The Eric Metaxas Show - #89 - John Zmirak

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, Eric talks with John Zmirak about Pope Leo, pacifism, Iran, Islam, euthanasia, immigration, and why the West keeps rewarding weakness. Later, Eric speaks with Cornerstone University president Gerson Moreno-Riano about Christian education, America’s founding, and why students need truth, courage, and a serious understanding of the American experiment. Subscribe for clips from The Eric Metaxas Show to hear politics and culture from a Christian perspective.

When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Hey there, folks. I have exciting news. Did you guess?

Yes, the exciting news is that my. guest is John Zmirak, the one the only. John Zmirak, welcome back. Hi, Eric, always good to talk to you. And you're so much calmer now that your book has finished. Really? You seem much calm. Yeah, you were, you were more harried before, believe me. Okay. I guess I don't want to, I just don't want to remember. First of all, the book Revolution is available for pre-order. And you just reminded me, I should mention that as often as possible because it really matters, folks. If you think you'll ever buy a copy of the book, please pre-order the book and you will get the cheapest price. If you order from Amazon, whatever the price is now, you won't be charged that.

Between now and June 2nd, they will drop that price significantly, I know this, and you'll be charged that price. So please, please pre-order the book revolution. But, John, we're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk with you about all kinds of stuff. Where do we begin? We recently had, I don't know, I guess there's so many things we can talk about the Pope and pacifism, the Pope and the pizza. What do you want to talk about? Yeah, there's some really serious stuff I want to get to later, but let's start on a lighthearted note.

The wacky fumblings of Pope Leo. I remember before Pope Francis, when the Pope would speak, I as a Catholic would listen, would take it very seriously. And if he said something that I couldn't wrap my head around, I would really struggle with it and wonder, oh, maybe I've been wrong about this. When John Paul II or Benedict said something, I had to take it, you know, great seriousness, not just because of their office, but because of their learning and their wisdom. and the fact that they were faithfully carrying on a tradition,

hundreds of years of serious moral reflection on the most important issues in the world. So I remember Pope Benedict said something that seemed positive about the idea of a world government. And I thought that was a terrible idea, but I really had a struggle. And I wrote a very cautious but respectful correction where I said,

if you had one world government, it would inevitably become a tyranny. It would be a monopoly, the worst monopoly in human history. There'd be no escape. There'd be no exile. Nowhere for dissidents to go except outer space. Given man's fallen nature, a global state is a terrible idea. And it's a dystopia, not a utopia. But I wrote it very cautiously and respectfully because I was deferring to the Pope.

Then we got Pope Francis, who, seem like a bot created in a Ukrainian server farm to generate high-minded sounding nonsense.

And Pope Francis I remember in one speech, he said, the people who create the weapons of war are not Christians. You say you're a Christian. If you create the weapons, you are not a

Christian. And then in the same speech, he said, the ally should have dropped the bombs on the train tracks to the concentration camps to save the Jews. And I said, okay, so, but if you made the bombs, you're not really a Christian, but you want there to be bombs so we can stop the Holocaust, but making the bombs and dropping the bombs is not Christian. So I guess we have to get Muslims and Hindus and Jews to make the bombs and drop the bombs, because using bombs to defend us against evil is not Christian. What is this gibberish? And now Pope Leo said something very similar.

He said, I'm not going to do an accent because he's an American and I can't do a Chicago accent. He said that God does not hear the prayers of those who wage war. Now, I want to point out that in the 1570s, there was a battle, the Battle of Lepanto, where the Spanish and the Venetians and the forces of the Pope, the Pope sent troops and sent ships, defeated the Turks and prevented the Turks from taking over the Mediterranean and continuing to kidnap something like a million Christian slaves a year. Many of them women sold into sexual slavery. This was a battle against the Islamic slave tree. The Pope at the time asked Christians around the world to pray the rosary for victory. We did win that battle and he created a feast,

our lady of victory, which is still celebrated in the Catholic Church. Pope Leo says the mass that was created to celebrate a military victory over the slave trading Ottomans. But now we have the Pope saying, any war is evil. The same Pope who Chris condemns every attempt to enforce immigration in Western countries. You'll notice. How do we possibly make sense of this, John? I mean, is the Pope a dim bulb? Is that the term? How do we make any sense of this? George Washington prayed for victory. The Allied forces prayed for victory against the Nazis. What in the world could the Pope mean by this?

It's like he's like a 20-year-old influencer, just, you know, saying dumb stuff. What can account for the Pope saying something that silly? Well, like the silly things he says about immigration. No Western country is allowed to control immigration. You never hear the church say that African countries can. can't control immigration, that Asian countries can't control immigration, just Western countries have to have open borders and limitless welfare for whatever jihadis shows up and has 14 kids and calls for Sharia on the public die. My theory is Pope Francis is keeping his campaign promises.

He was elected, okay? How do you get elected? You make campaign promises. In the Renaissance, they were more straightforward. They would just bribe the Cardinals. But, here, Pope, I think Pope Leo was selected because they wanted an American to push back against Donald Trump. They thought Pope Francis is pushing back against Donald Trump didn't work. He was obviously bordering on being a communist. He was surrounded by, by, he had been protecting sex abusers. He was surrounded by the seedyest, dodgiest characters. Let's get an American. And the American, and the American, can push back against Donald Trump.

I think that's why he was selected to promote open borders and a weak American. How do you as a Catholic not get cynical about the corruption of the Catholic Church? I am profoundly cynical. What you just said is called corruption, right? And political corruption within the Catholic Church at the highest level. How do you make sense of that as a Catholic? Well, first of all, We have a very long tradition of it.

And every church is subject to corruption. I mean, look at all the evangelical leaders who took money from Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci to promote an abortion-derived vaccine and tell people they had to take it or they didn't love their neighbor. Right, but I would not say those are the one true church. What I'm saying is human leaders are unavoidable. We can't have a church run by robots. human beings are fallen. They don't become less fallen just because they're Christian. They don't become less fallen just because they're priests. I am very cynical about the leadership of my own church, and I no longer pay attention to what's coming out of the Vatican. Now, if I want moral guidance on what's happening in the world, I pretty much listen to Gordon Ramsey, because he has shown himself a wise, prudent, and good man. So I, I, I, Really, the psychological, Pope Francis, the horror of Pope Francis created, I realized that it was, I had always sort of looked at the Pope as a father figure. Well, with Pope Francis, it was more like you were in an orphanage in a Dickens novel.

And he's the guy handing out the porridge. So I fill that psychological gap of like an earthly father figure with Gordon Ramsey. And I'm much happier. And I encourage my fellow Catholics to watch more Gordon Ramsey and listen to what he says because it's more reliable than what's coming out of these dimbo these cardinals. Here's what I think on the deepest level is going on. Not just in the Catholic Church, in many churches. These church leaders sense that the power structures in the West are secular elites are itching to persecute Christianity. to just wipe it out.

They are buying themselves tolerance. They're buying themselves a decade, another couple decades of continue to have institutions with nice buildings and multi-billion dollar budgets. They're buying themselves tolerance from the hateful secular globalist elite. And in return, they're doing what the elite wants. They're preaching open borders, military weakness. But that's how they're buying. They're safety.

We're going to go to a break. Ladies and gentlemen, I know you wouldn't possibly. You won't go away because I'm talking to Johns Merrick. I don't like alarmism. I don't like fear mongering. I especially don't like people who profit from panic. But I do believe in telling the truth, especially when the markets are reminding us how fragile things are. Over the last few weeks, we've all watched the volatility, stock swinging, confidence shaking, long-estanding assumptions, suddenly looking less solid.

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Please go to metaxisgoldir.com. That's metaxusgold IRA.com. You don't need to panic, but you do. need to be informed in times like these. Wisdom matters more than optimism. Welcome back talking to John Smirak. Let's talk about Iran. Yeah.

Or Iran or Iran or either. I have nervously supported the president's actions against Iran. And I think a lot of things have vindicated them. The fact that we now know Iran had ballistic missiles that could reach Diego Garcia over by India. They hit Diego Garcia. That means they could hit Rome. They could hit Vienna. They could hit Munich.

Iran had intermediate missiles that could strike major European cities. And they're aggressively trying to develop nuclear weapons. Think about a regime run by end of the world fanatics who believe that a destructive global war would bring on the Islamic second coming, if you will, the Islamic apocalypse, and them having nuclear weapons and missiles that could reach Paris and Rome and Vienna. The Obama administration actually helped them develop all this, gave them rafts of money, removed obstacles. Meanwhile, Iran has been in a virtual state of war with us since the hostage crisis. They call us the great Satan.

They constantly call for our destruction. They've caused the deaths of hundreds of U.S. soldiers. They fund terrorism around the world. Getting rid of that regime would be an unalloyed benefit to the human race, to the United States, to Israel, and even to those lily-livered cowards running the European Union. They would be safer. You're nothing but a mouthpiece for the Jews.

I say that in love. I say that in love. Now, there are people like Tucker Carlson and the, you know, I can't take Megan Kelly seriously, so I don't even, I shouldn't even mention her. But Tucker Carlson, he said this is Israel's war. And I just think, whatever you think of the war, the idea that Donald Trump, of all people, could be manipulated by anybody is so dumb that it's amazing. to me. But there are people that seem to have, they seem to have no judgment or discernment that they think that Donald Trump is a stooge for BB Netanyahu. It's so bizarre to me. I would say this, okay. Israel is the country most threatened by Iran. Israel is the country that faces possible extinction at the hands of Iran. That would be a terrible thing from a moral point of view, from the point of view of our

national interests. So we have a national interest in helping stop this mortal threat to Israel the way we would if there were a mortal threat to England. And there is. It's called Muslim immigration, but we can't do anything about that. We can do something about this. But because Israel is the country most threatened, that has the most at stake, Israel should be the country whose soldiers land in Iran and do any kind of ground action. If the U.S. sends troops, I predict, however well it goes, we will lose a lot of casualties. We will lose the midterm elections to the race communists of the Democratic Party. And maybe the people of Iran will be liberated and you and I will be imprisoned by a regime

worse than the Ayatollahs. So I think Donald Trump needs to resist the temptation to have. put U.S. troops into Iran under any circumstances, no matter what arguments are offered to him, it should be an absolute red line. Zero U.S. troops in Iran and zero Iranian refugees accepted in the U.S. If you keep within those two red lines, Trump can continue to do what he's doing. So basically, the Israelis, and if they can get some Arabs in there, they have to be the boots on the ground. It's pronounced Arabs. Right. And we keep nuking the mullahs from orbit. But U.S. boots on the ground, it would be seen as such a fundamental betrayal of his campaign promises.

Remember, Donald Trump only got the nomination by campaigning against the Iraq war and the neocons and that whole corrupt war-mongering establishment. We keep moving the line. A forever war is different from boots on the ground for a short period of time. The problem is Iraq was supposed to be for a short period of time. once you put your men in the country, it just starts ratcheting up. The logic is like, well, yeah, but we can't leave until we secured this.

We can't leave until all the women go to college. We can't leave until they've had democratic elections. Until all the women go to college. That's good, John. No, no, I'm serious. That was one of the rationales for the Afghanistan occupation was that we had to protect women's education.

We had to protect LGBTQ rights from the Taliban. So if we let the Taliban take over, transgender Afghans might be persecuted, so we have to keep our troops there. It is a tar baby. Okay, hold on. We're going to go to break. Folks, here's the good news. We're going to come back with John Zmirak. It's finally here, our second annual mega sale.

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your order's going to ship absolutely free. Welcome back. It is my honor to say that we have with us continuing in this program, John, the Honorable John Zmirach. And John, there's a Z and an M in your name, and there's nothing. separating them. And I just want to say, folks, that's just the way it is sometimes. So, John, what? We don't, we never had enough vowels in the Balkans. That's why, if you remember the show

Car Talk, they tried to organize it to drop vowels for Bosnia. Drop vowels over Bosnia so that we could pronounce our own names. It's, it's incredible. That's, I wrote a piece, I think it's on my website under humor called Our Changing Language. And I talk about how the, the migration of people, people's south, you know, through the, uh, the, uh, the itthmus of Panama, itthmus, isthmus of Panama. Something happened and twice as many exclamation points and question marks, uh, were taken down there. So now they use them at the beginning and the end of sentences. And it's, it's very complicated. But okay, so we're talking about Iran or Iran or Iran or Persia. Um, what is your sense?

of what this administration is doing, whether surreptitiously or otherwise, probably surreptitiously, to help the people of Iran stand up against their wicked subjugators, because that's kind of the key, isn't it? They have no guns. Can we not give them guns?

Because they don't have a chance unless they have guns. I think Mossad has been doing a lot of stuff like this surreptitiously. And I think they know the region better. They're closer. They ought to be. the ones. You think somebody's doing it. You think that Israel is doing it.

I hope. I hope so. Because you can't expect them to take over and to have, you know, we, of course we want regime change because, you know, you've got lunatic mullahs representing, replacing other lunatic mullahs. There's no win there. I think Trump's strategy is to keep killing them until they give it, they, they, they pick somebody remotely acceptable to us. So whoever, they keep elect selecting people. If we don't think those people are acceptable, we weave them out, so to speak. And okay, when are you going to get sick? When are you people going to get sick of getting drone struck and getting knocked off, present us with a leader who will offer some kind of legitimate change, or at least cease to be a threat to your neighbors?

So I think the current strategy where we are now, we should not escalate beyond this. And Trump has made a threat to take out the energy infrastructure of Iran. That would have very serious civilian implications. So I think a lot of civilians, the innocent people, would die. So I would hate to see that. This is the problem when you get involved in a war. It's like getting involved with a woman. I mean, it's just so complicated.

It can go haywire in so many different ways. That's very funny. It's complicated, folks. It's complicated. With one of the things that I don't think I've ever spoken about this on the program, but I'm fascinated, particularly with Trump, at the news cycle. Like one minute we're all focused on Greenland and Denmark. The next minute we're focused on Ukraine and Putin.

The next minute, we're all focused on Venezuela. The next minute, it's Cuba. It's a strange way to live. And I guess I wonder, for example, what is going on with Cuba? What is going on with Venezuela? What is going on with Greenland? What is going on with Kier-Starmer? And, you know, to the lunatic-

To some degree, I think Trump has been so crippled in domestic policy by the lawless decisions of federal judges to take away his legitimate constitutional authority to do all sorts of things that Obama and Joe Biden were able to do, that he is, the one place federal judges can't stop him is on the international stage. You can't issue a federal injunction to stop us from bombing a place in Iran. So I think to some degree, Trump is being active where he's able to because the Republicans in the Senate won't confirm his appointees. The judges won't

actually apply the U.S. Constitution. John Thune just, you know, refused to get rid of the filibuster. We won't have the Save Act. Does the president have the authority to extradite John Thune

to the Strait of Hormuz and to possibly Kiel Hall him? You know, I think the Gerald Ford, that would be appropriate, a rhino aircraft carrier like the Gerald Ford. If we could keel-haul John Thune, I just think that that would be a positive thing.

And I'm wondering if the president has the authority to do that. We're going to go to another break. When we come back, John Zmirak is going to tell us whether the president has the authority to have John Thune keel-hauled under the hall of the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier. Stick around. Hi, everyone. If you were injured in an accident, listen up. We have legal professionals standing by to answer your questions.

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Welcome back talking to John Zmirak. John, can we talk about something positive and fun? Is there anything positive and fun? we could talk about. I know you and I are, we're not going to talk about Duke and Yukon. We're not going to go there. You didn't prepare me for this line of questioning. I know.

Well, you have serious things you want to talk about. I mean, we can talk about something really fun like the Spanish euthanasia case. Yeah, I mean, this is Holy Week. Okay. We're coming up on Good Friday. We mark the death of the one truly innocent person in all human history. For our sins, because of our sins. Not because of the Jews, not because of the Romans, because of our sins.

Now, what you just said, would James Telerico agree with that theology? He doesn't think we sin. Oh, except racism. Maybe Jesus died to help expunge white racism. Right. Because white guilt is the new religion of the Antichrist. And it is what is being preached in so many churches where, We get to pretend that we feel really guilty about slavery.

We get to look down on our ancestors. Oh, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, they were slave owners. I'm so much better than them. I work at Planned Parenthood. We don't enslave black people. We kill them in the womb. Aren't I great? I'm an anti-racist.

White guilt is the new gospel of the Antichrist, and it is a way for rich white people to feel like they are kind of the savior. Oh, I'm willing, we're willing to suffer. We're willing to pay the price and do DEI and have George Floyd's running rampant on the streets. We're suffering for our sins. We're redeeming ourselves. We are replacing Jesus Christ. So when you mentioned James Tallerico, I have to say it's not just liberal Christianity. It's anti-Christianity, the religion of the Antichrist. Well, that's right. No, that's exactly right.

And I apologize for getting you off on that by even mentioning Tala Rico. But you said it's Holy Week. It's Holy Week, which is the time to focus on innocent suffering and the price of sin. There's a young woman. Her story is so tragic. Noelia Castillo. She was a Spanish woman, I think, in her early 20s. She came from a troubled home.

Her family lost their home for financial reasons. She ended up in foster care system somehow over there. She was raped multiple times. That shows you how great the foster care system was. She attempted to commit suicide by jumping off a roof. She was left a paraplegic. The Spanish government, just killed her by euthanasia.

Her doctors and nurses encouraged her to seek this. Her father was against it. They were an alliance of Catholic lawyers tried to stop it. At one point, it sounded like she had changed her mind, that despite the pain left over from her suicide attempt and the psychological anguish of being a three-time rape victim once a gang rape.

There was at one point at which she just, she changed, according to her lawyer, I've seen this on Twitter, she changed her mind and the hospital said, you can't change your mind. We already have your organs slated to be put into other people. What the modern

secular state is all about and socialized medicine is all about is efficiency, cost reduction. If you think believe that suffering, has any meaning. If you don't believe that our suffering on this earth means something, that we can join our sufferings to the sufferings of Christ on the cross. If you think suffering

means nothing, then you're going to look at people the way they look at dogs in pet shelters. Oh, this dog's 14 and he has arthritis. He probably won't get adopted. Yeah, we're going to have to put him to sleep today. That is the attitude of secular governments towards their citizens. I just saw a report that in Canada, a woman had severe back pain. Her doctor at the National Health Service up there, her doctor said, have you considered euthanasia? They're advertising euthanasia on television. The Canadian government is advertising euthanasia. That is their solution. Well, you know, it makes a certain kind of sense. If you are a utilitarian, if you are a secular materialist, you believe the only good thing is pleasure and the only bad thing is pain.

So if you cross a certain line where the pain pleasure ratio is permanently out of whack, and you're probably going to feel bad more than you feel good, well, it makes sense to euthanize you. And by the way, we can make millions of dollars from your organs for other people who are the right side of the pleasure pain. This brings up, I've been talking about this to anybody who will listen, but you probably know that Jan Yeklech, who is the senior editor at the Epic Times, has written a book called Killed to Order about China's organ harvesting industry.

And I have to say, this is exactly what you're talking about. If you believe that we're not made in the image of God, if you believe we're just, we're nothing, it's perfectly logical to kill people for their organs. It's all utilitarian. And the idea that the Chinese communists, they believe this, they're doing it. The Nazis would have done it if they had the technology. This is the demonic view of Marxists. And the Canadians are doing it.

It's less gruesome, but it's the same worldview. And it is anti-Christian. It is evil. It's unbelievable. It's a worldview of despair. If you believe that, if you believe, that suffering is meaningless and the only good in life is pleasure, even when you're young and healthy, that's going to make you miserable on some level. It's going to make you not want to

have kids. It's going to make you not want to commit in a relationship and get married. And that's why birth rates are plummeting all around the world. And the only subcultures that have high birth rates are very religious people, evangelical Christians, traditional Catholics, and of course our friends the Muslims. Yes, our friends the Muslims. Do you think that Americans are waking up

to the nightmare of Islam in the United States? Here in Texas, they are. There's a lot of pushback. There's a lot of pushback. The problem is we're a country based

on religious freedom. And the whole idea that you would say, well, look, they just opened 300 mos and America last year. It kind of goes against our grain to see that as a bad thing. Well, we have freedom of religion. The problem is Islam is a totalitarian political movement with a chapel in the back. With a what? A chapel out in the back. I was going to say it's not really a religion. This is where they gain the system. The say, oh, we're just a religion. No, no, no. It's kind of like the

Nazis saying, we're just a religion and we're taking over your country. Actually, some American neo-Nazis got that idea, they started something called the Worldwide Church and the Creator. They declared themselves a religion. They said that the Creator was the white race, and their emblem was a W with a crown and a halo. And they claimed First Amendment exemption as a religion. When was this? This was back in the 90s, and the IRS did not approve it, thankfully. But basically, that is what Islam amounts to. It was a warrior movement that had a religious justification for it. But I don't think we can make exemptions to the First Amendment. I don't think we can do anything against mosques per se. This is an immigration issue. The First Amendment was not written

with Muslims in mind. We need as few Muslims admitted to America as possible. We need to look at Islam and America kind of the way they looked at slavery in 1850. It's something we hope doesn't spread and gradually goes extinct. Islam is incompatible with life in Western countries. I'm pretty sure they fought a war over slavery. I have to check the books. I don't want a civil war over this, okay? I would like to avoid a civil war.

So to me, the peaceful alternative is get rid of birthright citizenship, deport people who came here under fraudulent pretenses, zero refugees into America ever again, cut legal immigration, stop offering student visas. This is an immigration issue because fundamentally, our First Amendment doesn't allow us to target particular religions because you don't like the contents of the religion. So if there is a religion which is incompatible with America, we need to keep the numbers as small as possible. I think that's the only constitutional solution. Do you think Trump is aware of this?

I think to some degree, yeah. Yeah. I know that he has, do you think he has people on this working on this? Yeah, because visas to all these terrible countries have been cut way down. Legal immigration is way down. H-1B visas are way down. There are a lot of things to be encouraged. Wherever Trump can do things on his own initiative, he usually does the right thing. But the Republicans in Congress are 100% the Washington generals who think it's their, especially in the Senate. It's their job to go out and lose graciously to the Harlem Globetrotters every single night.

And that's certainly how the Republicans in the Senate have been acting. And I think a lot of the people in the Republican Party, the establishment, would rather see the Republicans lose the midterms and see Congress turn into an impeachment circus for the next two years. And they don't really care whether the Republicans win. They want to control the Republican Party. They want to take it away from the populace, take it away from MAGA. They're like that guy in the local office. space who wanted his red stapler. And when they took his red stapler away, he said, I could burn this building down.

And he does. Yes, that's where we are. Folks, that was and is John Zmirak, my friend, thank you. Thank you. Hey, folks, before we get back to our guests, I just want to say a lot of people donate when there's a headline. But MDA, Magan David Adom, doesn't get to slow down when the news cycle moves on. MDA is Israel's national EMS system.

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Go to savinglifeisrael.org. That's savinglifeisrael.org. Hey there, folks. If you listen to this show or know me, you know that I've become a fan of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And that's not because the president of Cornerstone, Dr. Gerson-Morraineo Rionja.

It's not because he made me a distinguished presidential fellow at Cornerstone. I've been a fan of Cornerstone before that. They are one of the great colleges, universities in America. And so I guess, you know, why not have the president himself on this program? I have said in the past, and I say it again now. Dr. Gerson Moreno Riano, welcome back. Thank you, Eric. It's great to be back with you, Eric.

Thank you. People, I mean, people who know me already know this about me, that I've been talking about this for years. When I go, when I wrote my book, Fish Out of Water, telling the story of my life and how I went to Yale University and pretty quickly realized they do not have the answers to the big questions. And so whenever you and I get together, whether in person or here, we realize that's what education is supposed, that's where you're supposed to begin. right the big questions who are we where are we going is there a god what's the meaning of life i mean traditionally that's the that's the original goal of education and then when you get into like specifics you know that that's that's one thing but the fundamental moral foundation of life of ideas of good ideas versus bad ideas one of the reasons i love cornerstone is because you understand

that is at the heart of education. And most colleges and universities and increasingly, you know, K-12, they're avoiding these questions in a way that tells you they don't believe in moral education. So why don't we start there? Yeah, Eric, thank you. I mean, that is a great travesty, I think, of American higher education, and even K-12 now, so that you have students, whether there's K-12 and certain colleges and university, college students coming to universities. And those fundamental questions are not being addressed or being ignored or rejected. And we're giving education a sub-sub-par education.

That's what we're giving students. And the dilemma and the travesty is that they have nowhere else to go to to address those questions except, you know, reels on the Internet, right? Or cartoons or movies and so movies and the Internet has become sort of the moral temples of society, and it's a terrible thing, a travesty, and something that should terrify all of us. And we took that head out. We've been taking that head on here at Cornerstone University. Do you know, Eric?

We've launched a new general education curriculum. We call it the Cornerstone Corps. It starts this fall for all of our undergraduate students. And we're talking really three key things. And one of them is we call it the beauty of Christianity and the Christian worldview. you. Christianity has the answers and provides the most pressing true answers to these fundamental questions because Christianity is true. It's real. It's beautiful. It's objective. And it's personal. That's such a big deal. I mean, and again, we've lost, you know, in America generally,

we've lost cultural confidence in the West that, oh, you know, we don't want to impose our views or whatever. And it's so preposterous because, again, what we're talking about is answering the question, what is truth? Is there such a thing as truth? Is Christianity true? Or is it just a set of ideas that, you know, you could take it or leave it? Is Islam true? Are the claims of these different religions immaterial? Or should we actually take them seriously? And many Christian colleges do not take it seriously in the way the Cornerstone does. There are a handful that do. But, you know, I was just in Fort Lauderdale and someone came up to me and said that they're aware of Cornerstone and how you have really turned things around, I think, was the guy's way of putting it.

I mean, I don't know what Cornerstone was like in recent years, but the fact is most Christian colleges are really not, they're not taking this stuff head on. They kind of act like I can, I can dodge this and I don't want to be controversial. And it's ridiculous because truth can be controversial sometimes. Yeah, we just had Robbie George on campus here a few weeks ago for our spring wisdom conversation series. He and Cornell West both came and talked about their new book, Truth Matters. And Robbie George shared with me, he said, you know, I have a very difficult time recommending

almost any Christian school now. He said, any Christian university, it's really difficult for me to recommend. any of them. And now that I'm here at Carstone, I will be glad to recommend Carstone because of your commitment to faith and reason and learning and integration and truth. And that was music to my ears, but it was also sad to know that a country with hundreds of universities, right? Here's a seminal public intellectual who says, I can't recommend these Christian universities. I just can't. Many of I cannot do it. Look, that's exactly what I've been saying, Gerson. I've been saying it for years, and it's upsetting to me.

I mean, years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, I could recommend some of these Christian schools because I just thought, well, they're actually Christian schools, so they must be teaching this stuff. They, when, you know, when the BLM riots happened and all of that weird stuff broke, you could see a lot of the leaders were not willing to deal with it

in the way that it needed to be deal with, because it costs something. Let's be honest, it cost all of us something. It certainly cost me something. And I think that they somehow believed, like many pastors of big churches, they thought, well, we can dodge this or something. And you dodge it. Who pays the price when you dodge it? The kids that come, they don't get clarity on some of these big issues.

And so I'm glad, first of all, I'm so glad you had Robbie George at Cornerstone. But, you know, the fact that he would say that, I'm not really surprised that he would say that. And it's why I'm so vocal about Cornerstone, because when you find somebody, you know, who gets it or you find an institution that gets it, whether it's a church, I just want to point people in that direction. And so I guess I just want to ask you, you mentioned this Cornerstone Core curriculum, which is you're launching this fall. Talk about that when you say that. What do you mean by core? Yeah, so what we've done is that we've looked at three foundational pillars that we need to introduce our students to and educate them into and have them think and engage. First, the beauty of the Christian worldview in Christianity, I find so many students today are Christians who don't know enough about their faith or have misperception about their faith or are afraid to share their faith or defend their faith. So we want to provide them a coherent, beautiful, not just introduction, but deep conversation.

about the faith and the doctrines of the faith and the beauty and the truth of these doctrines to shape their heart and to shape their mind. Then we want to talk with them about the wisdom of the American experience. That's the second part of the core. You think about 250 year anniversary coming up here this July and the exceptional nature of our country of its founding and its beauty and the wisdom that is a part of the American experience from its founding until now. And we want our students to engage that of the American experience, American history.

And we've introduced something as a part of it called the Cornerstone Grapeworks Canon of the American Experience. So all of our students will read 50 works, original writings over this 250 year period. And they will focus on really encountering these ideas at their very source. We want to tell the whole story of America. we want to form moral leaders, not partisans, and we want to integrate faith in public life. So they'll read 15 works from the colonial era to the revolution to the founding, 20 works from the early nation to the progressive era period, and then 15 works from World War I to the President. And we're talking about speeches and sermons and the Constitution, the Declaration,

the anti-federalist, the federalists, novels, films, works of art, George Washington's Farewell Address. I can go on and on, but we want Martin Luther King and Freddie Douglas. We want our students to really engage these fundamental texts and learn from them and had those profound conversations about the beauty, the promise of America, when we have failed, how we have recovered. I mean, all of these things, it's absolutely important to tell the whole beautiful, exceptional story of America.

And we don't know of any other core in the country that takes the beauty of the Christian worldview in a coherent, coordinated way in a curriculum, and brings that together. And then what we call the great works canon of the American experience and bring that into a core, we believe it's an exceptional curriculum. And then we tie that into what we call market intelligence, Eric. Look, we know our students care about careers. They care about their call-ins. They care about professionals. And we want to bring the best of the industries to them and have them be prepared to be great moral leaders to think deeply about their faith, who can articulate it, defend it, listen and engage, who think deeply about this country

and they defend it and they know its promise and its limits and how it be great moral citizen and great moral leaders and bring that to bear in the marketplace. And we think, Eric, that's life-changing, transformative and quite frankly, unique and deeply needed in our country at this very moment. It's all music to my ears. I have to tell you, I hope. folks. I hope there's a way for folks beyond Cornerstone to get a hold of what you're doing there. I mean, I know you have online courses and stuff. I've started a publishing imprint. I don't know if you've figured out a way to publish those documents, but I would, if you haven't. You and I should talk, Eric, let's talk. No, and I'm serious because this needs to be available

to everybody. And we're going to keep you on for another segment. But folks, anyway, check out Cornerstone University. I just praise God. We'll be right back. For the first time ever, we're bringing you My Pillow mattresses and mattress toppers for as low as 99.98. Remember, sleep's all about temperature and pressure points.

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absolutely free. So go to Mypillow.com or call the number on your screen. Use this promo code to get MyPillow mattresses and toppers for as low as 9998 and free shipping. Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to the president of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dr. Gerson-Morreino, Riano. I said it correctly.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Juston, let me ask you, because I said it before we went to the break, you know, what you're talking about is important for everyone in America. And so I always get frustrated when I see a great thing and I want it to be, you know, whatever. It's like if I see a book and I think, but nobody even knows the book exists, it's like, how do we get this book out there? Because this is important. And what you're doing, when you talk about this core curriculum and, you know, this supercentennial 250 celebration that you're launching these documents, these fundamental seminal primary documents to educate the folks, the young people at Cornerstone on who we are as a nation, I just think, boy, I wish everybody in America had the ability to, you know, take this course or not.

you know, you didn't ask me to say this, so I'm just asking you. I don't even know the answer, but can other people take the course or take these courses? Because, I don't know, it's kind of important. No, that's great, Eric. No, we are working on ways to micropackage these things and make some of this content available. And I love your idea about your imprint and perhaps putting this together. I think it's absolutely essential for the future of our country. Well, no kidding.

I mean, we've launched it. I don't even know if I've said this publicly. I can't remember, but we're launching an imprint called Odysseus Books. You know, it's something I've wanted to do for years under Skyhorse, and my Revolution book will be under Odysseus books. But when I hear an idea like this, I think to myself, you know, that would be a great book because, you know, people who are not able to go to Cornerstone or whatever, to have these foundational documents in front of them in a book,

it just seems like a good idea. But just generally speaking, what you're talking about, I'm excited. My Revolution book on another level is doing the same thing. It's like we realize Americans need to know this. This is not like, you know, it's not obscure stuff. It's important stuff. Some of it is very exciting to read.

And you begin downloading what most Americans have known on one level or another until our lifetimes. Basically in our lifetimes, the culture has drifted away from this stuff. and we need to go back, you know, to, you know, when Lincoln said we're a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, you know, there's, there was a conception and there was a DNA. And we're, we need to be true to that. And so reading the documents you're talking about, all of these primary documents, it's a way of, you know, keeping people true, you know, and straight on what, how did our country, how is our country founded? How did it thrive? And where are we now? How do we course correct? I guess I feel like that's a way to do that. Well, it is. And you provide students with great guided conversations and discussions a way through all of these documents so they can then formulate and be able to defend and articulate and have profound conversations. I find so many Americans of all ages today, ignorant of the founding, ignorant of our own history, or afraid to talk about it because the dominant cultural, political narrative is so negative and destructive about and toward America. And so one of our

goal is also to educate our students in wisdom and the wisdom of this country and the experience of this country to be able to talk about it intelligently and to have profound conversations and to offer an apology, right, defense of it because it's so desperately needed. And when I think about the fact, Eric, that you have about 100 million Americans in the workforce right now, about half of those have never gone to college, the other half have gone to college or have dropped out and have not finished. I think we are in trouble.

You think about a significant portion of the current population, right, who have not finished a college degree and have not perhaps even had access to this or have been introduced to their own history. And the beautiful way to it, I would say, I don't care if people went to college because most colleges are not teaching. They're not teaching.

But I mean, this is overwhelmingly true. Almost no colleges are teaching this. So if people say, should I go to college, I say no, don't go to college, unless you can go to a place like Cornerstone or Hillsdale or just a tiny handful of schools that I would say that would be worth your trouble.

Most of the rest are not teaching this. In fact, Gerson, I want to hold you over for another segment to talk about some current events, but most colleges, not only are they not, are they not teaching this. They are teaching against this. They are teaching delicious anti-American ideas, which by the way, folks, they're not bad ideas

because they're anti-American. They're bad ideas because they're false, because they're mistaken. And it is vital that we course correct. Okay, we'll be back for another segment, folks, with the president of Cornerstone. We'll be right back. Hey there, folks. I've been saying that 2026 must be the year of accountability, Whether talking about government spending or the way we steward our own families, we have a moral duty to seek the truth.

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please call chapter at 571, 421, 1,253. That's chapter at 571, 421, 1253. Talk to a real person and get the honest answers you deserve. Dr. Gerson-Morino Rianio is my guest. He's the president of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. So let's talk about current events. You know what's going on in the world of education. What do we need to know?

Well, one of the things that it happened last week was the Florida Board of Governors on Thursday of last week voted to remove introduction to sociology from the institution's general education curriculum offerings at Florida's 12 public universities. And the reason they did this, Eric, was because they argued that sociology is a discipline, is now social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy. I think, I mean, as soon as somebody says sociology, to me, You should be scared. This has ever since I can remember been pure blather. Like, what a waste. I mean, I don't even know what sociology is. It's 100% baloney.

And so to hear that they have the common sense to say, you know, we don't need this anymore. That's great. But you're telling me it's not just baloney. It's propagandistic baloney. I mean, they call it ideologically captured. Look, I've known this for decades. Sociology is a discipline. It's focused.

it's part of the significant problem in American higher education. And you talk about critical theory and skepticism and undermining America and the false ideas it proposes and you can go on and on. So you have a generation of students who have gone through that. So I'm hopeful that as states begin to do this, or hopefully universities take this seriously, that we also place something to replace it with something that's true and beautiful and good. This is why we're doing here at Carstone.

We know that students need truth. They're looking for it. They're longing for it. They're longing for beauty. They're longing for facts. Where do we go at a place like Carson to be here and to be able to say, look, here it is? Think about these profound questions and these profound answers. And so Florida doing that is a bold step.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of outcries out there and it will be in other states as well. But it's a bold step that I think we should celebrate a legislature step in and said there's something fundamentally wrong with this curricula and these kinds of courses. They're not intellectual. They're not true. They're not truly about the pursuit of truth and the acquisition of truth. It's ideology dressed in regalia, and we need to disrobe it and get rid of it. I applaud that. And I think more legislatures and more universities need to be courageous about this. But again, my question is, who has the courage? I know Governor Ron DeSantis has the courage, but most politicians in America,

most governors in America do not. I don't think Greg Abbott even in Texas. I mean, there are many folks that just aren't going to, they're not going to do that. It's one of the reasons I so admire Governor DeSantis. I mean, he clearly has guts. He clearly has courage. And I heard him speak recently.

I had heard him speak in years. I was so impressed because that's what we care about. We don't care about, oh, you've got some good ideas. Do you have the guts to enact those ideas, knowing that there's going to be blowback? And he does. And so I can hardly think who else in the country, what are the governors in the country, have that. There may not be many, but I do think we should think about doing something.

You know, I woke up this morning thinking, man, we should come put together a group, a compendium, some kind of meeting where we bring these courageous leaders, courageous approaches and bring them to the public, right? disseminate them, let people know about them. I heard this through the inside higher ed trade paper, and usually it's a negative spin on these kinds of things, right? Higher ed itself criticizes them. But I think we have to bring it to the public, Eric.

I think it's a beauty of what you're doing with your book, what we're trying to do at Carstone. We should disseminate these ideas regularly, these courageous act, these courageous leaves, and even bring them together in some kind of meeting and say, look what's happening, and look why we need to do that. I think we should think about them more seriously, disseminate them, get them out, get some media behind them, and tell the world, tell the country

about the great things they are being done and why they're so important for our future. I think people will listen there. I think there are plenty of common sense Americans who realize we're way off the track here, and especially in higher ed, and we should give voice in the year to these things. I know if you're in the state of Michigan, a lot of conversations are taking place now for the next governor, the governor's rate that's coming, given that the poor conditions of K-12, of education in Michigan. It is abysmal here. And all of a sudden, everyone left or right has realized we're in trouble. What are we going to do? And so there are a lot of conversations about that. I think we should think about a way of getting these profound, good ideas, leaders,

curricula out for the public to see, to hear, to interact with, to be informed about. Well, it takes things to get very bad, usually for people to kind of wake up and say, hey, wait a minute, what's going on? I think COVID did that. A lot of people suddenly saw what their kids are learning, and they thought, wait a minute. I've trusted the experts like an idiot. Why did I trust them?

Now we don't trust them anymore. We need to get involved. It sounds like that's going on all around the country. Whether we can have action, I don't know, but I'm hopeful. And I'm just so grateful for you, Jerson. Folks, check out Cornerstone University. Jerson, thank you. Eric, thank you so much.

Talk to you soon. Folks, welcome back. You've heard me talk a lot about gold on the program, or at least I know many of you have expressed interest in gold, and we have a sponsor. If you listen to the program, you know it's Genesis Gold Group, and I thought, why don't we get the head of Genesis Gold on the program to talk about what Genesis Gold does?

And we have right now, Bill Ammore Armour, coming to us from, I think, someplace on the left coast. Yeah, I guess, you know, we're both, you know, under pretty strict rule here, communist rule, but so be it, we're talking to a lot of middle America here, a lot of people that have it better than us. But, you know, I think, you know, as you of all people would know, and with your book about Bonhofer, we have to resist from within. So I actively resist.

But absolutely pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on. Most gold sponsors wouldn't know anything about my Bonhofer books. So this is why we picked you and Genesis Gold, because you actually, you know, you're a person of faith and you understand this stuff. And it is true that being on the coasts, in some ways we see even more clearly

because we see how bad things can get, you know, when you're dealing with cultural Marxism and lunatics like Governor Newsom or Mayor Mamdani. So anyway, for folks who have questions about gold or what you do, tell us where you're coming from. And I want to actually, let me say up front, folks, if you want to get information, please go to metaxusgoldir.com. Metaxusgoldir.com.

But Bill, talk to us about what you do. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, at its core, we help people steward, you know, what God has given them. You know, the way that I approach this always is understanding that anything we have is a blessing from the Lord, right? And so we want to be good stewards of that. We want to direct that in ways that honor God and the kingdom. And so how do we do that? Well, one of the most important things is we'd be responsible and we be prudent with what we've been given. And if you look around, I think it doesn't take a genius to look at the market, the world,

you know, the economy, et cetera, and really start to question, wow, what are we heading to? I mean, any fiat currency in history has failed. You look at the dollar and what's become of that, you know, $38, $39 trillion in national debt. You start to look at the inflationary pressures, what your dollar is worth today versus what it was worth 20 years ago. And you start to gain an understanding that this is not just kind of the cyclical things go up, things go down. We are experiencing a real shift here, a long-term shift that's been occurring, but we're at a sort of precipice. And so people come to me and they say, Bill, how do I preserve what I have put my life working towards, which is, you know, the wealth that we have saved up, you know, for our family, you know, ass down, whatever that might be. And in the true answer there is the same thing that has been good for 4,000 plus years, and that's physical gold and silver.

You know, you can read through the Old Testament and they're using gold and silver, and you can read to the very tail end of revelation. And what are they throwing into the street when Christ returns? They're throwing gold and silver. So I think, you know, using that as an understanding that gold does make it from A all the way to Z and silver. And so that's kind of the one vehicle that can protect your wealth in a way that, you know, a bank, the dollar, stocks, nothing else really can offer that. because nothing else has sort of the divine a blessing in terms of currency that gold and silver does have. I've only begun thinking about it that way recently,

but the idea that God gave us gold and silver, it's not just some random thing. And that, yes, for millennia, we've been dealing with gold and silver. And there's something sort of foundational about it. It's not coincidental. There's something about it. But the idea that even today, you could say, yeah, these fiat currencies, it doesn't work, this is your best investment.

The idea that that's true is kind of amazing and that, you know, we can still do that. We're not yet in a world where it's not possible to get gold. Thank God. Yeah, you're exactly right. And who knows that could come in the future? I know there's a lot of talk about things like central bank digital currencies, you know, and really the dangers that that presents. But at least for now, you look at, you know, what. has, you know, occurred over the last year even in metals. And I think that this is a sign of what's to come. As you watch gold's up, you know, 40, 45 percent in the last 12 months, silver's up over 100 percent. And people will ask me sometimes, you know, Bill, is this just, you know,

what it's under the last 12 months is that an anomaly, are we at the end of the ride here? And the answer I give is that no, I think, if anything, that gold historically is really a financial bloodhound. And it's sniffing out problems in the greater financial order. And we're seeing that today. I mean, just this month, we're seeing huge, huge numbers of the private credit market in that entire world, nine and a half percent default rate, which is a record here through all of the U.S.'s history and private credit. So we're seeing, you know, potential contagion. Powell was on just, I think it was this morning talking about, he says, we're, you know, they asked him, should be, is this going to be okay? And he said, we don't really want to comment on that right now, which if the

people at the top are avoiding answering that, that's, that should be, you know, siren should be blaring. I was going to say, folks, if your interest has been peaked, and I hope it has, go to metaxesgoldiraira.com. Metaxesgoldir.com.