The Daily Signal - Carl Trueman on How Society’s Search for Identity Spurred Sexual Revolution, Gender Ideology

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Today, biological men who identify as women are celebrated. Young girls taking puberty blockers are hailed as brave. How did we arrive at this place in our culture?  Carl Trueman, a professor at Grove City College and author of “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self," says humanity's search for identity played a large role in the sexual revolution and the embrace of gender identities we see today.  “I set the sexual revolution against the background of what I call the revolution in selfhood, which ... is a fundamental transformation in the way that human beings think of their personal identities,” Trueman says.  Trueman joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain how he believes society has come to embrace gender identity ideology.  Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a “good news story” about a special 9/11 remembrance event hosted by Wreaths Across America.   Learn more about Wreaths Across America here: https://www.wreathsacrossamerica.org/. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, August 30th. I'm Robert Louis. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, I talk with author and Grove City College Professor Carl Truman about his latest book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. He explains how the gender identity movement can be traced back to humanity search for identity. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a way you can support our veterans and Gold Star families on the 20th anniversary of September 11th. Before we get to today's show, we want to tell you about the only annual non-governmental assessment of U.S. military power, the Heritage Foundation's Index of Military

Strength. As the crisis continues to unfold in Afghanistan, many Americans want to know our true military capacity. The index seeks to inform both government officials and the public in assessing the ease or difficulty of operating in key regions, the presence of U.S. military forces and the condition of key infrastructure. To learn more about the 2021 index of military strength, you can visit heritage.org slash military. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. I am so pleased to be joined by Dr. Carl Truman. He's a professor at Grove City College, and he's also an author of a number of books, including his latest The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Dr. Truman, thank you so much for being here.

It's great to be here. Thanks having me on. Well, you have, like I mentioned, a brand new book out. The full title is The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. A lot to unpack there. So let's just start off with why did you choose to write this book? And what is really your hope for what you're seeking to achieve through the book? Yeah, good question. A number of reasons I wrote the book.

of them was I was approached by Rod Dreher and Justin Taylor. Rod's works of the American Conservative, Justin Taylor, as the editor at Crossway, the publisher in 2016, asking if I would, actually 2015, asking if I would write an introduction to the thought of Philip Reef, who features pretty heavily in the book. And as I was working on that topic, it became clear to me the more interesting project would be to apply the thinking of Philip Reef to our contemporary situation. And of course, 25, and beyond has been the era of tremendous transformation of certainly the legal status of certain sexual identities and the cultural triumph of transgenderism, trans ideology.

So the book morphed somewhat and became an attempt to try to set these very dramatic changes that are taking place within our culture, within a much broader understanding of what has gone on culturally over the last three, four hundred years. So what I hope the book does for those who have the stamina to wade their way through it is to enable them to see that the dramatic change is taking place today are actually very deep-seated and make a kind of cultural sense given the trajectory of the culture and many of the cultural dynamics that have been in play now for several generations.

I think that's so critical to begin to think about these issues, not just as something that happened overnight. You know, we didn't arrive at a society that, you know, embraced men trying to become women, just all of a sudden. And there are these larger issues and larger conversations and deep-seated cultural things that have been happening for generations. And it's really important to go back and look at those. And I know you've done that so, so well in the book. So as you mentioned, one of the issues that you tackle is sexuality, gender identity, and you make the assertion that the sexual revolution was really just a symptom of this very human search for identity. What exactly do you mean by that?

Yeah, what I do is I set the sexual revolution against the background of what I call the revolution in selfhood, which, as you've hinted at in the question, is a fundamental transformation in the way that human beings, think of their personal identities. If you would go back 500 years to medieval Europe, your identity would pretty much have been given to you. You'd have been born into a particular point in society. Maybe you're the son of a peasant farmer. If you're the son of a peasant farmer, you're going to grow up to be a peasant farmer. You're going to be baptized, married and buried in the same church. You're going to live in the same village all your life. The world had a very fixed external authority that gave you your identity.

We now live in a world where all of that has changed. Those external markers of identity are now very much in flux. We're able to choose where we study. We're able to choose who we marry. We're able to choose where we live. All of which can be good things, but they have implications for how we think about ourselves. And they encourage us to think about ourselves

or to imagine ourselves as being much more, well, I would describe as plastic than in the past. In other words, we are more capable of deciding who we are these days than we would have been in the middle ages. Second big developments would be the increasing emphasis or authorization of inner feelings as fundamental to our identity. That again, we live in a world now where what we feel is given tremendous. authority and who we consider ourselves to be. And we could use the trans issue as a good example of that, in that if you went to a doctor 50 years ago and said, I'm a woman trapped in a man's body, the doctor would say, well, we have a problem here. The problem is with your mind, your feelings

are out of sync with your body, we need to bring your feelings into line with your body. Think of what the doctor's doing there. The doctor is assuming the authority of the body over feelings. Today you would get the opposite response. The doctor would say, well, we have a problem, and the problems with your body, and we need to bring your body into line with your feelings. What the doctor is now doing is giving those feelings an authority over the physical nature of your body. And that shift really is the culmination, I think, of what we've seen over the last several hundred years, of an increasing emphasis upon the authority of our inner psychology, our inner feelings, to determine who we are. So that's the kind of the broad story of the self. The self has has become much more plastic thing, mainly because of the way society itself has changed,

combined with something rooted very deeply in our psychological feelings. So really so much it comes down to kind of this broader seeking of identity and of self and of who I am. And like you say, we've kind of turned more onto the feeling side. And we put a lot of focus on feelings in our culture and in our society. So just explain a little bit about, you know, how you personally began specifically around the issue of, you know, the transgender and sexual identity and gender identity to think of this through this lens of, okay, this is a bigger, a bigger story, a bigger subject, and maybe we actually need to zoom out here and talk a little bit about kind of your own personal thought process of what led you there. And then also,

how do we tackle that? That's a big hurdle. Yeah, it's a very good question, a set of questions. I would say as to the first, how did I get there? On one level, it's intuitive. It's intuitively obvious, I would say that the trans issue can't be taken in isolation because it's happened so quickly. And it's so counterintuitive compared to how people have thought over the decades. In the book, I used the example of my grandfather and say, if I'd said to my grandfather, you know, I'm a woman trapped in a man's body. He would have been, he would have burst out laughing.

I would have met with incomprehension. He would not have had the conceptual categories to make sense of that. And yet that's a commonplace now, even among, ordinary people who've never sat in a gender theory seminar at a university, that statement makes a kind of sense. So the fact that it's happened so quickly and so comprehensively strongly suggested to me that the underlying causes were very powerful, very deep-rooted and much broader than them might typically think.

So that's what led me on my narrative. And to sort of summarize the narrative of the book in a rather simple way, The narrative runs, well, the self gets psychologized. We see the rise of the importance of inner feelings for identity in the late 18th, on into the 19th century. Those feelings get profoundly sexualized with the advent of Sigmund Freud, who's thinking about human sexuality, of course, was expressed using the very powerful and persuasive idiom of science.

So that became something that really gripped the elite imagination in the early part of the 20th century. And once one sexualizes psychology and sexualizes identity, inevitably it becomes politicized because that means that sexual morality, laws governing sexual behavior are really laws governing who you're allowed to be. So that was the narrative side of that story. How we come to address this, how we can push back against this, that's very difficult. Partly because those reasons are very, the reasons for this are very deep-seated in culture. partly because a lot of it connects to our imaginations. It's not that my neighbours have been argued into thinking that trans ideology makes coherent sense. It's not that my neighbours have been argued into thinking that gay marriage is the right way for society to go.

It's that our culture shapes our intuitions, shapes our imaginations in a way that leads us to think these things just make an intuitive kind of sense. So I'm not sure about how to push back against these things at this point. One obvious way, I think, is to understand some of the tendencies of the culture around. One of those tendencies is stories are very, very powerful. I a big believer in the fact that Will and Grace, the soap opera, the sitcom, probably had more impact on popular understandings of homosexuality and gay marriage than any book written has ever done. one thing that I think we need to be aware of is the way society thinks, the way, what the things that

society finds influential. And I think narratives and stories are powerful. And that I think then leads us to, to think about, well, how can we present stories that are more powerful than those the society itself is offering? And that's difficult. I think it's unlikely that we can do that at a national level, because the people who think the way I do do not actually control any major cultural, influential, cultural institution in the Western Hemisphere. But we can do it at a local level. I think engaging in our local communities in ways that present better ways to live than those being put on offer by Hollywood. Perhaps that's the place to start. I think that's great insight. Because really what you're saying is there's, you know, there's obviously there's real world consequences for things like, you know, gender identity being pushed forward.

And we've had a number of individuals on this podcast, you know, Selena Soul and Chelsea Mitchell and these female track athletes that are losing opportunities because, you know, males who identify as females are competing against them. So we see this kind of tangible effects, and we know that there's a role for litigation to take place in these areas, like Alliance Defending Freedom, is really stepping up to the plate in this area. But there's kind of a larger cultural debate that, you know, really it feels like this issue will be one and lost in the court of public opinion and in capturing hearts and minds and empowering people to think for themselves again. and to not abandon that self-compassion because, you know, we want all people to be loved and respected and to discover that true identity. That's so, so critical. But at the same time, we have to recognize that there are, you know, such real-world consequences for these things. So I would be curious as regarding, though, kind of the legal side of this. There's something called Soji laws, sexual orientation, gender identity laws. And I know this is a subject that you discuss.

Get into a little bit of the implications of those laws in culture, in society, and where you think we're headed right now if there's not a change, if there's not a course correction. Yeah, again, good question. The issue of soji laws, I would want to look at from a sort of broader cultural perspective. I think 15, 10, 15 years ago, a lot of conservative people, a lot of conservative Christian people, my sort of constituency, thought that an approach of tolerance would be a way to move forward on these issues. Bottom line is, I don't want gay people put in prison. Is it not enough, we thought then, to tolerate people to remove any legal penalties that might apply to those who are adopting lifestyles or approaches to sexuality with which we disagree? I think that that underestimated what's going on because one of the striking things I think about being a human being is we want other human beings to recognize us. And when I use the term recognize slash recognition, I'm not talking in the common sense term of I'm walking down the road.

I see Virginia. I wave and say hi, Virginia. I'm not talking about recognition in that term. I'm talking here about recognition in terms of affirmation. somebody in the identity that they have. And what we have in the in the LGBTQ plus movement is a demand that not only their lifestyle choices, their identities be tolerated, not subject to legal penalties, but that they be fully affirmed and recognized. And that is the, I think, the motive that lies behind laws that don't,

simply provide protections for individuals who affirm these identities, but enforce a kind of cultural and social affirmation of the group as a whole. And this is why it's going to be very, very difficult for conservative people to have a live-and-let-live approach to this, because that's not the game that's being played. The issue is not that, well, we can all just get on and live our lives because, hey, nobody's... leg is being broken, nobody's pocket is being picked, as Thomas Jefferson would have said. The issue is which groups, which identities does society affirm and consider to be fully legitimate? And so, for example, on Soji laws, we're going to find issues relative to public spaces becoming unavoidable.

Public bathrooms are going to be subject to these kind of laws. employment is going to be subject to these kind of laws. It's going to be very difficult to find a space where these laws do not intrude in some way. So sexual identity is really through these laws becoming highly politicized in a way that it's going to be, I would say, not just hard to avoid, but impossible to avoid for the ordinary man or woman in the street. And in what capacity or in what areas across the aisle is there agreement on these issues? Because I think sometimes the narrative that we hear from the media is very, very loud. It's kind of one-sided.

But what do we know about what the majority of Americans actually think about this issue? What are the majority of Americans actually think about, you know, a 12-year-old. being given puberty blockers about, you know, a biological male in high school being allowed to use the female locker room. What do we know about, you know, statistically, if we have it, what the American people really think? It's hard to tell. I mean, it's hard to tell. It's hard to generalize because I would guess that if you took a poll in San Francisco, it would be very different in terms of how people carve up that if you took a poll in West Virginia or Western Pennsylvania, where I live. I've always been struck moving to Pittsburgh, moving to the Pittsburgh area that the

Democratic Party commercials at election time focus on hard hat jobs. I lived in Philadelphia for many years and there the focus was on abortion, LGBTQ issues. So I think it does vary from place to place. I think on the trans issue, my intuition is, my hope is that it would still be regarded as way out, particularly to be doing these things to pre-puberty, teens and children.

I suspect there's a lot of people who just pretending it's not going on. A lot of people thinking, well, it's not going to happen in my backyard. But my guess is on the transition, and I think I'd want to make a separation between the trans issue and the lesbian, gay,

bisexual issue. on the trans issue, because it involves such traumatic gerrymandering of the bodies, often of children, that I still have enough confidence in the public to think that that would cause significant revulsion. The problem we face, of course, is getting that expressed on any major media outlets or finding a Hollywood director who would do a movie that would press that. there are plenty of radical feminists out there. I've interviewed one on my own podcast, a woman called Natasha Chart,

who lost her job at a feminist magazine on the trans issue. So there are plenty of people across the aisle on this who are united on the trans issue. But you would not know that from watching the news. Just before I came down for the podcast today, I was flicking through the news feed and the Guardian had a headline on how families are pushing back against anti-trans sports laws. In other words, laws that I would say are designed to protect women's sports.

You're not going to see those laws described in the mainstream media as laws protecting women's sports. You're going to see them characterized as anti-trans sport laws. And I think that that is typical. So getting those voices heard, finding a context in which those voices, voices can be heard is currently extremely difficult. I do hope that that will change. And I know the Heritage Foundation has done its bit in trying to give a platform to some of these radical feminists who want to speak out on this. But we need more of that. We need more of that if we're really going to make an impact. I can't agree with you more there. We've been privileged to talk with Natasha

chart a couple of times on the Daily Sickles Problematic Women podcast. And like you say, I mean, there's many areas of disagreement, but on the women's sports issue, that's an area where we can lock arms, and it's really encouraging to see that happening. So talk a little bit about where we're headed, specifically on the transgender issue. What's next? And, you know, what do you predict it will take for there to be, you know, a change or a shift in this area? It's difficult to predict with accuracy. I mean, I'm a historian, and I know that cultures commit suicide and cultures pull back from the brink historically. And you can never tell what they're going to do until they pull the trigger or they put the pistol down. So who knows

what American culture will do. But I am, I won't say optimistic because that has a naive polyanarish sound to it, but I am hopeful that the trans issue will collapse under its own weight for a number of reasons. One, I think it is taking on nature and it's making demands of the human body and making demands of technology that ultimately the human body will deny and that technology cannot deliver. Secondly, it's taking on so many potential political enemies that you have groups where there are very conservative Catholic women. Standing shoulder to shoulder with radical, atheistic feminists is remarkable. And it tells you something about the way that this issue is uniting those that you would never put together. Thirdly, we don't know as yet the full impact of hormone therapy and trans surgery.

We do know from Sweden, where this has been going on and has been well supported by society for many years, that it does not appear to make a whole lot of difference to long-running psychiatric issues that a number of a lot of trans people have. So I suspect in the long run it will become clear that, yes, somebody who is convinced that they are in the wrong body has an issue, but surgery and hormones are not the way to solve that problem.

And that leads me to think that, again, another trend that's starting to emerge, that the narratives of detransition, those who have been through sex change and have realized that it doesn't solve their problem and want back, those narratives will become more and more frequent and I think more and more powerful. And of course, I have seen very silly trans advocates talking about how we allow teenagers to make decisions all the time. We allow them to choose college. Is this, that and the other? So why shouldn't we allow them to choose gender?

if you choose the wrong college, that's sad, but it may not ruin your life. If you choose the wrong college, hey, if you find out you chose the wrong college early enough, you can change colleges. If you have your ovaries removed, if you go through hormone treatment, if you go through puberty blocking treatment, if you have your breasts removed, if you have your penis removed, there is no going back at that point. We typically do not allow children and teenagers to make.

decisions that once made are completely irreversible. And I think what we will see in coming years is more and more kids, whose parents, put it bluntly, whose parents use them as political chemistry sets, will fight back against that. They may well sue their parents, they will sue the doctors, and they will sue the insurance companies. They will sue the adults who should have acted like responsible adults and protected their kids and rather than doing that, indulge their own sort of political and social and cultural

fantasies. And I think once these groups start getting sued, this is America. Once you start hitting people in the pocketbook, you can expect people to start thinking about the issue in a very, very different way. So I am hopeful long term that the trans issue will collapse under its own weight. I'm sad that it will take a lot of human suffering to get to that point, but I think we will get to that point. And I hope in 50 or 100 years time, people will look back on the trans moment in the way that we today look back on lobotomies as an absolutely crazy idea and look back on it with incomprehension as to why we were so stupid as to ever think that it would solve. The very real problems that a lot of trans people are experiencing.

and facing in their lives. We're so pleased to be chatting with Dr. Truman. He's the author of the new book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. So Dr. Truman, just going off of that last point that you made and kind of bringing it back to the larger subject of the book and this idea of identity and really understanding the self, you know, so much, like as you've so well described, of the challenge that we're facing, revolves around that.

and I'm interested to hear you say in some ways that it sounds like this issue, it's going to come down to lawsuits in a way. And, you know, people realizing that there is a massive cost. And unfortunately, you know, maybe some damage will have to be done in that process to get to that point. But I just think that that's a really fascinating point to make. that, you know, in some ways, you know, we might see lawsuits kind of be this key thing that kind of turns it around. Do you have anything you wanted to add on that? I do think that's the case. I mean, again, one of the things you learn from history is that lawyers never lose money.

Well, you know, whatever's going on, they're usually at the center. You know, that's a slightly facetious comment, but I do think we will see lawsuits that will turn this around. But I don't think we can rely on that. I think there's more to this issue. And again, it would be, this would be an entirely separate podcast to do. I think one of the things we face, one of the reasons why the trans issue is rising among young people is young people want an identity. They want to know who they are. And the traditional ways of doing that, particularly the family, are now in crisis. And one of the ways that I think we need to address this issue is not simply on how do we tear down the false identities that are being presented by the wider culture.

But how do we provide real identities that give. these kids something solid and secure to hold on to. And I think that rebuilding the family is one of those. And I think rebuilding local communities is one of those. We all have numerous identities, but the strongest identity we have is always related to the strongest community to which we belong. Whether that's family or church or nation, if that community is strong, it gives us a solid foundation.

So I think it's not enough to think about, well, if we just sit back and allow the lawsuits to make their, way up through the courts. All will be well. We also have to be building something positive, providing something strong for people to find themselves in. So I would also want to advocate, let's positively think about building communities. A lot of single people out there. A lot of single lonely people out there. If you're a family, invite one of these lonely single people into your family. Not simply for a meal maybe on a Sunday or Saturday, but invite them to a family event. Invite them to Thanksgiving. Invite them to Christmas meal. Invite them to something where

normally you just have your intimate family members, allow people to belong. And I think that has to be part of our solution. That, as I say, you could talk about that for a long, long time. And there are all kinds of ways that can be done. And it probably looks different in different places. It looks different in a rural village to what it does in a metropolis. But I think we need to think about how to rebuild real communities that allow people who are searching for an identity somewhere to find an identity and to belong. That's so critical. And that was going to be my final question to you is, what can we do?

And I think that that really hits the nail on the head, that there is something we can all do. And really that looks like standing with individuals, building those communities, loving people where they're at in the middle of their daily lives and their struggles. That's so, so critical. Well, the book is The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. You can get a copy on Amazon, wherever books are sold. We encourage you to do so. But Dr. Truman, thank you so much for your time. Thanks, having me on, Virginia. Virginia Allen here, I want to tell you about the most popular resource on the Heritage Foundation website, the Guide to the Constitution. More than 100

scholars have contributed to create a unique line-by-line analysis of our Constitution. The guide is intended to provide a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by the framers and as applied in contemporary law. There has never been a more important time to have an understanding of our founding document. So if you want to learn more about the Constitution, go ahead and visit heritage.org slash constitution or simply search for heritage guide to the Constitution. Thanks for setting us your letters to the editor. Each Monday we feature our favorites on this show.

Virginia, who's up first? Well, we received a very kind five-star review on Apple Podcasts from one of our listeners writing, refreshing and needed, straightforward news and an admirable pursuit of truth. And in response to Virginia's recent interview with Senator Joni Ernst about the situation in Afghanistan, Harold Harmon of Georgia writes, another excellent podcast and informative. Leaving military equipment behind has always proven to be a big mistake. It is disastrous in Afghanistan and dangerous.

We will suffer because of it. I love this country and its flag. I cannot stand to watch everything I love being systematically destroyed. May God have mercy on us as a nation, collectively and individually. Your letter can be featured on next week's show, so send us an email at letters atdailysignal.com. The Heritage Foundation has a new website to combat critical race theory. CRT, as it's known, makes race the centerpiece of all aspects of American life. It categorizes individuals into groups of oppressors and victims.

The idea is infiltrating everything from our politics and education to the workplace and even our military. Heritage has pulled together the resources that you need to identify CRT in your community and the ways to fight it. We also have a legislation tracker so you can see what's happening in your state. visit heritage.org slash CRT to learn more. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thanks so much, Rob. Today's good news story takes us up to Maine

to a group of patriotic Americans who regularly honor the sacrifice of our military. Their story begins on September 11, 2001. After the towers fell on 9-11, Cameron Footer, Joanne Miller, and Elaine Green joined a crowd on the main Street of Freeport, Maine. They lit candles and raised an American flag to remind their community of our shared patriotism. The three friends were determined to never forget the tragedy of 9-11.

So every Tuesday morning, for the next 18 years, the women took their American flag and stood on the corner of West and Main Street in Freeport. The friends became known as the Freeport Flag Ladies. But after 18 years of standing outside with their flags every Tuesday morning, the women had to retire because of their health. That's when the main-based national organization Rees Across America stepped up to take on the work of the Freeport Flag Ladies. For an hour every Tuesday morning, the executive director of Reeves Across America, Karen Worcester, and others hold the American flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance,

and encourage all Americans to never forget the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform. I recently spoke with Karen, and she told me why her organization, organization chose to take up the mantle of the flag ladies. When nobody stepped up in Freeport to take on the challenge, Ries Across America and the founding family, the Wister family, decided we would do that. So the Worcester family built a flagpole and a monument for the Freeport Flag Ladies here in Columbia Falls, Maine. And Ries Across America has taken on the duties to be there every Tuesday, rain or shine,

snow, sleet hail from 9 to 10 and wave the flag. And we also, when we wave the flag on Tuesdays, we are live on our Facebook page, Refresh America's Facebook page. And so we do the Pledge of Allegiance with people from all over the country and even overseas every Tuesday anyway as an extension of what the Free Port Flag Ladies did. Rees across America is most known for laying a pine wreath on every headstone in Arlington National Cemetery each December. But since their founding in 1992, they honor veterans across America through various events throughout the year. As we near the anniversary of September 11th, the nonprofit is inviting all Americans to raise the American flag and remember those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

On Tuesday, September 7th at 8.45 a.m., the organization is hosting event at the Freeport Flagland Ladies Monument in Jonesboro, Maine, with Gold Star families and veterans. The event will also be streaming live on the Rees Across America Facebook page. We're asking people to join us to, if they want to step out on the curb in their community and wave that flag and just get as many people to join us in putting that symbol of freedom, that symbol of the men and women that served out there and join us as we remember. 9-11, which is especially poignant this year with everything that's going on overseas. The event will include the singing of the national anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance,

several moments of silence, and remarks from several veterans and Gold Star families. One of those families is Scott and Lana Harris. Their son, after 9-11, he signed up and went and served, and he gave his life. and the Harris has got involved with Luce Across America quite a few years ago, and they've become actually, Lana is on our board of directors now at Rees Across America. And she will be talking about just that, how brave and courageous and wonderful her son was in life, and how brave and courageous he was in death.

The 20th anniversary of September 11th is an emotional time for all of us as Americans. and has been made even harder now seeing what is happening in Afghanistan. But Karen says she hopes this event will remind us all that we stand as one united country. We just want people to remember, especially in these conflicted times, to remember that we live in the greatest country on Earth, and that flag symbolizes so much, but it symbolizes what's great about this country, and that's the men and women that live here, and make sense. the sacrifice so that we can live free. So it's a great opportunity for people to come together, and we do need to come together.

We need this common ground, something we can all agree on to that to mend this country, and we can all agree that but for those men and women, we wouldn't have the opportunities we have. You can attend the event online at the Rees Across America Facebook page. We'll be sure to put a link for that in the show notes. You can also learn more about Rees Across America and the resources that they offer, including resources for veterans struggling with PTSD by visiting their website, reaves across America.org.

Thanks for bringing us that story today, Virginia. We appreciate their efforts and always the good news that you share on the Daily Signal podcast. We're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rurkishay Audio Network. All of our shows are available at daily signal.com slash podcasts. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. And be sure to listen every weekday by adding the Daily Signal podcast as part of your Alexa Flash briefing.

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