The Eric Metaxas Show - Scott Powell

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

Historian Scott Powell takes a chapter from his book, "Rediscovering America," to focus on "Why Thanksgiving is as Relevant Today as it was for the Pilgrims Four Centuries Ago."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Ladies and gentlemen, he has a jar of peanut butter, and he's not afraid to use it. Here comes Eric Mattaxas. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, Albin. Happy to you.

I don't like when people say happy turkey day because it's not about the turkey. Well, have you noticed this? And this is kind of, this is good to say at the beginning of both hours today and both hours tomorrow. When we celebrate a holiday, we need to celebrate the thing. Okay, the thing is not turkey. The thing is not family. We are celebrating family is important. The turkey is part of the tradition.

All these things are part of what makes it wonderful. But we are celebrating not the Turkey, not the family getting together. We're celebrating what happened in 1621 that really began what we like to call the United States of America. And we need to know that history. And part of what we're going to be doing what we're doing in both hours today is talking about that history, why Thanksgiving is important. And just like at Christmas, we don't say, what's Christmas about it? Gift giving, trees, you know, Yule Tide, cheer. No, no, it's about the birth of Jesus.

That's what you're celebrating. And around that, you have all these traditions and all this great stuff. But you're not celebrating the trees and the gift giving. You're celebrating the birth of Jesus, God coming into the world as a human. It's really very easy for us to drift. It's called mission drift. And so we always need, same thing with July 4th. When you celebrate July 4th, you don't say, what's July 4th?

You don't say, what's July 4th? Firecrackers, hot dogs. No, no. It's about celebrating independence. It's Independence Day. It is a sacred day in American history. You celebrate that, usually with fireworks, hot dogs, families. Okay, so those are the trappings, but you need to focus on the thing itself.

So in both hours today, we're going to be talking, and also tomorrow, about what actually happened at Thanksgiving. Yeah, no, this is great. This is why we celebrate Turkey Day, and thank you for that. Eric. Exactly. So I think that... I'm just in a... You're such a wise guy.

Yeah, wise guy. Just for that, I'm having ham. I'm having ham. But I want to say that in hour one today, I'm telling the Squanto story. Now, if you want to read that, if you have a copy of my book, I wrote a children's book on Squanto. Actually, I wrote two children's books on Squanto. The first one I wrote for Rabbit Ears. I wrote a lot of children's books for Rattieers.

I wrote a lot of children's books for Rekwanto. rabbit ears, but they kind of took the God part out of my telling of the story when I wrote it for rabbit ears. So it's an otherwise wonderful book. They made a beautiful video, but they kind of took the God part out a little bit. And I said, someday, I'm going to write a book where I put that back in, because it's at the heart of the whole story. So I put it in a book called Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving, published by Thomas Nelson, Tommy Nelson. But I also write about it in my book, if you can keep it. Some of you already have a copy of if you can keep it. And I tell the story. It's an amazing story in the next segment or in one of these segments, I'm having a conversation

with Chris Himes about what is the Squanto story. Because it is a miracle from our history, an astonishing miracle from our history. And I remember when I was doing the research on this, I mean, this was literally, let's see, I did the original research on this. It must have been like 1991. And somebody said, oh, you used to tell about the story about squantas for rabbit ears. And I remember, maybe I repeat this when I talk to Chris about this because we recorded the conversation that I'm having with Chris Himes. We did a few years ago. But I'll never forget doing the research and thinking, well, I'm going to go to the original documents.

So there's an old pilgrim document called Mort's Relation. There's something about what William Bradford wrote. So I'm looking at these original documents and piecing together the story of Squanto. And I remember when the light bulb goes off and I said, this is a miracle. Yeah. And the other children's books and stuff didn't really mention that. They act like it's some coincidence. Yeah.

And when you understand what happened, you go, this is a flat out insane miracle of God. There's no way around it. And it's at the very heart of the beginning. of what became the United States of America. And what I was so astonished by this, this happened to me a number of times over the years in the research in my books, when you get this moment,

and you think, how is it possible that no one else has seen what an astonishing miracle this is? And when you call it a coincidence, or you just kind of relate it like, well, all these things happen. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. This doesn't make human sense.

This is crazy. And this allowed the pilgrims to survive and to stay there because of this miracle of Squanto. And then by the way, folks, because the pilgrims stayed and didn't go home, suddenly you have others coming and then you get the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And you get John Winthrop talking about a shining city on a hill. And you get all of this stuff follows this miracle.

So if you don't believe in miracles, I challenge you to familiarize yourself with the squanta story. And if you're listening to this, and this is our two, Scott Powell comes up next. and he's talking about why Thanksgiving. So why are we even celebrating? Yes, that's right. So today we have, I talk to Chris Heimes, I tell the Squanto story, and then we've got some other crazy stuff there.

In hour two today, I don't know which hour we're in right now. We've got Scott Powell who wrote a book called Why Thanksgiving. We've had them on the program before. Now, Alvin, maybe we should mention a couple of things in case people are, I always feel like I don't want to forget. a couple of commercials. Nutrametics.com. They told us the other day that for this month only,

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we taped four episodes of a full-blown late-night talk show. My sidekick was played by Albin Seder. Alvin, you did a great job playing the role of sidekick. It was tough, but I did it. It wasn't you. It was you playing the role of you, which is very different. Very different. And I'm the host.

We interviewed over the course of these four episodes, Ron Howard, John Cleese, carrot top, Danny Bonaducci of the Partridge family, who to me was like meeting Abraham Lincoln. Like I can't go higher than meeting Danny from the Partridge family. It was actually moving. And George Hamilton, who was alive during the Lincoln administration. George Hamilton was born in the last days of the Civil War.

It's hard to believe. And he looks fantastic, by the way. He looks unbelievable. I've never seen an embalming job like his. It is unstinking believable. He's a great guy. Actually, in all seriousness, he looks tremendously youthful, which is the only reason we could joke about this.

So he's one of my guests. But they were all entertaining and generous guests. I mean, they didn't need to be. They're kind of like, who are you, Eric Metaxus? They were all generous. Supermodel Carol Alt. Yes. But I mean, just tons of wonderful guests.

I mentioned Ron Howard. I mean, it was kind of crazy that we got these guests. And the reason I'm telling you all this is because suddenly we're told that all of this is available at SalemNow.com. So, folks, if you go to SalemNow.com, you can actually watch these four episodes because we're in the process of figuring out where they're going to go ultimately. Yes. And I hope we'll know soon. But it's a big process of...

Now, just type Eric's name in the search bar and it'll pop right up. There's a couple things there. But it's the TV show called The Talk Show starring Eric Mattaxas. So if you go to SalemNow.com and put in Eric Metaxus, you'll find it. But the four episodes, honestly, we had... Mike the situation from the Jersey Shore. We had Vincent Pastori from the Sopranos. I mean, it's the kind of thing I would make up.

Like, I'd be like, who's the last guest you'd ever have? You'd never, in a million years, Eric, have Mike the situation. I played Cornhole on the stage with Mike the situation. You did. So there's like loads of crazy stuff. Go to SalemNow.com. SalemNow.com. Don't forget, please go to Eric Metaxus.com and to sign up for my newsletter.

And let me conclude by saying, happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving, guys. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed. And when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes leading the prices of goods to rise. And when we're already seeing record inflation, that's the last thing we need. Our economy is in trouble and you need to take steps to protect yourself. If all your money is tied up in stocks, bonds, and traditional markets, you are vulnerable. Gold is one of the best ways to protect your retirement. No matter what happens, you own your gold.

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If you're fed up with woke companies that don't care about your values, support a company that does. Make the switch today and get a free month of service plus free activation. Patriotmobile.com slash Eric. That's Patriotmobile.com slash Eric or call 972 Patriot. Hey folks, I don't know if you know, but in my family, we call this season Thanksgiving. And we wanted today, especially, to dig a little bit deeper into the roots of Thanksgiving. So we have, as my guest today, Scott Powell, he's been on this program before.

He's a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. He wrote a book that came out a number of months ago. We covered it on this program. It's called Rediscovering America, loaded with interest. things. It has sold very well just because of the information in it. And I thought, why don't we have Scott back on to talk about

Thanksgiving? And it just so happened that he's written an article, which is taken from the book, Rediscovering America, about Thanksgiving. And he's going to tell us about it right now. Scott Powell, welcome back. Thank you, Eric. Good to be with you. Good to be with you. I didn't read the whole

article because I thought, then I'll talk too much, which I always do anyway. So you wrote an article titled why Thanksgiving is as relevant today as it was for the Pilgrims four centuries ago. Now, first question is, where does the article appear? Where can people find it? That can be read in the Federalist today. The Federalist, okay?

Yes. So The Federalist.com. So then answer that question. I know you mentioned that there are five specific points you want to make. I want to take the time to go over each of them. So why is Thanksgiving as relevant today as it was four centuries ago? I think there are two things. There's the five achievements, if you will,

and then there are the qualities of character that enable the pilgrims to be successful and overcome insurmountable odds. Well, when you say insurmountable odds, I remember when I did the research on my book Squanto, and I realize when you just read it and you say about half of them died. It is incomprehensible to us in this modern era

when we talk about this small group of people coming and half of them dying. It's completely just beyond our ability to comprehend what they went through, but then the fact that they hung in there, that they persevered. That to me is the most astonishing part because, I mean, I would think a few people die

and you think we're out, we're going home, that's it. Well, of course, they couldn't very well go home. That was a big issue just to turn around and go home. But you're absolutely right. Most groups like this would be very demoralized, but they persevered. And not only did they get through that first, you know, not only did the first winter pass where they lost half their people, but they proceeded to establish a treaty with Massachusetts.

And this treaty lasted more than 50 years, which was remarkable. It distinguishes the pilgrims against all other colonizers of having a longer peace treaty with Indians than any other settlers, any other peace treaty. They never lasted close to that. But it was the attitude that the pilgrims had that was reciprocated by the Indians that enabled them to work together in ways that were really quite remarkable. They would have perished, were it not for the help of the Indians. Well, you know, whenever we talk about the Indians, of course, it's complicated because there's no such thing as the Indians. You have all of these Native American tribes, many of whom were, you know, genuinely bloodthirsty savages, and many of whom were absolutely wonderful and kind

and gentle. So when we're talking about the Wampanogs and And it is interesting to me that it so happened that it was possible for them to have this wonderful beginning. Tell us a little bit more about that. But it is really, it's just astonishing when you talk about a 50-year treaty with Massasoit that was, that Squanto helped a broker. Obviously, they never would have been able to get a foothold, these pilgrims. and these English souls on American soil if it hadn't been for that?

That's very true. It's true. You know, the hardship that they endured, the backstory of the pilgrims is equally fascinating. I mean, they were on ships that almost sank twice. First of all, they fled Great Britain because they were persecuted. You know, the leaders of the pilgrims went to jail for their brink. beliefs. And anyway, they were released and they made a second attempt to escape England to go to Holland, which was more tolerant, more religiously tolerant. They lived there for 10 years. Meanwhile, the Jamestown colony was successful and they heard about that. And they realized that

we would be better off going to the new world. And they viewed the new world in Hebraic terms. This is what's so remarkable about the pilgrims. You know, William Bradford wrote the first 20 pages of his narrative of Pilgrim's Progress in Hebrew. He was a Christian, and yet he could write in Hebrew, and so he did. So they viewed their going to the New World, just like the Israelites were fleeing bondage and slavery from Egypt, going to the promised land, and they spoke in those terms, specifically that they were going to the promised land. They likened themselves to the Israelites, and that gave them, I think, a kind of

kind of spiritual vision that helped them get through the great hardships, the life-threatening hardships. I mean, their Mayflower was only 94 feet long. They had 102 people on it, extraordinarily crowded, and remarkably, no one died in that passage. No one got so deathly ill that they passed away. Now, it's a belief, and I point out in the article in the book, that the Mayflower had been used as a wine transport ship. And across a wine transport ship. A wine transport ship. So they transported wine from France to England,

crossing the English Channel, which can be very rough. And many of those wine casks broke and leaked wine so that the whole ship was soaked in wine. And that was a disinfectant. So when the pilgrims got the ship that they got, it wasn't built for them. It had been a wine transport ship. It was pretty medicinally clean, and that enabled them to live on that ship for over two months without really getting deathly ill. When they got to Plymouth, however, that winter was brutal.

And as you pointed out, Eric, they lost half their people. They got deathly ill and passed away. So what are the other reasons that you give to say why Thanksgiving is? is relevant today to us today? Well, it's the qualities of character, really. I think we all need a, we can all do well to look at our lives as adventure and not be afraid of doing something new

and going on adventure. We have to have vision about what it is we really want. How do we want to live? We have a vision for that, and then we have to have the courage to pursue that. And in the case of the pilgrims, they wanted to live biblically. They wanted to live their lives according to the Bible as they understood it. So it was pursuing the truth.

And they were persecuted for that. So we have to be willing to endure persecution. And then I think that the other important qualities include tolerance for people of different beliefs. Remember that the Mayflower had half pilgrimals. and half non-pilgrams. Some of them may have been Christians, I think some were, but then there were a lot of non-believers on the ship. They had to have tolerance to live together.

And, you know, when they were blown off course and some of the non-believers were ready to mutiny, it was the pilgrim elders who got together and said, we've got to save this. We've got to stay united if we're going into, you know, into a place we don't know about. They couldn't go to the Virginia Company territory. They were then in Massachusetts.

And they had planned, I mean, I've only read this, I think, recently, and I forget some of these things, but they had originally planned to settle in roughly what is New York. Yes. And they were blown off course up into liberal Massachusetts. It's kind of funny, actually, that they wanted to end up, because it's so early, again, this is hard for us to think about, that if you're talking 1620, there's no Dutch settlement in New York in 1620.

It's just the beginnings of the – but there's really nothing there. They plan to settle there. And as you say, they were blown off course. That's a pretty far way off course to get blown. Well, the weather was so bad that I think it was a matter of survival. And when you're on a sailing ship, you have to keep your ship adjusted to the wind so that you don't broach the ship. So I think they were just trying to survive

and they were sailing in a north-westerly direction to do that. And in any case, they could not get to the territory in northern New Jersey that had been given to them. They didn't choose. They were giving a colony destination.

I don't remember what part of northern New Jersey were they supposed to be going to? Well, it would have been, northern New Jersey sort of at the mouth of the Hudson River. That's unbelievable. I can't believe that I don't know this or don't remember it. But that's an amazing concept, really, when we think of that. Folks, I'm talking to Scott Powell. The book is Rediscovering America.

I recommend it. We're talking about Thanksgiving. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Bend and low at the people's feet on a windy corner of the dirty street. Will I ask him while he shine my shoes? How to keep from getting the blues? He grinned as he raised his little hit.

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Welcome back. We're talking about Thanksgiving. Surprise. We're talking about Thanksgiving with the author of Rediscovering America. Scott Powell. He's a fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle and has written a wonderful book called Rediscovering America, from which he's written this article. You can find at the Federalist called Why Thanksgiving is as relevant today as it was for Pilgrims four centuries ago. So what other reasons do you guys?

give Scott Powell for the relevance of this event that happened four centuries ago? Well, in terms of the qualities of character that the pilgrims had, I think another important quality that we need to rediscover and strengthen is tolerance. These were very tolerant people. You know, they got together with nonbelievers. They, you know, they lived together on a ship for over two and then when they got to the new world, they found themselves making relationships with Indians that accepted them. Well, of course, when you say tolerance, today tolerance has become an unpleasant cliche. What we really mean, obviously, is that not that we elide our differences,

but we respect those with whom we disagree and that the pilgrims certainly respected those with whom they were traveling who were not of their faith. And then the way they dealt with the local, with the Native American tribes of that area, it is a model, really. It's an amazing, amazing story. Squanto, of course, is at the center of it, Massasoit. But we see so little of that in the centuries ahead, of course, starting with the incredibly bloody King Phillips War. So they really were a model of toleration, and I think it's important to say that that is a Christian virtue. In other words, you believe what you believe, but you also love those with whom you disagree, and you treat them the way you would want to be treated.

And the pilgrims did this, and it's an amazing thing, because we're always talking about the black marks in our book of these mistakes and these sins. They really were exemplars of Christian love and charity. No question. And to illustrate that point, Eric, the pilgrim community learned that Massasoit had fallen ill, that he was on his deathbed. And Edward Winslow, one of the senior elders who had experience with medicinal herbs and taking care of people when they were sick. And he was also, you know, he was also one of the spiritual leaders.

He immediately decided that he was going to go the 40. miles to see if he could get to Massasoit before he died. 40 miles walking is generally at least two-day trip, and that's if you don't get lost. Anyway, he did get to mess. This is before scooters were invented. That's right. No, actually, when you say 40 miles in those days, that's, yeah, that's kind of an amazing journey.

And he decides really out of the goodness of his heart to pay a visit to Massasoit. So please continue. So he gets there. He administers his herbs and his broth and praise over Massasoit. And remarkably, Massasoit recovers. And he's almost fully recovered within a couple of days. And what he said was, now I see the Englishmen are my friends and love me. And I will never forget this.

I don't know the exact words, but they're in the book. So it was really quite remarkable that these very different people could have this relationship, not just the peace treaty, but the personal relations. And you know, Thanksgiving was amazing because this is after the first winner, right? It was the first harvest. It was a meager harvest. And they invited the Indians to join them. By this time, the Pilgrim's numbers have fallen slightly below 50, I believe.

And they assumed, well, they're not going to show up with more than 50. Indians, but they didn't specify. Well, anyway, over 100 Indians show up to celebrate Thanksgiving. Oh, oh. Make more potato salad, ma. Yeah. But it's good that they did because they brought food you wouldn't believe. They had five deer that they had shot.

They had fowl that they'd shot. They had all kinds of food enough to last three days. The first Thanksgiving was a three-day festival. And this is before the Indians understand. that veganism was morally superior. I got to tell you, when you think about this, this amicable celebration that they would bring food, there's a reason we celebrate this.

This is an absolutely astonishing moment in our history. It's beautiful. It's amicable. And as you said, it lasted 50 years. This kind of relationship, this respectful relationship lasted 50 years. lasted 50 years. It is as anomalous as anything in our history, because as we know, things didn't go so well after this.

It gets very complicated, very hostile, but it really was beautiful. You talk about the Pilgrims, the Mayflower Compact, which was their governing document. Touch on that, and then in the next segment, I want to talk more about that. Yeah, we've kind of gone out of sequence a little bit, but the Mayflower Compact was draft,

on the Mayflower off Cape Cod, before they had even set foot on land. And they didn't know, they knew they were way off course. I mean, they didn't have even a term of Massachusetts. So yet. And the ship was, there was a lot of insolence and unrest. So the elders of the pilgrims decided, look, we've got to stay together. We're going into perhaps hostile land.

we don't know what's ahead of us. So they drafted up this short document, the Mayflower Compact, that called for everyone being equal, everybody looking out for each other's back, and that there would be a consent of everybody. So it's the first document that was the government by the consent of the people.

It's amazing. We'll be right back. We're talking about Thanksgiving. Wouldn't you know it? Don't go away. With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, lots of companies are coming out saying they'll pay for employee abortion travel and expenses. Most of you've heard about some of these companies. You've decided to stop shopping or doing business there, but did you know that you most likely own stock in those companies through your 401ks, IRAs, and other investment accounts? Folks, this is a huge problem, and we need to do something about this to send a message to Wall Street through our investments.

You need to go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric and get a free Inspire Impact Report. This biblical investment analysis will educate you on what's really in your investment accounts, like companies paying for abortion travel. You need to go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric to connect with an InspireAdvisors financial professional who can run your report and help remove companies paying for abortion travel today. Go to inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. That's inspireadvisors.com slash Eric. Advisory services are offered through Inspire Advisors LLC, a registered investment advisor with the SEC.

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with USA Cotton. It comes with two bath towels, two hand towels, and two washcloths. Typically retails at 89.998, now just 3998 with promo code Eric. Limited supply, so be sure to order now. Call 1,800-978-3057, 1-8-3057. Use promo code Eric or go to MyPillow.com. Click on the radio listener square. Use promo code Eric. These offers will not last long. They're known to sell quickly. So order now with promo code Eric at mypillow.com. Mypillow.com. Promocode. I'm talking to Scott Powell. The book is Rediscovering America. He talks about most of our holidays, but we're talking today about Thanksgiving. And you were saying, Scott Powell, that the Mayflower Compact drafted 170 years almost before the United States Constitution was a model for the Constitution and really set the standard. It is amazing that at the beginning of the 17th century, these Christians on a ship came up with this. And obviously it's because they were so steeped in the Bible that they understood these things. Otherwise, it was not going to occur.

Of course, all of, you know, the Pilgrim's beliefs came out of the Protestant Reformation. These were classic Protestants in the sense of, first of all, they even protested the Church of England. That's what drove them to leave England was that they disagreed. The Protestant, the Church of England was thought to be a Protestant church, but it carried over a lot of the traditions of the Catholic Church. And so these pilgrims who were Protestants, they believed in the fundamental principles of the equality of all people, right? The priesthood of all believers, that everyone is equal before God. Everyone has equal value. And so this equality started, was codified, if you will, in the Mayflower Compact and the consent of the government, the consent of the equality of all people.

So it was really quite remarkable, and that led to, I think, their success, their prosperity. The peace treaty that followed was, again, quite a remarkable event. And after that, I think what's important to talk about was the Virginia company that sort of gave them their direction said that when you farm and you produce things, you're going to do it communally and you're going to share the harvest equally. So they were commanded from across the ocean to be socialist communists. And what happened? What happened was their harvest was very meager. William Bradford comments in his diary how some people were slackers. They didn't show up to work.

And yet when the harvest came, they all wanted their fair share. But he commented that the production was very low because of the dysfunctionality of this communal socialist arrangement. And that's how the Department of Motor Vehicles was born. We don't have time to go into that, but that's how it began. No, but it is kind of funny that they noticed this, Practically speaking, they said this isn't working. The incentive isn't there. They had to go through two harvests to finally, for William Bradford to finally said, enough.

We can't do this socialist thing any longer. And he decided on the third planting season that he would divide up the land to all the families so that each family had a private plot. Lo and behold, they had more, you know, more productive. than they knew what to do with. So things turned around dramatically for that. So that's another lesson of the Pilgrims. This is long before Karl Marx that they understood

that socialism doesn't work. Yeah, Karl Marx didn't invent stupidity. It is an amazing thing, really, that this happened, that they experienced this and that we have this story that they lived it through. They were willing to try it. It failed. And then they said, no, we'll do it this way.

So we just have a few minutes left. What else can we learn from the pilgrims that's relevant today? Well, I just think that the story of the pilgrims on so many different levels from the qualities of character to what they went through. It just so happens that the experiences that they had have a lot of lessons to us. We just talked about the lesson. that socialism doesn't work. Well, what if modern American, liberal people go back to the roots of the country and look at that and learn from that?

Well, it turns out that private property and free enterprise are pretty good, and we ought to defend them. We ought to uphold them. We ought to not listen to the siren call of the World Economic Forum or any other socialists because it doesn't work. I'd be all for it, but it never has worked. It brings harm and poverty and suffering, and we have to look at history and we have to understand that. But it is fascinating that at the very beginning of the beginning that there was this short experiment in socialism, it failed.

And, you know, they really got to see that, no, it doesn't work. There's so much else to cover. We've just got a couple of minutes left. Of course, your book is rediscovering America. You talk about all this is in your book. But what else can we learn from the Pilgrims before we have to go? Well, it is nearly, it's the 401st anniversary of Thanksgiving. The first Thanksgiving was held in 1621.

That was 400 years ago plus a year because the years passed. But because of COVID, they were going to have a great, celebration in Plymouth, Massachusetts on the 400th year of the colonization. Unfortunately, that was the first year of COVID. You know, 2020 was 400 years after 1620. So it was canceled. And the best they could do was to do the 400th anniversary of Thanksgiving. And it was not, and of course, it had to come in November when it gets cold. So it wasn't quite the occasion. But it's interesting how the the pilgrims haven't been really sabotaged as much as some of our other figures of history, be it Columbus whose statues have been torn down everywhere,

and of course the Confederate statues. And they really want to go after the founding fathers. We know that. But really the founding fathers, they were Christians, and they formed a government based really on the moral law, the moral biblical laws in the Old Testament. And so I think we need to rediscover it all, and that's why the book is so powerful.

This chapter on Thanksgiving is just one out of 14 chapters that describes the virtue of the history of America. And it doesn't gloss over our problems or the periods or like the slavery period. But what it does show, you know, what the critical race theory people don't understand is that, okay, so you go through the indoctrination of critical race theory, nothing gets accomplished, whereas we went through the slavery period, we ended up fighting a war over it. That was a civil war. We paid a huge

price of 620,000 deaths. Forgive me, Scott. I'm afraid we're out of time. All this stuff is in the book, Rediscovering America. I recommended highly. Scott Powell, thank you so much. Hey, thank you, Eric. We'll do it again. Happy Thanksgiving again and again and again. Okay, Alvin. The week, the weekend. We have some particularly exciting news.

We do. We're going to save that in a minute or two. Before we get to the exciting news, and I am almost shocked at this news. This is big news, folks. I think you're going to have some fun. Okay. I want to mention a couple things. Neutrametics told us that for the rest of this month only,

that's November 22. If you use the code Eric, it's 35% off. I don't know why they chose to do that at the end of the month, but I would take advantage of it if you're interested. Nutrametics.com, 35% off. Also want to repeat, if you're interested in company Socrates in the city, I can only tell you, folks, it is Oz Guinness. He's the gold standard.

You'll see when you're there, there's no one like him. If it weren't for Oz, I never would have started. Socrates in the city. So this is a very special event, December 6th, here in New York City. We're looking forward to that. I'm traveling like crazy. I'm preaching in Atlanta at Church of the Apostles in Atlanta this Sunday morning. You can find out everything at my website, which is Eric Mataxis.com. And I want to remind you, before we tell you the big news, I want to remind you to sign up for my newsletter at Ericmetaxis.com. And I want to remind you to sign up for my newsletter at Ericmetaxis.com. I want to remind you to support our sponsor, Mike Lindell, by buying all of your Christmas gifts at my store.com and mypillow.com.

And use the code Eric to help support this radio program. There is all kinds of stuff there. You just have to go there and you'll see. But if you want to support a hero, someone that I now think of as a dear friend, kind, generous soul when you get to know him, mypillow.com. Mystore.com. And as we always say, the coffee is unbelievable. Oh, yeah. I can't believe how good it.

Honestly, I just, it's going to be mediocre. It's going to be fine. No, it's really good. It is. It's mystore.com, my coffee.com. Okay, Alvin, the big news. Yes, the big news. Oh, I love it.

This is hard to get my head around. Okay, where do we start? About a few months ago, we taped four episodes of a late-night talk show, The Talk Show, starring Eric Metaxus. That's me. It was next level. It was like the Tonight Show, Carson, Letterman, you know, it was like a big deal thing. We raised the money to tape four bona fide episodes, hour-long episodes, which we did downstairs.

We're upstairs here at the TBN Theater, downstairs in the theater, which is a heavenly little theater. I mean, just like made for this kind of a thing. We taped the four shows. We had an array of stunning guests. Yeah. The shows were edited and basically we're trying to figure out who is going to air it and how we're going to do that. But in the meantime, somebody thought, hey, now that these shows are edited, why don't we put them up at SalemNow.com? Yes.

For free. Free. You understand? Free salemnow.com. So I am really just a little thrilled and shocked to say, that you can watch these episodes. These are pilot episodes. We taped them in August,

but we thought, let's make them available if you go to SalemNow.com, and how do it would people find it there? Well, there's a search bar up there. Put in Eric Metaxus. Put in Eric's name. Eric Metaxes. Two things will come up.

The radio program, which is also at Salem Radio, Salem Communications. Salem News Network. That's right. That'll come up. Yeah, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about the talk show,

late-night talk show. There's a great little logo up there. You're going to see it. You click on that. You get all four programs. I think it's free. I'm not positive. I hope it's not free. No, I'm serious. Like, this cost us a zillion dollars to produce. But the guests are like Danny Bonaducci of the Partridge family. George Hamilton, Carol Alt, Vincent Pastory from the Sopranos. Ron Howard. Ron Howard, John Cleese. Oh, my gosh. Carrot Top. I mean, look, you'll see. Salem now. We had a great time. I just can't believe. Well, there's the announcement. Thank you.