The Eric Metaxas Show - Peter Kreeft

Episode Date: June 5, 2021

Peter Kreeft has a new book, "How to Destroy Western Civilization," and hits on hot topics, including the pope's naivete about China and the plight of martyrs -- and Critical Race Theory.

to the Eric Mettaxas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Folks, this is the Eric Metaxus show. As you know, part of the magic of this show is the relationships I built over the years. People that you just won't see on other programs, but I happen to know that the kind of people you want to hear from. One of those people is Dr. Peter Craft. In fact, three of those people are Dr. Peter Craf. Crave, and I have him or them on the program right now. Dr. Craft, I just love talking to you about

anything. Welcome to the program. Oh, so I'm triplets now. Well, this is one of my two evil twins. Well, I identify as twins, and I thought, you know, you're a little older than I am, so you can identify as triplets. Let me just say you have a new book out. You have written now 80 books, which is astonishing. But I want to say that I think the first time I was acquainted with you was in the early 90s, I was reading your books published by Ignatius Press. Is this book published by Ignatius? Yes, it is. Unbelievable.

Well, you've written so many books, but the title of this one is how to destroy Western civilization and other ideas from the cultural abyss. That's kind of a big thing. So before we get into that, let me say to people that you've written many books, but also you're a professor of philosophy at Boston College. and at the King's College here in New York City. What led you to write a book with the title How to Destroy Western Civilization and other ideas from the Cultural Abyss?

Well, when you see your house burning down, you pay attention. I'm part of Western civilization. And if the civilization is being destroyed, our house is being destroyed. It's self-interest. Okay. I like that idea.

I like the cut of your jib. So this is a book of, essays. What should we talk about first? Let's start with a medical diagnosis of the situation. You know, Buddha was not a very good theologian, but I think it was a very good psychologist, and its four noble truths correspond to the four steps in any medical analysis, observation of the symptoms, diagnosis of the disease, prognosis for the healing, and the prescription for the treatment. So the symptoms are very obvious. suicide rate is up, drug addiction is up, all down indicators are up,

but all up indicators are down, and people are leaving all the churches and droves. Okay, now, I wasn't really aware of all of that. I might have guessed it, but it is a fact then that the suicide rates are up. From when? William Bennett's index of social indicators says that in the past, I think it's 50 years, the suicide rate among teenagers has risen 5,000. percent. That's an astonishing statistic. Wow. By the way, the suicide rate is always, almost always, directly rewarded to wealth.

To what? Well, the richer you are, the more likely it is that you'll find your life so satisfying you put a bullet through your head. The poor rarely can be suicide. And that's true in the large as well as the small. Africa has the lowest suicide rate as the poorest continent. Scandinavia has the highest suicide rate and it's the richest subcontinent. If you can look at the camera when you can, just because I want to make sure that we're connecting. But you're teaching us things right out of the gate. Again, we might have guessed, but you're telling me that the wealthiest societies have the most suicides.

I can guess why that is. Why do you think it is? Well, they're not happy. The two strongest indicators of happiness are smiles and the lack of suicides. It's an organization, I think it's sponsored by the United Nations, called the Global Happiness Project, which awards some sort of plaud it to the five countries, which are supposedly the happiest, and warnings to the five countries that are unhappiness. And the last version of this designated five countries in South Sahara and Africa as the least happy countries in the world,

the five Scandinavian countries as the most happy countries in the world. I thought it was a joke, because even an infant who can't talk knows that a smile of the situation. indication of happiness. And Africans smile the most and Scandinavian is the least. The other indication is suicide. If you commit suicide, you're certainly not happy. And of course, we speak about smiling Scandinavians and those dower Africans all the time. Isn't that interesting?

I mean, my guess, I have to throw this out and see if you would concur, would be that only wealthy countries have the luxury of thinking about their situation. They've got a lot of leisure time, and I've never pronounced it leisure before. Forgive me, leisure time. I'm going to interrupt you here and disagree with you. I don't think that's true. Okay. I think that's a, you're not a snob, certainly, but that's a snobbish thing to say.

Only the rich and educated are self-aware and thoughtful. I find primitives in many ways much more thoughtful than educated people. I don't really mean, I guess I don't mean it the way I think you do. just took it. What I mean is that it takes a certain kind of wealth to give us the privilege to almost think beyond common sense, to be able to wallow in anouille. If I'm looking how to put food on the table, if I'm caring for my children, it's much less likely that I will have the time and the leisure to think about, gosh, why aren't I more fulfilled? Well, in a sense, that's true, because if you're rich, you're flying to the top of the

materialist mountain, and there's no other place to go but down. And if you're poor, you're still in the bottom, and you've got a task ahead of you climbing up, so you have hope. But the rich have hope, have no hope, because they've gotten to the top, and it's not heaven. They've put their faith in heaven on earth, and it doesn't exist. that's that's kind of that's kind of what i meant well uh i didn't mean to get so far field but uh you did say then that it doesn't look like we're doing very well uh in what we call western civilization

and so in your book how to destroy western civilization and other ideas from the cultural abyss what are some of the ways that we can destroy and have been destroying western civilization well we can work of idols idols are simply false gods that don't exist. Worship Western civilization itself, for one thing. Self-worship doesn't usually work. We can worship politics. We can politicize religion and religionized politics,

which most of us do. We can idolize conformity and niceness and peace and the zeitgeist and let the media do our thinking for us. We can idolize results. We can be utilitarians. We can revert the greatest, most famous saying, did not put me here to be successful, but to be faithful. No, we're to be successful, not faithful.

That doesn't work. Scientism, materialism, consumerism, all these isms are alternatives to God. So it's Salianitsyn's very simple diagnosis. We have forgotten God. Well, yeah, to quote Solzhenitsyn, who was quoting an old Russian proverb, we have forgotten God. So how is it that we have forgotten God? So how is it that we have come to forget God more than we used to forget God?

Or how is it that we've come to forget God when previously we did not forget God? Now, that's a question I don't know the answer to. First of all, I'm not a sociologist or a psychologist. And secondly, I suspect that the best sociologists and psychologists don't have an adequate answer to that question. Because forgetting is not something that happens to you, just as losing your faith isn't something it happens to you, like losing your watch. You do it. You choose it. to make a choice.

So we can choose to become saints and we can do it to forget God. And we have chosen the second thing. It's the first thing. Most people wouldn't think of it that way, although I appreciate what you're saying, but most people think that we forget that it's a passive thing that we forget and we're not aware that we're forgetting, that we don't choose to forget. But you're saying that we participate in choosing to forget God. our ignorance comes

our passive ignorance the state of ignorance comes from active ignoring we don't want to look at the hard aspect of our faith we don't want to look at God's demands for us we don't like words like authority and obedience those are old-fashioned we want

we want the soft stuff without the hard stuff we want the skin without the skeleton I was speaking recently to John Zmirak whom you may know about this very thing that if we want to say that, oh, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious, we're looking for kind of a soft way out of dealing with the hard things.

Folks, I'm talking to Peter Crave, K-R-E-E-F-T. All of his books are worth getting. The new one is called How to Destroy Western Civilization. Other ideas from the Cultural Abyss. We'll be right back. Hey there, folks. How many years have I been telling you about relief factor? What, like four? The truth is, I know there are millions of people. In fact, some say over

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to stay at a pain. Go to relieffactor.com, relieffactor.com or call 800, 500, 8384. Relieffactor dot com, 800, 500, 800, 8384. I use it. It works. Check it out. Hey, folks, Eric Metaxis here. Like you, I am sick of hearing about big tech companies, spying on their customers, selling their data, and not being able to keep their platforms safe and secure.

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slash Eric. Check it out. Make like a Mr. Milk toast, you'll get shot. Folks, I'm talking with philosophy professor and philosopher and author Peter Kraef, K-R-E-F-T. Most people want to ask you, the most important thing they want to ask you is how do you pronounce your surname? name. Well, that's like the Irishman and the Englishman arguing about whether you would say neither or neither. The Scotsman solved it by saying, it's neither. It's Crafe. It's Dutch. It means lobster or crept. It's Craved. It's Dutch. It means lobster. All right. So, but what makes you the authority on how to pronounce it? Obviously, it is Crafe, but you realize probably some people with your surname do pronounce it creft. Have you ever met anyone? like that? Yes, you can call me anything you like. Just don't call me a cab. Okay. I won't call you a cab. And surely you must be joking, but I won't call you surely either. Or is it either? No one knows.

Here's the question. You've written a book called How to Destroy Western Civilization and other ideas from the cultural abyss. The assumption, Dr. Craved is that Western civilization is something worth keeping, preserving, not destroying. Am I correct in thinking that that's the assumption behind the book? Yes, and philosophers, unlike the Blessed Mary, Mergin Mary, make more than one assumption. And that's one of their assumptions. And that's a questionable assumption. Perhaps Western civilization, as it is, now is not worth saving. And it's certainly not heaven. Nowhere are we promised that the gates of hell will not prevail against the United States of America or Europe or Western civilization. Our home is elsewhere.

Well, all right. But it's a good place to live. It's a great motel. So we know. It's not a home, but it's a great motel. Well, so yeah, so what do you say to somebody who says, hey, it's all going to burn? This is temporary. Who cares about Western civilization? I want to go to Glory quick. Let it burn. Well, that's a prescription for suicide. What prescription for suicide? But again, people would say, what difference does it make?

I want to live. I want to go to heaven. I don't care about this world. Good or bad, Western, Eastern. What's the difference? Very simple answer to that question. has written the script and it's a long play and you can't get to Act 5 by going directly from Act 1. He wants you to go through Acts 2, 3, and 4. In other words, that's the easy way out. We shouldn't be on board with the destruction of Western civilization. Well, I've often spoken about the United States and Franklin's famous phrase, not famous phase, just in case you're scoring at home,

its famous phrase. It's a republic madam, a republic madam, if you can keep it. The idea is that we have something in the freedoms of the United States and generally speaking in the West that is worth keeping. But there are people that say that's a nationalistic idea. It's a selfish idea that even phrasing it that way, thinking of it that way is fundamentally erroneous. It's not biblical.

What do you say to those folks? You say, you know, America is not worth keeping. There's nothing special about it worth keeping. Read the founding fathers imbibed their practical wisdom. They deeply understood, as most regimes did not, that the fundamental political problem is how to blend freedom, which is not just liberty with an order that is not just oppression. They were very good philosophers.

If insofar as we were true to their vision, we became the greatest country in the history of the world. Now their vision is being thrown down the garbage. So where do you see their vision being thrown away? Well, in the so-called woke movement, which despises and hates ancestry, authority, obedience, the past, history, and every basic source of learning that we have. I'm kind of cononsensical and empirical, and we have to start with facts and proceed to principles, and they do the opposite.

They start with principles and ignore facts, especially the facts of history. Are you surprised to see, I know you're not an evangelical, but are you surprised? I am. I'm an evangelical Catholic. Well, actually, that's right. but when I say evangelical, I hate these terms, as you know, but it seems that there are many

Protestant evangelicals who are very welcoming toward things like critical race theory, toward BLM. It's shocking to me that they would, in a rather short period of time in the last decades, have drifted into cultural Marxism and seem to think somehow, that it's compatible with Christian faith? Well, they should take a trip to the zoo and distinguish their animals. They're worshipping the donkey instead of the lamb and the other side are working the elephant instead of the lamb,

but we should worship the lamb, not either the donkey or the elephant. So you think critical race theories is political? Of course it is. How so? So isn't it very obvious? it almost explicitly corresponds to the so-called progressive or far-left plank. It's a kind of neo-Marxism.

But there are people, I mean, respected evangelical figures like Tim Keller, who say that we ought to read everything we can. Even if we disagree with critical race theory, we ought to read every book we can on it. I disagree with him. I actually think that's a waste of time. It's like reading everything on the Nazi so I can understand Nazi doctrine. I don't know that I want to trouble myself to do that.

I agree with Tim more than I agree with you here. I've learned a lot by reading Mussolini. I think Mussolini is a very wicked man. But I think we learn a lot by reading from our rhetoric. No, I'm not opposed to that. I'm not opposed to familiarizing myself. But the idea that it's a big priority, I think most people ought to be able to assume that critical race theory is wrong without having first to read several books on it.

I mean, if you're a philosophy professor or pastor sometimes. So you don't think that I should assume that critical race theory is bad that I need to read books before I can speak about it? That's exactly what I believe, yeah. You have no authority to speak about facts that you don't know about. Well, but the point is you don't need to read books. You can read other things besides books on the subject. And you can listen to people like Peter Craft on the Eirchman, Texas show, who says critical race theory is radically left.

And you can sort of assume from that that it's probably not something you want to get interested in. There's a pragmatic question of how much time you have. Correct. If you have a choice to be meeting Carl Marx or C.S. Lewis, of course, we'd C.S. Lewis. but you have the authority and the right to criticize something only after you've listened to it and gotten the facts straight. Okay, so tell us to listen to this program so that they can get some of these facts. So tell us what is it about critical race theory that is good or bad? Frankly, I am not enough of an advert and I have not read our primary sources.

I've read a number of secondary sources. So I demurred from answering that question. I'm not going to refuse to practice what I preach. I am not enough of an expert on it to know for sure that it's not worth anything. I suspect that it is worth something. I think that all mistakes are the nature of things, by the metaphysical nature of the difference between good and evil, have to start with some insight into the good and then twist it.

And if you can un-twist it, you find something. Take an extreme example. Take Adolf Hitler, probably one of the most wicked men who ever existed. I think you're going to learn a lot from him. We'll learn a lot about people and about psychology and about charisma and about the genuine love of order and law and the nation and the folk. Take that away from everything else in Nazism. And you've got one of the reasons for Nazism,

popularity. Those genuine values were being ignored and Hitler manipulated them and appealed to them and ordinary people, fallible, finite, foolish people, but ordinary people that suckered in by it. But isn't that the point that those ordinary people, those ordinary people living their lives don't have the time to read books about Nazism? And the idea that theoretically we ought to do such things. I understand it, but it is theoretical, and that in this world, most people don't have time to read books

on those kinds of subjects. Okay, so people meet other people who have read books and have conversations, and I think we should expand our conversational agenda. We should listen to people on the left and on the right and on the center and nowhere in particular. We don't have time to read books.

We certainly have time to read people. So we need to do a lot more listening. Right. For the sake of our own agenda, even if, for instance, we are convinced that progressive left is destroying Western civilization. Listen to them. Understand them. Know your enemy, even if they are your enemy. I mean, I certainly agree with that.

I just think it's an issue of time. And I think ultimately you're straining at a net to swallow a camel. but we'll let you say something about that when we come back. Folks, I'm talking to Dr. Peter Craig. Prescription dispensing Labs is a national licensed pharmacy specializing in personalized prescription and natural medicine. The pharmacists at PD Labs are credited with formulating unique nasal sprays for the dreaded brain fog and a leader in uncovering new compounds to improve your health. PD Labs is one of the first pharmacies to now offer a telemedicine group trained in prevention medicine and how to restore your health. They have developed signature professional supplements that really work rather than just promotional advertising. PD Labs pharmacy prides itself on innovation and amazing customer service that show dedication to your health.

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Contact Legacy, precious metals today. That's 866-473-6204. Folks, I'm talking to philosophy professor and philosopher and author, Dr. Peter Craved. Dr. Craved, I've got a question for you. I'm holding up a book, which you can see. Have you read this book? Part of it, yes. It's a pretty good book.

This book is a Russian book. read Russian? No, but I read the English version of it, which you read the English version, and you're assuming that nothing was lost in the translation? No, I'm not assuming that. Okay, actually, it's a trick question. This is my Martin Luther book in the Russian edition, Martin Luther. And you did read it, and I wanted to thank you being committed and outspoken Roman Catholic that you not only read my book on Luther, but that you said some very nice things about it, which really illustrates what you're talking about. In other words, we shouldn't be afraid to read things that might come from a different point of view.

Although I have to say, in defense of my own book, it wasn't really meant to be an apology for Luther. It was simply meant to be a biography for Luther. But it is interesting, isn't it, that there are people for whom Luther is a devil and they don't ever want to know anything about him when many of his criticisms of the Church of his day were extremely apt, even though one might ultimately take issue with where he took those criticisms. Yes. I totally agree with what you just said.

Yes. So you're going to play the true or false game, are you? I am. So you, but you do talk about why it's important to understand things. And I really do value that because I do think it's important for us. to be able to say the Nazis are wicked, but there are reasons people were taken in by them. And we should be aware of those things, just as we ought to be aware why people are being taken in by cultural Marxism and critical race theory. There are good reasons people are being led astray.

Again, I agree with everything you say. Keep going. Okay. Well, I just thought you might want to say more about that. Well, I'm a philosopher, and I love dialogue. I love Plato's Socratic dialogues, and it takes two to dialogue. And even if one is a fool, you can learn from a fool. Imagine if Plato had never put fools into his dialogue. If Socrates had done nothing but monologues instead of dialogues, he would not have been the greatest philosophical writer in history of the world.

A dialogue is better than a monologue simply because it's closer to ultimate reality, which is trialogue, the Trinity. Here's a, well, here's a question for you. I am not a Roman Catholic, but I have deep respect for the church and always have. What do you suppose people who don't pay close attention should make of the idea that there is a Pope today who seems to be in some ways less Catholic than I am? Well, he's a Jesuit after all. So the next time we might get a Catholic book. No, Francis is a holy man. I don't think he's very bright. I think he's practically, very naive, especially in dealing with China. But we've had stupid and wicked popes in the past,

and the fact that the church has survived and has never changed his doctrine, no matter how many bad popes we've had, is one of the strongest reasons for being a Catholic. There's no other historical institution that can make that claim. The idea that popes could be stupid or wicked is interesting. but I mean there are when one looks back there have been moments when there have been it seems several popes or uh it gets confusing to not just Protestants but but to some Catholics who weren't studied on this but you do believe that there has been a an unbroken chain of apostolic succession that's simply a historical fact that's not a belief okay can you you referenced the doctrine of the assumption, which is not a Protestant assumption or doctrine that that happened. Well, you wrote there because Protestants do believe, since the Bible clearly says it,

that Enoch and Elijah were assuming into heaven. It doesn't say that the Blessed Virgin Mary was, but the idea of an assumption is not an unbiblical idea. Oh, no, no, no, I know that. but that's, it's, do you think it's odd that the, that the, that Western Christian, Protestant faith would have lost some of those faiths, some of those doctrinal beliefs? In other words, it's interesting to me that Luther's view of the Eucharist was far closer to the Roman Catholic view of the Eucharist than many Protestant or evangelical views of the Eucharist today. but it's interesting to me that the reformers lost some of those beliefs, for example, in the assumption of Mary.

Well, the main reason is, I think, Soliscriptura. What they couldn't explicitly find in Scripture, they said, is not authoritative. The problem with that is that Solicptura is not itself in Scripture, so it's a self-contradictory idea. In Scripture has always been interpreted by the Church, and by the church's tradition for 1,500 years before, as well as after the referendum. It's interesting you bring that up because I agree with you, of course, being an ecumenical pro-Roman Catholic, non-Roman Catholic, the idea of Soliscriptura strikes me as a little bit subjective,

and it came out of the circumstances. In other words, Luther was really, he had a binary choice. He says, if we have a choice between what church councils have said and the scripture, I have to go with scripture. But that kind of blew up into the idea that scripture is the ultimate authority on everything, not just that it might be a better authority in this case, but that it is the only authority. When we come back, maybe we can touch on that. We're going to a break. Folks, I'm talking to Dr. Peter Craft.

Many books have been written by him, the most recent of which is how to destroy Western civilization. and other ideas from the cultural abyss. We'll be right back. Talking to Dr. Peter Crave. Dr. Crave, it's always just fun to speak with you because we can go in any direction and have a dialogue. I was just wondering about that idea. You said Soliscriptura, ironically,

is not found in the scripture, which is true. And I was saying it struck me as something that kind of evolved out of the circumstance in which Luther found himself. And scripture itself evolved out of the circumstances in which the church found itself. In the development of the canon, it was a gradual process, and scripture does not have its own canon. So if you believe Sola Scriptura literally, you can't be sure what Scriptura means because Scriptura doesn't define itself. And there was some controversy about some of the books.

The book of Revelation was rejected by a few of the early fathers. It's interesting to me that somebody as brilliant as Martin Luther obviously was and as Calvin was, that they wouldn't have seen these problems, or did they see these problems? Oh, I think they did. They were less dismissive of the authority of tradition and the church and consensus than most Protesters are today. They were not radical autonomous individuals. I always feel that it was Luther in a, in a, in a kind of a moment of temporary madness that he wanted to throw out the epistle of James

and that he reversed course on that, but people always talk about that. What do you suppose it was that would make him think on the one hand that we could be talking about something like Solis Scriptura, and on the other hand, that we could ourselves subjectively choose which books we think are part of the canon? Well, the reason he threw out James is that he didn't have a time machine to get into the 20th century and read the decree on just. justification, which has solved the major problem of the Reformation, the reconciliation of Jains and Paul, of works and faith.

The fact that both churches have succeeded in having at least a fundamental agreement on that most controversial issue, that proves that both sides were blinkered and saw their own truth and didn't listen to the other side's truth. and once the ecumenical movement motivated us to do a lot of listening and a lot of serious thinking, look what happened. Eliath is down. Their other Philistence is still alive, and it may take centuries to solve them. But I'm very optimistic about ecumenism. About ecumenism.

Yes, not just dialoguing with the other, but reconciling our fundamental contradictions. We did it with the issue of justification. Well, but isn't the problem that we who are not Roman Catholics don't have anyone who can speak for us authoritatively in the way that the Pope or church councils in the Roman Catholic Church can speak authoritatively? Yes, and the recent Pew research indicates that there's more movement both into and out of all the churches now than ever before in history. So I think God is shaking things up and relativizing all the denominational lines so that once you get agreement, you'll get

agreement not just among Catholics and not just among Protestants and not just among Lutherans, but among people of various churches around a common cluster, something like what CSO is called mere Christianity. in the beginning of that book, the director of that book, he made a very profound statement, namely that his statement of Orthodox Christianity drew a lot of criticism, not necessarily from Catholics or necessarily from Protestants, but from people in all the churches.

And they were always the so-called enlightened ones, the woke ones, the modernist ones, the ones who were not exactly obedient to their own tradition or dineate tradition. That's interesting that they were the ones to have the problem. Yep. You, I knew you first. You're yourself an example of that. You said you're closer to the Catholic position than the Pope is on some of theitudes. Right.

Well, I'm not shaking our brains up. But I'm more ecumenical than most, I would say. I'm always horrified when I meet Catholics who are very rigidly, Catholic and anti-anything but Catholicism in the same way that I'm troubled by a Protestants who are deeply anti-Catholic. I feel like they're missing something, or maybe they're making an idol of theology, that they're somehow pushing Jesus away just enough so that they can worship theology. Well, sure, they haven't listened. They haven't done what I'd fall for earlier in the show, namely talking to people that they disagree with you and trying to understand why.

It's a problem that we both agree on so much. It's hard to talk to you because I want to find areas in which we disagree. Let's just say more about what you said earlier about the Pope Francis's view of China, because I think that's a big issue. Well, he's thrown the most holy and faithful Chinese Christians under the bus in making a deal with the communists to give them at least partial authority in choosing bishops. And there was no need to do that. There are martyrs in China that he's not listening to.

He's listening to the people who are willing to compromise and share power with the regime, which explicitly says they are atheist and they cannot grant the church autonomy. How is it possible for somebody like a Pope Francis? He's a Jesuit. What does that mean? For those of us who are not Catholics, we're not familiar with that. I know what you mean, but what do you mean? There are some very good Jesuits.

There's some great Jesuits, but there are some bad ones, too. Aren't all the great ones dead? No, no, no. There are many of them are, but I know personally a number of them who are alive. Jesuits are like New Yorkers. York's the greatest city in the world. It's also the worst city of the world. There's some great stuff, and there's an awful stuff.

It's the biggest order in the church. So they have a lot of great stuff and a lot of bad stuff. We've only got about 30 seconds. For my audience, for people who know nothing about who the Jesuits are, can you tell us in 30 seconds roughly who they are? They were founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola in the 16th century. And they were originally sort of the Pope's central core of apologists and theologians and arguers and very loyal to the Pope. But they're also very educated, and their vocation is to be in the world, and they've become

rather worldly in the bad sense, the word. As, you go to New York, and you become a New Yorker, and that could mean one of two things. Right. I'd love the good stuff in it or the bad stuff in it. I'm really wonderful judgments. I'm particularly sorry to be out of time when I'm talking to you, folks, talking to Dr. Peter Craved, K-R-E-E-F-T, look him up. Dr. Crave, thank you.

The guests we get on this program, I don't know. I don't know how we do it. I don't know how we do it. Hey, I got to just say something. Yes. We've got to tell people again and again and again. Yesterday, we were completely forever knocked off of YouTube. That's right.

And folks, I've been looking into this. This is Maoist Soviet-style intimidation. It is wrong on every level. And if you think you're going to silence me, let me tell you something. If you knew who my parents were. No, I don't think it's going to happen. Good luck. Yeah.

Keep trying. But in America, we have to speak up, and especially when they try to silence you. We have had the most wonderful guests, and we put it on YouTube. They're all gone. You have to go to Rumble, even better, and I'm begging you, folks. I'm just begging you. Go to my website, ericmataxis.com. Please sign up for the newsletter.

Please, please, please, please. because there's no way to get all the information out to you that we want to get out to you. So just sign up for it. You'll see what I mean. Right. You can still hear the guest at metaxistocotocicot.com. We've got the whole podcast there. Obviously.

If you want to see it, and I know so many of you want to see, for example, what are we wearing today? That's right. If you're not watching the video, you can't see what we're wearing. We can tell you anything. I am wearing a union suit. Love it. And I'm smoking a corn cob pipe. And I have not had a haircut in six weeks.

I'm looking like a bald, shaggy dog right now. I was going to say, my ear has started to thin, and I want to know, Alvin, what's your secret? Well, I just let it go, brother. You just let it go. Okay, we got to mention two things real quick before we go to the next guest. A lot of people know that Father's Day is coming up. Folks, Father's Day is coming up. I don't expect any big gift.

No. But it wouldn't hurt. But here's the issue. Father's Day. We have a film on SalemNow.com. Now, people should be going to Salem Now.com. Anyway, because there's a lot of great programming there. But Salemnet.com, there's a new film coming out called The Streets Were My Father.

You can tell it's kind of a dark story, but it ends very, very wonderfully. It's an inspirational film about, well, I mean, I guess you have to be honest. If you didn't have a father, Father's Day might really be a hurtful day. Might be a difficult day for you. And so this film deals with three men from the urban community, two Hispanics, one Black. and I got to tell you the story of their lives of not having a father and what happened to them. And this is a fact, 85% of youths in prison, 85% of youths in prison come from homes without a father. If you don't realize that that is the problem in America right now, you're not paying attention.

That is one of the most overwhelming statistics conceivable. So the film is called The Streets from My Father. go to salem now.com, SalemNow.com. Once a year we have a program with Christian Solidarity International. They are literally freeing slaves in Sudan. That's right. It seems satanic and unthinkable that slavery exists in 2021. Ladies and gentlemen, apart from you giving, it does.

In other words, right now, you could give $250 to CSI. Go to metaxus talk.com. And you can literally free a slave. and the money doesn't only pay to make that happen, but it sets them up in a new life. It's an astonishing thing that they get, how far American money goes in Africa. It is astonishing. But in Sudan, they still have slaves. These Muslim slave traders, they believe in slavery.

They don't have a theological issue with it, as Christians do, but didn't always, obviously. So we want you to go to our website metaxistalk.com, ataxistocot.com, mataxis talk.com, at taxes talk.com. Check out the banner CSI. Or call the phone number, which is 888-253-352-2. Let me spell that out. 888-253-3522. Whatever you give folks, there's nothing more important than using the money that we have, which is a lot. To give it to a cause like this, you're literally freeing slaves. We'll tell you more about that on this program. How much? much time we have left. That's it, buddy. We're at a time. Yeah. Okay, folks, please do that. You've got a couple of assignments. No kidding. Go to Ericmetaxis.com, sign up for the newsletter. Please, we need

your help. And please go to Metaxistalkis talk.com and do what you can for CSI. God bless you.