Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 365 | Best of the Super Bowl & the Worst of Progressivism

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Despite cynicism from conservatives, many of the Super Bowl commercials were pretty funny this year. Some, like the Jeep commercial featuring Bruce Springsteen, tried to virtue-signal to the Right, but didn't accomplish much since the Right isn't a fan of Springsteen and the Left decried the association the commercial made between Christianity and patriotism. Some on the Left are declaring the day after the Super Bowl "Colin Kaepernick Appreciation Day," but it seems like the millionaire activist has a lot to appreciate himself. Switching gears to talk about a more serious issue, we delve into the effect lockdowns are having on the mental health of our kids. This seems to be part of a larger social experiment by progressives to break down long-standing facets of our society, like family and gender norms. At the end of the day, a top-down approach to governing goes against human nature. --- Today's Sponsor: Built Bar is the healthiest thing you'll do today! It's better-tasting than your favorite candy bar. Right now, go to BuiltBar.com & use promo code 'RELATABLE' for 20% off your next order. --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful Super Bowl Sunday and a great weekend. We are going to talk a little bit about the Super Bowl, some highlights, some low lights, some good tweets. That's just going to take up the first part of the episode and then we're going to transition into stuff that's a little bit more serious. I want to talk about this idea that I've been thinking about and unfortunately that I've been seen of children being the subject of progressive social experiments, how I've seen that play out in the past few months, and then what we as Christians should make of all of that. First, I want to start with some of my favorites from the Super Bowl. So there were a few good commercials. I know that conservative

Twitter was very cynical about the Super Bowl commercials that were being played for the most part. And of course, not all of them are good. And there are many, many virtue signaling ones that are just ridiculous. But a lot of them, We're actually, I thought really funny or really clever. There was one that wasn't like, you know, slapier or any funny, but I thought it was clever. And that was the Bud Light Seltzer Lemon commercial. And so I'm going to play a little bit of that now. When did the Bud Light Seltzer start making lemonade?

Probably when 2020 handed us all those lemons. 2020 was a lemon of a year. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I love... January February. So I just thought it was cute. I mean, videos of people being hit in the face with things, it's just, it's one of those things that never fails to make you laugh. I think the perfect balance of a good Super Bowl commercial is just a little bit clever and just a little bit humorous, but not trying too hard.

When you try too hard and when you have people in it that are that are trying to be funny but aren't funny, it just fails. I don't know if you guys saw the poor Oatley commercial. So Oatley, it makes Oatmeal. and we have Oatley Oat Milk in our refrigerator. And we watched the commercial and we were like, I think, I think we need to throw our oat milk out because it was so bad. I saw someone say.

And I just, I feel bad for the guy. I feel bad. Everyone makes mistakes. But it was the CEO. He was playing on a keyboard, which, you know, he didn't have a terrible voice,

but he didn't have like, hey, you need to sing in a Super Bowl commercial voice either. And he was singing this kind of like, I don't know, theme song about his. oat milk. And it was it was pretty strange. I'm pretty sure it actually said like it's milk except made from humans. And I'm like, well, it's not that kind of milk. Not that kind of milk. That's different. It's oat milk. So it's made from oats. Maybe I remember that wrong,

but I remember thinking as I was watching it. Okay, this is kind of strange. I saw someone say on Twitter, like, this is what happens when people are too scared to tell the CEO that he has a bad idea. Poor guy. So that was one of the, that was one of the worst. commercials, I would say, but at least it wasn't virtue signally. Those are my least favorite kinds. There was one very virtue signaling one, and that was the Bruce Springsteen. And this is a different kind of virtue signaling. Okay. So typically virtue signaling goes to the left. It is trying to signal that you as a company or you as an individual are a performative activist, that you're going to say the right things. You're going to throw the right images up on screen, and you're going to act like you are

all for the social justice cause, even as you are, for example, profiting from China like Amazon or Apple. I hate those kinds of commercials. This is a different kind of virtue signal, and I'll talk about why I'm going to play you a few seconds of this Bruce Springsteen Jeep commercial. There's a chapel in Kansas standing on the exact center of the lower 48. It never closes. All are more than welcome. to come meet here in the middle. It's not the property of just the fortunate few.

It belongs to us all. Whoever you are, wherever you're from. It's what connects us, and we need that connection. We need the middle. We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground. All right. So I liked it when I was watching the commercial. I'm always skeptical whenever I see any kind of patriotic seeming message come from a major company because it seems like so much of corporate America is just against any kind of patriotism. I'm going to be perfectly honest. I didn't know who this guy was in the commercial. I had no idea. I thought this was just a random actor that they had picked. And then people were saying, You know, it's Bruce Springsteen. I just didn't know. I had no idea what the guy looked like. I know obviously who Bruce Springsteen is, but I just didn't know what he looked like.

And, okay, I thought this was a pretty unifying message. I was surprised by the Christian imagery in it that you guys saw if you're watching this on YouTube. There was a chapel, which represents, like, the middle of the country. And inside it, there is, you know, the shape of the United States with an American flag and then it had a cross in front of it. And as soon as I saw that, I said, oh, woke Twitter, woke Christian Twitter is going to be so mad. They're going to say this is Christian nationalism. And so I typed in Christian nationalism on Twitter, Christian nationalism Jeep, just to see. And I was not disappointed. Immediately there were hundreds, if not thousands of tweets saying, Jeep just put up a Christian nationalist commercial. And I am so mad as if you're not allowed

to put up across in the United States of America. And so Twitter is very predictable. Segments of Twitter, including conservative Twitter, are very predictable and their takes on things. And I just knew that the mixing of the American flag and Christian symbolism was going to make a lot of people mad. And indeed, it did. That's not what bothered me about this commercial. And it wasn't, it wasn't the message that we need to come together and find common ground. I think that's all well and good. I will say I was actually surprised, like there's a portion of the commercial where he picks up dirt and he says, we're all on common ground. And I was like, oh, we're on common ground instead of stolen ground now. Okay, that's a new message that we're not typically hearing from the mainstream.

That's better, I would say. But here's the whole weird thing about it, is that Bruce Springsteen is an outspoken progressive, which is fine. Everyone has a right to their opinions, even as a singer you're allowed to say what you think about politics. But here's what he had to say on October 29th, according to USA Today. Quote, a good portion of our fine country to my eye has been thoroughly hypnotized, brainwashed by a con man from Queens, said Springsteen on the Wednesday episode of his serious XM East Street radio show from my home to yours. Didn't know that existed either. You mix in some jingoism, some phony patriotism, fear of a black planet. I've never heard that phrase in my in my life vanity narcissism paranoia conspiracy theories and a portion of our nation

undergoing mass delusions and teetering on violence and you're left with the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime how did he do it so that is how he categorizes the tens of millions of people who voted for Donald Trump we're all hypnotized we're all conned we have all been duped by this guy who just pretends to be a patriot and of course is some kind of vicious or racist. It's not because our values just don't align with Joe Biden. It's not because we have policy disagreement. It's not because we don't like some of the things that we've already seen Joe Biden execute. We knew he was going to execute in the first few days of his presidency. It's because, of course, we have been hoodwinked. We have been tricked. And so that person

who then later in his show says that we need an exorcism from the White House. So, of course, comparing Donald Trump to some kind of demon, some kind of demonic force, that person, you said that in late October, is now doing a commercial with Jeep saying that we need to come together and find common ground. I mean, as we've been saying for the past few months, or yeah, I guess it's been a few months, it's crazy that it's been that long since the election, the people who supported Biden have been saying, let's come together, let's come together. meanwhile constantly chastising us and categorizing us, everyone who voted for Trump, the tens of millions of us, as racist, white supremacist, domestic terrorist enablers, people who have been conned and tricked.

And so how are we supposed to, how are we supposed to unite with people who think of half the country in that way and who feel some sense of moral superiority and have since the 2016 election toward people who voted differently? There hasn't, it doesn't seem to be, there doesn't seem to be even a slight willingness by a lot of people, especially in the media class, to say, okay, how is it that so many people could vote for someone who is so scandalous in a lot of ways? Why is it that so many evangelicals voted for someone who ostensibly is against a lot of our values, at least in his personal life? It's not just because we pretend that he didn't have moral issues. It's not because we pretend like he's some perfect, person. Maybe you could seek some understanding and understand the issues, the policies that we actually care about and what we just can't bring ourselves to vote for in a Democratic candidate. But there's been none of that. There's been no attempt at reconciliation. There's been no attempt at understanding. It's just, oh, yep, they're all racist. Let's reprogram them. I think that was AOC's words. And let us, let's kind of re-educate and let us make sure, or deep.

program them, rather, and let us make sure that they're no longer believing in Trump's tricks, not understanding that we are human beings with agency and with plenty of understanding of what's going on. But Bruce Springsteen represents that kind of people who thinks that he can call half of the country terrible, awful bigots who have been tricked, and then a couple months later say that we need to come together and try to use middle America and Christianity in the American flag to do the very thing that he was accusing Donald Trump of doing, which is showing phony patriotism and using what he thinks is going to attract conservative America to come to the middle, which is some superficial form of Christianity. I mean, he is actually doing the very thing

that he accused Republicans and Donald Trump of doing to attract the conservative and the evangelical vote. So that was my problem with the commercial. It was a good commercial other than that. why did they pick this guy who literally said that the White House needed to be exercised just a couple months ago. Okay. Now to another commercial that I did like, so the Bud Light Seltzer commercial I thought was cute and I liked it. The Bruce Springsteen commercial wanted to like it, didn't end up liking it for the reasons I listed. And then this commercial was probably my favorite commercial and I'll tell you why after I play a snippet of it. It is the Toyota Olympic commercial. baby girl for your adoption, but there's some things you need to know.

He's in Siberia. And she, her life, it won't be easy. So I thought that this just sent a very good pro-life message, pro-adoption message. Now, I'm sure that that is not the message that the Olympics nor Toyota were trying to convey. But this woman who didn't have, didn't have full legs, she was adopted by this family and then turned out to be a very successful swimmer. I mean, that represents what the pro-life, what the anti-abortion, if you want to call it that side, believes about human life.

Not just that we all have the potential to be Olympic swimmers, because that's not where we derive human value from. We don't derive human value from how successful they're going to be. We derive human value from this idea that we all have inherent worth as individuals from the moment of conception. We are not just clumps of cells. We're not just matter. We're not just potential humans, but we are humans and we are people at that time and we are made in the image of God. We have purpose. But this commercial does show what happens when you choose not to waste a life. When a life is redeemed, when it's pulled up from what seems like a despairing,

desperate situation, and someone has given love, someone has given acceptance, someone is given a chance. Who knows what that person can accomplish? And again, I'm not saying that accomplishment is the reason that we are pro-life and against abortion, but it does make you wonder how many babies have been aborted who could have grown up to do something like that, who would have grown up to be an incredible doctor or an incredible researcher or an incredible statesman or congresswoman or amazing mom or amazing teacher or incredible loyal friend. Who knows? how many lives and how many people we have taken out and placed on the altar of convenience. And this is just such a good reminder of what happens when we take a chance on people,

when we love people, when we accept people. And when we decide to choose love instead of fear. And man, all of you parents out there who have adopted kids, whether it's here or abroad, whether it's kids with special needs or just a child who needed a home, Thank you so much. Thank you for the example that you set. Thank you for the love that you give. Of course, you know, and I hope everyone knows, that adopted parents are every bit of a parent as a biological parent is. And there are some people that only have adopted children and some people that have biological and adopted children. There are some parents who are incredible foster

parents. And I think that the parent-child relationship obviously is such a wonderful depiction of the gospel. When you have a child, for example, like me, like a biological child, you realize the moment they lay that child on your chest, what it means to have sacrificial love in a way that you didn't really understand just when you got married. I mean, yes, you love your spouse so much and you lay your life down for your spouse in a metaphorical sense and for the husband in a spiritual sense. But when they lay that baby on your chest, you feel this tidal wave of overwhelming love and you all in a moment that you would die a thousand deaths if it just meant the well-being of that child, all the hopes and the fears that you had for your own life are then transferred onto your child

and their happiness and their success and their well-being becomes your highest hope and their failure becomes your biggest fear. And it is that amazing, just a rush of sacrificial, selfless love, this heartbreaking, gut-wrenching love that you feel for your child, that gives you just a snippet into just a small glance into the father's love for us. And also what it must have been like for God to send his only son, the son that he loved so much, his only begotten son, as John 316 says, to die a gruesome death that he didn't have to die on our behalf. like how hurtful, how hard must that have been for the father, but also how much did he love us,

his children, that he would do that, that he would allow that kind of sacrifice. So of course, the parent-child relationship, the biological parent-child relationship is a depiction of the gospel, but so is the adopted child-parent relationship, because we are told that God adopted us as Gentiles, those of us who aren't a part of Israel, who are, aren't a part of the Jewish people, the original chosen people, we Gentiles have been grafted in. We have been adopted through Jesus Christ to become part of God's family. That is the gospel, that God took us from a place that was far off. He took us from a place of despair when we were dead in our sin, according to Ephesians 2.

It made us alive together with Christ by grace. We have been saved. That chapter says. And that is what adoption looks like. we are now a part of his family. We are now heirs with him. We get to enjoy all of the pleasures and all of the mercies and all of the blessings of being in his home, not because of anything we did, not because we earned it, but because God loves us so much as our father. And for us Gentiles is our adopted father. We are adoptees. And so every kind of parenthood is such a beautiful depiction

of the gospel and God's love for us. And I know that it's certainly not what Toyota was after when they were creating this commercial, but it's just a reminder to me, the beauty of adoption, the beauty of family, the beauty of parenthood, which we're actually going to talk about in just a little bit too. And we get to the next segment of our podcast. But good job, Toyota, good job on that commercial. I hope that it resonated with a lot of people. and I hope it just reminds us of the, not just the gospel, but also the importance of our cause,

of the pro-life cause, of the anti-abortion cause to remind people to show people that adoption is an option and that all life matters because it does, even the smallest life. All right. Into a little bit less serious, unpopular opinion of mine, I like, I liked the weekend performance, okay? I know that it wasn't as good as Beyonce. There wasn't as much dancing. It wasn't as good as, what's his name? Bruno Mars, probably better than Maroon 5, in my opinion.

But I mean, I'm not like the biggest. I don't want to say I'm not a fan of music. But, you know, back in the day, back in high school and college, I actually cared about, I actually cared about like the latest music and things like that. I actually invested time and thinking about what music. I wanted to listen to and like curating podcasts and burning CDs back in the day. But I obviously don't do any of that anymore. I just listen to Christian music and then whatever comes on.

But I actually like The Weekend. Like I think that he has a lot of really good songs. They're just catchy. They're not just catchy. They're, I don't know. They're unique. They're different. I was trying to explain it to my husband last night.

And I couldn't really put into words why I like the weekend and why I think he's so talented. because I really do. The bottom line is, is he's not an amazing dynamic performer because he can't dance and that's a problem. But he did a really good job singing live. I mean, in that kind of situation, I think that's very difficult. I thought it was a pretty good show. Like I said, I like the weekend. And so I was like glued to the TV during that time. And I was actually looking forward to it. I might be some of like one of the only people who thinks that because apparently Twitter didn't like it. I liked it. I thought it was good. I don't really have any comments about the football game itself, you guys don't come to me for a football commentary. And man,

that's good. If the blaze came to me and was like, Allie, we need you to put out some, some more football content. That would be a huge problem because guys, I don't understand football. And I'm not just trying to be typical girl. I really wish I did. It's one of those things for me that my brain just is like, nope, I don't want to know that. I don't want to know that. I get it generally, obviously. I know what's going on. Generally, I get what they're trying to do. But every time I ask a question to my husband of like, okay, what is this?

What does it mean when they say this? What are they trying to do here? Why is that good? My brain is just like, nope, I know you just ask this question, but I'm not going to take in the answer. I don't know why my brain does that. It's the same thing with certain aspects of math. Not all math, but math was just not my subject of expertise growing up.

And my parents would always say, stop saying you're bad at math. You're just saying that and it's coming true. And I'm like, I don't know how to explain this to you. But my brain shuts off when I try to do a math problem, like a word problem, something beyond like algebra two because leading up to that is okay. But anything more complicated than that, my brain just shuts off. And it's the same thing with football. So I'm not going to give you any commentary whatsoever on the football game.

thank goodness you guys don't come to me for that. But I mean, I just think about Tom Brady. And I know this is not original commentary. I know. But how like I don't think that he's an arrogant person, but how arrogant do you have to be to say, okay, I was with this team for a very long period of time, the Patriots, who didn't even make the playoffs this time now that I don't play with them. And then this team, the Buccaneers, or do people just call them the Bucks? I don't know. Who were kind of me. E. Ochre, like, they weren't that good. Now I'm on this team. And now they won the Super Bowl. It really is just me. Like, maybe before when he was playing for the Patriots, he could just say, okay, you know,

it's not just me. It's the franchise. It's the whole team in general. But then he leaves and they do bad. And he goes to another team that was doing bad and they're doing good. Like, it'd be really hard not to just, like, yeah, you know what, I am the greatest of all time. It would be really hard, I think, for him to keep his humility. But, you know, I like Tom Brady. I know people love to hate Tom Brady. I think people love to hate excellence, but being 43 years old and working as hard as he does, he also seems like a genuinely good person. Like the stories that I hear about him of how he really treats his fellow team members like their family and how he really takes them in and seems to love them well and encourage people well, I think that speaks to a level of confidence that a lot

of really good athletes, it seems like they just don't have. And I think it's not just that he's a good player, it seems like, and this is what I've talked about with my husband because I ask my husband about this kind of stuff. And he said it's also just his leadership abilities. Like some people are just really good leaders. They know how to make a team work together toward a goal. And we should all aspire to that. We should all want to be that kind of leader that people want to follow, that kind of person, that people are like, you know what? I trust you. And it's not necessarily, I know that he's also a really good football player. I understand that. But I don't think it's necessarily just because of I think that there is something else that maybe can't even be taught that he has that makes him such an important leader on a team.

Speaking of leaders and bad leaders and people who are very different than Tom Brady, people were also talking about Colin Kaepernick on Twitter, Mariah Carey. Her tweet went viral. She said that it's, I guess, the day after the Super Bowl today, or I don't know, maybe she tweeted it yesterday. that it's calling Kaepernick Appreciation Day. I don't really understand why. Again, not a football expert, but from what a lot of you guys tell me, from what I've heard from people who do understand football,

is that he wasn't very good. Like, I'm sure he was good, and I know that there's some, like, debate over that. But apparently he wasn't very good. And there are a lot of people on the left who hail him as a hero for kneeling for the national anthem. And I will credit him with saying that he did, kind of start a movement that people weren't really kneeling or doing the kind of what I call

performative activism that he was doing before that. And apparently he does actual substantive activism too with the causes that he believes in. But I still don't understand why he is hailed as a hero. I mean, he wore socks with cops depicted as pigs on them. He, you know, acts like he has been victimized. Like he has been wronged by these different organizations, including in the NFL. Like he has just had such a rough go of it because of, you know, deciding to speak out when, in fact, he's made millions and millions of dollars as a spokesperson for Nike. Like, when it comes down to it, he really hasn't sacrificed. Like, I guarantee you, he makes more money doing what he does now than he would have probably being a third string quarterback. Again, you can correct me if I'm

wrong, those of you who know more about football than I do. But he probably has more notoriety and is more famous and has more of a platform and more influence and more money now than he ever would have if he had just stood for the national anthem and continued to play football or if the NFL had tolerated what he was doing and continued to give him a spot. But I mean, he, you probably remember that whole like tryout thing from a couple years ago or maybe it was last year where he had like his own camera crew come and like film him, try out for certain teams and he didn't make the cut. I don't really know.

But the fascination and the idolatry surrounding this person, because of, because of things that I just don't fully understand. Again, I'm not saying that he didn't do anything. I understand that he kneeled when no one else was kneeling. He raised awareness about a subject that, of course, a lot of people care about. but the way he went about it and how he has reacted since then and how he has been rewarded since then, it just doesn't speak to this guy who has been so victimized that we need to put on a pedestal and say that this is calling Kaepernick Appreciation Day.

And he doesn't have the same kind of characteristics of leadership. I don't think it doesn't seem like at all as some of the most successful players do. Let's not pretend like he would have ever reached the level of success of someone like Tom Brady, talent-wise, or just leadership. that's fine you can appreciate him you like his politics you like what he stands for i just think the level of worship of calling capperick is very strange it's a it's very very strange okay a couple more things there were some tweets that i thought were uh were kind of funny and then we'll get into uh the last 15 or so minutes of of the podcast uh probably probably longer than that we'll see um

all right so here are some funny tweets this This is a little, it's a little inappropriate. But as I was saying, like, the Super Bowl commercials today are like, they can be so virtue signaling. And like, no one's allowed to laugh at some of these commercials. And they're just so insufferable some of them. And this person, I don't even know who he is. Mark Agee, someone on my timeline retweeted him. It said, Super Bowl commercial in 2021.

Racism is a disease of the soul. We at Arby's can do better. Super Bowl commercial in 1990s. Twins are hot because there's two of them. I thought that was so funny and such a true contrast to where we used to be just like not having to take everything seriously and to where we are now. These companies that we really don't care what they think about these social justice issues. Like we don't care what RBs or cheese it or whatever. What they think about politics. We just want them to tell us about like what food they offer and we want them to make us laugh because they're not supposed to

to be a serious, a serious company. Now they're taking these activist stances, and it just seems so silly in contrast with the, with the brand that they have. And SNL actually parodied this as well in a video, and I thought that it was funny. There was this, also there was a Washington Post article that said, the Buccaneers embody Tampa's love of pirates,

is that a problem? And then it goes on to say how it's like politically incorrect to, I don't know, glorified piracy. I'm not really sure of the argument, but I thought Matt Walsh's response to it was funny. This is a good point. I know many people who spit years swash buckling on the high seas because of the way piracy was normalized by professional sports teams.

Very true. We all know a swash buckler who said, you know what? If Tom Brady is going to normalize and glorify pirates, I'm going to go out and get an eye patch. And I also am going to become a pirate on the, high seats of the of the coast of florida um dan rather posted this he didn't mean for this to be funny but i had a good chuckle um is it responsible having commercials showing people gathering in large groups

without masks well i i don't know dan rather was it responsible for doritos to imply that they could take matthew mconehe from being two d to three d just by eating their chips was that responsible people might actually think that they are able to make flat stanley into a real person and if they just feed their flat Stanley 3D Doritos chips. Yes, I think it's highly responsible because it's a fictional depiction. And by the way, at one point, like we're not going to wear masks anymore. I think that it would drive so many people insane. If even their forms of escapism, like commercials and TV shows,

if they all showed the dystopian reality that we're living and with everyone wearing, wearing six masks and face shields while they're walking their dog as Jill Biden recommended that we do on Twitter. She said that we need to wear a mask even when we're outside walking our dog. But this is the fall of the science administration. But Dan, rather, because he cannot have fun, he's actually allergic to fun, and he's allergic to laughing, and he's allergic to entertainment. He has said that it is irresponsible for commercials, which are fiction, by the way. I don't know if you guys see that. It's actually, it's not real. It's not, it's not happening. That is irresponsible for people to, um, to show large gatherings with that masks. Oh, goodness,

gracious. This virus has become a disease of the mind for some people, a disease of the mind. All right. That's all of my, um, very profound commentary on the, on the Super Bowl. We kind of went, we kind of went a lot of different places in those, in those past 30 minutes. I mean, We talked gospel, we talked adoption, we talked anti-abortion, we talked Doritos. We went a lot of different places. And now we're going to switch gears entirely for the last portion of the podcast. All right. I want to talk about this idea that I've been thinking about recently.

And we might not be able to spend as much time on it as I want to so that this podcast isn't an hour and a half long. But something I was thinking about, and this kind of relates back to what we were talking about the importance of the family. But just scrolling through Twitter over the weekend, and I saw a few different threads about how children are suffering through the COVID restrictions, not through COVID, because most children aren't suffering from COVID. Most young people aren't suffering from COVID. And if they do get COVID, most young people, it's a cold to them. Yes, there have been children who die. Yes, there have been rare instances of serious illness

and hospitalization. I'm not discounting that. I'm not minimizing that. But the vast majority of young people are very minimally affected by the virus. And so when I say that they've been affected by COVID, what I mean by that is they've been really affected by the lockdowns. They've been really affected by the school closures or the remote learning or even just the lack of normalcy in their everyday lives. It's affected the young minds and the psychological state of a lot of young people. And I started to think about how children, really the most vulnerable in general, but I would say in particular children, are always the subject of progressive social experiments. And the reason why I say progressive social experiments is because I would say conservatives just by nature, by definition, don't experiment with, you know, social engineering because we tend to believe that we have like a teleological view of nature. Christians do, that nature tells us something about how society should be formed and how

society should function. And we believe that when you go out of that original teleological design of nature, that things tend to default and get worse, whereas progressives think something different. They think that's in the nature versus nurture debate when it comes to how human beings are and how we should function, that it is almost all nurture, that there can be this kind of third party social engineer that creates societies how they want them to be created. So they think that human beings are able to adapt to everything. Now, I would say the 20th century, when you look at communism and socialism and fascism, trying to take root and then failing to be able to create

any kind of surviving or thriving society and instead producing lots of suffering, I think that it goes against this kind of progressive, leftist notion of being able to construct society however you want to, and human beings are just going to adapt to that. It just doesn't happen. Communism and socialism are outside of human nature. They cause suffering because of that. This idea of personal and private property, it's a part of human nature. This idea of earning a profit to be able to provide for yourself and to provide for your family, it's part of human nature. You know how I know that? Not just because I think that the Bible speaks to that, because the laws that God created for Israel speak to that and speak to human nature, the moral laws

anyway. But also, I've talked about this before. If you look at a place like North Korea, where capitalism is so adamantly propagandized against. And communism is seen as not just the picture of perfection, but the savior of North Korea and the savior of all people, even while they're starving, what people resort to and have resorted to. It's been reported in North Korea are these black markets, these capitalist markets, where they buy and sell, they trade food, they smuggle the food from China, and then they trade it in these markets. And so without having any knowledge at all of supply and demand, without having any training in entrepreneurship, without having any affection whatsoever towards capitalism, people naturally understand,

what it means, what supply and demand means, what it means to provide for your family, what it means to make a profit, what it means to buy something. This kind of top-down approach of the government is going to take care of you, it just goes against human nature. And of course, it goes against human nature in another way, and that power corrupts an absolute power corrupt absolutely. The more centralized and the bigger government power is, the more corrupt it becomes. And we elect these bureaucrats on the basis of them taking care of people. But then once they centralize and once they expand, of the power, they never, ever, ever deliver the promises, deliver on the promises that got them elected. So that is, in my opinion, I mean, that's a huge reason why I'm a conservative because

this kind of progressive idea of bureaucrats know better and they're able to kind of engineer society, how they see fit in a way that fits their definitions of equity and fairness. It just doesn't work. It leads to corruption. It leads to human suffering. And I would say socialism and communism, all forms of totalitarianism, collectivism, I would say fascism is included in that for the past 100 years, shows that that social experiment has failed. And yet we see over and over again, Marx is trying to revive those failed philosophies. But it's not just in socialism and communism that we see these failed progressive social experiments that I think predominantly end up affecting children who just can't defend themselves, who are in so many of these cases when these totalitarian regimes

take over. They're taken out of their homes. They're brainwashed. We see this, of course, in 1984. We saw this in Paul Potts, Cambodia. We saw this in Nazi Germany. We saw this in Mao's China. These children taken out of their homes. They're indoctrinated to hate their parents, to hate the certain parts of the culture, society, or history that the government wants them to hate. They start thinking in the way that the government wants them to think and they become these little spies. They become these little soldiers, these little ideologues that are vessels for whatever government propaganda and government purposes that these totalitarians want them to have. We've seen that throughout the 20th century. So once again, I think children in those cases

and of course the elderly, the disabled, those that society deems not as valuable, they always are the main victims of that. But it's not just in that great sense of socialism and communism and progressivism in general. It's also in the smaller ways that I think that even as conservatives, we kind of ignore because we see these as social issues. And I think even as conservatives, we don't think about how social experiments, progressive social, experiment affect kids. So we've already talked about COVID and how the COVID restrictions are unfortunately affecting children, how kids are struggling with mental health, the hospitalization rate for kids as young as five with suicidal thoughts and mental health issues has risen

over the past year. Kids, their rates of depression, their rates of anxiety, their rates of suicidal thoughts are all up. Unfortunately, this is, is something that is going to be very difficult for parents to rectify when a child slides into depression or when they start to be tempted with those suicidal thoughts. It can be very difficult to take a child out of that. I mean, we're talking about irreversible in some cases, irrevocable damage that we are doing to children because they aren't allowed to have friendships like they're used to having friendships. They're not used to being in a classroom and having the kind of social life that they're used to or having the kind of organization and predictability in their

day that they're used to, especially kids with special needs are suffering from that kind of thing. Just to the normalcy and the routine of everyday life is gone for most of these kids and they are suffering mentally. They're suffering psychologically. We are seeing kids killing themselves at almost unprecedented rates in the past year because their normal way of life has just been swept out from under them and not for a second are these teachers unions who are refusing to teach their classes thinking about that. Because as I've talked about many times, teachers unions don't care.

I don't care about the students. They care about power. And they don't even care about their teachers. They care about power. And all of the leaders that are cowtowing to the teachers' unions refusing to allow the schools to open, they are exacerbating and they are worsening this issue of children. We're talking little children suffering from suicide. thoughts and mental health issues, not to mention all the education that's going to have been

lost, all the progress that's going to have been lost, and not to mention the kids who are already dealing with domestic abuse situations now being made vulnerable for multiple hours, hours on end in a day to further abuse at the hands of either their parent or their uncle or their brother or whatever it is. We've also unfortunately seen the rates of child abuse and hospitalization from child abuse go up in this past year. So children, once again, because they don't have the power, they don't have the choice, they don't have the physical ability, they don't have the mental ability to be independent and to, you know, make some of their own choices.

They are at the mercy of the state. They are at the mercy, unfortunately, of these restrictions and regulations, and they just don't have the ability to be able to process all of it. and I'm just afraid we're losing an entire generation of kids. So this is yet another way that progressive social experiments, that progressivism, in my opinion, just gets human nature wrong because it says, you know, people are going to be able to adapt. And it's also this misunderstanding of the human person that in general, progressivism, because

whether you identify as a Christian progressive or not, what you may not understand is that progressivism is a secular worldview. It's a secular ideology. It's a materialist ideology that sees human beings as just clumps of matter that, again, can be molded and are made malleable, however the people in charge want them to be made. The reality is what we know as Christians is that we are whole people, that we are souls, that we are hearts, that we are minds, that we have needs other than the physical. So it's not always most important to just protect kids from a virus with the 99.9% survival rate. that's not your highest priority when you're raising kids or you're thinking about education or when you're thinking about the well-being of an entire generation. You have to think about their mind. You have to think about their hearts. You have to think about their souls. You have to think about all of the other needs that human beings need as people made in the image of God. We are whole people and we are not meeting the needs of an entire generation. Now look, as a conservative and someone who is generally against the public school system, because I don't think that it's good. not saying that all private schools are good. I'm not saying that all charter schools are good.

I just think that parents should be able to have a choice if the public school in your area isn't working for you. I think it's better for Christian parents, pull your kids out of public school to send them to a place where you at least have a little bit more control and more say over the curriculum that they're learning. Unfortunately, I think a lot of public education wants to make kids mindless activists rather than critical thinkers with a wide breadth of knowledge and understanding of a variety of subjects. And so I, of course, think it's better for parents to homeschool, for parents to send their kids to some kind of classical Christian education or to even a charter school, you have a little

more say in kind of how your child learns and what your child's, the kind of environment that your child is in and what they are being indoctrinated with. But at the same time, I understand that's not an option for everyone. And for the people that it's not an option for, I want them to. to be able to go to school for all the reasons that we just listed. So this is another example, I think, of kids being the unfortunate, the unwilling subjects of progressive social experiments and suffering the costs of it. The other one that is very scandalous, I would say, that even conservatives or just people

who, you know, identify as Republicans don't want to talk about. And I understand why, because it is very, very. controversial, but I think the redefinition of the family is another way that we are just saying, eh, kids are just going to be the subject of our social experiment and we're just going to kind of hope for the best. I mean, for all of human history, for all of human history, we have had a mom and a dad and a kid. So like the natural family has been the family. That it was supposed to be this way wasn't even a question. The idea of men and women being arbitrary categories without any definition or without any implication of what their responsibilities would be was totally foreign as a means

of survival. Men did what men's bodies do best, which is hunt and fight. Women did what women women's bodies do best, which is birth babies, raise children, create, nurture, nourish, and beautify. And yes, we don't have those exact survival needs in the United States. Of course, today, we don't have the same demands as hunter gathers. But that doesn't mean that men and women are interchangeable. That doesn't mean that we're arbitrary. We are still different down to our DNA. Our bodies are still different. Our physiology is still different. Our psychology is still different. Our minds are different. How we function, how we think, what we want is different. That doesn't mean that all men fit into one neat category or one neat stereotype and neither do women. But physiologically,

biologically, we are still men and women with certain functions. We offer different things to society. We offer different things to family. And for us to say over just the past few years that, oh, actually those things don't matter, that the natural family, which again, for all of human existence for millennia, has been, has been necessarily been a mom and a dad and kids, we're just going to rearrange that because we've become too progressive for human nature. We've become too progressive for science. We're going to rearrange that. We're not even going to ask the question, whether or not this has a consequence on kids. Like, we're not even going to let ourselves wonder, is there some purpose outside of biology

or in addition to biology that kids would need a mom and a dad? Like, is there something unique that moms offer? Is there something unique that fathers offer that when we take at least one of those things away, there may be unintended bad consequences on kids? Like, we didn't even ask that. We just blew right past, hey, how would this? affect kids. Like, are we even asking the question what happens when, for example, we have a child whose biological mother, like the egg that that child came from is one woman.

And then another woman actually just dates the child, has the child grow in her womb. And then that child is taken from the mother whose womb he has been a part of for the last nine months and then given to two other people. Like, are we even going to ask if there's any effect on that child whatsoever for that to be how he or she was created. Like, we haven't even asked that question. We've just thought, well, it's possible. It's scientifically possible for us to manipulate the natural order this way. And so let's just do it.

Why not? Without even wondering, without even asking, hey, is it better for kids to have a mom and a dad? Does science tell us anything? Like, does human history tell us anything? the hubris that human beings have in the 21st century to say, you know what, human history, how human beings naturally function, that doesn't have any effect whatsoever on what is actually good and right and true and what is actually beneficial for kids, who, by the way, are future adults, which means they make up society.

Like, I don't even think that we wondered about that because we didn't want to, because we wanted, quote, social progress, because science and technology allowed us to do something to manipulate nature in a way that fit into what we saw as human progress, progressive social experiments. So we just said, whatever, whatever. Like, we're not even going to think about how fatherlessness has an effect on kids. I mean, we know that to be true. We know that when kids don't have a dad, they're higher rates of, their higher rates of depression, there are higher rates of suicide, there are higher rates of teen delinquency, teen pregnant, that there are higher rates of eating disorders and girls when they don't have a dad.

We know that they are higher rates or higher chance of poverty, a lower rate of high school graduation when you don't have a dad. And this is particularly true. Not when, for example, the dad dies, but say the dad walks out that kind of rejection or never having known your dad. That has a serious psychological well-being effect on a child. child. And we also know that the mother is the biggest influence on a child's life. Like that nurture, that giver of life, whether you're an adopted parent or a biological parent, like that has a real

effect on how that child is raised, their self-confidence, what they think about themselves and what they're actually able to do. But we just throw all that out the window for progressive social experiments. And I don't even think conservatives are willing to take a step back and ask, hang on is this right remember human beings or um christians we believe that human beings are teleological like i've talked about this before christians the christian ethic has a teleological view of nature so we believe that everything created has a particular purpose we believe as most people do that a wing on a bird has a purpose its purpose is to fly in most cases, not all birds can fly, but in most cases, that is its purpose. It serves a particular

function. And if it goes out of that function, if it tries to do something that is not in alignment with what it has been purposed to do, it doesn't function well. Now, most people agree with that. Most people see that, but they don't want to apply that to human beings because they want, quote, social progress. So if I say, okay, a bird has a particular function, it can't do the same thing that an elephant can. It can't do the same thing that an ant can. Human beings are the same way. Like our bodies and every single part of our bodies have a particular function. And when they're taken out of that biological function and when they're taken out of what they are naturally made to do, then we are going to suffer. Then society is going to suffer. People don't like that teleological

view of nature. That includes human nature. That includes human beings because it gets in the way of how we want to view the world is constantly evolving according to these arbitrary, progressive social standards. But the people who are suffering from that are always going to be the people who don't have a say, and that is kids. And I just think that we should care about that. I think that we should at least be asking the questions about that. I think that we should be wondering, the same thing goes with this whole gender identity

movement with young girls, how we are basically saying even the American Academy, of pediatric to saying, oh, yeah, you know, if a girl wants to transition into a boy, which of course we know that is something that can't actually happen, then she should be given cross-sex hormones when she's 11, 12 years old, and when she's 15 years old or however old, she should be able to get a double mastectomy where she, where healthy breasts are removed because it is supposedly causing some kind of gender. dysphoria. The reality is, is that gender dysphoria is a real disorder, but it is very rare. It is far more rare than the rate that we are seeing among young girls. You should read Abigail

Schreier's Irreversible Damage. I've had her on before. She talks about how it's become this social contagion among young girls in the same way that anorexia is sometimes a social contagion, sometimes cutting is a social contagion. Now this idea of wanting to identify as a different group to kind of co-suffer and co-other-ise with other girls is just another form of that. And that also is very scandalous to say. And that is the exact reason that the American Academy of Pediatrics and most psychologists won't actually, again, ask questions of how is this affecting this girl long term? What happens if she regrets it?

What happens if she's sterile for the rest of her life? What happens if this discomfort that she says that she's suddenly feeling actually abates and then she realizes that, oh my gosh, I have completely changed my body for the sake of something that I felt when I was 13, 12 years before my frontal lobe had even fully developed. And now I don't know what to do with myself. That dysphoria is not actually going to be satisfied. It's not actually going to be satiated by surgery in those cases. In most of these cases. And we're not asking ourselves, what does it do to a child when we say to a little girl who says, you know what, I really like cars. dirt and I don't want to wear dresses. What does that do to her when we say, well, that means that

your body is wrong. That means that you're actually a boy. Like, what are we doing to our kids in the name of progress? How is that progress? That's abuse. That's abuse. The fact of the matter is is that most people who care about most people who want to without even thinking push these progressive causes do not care whatsoever about how this may negatively affect kids because again they have a different view of human nature they think everyone and everything should just be able to adapt according to what the progressive social engineers think they should be adapting to the fact of the matter is is that we do have a human nature that god did create us a particular way that we our bodies are made how they are supposed to be made and yes there is a very rare disorder in which someone's brain

makes them very uncomfortable in the body they were born with, but it is rare, and it is not the reason for us to wholesale accept this ridiculous idea that men and women and families are just arbitrary, that we're all interchangeable. Again, the people who suffer most from this are these kids who are going to be gender confused, who are going to be psychologically tortured, who are going to be sexually messed up by such a young age. Another social experiment that we see is this radical K-futable, through 12 sexual education that we're seeing in schools that teach young kids, young kids about things like masturbation and gender fluidity and two spirit and all of these things that kids are just not able at a young age to be able to learn and understand. And even if they

were, it is not the state's job. It's not the job of the public school to teach kids this. It's not the job of the private school to teach kids this. And I saw a quote by Thomas Sol the other day is that it does not take 12 to 13 years to teach a child how sex works. Like that biological function has been around for a very long time without sex education. Now, I understand that trying to create a healthy culture and a healthy mentality around sex and consent and all of that is very important. I still think that the person with that job is the parent. I understand that sometimes parents are absent.

And so you want to teach good things to kids about sex and about their bodies. But that's not what they're learning from progressive sexual education. It's actually that your body is very arbitrary, that you can do whatever you want with your body as long as you have autonomy, as long as you have control, as long as you give consent, whatever you do, however you want to identify, whatever sex you want to have at whatever age is totally fine. That's not healthy. That's not going to create a healthy generation of functioning adults. that cares about family and that cares about all the things that make society survive and thrive?

No way. No way. But it's not about that. It's not about that. The reason why there is radical sex education being pushed on kids ages kindergarten grades, kindergarten through 12th grade, is because it's about a holistic ideology. It's about an ideology. It's about progressivism that is actually very regressive in every sense of the word.

And you as a parent, you as a parent have the responsibility not to shield your kid from everything. I don't think that that's our responsibility. But it is to be the filter through which these ideas come through. Or I used one too many prepositions there. You are the filter through which these ideas come. You are the one that teaches your child about the body that God gave them. And you help them rejoice in that and thank God for that. And you remind them that God made them male and female.

And he said it was very good, that their body is very good, that it was made with a particular purpose that God loves them, loves their body, cares about their body. The Christian ethic doesn't just throw away the body is something that it's not important. No, it says that our bodies, as Christians, are dwelling places for the Holy Spirit that were made in God's image. As Christians, we believe that the body matters. We believe also that the whole person matters. That's why the Christian worldview is so beautiful in addition to, of course, sin and salvation and reconciliation and redemption and ultimate victory by Christ.

Also, it has a beautiful understanding of a holistic human nature, a teleological human nature that has a purpose that is cared for in all its different aspects by the God who created that includes our bodies, that includes our minds, that includes our souls, that includes our hearts. that is what we have the responsibility to teach our children. It is not to say, hey, you just decide whatever you want to decide in these areas, figure it out, you identify however you want to identify when you're five years old and you don't even know if you want a hamburger or a hot dog and you don't even know how to tie your own shoes. Like that is a form of abuse. Our job, our responsibility is to steward the gift that God gave us in children, to train them in the way that they should go, to love them well, to help them rejoice over who they are and how God created them to create an environment in which they can survive and thrive.

And for us to think about kids when we're thinking about the policies that we care about when we think about the issues at hand, when we think about human nature and the purpose and the care with which God created all of us. Psalm 127 3 through 5, Behold children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of a womb, of the womb a reward like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them. That is the kind of language you see surrounding children in the Bible, that they are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Christ in Luke 18 invites the infants invites the children to come to him. Proverbs 226 tells that we train up the child in the way that we should go. Every single depiction of children in the Bible views them as blessings, as gifts to steward, as people to protect, as children to discipline and train in a loving way that is godly, that is compassionate, that is kind, that shows them the goodness of the God who created them. They're not just social experiments because people aren't just material objects. Vulnerable people aren't just at the mercy of society to do with what we will. That's why we're against abortion. That's why we're against euthanasia for the elderly or even for the terminally ill. We are for the preservative. We are for the

preservation of life, and we are for the care of children. Children are never in the Bible depicted as an inconvenience. They're never depicted as these things that we should put off until we've traveled enough or until we have accomplished all that we want to in our career. They are people to love, to take care of, to steward, to send as arrows into the future, as Psalm 127 says. The arrows, I'm afraid, that we are sending into the future. the form of children are very confused and are very fragile and are unable to understand themselves or understand the family, understand the world, understand morality in a way that makes sense because a lot of parents and teachers have advocated that responsibility and have accepted this

postmodern progressive nonsense which says truth and biology and all of these things are completely arbitrary and young children can just decide whatever they want to. They are the victims of these progressive social experiments. And we just need to be very aware of that and very careful of that. And as Christians, we parent our kids in a way that is different that is so much more compassionate and so much more loving and so much kinder and so much more gracious and truthful than the secular world tells us to. That is how we set ourselves apart as we are parenting our kids, especially when it comes to all these social experiments. It is not scandalous for you to say no to those things, that which God has not said are good. All right, long episode. That's all I got

for today. I will see you back here tomorrow.