The Eric Metaxas Show - Doug Collins

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

Doug Collins, one of Salem Radio's newest hosts, covers several recent events in the culture and in politics, providing insight from his background as a former congressman from Georgia.

to the Eric Mattaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, it's the Eric Mataxis show. I'm Eric Mataxis. What can I tell you? Do I need to show you ID? No one else would claim to be me. It's that bad. But I'm talking to a fun guest named Ethan Nicole, who's tough to sum up.

And I love my favorite people are the ones you can't sum up. Ethan Nicole, you have a position at the Babylon B. What is your title at the Babylon B? My current title is the creative director. director, which they just asked me when I, when I, like, I was the second employee ever at Kyle's editor-in-chief. They said, what do you want your title to be? So I just like went to like a magazine or, I think I went to the onion actually. And I was like, who's just below the editor-in-chief? And it was creative director. So I was like, yeah, whatever that is. So you are making the Babylon B happen. So if people don't understand how impressive that is, they should look into it.

But you write books. You have many interests. And again, I think it's one of the reasons I like you is you make me feel a little bit more normal because I usually I feel like a freak. And I wear a potato sack over my head and I walk around, you know, a lot like the elephant man. If you've seen that film, that's who I am. And so you make me feel a little bit, you know, more less freaky. You've written a book about G.K. Chesterton. and his chapter, the ethics of Elfland, the ethics of Elfland in the book Orthodoxy,

I want to read a quote because kind of what you're talking about in the book is how Chesterton is so dense that to really try to figure him out. Sometimes people will just use a quote from him because that's enough. The quote is like, says it all. Yeah. But then he writes these essays and he writes books. But here's a quote. The book is Orthodoxy, which I recommend.

If you're going to start on Chesterton, I would say muscle through that book. But there's a chapter in there that's my favorite. It's called The Ethics of Elfland. You have it in your book. And there's a quote at the beginning of this chapter. And I want to read this. Because this kind of sums some things up. It says, this is Chesterton. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit, fierce and free. Therefore, they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, do it again. And the grown up person does. does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exalt in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exalt in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, do it again to the sun and every evening, do it again to the moon. That sort of sums up Chesterton in a way, doesn't it? This childlike delight, energy, brilliance. Yeah, that one always just gets me.

It gets me too. It kind of says it all, right? There's something so beautiful about it. Now, he also wrote poetry, my goodness. Can we remember any of the poems that he wrote? That's like, what's it called? La Ponto. I can't remember.

I have to admit I'm not, I don't understand poetry. I have to admit even Chesterton's poetry I like it but I don't like it as much as his essays I have I have written poetry myself and I think whether I'm realizing it or not I'm sort of leaning toward being Chestertonian like my goal my ambition is to is to do something he but he wrote a number of beautiful poems just killer killer I've assigned Chesterton book of poetry my brother got me It's got a signature right in it. What? It's my prize possession.

I want to steal that from you. You could have when you were here, yeah. It was right there. Man, next time I will. I will. I do want to say that, as you keep saying, I wrote this book. I wrote introductions. This is a collection of essays that I picked out.

And the main thing, probably the biggest job in the book was I did 400 footnotes because that's one of the hardest things is you don't get footnotes in most testimony books. And if you do, you get like a few. So I really kind of detailed footnotes. for a guy at least at my level, you know, anytime a word came up and like, what is that? I just footnoted it. And so it's pretty detailed.

And I broke up the giant walls of paragraph, walls of text paragraphs. I don't know what's going on. That's really funny. Because when I read that, in your introduction, you mentioned a few of these things. And you're the first person who's ever mentioned it. But yes, if you look at Chesterton books, for some freaky reason in 1908, whenever he was writing these books, they didn't seem to be in love with line spaces, line breaks, paragraphs,

and so there's like walls. There's pages without a break, right? Yeah, what is that? Maybe that's just bad editing. You ever think about that? It would be. I assume it's a lot of work to go back and rewrite the whole thing. They can't just go back and edit it because it's typing on paper.

So you call this book. He's probably just barfing the words out and he's probably got somebody there typing it as he talks. I know he did a lot of days. dictating too. Right. Well, you call this book Chesterton with training wheels. Yes. And I love, I just love that because I do think that Chesterton is worth the trouble. I'm trying to think I haven't read a ton of Chesterton, but as I said, Orthodoxy is one of those books. It's such a slim volume, and it's hard not to really want to push that on people because it's so extraordinary.

I'll plug another book that's not mine, Dale Alquist from Chesterton.org, the president of the Chesterton Society. They recently put out an updated orthodoxy. And I know that you immediately go like, that's a classic, you don't touch it. But like, they really didn't hardly touch it except for all the really obscure references that are made in there to things from his time. They either just, they slightly change things so that it would, you don't have to go and do it at whole bunch of Googling and searching and history. You know, it's not. Now the word much easier to read. Color, does Dale Alquist permitted to be spelled with a you or not?

I can't remember if he's stuck with the English spelling or not. I think they maybe did. I it's kind of funny because I think someplace I quote Chesterton in one of my books I can't remember what but I but he talks about an India rubber and I'm old enough and appreciate old books enough

that immediately I know that he means an eraser but in his day they called it in India rubber and because it rubs or editing my book you know like I might as well have said Trojan I think they said no you got to change that Eric I've got to change that now. So, but anyway, can you talk a little bit about Chesterton's influence on C.S. Lewis?

Yeah, I think that, so if you've ever read The Everlasting Man, which I've read it three times now, and I think I only started to grasp it the third time, and it helped that we were reading it in our group when he had some real history buffs in the group that really knew, like, church history and world history. that it made a huge difference. But it's probably his most serious. Like it's very, well, and all his work is serious,

but also like there's a whimsicalness. That one feels the most like a textbook. The chapters are very long. It's very dense. He doesn't do as many puns. He doesn't go into a bunch of jokes. Like, he tends to sometimes,

like, he'll just take a whole paragraph and just be absurd just to make a point. He doesn't do that as much in Everlasting Man. It's a very, He wrote it much later in his life, and it was kind of a response to, I think it was, was it Jules Verne. No, it's H.G. Wells. H.G. Wells. Hughes.

He was a good guy. He was a Frenchman and a good guy, 19th century. H.G. Wells, not such a good guy, but they were friends, right? I get them mixed up. But he had written a book about the whole history of the world, I think, and where the exact name of the off the time of the head was. But it was a kind of response to that, to that book. So he was trying to paint an entire picture of history showing how God's, the church and God at work, he starts off with the cavemen, and he says from the beginning, and he kind of debunks all the assumptions that we have about, you know, that we're just, we came from animals.

He goes, well, where's the evidence? And he goes all the way back to the earliest evidence of man. We're making artwork. He says, no animal makes artwork, but man. All the way back, he's making. The very first thing we know about him is he's doing artwork. And people will argue about whether it's 30 or 40,000 years ago or what's possible, whatever. But for those people who do believe that the cave paintings are 40,000 years old, 50,000 years old,

and many people believe that. You'd have to say to them, do you not find it mind blowing that these supposed cavemen were drawing these gorgeous? I mean, what is crazier than that? What is more provocative and challenging than that idea? Actually, don't answer that question because we're going to a break. We'll be right back with Ethan. Nicole, why would you go anyplace? Stay right here. Hey there, folks.

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That's IPfrequently.com. Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to eat. Ethan Nicole about his new book on G.K. Chesterton, it's called Chesterton's Gateway, 14 essays to get you hooked on Chesterton. Did Chesterton ever write any children's books or fables, fairy tales? I'm not remembering.

He never had like a, I mean, he did. I think the closest I can think of that is actually published was he has a book called The Colored Lands, which is a collection. It's got poetry. It has some children's stuff. but he always had a tough time making it. He'd write a children's story, but it would still have, you know,

demons and people dying and things like that. What's the title of that collection? The colored lands. I actually have it sitting here somewhere. It'll be very close to me, but if I get up this mic will pop off of me. Don't get up, don't get up. It's got a lot of his illustrations in it.

It's pretty cool. The colored lands. The first essay in my book is a fairy tale that he tells at the beginning. And he tells it at the beginning of his book Tremendous Triples. And it's one of my, probably my favorite essay of his.

It's so simple and beautiful. You mean a piece of chalk? No, it's before that one. That's the second one. Before that, and it is called Tremendous Trifles. Right. It's the introduction to his book, Tremendous Trifles, which is also called Tremendous trifles.

He starts off with a fairy tale about two kids in a garden, the tiny little Sussex Garden, he says, and the milkman appears and says and offers each one one wish, and one wishes to be a giant, and he strides across all the continents and the lands, and he sees Niagara Falls looks just kind of like the kitchen tap,

and Grand Canyon looks like a little bit of cork in his garden, and he just kind of lays down and gets bored with the whole world and has his head chopped off because it's a good old-fashioned fairy tale. The other kid wishes to be a pygmy, becomes this tiny, microscopic child, and suddenly that little tiny garden becomes the most amazing and endless, land he could ever explore. And I think that sums up Chesterton. And also you hear that and you go, oh, that's a simple concept. But read Chesterton telling it. And do we have since he died in 1936 or 38, I think you're right, 36, do we have recordings of his voice? Do we have films of him speaking?

there are a few according to we had dale alquist on recently and i know that on youtube there's at least one he's giving a speech um at a university accepting an award and so yeah you can hear he has that really kind of high nasally british voice uh yeah it's amazing when you hear the voice of a legend like that it's it's sort of like hearing the voice of c s louis have you heard those tapes of louis yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's weird because they become so legendary in your head. It's hard to imagine them, you know, actually breathing air. Right.

Well, you, as we've said, you do a lot. You've done a lot of comedy with the Babylon B. And I just want to say that I had the privilege of visiting your offices in Uplands, California. And you interviewed me for the Babylon B podcast. And that was one of the most fun, loopy, expansive conversations I've had in a very, very long time. So I want to thank you for that. And I, we enjoyed it so much. It was a real blessing to me, honestly.

And I don't, how do people find that if they want to watch that? We have the Babon B, YouTube channel. I think you just searched Babon B on YouTube. Go to our channel. You guys weren't kicked off of YouTube. You must not be speaking truth to power, bro. Yeah. haven't got to us yet, but I don't know if we're, uh, what we're doing.

You're not over the target, bro. Okay, but when I was in your offices, I noticed something and you really, really, really, really kindly and generously mailed it to me. I almost died when I saw this in my mailbox. Some place in, in the Babylon B, like, I don't know, a year or two ago, you had an article with a photo. I mean, I don't know if you want to try to describe this. It was just, it kills me.

Are we talking about the Trump last supper? Yeah. I can't remember the exact headline, but it was something about the Christian leaders all asking Trump, who will be the first to betray him. And it's all kind of the big. There's nothing funnier than this. This is so funny because like on the one hand, I'm in the middle of that world. And at the other hand, I mean, it's just like, it's just so it's funny that you guys can make fun of this stuff sort of from the inside. Yeah, yeah. Well, I was asking, because Kyle knows that world a little bit better than me. So I asked him, like, who is a list of people I should put on? because I did the Photoshop. So he sent me this list. And then at the end of the list, there's kind of a space. And then he said, it was like an ellipse dot, dot, dot.

And he said, Eric Metaxus, L.O.L. with a question mark. You know, Eric Metaxis is kind of, does he count as one of these guys? Where is he? Yeah. I'm not really, but I'm enough that you could have put me in there. So what you did, I don't know if people are going to be able to see this. They're going to have to, maybe they're going to have to go to the Babylon B.

website and look this up. But you sent me the picture. I'll put it on my camera here. Some people will be able to see this. But it's a mock-up. It's a mock-up of the Last Supper. And it has a lot. I mean, it's sort of blasphemous,

which is why it's so funny. It's got Trump as Gets who made us take it down if it was in the same camera shot as they were in. What's that? We had guests on the podcast. If it was in their shot, it was in there next to them, they'd ask us to take it down.

because they felt it was blasphemous. Well, it is sort of blasphemous, which is why I find it, I find it hilarious, freaking hilarious. And I found it hilarious before I realized. Yes. That you sort of put me in it.

Stuck in there. Because if you look at it, who do we have here? We have Jim Baker. We got Robertson, Heygy, Higie. You know, these are all people that I love, right? But what's so far.

funny. I don't even know if you can see it in this. You can't see it. Is the other side? There it is. There it is. Right there. Yeah, you might have to put like right up to the camera. We don't know if we can do this. You see it? There we go. There is. He said there's Erica Taxis poking his head in the window.

When I saw that I was of course horrified, flattered, entertained. But you guys. It was a nod. It was a nod. But the fact that I have this, so what am I supposed to do with this now that I have it? Put it up in my house. Go hanging up on Mike Lindell back there. I'm hanging up on my, Mike Lindell should have been in there, by the way. Yeah.

This is before. It might have been before his rise. Well, okay. That's really very early indeed. But my goodness. So your comedy at the Babylon B, if people don't know about the Babylon B again, that's, that's one reason, folks, to listen to this program. because I want to introduce you to things that you'll thank me for. The Babylon B is just, it's brilliant.

What are you guys doing at the Babylon? Because when we were there, I was talking to you, I thought, it seems to me that since nobody else is doing what you guys are doing, there's room for more. There's room for, you know, creating videos, creating shows, creating things. What do you think? Can you talk about this? I said my passion since I joined. I love the articles.

I feel like the Babylon B draws in this crowd, this community. that isn't being served by anybody else. And there's so much we can do. So I kind of spearheaded, getting the podcast going, getting more books out, and getting more video. So I brought in a lot of friends of mine from that I've met in Hollywood or in animation. We started putting out animated cartoons.

We started making animated video sketches and doing kind of mock news desk, stuff like that. And I love the animation. keeps getting better. We're doing all these cartoons now. They're all on the YouTube channel. And now we're talking about expanding a lot more. We love to play with, you know, we haven't locked thing down yet, but we would love to play with doing an actual show or even a movie, start getting into that territory.

So it's a lot of possibilities right now. We're going to have to go in a couple of minutes here. But I just want to say that I'm thrilled you guys are out there. And I hope people will be introduced to Chesterton. through your book Chesterton's Gateway. You've done really good work. You're not just editing his essays. You're really annotating them in a way that is tremendously helpful.

And I think I read, I'm trying to think, I read the Everlasting Man is tough, but it's next level, as the kids say. And then the man who was Thursday is another one of these books. It reminds me of C.S. Lewis's. last fiction book, which I'm now forgetting the title of. But it's so, that's the word, it really is almost otherworldly. It ends in a way that is really freaky. And then that last chapter is like, huh? And that was the, I think I mentioned there that my buddy Kyle Mann has the,

how high was Chesterton when he wrote this rating? he's off. But that's what it seems like, isn't it? Yeah, sometimes. Is that it seems like, and you know, we joke around how high was he. But the really attitude is like he was such a genius, such a visionary, was able to see things on such a level that it's what makes him so celebrated. But it's also what makes him difficult for some people because you think, I don't know if I can handle this. And a totally original voice.

I mean, he didn't, he didn't try to, you know, speak the language of the culture or, you know, don't things down. Can we make a movie about Chesterton? Isn't that the next step? I'm going to have to go here. But I just think we should, we should like make a movie about Chesterton. Yeah. I think, anyway, we're going to say goodbye. Ethan Nicole, to be continued, my friend, really proud of all the work you're doing.

Folks, the book is Chesterton's Gateway. Thank you. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis, and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed, and when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes, leading the prices of goods to rise. And when we're already seeing record inflation, that's the last thing we need. Our economy is in trouble, and you need to take steps to protect yourself.

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We lied. It's just an old friend. It's just Doug Collins. You know, Doug. Actually, no, he is a special guest. He, Doug, it's tough to describe you. You were just telling me, first of all, you're a new Salem host. You're part of what Sebastian Gorka calls the Salem faculty.

So you have a program podcast on Salem. But people know you. They look at you to say, I know that guy. How do I know him? Well, he's a former ranking member of the House. Judiciary Committee. He's from North Georgia, which we can tell by his accent. And we know that this is the guy that was involved in the impeachment of Donald Trump defending Donald Trump from the madness, from the political witch hunt that was the impeachment. So Doug Collins, welcome to Salem.

Welcome to this program. God bless you. You're also a pastor, which just gets better and better. Eric's great to be with you. And I'm glad to be part of that. Salem faculty. Hopefully my classes will be enjoyable, but also informative, just like yours have been. Well, listen, I'm thrilled. We're thrilled to have you aboard, and I want to introduce you to my audience and deduce my audience to you. If people want to listen to your program before we get off on more specific stuff, how do they find you, Doug? It's real simple. It's the Doug Collins podcast. It's on a local, I know, from the Salem Network. It's available anywhere you get your podcast. We've been going for a little about six weeks now, seven weeks. We've got some,

the whole premise of the podcast is from a conservative perspective, not only having people, you know, like former attacking attorney general Matt Whitaker, Mark Meadows. We've had, you know, Jason Chaffetz, we've had folks that I worked with in Congress, but also we also have taken it out a little bit further where we've had Kane from the WWE. Many people know the wrestler Kane. He's also the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee. We try to make conservatism real to people because if we don't start connecting to people, then we learn our chance of impacting the rest of our country. So did you grow up in North Georgia? I did. I'm born and raised. My dad is a state trooper. He retired after 31 years. He moved up here in what's called a

little town called Gainesville and Lake Lanier. And I've been here, I've been all around the world, but I've been here ever since. I just love the fact you say, my daddy, that's how I know you're not from New York. Because, you know, you got to understand some of us, Albin and me and my engineer James, our references are things like, you know, the Smoky and the Bandit movies. So when Jackie Gleason's son says, Daddy, we're like, that's,

we realize it down south, that's what they say, it doesn't matter how old you are. You say, Daddy, and it's okay. But so you really are your life on. Now you do realize, Eric, that Smoky and the Bandit is a documentary. Close enough.

Close enough. Let me tell you. Filmed in my district, by the way. filmed in my district. You're kidding. Nope. Seriously. I actually did not know that.

So that's pretty good that I kind of intuited that. You see? It's amazing. That's the wavelength that I'm on. The Holy Spirit's moving right there. I tell you, Paul Williams, who play, who the famous songwriter, who stars in Smokey and the Bandit, he's the short of this, Pat McCormick. He's a dear friend of mine.

Paul Williams is a friend of yours? Yes. Okay, this show is over, Albin. I cannot believe. Like, when we achieve something like that, we want to go out on a high note. Goodbye, ladies and gentlemen. How in the world, let's break this down.

I knew I'd like you, but I never thought it would get this quick. We'd get here this quick. Paul Williams, the famous songwriter. Yeah. How do you know him? I got to know him about seven, eight years ago. We did a bill, ended up called the Music Modernization Act, and I was the chief sponsor of the bill.

took us about seven years. And Paul is ahead of ASCAP. And Paul and I got to know each other. AsCAPs. Okay. So people know that's a gigantic, that's a music. Yeah, the music globalishing, you know, the rights, the royalty rights. But anyway, he, that's how he came in. And then he came to the office one day early in my career in Congress. We began to talk, talking about smoking the bandit. That was one of the things. And now we've just developed a friendship. I'm about a foot and a half taller than he is. We talk regularly. He is just, he's an interesting, guy in his perspective, you know, of all that he's overcoming, his life has been really neat. This is just too much.

I, he wrote, he wrote many songs that we would know. He wrote the Rainbow Connection. Yes. Which is one of the most really heartbreakingly beautiful songs sung by Kermit, the Frog, or, or I'm sorry, Kermit, the Frog. And Paul Williams is a lot. legend in that world. But what's interesting is at some point in the 1970s, there were a few of these figures that kind of broke into the mainstream. He was no longer just a songwriter, but he became

an actor. You'd see him on talk shows and stuff. And now he's a friend of yours. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, Doug. It's very sad. They just, you know, they have to hang out with whoever they can come to. You know, he also wrote Evergreen, that amazing song from Saturday. But then he won a Grammy a few years ago, and he and I laughed about this. He won a Grammy. with the electric dance people daff punk. Well, yeah, that happens. That happens. Yeah, they'll quote your music and then they have to give you,

you get the Grammy also. Evergreen, is that the song that Barbara Streisand saying? I can't remember it. It is. It is the one it just blew. I mean, it's just, you hear it all about it. And you and I are, we're heterosexual men. Yep.

And yet we know that Barbara Streisand sang that's, I think that's a beautiful thing. thing. I think we're crossing over, Doug. You and I, we're crossing over, man. It's all, it's a connection going here. I can feel it. It's a rainbow connection if you know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about? Listen, no, listen. The lovers, the dreamers and us, Eric. What's good is good. And those songs are beautiful, really beautiful. Well, listen, I want to keep talking to you if we haven't lost you by now, maybe we can keep you for another segment. And folks, I'm talking, as you know, to Doug Collins, who has a podcast now on the Salem News Network.

Really excited to have you on board. We'll be right back. What's all amazing that keeps us stargazing. And what do we think we might see? Hey, folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son, owners, Pete and Seth Talbot, have never made a big. deal about, but I think it is a big deal. I really do. They sell the three-week quick start pack for just 1995 to anyone struggling from pain like neck, shoulder, back, hip, or knee pain, 1995, about a dollar a day. But what they haven't broadcasted much is that every time they sell a three-week quick start,

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Who is Doug Collins, you say? Well, I will tell you. He's been a pastor for many years. He is now part of the Salem faculty, which is to say he has a podcast here on Salem. He was for eight years a member of the house from North Georgia. And we're just glad to have you on board, Doug. I've heard such great things about you from people like Phil Boyce,

who I never take seriously. But in this case, I'm going to make an exception. He got you right. Yes. Well, good. Well, I appreciate it. It's been fun. And in bringing a background like Eric,

what you're trying to do is it's a blending of conservatism, faith, is who we are. And I really am tired and I travel all over the country. I'm ready for conservatives to not be ashamed of who they are, to have a voice where they can come and learn and then be able to take that out. And, you know, have a difference in not being backing down to what the world is telling them. It's funny you put it that way.

because I've been saying exactly the same thing quite a bit lately. My last book, my new book is called Is Atheism Dead? And in the book, this is not really about conservatism. It's about God and the Bible. But it's the same thing. Truth is truth. If something is true, why would we allow ourselves? Why do we allow ourselves to be kind of bullied into being quiet or acting as though,

well, I'm not like those conservatives or I'm not like that. In other words, we allow people something. Sometimes we're just trying to be gracious. Sometimes we're being cowards. But I think that truth is so important, the truth of the history of America, the truth of the scripture and of the God who loves us. We're at a time now where things are so bad that we need to be bolder about the truth. And we need to, you know, in a sense, apologize less and proclaim more just because I think that's what discerns. would have us do. But you know better than anybody. You were in the middle of this impeachment.

You saw the madness. And I'll tell you something, it's only because the Lord created you the way he did that you could even go into the belly of that beast because I would have lost my mind in a nanosecond. I don't have the temperament to handle that level of lies and gaslighting. Can I ask you, what was it that brought you into the middle of that? And just, talk us through that because most people cannot even imagine what it would be like to be there. Well, I think it is. And it's, I sort of, you know, same from a biblical reference for such a time as this. I think that it was designed for me to be there at a time in which, you know, you can have a position, you can fight. I've always lived by something Eric called motion causes friction.

And if you're not doing anything, you're probably not going to have a lot of friction in your life. But if you're out there taking what you believe and how you believe it, then there's going to be some people are going to disagree. In fact, you just wrote your book about atheism, and I wrote a book just recently, and it's just been out a few weeks. It was called the clock in the calendar, and it was about my time in the impeachment. Sitting next to Jerry Nadler, who was completely, you know, talking about New York, Jerry Nadler was completely obsessed with Donald Trump, and that became the whole working model. So what we knew is, is we could either degenerate into, you know, just ignoring it or letting the Democrats be Democrats, or we could fight back. And I knew from my time with the

president talking with him and knowing where we needed to go. It was our time to fight back. It was because nobody else was going to share the truth of the stupidity that was going on during that entire year. And if you do so in such a way, you raise your voice, you make your points, then people will know that there's somebody else out there fighting. And if I can encourage people to do that and fight from the basis of truth and realize that people will have their back, then I think that's what we got to do. But it was tough because you had everybody lying and, you know, just Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff wouldn't know the truth that did them. Well, can I tell you something?

There are people, here's what I think, really, Doug. First of all, the fact that you have a book out and didn't mention it, folks, the clock and the calendar, check it out if you want more of Doug Collins. And I hope you do if you're listening here. But what I think is difficult for Americans, I'm being just perfectly honest. I think most Americans are just good people. and they live among good people. And we do our best.

And we are tolerant. And we put up with lunacy because we don't want to hurt people's feelings. And that's all good. But there comes a time when I think you have to wake up and realize, like, somebody's pointing a gun to your head. And you need to react. You need to either shoot him back or disarm him or run or you. But you can no longer pretend that somebody's not pointing a gun to your head. And what happened in America in the last few years with figures,

lying as brazenly as Swalwell and Nadler and company. I really think most good Americans just weren't used to this. And it took us time to realize that guy's pointing a gun in my head. He's not my friend. He would love to kill me and he will kill me. What do I do? How do I fight back? What do I do?

I really think that's part of the reason that all this stuff happened, the impeachment and stuff, is just because if we would have known in 2016, what we knew in 2017 and 18 and 19, we would have gone in differently. But I think we kind of thought, hey, it's a great country. And if everybody plays by the rules, let's see what happens. We were not realizing that the other side had really thrown the rules away before Trump was inaugurated. And so the rules were changed.

And we're kind of playing catch up. Yeah, we are. And I think that's something I'm good. Eric, I'm bad you brought that up because let's not make any mistake. This actually started before 2017. There was a design when it looked like dogs. Donald Trump was going to get elected. You had the FBI.

You had Comey struck the rest of them, which I was right in the middle of who were trying to take him down before. And then after he was elected, really disrupting. And I know President Trump's heart when he first came in, and he still was, was what could he do to help people? The realization was his left was not going to ever give him the moment to do anything. And now I think people are actually waking up and realizing that, you know, unless you dig for yourself, unless you find out the truth,

unless you see, you know, what was happening, the media lets people like Swalwell and Schiff and Nadler and Pelosi and Schumer just get away with it. And now you see it from the pull from, I call it the pulpit from the press chamber every day with Jen Saki who just gets up and demeans people. I've never seen it so even under Obama who is as condescending as they come. I've never seen it. It's so condescending coming from a White House is this White House. Well, you're right. And I think that that's why some of us have changed dramatically.

I mean, in many ways publicly, I'm dramatically different than I was eight or 10 years ago because the times have changed because the level of viciousness, the level of brazen lying, I couldn't have imagined it. And yet here we are. And so we have to respond to it. And a lot of us just don't want to believe it's the case. And when we keep looking the other way, looking the other way. But I think that when things get as bad as they are and they keep getting worse, there are people finally waking up. And voices like yours and hopefully like mine, we're helping. helping them to track, to figure out what is happening, what can we do about it today. We'll keep you on for another couple of minutes if you can spare it. Folks, I'm talking to Doug Collins. And this is the Eric Metaxis show. Hey there, folks. It's the Eric Mattaxas show. As you know, this program was completely banned from YouTube thrown off of YouTube.

Because, you know, I've interviewed people like the songwriter Paul Williams, the comedian, Jimmy J.J. Walker, you know, really scary people. And we were thrown off of YouTube. But I joke. But, you know, I'm talking to Doug Collins, a new member of the Salem Radio faculty. And Doug, you know, you were just talking about some stuff. And it reminded me that when people tell you can't talk about something, like whether the election might have been stolen, I say, wait a second, who says I can't talk about it? Why can't I talk about it? If I think it's true or if I think it might even be true. You're telling me I shouldn't look into that. If you're telling me, I shouldn't talk about it, you're telling me you're afraid that people will talk about it. And that's kind of where we are. We have a lot of radio talk show hosts conservatives, a lot of TV talk show hosts, conservatives who are steering clear of this issue, I guess because they're afraid maybe to get sued or something like that. They don't seem to understand like the whole nation is at stake. Salem Radio and Fox News, this will all go away

if we don't get to the bottom of the swamp, so to speak. Well, the question I always have is when somebody brings up a question, why are you asking a question or talking about that? Look, questions are the very first step of education. Questions are the very first step of learning. Because if you don't ever question, you don't ever, then you have no chance of actually learning it. And avoiding topic simply because you don't want to be controversial is frustrating

because, again, so many things that need to happen, you may mention of something, everybody looking around and waking up one day. Scripture talks about the men of Ischkar. They looked around and they understood their time. They understood what was going on around them. We need to raise up men and women who look around and understand what's going on in our country right now and the world and begin to ask those questions. Why?

Why is this happening? Why are we doing this? I think that's the first step to learning. I had a gentleman who's a large CEO on my podcast for a company called King's Hawaiian, the wonderful little rolls that you buy. And one of the first questions he said when he interviews, somebody. He said he could care less what their background is as far as where they went to school. He said, I want to see if they're curious. Well, Eric, why don't we raise up a generation of folks in this country that are curious again, where they actually ask questions instead of

believing whatever pablum is given to them by the mainstream media? Well, there we are. I mean, that's why I knew I'd enjoy talking to you, Phil Boyce, the guru, the media guru behind Salem said to me that you and I were very much on the same page. How can people find your podcast again? They go to anywhere. They normally download their podcast off of Spotify, you know, Apple, anywhere. And also on the Salem network as well, they could go get it. It's the Doug Collins podcast.

We would love to have them be a part because we're doing exactly what you're doing. And that's just trying to take people along on this journey. And, you know, from a perspective of saying that if you have the tools, then you can build. Without the tools, it's hard to build anything. Okay. And I got to remind my audience, folks, if you want to help this program and if you want to help my friend who's a patriot, Mike Lindell, go to mystore.com, go to mypillow.com. Use the code, Eric.

Doug Collins, God bless you. Bless you, Eric. Many of you know the last couple of years we've worked with CSI. CSI is Christian Solidarity International. When you hear what they do, if you don't already know, you're going to want to help. There are people in other parts of the world who's lives are being threatened. Their very lives are being threatened for believing in Jesus. They could be enslaved, the kind of things that you think ought not to be happening anymore.

So some of them are being enslaved for their faith. You can buy a believer's freedom. You can give, you can contribute toward it, or you can give a whole $250 and free somebody from slavery. Go to metaxis talk.com, please. You'll see the Christian Solidarity banner. Here's a phone number 888. 253-3522. 888-253-3522. 888-253-3522. Or just go to metaxisotoxystalk.com. Thank you.