The Eric Metaxas Show - Voddie Baucham (Encore)

Episode Date: June 12, 2021

Voddie Baucham provides a great deal of pushback on Critical Race Theory with his new book, "Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism's Looming Catastrophe." (Encore Presentation)

Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Hey there, folks. I am very excited about my guest today. He's just told me how to pronounce his name, and I'm going to try. Vody, Balcom. Vody, welcome to this program. Thank you very much. It's great to be with you.

That's really the only question I had. How do you pronounce your name? And we're done, basically. So we can just talk about anything you like. You, listen, I've been booked on this program a couple of times. you have had major health issues, so I am just thrilled that you're looking good, you're here, we're having this conversation, but welcome back to the land of the living because you've been through it. Yeah, I have, man. In fact, I'm here right now in Jacksonville, Florida,

where I'm finishing up treatment at the Mayo Clinic and I've had a couple of heart surgeries. But all is well. I'm on the road to recovery and feeling a lot better. You had a couple of heart surgeries. You make it sound like I'm going to get a couple of, you know, newspaper. A couple of heart surgeries. Honestly, we're just glad to see you. Now, look, part of the reason I'm so glad to see you is because you have some important things to say that very few people are saying. They're certainly not saying it in the way that you are.

Your brand new book, which is doing extremely well, is called Fault Lines. fault lines, the social justice movement, and evangelicalism's looming catastrophe. So let's start there. What's the thesis of your book? Well, the thesis of the book really is that social justice is not what most Christians think it is. And that people are being sucked into it with good intentions, but it's not going to end well. That's why I used the fault line metaphor. That whole earthquake metaphor, we're seeing a massive divide, and we're seeing it divide families and churches and, you know, ministries and

businesses and so on and so forth. And I just want people to, number one, be aware and secondly, find themselves on the right side of the fault line. Actually, before we continue along these substantive lines, I just have to be childish and say, if your name is pronounced Voddy, Why does it have two Ds in it? Yeah, because that's the way my father and my grandfather wanted it, I guess. Because that's just the way it is. Vody. What kind of a name is Vody?

I mean, obviously, that's not typical for, I mean, it's just not something I've ever heard before. Is that unique to you? It's just a family name. It's just a family name, yeah. And Vody, where did you grow up? I grew up in Los Angeles. In Los Angeles. Did you grow up in a Christian home?

No, no. I was raised by a single teenage Buddhist mother. Never heard the gospel until I got to university, actually. So, no, I wasn't raised around Christianity. So you became a Christian in college? Yeah, definitely. Wow. And did you know that you immediately that you wanted to go into the field that you're now in?

No, I didn't. I wanted to be a lawyer. Really, if I'm honest, before I became a Christian, if you had asked me what I wanted to do, I was majoring pre-law and international business, and I would have said I want to be the most powerful black man in America. You want to be what? Say that again? The most powerful black man in America. The most powerful black man in America?

Yeah. That job is taken. I got that job, pal. All right? I'm the most powerful black man in America. And I don't care what anybody says, I am who I want to be. It's the power of my mind. I can be anybody.

That's right. But so you just identify. You want to be the most powerful black man in America. But right now, you know, when you say powerful, there's kind of a worldly way of thinking about power. But your voice has become extremely powerful. I mean, it seems to me that there are very few people saying the things that you're saying. I mean, to go back to the conversation and your book, Fault Lines, what is it? How do people get twisted?

In other words, we all know if you're a Christian, you're supposed to care about the poor. You're supposed to care about disenfranchised groups. I mean, that's kind of obvious. You're supposed to be anti-racism or tribalism. I mean, that's all basic from the scripture. How does a good idea like that get twisted into what we call social justice that is no longer biblical? What part of social justice? Where does it peel away and become something that is dangerous?

You know, ideas have consequences and words have made. And we want to be just. We do want to look out for the poor, for the oppressed. And along comes this worldview, this critical theory worldview, that basically says the world is divided into oppressors and the oppressed. It says that the oppressors are white, male, heterosexual, cisgendered, able-bodied, native born, so on and so forth, on down to Christians, right? it says that, you know, the rest of us are part of these oppressed minority groups. And then it says that justice is about distributing resources and power from the oppressor to the oppressed. So they're using the same words, right?

Justice, oppression, you know, so on and so forth. But they're pouring a different meaning into those words. Okay, let's be honest. We're talking about Marxism. This is cultural Marxism. And instead of wealth redistribution, it's something else redistribution. But it is antithetical to freedom. It's antithetical to a free society.

And most importantly, it's antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the Bible. What am I missing? What am I missing? No, you're spot on. And that's why this is so problematic. That's why it's so confusing. and discouraging for many when they see Christians sort of imbibing this, when they see Christians parody this ideology. And that was the main motivation for writing the book. I mean, I'm seeing

this. This wasn't a book that I wanted to write. It's a book that I felt like I had to write. I mean, I'm seeing this, and it's driving me crazy. I've been talking about cultural Marxism, Gramshian neo-Marxism since, you know, the early to mid-2000s, people looked at me like, you know, what are you on about? What is all that, you know, like I was just making stuff up, you know. And now all of a sudden the enemy is at the gate and people are wondering what happened. Yeah, the enemy's inside the gate in many of our churches. I mean, it's just astonishing to me. and, you know, the idea that many evangelicals, usually, let's be honest, white evangelicals,

the whiter, the more likely they are to feel, I guess, maybe some sense of white guilt that prevents them from caring about why these are bad issues. All they could see is, I'm white, I got to do something. Yes, I have privilege. They don't really seem to be able to think more deeply about the fact that people in the, the church should always be for equality and against racism. How do they make that leap? In other words, when did it leap to critical race theory? And talk about that, too.

If you don't have time in this segment, we'll get into the next segment, because it's something that's been thrown around, critical race theory. Like 10 minutes ago, somebody figured out some magical thing and now everybody has to worry about critical race theory, you know? Yeah. And critical race theory, you know, comes out of critical theory. But to go back to what you were saying, Christians are for equality, but critical theory is not about equality.

Critical theory is about equity. It's a Marxist concept. Equity is about the equal... Sorry, can we stop? No, that's all right. Go ahead. Go ahead. This is great.

We're keeping it real. Oh, that was... That's... I just want people to know that we're not as buttoned up as they think. I saw it happening, and they're... There was nothing I can do. Don't wait about it. Yeah.

So critical theory is not about equality. It's about equity. Equity is about equal outcomes. Equity is about equal distribution. And so when Christians say, yes, we're all about justice. We're all about equality. Again, they're speaking a different language and not realizing that these ideas come from somewhere.

And most of the time they come from the academy and many people are, you know, sort of accustomed to talking about it from that perspective. But the academy is using it in these deceptive ways intentionally because they know that that's the way that you get into people's thinking. It's amazing to me, again, that the gullibility of evangelical pastors or the lack of courage. In other words, you have to call a spade a spade. And I can't, you know, people say, well, you can't even say that, Eric. Be careful what you say. We're going to actually, we're at a time of this segment. We'll be right back.

And Vodie, I will give you a chance to speak. Don't go away. Hey there, folks. How many years have I been telling you about relief factor? What, like four? The truth is, I know there are millions of people. In fact, some say over 100 million people struggling with some kind of pain, maybe from exercise, just getting older.

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Right now we're talking about your new book, which is doing very well, thank God, it's called Fault Lines, the Social Justice Movement and Evangelism's Looming Catastrophe. We're going to get more, I want to get back to that, but I just want to say that you're all over the place in a good way. You've done many things. You've written a lot of books. It says that you are the dean of theology at African Christian University. University in Lusaka, Zambia.

Did you just throw that in here just to play with my head? Are you really, because I know you're not in Zambia now, but that's amazing. When did that start? We've been there. It'll be six years in August. We went to help to start the African Christian University. Me and my wife are seven youngest children. Your seven youngest children?

Yes, we have nine. You have nine kids? Yeah, yeah. Wow. That alone is impressive. I could just interview you about that. That is very impressive in this day and age. Most people don't have nine kids.

It says that you're an accomplished martial artist, and you took up Brazilian jiu-jitsu. We could just talk about that. We're going to talk about your book, but I'm just saying you're very interesting person because you've done so many different things. You're all over the place in a good way. What is your most official title at this point?

I mean, do you have a position as a professor? here in the States? No, no, no, no. We live in Zambia full time. You do? I didn't know that. Yeah. No, no, we've been there for, yeah, like I said, we've been there for six years now.

I come back to the U.S. three or four times a year to do different speaking tours. Wow. And so you're obviously here. Now I understand what you were saying earlier that you've been here in the States to get you said a couple of heart surgeries. Right. But you seem healthy. You seem like you're doing very well. Yeah, I am.

I'm doing very well. well and we thank God for that. Well, I was saying earlier, I'm just so grateful for you and your voice. Let's go back to this issue. The book is called Fault Lines, the Social Justice Movement, and evangelicalism's looming catastrophe. Why do you say evangelicalism's looming catastrophe? What do you mean?

This is not going to end well. Again, I've said earlier, we're seeing the divide. We're seeing the divide in churches and families and denominations and so on and so forth. this ideology is incompatible with the gospel as you so aptly pointed out and as people continue down this road the divide is going to be catastrophic we're already beginning to see it but the divide is going to be catastrophic there are going to be some people who end up shipwrecked in their faith because of this that's that's a big statement but i unfortunately think you're you're quite right in saying that is it I guess what I see happening in the culture in the last number of years and Trump was a large part of this.

A divide kind of happened and many people went radical left. In other words, maybe they had been able to exist in a kind of no man's land, sort of a moderate place. But somehow many people turned harshly left. And when I say left, I don't mean to the traditional left, but I mean to Marxism. whether they know it or not, many of them don't know it, or even if they know it, they're not, they don't know enough to understand how dark and terrible it is as an ideology. They seem to think that maybe there's something to it.

Yeah, and I point back even further than that. I think the Obama administration was a big part of that. I was writing in 2008 about Obama's Marxist roots and his Marxist ideology and, you know, how he was not going to be good for race relations. Because, again, he becomes president and immediately because of his ideology and because he's coming from the left, anything that's set against him all of a sudden became an act of racism. And I think people became entrenched during those eight years. And I'm not saying it's a bad thing for a person of whatever ethnicity to be. president but what i am saying is that when people have a particular ideology that that ideology

will bear fruit and i think his ideology bore fruit and i thought i think we saw that as you so happily pointed out as well i think we saw that magnified um in the last two elections yeah i mean it's a horrible thing when uh marxism makes its way into american life because as we both know it's simply not compatible with freedom, with the kind of republic that we've had for two and a half centuries. And many people in the church seem particularly naive or ignorant about what it is. Is there a reason for that, that people in the church seem to be particularly open to this kind of thing? Yeah, I think it goes back to that use of language, to the strategic use of language.

And I would take this all the way back to, and a Marxist from the 1920s and 30s in Italy by the name of Antonio Granchi. And then forward from there to the Frankfurt School with this very specific and intentional move to sort of cloak Marxism in different terminology and to not talk about the sort of bloody revolution anymore, but to do battle in the market. place of ideas. And, you know, I think when you start talking about critical theory, people don't know what critical theory is, critical race theory. People don't know what that is. They don't know that term critical takes you back to the Frankfurt School and Yale Marxism. Well, listen, most people don't know what the Frankfurt School is. They've never heard of Marcusa. So let's let's lay that out since we can. Tell us, when did Gramsci and Marcusa, how did they, what was their thinking about taking Marxism into this other sphere so that the theory,

which was once purely economic, became something else? Yeah. So Gramsci is an Italian Marxist who spent a lot of time in the 20s and 30s in prison under the fascist in Italy because the fascists wanted to protect Italians from his mind. Imagine that. And so he was a sort of bookish guy, a small, sickly guy. And he, like a lot of Marxists, after the Bolshevier Revolution, thought that Europe was going to fall, sort of systematically that was going to happen. And it didn't.

And so now the question becomes, okay, why isn't this working and what needs to happen? And Gramsci is the one who comes up with this idea of cultural hegemony, that the roles of society, meaning professors and priests and, you know, and lawyers and judges and so and so forth, were sort of influencing culture and imposing on culture, this worldview that had nothing to do with truth, but had everything to do with the oppressor, teaching the oppressed how to think. You move forward and, you know,

the Frankfurt School in Frankfurt, Germany, is influenced by Gramsci. Eventually, when Hitler comes to power, they leave. and end up in the United States. And really in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, sort of become ingrained in American institutional life and become real fault leaders

in what people refer to as cultural Marxism. Where was Markusa? Where did he end up? Was it Hollywood? I believe so. Marcusa, Lukac, you know, these guys were all over the place. They were in Columbia at Columbia University, in Hollywood, you know, having influence there, not just in Hollywood, but having influence, for example, with people like Angela Davis, who was sort of disciples by the Frankfurt School.

Their influence was far-reaching. And then you get into the academy and into so-called grievance studies. and it is, you know, Frankfurt School writ large in feminist studies, in Chicano studies, in African-American studies, in, you know,

critical legal studies, and so on and so forth. I remember when I was at Yale in the early 80s, this was already a big thing, and, you know, Jacques Derrida came to the campus to speak, and I remember the stalwart

against it was Harold Bloom. He saw this all as kind of, grievance, you know, it was a philosophy of grievance, basically, and, you know, Marxist theory and feminist theory, and on and on and on. I think most people, though, are simply mystified by it. It seems like a lot of gobbledy gook. It doesn't really, I think that's one of the reasons it's been able to stay under the radar and why so many people don't have any idea of how pernicious it is. Yeah, and the gobbly gooks, that's a good word, because if you read the literature, If you read the academic literature in the grievance studies, it's all over the place.

And it's extremely poorly written. And a lot of that is by design. You can't really understand what people are saying. And yet they're getting PhDs and, you know, prominent teaching posts and so on and so forth. And Pete Buttigieg's father introduced all of this stuff in Notre Dame, as you know, you're nodding. Folks, I'm talking to Vody, not Voddy, Voddy, Voughty, Baucom, who is with us in the United States. Thrill to have you. We'll be right back. Prescription dispensing Labs is a national licensed pharmacy specializing in personalized prescription and natural medicine. The pharmacists at PD Labs are credited with formulating unique nasal sprays for the dreaded brain fog and a leader in uncovering new compounds to improve your health.

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That's 888909-11010. Hey, their friends, Eric Metaxis here. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Vody Baucum, who's with us in the United States because he's had a couple of heart surgeries. Vodia, again, I want to say how happy I am to see you obviously healthy and, back. Congratulations on your book. Fault lines, the social justice movement and evangelicalism's looming catastrophe. When we're talking about Marxism, the reason I'm often shocked that usually white evangelicals in places like Wheaton or wherever, they get sucked in by this,

but what strikes me as troubling is that Marxism is by definition anti-God. It's enforced atheism. godless philosophy by definition. But people who are trying to push it, they don't really want to talk about that. They don't want to lead with that because they don't want to drive people away. So BLM has made great inroads. But when you push God out of the picture, you get this kind of ideology. And it is anything we know by definition, if it is, if it's pushed God out of the picture, there is something satanic about it. I don't say that too lightly. Yeah, there absolutely is. And, you know, not only did Marx have this open animosity toward religion in general and Christianity in particular, but also Gramsci. Gramsci talks about socialism being that ideology that must most assuredly supplant Christianity.

There's open hostility today in grievance studies, in the sort of socialism. justice literature towards Christianity. Christianity is seen as an oppressive hegemony. And so, again, these things are not new. And it is surprising until you recognize that this deception is intentional. When you talk about people being delivered from oppression, when you talk about, you know, equity, which sounds a lot like equality, and when you talk about, you know, resources being fairly distributed. These are things that sound good to Christians. They sound good to Americans. And unless you scratch and go beneath the surface, you can be duped. And many people are duped into believing that this is okay. Or what they do is they'll say, well, I know that that ideology

is not okay. But what they're going for, right, or the Christian version of what they're going for is okay. And what we'll do is we'll write that ideology in order to get the Christian version of what they're going for. And there is no middle way with this. Yeah, I mean, it's like the Christian version of atheism. Let's try it. I have to say that the history of this, and we go back to Marx, but it seems to me that the spiritual roots are in the French Revolution. There's something fundamentally divisive and anti-clerical. anti-god, anti-religion. It really is a utopianist scheme.

I mean, we can think of the Tower of Babel. We want to get to heaven without God. We're going to do it on our own. I would say, philosophically, that's ultimately the project beneath what we're talking about. We know that it cannot succeed, but many people seem to think that it can. Many Christians seem to think that it can.

Yeah, and in many ways it's an over-realized eschatology, right? we have a natural hunger and thirst and desire for that time when God will make all things right, right? When, you know, this will be delivered from this, you know, the pain of this world and from the yearnings and longings of this world in that perfect world that is to come. And in many cases, what happens is people are tapping into that and offering it as though we can have it, number one, into here and now. And number two, without God. Well, it's interesting because it always seems to me that that's kind of where leftist ideology pulls Christianity. You get this idea that we can have it here. We can, I guess it was Buckley who popularized the phrase. I don't know where it originally came,

but to immanentize the eschaton, right? That we want the millennial reign. We want everything to be wonderful. We want the line to lie down with the lamb. And we're going to make it happen now. We're going to get there now. And so there is a tension because of course, as Christians, we want to work toward that. But it's a little bit like working toward the resurrection and avoiding the crucifixion. We cannot get there unless we go through this certain way because the world is fallen, because there is sin and death. They seem, I guess, in a way to be pushing away the sin and death as though we can find a shortcut. Yeah. And I think a lot of this has to do with sort of that kind of religious right mentality.

I think there are a lot of Christians who, in that sort of religious right movement, had that over-realized eschatology as well. But because it was conservative, we didn't think about this problem of an over-realized eschatology. Because it was us, we thought that it would somehow be better. Talk about that. In other words, how do you see this idea? played out in the religious right.

I'm fascinated by this. Say more about that. Just that just that whole idea that if we get enough people to vote the right way, if we just get the right people in office, if we just get the right people in the Supreme Court, then we will usher in a utopia from the right, as opposed to ushering in a utopia from the left. So where does it, how do you strike that balance?

In other words, shouldn't we, we should try, to elect people who are going to govern according to constitutional principles and that kind of thing. Absolutely. But what you're saying is there's a temptation to solve our problems politically. Yeah, there is. It's a temptation to do that. And I think one of the easy ways to deal with that is to keep the gospel in the forefront. And one of the things that happened with the truth's right is that all of a sudden we tampered down our Christianity.

Hang on, hang on, because I want to get right back to that. When we come back, we're going to talk about, we're going to let you complete that thought. Very important thought. Folks, don't go away. Folks, welcome back. I'm talking to Vody, Bacom, Jr., complicated, fascinating person, Voti, wonderful to talk to you. You just make an important point that, I mean, I say this a lot when I do public speaking, that I think it's important for Christians to be involved in everything, and especially,

especially politics, but we cannot make an idol of politics. And you were just saying that there's a temptation. I was talking about it on the left, but you were saying on the right, and I agree with you, there is a temptation to solve our problems politically and to forget that ultimately our problems cannot be solved outside of the gospel. So we want to do every good thing we can. We want to abolish slavery in the slave trade. We want to abolish sex trafficking.

We want to do everything we can, but we have to be aware that we can't do everything apart from the Lord. And so you did say that you think that some people on the right were tamping down their faith and forgetting about it. Yeah. Yeah. So all of a sudden, when you gain political power, you sort of pull your foot off the gas in terms of, evangelism and the gospel and, you know, openly acknowledging Christ and so on and so forth. And we see a lot of people who did that because power is intoxicating. And if we're not careful, that's where we always end up going.

And we sort of wrap the Bible and the cross and the flag, you know. But we have to remember that King Jesus is just that. He's King Jesus. And it is him before whom we vow. and no one else. And I'll tell you one of the ways that you see this is when our guy gets in office and he does something that we don't necessarily agree with, right, like Reagan's Supreme Court appointment.

And all of a sudden it's we can't hit him too hard because he's our guy. That's when you know you're in a bad place. I think you're right. And it's a tricky thing. I mean, I felt that with Trump that I, I, I felt that the media was beating him up so astonishingly. I mean, I'd never seen anybody quite treated that way that I did. I mean, I said publicly that I felt that it would be piling on to criticize because, of course,

I would see things that I wouldn't like, whatever, but I thought, what's the point this guy's, it's, you know, it's sort of like somebody is just getting beat up in an alley and you feel like, do I really want to get in and get my kick in? is it really is it really the time to do that so it is it is a very very tricky thing if you thought if you thought it was bad try being an american expat living in a foreign country during trump's presidency it was amazing to see how the foreign press uh dealt with him and and dealt with the u.s during that time um where we are we get BBC Africa um and it's you know basically Marxism 101 um so i i i guess

what you mean. And I get it especially being an American, living, you know, in a foreign land and seeing not just the president, but the country, being beat up like that. It was something that was hard to deal with. Yeah. And when do you get to go back to Zambia now that I realize you're there full time? When are you healthy enough to go back to your seven youngest kids? Yeah. Well, now we are going to take some time to do some visiting. We're going to visit the, you know, the great grandkids and whatnot and do some other things. And so we'll go back mid to late jure. All right. And the doctors are basically saying that you're out of the woods. I mean, you really, for people who don't know, because I was one of those praying for you or, you know, we have the same publisher, Salem books. And I was astonished at what you were going through.

Can you share a little bit of what you've been through in the last few months? Yeah, you know, it started really at the end of January, beginning of February when I finished a preaching tour here and just felt poorly. Went back to Lusaka. The flight was horrible. I didn't know at the time that I was in heart failure. But I had an amazing, a terrible arrhythmia. My heart was racing, you know, 130 to 150 nonstop. And so we ended up having to get stabilized there in Lusaka.

and fly here, ended up at the Mayo Clinic and had the first procedure to deal with the arrhythmia. And then as I was sort of recovering from that, they wanted to just make sure everything else was all right. And in the making sure everything else was all right, they went and looked at my heart more closely and found that I had four blocked arteries. Just four? Yeah, just four. Now, I just want to be clear, you're a guy, not only have you done mixed martial arts, you have competed and won in competition in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, whatever. So you're a tremendously healthy person on one level. How do you square that?

I mean, that's just fascinating. Well, you know, when I had my first procedure, it was on my mother's 70th birthday, and she had had that same procedure for an arrhythmia. and then when I had the second procedure in April, and the first one in February, the second one was in April. And I had that almost 15 years to the day after my father died of a massive coronary at the age of 55.

So I came by it honest. This is called genes. Wow. Yes. I mean, and so right now, what did they do if I can get invasive, not physically, but in terms of my question, what did they do?

So did you get stents? Did you get new valves? What happened? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no stents. No stents. I mean, two of them, yeah, no stents. They did a quadruple bypass. So I got the whole, I got the full Monty, you know,

the whole zipper and, yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. But this will, it seems like they kind of set you up for a long season ahead. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's repaired, you know.

Yeah, I got the, I got the engine overhaul. I'm ready to go. Well, it's just, it's just, do they do a steam cleaning? A lot of times I'll throw that in. Yes, absolutely. Honestly, on behalf of so many people, I just thank God that you are well and that you're able to promote your book. As I said before, it is a bestseller. It's doing very well. I speak as an author. I know what I'm talking about. This book is doing very well. It's called fault lines, the social justice movement, and evangelicalism's looming catastrophe. fault lines by Voti, Bacom, Jr.

And Vody, how can people find you online? They can look at Votebawcum.orghum. But they have to spell VOTI-E and B-A-U-C-H-A-M. Voting. If you just put Votee in any search engine, it usually comes to me. That's the good news with a name like VOTI-E, V-O-D-D-I-E, V-D-I-E, V-D-I-E. V-D-I-E-A-J-A-J-A-J-A-J-A-G-W-W-E. V-D-J-J-J-J-J-W-E. joy to have this conversation. Look forward to talking to you again. God bless you. Thank you so much.

It's been an honor. Alvin, guess what? It's time for the homework assignment. Every day on this program, we're going to be given out a homework assignment. I've been doing it casually, but folks, it's going to be part of your grade. And I think it is incumbent on me to say clearly what the assignment is since this goes into your final grade in the class. Okay, so today's homework assignment. Yes. First thing, this by the way, this is, this is for the month, SalemNow.com. If you go to SalemNow.com, there's a lot of stuff you can watch with your whole family. So visit SalemNow.com, but specifically there's a film out. It's called The Streets Were My Father. It's the Journey of Three Inner City Chicago Men, a story of fatherlessness, gang life, prison life.

and then the power of God to change lives, transform lives dramatically. It is hugely inspiring, but it also underscores the, like practically the most important issue there is. It's called fatherlessness. If you don't want crime in America, deal with fatherlessness because it's huge. So go to SalemNow.com. It's called The Streets Were My Father. Okay, that's assignment number one.

Assignment number two. Tell your friends, please, about Mypillar. and my store.com and using the code Eric. A lot of people, maybe they're watching Fox News or something else, and it gives you a code. And I'm thinking, do you really want to give that portion of the profit to Fox or to whomever? Or do you want it to give it to this show, which has been banished from YouTube and is being sued by, I can't even go into that publicly. So we do need your help. Every time you use the code, Eric at Mypillow.com or MyStore.com, most of my books are at MyStore.com. most of my books are at my store.com and we'll have way more coming up soon. You're helping

us defray those costs on this program and we do need your help. So if you tell your friends to use the code Eric, we're grateful. And as part of that, Nutrimetics is a new big sponsor on the program. We've had Tim Eaton on now twice. Watch those videos. We posted them on Rumble. And if you get the, if you get our email newsletters, you've seen them. They are heroes, honestly, because they're producing a spectacular product. And I'm learning a lot about different herbs and spices or whatever they call them. What do they call them? Supplements.

Oh, yeah, supplements. But not only that, they give 50% of their royalties to missions. Right. You can listen to the thing. But if you use the code Eric there, you get 20% off. And most of us use all these things, whether it's, you know, magnesium or zinc or vitamin C or vitamin D, all the basics, stevia, melatonin, and on and on and on. They have more exotic stuff. But I just want to say that every time you use the code, Eric,

you save 20% and it helps defray costs on this program and we need your help so that's a homework assignment and then finally finally okay CSI yes we are freeing slaves in the Sudan folks am I making this up no people in this is this is like the wake-up call for us in the west we complain about you know getting banned from YouTube there are people enslaved for their faith in Sudan and I just want to say that we can do something about it we did something about it was a year ago or eight months ago we A huge number of, was a Christmas, that's right. Yeah. And we freed like thousands of slaves.

And this is an amazing thing. I can't even believe I'm saying this. Yeah. But that's what CSI does. You can participate. Whatever you give goes to this. But anybody who gives $250 that frees a slave, and they don't buy them out of slavery, it's more complicated.

I won't go into it now. But it frees a slave and then sets them up in a new life. Now, again, it's incomprehensible to us. We're talking about people enslaved. So CSI, their boots on the ground, they're helping. Yes. It's kind of astonishing to me that they do this. So, uh, yeah, the banner.

A banner is right at the top of the, uh, metaxistocotoccom. Right at the taxistocot.com. What for it. Have I mentioned our radio website is metaxis talk. There you go. Have I mentioned that? You can call 888 253-3522. Say it again?

888-253-352-2. Please give generously. This is an incredible. People talk about slavery 150 years ago. This is happening today. And you can free a slave today. And the fact is, because of CSI, you can do something about it. God bless you.

Thank you. Thank you.