The Eric Metaxas Show - Ryan Bangert

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Ryan Bangert, Senior Vice President at Alliance Defending Freedom gives an update on their fight for freedom across the courtrooms of our country. More at: https://adflegal.org/support/metaxas/

Noble gold investments is the official gold sponsor of the Eric Mataxis show, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments. That's noble gold investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Metaxus show. It's the show featuring Go-Go-Go the chimp. Nothing like a chimp to liven up the radio show. Easy there. Go-go, go, go, go. No, go-go! No! Go-go! No! Hey folks, welcome on the program. It's Friday. We have a couple things. First of all, we're doing a fundraiser with food for the poor. We ask everyone who listens to this program to chip in what you can. They ask for $100. But if you can't give that, can you give 10? Can you give 20? Can you give 30? What can you give? Some people can give a lot. It's tax deductible. Every $100 feeds a child for. A year. That's amazing, okay, but that's food for the poor. They are amazing. This is a ministry started by a Christian man who knew God was calling him, who spoke to him in a miraculous way, and who has been feeding the poorest of the poor, the least of these for over 40 years. It's a powerful

ministry. So you can go to metaxis talk.com, mettaxistocon.com. When you go to Metaxistalkis talk.com, when you go to metaxistococococcom you'll see the banner at the top of the home page and right there you just click on that and it takes you through and you can do whatever you want in a minute i'll give you the phone number i also want to remind you of our friends at the israeli ministry of tourism they are some of the sponsors on this program on behalf of the government of Israel. And really, I hear this over and over, anybody who has visited Israel, now maybe now is not exactly the time you're ready to go, but I think everybody wants to go as soon as it's possible or feasible. Go to the website, goisrael.com, go Israel.com. But I hear

this over and over. People who visit Israel, it's life-changing. It's absolutely life-changing. Now, why is that? It's because suddenly all the stuff you've been reading about that sounds mythical, you get to see, you know, the stones. You get to see this is the spot. It's amazing. You know, when you go to Copernium, you know that Jesus spoke in the synagogue, and we're looking at the tile floor.

It's amazing stuff. I was there briefly a few years ago, and I will never forget it. We were on the bus going from the airport to our home. hotel and I had a supernatural experience. I started weeping. It was just completely supernatural. I don't know what was going on, but I started weeping and thinking about Jesus was here. He walked here and he was rejected. He was brought into this world by God for God's purposes and he walked here and just thinking about it. It was just a supernatural experience that I had weeping, but it was just because I was there, and I knew that he was there, that he had walked there.

And that's, you hear these stories over and over and over and over from people who have been to Israel. So we want to stand with Israel. And the website, as I say, is go Israel.com for more information on exploring the beauty and the history of that sacred place on the surface of this earth. I want to give you the information before we get to our Miracle Monday guest on how, if you want to give to food for the poor right now, there are three ways you can give. One is go to metaxis talk.com. You'll see a banner at the top of the page. I exhort you to go to metaxis talk.com. That's the banner. There's a phone number. Some of you prefer that. I'll give it to you right now. The phone number is, you get your pencils, you ready?

844-863-4673, 8473, 844-863-4673. I'm always amazed that from watching TV and they give you a phone number. They kind of rattle it off. Like, who's writing that down? How do you remember that? You got to, like, you know, if you're going to give a number, you got to really give it slowly so people can actually write it. down. 844-8663-4-6-7-3. Please dial that number. 844-863-4-6-7-3. Obviously, it's tax-deductible.

Every $100 feeds a child for one year in El Salvador. I've given the information on it. I don't need to get into the details. 844-863-4673. Or you can also text my last name, Metaxus, to 51555. and that's again my surname, M-E-T-A-X-A-S, Metaxus, M-E-T-A-X-A-S to 5-1-55-5-5-5-5. Metaxus to 5-1-55. I'll say that whatever you give is a monster blessing. So, $1,000, $100, whatever you can give. A thousand dollars feeds 10 kids for a year. Get your family involved in this.

Tell people about this. When there's a reputable organization doing God's work. I want to know about it. I want to give to that organization. So the phone number is 844-863-4673. You can text Metaxus, M-E-T-A-X-A-S- to 5-1-55-5-5-5. Or you can just go to Metaxist Talk.com and see the banner. Also want to mention our friends before we get to our miracle story at the Herzog Foundation. The Herzog Foundation, folks, I talk about this all the time. homeschooling is the future. A Christ-centered K-12 Christian education, this is the future.

This is how we bring our nation back. We used to basically have homeschooling and Christian schooling, and I don't mean 100% theological, but I mean schooling that has a basis in reality, that there is a God who loves us, that he is the way forward for us, that he made the world. When we study science, it's because God made. made the world to be understandable by us. He gave it order, and we can use our reason. He gave us reason to study science and to declare the glory of God as we study science, to study history. All of this stuff ought to be linked to God. And whether it's done explicitly or implicitly, it's not done at all,

not explicitly and not implicitly in most public school education. So Herzog Foundation, they are they're the best. Herzogfoundation.com. They want to help you, by the way, to do this, to get plugged in. So that's why we talk about them. They're a foundation. They're there to help you.

Herzoggfoundation. com. And before we go to the break, let me remind you, Socrates in the city, we are on YouTube now. We have a ton of new stuff there. We just posted new stuff.

If you're a member of Socrates Plus, we just posted an amazing interview. actually two amazing interviews. If you're a member of Socrates Plus, I taped a bunch of stuff when I was in England recently. You don't want to miss it, believe me. We're adding IAN Herssey Ali to that list. She has an insane story. Wow, big stuff.

So go to Socrates in the city.com. You can sign out for Socrates Plus. We have an event in Palm Beach on the 21st of this month. We have an event in Lexington, Kentucky coming up. next month, I can't believe it. Wow. We're going to have Larry Arne of Hillsdale College. Big deal. Big deal stuff. So that's Socrates in the city. Put that on your map. Sign up for our updates. And then finally, you got to celebrate what is happening in America. I don't know how you want to celebrate, but I suggest why not get a copy of Donald Drain's the Swamp? Because it's actually happening.

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generous contribution, please. The nutrition these kids get in school is often their only meal of the day. Food for the poor school nutrition program effectively addresses malnutrition and increases children's school attendance. Your donation will also support local farmers who produce the nutritional supplements. You are needed to improve children's nutrition in El Salvador. Your gift will allow them to focus on learning rather than worrying about their next meal. Today you have the power to feed a child or an entire classroom for a year. Please click the blue banner at metaxis talk.com or call 844-860. 36373 with a gift of $100 to feed their future.

Folks, welcome back. Joining me now, I sound stuffed up. You know why that is? Because I am stuffed up. I have a cold. I'm in Dallas and I, okay, I'll be fine. I'm talking right now, joining me now, is Ryan Bangert with the Alliance defending freedom. Ryan, we last saw each other.

It's kind of bizarre. people wonder why I'm confused. I travel all around and I bump into people in these different places. Last I saw you, we were in London together. So it's a little funny to be in Dallas suddenly a week later. And it's like, hey, here you are. Where do you live? Well, I live down in Austin.

It's great to be here, Eric. Thanks for having me on the show. Of course. Yeah, so you're in Austin. I live in New York, but we bumped into each other in London. And now here we are in Dallas. How long have you been with the Alliance Defending Freedom? Since 2020.

So right after the election in 2020. I joined ADF. Well, so you and I bumped into each other. I want to talk about this. We were in London at the ARC conference. An ARC stands for... Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Alliance for Responsible Citizenship,

which just sounds like so hopelessly vague to me. But I guess Jordan Peterson is one of the folks behind it. And it was a real who's who of interesting conservative thought leaders. It was fascinating. There was so many friends. Oz Guinness was there. I didn't hear one of the talks, any of the talks.

But a number of people, and you just mentioned it now, were taken with Oz Guinness's talk. I think he wrote a book called Our Civilizational Moment. And so it was a talk, I guess, about that. It sure was. In fact, it's a great concept of a civilizational moment. And here we are at a hinge point in history.

And we've had this concept of the long 20, century. It just seemed like the 20th century in all of its pathologies and all of its politics just continued and continued up until 2024. And a lot of people think that the Trump election in 24 might be the real break with the past and a doorway to the future. It's like when the 20th century officially end? I think it was in 2024 when President Biden coughed up a hairball right before one of his naps. I really, it's such a strange thing to think of these moments in history. It does seem like the Biden administration was the horrible ending, like almost grotesque kind of ending of all of these horrible trends finally converging in a way that it was like

some kind of a nightmare and that we are now at the beginning of a new era. I certainly hope that because, well, I've talked enough about that kind of thing on this program over the years. But what did you get from why he was? Why was he suggesting that we're at a civilizational moment? Because I do agree that this is a hinge. This is a moment that is, it's an astonishing moment. But what did Oz say?

What did you pick up? Well, Oz bait pointed out a couple of things. And one is that the West has to face a question. And that is, are we going to reclaim our historical identity as a civilization grounded on Judeo-Christian concepts and values? And I think you saw over the last four years in ADF, we certainly saw it. Under the Biden administration, we hit almost like peak woke. We were suing the Biden administration.

It seemed like every other week over rulemakings, over actions that were being taken by the Biden administration, to redefine Title IX, the definition of sex in Title IX, to say it meant gender identity, to tell doctors they had to perform abortions, to tell doctors they had to perform, quote-unquote, gender transition surgeries. You know, these are crazy ideas. they were being embraced fully by what they called whole of government programs in the Biden administration. Well, and again, most people listening, I think, are just aware of it. It was a level of pathology. We've never seen anything like it. I mean, it really was unhinged lunacy. And, you know, nobody knew where it was going to go.

Do we just go into a permanent dark age? Is it over? And somehow, by God's grace, we seem to have pulled out of this, impossible death spiral, and we seem to be at the beginning of what may well be a golden era. And it's beautiful. And I think we have to, you know, remind ourselves. So what, what is Western civilization? What are these things that we took for granted and that we allowed, you know, to decay and erode until, you know, suddenly we got desperate and we said, hey, wait a minute, we've got to do something. But how do, when we're talking about, you know, quote unquote, Judeo-Christian values. I taped a number of Socrates in the city sessions while we were in London. And one of those, we asked this eternal question. Turtullian asked it, you know, I think in the

fourth century, what does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? And so it's these values that we get from classical Greece and somewhat from Rome combined with, you know, the Hebrew ideas, that ultimately they come together and they create this beautiful thing called Western civilization, which of course is also called Christendom over the centuries. But did Oz talk about that in his speech? You know, Oz hinted at a lot of that. And I think one of the things that was talked about very much at the ARC conference, as we were there, was J.D. Vance in Munich, delivering an incredible address

and talking about the way that EU officials have systematically stripped their own citizens of civil rights, including. the right to freedom of speech. And he mentioned our client, Adam Smith-Connor, a man, a veteran in the U.K., who was silently praying on a sidewalk outside an abortion clinic where years before he and his girlfriend had aborted their unborn son, didn't say a word. He was just praying in his mind, and he was prosecuted for a thought crime under the U.K.'s buffer zone law, and J.D. Vance called them out on that. But that's, you talk about values of Western civilization, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, free exercise of religion. And why is that because man is called by God

into a relationship with God? Man is obligated to speak truth in order to propagate the gospel. These are foundational values to Western civil. It's incomprehensible stuff. I think we have to, you know, we have to allow ourselves to be taken aback and never think, well, that's just the way it is. know we ought to be horrified at the prospect anywhere in the world of somebody being, you know, arrested for praying silently, much less any place in the West. And so, yeah, J.D. Vance's speech was, I have to say, really startling in a way, because here he is going to European leaders and saying, hey, Europe, you're not behaving like the Europe that we made this deal with, you know, following World War II. We made a deal that we had shared values, and so we would stand up for each other and so on and so forth.

And you have drifted so dramatically far from those values that we kind of don't know who you are anymore. You're not – we didn't sign up to partner with people that don't believe in free speech, that don't believe in their own citizens having a say in how they're governed. We didn't sign up for that. And unless you're willing to be – you know, have some fidelity. to these shared values, we really don't owe you anything more than we owe Russia anything. That's exactly. In fact, there was an attendee at the ARC conference, Matthias Desmond, he's a professor over in Belgium, wrote a book called The Psychology of Totalitarianism.

And he traces back to the COVID pandemic where you had just, it was incredible, it was happening. I mean, you had examples of this where ADF was litigating some of these cases where the Biden administration, the White House, was leaning on social media companies to scrub from their pages. any commentary that didn't tow the party line on what vaccines did and masking. And Matthias pointed out, he said, look, this is mass psychosis. This is mass formation. And what it takes is it takes people of principle and courage who are willing to speak out, even at risk to their own lives and fortune, to speak truth.

And oftentimes what you'll have, you'll have a large number of people who are just going along to get along. And when they see that beacon of truth, if someone exercises courage, it makes all the difference. And I think that's the distinction we're seeing now. I met Matthias in the, you and I were in this kind of VIP area and somebody introduced him to me because I'd heard about the book. But it really is, you know, we have to say this over and over. What we've lived through in the last four plus years, it's unprecedented. It's certainly unprecedented in the United States of America. I mean, people talked about the Salem witch trials.

This was exactly like that, you know, on a much higher level where you have an. entire civilization absolutely buying lies and not just buying lies, pushing lies, insisting that you agree with the lie, or we'll silence you, we'll cancel you. And, you know, I was canceled and persecuted significantly. I don't really talk about it much. But of course, the reason I don't talk about it is because so many were canceled and persecuted far more than I was. And if you're not outraged by that. You are part of the problem. And there are many, many people who are part of the problem. And worse than that, many pastors and many Christian leaders that were perfectly willing to go along with this. In my book, Letter to the American Church, I reference, we're now at the NRB. I was at

NRB maybe three years ago in the middle of this stuff. And a respected pastor was in a little forum talking about, I don't mention his name, I saw him earlier today actually, talking about how he deliberately on his huge program never brought up this stuff that might get him canceled. And I thought, well, that's the problem right there, is that rather than bravely speaking about this kind of stuff and joining those who are bravely speaking, he thought, oh, no, I don't want to, I don't want any trouble. I just want to get to do what I want to do or what I think is so important. And so we've never lived through anything like this. It's just amazing, and it's only by the grace of God that we're turning the bend here and arriving at a happy moment. We'll continue our conversation.

I'm talking to Ryan Bangert. He's with ADF, the Alliance Defending Freedom. Don't go away. My Pillow is excited to announce that they're having the first ever mega sale on overstock clearance and brand new products. For example, you can save over 50% on this season's flannel sheets. The queen size is only 5998, and King is only 6998. They sell out fast every year, so be sure to order now. You can also save 30% on their brand new My Crosses. They're designed in the likeness of the one Mike has worn every day for over 20 years. They come in men's and women's styles, and they're made right here in the USA.

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Folks, go to mypillow.com, use the promo code Eric. Mypillow.com, promo code Eric. Make like Mr. Milk toast, you'll get to shut out. I continue my conversation here at NRB with Ryan Bangert of the ADF lines defending freedom, who are heroes, and we have talked with many folks from the Alliance of Finning Freedom on this program over the years. So you wanted to respond to something that I just said, Ryan. You were talking about cancellation and censorship, and there's a great substack run by NS Lions, where he put up a piece, long-form piece, very long piece, called the China Convergence.

And he pointed out that in totalitarian countries like China, you have hard totalitarian number, they're just going to punish you through the force of law. that in Western countries we're always at risk of soft totalitarianism, where societal norms will militate against speaking truth. And we've seen that here in the U.S. I mean, you talked about your experiences with cancellation. But look at what happened in California just last year. Governor Newsom became enraged when he saw a parody tweet from a parodist named Mr. Reagan, USA,

puts up this tweet, sort of mocking Kamala Harris' campaign announcement, using AI to voice over some things that she didn't say. Right. And he said, this has got to stop. So he passes a law that effectively makes satire nearly illegal in California. So we sued him on behalf of the Babylon B and on behalf of Rumble. Now, I forgot this. So you guys at the Alliance Defending Freedom sued Governor Newsom over this issue, on behalf of the Babylon B and other satirists.

That's right. That's right. We sued him because the law that he passed said, hey, if you're going to put up satire that makes a political candidate look bad, which is sort of the definition of satire. Well, then you've got to put up a big disclaimer. and it has to be in the same font size as the largest font. So you can think of a really funny satire or parody you would see on the Babylon B's website of video with a giant disclaimer covering the whole thing.

Yeah. That sort of ruins the point of satire. I mean, what I'm always horrified at is when leaders, like Governor Newsom, show their staggering ignorance. I mean, it's a staggering thing that the government. governor of a large state could be so astonishingly ignorant of the basics of what it is to be an American, the basics of the idea of free speech. I mean, that's a scary thing that you think, this is not some dumb kid. You know, this is not AOC. This is somebody who has risen to be the

governor of a large state who seems to be ignorant of this. The same thing happened, speaking of California, Diane Feinstein, who of course passed away. But she was, when Amy Coney-Barritt was, you know, being questioned in the Senate about her beliefs, you have Senator Dianne Feinstein, who at this point is an octogenarian, clearly showing that she's hostile to the basics of religious liberty. I mean, she basically is excoriating Amy Coney-Barrant for really believing in her Christian faith. And I thought, how do you get to a place where, you know, senior figures in the American government do not get the basics? It really would be like a, you know, a writing teacher who doesn't know how to spell the word cat.

You'd say you can't, you really have to have people that understand this. And how is it possible that a senator or a governor could get to a point where they don't get these basics? That to me is a scary moment. But we're massively constitutionally illiterate. here in the United States. I mean, take the example of what's happening in Oklahoma right now, where we represent the charter school board in Oklahoma. And they approved for members for entry into the charter school program,

St. Isidore of Seville, virtual Catholic charter school. No big deal, right? They could become a charter school, participate in the program, except they were sued. And they were sued because they were a religious school. And the plaintiff said, well, you can't have a religious school in the charter school program. And the Oklahoma courts upheld that. So now we're going to be going to be going to be going to,

the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of April in arguing that case before the U.S. Supreme Court. It's Oklahoma Charter School Board versus Drummond. But that's just an example of how illiterate we can be in America as to core constitutional principles like freedom of speech and free exercise of religion. I have to ask you, Ryan, because I'm always interested in people, how did you get to be doing what you're doing now? Where do you grow up and how did you find yourself, you know, wanting to work with ADF? Well, I had the privilege back in 2002 of being a Blackstone Fellow.

One of the earliest classes of our Blackstone Fellowship, it's a legal training program that we do for law students. We have over 3,000 fellows now around the globe. But I was always connected with them that way. I became a commercial litigator here in Dallas at a law firm, and then went to work for a senator. Actually, at the time, he was an Attorney General, Josh Hawley, one of my heroes.

And so a fantastic guy. I also worked for the Texas Attorney General's office for a while. and found my way to ADF. It really was invited to join by my friends there. It was such a privilege to have the chance to come home and do this work for an organization like Alliance Defending Freedom. Well, I'm so glad you're working for the Alliance Defending Freedom. It's funny. You mentioned Josh Hawley.

He's one of the folks. Clearly gets this stuff. You know, not all senators get this, which I just said, but when somebody really does get it, you think, well, this gives me hope for the nation. but it is, this was as basic as it got. I mean, throughout our history, everyone had to get this kind of stuff, you know. And we've had our moments where, you know, you have to have correction, you know, you have to have. But we've lived through a very strange season, you know, and again, we mentioned it just a moment ago about the Biden administration.

It was, it was, I think for most Americans, we never thought we could go there. We can never get to a point where just unshirted lunacy is reigning and being pushed forward. And in large part, I would say thanks to the lines defending freedom, we've been able to pull that back and not have it take over. I want to talk to you about some of the cases that you guys have handled at ADF. We're going to go to a break here. Folks, this is the Eric Metaxas show. We're at the NRB. Don't go away.

talking to Ryan Bangert of the Alliance defending freedom. I wanted to touch on some of the cases that you guys at ADF are working on or have worked on. Yeah, we've got a case coming up on April 2nd or arguing at the U.S. Supreme Court. The state of South Carolina excluded abortion providers from receiving Medicaid funding. In other words, the state didn't want to provide taxpayer dollars to abortion providers. Imagine that. Yeah. And, of course, Planned Parenthood sued.

and said, well, we can't have that. So that case is going to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on April 2nd, ADF's own John Burch will be arguing that case. But that's a really interesting question about whether or not a state has the ability to control how taxpayer dollars are being used and whether Planned Parenthood has some sort of right to access that funding. I mean, that's, and we've been really gratified to see the Trump administration pull back in the first month of administration from pushing federal funds to abortion providers. But this is, we really need to focus, I think, over the next four years on institutionalizing

these changes, on building up the institutions necessary, because there's been a great crumbling and tearing down of institutions. And we need to do some building over the next four years to institutionalize these good changes. Well, it's so fascinating to me that, you know, so many people, including, you know, pro-life activists thought, well, Donald Trump's not pro-life enough for me. You know, I would agree with that, but you have to say, well, compared to what? Because if he hadn't been elected, you would have the most horrifyingly pro-abortion

administration in history, literally. And to think that he pardoned all of these pro-lifers who had been imprisoned, I mean, you can't even believe this. that imprisoned by the Biden administration for being, you know, one of them is a friend of ours, been on the program, Bevelin Bady. And so on the one hand, you have the Biden administration, the Harris administration, imprisoning people for standing up for the unborn and going after them extremely aggressively. I mean, it's very clear, very partisan.

And then Trump comes in and pardons these folks. He could just say, oh, well, you know, I don't want to get involved. So it's a sea change, frankly. It's just absolutely astonishing to me how dramatic. I mean, I don't think anybody in our lifetimes has ever seen anything like this, the change from what we had to what we're seeing now. Usually they wait until, the President's wait until the end of their term, to pardon people.

He went, came right out of the gate and pardon these peaceful pro-life activists who were being prosecuted under the FACE Act, but this weaponization of government. And this is a real problem. We have a case that's pending it, cert petition at the U.S. Supreme Court right now, first choice versus Plattkin. This is a pro-life pregnancy resource center that serves vulnerable women who are in these really difficult situations. And they have been relentlessly pursued by the Attorney General in the state of New Jersey, Plattkin,

who has an avowed radical pro-abortioners, and he has been targeting them with investigatory subpoenas, asking for the identity of their donors, asking for documents and records going back 10 years. The ADF has been representing first choice against this intrusive use, this lawfare effectively. Yeah. And this case has now landed on the doorstep to the U.S. Supreme Court. We're still waiting to see whether the court will take it. But this is just an example of how, even though Trump has been fantastic about peeling back federal weaponization of government, you're still seeing it in blue states like New Jersey. Yeah.

No, there's no doubt about it. Well, we have a lot of fight to go. Like it's not over, and that's the whole thing. We have to just keep going and keep going. I was interested because I saw you at the ARC in London, I wanted to bring up that. I was very encouraged when I was over there to think that Europeans want what we have here. Like they see what's going on, and they think, I'd like a piece of that. We were actually, we were in an Uber, and the Uber driver was like, yeah, we'd like to get some of that doge over here, you know, kind of cut some of that waist and kind of.

And I thought most people would want that. But I think people in Europe have really been, it's as if they've had, you know, 25 years of a Biden administration. They've really been suffering under this socialist, lunatic, anti-we-the-people thinking that it's these bureaucratic elites ruling over them. And I think, you know, not only have they suffered under it and have come to the end of being willing to put up with it, but I think that seeing what is happening in the United States under this. second Trump administration, there's a real hope and a desire to get that. I don't know to what extent that can happen or how that works, but I just sensed that when I was over there talking to different people. I did too. In fact, there were several people who after J.D. Vance spoke in Paris and then again in Munich, who said, I think J.D. Vance actually speaks for me,

and I'm a European. And they are looking to the United States to lead on these issues relating to freedom, relating to civil rights, relating to government accountability. And we are so privileged here in the United States to live under one of the greatest charters of freedom ever conceived by human hands, the U.S. Constitution. I think the greatest. Yeah. I don't think there is anything greater. I'm trying to think what I can compare to. There's not much.

Definitely not Hammi Rabbi's Code or anything like that. No. But it's a tremendous document. And the First Amendment, I mean, what a blessing to have a document that enshrines that's very first fundamental liberty, the right to freedom of speech, free exercise. of religion. I mean, these are these are real blessings that we as Americans oftentimes take for granted. Well, and again,

you know, to be reminded, J.D. Vance in his speech in Munich reminded us that Europe doesn't have this. It's kind of shocking because we think of Europe as being so much like us, but then you realize, no, they're not. They don't, they weren't really I mean, because you could even have argued that, I mean,

many of the Patriots during our revolutionary era, were arguing that, hey, these are English values. But King George III was like, well, no, I don't think so. Because these are foundational ideas. And it is interesting, unless you enshrine them in a constitution and in our amendments, and unless you have a population, a citizenry that understands these things and lives them out, they go away. And that's exactly what has happened in Western Europe. You have all these nations that we think, well, they're sort of like us. They're not. And you're now seeing the fruit

as they have drifted in a certain direction. It's very, very dramatic. And because you think if they really were like us, then Jady Vance's diplomatic speech in Munich would not have come across to them like a big slap in the face. But they were so stunned to hear him speak these basic things, to speak the truth. And I thought he did it very diplomatically. So I was just so proud that We have him as vice president, and God bless President Trump for picking him. We're at a time. Ryan Bangor, just a joy to speak with you. God bless you, and God bless the Alliance Defending Freedom.

You guys are heroes. Very grateful for you. So thank you. Thank you, Eric. It's a lot of news to share right now. Okay, real quick, remember I was telling everybody to boycott Target because of what they did. You know the whole story. I think it's time to reverse engines.

Target, you need to reward people when they do the right thing. Target made a huge decision. to blow off their whole DEI thing, which is amazing that on a corporate level, a company that's been sort of progressive would totally change their tune and say, we are no longer going to play the DEI game. That is big news. They are being boycotted by all kinds of radical Marxists. There's some insane leftist megachurch pastor calling for a boycott on target.

I am here to say we should reward them. When somebody totally changes their tune, we need to reward them. So I am today going to buy a TV at Target. Not making that up. Got to get a TV for my mom. I'm going to do it at Target today. We need to reward them. God bless them for changing what they've done.

By the way, I wanted to talk more about Donald Trump's ultimatum in Israel. It's just amazing. The evilness of Hamas. I can't talk about it because I get so upset. But I wanted to say that portions of this program are sponsored by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism on behalf of the government of Israel. But that's not why I talk about Israel. I just want to mention that. But I'm asking you specifically to visit goisrael.com for more info on visiting Israel.

Obviously now is not the perfect time to go. But to think about it, everyone I talk to who's been to Israel, they all say the same thing. It's like funny. They go, oh, it was life changing. It was life changing. It was life-changing because that's where it all went down. That's where it actually happened. And when you see those things, I was just there briefly a number of years ago, I guess

was seven years ago. And even though I was there briefly, I was moved to tears by realizing that Jesus walked here. And so it's a life-changing event for everyone I've talked to. So it's important that we stand with Israel and pray that the horror is going over there end soon. So I look forward to going back there when I can. In the meantime, visit goisrael.com for more information. Also wanted to mention that we talk about education a lot on the program and how our nation's public schools have been taken over by lunatic ideologues. You know,

just like corporate America, I was saying like Target, well, Target has reversed course. We need to take back our schools as well, which is why I'm exhorting you to visit. our friends at the Herzog Foundation, Herzog Foundation.com. They are the trusted source on American K-12 private education. They have a remarkable suite of free resources for parents and grandparents

thinking about making the switch from public schools to a Christian education or to homeschooling, which is the best of the best. They have an online publication, the lion, sorry, you can go to readlion.com,

R-E-A-D-L-L-O-N-D-L-O-N. They have a podcast called Making the Leap. These guys are heroes, folks. If you've encountered them, you already know they're on the same page as we. And I want to say that it's important that we're aware of them. And again, they're there to help. Herzog Foundation.com. Before we end our one, I want to mention that we've got a lot of Socrates and the city stuff coming up.

I've done a whole bunch of Socrates and City interviews in London. We're going to be airing those soon. One is with Ian Herssey, Ali, buckle your seatbelt. So that's going to be all on. Go to Socrates in the city.com. Sign up for Socrates Plus on our YouTube page. Most of the stuff is available. We're doing an event in Lexington, Kentucky, with Hillsdale President Larry Arne.

Very excited about that. That's April 16th, Palm Beach, March 21st. I'm interviewing Senator Josh Hawley. But there's so much stuff at the Socrates and the city website. And then finally, plug for my story. You can get most of my books and especially the Donald, the caveman books at my store.com. Be sure you use the code Eric at my store.com. Donald drains the swamp is there waiting for you. Donald drains the swamp. Discount code Eric at my store.com.