Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, guys, there's a strong chance that what you're about to hear in the Parish Circuit is going to offend you. Hold on.
Don't turn it off. This episode gets spicy, and my challenge to you is to make it all the way to the end. And don't turn it off just because you hear something that you might not like that David or Stuart may be about to say. Instead, sit down, marinate in the info, maybe make some notes, ask some questions, and then really think through what. Why you believe what it is that you believe.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Hold on.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: Things are getting dicey. Here we go.
What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Parish Circuit.
Comment section Roundup. That's our new theme song for this segment. Episode style.
Oh, you don't like it?
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I should have said. I should have said before you start, you know, push the record button. But I hate it.
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Well, okay, then we'll have to pick another one. Maybe we could let the fans submit their own comment section. Roundup theme song. Yeah, that's it. We'll take it. Maybe the Bonanza theme song comment section. You know, because it's a comment section Roundup.
You don't like that one either.
[00:01:12] Speaker B: That could be better.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: That could be better.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Comments section Roundup. Yeah, I like it. Let's do that.
Okay, we'll figure that out later. So today we're talking about Jamie Davis.
This was the most viral post we've ever had. This is the farthest reaching post we've ever had.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: That's amazing to me. What? 300 some odd comments. What was it, 360 comments?
[00:01:40] Speaker B: 346. Wow.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: 346 comments, almost 200 likes.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Some of those are laughing faces, though.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Some of them are angry faces.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: No angry faces.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: But some of them are laughing faces, which I interpret as not liking.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: What they don't think we're.
All right, let's talk about this. So some of these comments are amazing, and they're from people who obviously aren't really engaging with the content that we're creating. They just read a highlighted headline, said something angry, and then kept scrolling on Facebook.
Just scrolled down to the next thing on their feed.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: The age that we live in, that is how we interact with content and information.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: That's right. We read a headline, and then we say something about that one random headline, and then we move on to the next thing. We don't actually engage with the ideas of the content. That's the vast majority. But there was a lot of people, I would say, that are Actually engaging with the ideas. At least 15%, 10 to 15% of the people who are blowing us up in the comments. So we're going to take it some time today and kind of walk through a few of these things. In another special comment section, roundup episode of the Parish Circuit.
So I'm Stuart Amadon. With me is David Riley. Somebody else said that.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: What up?
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Somebody else said, you guys don't tell us who you are. And I'm like, just tell me that you didn't listen to the podcast without saying you didn't listen to the podcast, just push play. We even put it as a button on the website. A giant button says listen.
It really is funny. So if you are listening to this episode right now, I want you to know that we appreciate you, even if you hate everything we say.
You're listening.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: And that means something to us.
Thank you.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Absolutely. And, you know, look, we're not. We're not out here, unlike some of the comments, we aren't here just to, like, be offensive intentionally or anything like that. We are really trying to.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: We've been called so many things.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Talk about truth, God's truth, ultimately.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: And discuss these things.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Somebody else said in the comments section. I don't remember who it was. They were like, you guys are biased. I'm like, come on. We've said from day one we're here to provide a Christian conservative worldview on local news and events.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Well, yeah, and that's a man. I feel like this episode could be long because there's just so many things we could talk about here. But, like, on that point, it's like, yes, we've told you exactly who we are and what we believe, and we're biased, and so are you, and everyone is.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: It seems like there's this weird world. Let's address this for just a minute. Let's just address the bias fallacy, okay? As if there's some news media out there in the world that's genuinely neutral, as though that could possibly exist.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:37] Speaker A: So in what planet?
[00:04:41] Speaker B: It's this myth of secularism and neutrality that can exist in our world, and it found its way into a lot of education and things like that. So people are still out there that think like, oh, no, I'm a neutral observer who makes only rational decisions and observations based on the undisputable evidence.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: I am above the fray. I don't come down there with you peasants where you have your opinions. No, I see all, and I recognize that I am above it. Yes, that's a come on, man, you have biases. Everybody does. Everybody. There is no neutral.
You have a worldview, and it works its way out into the way that you speak, the way that you think, the way that you act. It happens with everybody. What we're doing in the parish circuit is we're coming in to say, hey, let's put the Bible on that.
Let's talk about this from a Christian worldview. Let's sit down and say, hey, let's examine this according to the scriptures and then see what comes. Yep, this is who we said we've been from the day one. This is not a surprise. And in St. Landry parish, we are a deeply religious region.
Omnia ade glorium. We live in a.
Heck. Our counties are called parishes in Louisiana. Like, we are a deeply religious people.
And so we're here to say amen.
Let's do it. Let's go hard. Let's go all the way back to our roots and say, what does the Bible really say? How do we really live? How then shall we live?
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Can I make a quip, please? Look, I mean, not all the way back to our roots. Appaloosis, the tribe related.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: Not that far back to the attack.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Apaw.
Wait. And I'm sorry, I could be getting my tribes mixed up here. I think it was the attack of who were cannibals.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Let's not go that far back.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: We don't want to do that.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Not that far back.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: No. And the Bible would have something to say about that.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Christendom. Let's go back to the Christendom time of Saint Landry Parrish in Opelousis. Let's go back that far. That's the far that I would like to go back. Omnia ad DEI glorium. That's the motto of the city of Opelousis, by the way, if you didn't know that already. Okay, so. Comment section, Roundup, Bonanza. Comment section, Roundup. Let's see what we got. Dave, which one do you want to do first? Do you have one?
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Let's start at the top.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Let's go right from the jump. Here we go.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: So we. We did excited in the episode, we nuanced quite a bit. Like, we. We talked about how Democrats in Louisiana like Jamie Davis have a unique flavor and aren't exactly like other Democrats. Like you could. If you were pro life in my home state of Washington, you would be laughed out and scorned out of any Democrat convention or gathering and called all sorts of bitter names. But in Louisiana, you can be a A pro life Democrat.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah. What I would call. And this we talked about in the previous episode what I would call a conservative air quotes Democrat.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So we talk about some of those things and Jamie Davis is pro second Amendment, all those things. But this first comment says.
This is a hilarious headline. Thank you.
This is like comparing John Bel Edwards to Chuck Schumer. Democrats in Louisiana are polar opposites. And, and I think that's, this is indicating a couple things that are very prominent in our current political kind of.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Who said that?
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Paige. Christopher.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Paige. Christopher. Thank you, Paige, for interacting with us on social media. We would invite you to listen to the episodes that we put out that would probably help inform your comments. But anyway, please continue, Dave.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: So. Well, one we would probably disagree with
[00:08:17] Speaker A: obviously, because we spent the whole last episode disagreeing.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm understating before I come in with the right hook.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Sorry, I should let you play with this more. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: Yes, so, so yes, we would, we would disagree probably.
The Democrats of Washington D.C. let's say, or, or Washington state and the Democrats of Louisiana do differ a little bit in how they kind of put themselves forward. Just a tiny, there's a couple of items that they will check differently on the boxes, but as a whole they're socialistic.
They're going to agree on the majority of, of platforms.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Yeah. In their ideology.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Yes, agreed. And, and things like that. So, so to say that they're polar opposites is a bit extreme, but maybe you're just trying to make the point that they're very different and there are some differences.
But here.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Well, do you want to say something?
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Well, the whole point of the article was that as evidenced by Jamie Davis platform, our argument is that they're moving.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Sure. And so the Louisiana Democrats, they have had some differences. They're moving closer.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: They're moving closer to mainline party standards.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Namely some things we talked about. Universal health care, kind of a socialist stance.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Well. And people have even found recordings of Jamie Davis saying things like he would not tell a woman what to do with her body.
So while he has like what we would call a conservative Democrat stance as far as being pro life, which Dustin Miller has expressed the same thing. Dustin Miller, who is our current state representative for our area, he's expressed the exact same thing in the past. Now, exactly where he stands right now, I don't know because he did kind of flip flop on some gender identity stuff that was coming through the local state issue over the past couple of years.
So where he is now on abortion. I'm not sure.
But with Jamie Davis, somebody found recordings of him saying that. So it's like, well, he's pro life, but what does that mean? What does that mean exactly?
[00:10:16] Speaker B: Wait, are you asking me?
[00:10:17] Speaker A: No, you're just. It's a rhetorical question.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: You're letting it hang.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: I'm letting it hang out there. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. Go back to your point, David.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Well, let's. Let's just take this. Let's. Let's take this to a step further.
We would not say. We would not agree with the idea that Jamie Davis and the Democrats like Chuck Schumer are polar opposites.
Nor would we say that the Democrats and Republicans are polar opposites.
Yes. So. So left hook. There's a few. And this would be out of nowhere, what just happened.
But it gets to the political milieu that we live in today, that we have been kind of separated and told that we're polar opposites. If you're a Republican or Democrat and the media goes after each other and the politicians go after each other, and there's the mud slinging and the kind of these hard lines drawn between Democrats and Republicans politically, emotionally, families are split over this.
Friendships are broken.
But.
And maybe this would address some of the comments here. This is a comment roundup, after all. There were a handful. We don't have to get into all of them. A handful kind of like were like, you know, you're just a bunch of MAGA Republicans, Trump Republicans or whatever, because you would call someone socialist who's being socialist.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: But if they'd listen to any other episodes, they would have heard us call Republicans socialists. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: So that's my point. So let's.
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:11:44] Speaker B: Let's talk. Should we talk about Trump for a second?
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Let's do it. I mean, let's go.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:11:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So you do it. Dave, you go.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: I'll come.
[00:11:50] Speaker A: I'll come behind you when you're done.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: At the risk of just making everyone angry, the Republicans, the Democrats, everyone who's listening.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:11:59] Speaker B: So I've come to the. I had this epiphany.
So Stuart and I are not.
We haven't caught Trump derangement syndrome.
Right. We don't have tds.
Let's put that out there so people know.
But while I am very thankful that Trump is president versus the alternative that we could have had, I had this epiphany, and it wasn't much of an epiphany because it's obvious Trump is much closer to the modern Democrats who hates him than he is to me or to most people who don't have Trump derangement syndrome.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: You're gonna need to flesh that out though.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: So let's flesh that out. So if you didn't know some people don't like Trump around our nation, you're
[00:12:56] Speaker A: just playing all this stuff.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: And in the comments here, there are some people out here who don't like Trump very much.
And personally I'm not a huge fan of Trump either. I'll put that out there.
However, Trump is basically in line with most things that Democrats are for. And in fact I would argue that his platform now is probably further left than Obama's first term.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah. Or Trump's. Well, Trump's first term either. We should articulate that. Sure.
[00:13:27] Speaker B: So let's go down a few examples. So Trump is pro abortion in, in certain circumstances he has kind of like his exceptions. He's kind of like, well, we don't want lots of abortion because he recognizes that we could have a population problem and things like that. Kind of pragmatic in his approach to it. Yeah, but he's still like, oh, but if it's you know, rape or incest or whatever or life of the mother which is kind of just usually a made up scenario.
Yeah.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Like 0001%.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: The he, he's still fine with killing babies. So he's, he's fine with abortion in, in those cases. That makes him very much not where we are.
He's generally big government.
Right.
Social programs, welfare.
I mean go down the list of all the programs and yeah. And I know there's a bunch of people who are like, but what about, but what about. You know, but let's, let's just talk about like 99% of it that the Democrats would support existing government programs. He's fine with.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: Okay. Now shockingly, for one of the first times in history, a government here in the United States reduced its reach and spending to some degree when they cut things like USAID and went through and
[00:14:47] Speaker A: DOGE came in hot for a little
[00:14:49] Speaker B: while there stopped paying money to non existent or you know, Shell.
[00:14:53] Speaker A: Yeah. We stopped funding Pakistan NGOs and things like that. Right.
[00:14:58] Speaker B: So it's one of the first times in history where a government has been like, hey, let's just stop spending money like crazy without any accountability.
So that was nice.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: That was nice.
Agreed.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's where it's like, okay, well I'm definitely thankful that Trump's the president and not the alternative. But if you just go down the list of stances and beliefs.
He's basically a traditional Democrat in most of the things. So all that back to this comment.
[00:15:27] Speaker A: No, pre Obama term, one Democrat.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Yes. Yes.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Democrats are shifting, Democrats are moving. That's the point of what we're saying here.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's definitely a point.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: And we would also say so are Republicans.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Right?
Yeah. So at the end of the day, no, the Democrats of Louisiana are not that different than Democrats of other parts of the country.
And neither are the Republicans.
[00:15:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
Now ask me, ask me if I would rather have Donald Trump or Joe Biden be president. Ask me,
[00:16:01] Speaker B: would you rather Trump or Joe Biden?
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Trump all day long.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Listen, this is another part of the situation that we're in is that people don't realize the stakes of the elections that are going on. So Joe Biden was president, and we literally had transgender strippers dancing on the White House lawn on Easter Sunday.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: And that actually happened.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: And USAID made sure this was kind of recent breaking news, not locally. So it didn't make the parish circuit.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Of course not, because we're local focused.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Sadly, with the cutting of usaid, the trans prostitutes in Nepal were no longer receiving government funding from the United States.
And that sounds like a joke. It's not.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: It's not. Google it.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: So. Yeah. What do you think?
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: I think the biggest backlash against Trump this term has been immigration, though, wouldn't you say?
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the ICE immigration situation. It's the misplaced nurture instinct. It's so many different things.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Well, and Marxism. I know we got accused in one of these comments of looking under the bed for communists, and it's just like, come on, guys.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah, Communists.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Where do you think that the desire to destroy national identity in favor of globalism and all that came from Marxism?
[00:17:28] Speaker A: Okay, go listen to past episodes.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Yeah. So the biggest critique of Trump's current term has been immigration, by and large,
[00:17:36] Speaker A: which we cover in past episodes.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't want to get all into the weeds there, but I just want to make this point again to draw home the point that, like the Republicans and Democrats historically or the current Republicans and historic Democrats are not that different.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Correct. They're not that different.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: The numbers may have passed, but last time I checked, Obama had deported more illegal immigrants than Trump has.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
One of the things that we should probably. And didn't he, like, award somebody, like,
[00:18:02] Speaker B: a high Medal of Honor? Tom Homan, the guy who is in charge of ICE now, Barack Obama did that. He was, like, the most hated person besides Trump in our country. Right now, awarded by Barack.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Does he have a picture hanging up in Barack's library of that award? I bet not.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: That one probably got taken down.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: See, look like this is the deal.
We are what I would call us. I don't like. David and I have had this conversation before, so this is nothing new. I would not call us conservatives, although that's probably the closest publicly acceptable term to what it is that we are trying to communicate to everybody else around us, which is why we say that we're building this organization as a Christian conservative news media source, which no one else is doing. So we're doing it.
But I would take us a step farther than conservatives. We're not just trying to conserve, because conserve means that you're playing defense, right?
I'm not here to play defense. I'm here to play offense.
My goal is to bring the Bible into every corner of life. That's what I'm here to do. Push it into all the corners. That's what I'm chasing. And so as we're doing that, I would call us reformers. I would not call us conservatives. I would say, hey, we're here to push the reformation out into St. Landry parish. And that's why we started this platform and other platforms, other institutions, and we continue to work to build. So Donald Trump. Did I vote for him?
Yes.
And would I do it again? Well, I don't think he can actually run for a third term, can he? Have we sorted that out yet? Isn't he trying to run for a third term or something like that?
[00:19:41] Speaker B: No, he jokes about it because it's a really easy way to trigger the
[00:19:45] Speaker A: liberals and get some free press.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: But you know who I do like. This is a national news topic, but since we're on the subject, and I can see that you're scrolling for our next comment to talk about, so I'll just buy you some more time. You know who I would love to vote for? J.D. vance.
I like him.
He talks, like, from a Christian worldview, like a young Christian worldview, but I'd say he talks from one. Seems like a smart guy. Seems like he's heading in a good direction.
He talks about how he converted to Christianity later in his life, so he's trying to get his wife to come along with him. That's all positive signs for me.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I'd say it seems to me that he's.
He'd be another good example maybe of how the Democrats and Republicans are really kind of just two sides of the same coin.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Oh, you think so?
[00:20:29] Speaker B: Yeah. In most of his policies, I'm not. I think personality wise and belief wise, he's more.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: More like us.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: More like us. And that does excite me. You know, it makes me hopeful.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: But policy wise, you see the same thing.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Policy wise, I'm kind of just like, eh, you know, But I'd say there's hope there. You know, I think there's hope there.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: We need somebody to come in and, like, shut down all the government agencies.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Radical.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Radical.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Maybe one day we'll get to see that. All right, Dave, what's next? Who's next, man?
[00:20:58] Speaker B: Well, I mean, there's. There's a lot of good ones here.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: So many.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: A lot of them just come back to, you know, our use of the term socialist socialism in the article. I don't think it's even in the headline. So props to people for actually clicking on the article. Hey, but maybe we should talk about.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: Again, they took a further step down the content hole.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: Now just land on the podcast.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: We could drive home the kind of the historic context of where, you know, how we've gotten to where we are
[00:21:28] Speaker A: a little bit more. Well, so good news for everyone. We have a special episode coming up.
Yeah. With a special guest who is a American history expert. Okay. And I have no qualms saying that phrase. We have a special guest coming to the studio in a couple of weeks who is an American history expert, and they're actually going to do that for us. They're going to walk us through the historic progression of national America. I would argue starting from Woodrow Wilson forward. Now, I'm not quite sure what he'll say. I bet you he would agree.
Starting from Woodrow Wilson forward into where we are today and say, this is the path that we have taken as we have drifted farther and farther and farther and farther to the left and in our politics.
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And by. And by left, we mostly mean progressive. Yeah. Big government.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Kind of big government.
[00:22:19] Speaker B: Stepping into more and more roles in society, things that God never intended them to do.
More and more taxation, more programs. And in the mindset of Americans, the idea that whenever there's a problem, we always look to government to solve that problem. We've. We've in many ways just made a God out of government.
And to critique something like, we're statistics. Socialism. Right.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:43] Speaker B: Like, nobody would call themselves a statist, but, like, I'll just say it like, we are all statists.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: Yes.
If you look to the state to solve your problems. Right. If you look to the state to solve your problems. Check yourself because you might be a statist.
[00:23:00] Speaker B: Yep. And the one point we'll make historically is that that has not been the case for the majority of American history.
[00:23:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: Now it's been a while that this has been growing for sure. You know, at least back to Woodrow Wilson.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: Yeah. The last hundred years.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Last hundred, 110 years, something like.
But no, that's not how society will expand and do well and flourish in the long run, we would argue is an increasingly large government. That's not the answer, but those are the answers that kind of Jamie Davis is providing or pushing for and other socialist leaning politicians.
[00:23:36] Speaker A: If the answer is more government programs, federal dollars, state dollars, you are taking a socialistic lean.
That's what's happening. If the answer to the problem is, well, we're going to get more dollars from the federal government or from the state government or we're going to raise taxes to do X, that's a status direction, you're moving somewhere.
We didn't used to think that way as a people. We used to deal with our own stuff. My dad started a volunteer fire department.
I'll say that I didn't know that. Yeah.
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Well, where we lived, like my dad moved to where we lived. And I grew up in Jackson Parish in north Louisiana, middle of the woods.
And out in the middle of the woods they didn't have a volunteer, they didn't have a fire department.
And so my dad got together with a bunch of the neighbors and they said, hey, we need a fire department. And they started the. I can't remember what ward. It was Ward 4, maybe in Jackson Parish. Ward 4, Volunteer Fire Department.
Got some money together, got a firehouse built, got a pump truck, got all that stuff. And then even our pond in our front yard got volunteered as a fire hydrant. I have fire hydrant air quotes because they didn't have fire hydrants.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: That's where they'd stop and fill up the.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: They'd fill up the pump truck at our pond in the front yard and go run around like this is not far from us, you know, like we can, we can return, we can return to this, this lack of dependence on the state.
It does mean that we have to be courageous. We have to be courageous. It does mean that we are going to take risks and it does mean that we're going to have to learn and figure things out. But this is what freedom looks like, man. Freedom has a cost.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: And the reliance on government for provision and things like that can potentially meet, or at least be perceived to meet certain Immediate needs that people have. But the trajectory is always going to be bigger government, less efficiency, more waste, and eventually more and more poverty and less flourishing.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: And we've seen, we're seeing that in our own country over the decades, as the government in our country has gotten bigger and bigger and taxes and programs only increased.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: But maybe just some big.
Maybe we'll let our guests in the near future maybe get into more of the.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: Oh, it's going to be a big one.
[00:25:59] Speaker B: The specifics.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: I don't want to say who it's going to be because I don't want to ruin the expectation, but it's going to be a big deal. You're going to want to tune into that episode.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Absolutely. But I was going to say maybe just some big, like, big picture things we could say quick, we do bring up socialism because we do think it's bad.
Okay.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: What a radical idea.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Here's some reasons. Here's some reasons.
There's a few comments. And again, back to the comments. Some of them are like, you know, all he wants to do is have programs that help people. Like, how could you be against that?
This would be a good one to find, if we can find it. There was one that even. Oh, here it is.
Okay. There's some nice expletives here.
But he found out that you're a pastor.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: He says you seem pretty leery on candidates that pretty explicitly support policy that falls in line with biblical teachings.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: Oh, let's deal with that.
[00:26:52] Speaker B: On how people should be treated.
And then he goes on to throw some accusations at Republicans. Again, we would say, well, yeah, Republicans are basically the same as Democrats. Yep. I just offended everybody again.
And that Jamie Davis is a fresh air. But.
Oh, and he finishes up with some more expletives. That's nice.
We would argue that like, all right, so socialism has never brought, let's just say a couple big statements. Socialism has never brought anyone out of poverty.
Socialism has never brought anyone out of poverty.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: But what about these obscure Western European, northern Western European countries that everyone references, David.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: They were never in poverty.
And if they continue.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm so glad we're friends. I can't even tell you.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Yeah, there are a couple socialistic, ish countries that you could look at that are very, you know, they're very high standard of living countries. Sweden is brought up and Norway and those countries.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: Yeah, please stop referencing the Swedes when you talk about socialism.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: They're ethnically homogenous.
They have been built.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: They're culturally homogenous.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Culturally homogenous. They were built. The nation, the infrastructure, the belief system, the work ethic was all built on hundreds of years of Christianity and not socialism.
And after they found themselves in a state of kind of flourishing and productivity, they adopted some socialistic policies. And so people always are like, look, socialism works because Sweden is pretty good.
They also kill their babies and their socialism will not survive.
Would not survive an influx of many other cultures and all that stuff.
[00:28:50] Speaker A: Would not. Yeah, what was it Margaret Thatcher said? She said socialism works great until you run out of other people's money.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Yep, 100%.
And you know, I've mentioned this. I'm going to double quote. I'm going to, you know, copy a quote from an earlier episode. Another Prime Minister of Great Britain, Winston Churchill. Right. You cannot tax yourself into prosperity. Socialism does not know how to create wealth. Socialism is not a mechanism for wealth creation. Socialism only redistributes wealth that has been accumulated and produced through the free market, through entrepreneurial, hard working people over generations. And then socialism comes along and tries to take wealth and does not produce wealth.
And by doing so it only incentivizes, we'll call it laziness. Let's go right in. It only incentivizes the lack of productivity and it deincentivizes the production of wealth, inventiveness, you know, starting businesses, things like that. So that if you want to love your neighbor, in short, we can get back to this comment where this guy Christopher Jackson is making the claim that socialism is Christian.
If you love your neighbor, you should not support socialism.
[00:30:21] Speaker A: Yeah. If you love your neighbor, you also won't steal with them. Steal from them.
[00:30:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And that would get to the kind of the broader Christian argument against socialism.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: You can't, don't steal from your neighbor.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Thou shalt not steal.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Which implies that there is such a thing as private property.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: Where do we get the idea that private property exists that from the commandment
[00:30:42] Speaker A: thou shalt not steal. It's a inference of that statement.
If you're not stealing, then that means something belongs to you. It belongs to someone else. You can't take their stuff, they can't take yours. Thou shalt not steal. That means private property exists and that's
[00:30:58] Speaker B: fleshed out in many other Old Testament law cases.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: And if you steal, you owe a certain amount, anywhere from 120% of the value stolen to up to five times the value stolen.
All these things play out inside of
[00:31:16] Speaker B: the Bible property markers in the Old Testament.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: Yes. Don't move the line. Don't move the boundary marker. Yes, absolutely.
And voting to steal somebody else's property is still stealing their property.
[00:31:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And you probably have broken another commandment on the way. Thou shall not covet.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Ah, yes. Covetousness. That. I think covetousness is a large root of the socialistic play that's happened in our. In our culture, by and large. Like you, you look and you want the. The advance of the proletariat, of the. Of the oppressed class and their hatred of the rich.
Why.
Why do you hate them? Have you seen the taxes that the rich people actually pay?
It's a lot.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: And the jobs that their companies produce.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: People hate Elon Musk nowadays because he's the world's first trillionaire. They're like, God, we hate that guy. Why? Because you're envious of him.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: You're coveting him. He has made, what, something crazy, like 100,000 jobs? Is that what it is inside of his businesses? Something like 100,000 jobs?
[00:32:21] Speaker B: Probably. But yeah, I don't know the exact number.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: I mean, it's insane, the developments that have happened in the world.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you're not troubled by that trend, socialism, which modern socialism does have its roots in Marxism. I know we're going to get accused again of just looking for communists under the bed or something like that, but modern socialism has its roots.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Well, Karl Marx even said that socialism is the stepping stone to communism.
[00:32:45] Speaker B: It's the mechanism by which this will be accomplished. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: And Karl Marx said that.
[00:32:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:51] Speaker A: Come on, we're not making this up.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Yep. But it. But his. His worldview, which many have kind of adopted today as a result of our educational system and politics and things like that.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:33:04] Speaker B: It splits people up into classes. Right. The oppressed and the oppressor, which is.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: Go read Animal Farm.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Which is not helpful if you actually care about, like, humans and human rights and things like that. It's a way of devaluing one group of people and elevating another. And when the submarine with billionaires, you know, implodes. You remember this story a couple years back.
[00:33:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: And billionaires, or a billionaire and his son die.
It's celebrated around, you know, American and Western culture because they got what they deserved.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Because they were rich. Because.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: Just because they were. We were rich. And you don't know anything else about them, but they were rich, so therefore they were evil. That's the jump. People often make that assumption.
And also in the Marxist kind of framework, it's a zero sum game. Right. The assumption is that because someone has wealth, someone else had to have been subjugated in order for that wealth to exist. So it looks at the world as only having a certain amount of wealth. And if someone else has it, it means that someone else can't have it. And if someone gets wealthier, it means that someone else gets poorer.
[00:34:15] Speaker A: That's not the way the Christian worldview works.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: Well then that's just first. Yeah, it's not the way that God made the world.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:34:22] Speaker B: And whether you're a Christian or not, if you're able to look at the world and how it has functioned over the last hundreds of years, that's simply not true.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Closed pie is a lie. There's only so many resources in the world is a lie. God says he promises to care for his people.
So for just one easy example that I love to cite is that in the early 1900s or late 1800s, everybody was worried about world overpopulation. We're not going to have enough food to feed the population of the world because the population is growing so fast and we can't create enough crops, we can't create enough return on these crop fields in order to do this. And everybody was freaking out about this. Oh no, what are we going to do? What's the future of the world going to do?
And then somebody invented a tractor and farm output went up by like 20 or 30 times.
Like, come on. And then all the advancements that we've had to this day, I'm not particularly excited about this, but people are 3D printing steaks now, admittedly not an exciting thing for many. It's happening. No, it's happening like steaks from cows. Well, it's not actually from cows. It's different. It's fake meat.
[00:35:32] Speaker B: That doesn't excite me at all. That makes me very sad.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: My point is the technology is advancing. Like we are able to create food, create housing, create all these things for people in ways that we haven't been able to before. We don't have to be afraid of us running out of resources is what
[00:35:52] Speaker B: I'm trying to say. It's not a zero sum game. And at the end of the day, if you're disobedient to God's command to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the Earth and take dominion, then you will actually experience the curses of that. So the society that has begun justifying the killing of its children and not having children and fear mongering, overpopulation.
[00:36:13] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: What is that actually doing? It is just, it's Going to destroy civilizations. Look at Italy, look at China, look at Japan. Japan. A lot of other nations that have massive negative population trajectories, and they're going to be in big trouble soon.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: Well, they're being invaded.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: You want to talk about that?
No, let's not talk about that. This episode. We'll talk about that. Let me. Can we do one more comment?
[00:36:39] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Let me do one more comment. This is from Blake Garland. Yeah, I love this comment. This one's. Thank you, Blake, for providing us with this. He starts. He says, you're an idiot.
He says, you're an idiot. Don't try your broad brush tactics on that, man. What's the alternative? Israel invaders push over reps sending all Louisiana's money to Netanyahu?
I want you to. I want you ninto. Yahoo is what?
Sorry. And then only focus on division and hate. Let Louisiana try to get out of 50th place. WTF is wrong with you? Is real genocide. Scumbag.
He thinks I'm the one with. That's a hate problem.
All right, so let's just chat about this for just. I want to just draw one thing out of this. First off, this is.
This is indicative of so many other comments. They're like, you guys are hateful. And then this is the kind of feedback that we get from the people who call us. We're hateful. Let me draw that out.
There is a. We're actually just trying to help lead people in a particular direction, and we're not pulling punches about it. We're happy that we are given the opportunity to be able to say these things in a public space and get as much traction as this parish circuit has gotten in the last two months. Something like half a million million views.
I mean, that's amazing. The Lord is using this and putting it out in front of people. And we're just going to keep riding. We're going to keep going. Tally ho, man bonanza. Let's go. I'm excited to see what the next two years are going to look like with this institution. And also let Louisiana try to get out of 50th place. I think that's a reference to education.
Is that a reference to education?
[00:38:21] Speaker B: We talked about this already. Y' all have not been listening to our podcast. How dare you.
[00:38:25] Speaker A: We're 45th.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: No, we're like 38, Stuart.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Oh, my bad.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: All the way. I mean, I might even got it wrong. But we're in the 30s now.
[00:38:33] Speaker A: We're in the 30s. Yeah. Well, to go to reference Our education episodes, which you should go back and listen to those to reference our education episodes.
We used to be a lot smarter than we are now.
And it was way before the state ever got involved in education.
Way before when we had little schoolhouses.
My friend, go back and look at what some of those one room schoolhouses put out in terms of a quote unquote, third grade education.
It was considerably more than I would argue, many of our high schoolers do today.
Something happened to our education system. You should dig into that and do some research and watch.
All right, I think that's it.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: There could be a lot of fun here, Stuart, but we probably don't.
[00:39:16] Speaker A: We're already at 40 minutes. Oh, yeah.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: And we don't have to step on too many toes here.
[00:39:20] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's okay. Well, guys, if you made it to the end of this episode, I want to congratulate you. Undoubtedly, we have offended you at some point as we have spoken today.
Here's the deal.
We are chasing a particular outcome.
We are going after reforming Appaloosa's St. Landry Parish, Acadiana, and building specifically a biblical culture in an area that used to have one, that used to have, I would argue, a distinctly biblical culture. And we want to bring it back, make it better. We're reformers and so we're going to continue to advance and build. I would also like to give a shout out. We have our first.
Our first monthly funders have landed in the last several weeks for the Paris circuit.
There's a lot of cool opportunity that's happening here. There's a forward trajectory. We're grateful. Thank you guys so much for coming along for the ride. And if you have been offended, hey, don't stop listening. Maybe you should argue with us a little bit. That might be fun. Send us messages, ask us questions. We would love to help shape this down a little farther for you and for anybody else who happens to be in our feed. But for now, here we are swinging our pickaxes one day at a time here in little Olapalousas. And our hope and dream is to one day again be able to say as our city motto with confidence, omnia ad DEI gloriam to God be glory in all things.
Thank you guys so much for listening and we'll see you next time.
