppressed by the Chinese Communist Party.

They are still desiring the freedom and the democracy that America represents. And yet you have people here who have more freedom and more money and more opportunity and more fairness and more justice. then the vast majority of the world will ever know, and they refuse to even sing the national anthem. I mean, it's insane. It's insane. Now, here's some good news. 73% of Americans, according to Pew Research, have an unfavorable view of China right now. That's good. That means that the majority of the United States, at least in this realm, is not an idiot. So that's good. Unfortunately, the NBA doesn't represent the majority of America, which means that I think that a lot of these leagues that are deciding to take a knee for these organizations that don't represent actual justice while turning a blind eye to the nation that they are making a lot of money off of who is doing all the things that they say that they hate.

I think that they are out of step with the rest of the country. I mean, it is just a bummer. It's just a bummer that you can't even watch MLB. Like you can't even watch baseball without it being politicized. you just you can't escape from it anymore i mean america i think of the most american institution or the most american sport out there definitely baseball and you can't even turn that on without getting some kind of left wing demonstration and it's just it's just sad i think a lot of people have decided that they're just going to watch golf because golf had for the most part has refused to be politicized

and i think that's good but it's just sad that we can't even and unify over a love of sports anymore because it's been politicized and I just don't think it represents the majority of the country. America is not perfect. You don't have to tell me that. The person who believes that abortion is the greatest moral atrocity that has ever existed in this country right in line with slavery. That's happening on a daily basis. Hundreds of babies across the country are being brutally murdered every day inside the womb. You don't have to tell me that America doesn't necessarily represent a freedom and justice for all. I know that. America is the number one consumer of child pornography, which props up global sex trafficking. You don't have to

tell me that America is not a perfect place. You also don't have to tell me that America has a warped justice system sometimes that has a different justice system for the rich and the elite than they do. for the poor. I agree with that. So I am not someone who is saying that America is perfect that you have nothing to protest for. You have nothing to be mad at. By the way, I also believe that the police unfortunately kills too many people white and black every year. And I am for reform. So you don't have to tell me that America is in a perfect place. You don't have to tell me that it's not ideal here. I believe that it's not ideal. I know that it's not ideal for a lot of people and there is a lot of injustice that goes on here. But because of the ideals and the ideas upon which we were founded,

at least we have a North Star to look to. At least we can look to our Constitution and the values articulated in the Declaration of Independence that, yes, at first, we're imperfectly implemented, but at least we can look to those and say, let's get closer to that. Let's get closer to recognizing that we are all created by the same creator with certain inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Like, let's get back to those values and life will be better for everyone. If we all embodied those fundamental values, then yes, society would be more cohesive. Every group would be more successful.

But if we just reject those in favor of what? By the way, the people who say they want to abolish the United States, what? Like, what are they advocating for? What's the replacement? unfortunately it's actually more inequality it is okay well we need to redistribute power from the groups that have historically had more privilege and give that power and capital to the people who don't have as much privilege or who are a part of groups that have been historically oppressed so it's just inequality that they are going for it's forced redistribution that they are going for and that is not

freedom and justice for all of course have vulnerable groups in this country have black Americans in this country been historically extremely mistreated? Yes, but we are not going to achieve equality for vulnerable groups or minority groups by treating other people unequally, by giving preferential treatment and showing partiality towards one group at the expense of another group. No, we want to get closer to liberty and justice for all. We want to get closer to fairness. We don't want to switch one form of oppression for another form of oppression. So there's just a lot of hypocrisy. There's a lot of incongruency here.

I am for your right to complain about whatever you want to complain about, whether I agree with it or not. I am for your right to peacefully protest. But there's just a lot of confusion. There's a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of hypocrisy that comes with a lot of these protests and these demonstrations, especially when it comes to places like Portland and Seattle, especially when it comes to the MBA. So don't talk to me about social justice if you are not actually concerned with the so-called social

justice in the places that are writing your checks. I mean, come on here. So Jonathan Isaac plays for the Orlando Magic. He is a young player and he is a Christian. He decided that he was going to be the only one on his team to not wear a Black Lives Matter t-shirt and to stand up. for the National Anthem. And he was asked about it at a press conference after the game.

And this is part of the explanation that he gave. I feel like putting a shirt on and kneeling one hand in hand with supporting Black Lounge. That it made me support Black Lounge or not. I believe that for myself, my life has been supported through the gospel of Jesus Christ and that everyone is made in the image of God and that we all foreshort show to God's glory. that each and every one of us, each and every day do things that we shouldn't do. We say things that we shouldn't say. We hate and we dislike people that we shouldn't hate and dislike.

And sometimes it gets into a point where we point fingers about whose evil is worse. I love it. I love it. You love to see this. So he didn't give some complicated political response. He shared the gospel. He said, look, I don't think that this organization is, is helping black lives. He believes that black lives matter. Of course he believes that black lives matter. I believe

that black lives matter. We as Christians believe that their lives matter eternally, that they are created in the image of God and they have an eternal soul that will end up in one of two places. Therefore, every black person, every white person, every brown person, every person of every ethnicity and background needs the same gospel. And that is essentially what he's talking about here and pointing people to the gospel. He understands that societal change, that structural injustices cannot be dismantled by revolution, but by regeneration. Regeneration of the heart. And so that's why he preached to the gospel. And I'm just very proud of him. Of course, he's getting a lot of hate. Yahoo News.com said that, you know, it could have been fine that he did this if his response wasn't nonsense. Well, you know what First Corinthians one says? It says that the

gospel is falling for people who don't believe. It is foolishness to those. those who don't understand, who have not had, as Ephesians 118 says, the eyes of their heart enlightened. And so, of course, it's going to be a stumbling block to people who do not know the gospel for someone to preach the gospel in this way. And there are unfortunately some Christians who see kneeling as something that is completely congruent with a biblical worldview. And I'm not saying that if you kneel, that means that you're not a Christian. Of course, I am not saying that. But they don't see Jonathan Isaac as taking a stand of courage, whereas I believe this is what it looks like to be in the world the not of. What is he really doing with his life that is supporting his neighbor,

that is loving his neighbor, loving the people around him. That's what he is going to answer for before God. He is not going to, God is not going to ask, well, did you virtue signal at an NBA game? Did you wear the T-shirt? Did you kneel for the flag? No, it's going to be what? It's going to be, did you do with the gifts that I gave you, with the time that I gave you? Did you fulfill the most important command, loving your neighbor, all your neighbors, no matter what they look like as themselves? And God also tells us not to show partiality in the book of James, the book of Romans, and the Old Testament, that partiality preferential treatment towards people, no matter what their skin color is, no matter what their station is in life, is actually a sin. And so he's saying,

look, the gospel is the answer. It's regeneration, not revolution. That's the answer. It's loving other people. And look, people have to know the news that saves them in order for us to hope for any kind of change. Neeling's not going to do it. And wearing a t-shirt that supports an organization that is counter to a biblical worldview is also not going to do it. So kudos to him. And for the Christians who are calling him out and saying that he was wrong for this, I mean, you can disagree with him without saying that he is wrong for doing this. You can be a person who thinks that everyone should kneel and not be angry at him or not think that he is stupid or that he should be silenced simply because he went against the grain. I mean, don't we know as Christians that we are going to be in the minority

that if everyone else is doing something, even the atheist that we know, the agnostics that we know, the non-Christians that we know, if they're all doing one thing, shouldn't we at least take a second look at what they're doing and ask ourselves if it's biblical? Because, I mean, there's a good chance, not always, but there's a good chance that maybe it deserves some further analysis if the people who, for example, don't believe that everyone is made in the image of God, who don't believe in the Bible, who don't believe that we come from a creator,

if they're all doing one thing as a form of activism, wouldn't it be wise of a Christian who believes that Jesus is the way, way, the truth, the life, and that no one comes to the father except through him, wouldn't it be wise of us to take a step back and to say, okay, is that what God is calling me to? Is that representing something that is glorifying to God? And so to me, that's what Jonathan Isaac did. Myers-Lennard is an NFL player and, or actually, sorry, he's another NBA player. And he said this. He also stood for the national anthem. He said, I think I can be a beacon of light not only for my voice or platform in action, but in everything I'm doing.

He is, so Leonard, who is white, told Mark J. Spears of ESPN's the undefeated after the game, this is according to ESPN. I certainly support Black Lives Matter. I am very aware of what is going on, but I can be both. My patriotism runs deep. So there are people who are willing to stand up against the masses, who are willing to stand up against the inevitable social media mobs, who will come after people who decide not to not to be a part of the mainstream and to be, as I've said before, human salmon,

which is what all Christians are called to be, by the way, to swim upstream. Now, he says that this person says that he supports Black Lives Matter, so that's obviously different than he seems to be talking about the organization that's different than what I believe and what Jonathan Isaac's teams to believe, but he was willing to stand up when he knew it was going to be unpopular and no one else was going to do it and he was going to be called out for it. And I think that courage is admirable. And yeah, you could argue as well, even though I disagree, completely disagree with why Kaepernick was kneeling.

I mean, he wore socks with cops dressed as pigs on them. He doesn't like the United States. Like he has been very open about that, especially on July 4th. And sure, you could argue that when he was the only one that kneeling, he knelt for something that he believed in. And that did take a certain amount of courage. Now, it's been very lucrative for him. now, but at the time in the beginning, it wasn't. So just to be fair for the people who said that was courageous, who did believe in the reason why he was kneeling, that is true. That's another

perspective. But this, from my perspective, is also very brave going against the grain. And this is how quick culture changes. By the way, that just a few years ago, Colin Kaepernick was kneeling and it was this very divisive thing, just a couple years ago. This was very divisive and no one else was kneeling. Now it's divisive, apparently, and controversy. for people to stand up for the flag. Again, this is this is not the same though. This is not comparable. This is not relative. There's there's one side that should be in my opinion the default, which is to stand for the flag. Again, do they have the right to kneel? Of course they have the right to kneel. Absolutely. And the First Amendment should and will always, I hope, protect that right. However,

when you are standing for the flag, you are not saying that you agree to everything that America has ever or represents, as I have articulated, that's certainly not true when I stand for the flag and seeing the national anthem. And you shouldn't be compelled to do that because that goes against the freedom that the flag represents. But standing in honor of the freedom and the opportunity that Americans have been afforded, that millions of people every year leave their homes, risk their lives to come here just for a taste of the opportunity that Americans have. When we stand, we are honoring the men and women who have bled and died for the freedoms that we so take for granted. I mean, America just, we just don't understand. We just don't know how good

we have it. Our privilege, our luxuries, our freedom has unfortunately allowed our brains to atrophy. Like, we are so addicted to victimization and the idea of oppression. Some people are that you have to almost create reasons sometimes in some cases, some people to be upset rather than being grateful for the extremely unique, extremely rare, not just on earth today, but in all of human history, freedom that we enjoy. Unfortunately, it's rotted people's hearts and brains as they have embraced things like critical theory, which are just stand opposed to any kind of rational thought or consistency whatsoever. So good, good jobs, Jonathan Isaac and other people who have decided to go against the grain and to be human salmon. That is not easy. And may that be an

example for us, not just in this, but in the power of standing up when it's unpopular, both literally and metaphorically. There was also an example. This is a little bit different, but Trader Joe's, there was a 17-year-old. She happens to be white, and that's kind of pertinent to the story of 17-year-old. She started a petition against Trader Joe's because she claimed that some of their products were racist. They have products like Trader Jose's that sells, that is taco shells and Mexican food items. Trader Ming's, which is Asian food at Trader Joe. She started a petition and got several thousand signatures saying that Trader Joe's needs to discontinue.

these products because they are racist. The racist, as it's Darrell Harrison from the Just Thinking podcast. He says, he says, racist. And so she decided that these were racist and that she needed to start a petition about these products. And at first, at first, Trader Joe's said, you know, we'll definitely take a second look. But then they published an article or they published a letter that said, you know what, we've talked to our customers and these things aren't racist. We are actually appreciating other cultures and these things aren't racist and we're not going to discontinue them. Good job. Good job, Trader Joe's. They just said no. They said no to the mob. Most of the people who signed this petition probably don't even shop at Trader Joe's, by the way.

And so they're going to listen to their customers, most of which don't care about this stuff, which doesn't affect anyone's life. Doesn't affect anyone's life. And so good for Trader Joe's, may we all gain courage from things like that. We don't have to apologize for or change our behavior for people who set standards that don't make any sense and who demand things from us that don't actually make any sense or have any grounded in any kind of objective truth or morality. Okay. I just want to say one thing after all of this. We actually don't talk about Trump very much on this podcast because conservatism in general, like as a philosophy, as a, a, part of a worldview. Of course, I believe in a biblical worldview, but you guys know that I am a

conservative as part of that. That is more important to me. It's more important to me to talk about bigger stories than just Donald Trump. And you guys know that because I believe that Donald Trump is basically the only wall between us and the lunacy of the destructive left, and that hasn't always been a characterization of the Democratic Party. But unfortunately, it is increasingly an accurate characterization of the Democratic Party. I mean, Joe Biden said that he wants to radically transform America. He has Bernie Sanders is part of his task force to try to create his policies about schooling and health care, for example. And so it's a radical Democratic Party. Radicals in the party like AOC, Ilhan Omar Rashida Talib, who are socialists and who do have a problem with America

on a fundamental level. They are mainstays now. in the party. They are mainstream in the party. And so of course, I believe that Donald Trump, whether we think he's perfect or not, which we don't, at least I don't. He is right now the only protection that we have between us and the craziness, unfortunately, that is going on in a large portion, unfortunately, of the left. Now, I want to play you a little clip of an interview that he had with an Axios reporter about the coronavirus. Let's look at some of these charts. I'd love to.

We're going to look. Let's look. And if you look at death, yeah, it started to go up again. Well, right here, the United States is lowest. In numerous categories, we're lower than the world. Lower than Europe.

In what? In what? Take a look. Oh, you're doing death as a book. proportion of cases. I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the US is really bad. Well, much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc. You can't, you can't do that. You have to go, you have to go by, you have to go by where, look, here is the United States. You have to go by the cases, the cases. Why not as a proportion of population? Well, look at South Korea, for example, 51 million population, 300 deaths. It's like, it's crazy. You don't know that. I do. You don't know that. You think they're faking their statistics, South Korea? So if that made you super uncomfortable listening to or watching that, me too.

It was very awkward. He was shuffling papers trying to look at data trying to prove the reporter wrong. And it was really hard to watch. And there were other parts of the interview that were hard to listen to and watch as well. The reporter asked him about John Lewis. And instead of Trump saying anything positive or at least respectful about John Lewis, I'm not saying he had to agree with him. John Lewis was, you know, pro-abortion. He was definitely a man of the left. So I don't expect Trump or conservatives to agree with him. But when he just died and he did fight for civil rights in the 60s and the 70s, Trump should be deferential, at least in this moment, at the very least, if not just morally right, it is politically savvy to be as respectful as possible. Instead, the first thing that he mentioned was that he decided to not come to his inauguration and that he didn't know him. This whole interview was extremely difficult.

It was extremely difficult and it just wasn't the best moment for Donald Trump. Look, people are going to vote for you, Donald Trump, because the left scares the heck out of them. Because they think Joe Biden is weak and incompetent and they know that the vice president is probably going to take over if he becomes president. and that he's probably going to pick a radical person. They know that he is just a vessel for radical leftist policies and the radical transformation of the United States in a very bad way. So people are going to vote for Donald Trump who are conservatives and who are scared of the left. Now, there are people who have not decided.

Both people who voted for you, Donald Trump, in 2016, and people who did not vote for you. They either voted third party, they wrote someone in, or maybe they even voted for Hillary Clinton. But they've just had it with cancel culture. They've had it with the wholeness of the left. They've had it with the defund the police movement. They've had it with the identity politics.

And they're like, well, if Trump is the only other option, I might. But they see things like this. They see particular tweets. And they say, I just can't stomach it. I just can't do it. So what the Biden campaign has done? Because he is so incoherent. Because Biden cannot complete a full sentence.

Because honestly, truly, I do not mean this tritely. I do not mean this trivially. I'm not trying to be rude. It is so clear that Biden is in cognitive decline because they are, because he is unable to, to be able to hold himself together in any kind of hard hitting interview whatsoever. They have basically hidden Biden away. They told Chris Wallace, who as you guys know interviewed Trump a couple weeks ago and that was a difficult interview for Trump, but I thought Trump did a pretty good job. They know that Biden can't handle that. They watched that interview and they're thinking there's no way that Biden can handle that until they've hidden Biden away. And Biden is doing pretty well,

not amazing, but doing pretty well in the polls right now. Why? Because the more people see Donald Trump in interviews like Axios, the more people see some of Donald Trump's tweets. Like I don't think he needs to be talking about people standing or kneeling for the national anthem. The more they see him, as a polarizing figure, the more they see him talking about, like he did to the Axios reporter, the more they see him talking about the coronavirus numbers in a way that lacks any kind of depth they're feeling or understanding whatsoever, the more they say, okay, well, I think I'm just going to vote for Joe Biden because he doesn't seem all that dead, because he hasn't gone out there and been especially polarizing. He hasn't had an opportunity to have a bunch of gaffes. He hasn't had an

opportunity to show his lack of understanding or incompetence because his campaign is hidden him away and it's effective. Honestly, I think that would also be a kind of effective strategy for Donald Trump. It might be too late. It might be too late. I think that if he had been quieter on Twitter for the past year or so, if he had shown, I do think, honestly, I do think that he is a compassionate person. There are some people who believe that he is just hardened and calloused. I don't believe that. I think he puts that on. I don't think that is actually who he is. I think that if he would have had a little bit more attacked, yes, the media still would have attacked him. It still would have been unfair. There still would have been biased reporting. There still would have been the Russian collusion narrative. There still would have been people calling him a white supremacist and a racist no matter what he did. Absolutely. But for the people who don't like the left, you don't like the left wing media, who think that they are crazy and don't want any part of their revolution, they have to be able to look to Trump. and to see some kind of stability and to see some kind of grounding and to see some kind of hope and to see some kind of coherence. They have to be able to see a better alternative in Donald Trump.

And so I think a good campaign strategy would be for Donald Trump to not do these interviews with axios. I mean, of course, it's revealing in some ways. And so there are some people who think that more transparency is better, but maybe the Trump campaign. needs to do some of the same things that the Biden campaign is doing, who is saying, you know what, they're basically both sides are running against the most radical portions of their, they're ready to get a representation of the Republican and the Democratic Party rather than running against just one person. Let the sides duke it out and allow the candidates to just kind of be quiet.

It's working for Joe Biden. I think that it would work for Trump, too, if it's not too late. maybe there just needs to be a little bit of quietness on the side of that candidate. I know they think by getting out there, by being in front of these reporters, he is showing a sign of strength, but not when the interview doesn't go well. Not when the interview doesn't go well. And I know it's a lost cause at this point to say that Trump needs to be quieter on Twitter. I understand.

It's a lost cause. But I don't know. Maybe just a last-ditch effort trying to show some kind of unity, which I do think that has done several times in his presidency, not taking these kinds of interviews that are just not going to highlight Trump's best side. I do think it would be effective in the same way that Joe Biden being hidden away is effective right now. He's running against the craziness of the left. Let the left do its thing and people will vote for Trump by default. If you let Trump do his thing, people are going to vote for Biden by default. That's just the truth. Okay, that's all I have to say today. That's how I wanted to,

I just wanted to make sure that I got that and I know this was a longer episode. But thank you guys so much for listening. We will be back here on Friday with Jeff Durbin. 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.