Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 449 | SHE'S BACK: Demolishing Anti-America Propaganda & Leftist Lies

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

She's back from maternity leave and feeling feisty! Today Allie delivers a passionate takedown of the anti-American lies infecting the minds of athletes, politicians, CEOs, journalists, and celebrities and explains why, despite what leftist elites say, the United States is still the greatest country on Earth. --- Today's Sponsors: Annie's Kit Clubs have the 'Young Woodworkers Kit Club' and 'Creative Girls Club' that include real tools & new crafts with each shipment. Your kids can master new, hands-on skills while expressing their creativity! Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE & save 75% off your first shipment. Raycon is offering 15% off all their products for Allie's listeners - get crisp, powerful beats at half the price of other premium audio brands. Go to BuyRaycon.com/ALLIE to save! Good Ranchers safely delivers American craft beef & better-than-organic chicken, right to your door! You can place a one-time order or, better yet, subscribe & save 20% with each purchase. Go to GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE to get $20 off & free express shipping. --- 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, 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. I am back in the studio after maternity leave. Thank you guys so much for watching and listening to all of the episodes that we put out over the past 12 weeks.

That's a lot of content for episodes a week for 12. weeks that we pre-recorded before I left. I just wanted to make sure that you guys had a lot of good content to consume while I was gone. Thank you so much for your feedback and for being consistent in your listening and watching. It really does mean so much to me. Also, thank you for all of your prayers and all of your thoughts and messages and emails and questions to see how I'm doing over the past three months. Baby and I are doing well. Our family of four is doing. doing well. I went to 41 weeks and one day pregnant. That is really pregnant. If you've ever been that pregnant before, you know how insanely ready you are to not be pregnant. Eight pounds,

eight ounce baby, head full of hair, totally healthy. Thank the Lord. And I've recovered and our oldest has adjusted to being an older sibling to having a crying baby thrown into the mix. and we are very happy as a family of four. So grateful to the Lord for these precious gifts that we have. And again, thankful for all of you, for praying for us and for thinking of us and encouraging me and our family during this time. I'm really excited to be back. I may do a motherhood focused episode either this week or next week, if that is of interest to you all. some of you have told me that it is. But today, I've got to go all in on the state of the country.

And maybe that's what you expected that I would do. There's a lot going on. I've gotten so many messages over the past few months asking me, can you please address this? Can you talk about this? I just have this whole like a page of notes in my notes app in my phone, various stories and tweets and different subjects and topics that I've been wanting to talk about. I probably won't be able to dive into everything that happened over the past three months. That's just going to be impossible. But I will try to cover it as much as I can. Today is going to kind of be a general overview on this trend of intense anti-Americanism that I see. And in that, I'm going to weave in a lot of the stories that you guys have been asking me about. Now, it's been really nice not to

have to be in the news or reading the news constantly over the past three months. But it's also been really hard for me to not have an outlet. I am an external processor. A lot of you are probably the same way. If I did not have this job, if I didn't have a podcast where people were listening to what I have to say, I would still find some way to get my thoughts out, whether it was just talking to myself or whether I just recorded something in my phone and sent it to my family every week, right, just stood on a street corner telling everyone my thoughts. I would do that. I would be, I would be standing on the busy street corner and I would be saying critical race theory is, is poison, abolish the teachers' unions, supporting communist China is the same thing as

supporting Nazi Germany. There's no such thing as gender identity. Jesus could have waged a revolution against the Roman Empire and the cis heteropatriarchy, but he chose not to. I would be, I would be standing in the street yelling all of those things to anyone who would listen if I did not have this job. But I do. I'm very grateful for this job. I'm very grateful that I do get to sit in front of a microphone and tell you the thoughts that I have because I am teeming with thoughts about everything that is going on. Now, I warned some of y'all on Instagram that I am feeling especially feisty and spicy and sassy these days. It's the opposite of how I felt during my last postpartum. I don't know why, but I'm just feeling very riled up. I think that's kind of a

southern term. I don't know if you northerners know what that means, but I'm feeling very riled up about the state of the country. And I apologize in advance. If I teeter on the edge of too much sass, that's not my intent, but it might just get there. I'll just blame my hormones or something like that. Today's episode is not all negative, even though I would say the state of our country is pretty negative. It will be a condemnation of sorts, but you should finish this podcast. I hope feeling fired up and ready to go, not down in the dumps about the state of our country. The state of our country is bad. It's pretty bad. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to try to sugarcoat that. I will give you a spoiler, though, and say that I do feel that the tide

can turn. Maybe. I'm never too hopeful. I've grown to be a pretty strong. I'm pretty strong. cynical when it comes to the culture wars and politics, but I am still hopeful. However, that hope dies just a little bit when I log on to Twitter. Like, if you are looking to abandon all hope, then definitely log on to Twitter on, say, like, the 4th of July. Seriously, Twitter, Twitter on the 4th of July is like Dante's Inferno. I mean, surely one circle of hell will be reading Alyssa Milano's tweets for all of eternity. on July 4th, Alyssa Milano tweeted that Frederick Douglass speech,

What to the slave is the 4th of July? She said, What to the slave is the 4th of July? The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. The 4th of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice. I must mourn. Now, Alyssa Milano was not the only one to tweet an excerpt of this speech. Of course, this has become a very fashionable thing to do.

Colin Kaepernick did it last year. There were several accounts I saw tweeting it this year. NPR dedicated an entire thread to how the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are hypocritical and contradictory. That's our taxpayer dollars at work, by the way. Congresswoman Corey Bush tweeted, when they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this. The freedom they're referring to is for white people.

this land is stolen land. She says, and black people still aren't free. That's an amazing statement from a black congresswoman. I saw several blue check marks tweet a similar sentiment. I also saw many people on Twitter upset. Understandably, I think that Peloton, after offering every themed ride possible, they always do, but especially in the past year, BLM rides, pride rides, even a Canada day ride, but no Memorial Day ride, no independent. Penn and Stay ride for the country on which this company relies on for its profits. This is all happening after I'm sure you saw Gwen Barry showed her spirit a couple weeks ago. And in case you didn't see it, in case you missed it, she is an American who got third place

in the Olympic trials for hammer throwing. Did not know that that was an event, but cool, more power to you. She turned during the national anthem when she was up on the podium, she turned it into a photo op by refusing to face the flag during the anthem, refusing to put her hand over her heart. Instead, she faced the camera. You probably saw this what is now like a very viral and maybe in a very negative sense, iconic photo where she's facing the camera. She's got her hand on her hip.

She's got a scowl on her face. And she said in response to a lot of the blowback and attention that she got that the American flag doesn't represent her, the U.S. women's soccer team, you also might have seen this on Twitter. They've got some members of the team that look to have refused to face the flag with their teammates during the national anthem. Here is that clip you can decide for yourself. So you see some of the team members are facing the flag at the end of the stadium and then some of the team members were actually facing away. Now, a World War II veteran was playing the national anthem on a harmonica,

Some of the players were, you know, facing that end of the stadium with their hands over their heart. Some of the players, as you saw in that short clip, if you're watching on YouTube, we're facing away with their hands behind their back. Now, they're saying the soccer team is saying that, no, this was no disrespect. This had nothing to do with the flag. I find that hard to believe. I find that hard to believe. But like I said, I will let you decide that for yourself. If you're just listening to this, then you can go on Twitter and you can.

can look at the video and you can see if you just thought it was a coincidence that some of these American players were facing away from the flag. It did not have their hand over their heart. Or if it was truly intentional, I happen to believe it's the latter. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. So we're seeing that it's trendy to rag on the country. It gets you fame. It gets you applause. It's brave, apparently. We are so oppressive as a nation that

absolutely anyone can criticize her not only without fear of punishment, but with an expectation of praise, approval, and fame. Now, I want to tackle specifically both the Frederick Douglass and the Corey Bush tweets, but let me address this general trend that we're talking about that is so prevalent today, especially in the younger generations, to rag on the United States, to reserve July 4th for trashing our country to turn your nose up at patriotism and insist on some nonsense that America has been, without exception, a force for evil, both here and abroad. And I'm going to speak to these people directly or I'm going to try to, but know sincerely that I'm not trying to be mean. I'm not trying to be condescending. I am just trying to tell

you very pressing truth. If someone believes a lie that is damaging them and the people around them and they just refuse to see that lie, the loving thing to do is to put your hands on their shoulders to look them directly in the eye and say, wake up. Wake up for the love of all that is good. Wake up. So that's what this is. It's not me being mean to you, America haters. It is me trying to love you and to love the country in which God has providentially placed both of us. Because those of you who were told America is this awful place that we should be ashamed of were lied to. You were fed, regurgitated 20th century, Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean propaganda about the oppressiveness of capitalism and the United States, and you were told

that it was history. If you read about, for example, North Korean propaganda, you see the same rhetoric that we see from the left in America today, that America is an evil, imperialistic, capitalistic force. That's the cause of all famine and bloodshed. The North Korean government in the 90s blamed America and Japan on their food shortage when, in reality, Bill Clinton had approved $3 billion in aid to them. And it wasn't until the North Koreans who defected that we actually knew the rest of the world that North Korea had been lied to about that. They never actually got the aid that was sent to them from the United States. They were fed, again, this lie that the reason that they were starving was because the United

States was oppressing them in some way. The people never benefited from that aid because North Korea is evil and corrupt. And that's just a side note lesson for you. By the way, foreign aid does hardly anything good for anyone. Like Ron Paul said, foreign aid is money from poor people and rich countries given to rich people and poor countries. But you have believed this propaganda that despite the outpouring of foreign aid that we have given across the world, despite the help militarily and financially that we have given to countries aiming for freedom,

America has only ever been bad, you're told. Your edgy freshman professor had you read Howard Zinn's people's history of the United States, and you took it as Bible, and you were never told that Zinn's writing relies on secondary sources and glaring omissions in order to try to make the argument that the evil United States has to be taken down and socialism must be built in its place. You bought the lie. You bought the lie that loving your country is for dumb hicks. And since you went to college and double majored in English and feminist philosophy, you're too sophisticated for it. You feel that there's not just an intellectual superiority that comes with looking upon America with disdain, but a moral superiority to

it. You feel that hating the U.S. makes you an ally, a fighter for justice and equality. You say things like, we live on stolen land or the Fourth of July doesn't mean freedom for everyone, or you post about the, quote, nuance or the, quote, tension that you feel eating hot dogs and watching fireworks while knowing that America has been such a horrible, oppressive place. You were lied to. Whether your resentment for the country has been slow growing or whether you're one of the many women who has been sucked into the social justice Instagram world that convinced you that Glennon Doyle and Robin DiAngelo could be your Sherpas in the work of anti-racism, you've bought a false narrative.

You read cast by Isabel Wilkerson. You read How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibermax Kendi. You, too, have been convinced that America is not actually worth celebrating. You want to be on the right side of history and you somehow imagine that means joining. the droves of ingrates who enjoy the benefits of America without actually celebrating her. So you decide to retweet or repost posts like those of Elizabeth Milano, quoting what to the slave is the 4th of July. Now, here's the problem with everyone posting this on July 4th.

And I hope that this helps shatter your general negative view that I just described of the country as well. You're not a slave. And chances are, unless you've got some very dexterity. prostitute friends in Africa, China, or the Middle East, or unless you have befriended women and children who have been sex trafficked in this country or abroad, you don't know any slaves. You do not know anyone in America enslaved because of their skin color. In fact, it is insulting to the misery and the true oppression endured by African slaves

in the U.S. to say that people here today and the wealthiest nation in the world that affords opportunities to people of all backgrounds and nationalities are suffering the same as the slaves did. I mean, really think about that. Listen to yourselves. That doesn't mean that there is no oppression. That doesn't mean that there's no racism. That doesn't mean people don't have it really hard or were placed in situations beyond their control, but to imply that we've made no progress and that black people in the United States have nothing to celebrate on July 4th, that is the definition of insanity if you are pushing that madness, especially trying to push. that madness on the black people that you know in this country or if you're just going along with it,

you are being hateful because that kind of misguided resentment will only ever suck the life out of its host. It will only ever lead to misery both individually and collectively. Frederick Douglass knew oppression. He knew it. He experienced injustice. He saw true inequity, the unequal application of the law. He wasn't concerned about equal outcomes. He was concerned about equal opportunity. And he loved the ideals upon which America was founded. He said it all the time if you actually read beyond a few sentences of one of his speeches. He said the reason he was confident that slavery would come to an end in the U.S. was because of our foundation, not despite it. He called the Constitution a glorious liberty document without a single pro-slavery clause in it.

He believed in the goodness of America's founding. He urged people to full. manifest that founding by recognizing the equal dignity and the equal rights of black people. He was an amazing man. He was an amazing patriot and such a far cry from so many of the left winger's decontextualizing and exploiting his work on Twitter today. Now I want to address this argument that Cory Bush makes that I've seen several people make, that America is legitimate because it's stolen. To that I say, Hello and welcome to the world, the history of which, tragically, is characterized by oppression, by slavery, by war. If we go back far enough, we see that every single people group has been both oppressed and an oppressor.

White, black, brown, whoever, everyone has oppressed and has been oppressed at some point. The Native Americans were constantly stealing land from each other through vicious, warring and conquering. Every nation on earth has experienced some sort of injustice and brutality. America is not unique because of the bad that she's done. She is unique because of the good that she's done in such a short time. Every tribe, people group, ethnicity and nation has perpetuated injustice, but not every nation has fought a war to enslavery. Not every nation has helped deliver the world from tyranny three times and 50 years. It's true that America was conquered by Europeans, and the land that was here was stolen and

re-stolen before the Europeans even got here by a rotation of native tribes for hundreds of years. Again, that is the history of the world. And what would be the solution, by the way? We keep hearing that we should give their land back. Okay. And then what? Do we all go back to our nation of origin?

How far back, by the way, do we go in order, or in our lineage in order to figure that out? Take a moment to realize how amazing it is that America went from the horrors of Jim Crow to a black president in less than 50 years, a black Supreme Court justice in less than 30 years, that we have people whose ancestors were slaves not all that long ago who are now entrepreneurs, heads of state billionaires. That's amazing. Black people in America are the richest black people in the world. And now I know people will say, well, we never should have had injustice in the first place. We never should have had slavery in the first place. We never should have conquered America in the first place. And you're right in that the treatment of these people by the settlers of America and then later by those who owned slaves, by those who implemented Jim Crow, was absolutely. wrong and atrocious. But again, sadly, that is the world. It's messy and it's bloody. The question is not whether a country has wronged people. Every country has. The question is whether we have righted those wrongs. And we have done incredible work to do so in a very short period of time. Remember, America is a very young country. We became a global powerhouse in a very short

period of time and have been sprinting towards change and our founding ideals. And yet, the people who hate her both in and outside the U.S. want to hold her to this impossible standard, a much higher standard than every other country. We see that when we see corporations talking about America's systemic racism problem, inequity, inequality, and then turn around and actively profit off of and celebrate the most racist, oppressive xenophobic. enslaving, colonizing regime in the world, the Chinese Communist Party. The CEO of Nike, John Donahoe, said that Nike is a brand of China and for China. Now, on June 5th, 2020, Donahoe said this in a statement.

Quote, systemic racism and the events that have unfolded across America over the past few weeks serve as an urgent reminder of the continued change needed in our society. We know Black Lives Matter. We must educate ourselves more deeply on the end. issues faced by black communities and understand the enormous suffering and senseless tragedy racial bigotry creates. Look, Donahoe does not care about racial bigotry or systemic racism or societal change. He and all of these American corporations who rely on China for business care about money. That's it. And they know they can keep duping Americans into thinking their

social justice advocates when really they could not care less. about actual slavery concentration camps, child labor, anti-black policies, and the surveillance police state of China. They don't care that China is colonizing and exploiting poor African countries as we speak. They didn't care when China was evicting African immigrants and kicking them out of restaurants in 2020 and using COVID as an excuse. They don't care that China very recently murdered millions of full-term babies for their one-child policy or that they're currently forcibly sterilizing and aborting the babies of weakly. Muslim women right now. They don't care that they overtook Hong Kong last year and have

completely cracked down on all descent. They don't care that they covered up the origins or the extent of COVID and murdered any scientists who dared to talk about it. They don't care about injustice. They don't care about racism or black people or democracy or anything that they tell you that they care about. None of these companies do. Not the MBA, not Apple, not Disney, not any of the tech companies. And in case you're thinking, well, they're criticizing their own country, it's not their business to criticize another country. First of all, you don't actually believe that if you're on the left-wing social justice side because most people who are on that side who rag on the United States have no problem with other people from other countries doing the same

thing. Secondly, I'm not asking these companies like Nike to go criticize a random country. I'm saying if you are going to say that you are for a country, for a country as repressive as China, actively do business with them and profit off of them, use their labor, basically slave labor. You do not have the moral authority to turn around and criticize a free country, the country that has afforded you the liberty and the opportunity to start and build your own company, of being systemically bad in a need of some kind of revolution to tear up the institutions, down. Just stop. Be a bad person that's fine. You can be a person that's fine with cozying up to a wicked communist regime, but at least have the tiny bit of decency not to be a hypocrite. But they won't have

that decency. Because this kind of thing is normal. The holding America to a higher standard than everyone else. The UN now is demanding the U.S. pays reparations for slavery and that we, quote, fix our justice system. I literally cannot roll my mind. eyes. Any harder at that? Can I read you? A few of the countries on the Human Rights Council of the UN, China, Nepal, where citizens are jailed for criticizing the government, Russia, Cuba, and Pakistan. Last term, the council had Sudan, Libya, and Venezuela. You know all of the world's bastions of human rights. Guys, some of these countries have slaves right now. Libya has a slave trade. Sudan just technically ended slavery a few years ago. This is from the Wall Street Journal

in 2001. What's Sudanese slavery like? One 11-year-old Christian boy told me about his first days in captivity. Quote, I was told to be a Muslim several times, and I refused, which is why they cut off my finger. Twelve-year-old Alikor Njording was taken as a slave in 1993. She has not seen her mother since the slave raider sold the two to different masters. 13-year-old, Akon was seized by Sudanese military while in her village five years ago. She was, content warning, gang raped by six government soldiers had witnessed seven executions before being sold to a Sudanese Arab. Many freed slaves bore signs of beatings, burnings, and other tortures more than three quarters of formerly enslaved women and girls reported rapes. While non-governmental organizations,

argue over how to end slavery, few deny the existence of the practice. Estimates of the number of blacks now enslaved in Sudan vary from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, not counting those sold as forced labor in Libya. So that was written in 2001. The slavery technically ended in Sudan several years after that, although it's probably still going on. It's still going on to this day in Libya. These are countries that are sitting or have sat on the Human Rights Council of the UN, which is turning around in telling the United States that we need to fix our justice system. So several things. First, the UN can take several hundred thousand seats. They have way bigger fish to fry than pointing out the supposed problems in America.

They are a cynical left-wing organization that enables authoritarian and helps China cover. up the pandemic. They have no place to point fingers at anyone. Second, do you see what I mean that America is not unique in its evil? Slavery still happens today in much of the non-Western world. Really, if you think the West is so bad, go live in not just a non-Western country, but a non-Westernized country and see how you like it. You probably won't. That's the harsh truth of it. So in all of this, I am urging you to release yourself from this burden of misery and resentment and to be grateful. It is okay to love your country for what she is at her core, what she is at her best, even if you hate what she has done at her worst. It seems like every other country understands this concept, except for us.

Mexicans love Mexico despite the narco-terrorism that has ruled many of their lives. Even Chinese and North Korean and Soviet defectors who come to America still love their culture in their country, even if they resent the rulers. That's why refugees and immigrants who come to America fleeing violence and tyranny still retain much of their original culture because they love it. There are few places on earth where you can do that, by the way. There are even fewer places where you can find refuge in the United or find refuge in that country, then become an elected official, and then gain fame and applause by constantly

putting down the country that gave you refuge, like, say, Ilhan Omar. But America is so tolerant and sometimes too tolerant of the wrong things that that is actually possible here. Most people love their country and their culture too much to celebrate that kind of ingratitude, that kind of disrespect, but not America. Because when Americans say that we love our culture, we love our values, we love our history, even in a lot of its ugliness, we love our founding, we love our flag, we love our national anthem, now it's considered bigotry or arrogance or idolatry or, God forbid, Christian nationalism. The Christians, specifically, who are so scared of churches waving the flag or singing, God bless America on the 4th of July.

I just wonder if they would have the same criticism of any other country doing the same. Like, do you fault the patriotic Zambian or Korean or Canadian? Do you accuse them of being a Christian nationalist if they say that they love their country more than other countries? If they thank God for the blessing of living in their country? And if they said that they want to use the gospel to positively influence their fellow citizens, their rulers and their culture, would you accuse them of dangerous Christian nationalism? Now, is idolatry of patriotism possible? Of course it is. There are people who elevate America to a place of God's chosen nation, like being like the modern day Israel, and that is not biblical. It is bad,

damaging, myopic theology. But there are, from what I see, far fewer people doing that, demonstrating that kind of idolatry than there are people, constantly bringing up how awful America is and how the Fourth of July is just so nuanced because of the military industrial complex and redlining and whatever it is. C.S. Lewis writes about patriotism in his book, The Four Loves, highly recommend it. We've talked about it. We did a whole podcast episode on it once for Valentine's Day. He talks about both the goods and the bats of patriotic love. In describing the positive kind of patriotism, he's inspired by Chesterton, who argues that countries are like families with distinct characteristics that are

preferred by its members. And you should like your family more than other families. That doesn't mean that you hate other families or you think other families are bad. You just like your family the best. Like think about your family, your kids. You love your family more than you love other people's families. That doesn't mean that you hate your neighbor's family. You might love your neighbor's family, but it's a different kind of love. And that's good. Your family is not only yours, but it's familiar. Even in all of its peculiarities and imperfections, you defend your family. You work to better your family, not from a place of hate, but from a place of love. All families have very complicated histories, and every generation has a responsibility and should have a desire

to set their family on a better path rather than try to destroy or deny their genealogy. Chesterton argues that it's good for the English to stay English, to keep their food, their dialect, their idiosyncrasies, their culture. It's good for the French to be French, for the Indian to be Indian, for the Chinese, to remain Chinese. And yes, for America to be American, to be free, to be hardworking, to be entrepreneurial, innovative, efficient, dog it in our pursuit of liberty and biblical justice, to eat hot dogs and watch fireworks, all the big and small things that make us us. So do Christians chastised Christians in other countries for wanting to put their country first

or waving their flag or feeling patriotic or doing what is true to their culture and their traditions? Why is it that when Christians in America love our country, that all of a sudden we see people clutching their pearls talking about Christian nationalism? it is good to love your country. It is good to love your flag. It is good to celebrate the good things about our country, to pray for our country, to thank God for our country. We know that as Christians, Christ calls us to gratitude. Thankfulness is a mark of the believer. Thankfulness in all circumstances is what we're called to, even in the most fiery trials. So if God calls Christians to rejoice amidst persecution, famine, disease, in the face of death and martyrdom.

Do you really think he's impressed and glorified by people living in a free and prosperous country scoffing at the rare blessings of liberty that we have? You don't have to love everything about your country. You don't have to love everything that America has ever done. I don't think anyone does in order to appreciate your country's ideals, even when those ideals have been haphazardly implemented at times. We have every reason in the world to think. Thank God for how gracious he has been toward America, how much good he has allowed us to do,

even when we have disobeyed him. Celebrating the good that America has represented to so many glorifies God. It shows joy and gratitude to him for purposely, providentially placing you here. I promise that he is not glorified by your grumbling malice. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. In 1776, a seed of liberty was planted at our founding. A seed. You don't criticize a seed for not yet being a tree. And you don't criticize a tree for once having been a seed. You nourish it. You water it. You're eager yet patient at each stage of growth. You do everything you can to ensure it can grow its branches as far as possible. The seed that was planted in 1776 had never been planted before in the history of the world. Or if it had been planted, it had never been properly nourished so that it could fully grow and thrive. Our founders took a risk. They took a risk planting the seed of a self-governing free republic, not knowing if it would work.

They based a radical vision for a country on timeless and biblical principles of human beings being made in God's image with equal dignity and an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. And it is absolutely true that when those words were penned, They only applied to white men. That is true. They didn't apply to white women. They didn't apply to black men and women, but just as Douglas knew, those words weren't hollow. They were just a seed. And the blood of black and white and brown Americans watered that seed. And it grew slowly, shakily. There were seasons in years when it looked like its branches would never give shade to some people. But it has. It's still not perfect. But, We should respect what it's done. We should respect how it's grown, providing shade for millions and millions of people around the world from the scorching sound of tyranny. You think socialism and communism would be better than this? Ask survivors of the revolutions in, say, Cuba or Venezuela, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, China, Germany, the USSR, North Korea, who risked everything to come here to flee oppression. Ask them if they think the U.S.

S is uniquely evil. Ask people who went from nothing to being able to provide a better life for their kids and the one that they had. That story is not only possible in America, it is probable in America. With just a few foundational good choices, that story is probable. Not guaranteed, but extremely probable. Most of the loudest people maintaining that America is uniquely or pervasive evil and oppressive literally have to ignore their own life. They have to ignore their own privileges and their privileges of almost every single person they know in America to try to convince themselves that it's true. It's like they say, sure, my hard work has been rewarded and so has the work of my immigrant neighbor and my poor cousin who now wants a successful business.

And oh yeah, sure, there are people of all backgrounds in the most influential positions in our nation. And yes, I guess it's true that more immigrants flee to the U.S. every year than to any other country by far. And yeah, I have to acknowledge that Asian Americans being a minority are more successful across almost every category than white Americans. But still, the white supremacist caste system is out there somewhere in the United States, even though I and every other American I know has escaped. Surely it is still there. You have to pretend that your life isn't absolutely exceptional compared, maybe not compared. to everyone in the U.S., but compared to most of the world to convince yourself that America

is the wicked place that you say it is. I'm just not willing to do that. I can absolutely critique, and I believe we should critique. We're obligated to critique policies and politicians and patterns here in the U.S. that we want to change, and we should do so from a place of love and a desire to keep growing the tree of liberty. We should do that. We all should. But I have to do so. I have a no respect at all. Just to be honest, I have no respect at all for the people who criticize America because they want to chop her down. So here's my advice to all of us who love this country. We've got to double down on all of it. We've got to double down on loving our country, double down on our values, double down on biblical definitions of justice and fairness.

We've got to double down on praying for our country, thanking God for our country, teaching our kids, our students, our congregants to love our country in a way that glorifies God, not idolatry, but in a way that obeys the directive to love our neighbor. We've got to push back loudly against any ideology or way of thinking that encourages people to hate our country. Listen, that is not mean pushing patriotic propaganda in the way of covering up the wrongs that any of our forefathers committed. We should absolutely be teaching about.

the trail of tears, about slavery, Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow, civil rights. It's because we love our country and believe in her founding ideals that we're not afraid to bring these things to light and to learn from them. A lot of countries like China, for example, never bring up anything like that. They want to convince their people that the regime has never done anything wrong. But America, because we should be so confident in our ideals, we're free to bring up the bad that has been perpetuated in this nation because we know. we can be better than that and we are better. Anything that purposely fosters division and resentment and needless misery and carrying the burdens of the past needs to be put away. And yes, that includes

critical race theory, which has taken center stage in the past few weeks and which we will discuss here this week or next. Teachers, pastors, parents, friends, Romans, countrymen, it is okay and fitting to love this country and all that she's offered you and millions of other people teach others to do the same that is a task that we should happily be willing to take on and again that doesn't mean that we put patriotism above holiness that doesn't mean that we have this wrong sugar-coated whitewashed view of our history just means that we are incredibly grateful to live in such a wonderful country and that we should open our eyes to the blessings that we and others have. And if you want to change something, then change it, change it within the

confines of the really good institutions that have made America the good in the great country that it is. I love this country. I will never not love this country, even if it keeps barreling down this extremely slippery slope of left-wing totalitarianism and amorality. I will still still love this country because I believe in its ideals. And I don't believe that God does anything arbitrarily. So I believe that you and I, our kids and our children's children are placed in eternity where we are supposed to be placed. There is no use and no time for having nostalgia for a different time when we feel America was better. One thing that is true that I think that people on the right need to acknowledge more regularly is that America has never been perfect morally. When we look at

one area that looks like we were doing well, we can look at another area and see that we were doing badly. And so America has been rife with different kind of division and different kinds of immorality at different points in our history. We were placed at this point to deal with the issues that we are facing today. That is not an accident by God. We are called to be a light in darkness. We are called to be salt in light. We use the power of the gospel to to share the gospel and to love other people and to serve other people, that does not mean that we are trying to live in a theocracy. It does mean that we shine light and darkness with the power of the Holy Spirit and the truth of God's word. Every other group in America has an ideology that they

are pushing. Christians being ambassadors of truth, ambassadors of love, ambassadors of light are also called to do the same thing in a kind way. Like I said, we raise a respectful ruckus in a way that we think advances truth and advances love and advances the betterment of our country because we love our country. And we thank the Lord for placing us here. All right, that's all I've got for today. We will be back here tomorrow. 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 Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.