Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Parish circuit. I'd invite you to go to theparishcircuit.com to find all of our news articles and podcast episodes. And you can also support the show. You can support the show with a one time contribution. Donation. It's not a donation because we're not a nonprofit, so. Contribution. You can also support the show monthly if you wanted to.
As we're trying to build conservative and Christian media here in southwest Louisiana today. We got a doozy.
We got a doozy, guys. This might be shocking, but the nanny state is getting bigger in St. LeGrand Parish.
Except it is. It actually is. So one of our beat reporters. Yeah, that's right. We have beat reporters who, like, search the Internet to find things to deal with from a biblical WorldView here in St. LeGrand Parish. One of our beat reporters found this fascinating article.
Who was it? It was Crime Stoppers who put this up.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, St. Landry Crime Stoppers with Acadian Total Security.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: So this is like an ad.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: I mean, it looks like just a post, but maybe there's an ad connected to it. I'm not sure.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Okay, well, what. So what's the gist? What's going on here?
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Well, I guess the. See, you know, see something, say something is kind of a common phrase, I hear.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Yeah, law enforcement agencies say that all the time.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: And that can be.
There's nothing, I don't think, inherently wrong with like that generally, if you're like. Yeah, like, if you see something, if you see an innocent person legitimately in danger, you say something, you should probably call the police. Right, right. So that. That. There's nothing maybe wrong with that phrase in general, but they take it a step further here and they're talking about swimming. So open water.
Open water is not the same as swimming or swimming in a pool.
You need to be aware of uneven surfaces, river currents, you know, hey, look, they're warning people of particular dangers. Great. And then they say that, you know, see something, say something. Keep an eye. Listen to this. Keep an eye on your neighbor's properties.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: What?
[00:02:06] Speaker B: And report any. All caps. Any suspicious activity to law enforcement.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: What does that mean? What does that mean?
That's amazing. Okay, so this is crazy, right? So watch. Watch your neighbor's property.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: And if anything's happening, they literally call the police.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Keep an eye on your neighbor's properties.
And this is obviously, this is coming from the law enforcement. So it's not. It's not like some sort of. They're not encouraging some Sort of community driven accountability that can occur in a good way apart from government enforcement. They're saying as crime stoppers, as law enforcement, like, help us out. Watch your neighbor's property.
Watch your neighbor's property.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: This is crazy, right?
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Really strange. Yeah.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: So this is. What is this to do with swimming pools or something? Like, watch your neighbors swimming pools.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: It also seems like a weird switch. I wonder if the bottom part, the second portion of the post where it says the crazy stuff about spying on your neighbor's properties.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: If that's just a copy paste tag,
[00:03:17] Speaker B: I wonder if that's on like everything now. They just put that on everything.
[00:03:20] Speaker A: Just put that on everything. Keep an eye on your neighbor's properties.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Because the top half of the post is just like some general. Be aware of uneven surfaces and river currents and ocean undertow.
And then they're like, watch your neighbors.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah, this is getting.
This is getting. This sounds like Australia during the lockdowns. It sounds like in Los Angeles, whenever, during all the COVID lockdowns, people would go to the beach by themselves and they would get arrested.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Like somebody would be like literally sitting on the beach by themselves and someone would report them.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: They would call the police. You know, this guy can't be out here. This is the kind of culture that this type of stuff, like, let's read this through the best possible lens we can. And the best possible lens. This is just like a sign off paragraph that they put on every post that they write.
And maybe they intend on saying, in case there's a break in on your neighbor's property, keep an eye on it.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Or like, but that's not what this community.
An unsupervised child is drowning.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Or something like that. But the gist of now everyone is a monitor for the state. That's what this is creating.
Now you are inviting everyone else to keep an eye on the things that your neighbors are doing. And if they're doing anything suspicious, call the police. And what is suspicious?
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Right.
Any. All caps. Any suspicious activity.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So I had a. I had a friend of mine recently who he took a trip out of state. He went to another state, and while he was there, he had the police called on him.
And you and I share this friend, but he had the police called on him. And the police showed up and said, hey, we got a report that this man over here was beating a baby.
And my friend was like, there are literally no babies here. We don't even know what's happening. But the cops got called because somebody saw something and reported it to the police. And the police came and there's literally nothing for them to actually be dealing with.
Like, and my friend was saying there's no babies here. And all these, you know, older children that we have, which are all older, are happy. No one is beating a baby. Like, what's going on here?
It is this odd world that we've created where now we are the see something, say something, report any suspicious activity, vigilantes. Like, we're watching our neighbors to make sure that they're keeping the law. Now what's happening? What's happening?
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Well, let's say before we maybe address that question too, we could say too that we aren't saying never call the police because we do believe that the God ordained authorities that are supposed to punish the evildoer and reward the righteous are there for good reason.
And there are people who will never call the police even when they should because of a.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: This is a great distinction to draw
[00:06:30] Speaker B: because they maybe have lived in a particular culture or lifestyle.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: That basically they see any, any communication with the police as, you know, being a snitch or ratting someone out.
So. So we also are not, we are not condoning this never called blanket accusation against the government. We. Yeah. No. So but everybody's got their lane, right? Exactly.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: And this looks out of lane.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. That's what we're talking about.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: I've called the police before. Like, just in case somebody is. Now Stuart never calls the law and be like, no, I've called the police many times in my life. I called the police one time when a midget was getting attacked in my front yard by a spiked baseball bat. That's all real. That's real. And it did happen.
I've called the police whenever I was suspicious of domestic violence issues.
Like, I call the police. We call the cops. But one of the things that we should be clear on is like I said a second ago, there's a lane.
And this seems out of lane.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Right. And again, if you're saying like, but what if a child is drowning? Well, of course, call someone like, also go save them. Go save them.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Go do something.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: But. Yeah, but this whole any.
All caps, any suspicious activity to law enforcement, that's where the government kind of does this uses as a play more in legislatures, like when they're trying to get legislation passed, they'll use very vague terminology to.
That's undefined. Right. And that's the problem. If language is undefined, then suddenly you could be.
You could have your rights trampled on.
But it was Just buried in this kind of vague, vague terminology. So to avoid being too vague, let's talk about like the Patriot act for.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Let's be specific.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So here. But for my example, in the legislature, when the Patriot act was passed, it was in the wake of 911 and we were obviously had kind of a ramped up fear of terrorism and things like that. But they started passing these measures in the Patriot act that allowed for search and seizure without warrants at the order of a judge and things like that.
Now the overall, the context of it was anti terrorism. But people started asking the question like, well, what is it? What is a terrorist? Or what do these terms mean?
Because then suddenly a judge could wield this against an American citizen. Yes or no defined reason.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: And has.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: And this has happened.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: And it's because of this kind of vague terminology. Just kind of like if there's a suspicion of terrorism and then it just moves on to the next thing. It's like, wait a second, let's define this out. What are you, what are you talking about? So here we see that any suspicious activity. Well, what is, what is that?
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Well, we should also talk about the trend of swatting that's happening on a national level right now.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Like so people that if they don't like you, there's this new thing that goes down. Specifically, this is happening in political ideology rivalries between Democrats and Republican, hyper conservatives and hyper liberals.
I found that there's these increasing reports of people who get the police called on them, but it gets faked as a, hey, there's a break in. There's violent people in this house with guns right now. You guys need to come.
And so the SWAT team shows up with their AR15s or whatever and they move on the house and they move in such a way where their mindset is if there is someone here that's the intruder, when really it's the resident.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:21] Speaker A: It's a thing that's going down. It's called swatting, folks. And this lends itself, this mindset in law enforcement lends itself to that kind of reaction. You know, oh, if you see anything suspicious, call the police. Oh man, there's. There's a break in happening at the such and such address. And I think you guys need to send some heavy arms over here to deal with it right away. They're violent people. They've got guns. It's serious. And you could see how that can escalate quickly.
[00:10:48] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: And end in serious violence towards the homeowner.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And I want to Connect something like that, this kind of political antagonism to what this is maybe being posted.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: My point is it creates that environment.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: It creates an environment where that is possible. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I get you.
Yeah. So it'd be great if they defined kind of what they meant by any suspicious activity.
And it'd be good for all of us to keep in mind that the government has a good and right lane and it is not to be in constant surveillance of its people.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Yeah. You want to talk about flock cameras?
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Oh, sure.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Speaking of. Because this is the trend, right. Like what we're seeing right here in this post, I would argue is a trend that we're seeing move through the nation as a whole as well.
And we. There's this increased level of surveillance that seems to just be going on.
The nanny state is growing and it's growing not just out there, but I would argue it's growing in St. Landry Parish and we need to be aware of it. And I would say also push back of it. Push back on it.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: There's a great quote. You were talking about this earlier from the movie V for Vendetta. What was, what was the quote?
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Well, so that quote. And I don't. I hesitate to quote V for Vendetta because.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Okay, well, let's flag that and not talk about that.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: Then it gets Guy Fawkes all wrong and all that fun stuff. But it's inspired by.
Let's look at what Jefferson said.
So Jefferson has a great quote on kind of holding power accountable rather than the government ownership only ever kind of exerting its. Its power and even intimidation or fear on the people.
He said when the people fear the government, there is a tyranny. A tyranny. When the government fears the people, there's liberty.
Now, I'll also flesh that out a little bit. You could take that too far into like a revolutionary, kind of modern, revolutionary mindset where you're always like, you know, the people determine authority and we can rise up and overthrow the government at any time.
That's more of a liberal revolutionary mindset that we're not advocating for. But I think what he's getting at is the checks on power exist for a good reason. And the government should not be the one constantly exerting surveillance fear.
It's the strong army of having guns and swords and stuff like that, depending on which time period you're talking about on the people, but that especially in a republic where our representatives are elected, their accountability ultimately to God, but they should have in their minds, oh, Like, I'm here to care for these people. I need to stay in my lane, and I am accountable to them in a lot of ways.
Yeah.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: And there's a important clarifier to say we need to. We believe in the three spheres of government.
Right. Like the state has its lane, the church has its lane, the family has its lane. Right. And what we're doing whenever we see content like this pushed out, keep an eye on your neighbors, is we're placing the state over the family in an odd way. In a way where now the family works for the state as the surveillance, as the ones who would inform for any suspicious activity. And what we're saying is that this is out of lane.
This is too far. And it creates an opportunity where the heightened nanny state that is only seeming to increase is not just overlapping the family, but enveloping the family. In fact, we saw this come out recently with a post that was done by Opelous Police Department, wasn't it?
[00:15:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: They threw something out on the Internet that. And generally speaking, I would say, you know, this is harmless. Hey, parents, keep an eye on your kids phones. Wasn't that the gist of it?
[00:15:13] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a bit. The police chief put out a thing with a list of a whole bunch of apps and kind of like what they do, I guess, and the dangers of them, and then had a fairly lengthy, you know, be checking on your student or your children's activity every day on their phones and be aware that they might be getting on other people's devices, even if you see theirs. So some practical, helpful advice. But what you're talking about is where is this coming from?
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: This isn't a friend or mentor giving advice to a parent who needs some help.
This is the government.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Telling parents how to parent, how to parent. And. And, well, what they're saying is actually right.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: Agreed. Yeah. Nothing he's saying is actually wrong. We're commenting on the fact that it has to be said.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Right. It. For. We've gotten to a place as a society.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Where the government has to step in and remind parents to do something.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: To be a parent.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: To be a parent.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And. Yeah. And it's. This is. I think this goes back to something that we talked about over the course of the last several episodes that we've had. Whenever there's a vacuum, something's going to fill it. Whenever parents aren't parenting, something comes in to try and do that for them. The previous episodes, we talked about this specifically with the church. When the church isn't ministering. The state comes in to minister and to minister with their religion, whatever that religion is.
And so we've got another vacuum, we've got a hole here.
And so the state just gets bigger and grows.
[00:16:48] Speaker B: And if you don't come at this from a biblical worldview, then you might have no problem with that in your worldview. You might be fine with it. The government being ultimate as a way to provide everything for everyone that fits your worldview.
And we would argue that that's bad.
Namely, like in this situation, when the government steps in to take on the role of the family, it doesn't actually solve any problems in the long run.
It might create a system in which some basic needs are met temporarily, but all it does is incentivize the family to stay broken.
Right. It only incentivizes the, the brokenness to continue when there's this kind of catch all safety net for, for everything and the society as whole does not improve.
[00:17:36] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and we would say lose the safety nets and things will get better.
[00:17:40] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: People respond to hardship well.
[00:17:45] Speaker B: Well, when the, and when the family fails or when the church fails, the, the answer is fixing that problem. The church or the family needs to repent, needs to start taking responsibility for their God given role again.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: But when you simply. Government gets bigger every time one of the other institutions fail, we get into a very, very scary place.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So what I would advocate for here is actually the opposite. Keep an eye on your neighbor's properties. Nah. Keep an eye on the government.
Turn your eyes towards accountability towards the state.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:17] Speaker A: Wield your influence there. I mean, obviously if someone's drowning in a pool, like go save the child. That's drowning and then maybe call an ambulance if you need one.
That's a great. Okay, fine.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And look, I love just this phrase, like keep an eye on your neighbor's property could also have a good positive connotation if the government's not involved. Like, you know what I mean? Like. Yeah. Build strong communities with your neighbors. Great.
[00:18:41] Speaker A: My family and I were recently moved away for months at a time and we had a whole community, we had all our neighbors keeping an eye on our house. We had family members keeping an eye on our house. We had dear friends. You were one of them keeping an eye on our house and making sure that the animals didn't die in the grass got cut and all that kind of stuff like that was very helpful and important to us.
But we didn't have to have the state remind anybody to do that. You know what I'm saying we had a community that was built in and they were joyfully accepting the burden of helping us in our time of need.
This is what we're trying to build again here.
We don't want to do this through the state. We want to do this through strong and healthy communities. This goes back to our interview that we had with Brad vay.
He also styles himself as Zsa Zsa, which I don't quite understand all the way. But his point was very much the same. We build strong families and then we build strong neighborhoods. To which I'm like, let's go 100%. It starts with the family, though. And it starts with heads of household taking that responsibility on their shoulders and saying, I'm going to build a strong family right here. And I think the residual effects of that bleed into your neighborhoods just naturally. Oh, absolutely. Naturally.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yep.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah, we have. I recently was talking to somebody, one of our neighbors in our little neighborhood that we live in, and she said that when her family comes to visit, they always ride by our house. And they just made this comment that our house is their favorite house in the neighborhood. And you know, this, like, our house is not the nicest house in the neighborhood.
It's definitely not the most well kept up house in the neighborhood.
And I was thinking about what that meant. Like, what does she mean? She loves our house the most? And I was. I was rolling through it and I was like, oh, it's because there's life here, because there's little children that play in the yard. There's toys.
There's toys out in the yard. Yeah, people go ride their bikes, you know, in the neighborhood. The kids go ride their bikes in the neighborhood. Like, I think what she was really getting at was not.
It's such an esthetically pleasing house.
I think what she was getting at is it looks like humanity.
And what I'm saying is we can all endeavor for that again in our homes. And it has effects on the neighborhood around us. It changes. It bleeds out into the neighborhoods around us. And so let's undertake this. Let's do that devoid of the nanny state, without the government overreach, without that kind of stuff. And let's devote our surveillance to the government. Yeah, let's pay attention to them and what they're doing and make sure that we're holding them accountable and living a life like Thomas Jefferson.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Amen. All right, guys, thank y' all so much for listening. You go to the parishcircuit.com for more episodes like Share subscribe, and if you feel so inclined, support us. Thank you guys so much, and we'll see you next time.
