The Eric Metaxas Show - Ryan Bangert and Paul Kengor (continued)

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

Ryan Bangert of Alliance Defending Freedom, who worked on the recent Supreme Court vax-mandate case, explains the outcome; then, Paul Kengor continues his MLK/CRT discussion.

to the Eric McTaxis show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. Today is Monday, Martin Luther King Day. We want to talk about a lot of things. But first of all, there was a Supreme Court decision recently, which we thought would be worth discussing with somebody from our friends at the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Alliance Defending Freedom always has something amazing to say, extraordinary, important to say about these

kinds of things. So our friend Ryan Bangert from the Alliance Defending Freedom joins us now. Ryan, welcome to the program. Eric, thank you for having us on. Well, listen, people need to know that the Alliance Defending Freedom, ADF, you guys are heroes. Unfortunately, you're very important at this time in American history. We need folks like you fighting in the courts for the Constitution. So we're grateful for what you all do, and we're grateful for you in particular today for coming on, Ryan,

because many people want to know what happened in the Supreme Court recently with the two ruling. So for people who really haven't followed the ruling, specifically the one about the one that was struck down, I guess it was six to three, and then the one that was not. not struck down. Tell us a little bit about those rulings. Sure. So back in September, President Biden announced that he was going to require federal agencies to mandate vaccination. And his chief of staff even called this a workaround knowing that federal authority wasn't there to implement these requirements. And so the agencies, the federal agencies began going one by one and requiring vaccination in areas that they could control. the occupational safety and health administration, which is part of the Department of Labor,

issued a requirement back in November that all private employers with 100 or more employees required those employees to be vaccinated or if they chose not to get vaccinated, they had to be tested every single week and they had to mask up if they were unvaccinated. So a sweeping mandate covering over 80 million American employees. Simultaneously, the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, CMS, issued a mandate requiring health care workers at 15 different types of facilities that receive either Medicare or Medicaid funds to be vaccinated with only very narrow exemptions. So that covered over 10 million workers. So right there you have almost 100 million Americans covered by federal mandates.

And those were the two mandates that the Supreme Court took up at oral argument on January 7th and issued decisions last week. The OSHA mandate, the one that covered the private employees, the 80 plus million private employees was struck down, like you said, six to three. And the Medicare and Medicaid mandate that covered health care workers was upheld by a five to four vote. This is, well, thanks for that summation. And folks, again, if you're just tuning in, we're talking with Ryan Bangert of the Alliance Defending Freedom. So was the Alliance Defending Freedom involved in this case at all? We were.

We actually represented a number of clients challenging the ocean mandate, including Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, several private religious institutions, educational institutions, Christian Employers Alliance, Homeschool Legal Defense Fund, as well as the Daily Wire. What always amazes me, I think, and this is what I want to say more than I get to, really, so I'll say it now. but the fragility of democracy, the fragility of liberty. To me, people say, oh, isn't it great that the Supreme Court struck down this mandate? And I think to myself, great. It's like somebody shooting in your face with a gun, and the gun doesn't go off and you say, isn't that great? Well, it's a nice thing, but it would be better if the person hadn't put the gun to your head and pulled the trigger.

That's how I feel that when you have an administration, as we currently do, putting forth what strike me as egregiously unconstitutional ideas, trying to destroy American liberty. And we only have the Supreme Court at this point to stand against it. And thank goodness they did stand against it. But they didn't stand against the health care mandate. And, Justice Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Donald Trump, whom we would think of as a constitutionalist, he didn't seem to understand what many of us understand on that issue. So let me ask you that. Many of us were shocked about Justice Kavanaugh not seeing this the way we would think he had to see it. What do you suppose happen? Because I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Sure.

Well, a couple of things there. First, this represents, when I say this, these mandates represent a tremendous overreach by the federal government. There's no question. President Biden ordered these agencies to push their authority beyond reasonable limits. And that's precisely what the Supreme Court found in the OSHA case, that there had been a major question presented to these agencies. And that major question was whether or not federal agencies, had statutory authority to impose a de facto vaccine mandate on effectively the whole of American society through employers. And that was a question that the Supreme Court in the OSHA case found had not been committed to the agency. Congress had never given that authority to the Department of Labor or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And Justice Kavanaugh got it right in that case, as did the other five justices who ruled that the mandate was unconstitutional. They found that there was no clear delegation of authority by Congress to the agency to take on this major question. So that was a very heartening and I think a great sign that the Supreme Court

is ready and willing to rein in excessive uses of federal power, especially by administrative agencies. Now, on the CMS side, it was a slightly different question. It was a closer question. Most lawyers looking at that case believed it was a closer question. Still, I think the court got it wrong. It was a closer vote five to four. As you pointed out, Justice Kavanaugh, as well as Chief Justice Robert switched sides effectively. They both voted to take out the ocean mandate, but voted in favor of the- I'm not one of the people who still thinks Roberts is a constitutionalist, so I'm going to set him aside. But I'm a little amazed by Kavanaugh. And I guess, my question is trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. What do you think he saw that enabled him to call this one as he did?

Yeah. If you look at the court's decision, what the court said they saw was a different statute. The statute that gave power to CMS to impose its mandate was written differently than the statute that was empowering the Department of Labor. and if you look at the Department of Labor statute, there was really no textual hook, no basis to say that OSHA or the Department of Labor could impose a national vaccine mandate, whereas in the case of CMS, the Supreme Court found at least some textual clues that indicated that CMS might have the authority to regulate health and safety. Now, I think they got a more. I'm sorry, remind us what CMS stands for.

Center for Medicare services. It's a part of HHS and it regulates the distribution of Medicare and Medicaid funds within the program. So they do have authority to set sort of guidelines for how these funds are used and health and safety within the various recipients. But at the same time, that was a very thin read on which to rest a substantial and far-reaching federal power to impose a vaccine mandate on health care workers. And I think Justice Thomas got that absolutely right. When he said, you cannot look to these, basically your housekeeping or administrative powers of CMS to enforce a never-before seen vaccine mandate on health care workers.

And I think the dissent was very clear, this has never been done by CMS, by HHS. They've never imposed a vaccination mandate like this on all health care workers at all facilities covered by Medicare and Medicaid in the history of HHS. And that should have been a pretty clear clue that this power went far beyond the statutory power. It's just interesting to me that today we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote famously in his letter from a Birmingham jail about just laws and unjust laws, of course, going back to Augustine. And it strikes me we're at living at a time when we need that kind of civil disobedience. We'll be right back, folks, talking to Ryan Banger, lines defending freedom. Hey, folks, I've got to tell you a secret about

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Ryan Bangerick. Welcome back. I want to ask you more about the Supreme Court ruling with regard to these vaccine mandates. I referenced Dr. King's letter from Birmingham jail before we went to the break. It's a funny thing when you live in a country that's free ostensibly as we are, but that you realize that we have to behave freely to be free. In other words, if there are laws that come down that really go against what the Constitution says, in some cases we have an obligation to stand against them via civil disobedience.

When Dr. King did it, it's always easy in retrospect to say, well, he got it right. But at the time, there were many, many across this country that said he's a rabble rouser, he's a troublemaker. When you tell somebody that they have to get an injection of something that I would say is, even if it were effective, is potentially, dangerous in order to keep their job. It seems to me that we're at a similarly uncomfortable moment in the culture where I think people are going to be making these kinds of decisions not to go along with what seems to me, what seems to be legally mandated, but which common sense would say really doesn't have constitutionality. Right. And it's amazing that the Supreme Court by a six to three vote was the last step in, was the last step in, was the last.

last really guard and defense in protecting American workers, 80 plus million American workers from that fate, from being told by their employer, get this injection, or lose your job. And yet now we have 10 plus million health care workers facing just that choice. It's really remarkable that our federal government is exercising power to put American citizens to that choice. This all strikes me as the proverbial teaching moment. Unfortunately, we've had about two years of teaching moment. but where Americans need to understand what is at stake and what it means to be an American,

what it means to be free, what it means to be self-governing and to elect people to do the will of the people according to the Constitution. Because right now, I think we've been, I've said this many times, but we've been so comfortable, we've been blessed with so much freedom that we haven't really had to think about this. This is the first time in many of our lives that we're seeing a lot of. level of government overreach, which is, which I think rises to the level of a kind of tyranny. I mean, we threw tea in the harbor in a moment of civil disobedience in Boston, you know, over two, two and a half centuries ago, basically. And I think many in America realize that

we've allowed things to creep back to this point where even those in our government, the people supposedly whom we elected, they don't understand these boundaries. They don't understand self-government. It seems clear that those on the left and then the Democratic Party understand this far less even than the Republicans do. Well, Eric, and you're right. And it goes even further than that. And I think Justice Gorsuch pointed this out in his concurring opinion in the OSHA case. The question here was who decides, who decides these major questions of federal policy? And the Biden administration answered that question, the bureaucracy, the administrative state, the unelected officials in the bowels of these bureaucracies who are not accountable to the American voters.

And the Supreme Court in the OSHA case said, that's a decision for Congress. That's a decision for the people's elected representatives to make. And there's a bigger question, but the court didn't even answer as to whether Congress itself even has constitutional authority to impose that kind of requirement. we think they don't under the Commerce Clause. But setting that aside, the Biden administration committed this significant question of federal authority to unelected bureaucrats, both in the OSHA case and the CMS case. And I think Gorsuch got it right saying this is not the kind of question that bureaucrats,

unelected unaccountable bureaucrats, should be deciding for the American people. It is a chilling thing, but I do think the only good news to me is that many Americans are waking up to where we are. And even to the idea that there is a federal bureaucracy that really is not accountable to the people. And to the extent that they're not accountable to the people, we should defund them. We should defund the bureaucracy. We don't need to defend the police. We need to fund the bureaucracy that is no longer, I guess, tied to the Constitution and to the people they're supposed to represent. But it has taken us many decades for this federal bloat to get to this level, I guess, to where it is causing real harm. I guess I'm wondering,

do you think that the medical establishment, I shouldn't say the establishment, that the workers in the healthcare industry, that they have any redress at this point? I mean, if I were a nurse or a doctor and I was told I had to get this vaccine, I know that I wouldn't do it. What do you think might happen, legally speaking? But there are exceptions for people who have disabilities or sincerely held religious beliefs, but that's it. And oftentimes, objections to these vaccines goes even beyond that, matters of conscience and bodily integrity. And those are rights that the courts just haven't recognized. And so it puts people in a really difficult spot.

But certainly if you have a sincerely held religious objection to receiving this vaccine, I think your employer should honor that. And they absolutely should recognize that. The question is will they? And that's where this story now turns. It's extraordinary. I can't help wondering about Kavanaugh and why he would do these things. I think sometimes it's horrifying to me to realize that these nine justices are human beings

because in a way what they're supposed to do is supposed to be legal minds, looking at the Constitution, not worrying about what their neighbors will think or whether there will be riots in the streets. They're supposed to just do their job. Everything else, all the ramifications, are not something they're supposed to think about. And I get the impression that probably led by Roberts, some on the court today are thinking more about that,

which means that they have been, that they have effectively appointed themselves over the American people in a way that the Constitution doesn't allow. You do get the sense. In these two opinions, there was some different splitting going on. And as you pointed out, Justice Roberts has been quite well known that he is concerned about the institutional integrity of the court. And of course, that can be a recipe for unprincipled decision making in instances like this. And again, not to cast aspersions, But I think when you start allowing things like considerations like institutional integrity to see into your decision-making process, it can lead to discordant results like I think we saw last week.

Well, you know, maybe we have to explain that a little bit. But I think I just think that they're playing politics. I think Roberts, to his shame, has become a political figure. and that, you know, just going back to the Obamacare, that he's thinking, he's overthinking. He's not doing his job. He's acting as though, well, I have a position, and I have to think about the position, and I have to have to think about what the court looks like. And I guess to some extent one has to do such things, but it seems that he's taken his eye off the ball, so to speak. And instead of calling balls and strikes, he's just sort of wondering, hey, how did this

game look to the spectator? type of thing. And that's not what a Supreme Court justice is supposed to do. We just got a minute or so left. What do you think will happen? And I know I'm asking you to guess, but with regard to the pushback on Roe v. Will that ruling come out in June? That's what we're expecting. The Dobbs case, I believe is what you're referring to. We're expecting that ruling in June. And we, based on the oral arguments, we have high hopes. We are confident. that a good decision is in the offing. Well, I guess I can't help but think that there will be some civil unrest.

In other words, I think that it's no different than with the Emancipation Proclamation. There are going to be times that many people are upset about what happens. And then the question is, do you have the guts to stand up for what you believe in, or are you going to let the mobs cow you into submission? So I guess my first question is, have they already ruled on this and we don't find out about it until June or do they rule on this in June? How does that work? Why is there such a gap between the oral arguments and the actual ruling? Sure. So the decision has effectively been made. Now it's just a matter of writing the opinions. And those would be the majority opinion. I assume it'll probably be some dissenting opinions, potentially concurring opinions. So that opinion writing process is taking place. right now, the decision's already been taken. But to your point, let's assume that this, that Roe versus Wade and Casey are overturned, the matter goes back to the states. And the question of the legality and

limitations upon abortion becomes a state question. And I think we're going to see the political process engaged. I guess I just, I wonder if, you know, if Roberts and now Kavanaugh are unwilling to, you know, bear the slings and arrows of public opinion, whether they will have caved on something so central, you know, to life in America. We're out of time, but just a joy to have you, Ryan Bangert, with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Thank you. And thank our friends at the Alliance Defending Freedom, doing great work. Thank you, Eric. Appreciate all you do. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed and when oil prices

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online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Folks, welcome back. As promised, we are talking to our friend Paul Kanger, who teaches political science at Grove City College and who there heads up the Institute for Faith and Freedom. Paul Kanger, I want to ask you, how did you get to be who you are? Where did you grow up? Did you have a moment where you came to faith, where you saw things differently, theologically, politically? How did you get to be? the man that you are today. Yeah. Well, yeah, I appreciate that. I grew up in Butler, Pennsylvania, which is in Western Pennsylvania, and went off to college, University of Pittsburgh. I was a pre-med major. I was not a Christian. And, I mean, to say I was sinful as an understatement, I mean, I really did not become, even begin to become a better person until my Christian conversion in the mid-1990s. And I was actually a conservative before, before I was a Christian, just because conservative,

made more sense to me, you know, from an economic point of view. I understood communism, for example, was bad. This is interesting, Eric. I was always pro-life. I always thought it always puzzled me that liberals wouldn't be pro-life, that anybody could be pro-choice. That always concerned me. But I really didn't change and I think start to become a better person until I had a Christian conversion in the mid-1990s. And when I was in graduate school at American University in Washington, I started looking at where would I like to teach someday, and this brings me back to Grove City College. This college about a half an hour north from my hometown had a commencement speakers like William F. Buckley Jr. And I thought, wow, that's where I want to teach, right?

That's where I want to go. I want to go to a college like that. But my focus became the Cold War, things that I studied in school, foreign policy, international relations. I started writing on Ronald Reagan. I did a book on Ronald Reagan called God and Ronald Reagan. So I started teaching about and writing about Cold War, Marxism. Today, ironically, is our first day back to class as at Grove City College. I'm teaching a course this semester on Marxism. I teach a course every other year on conservatism. So this has been a great place to teach, one of the few places where I would want to teach.

I should also point out that I'm Catholic at a school that is largely non-Catholic among the faculty. there's probably about a dozen Catholic faculty members. And I've always been respected for that and allowed that freedom, which is why I try to be fair to my colleagues who I disagree with on politics and other things, because I know they disagree with me on a lot of faith things. But it's been a great place to teach with wonderful students and wonderful faculty. Well, I know that I've spoken at Grove City. I can't remember when.

It's probably getting close to 10 years ago now. I think so. But a Wilberforce, I believe, right? It was probably a Wilberforce. Isn't that amazing? That's a long, yeah, that's a long time ago. Well, the Wilberforce book came out in 2007. My Bonhofer book came out in 2010.

I was going to say, it's probably Bonhoffer, right? Probably Bonhofer. Yes, I think that's probably about right. But yeah, it's been a while. In any event, so if somebody's curious where Grove City is, where is Grove City? I'm always, I love to know where people's stories, then I love to know geography. So, I mean, it's one of these places. It's not that easy to get to. Yeah, it's about an hour north of Pittsburgh. Right now, it's really not easy to get to with all the snow outside. But it's about an hour north of Pittsburgh. And it's really only about a five-hour drive from Washington, D.C. Anytime I go to D.C., I just drive there. It's really not that far. And so kind of about a half an hour away from the border of Ohio. So Western PA, rather than Eastern PA. I think Philadelphia is like five or five or five.

six-hour drive from us and very different. In fact, Philadelphia is more like New Jersey. Pittsburgh's more like Ohio, right? So that's, and we have about 25, 2,600 students. I should point this out, too. A lot of people don't know this. They think that Hillsdale was the first college to not receive federal funding. It was us. It was our Grove City College court case in 1984 that led us first to reject all government funding at all levels. So we are a totally, truly private Christian liberal arts college. That is such a huge deal. And again, you know, Grove City and Hillsdale become the more important as the universities have drifted dramatically leftward into CRT and some openly Marxist ideas, which are also fundamentally anti-American ideas. And so it's so important.

How many students go to Grove City College? I think about 2,500. And so it indeed becomes more important to protect institutions like this, which is what I think that the parents were concerned about, right? You know, they heard things from their children, maybe from whoever else, There aren't many like this. And I oftentimes get emails, not often. I mean, all the time. I get dozens of these a year. I'd probably get 100 of these a year.

I'd probably get more from prospective parents than anybody else on campus because of the writing I do and public speaking I do. And they say, where can I send my kid to college? You know, where? Where? I've got a list of about a half dozen that I feel are safe. And there aren't many. There aren't many at all.

I mean, that list continues to dwindle. I heard you said, Alliance for Defending Freedom. We are very close with them, very tight with them. We have a whole bunch of Grove City College students, Katie Imler, Travis Barham, Jeff Entralla, a parent, Grove City parent, who are, we send a lot of students to ADF and to groups like that. Well, I'm just glad that we have you as our guest today. We're going to keep you on. Folks, very, very important that you're aware of what's going on. When we come back, we're going to talk more to Paul Kanger, who teaches Polly Sigh at Grove City College.

We're going to want to talk more about the legacy of Dr. King and how critical race theory is antithetical to the great Dr. King. We'll be right back. You live your life in the songs you hear on the rock and roll radio. And when a young girl doesn't have any friends, that's a really nice place to go. Folks, hoping you'd turn out. Folks, Eric Matakas is here. Somebody just handed me a piece of paper with insane information on it.

But I know it's true because the other day I literally got a phone call from Mike Lindell telling me, Eric, you got to check out. And then he tells me about this towel special, right? And he says, you've got to tell your audience. Okay, so here's the special. $39.99, if you use the code Eric, normally $109.99. We're talking about the towels that work. We've talked about this before. It's a technology where the towels actually do the job of being absorbent and, you know, you know that whole thing.

So they're amazing towels, but you can get a set of six towels for $39.99. You have to use the code, Eric. Go to mypillow.com. Click on the new radio listener specials. And what you can call 800, 978-3057, 800-978-3057. Use the code, Eric. Folks, we're talking to Paul Kangor, Grove City, College. You heard a book called, was it the devil and Karl Marx? I did. I did. And one other thing before I hit that, I want to make clear,

I mentioned a couple segments ago about the petition that was against me. And some people have reported that the college didn't support me on that. The students who wrote that in the petition eventually pulled out what they had said about me, which I appreciated. I wish they would have reached out to me from the start because I think they realized it was not fair, what they said. And the Grove City College President Paul McNulty supported me all the way through that. And we decided, too, that it wasn't worth responding to that because we felt that what was raised didn't justify a response, the way that it was done, the way that it was organized and the kind of, I think, flat-out, malicious character that the way that it was done. But yeah, on the point of Marxism, I did, I wrote a book

called the devil and Karl Marx, and there's a component of that that relates to all of this, I think, in a very significant way. Carl Marx was a racist. And if you go back, Eric, and read some of his letters between him and Ingalls and German, and then all of a sudden you see the word N-I-G-G, continue. I mean, it's, they use the English, American English racial epithet for, they didn't use the German translation of, say, Negro or black. I mean, they're, actually using the N-word. These- How amazing.

I mean, headline, Carl Marx is a real racist. Right. But listen, I've talked about this many times is that if you follow the logic, Marxism is clearly, strongly, explicitly atheistic. And if you are atheistic, you have no grounds on which to say racism is bad. So it's almost comical how knotted these ideas get, that the idea that you could not understand that somebody like Marx, not only is he ideologically leaning toward racist ideology, but then you find out, yes, and by the way, he was personally explicitly racist. People need to know that.

Very few people ever hear that. Very few people talk about it. So thank you. And a very key component of this, too, is that. that he was a very strict evolutionist. In fact, Engels quoted Darwin at Marx's funeral and also Marx's wife's funeral. By the way, Marx's wife used the N-word. She was a racist. I mean, they had very, very, very offensive language. But they believe that human beings were not created in the image of God. They believe that human beings evolved. And they believed, and I know this is offensive, but I'm going to say it, they believe that black people were lower on the evolutionary scale than white people. Marx had a son-in-law named Paul Lefarg who had some Cuban blood in him. And so to him and

Ingalls, they tried to deduce with scientific accuracy how much quote-unquote Negro blood, while not Negro, the N-word, N-word blood that there was in Paul's veins. And they're like, I think maybe an eighth, I think maybe a 16th. They called him guerrilla or nigrillo, Negrillo, the gorilla. That's what they called Marx's son-in-law. And Ingls wrote a letter to Marx's daughter saying something like, I see Paul is running for office in this district in Paris. I also note that it contains a zoo. Well, given that he is lower in the evolutionary scale, one step closer to monkeys than the rest of us, he should make an outstanding representative of that district. Very racist things. That son-in-law, Paul, committed suicide in a suicide pact with Marx's daughter.

Marx had two daughters who committed suicide. They both entered into suicide packs with their husbands. So this was the kind of home life that Marx had. His use of the N-word, he was terribly anti-Semitic. And the idea that somebody like the founder of Black Lives Matter, Patrice Cullors, would run around saying, we are Marxists. Alicia and I, that's Alicia Garza, we are trained Marxist. We are superversed in ideological theories. Well, if she only knew what a Marxist, we are. what racist Marxist was. I mean, she may call herself a communist after that, but in fact, she probably doesn't know what the Marx was a racist because she's a product of our universities. Well, look, this brings us to the issue of why Grove City and Hillsdale, in particular,

why you've been heroic. Those two institutions have been heroic. Because there are many schools that I would think of would be holding the line, who are not, who have opened the door to Marxism, to Marx, who you just made clear is as racist as it gets. We throw the term around.

He was the real thing. His racism was so vicious that it drove his daughter and daughters and son-in-law to, not to self-harm, to suicide. We need to be clear about this. So if you're sending your kids to Biola or Wheaton or Baylor or any of these schools, ask them if they have allowed CRT a place at the table. I'm sorry to say they probably. have. Maybe you can tell us more specifically whether they have. Well, and I don't know about those schools. So,

so I really, I really have no idea. But on that point with Marks, too, if, I mean, colleges, look, you and I don't favor canceling people, but you have to, you have to wonder, why haven't they canceled Carl Marks? I mean, there are professors with bust of Carl Marks in their office. Why are students not outside banging on the door yelling, racist? racist, right? Because they want to reserve the cries of racism for people who actually aren't racist.

You know, it's, I have to say that this is the kind of thing. You know, you hear people say, you couldn't make it up. I mean, the idea that not only is Marx and atheism, not only do these things lead one intellectually to racism,

but then you find that, oh yes, and by the way, Marx actually was a racist. It's very important, folks, that when something is that clear that you talk about it, I just think we have to say that it's almost funny that in this day and age, if you're a real racist, a real Marxist, people don't call you a racist, but if you're clearly not a racist, if you're against it with every bone in your body, you're likely to be called a racist if people disagree with you, which is kind of what's happened to you and to me.

These words have been rendered meaningless in a way by people overusing them. Yeah, it's sad. In phrases like white nationalist rhetoric, I mean, what does that even mean? And the people who had used that against me, they cited four articles that I wrote, none of which had anything to do with race. I think one of them referenced an article I wrote on cultural Marxism. And if you type in the word cultural Marxism into Google now, It says something like anti-Semitic conspiracy theory or something like that.

So they might have gone with that or white. If they would have actually dug deeper, they would have seen that I've written articles for the American Spectator on cultural Marxism as conspiracy. We are living in crazy times, folks. The good news is we're talking to Paul Kangor of Grove City College, with whom we shall return. Folks, we're talking about Carl Marx.

The famous essay by Marx on atheism where he talks about the opiate of the masses, he says in there, and this is in a way kind of strikingly profound by Marx, he said the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism. So he understood you really had to go after religion. That was foundational. He uses the word criticism 29 times in that essay. He talked in a letter to Arnold Rouge about the ruthless criticism of all that exists. And if there's a word that he used more than criticism, it was abolition, which is a word

that Patrice Cullors and these others use all the time. You know, I am an abolitionist. She's talking about abolition all the time. Mark's had a favorite quote from Gertes Fowse. So Eric, right, if they ask you or I for a favorite quote, we might cite a scripture verse or something like, Be Not Afraid. Mark said, yeah, I have a favorite verse. It's from Gertes Foust, the Mephistopheles character. That's the demon, devil character. And it was everything that exists deserves to perish. Everything that exists deserves to perish. So this was a guy who was all about raising R-A-Z-I-N-G, the foundation, tearing everything down, ripping it apart, which is why to circle back where we were in the beginning,

you don't want a part of any theories that have any sort of Marxist foundation or influence. You know, that is fruit from a poison tree. You know, these atheistic theories are damaging, and they look at, they all lay at first at the idea of taking down God, taking down moral absolutes, which, by the way, is what Paul McNaltes has stated about critical race theory as well. Well, people don't realize how poisonous. I think they think, well, poison, it's not so bad. No, this is fatal, folks. This is much more dangerous than most people seem willing to realize.

It's interesting, too, because of where we are in the culture right now, that when we're talking about all of these things, you're seeing the evilness of evil manifested more and more. You realize that when somebody's talking about these things, they're much more quick to be anti-religion. Marx, of course, was already there. But even when you read about any of these figures, when you read about Captain Ahab, his hatred, his burning hatred was ultimately a hatred for God. I think he used the phrase, want to strike through the mask. In other words, he really wanted to hit God. He wanted to strike at God. And that is really what's behind all this when you find people despising the God of the Jews, despising the Jews. It's just fascinating to me that intellectually, ideologically, all these

things are connected, which is why it's very important we have professors like Paul Kangor writing about it. What's the title of the book on Marx that you and I discussed on this program? Oh, the devil and Carl Marx. Yeah, that came out in 2019. The devil and a nicer book. I wrote a book called A Pope and a President about Ronald Reagan and John. You've written a lot of great books. I hope people who are tuning in will check them out. Paul, Kangor, K-E-N-G-O-R, Grove City College. Paul, just a joy to have you. Thank you for what you do. Well, thanks, Eric, and thanks for giving me a chance to come on. Maybe for us to comprehend in America. There are people in other parts. of the world right now whose very lives are being threatened simply for believing in Jesus.

In fact, worse than being threatened, many are today enslaved for their faith. Some have been for decades, evicted from their homes, charged exorbitant fines, and then sold into slavery for their faith in Jesus. Amazing, but true, hundreds of thousands are being persecuted and enslaved in the Middle East, but together, here's the good news, we can literally buy their freedom and save the lives of our precious brothers and sisters and give them joy and hope. It's just amazing. $250, maybe can give less, maybe more. Please do it. Thank you.