The Eric Metaxas Show - Dr. Robert George on Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Dr. Robert George on his new book "Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment". ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:09 Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. They say it's a thin line between love and hate, but we're working every day to thicken that line, or at least to make it a double or triple line. But now here's your line jumping host, Eric Mattaxas. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the show Thursday, the 24th of July. Wow. A lot happening. but in our one today, I want to be talking to my old friend, my goodness.
Starting point is 00:00:44 He is an amazing, amazing figure. Robbie George, Robert George. He's one of the finest legal minds in the United States of America. He's at Princeton University. I met him through Chuck Colson years ago. And Robbie has just been one of these. geniuses in the legal world, who's a man of tremendous Christian faith, and he has a new book out. So I'm going to be talking to him about his new book.
Starting point is 00:01:17 There are just very few people like Robbie George, so I'm just glad to get a few minutes with him today. So stay tuned for that. In hour two, as you know, we have a real emergency in Texas because of the flooding. Food for the Poor came to us and asked for our help. I want to play in my conversation with Paul Jacobs of Food for the Poor just to give you an opportunity because I know everybody wants to do something and you think, what can I do? Food for the Poor is making it possible for us to do something. So please stay tuned for that.
Starting point is 00:01:52 It is an emergency, folks. It's an all court, full court press right now. In hour two, we've got a fun segment. English is a first language. That'll be an hour two. but before that, I've got a conversation with our dear friend, Albin Seder, talking about a lot of stuff that's going on the news right now. So we've got Robbie George coming up.
Starting point is 00:02:15 We've got Paul Jacobs Food for the Poor. We got Albin. We got English as a first language. Lots happening. First, my conversation with Paul Jacobs right now. Here that is. You know we've been doing a campaign with food for the poor. This is an emergency, so much so that I thought maybe we can get our friend Paul Jacobs on
Starting point is 00:02:35 to help explain what is going on. Paul, welcome back. No, it's great to be back. You know, it's nearly three weeks since the devastating floods in central Texas, and the need has never been greater. What is food for the poor doing? I mean, I've talked about this, but it's, you know, it's hard for people to get their heads around this because it's such a nightmare. You hear about these floods. You hear about children dying. But then I think most of us think, well, that's that. I don't know, you know, what is there to say? It's a horror. It's a tragedy. The reason you guys are there is because the tragedy is ongoing.
Starting point is 00:03:08 They're people suffering right now and they need our help right now. Yeah, that's right. You know, but hundreds have lost their lives and probably almost the same amount that are still missing. I think this attention, this tragedy has caught our attention because of the children and the families and this community. The Guadalupe River was literally the center of these three communities where more than 30,000 people lived. And it was the churches, the businesses, the ministries and schools. and of course these camps. And food for the poor, while there's thousands of people there in the response and the recovery effort,
Starting point is 00:03:42 food for the poor is working with the local church. Church partners on the ground that have been responding to help families with emergency relief kits, everything from tarps to cover their belongings to women's care kits for women and girls to be provided for. And even something as simple as baby diapers for small children who have become very vulnerable in this disaster. Well, so what is the area that's affected? I'm not clear. I haven't seen much video or anything of this. In other words, are there towns that have been wiped out?
Starting point is 00:04:13 I mean, I know that there are individual businesses and homes. And where are the people who have been displaced? Where are they staying, many of them? The Guadalupe River is in the center of Kerr County. Curville, Ingram, and Hunt, number of cities in the surrounding area. areas. You could say it's probably just out, just about 45 minutes to an hour just outside of San Antonio area, if you're familiar with the San Antonio area. But the thing about this is, while you may not have ever focused on this community on the map, it is for Texans, a very thriving
Starting point is 00:04:50 community. One of our ministry partners, excuse me, one of our staff members here at Food for the poor lives in the San Antonio area. Used to work in Kerrville and this Kerr County area. Matter of fact, he was personally affected because the camp mystic, which was the camp where a lot of those children who were there in summer camp lost their lives. One of the camp directors, a friend of his, also lost his life. So this is very personal for us. This is very personal for my colleague, Kevin Mayne, in San Antonio. But this area in the Guadalupe River has quite a few people that have been displaced. Hundreds of homes, completely destroyed businesses.
Starting point is 00:05:28 They're going to take their, it's going to take a long time for them to get back on track. But right now, we're focused not necessarily on the long-term, but really the immediate need of getting families, the recovery efforts, and the recovery efforts, helping them with the emergency kits they need to just get through another day. Okay, so folks, if you want to help, you can go to my radio website, metaxis talk.com. Metaxistalk.com at the top of the page that you see the banner. We're asking you every $50 purchases one of these emergency relief kits. So some of you can do multiples of that. But whatever you can do, we need your help, desperately need your help. And what is the partner that Food for the Poor is working with on the ground there?
Starting point is 00:06:23 Do you know the name of that? Paul Jacobs, the name of the partner? Well, that's the great news. We work with the local church. church partners ministries that are set up in san antonio as a distribution site we've already sent the first few pallets of emergency relief kits like the ones you just mentioned that these families for fifty dollars could provide a family with emergency kits and it's going through pastors local ministries on the ground matter of fact i was supposed to right now be in an interview with them just to kind of get an assessment of what's going on at this very moment unfortunately as you can well imagine they are very caught up with meetings and a lot of things that are going on in the ground, they could not change. So we've had to postpone that. But you can just imagine that's how busy things are and how frenetic and why you're needed right now to help our ministry partners and churches on the ground. I have a phone number here, which I want to give
Starting point is 00:07:15 in case anybody prefers to call. But folks, anything you can do, this is tax deductible, and it is an emergency. So the phone number to call, so you can give is 844-863.3.000. 4673, 844-863-4-863-4-6-7-3. I mentioned the radio website is metaxistoctalk.com. You'll see the banner at the top of the page. Or if you want to text my name to this number, you'll get the link. Metaxus is M-E-T-A-X-A-S. You can text it to 5-1-5-55-5.
Starting point is 00:07:58 Again, text metaxus, M-E-T-A-X-A-S, text Metaxis to 5-1-55-5-5. Text-Metaxis to 5-1-55-5-5. The phone number, again, is 844-863-4673, 8-4-6-7-3. Paul, any final thoughts? Yeah, very much. it's community effort. It is going to be a community effort in the response to help each and every one of these families. We have seen on the news.
Starting point is 00:08:36 We've heard it through our ministry partners on the ground. And we have seen thousands of dollars poured out through the Metaxis talk listeners. You know, those of you that are listened to this program. And maybe if you have not heard of this, maybe this is the very first time of hearing about food for the poor, or you're hearing about the efforts that through this radio program is going to help those families, We need you to join this community of those who are desperately in need vulnerable children, families, just like you, who need your help right now. Well, I'm glad to hear that it's through the local churches. I know a lot of people who are wanting to help or, you know, would be comfortable with that because they know that local churches know what's going on in the local area.
Starting point is 00:09:19 And they are, they have compassion and wisdom. And so I'm grateful that Food for the Poor is partnering with the local churches in the area. So folks, I'll just say it again. This is an emergency. Food for the Poor has come to us asking us to please ask you to help. So again, metaxis talk.com is the website metaxis talk.com at the top of the page. You see the banner, help Texas. We're asking you to do what you can.
Starting point is 00:09:49 If you can't do much, just do what you can. And it is direly needed right now. So God bless you as you give. Thank you. Mike Lindell and MyPillow employees want to thank you, my listeners, for all your continued support. Mike has a passion to help everyone get the best sleep of their life. He didn't stop by creating the best pillow. He created the best bed sheets ever. Yes, Mike is offering the best deal on his percale bedsheets.
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Starting point is 00:11:37 Join me in taking balance of nature and use my discount code Eric to get 40% off plus free shipping this week only. You've got to use my discount code Eric. Call them at 800-2468-751. Use discount code Eric or order online at balance of nature.com. Use discount code Eric to get 40% off this week only. Folks, welcome back as I think I already told you. My guest right now is Robert George.
Starting point is 00:12:18 Who is Robert George, you ask? Well, I told you the details. I'll say it again. He is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. There is so much more to say he's someone I've known for many years, principally through my friendship with the great Chuck Colson. Robbie, as he lets us call him, has a new book out called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth, Law and Morality in our cultural moment.
Starting point is 00:12:54 Robbie, George, welcome back. Oh, it's a pleasure to be back with you, Eric. Well, you're just seeing your face as an encouragement to me. You're one of those people. You give me great hope. You, there is so much to say about you. But let's just, I guess, stick to the book. What led you to put out this book, seeking truth and speaking truth, law and morality in our cultural moment? Well, I've been teaching the young men and women entrusted by their families to my charge as students. at Princeton for four decades now. And over the course of the last decade, I've written various essays on various topics. And looking back over those essays,
Starting point is 00:13:39 I saw that they were really integrated around a set of central themes, themes that are very much on the minds of young men and women these days. What is truth? Why should we be concerned about truth? Why should we prioritize truth? Is there such a thing?
Starting point is 00:13:58 as truth? Or is there just your truth and my truth? There are a lot of forces in the culture that are telling young people today, now there's really no such thing as objective truth. There's just your truth and my truth, and you can sort of choose. I also began to be worried, and this is for more than a decade, that people have given up on the two traditional sources of knowledge and wisdom. And those are faith and reason. And faith and reason have been replaced in people's minds, and especially the minds of young people, with a belief that our access to truth, if there is any such thing as truth, is simply our feelings, simply our emotions.
Starting point is 00:14:45 And, of course, if that's the case, then it generates the idea that, well, since our emotions and feelings vary from person to person, you have your truth, and I have my truth. So I thought, you know, I'll gather these essays together. present them as an integrated whole, address these themes with a view to saying to a general audience, but particularly young people. And this is why I hope that parents and grandparents will get this book into the hands of their high school and college age kids, especially to young people. Look, truth matters. It's really important. It's really important to prioritize seeking truth. We'll never get at it perfectly. We'll never get at it fully. But let's get out at the best we can.
Starting point is 00:15:27 let's deepen our understanding of truth, because it really is much better to live in touch with reality than with fantasies. Let's stop relying on our feelings. Let's use the twin resources. The two wings is the late Pope John Paul II described them on which the human spirit ascends to contemplation of truth, faith and reason to get at the truth of things. And then let's be courageous in speaking the truth. I see my vocation as a teacher, Eric, to form the young men and women and entrusted to my care to be determined truth seekers and courageous truth speakers. And I'm going to do that now with a broader audience of young men and women, not just my students at Princeton.
Starting point is 00:16:06 Well, when you just mentioned the two wings, you said faith and reason, right? Just so I'm getting this right. I always thought that originated with the late great Michael Novak. But obviously, he got that from Pope John Paul II. He did, yeah. It's the beginning sentence of Pope John Paul's great instance. cyclical Fides at Ratio, which is the Latin for faith and reason. The idea that faith and reason are the two wings on which the human spirit rises to contemplation of truth.
Starting point is 00:16:38 Well, whenever I hear faith and reason put together that way, I always think of, you know, the famous, I guess, fourth century question, what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? Yeah, that's Turtolian's question. Yeah. And that is the question. I mean, I guess I was speaking to Melanie Phillips recently at a Socrates in the city event. And we were talking about what is the West. And for me, I think she differed with me on this. But for me, that is the West. Athens and Jerusalem, faith and reason. And it's something that we've taken for granted for centuries. And we've, you know, in various ways, struggled to live up to, you know, what these things mean. mean to God, I think. But it is interesting right now that we're in a new part of the struggle
Starting point is 00:17:32 where people are no longer even thinking of reason as reasonable, that we have people think of reasoning and logic as patriarchal constructs. What is it the root of the denigration of reason? Well, I think it's the loss of faith because reason really does depend for its support on faith, just as faith depends on reason to work on the data of faith to draw conclusions about what we ought to be doing and not doing, what it means to live a truly human, a fulfilled human life. You know, Eric, the historians are fond of breaking up the epochs, you know this, into the age of this and the age of that. And so some historians say the medieval period, that was the age of faith. And what they mean by that is that for the great medieval thinkers, whether they were
Starting point is 00:18:25 Jewish or Christian or Muslim figures like Maimonides or Aquinas or Aquinas or Varroes. The fundamental touchstone of truth, of justice, of goodness, of rightness, was conformity with the teachings of religion, the teachings of faith. And then these same historians tell us that, well, the Enlightenment comes along, and that's the age of reason. So now the touchstone for the great enlightenment figures, whether in Germany or in France or in England or in Scotland, and the great touchstone of truth and rightness and justice is conformity with reason or with scientific inquiry. Now, both of those are partly true and partly misleading. The medieval's certainly prioritized faith, but they were no slouches when it came to reasoning as well,
Starting point is 00:19:13 and they did not neglect the importance of reason. And in many cases, enlightenment figures were not just people of science. Even those who were men of science, were often also men of faith. Newton is a very good example, but of course there are many, many, many others. Well, if the medieval period was the age of faith, and if the Enlightenment is the age of reason, in what age do we live? What's our touchstone of goodness of truth? I'm afraid, I fear that it has become feeling. We live in the age of feeling. And that is the high road to catastrophe because our feelings are extremely unreliable indicators of goodness, of justice, of truth, of rightness. We do need to return to faith and reason. And there's no way you
Starting point is 00:20:04 just go back to one without the other. For the great Christian thinkers, again, going all the way back to Augustine, reason really matters. It doesn't displace faith. It's not a competitor to faith, but faith and reason work in a kind of harmony. That's true. For the great Jewish thinkers, as well. I mentioned Maimonides earlier, a very good example of that. Well, that's where we need to go. We need to recover the true sources of wisdom, and those are in faith and reason. Where did this go wrong? I always go back to Rousseau, I guess. The, this idea that somehow our feelings, I mean, yeah, where did that idea come from in history, an intellectual history? Well, the trouble, Eric, as you know, when you start trying to trace things back, especially where things have gone wrong, you go back and you go back and you go back. And the next thing you know, we're in the Garden of Eden and that serpent is presenting himself and tempting our mother Eve. But you certainly put your finger on a key moment. Rousseau's abandonment of the idea of reason and the idea that we live by a kind of natural instance.
Starting point is 00:21:19 and they'll guide us in the right way that, you know, human beings are naturally good, and where human beings have gone wrong is by basically having civilization imposed on them. That's a very bad idea. But it's not just Rousseau. You might recall the very famous passage from Hume, David Hume, the 18th century skeptical British thinker. Hume said that the reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and may pretend to no office other than to serve and obey them. For Hume, and he was very influential. For Hume,
Starting point is 00:21:55 reason cannot tell us what to want. It can't adjudicate among competing wants. It can only play the instrumental role of helping us more efficiently to get what we want, whatever we happen to want. So Mother Teresa might want one thing, and Hitler might want another thing. On Hume's reading, no reason, no rational, there's no rational basis for adjudicating between Hitler's wants or desires and Mother Teresa's wants and desires. All reason can do is tell Mother Teresa how to save more people on the streets of India and it can tell Hitler how to kill more people in the ovens of Auschwitz. That's obviously a very bad idea. But human itself didn't invent it. I mean, go a generation or two, a couple of generations earlier, back to Thomas Hobbes, a very influential thinker.
Starting point is 00:22:41 Right. We're going to go to a hard break here. Oh, sure. We'll get back to Thomas Hobbs, ladies and gentlemen. Don't go away. Welcome back, folks. I'm talking to Robbie George, or, as the title of the book says, Robert P. George, who's at Princeton, the city, the university, or the town of the
Starting point is 00:23:22 university, the new book is called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth Law and Morality in our cultural moment. Robbie, you were just making a statement about Thomas Hobbs. Please continue. So I quoted that famous passage of David Humes, the great 18th century, a British skeptical, a philosopher. Our reason is and ought only to be the slave of the desires and may pretend to no office other than to serve and obey them. But I was pointing out that even before that, you go back a couple of generations to the figure
Starting point is 00:23:56 of Thomas Hobbs, an enormously influential. figure in the history of Western thought, especially Western political thought, who's writing in the context of a great civil war. And Hobbs says that the thoughts, by this he means the intellect, the thoughts are to the desires as scouts and spies to range abroad and find the way to the thing desired. It's that same idea that's now filtering in with Hobbs, the idea that our thoughts can't tell us, our intellect can't tell us what we should want. It can only find the way to whatever we desire it and can only help us more efficiently to attain
Starting point is 00:24:36 what we want, whatever we want. The great teaching of Christianity, of Judaism, and of the classical tradition, the tradition of Plato and Aristotle and Cicero, is that the intellect has something to say. It has a role to perform, not only in instrumentally figuring out how to get what we want,
Starting point is 00:24:55 but in figure out what it's, in figuring out what it's worth wanting, in deciding what is good and what is bad. Well, there's so much here. It's amazing. And I'm always fascinated about how people can push things too far. I mean, I know that Martin Luther, about whom I've written a book, really despise, I always find these things funny, despised Aristotle. I don't know why, maybe because he was just forced to read and study Aristotle so much, you know, in the very early 16th century. And he really seemed to have problems with reason. And so people can make us or feel they want to make us ourselves make a false choice and to say you must choose between faith and reason, which is to me self-evidently ridiculous. But talk about that idea that there are people who,
Starting point is 00:25:53 who seem to think it's got to be one or the other. They don't see them working together. Yeah, and you see this from both sides. You'll see this in religious people, and you'll see this in hardcore secularists. My old Oxford colleague, I knew very well in the old days, Richard Dawkins, for example. For religious people, some adopt a view that has come to be known in philosophy as Fideism. And that's the idea that the only knowledge worth having, and certainly this is true, they say of moral knowledge. The only moral knowledge worth having is knowledge that we have simply in virtue of revelation. If it's not in the scripture, we can't know it. We can't rely on our reason to get us anywhere in the vicinity of genuine, important moral knowledge. And then
Starting point is 00:26:42 on the other side, you know, the hardcore secularists, people like Dawkins and Hitchens and so-called new atheists, think that reason is our only guide to truth and that faith proposes itself as an alternative to reason and must therefore be rejected. Why? Because we have no rational basis for affirming it. But I'm with you, Eric. I think that they are both wrong. I think there's a very good reason why the early Christian church did look for wisdom not only in the scripture, which is very important and preeminent, of course, but also in the teachings of the great pagan, to be sure, ancient thinkers. The idea for the early Christians and going forward was, all truth is God's truth. If it's spoken by somebody who's a believer, that's great. If it's spoken by somebody
Starting point is 00:27:37 who's an unbeliever, it's still true. If it's spoken by someone who's a pagan, especially a virtuous pagan. Well, learn from it. Take it on board, integrate it into our overall knowledge, which is exactly what Christianity did. Well, I guess that's the, I've made this point innumerable times. All truth is of God. So if an idiot says one plus one equals two, it's no less true because it was spoken by an idiot or a fool. And it is interesting how how some people, I mean, I guess, you know, the idea that reason is something that we shouldn't trust, there's a point to be made, right? In other words, we know that if we are fallen, reason, which can lead us to truth, also can lead us away from truth. I mean, that's, we'd call that sophistry.
Starting point is 00:28:33 So there's a reason to be suspicious of pure reason. And if our reason is leading us away, from what the scripture says, then we have more reason to be suspicious of the way we are reasoning. But that doesn't mean we throw reason away. And so I guess when people like you mentioned, Richard Dawkins, his understanding of what faith is and what we can know, to me, becomes absolutely preposterous. I mean, this idea that the only things that we can know, we can know through scientific investigation. I mean, most people know that's preposterous, that you're reducing everything to a materialism,
Starting point is 00:29:20 which is just silly. You can't live your life that way. And so it's interesting that we have these, I guess, people, as you were saying earlier, getting it wrong on both sides. And I know that in your book, you're trying to help us understand what it means to use faith and reason, as I would say, God wants us to do.
Starting point is 00:29:43 We'll be right back, folks. I'm talking to Robbie George. The new book is called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth. Welcome back, folks, talking to Robert P. George. The new book is called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth, Law and Morality in our cultural moment. And it is a grouping of essays. one of the first ones by Patrick Lee or with Patrick Lee is called the nature and basis of human dignity.
Starting point is 00:30:28 That's a fascinating concept. If you do not believe in the biblical account that there is a loving God who created us in his image, there really is no basis for human dignity. I mean, if we just evolved out of the primordial soup via accident, then the concept of human dignity, I would argue goes out the window. But there are people who they kind of want to have it both ways. They sort of believe in human dignity. They say, what do you have to say about that? Well, what does it mean to say? What is the Bible telling us when it says that man, though made from the mere dust of the earth, is nevertheless fashioned in the very image and likeness, as you say, of the divine creator and ruler of all it is.
Starting point is 00:31:19 The Imago deity, the idea of man being made in the image and likeness of the image and likeness of, God. Well, it doesn't mean that God has five fingers on each of two hands and hair on his head and a nose because God is an immaterial reality. What could it mean then? Well, Thomas Aquinas, I think, has done better than anybody else in Christian history of giving us an account of what it means. What it means is that human beings, like God, enjoy reason and freedom, the godlike, literally godlike powers of reason and freedom, the power to envisage a state of affairs that does not exist, grasp, understand the intelligible point, the value of bringing that state of affairs into existence, and then to act reasonably, freely, to bring that state of affairs into existence and not act like a
Starting point is 00:32:15 brute animal acts on the basis of pure instinct or impulse. Well, a secularist, Eric, like my colleague at Princeton Jeffrey Stout, that's a very good example of it. A secularist, someone like Professor Stout will say, well, I can recognize that human beings have those godlike powers. We really are free. We really do have the power of reason. We really can envisage states of affairs that don't exist and freely on the basis of our rational grasp of the intelligible point of bringing them into existence, bring them into existence. those are godlike powers the thing is someone like stout would say i believe we don't get them from god that we're not created in the image of god we have created god in our image we have these godlike powers they are as you insist professor george the the basis of our dignity but there is no divine source of them now i'll then ask the next question well brother jeff where did they come from
Starting point is 00:33:16 How is it the case that the world includes creatures who have these literally godlike, immaterial, powers of reason and freedom? And his response to that, or a great secularist response to that, an intelligent secularist response to that will simply be, I don't know, it's inexplicable, I'm not buying the God version of the story. All I know is that we do, in fact, have these qualities, they distinguish us from the brute animals, and they are the foundations of our dignity as human creatures. There's so much in the book, and I look forward to speaking you at Socrates in the city soon on all of this. But I just wanted to touch at the end of the book, part four of the book is called Seekers of Truth and Bearers of Witness. You have a chapter on Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I assume talking about, I assume you're touching there on his 1978 speech to the Harvard undergraduates. That's right.
Starting point is 00:34:15 I talk about that speech. I was actually at Harvard at that time. I wasn't in the yard, but I heard the speech over the broadcast system. I was outside the walls. There was a simultaneous translation. I talk about that speech, and I talk about his 1983 Templeton address as well. I talk about two speeches, and it's the Templeton address in which he says the root of our problems is simply this, we, man, men have forgotten God. And I think he's hit the nail on the head there. And with the collapse of faith comes the collapse of faith in reason. You also have a chapter on Heinrich Heine, which I quote him in my Bonhoffer book.
Starting point is 00:35:03 He's essentially prophetically prophesying the right. eyes of Nazism. And you have a chapter on Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, whom I had the privilege of meeting. He spoke at Socrates in the city a number of years ago, as did you. But the final chapter, and this is where we out you, Professor George, as a banjo player. I've heard you play banjo a few times. You have as your final chapter, Ralph Stanley, the famous bluegrass phenomenon on Ralph Stanley, why do you have him in the book? Well, Eric, I will plead that I came by my banjo picking honestly. I was born and brought up in West Virginia, right in the heart of Apple H.I.
Starting point is 00:35:51 I had a kind of Huckfin boyhood hunting and fishing and playing bluegrass banjo. And Stanley was a banjo hero of mine. I had three great banjo heroes. Of course, Earl Scruggs, who's usually credited with founding the bluegrass style of banjo playing guy named Don Reno and then Ralph Stanley. Stanley's in the book because of the way he combined his musical vocation with his witness to the Christian faith. I particularly was arrested by a PBS broadcast that I saw in which he was interviewed. I don't know what the interviewer's name was, but he was one of the standard issue, PBS, secular, news people.
Starting point is 00:36:35 and he was just flummoxed by Ralph Stanley's absolutely effortless, unselfconscious proclamation of the Christian faith, just in his ordinary explanation of what he did and why he did what he did and how he came by his music and what he thinks his music means. He was expressing his Christian faith and just bearing witness to this guy, who coming from a completely alien sort of culture, the culture that you're very familiar with, there in New York City, the culture of PBS, the culture I'm familiar with at Princeton, just was trying to make sense out of this. It was an amazing episode, and it was the impetus to write that. What it began was a tribute to Stanley after he died. Well, I'm just thrilled that you squeezed him into the book. That's amazing. We're at a time, Robbie. I will see you soon to
Starting point is 00:37:29 continue the conversation. Folks, the book is seeking truth and speaking truth, law and morality in our cultural moment. Professor Robert P. George, thank you. My pleasure, Eric. Thank you. So much going on in the news. I never know where to begin. But one of the things that I find interesting, as the news gallops along, we forget stuff. And most of us have already moved way past the nightmare of the floods in Texas. It's horrible. But then something else happens. Then something else happens. Something else happens. And we forget about it. Well, the folks in Texas are suffering right now.
Starting point is 00:38:34 and they need our help. And so they put the word out. This is an emergency disaster relief situation. And our friends at Food for the Poor asked us to ask you to help. So I just want to say, let's not forget our friends in Texas. You know, do unto others as you would have others do unto you. If you have lost your home or your business and, you know, you're living in a tent someplace with your family right now, waiting to get back to, who knows. I mean, this is, the stories go on and on and on.
Starting point is 00:39:10 I want to thank those of you who've already given, but I know most of you haven't yet been able to do that. So the relief operations are underway. We're continuing our efforts with food for the poor. They are there rushing emergency relief kits. This is what your money is doing, rushing emergency relief kits to people throughout the flooded area. Texas Governor Greg Abbott had the privilege to meet him and speak with him. He says that the lives lost in this tragedy are still being tallied.
Starting point is 00:39:42 Actually, we've got a clip from him. Let's play that. The numbers that I have of those who have lost their lives statewide in this flooding episode in the month of July is now 135. Those who have lost their lives in the Currville area, because of the floods, it is now 116. We will continue the search for everybody in every single region
Starting point is 00:40:08 that was affected by these devastating floods. All right, that's Texas Governor Greg Abbott. So a gift of $50 rushes an emergency relief kit to a hurting family displaced by these floods. $100 gets a kit packed with supplies to two families. Whatever you can donate will make a powerful impact for the women and children who are suffering right now in central Texas. So I want to remind you to the top of our website, there's a banner. Metaxistalk.com.
Starting point is 00:40:40 There's a banner. The relief kits contain hygiene items, diapers, emergency medical supplies, essentials needed to ease the crisis facing these flooded out residents. And to remind you, food for the poor is working with a trusted partner in San Antonio, delivering shipments of emergency relief supplies. So if you can help, this is a big deal. Now, some of you listening, I know, can give a lot. If you can, I don't know, you've heard enough about these floods.
Starting point is 00:41:07 Let me give you a phone number as well. It is 844-863-4673, 844-863-4673, 8-4-6-7-3, 8-4-6-7-3. Or you can simply text metaxus to 5-1-55-5-5-5. Text metaxus to 5-1-55-5-5. If we really need your help, before we go today, I want to remind you of our friends at the Herzog Foundation. If anybody listening to this program today is interested in homeschooling or you've thought about it, you don't know whether you can do it. You're interested in getting your kids out of public schools because you understand that what they're learning there is not what you would want to teach them.
Starting point is 00:41:52 Maybe you're interested in Christ-centered K-12 education. Our friends at the Herzog Foundation are there to help you. They're not asking for anything from you. They want to help you. Herzog Foundation.com is their website. Herzog is H-E-R-Z-O-G. Herzog. Herzog Foundation.com.
Starting point is 00:42:12 And I've said this, and I will always say it, education is everything, folks. If these kids, you know, that are getting this Marxist indoctrination in public schools, if they get the truth, this sets them up for life, and this is our future. I keep meeting kids that have been homeschooled, and I'm amazed at their wisdom, at their knowledge. They are the hope for the future to use a cliche. So go to HerzogFoundation.com. HerzogFoundation.com.
Starting point is 00:42:43 And then to remind you finally, metaxis talk.com, help Texas at the top of the page.

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