In this podcast episode, the hosts explore the topic of enforcing virtue and the dangers of combining church and state, using a recent episode of The Michael Knowles Show as a starting point. They discuss blue laws and the potential harm in privileging one religion over another, as well as the importance of freedom of speech and the potential consequences of blasphemy laws. The episode offers thought-provoking insights into the balance between religious beliefs and individual freedoms.

Hello everybody.

Welcome back to another episode of the Gio and Joey's show.

We're gonna be talking about the dangers of mixing church and state and why Joey

and I are not in favor of mixing the two.

Joey, how you doing today?

Doing good.

How you doing Gio?

Better than I deserve, brother.

Hey, look, you send me a little clip here from Michael Knowles and he talks about

blue laws and that's where we're gonna get into first and the dangers of that.

But before Michael Knowles talks about blue laws, he sets it up about

the decline of religion in males.

Let's listen to this clip and then Joey, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Aged white guys are killing themselves at a very high

rate, at an increasingly high rate.

We've talked about this for years.

This is led in, in large part to the decline in the American life expectancy.

We've now several years in recent memory where the life expectancy has

decreased, and this really just started for the first time, not that long.

Why?

Because of deaths of despair among middle-aged white Americans.

Now there's a study.

It's a new study, and so you know when there's a study,

then we can finally believe it.

There's a study out that shows that a major driver of these

deaths of despair for middle-aged white guys is loss of religion.

In other words, there's now a scientific study to prove what normal

people have intuited the whole time.

What anybody with two brain cells and any even iota of common sense has known from

the very beginning when you lose hope, you despair is despair means a loss of hope.

Shocking, but stop the presses.

This paper was just circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research,

found that the increase in deaths of despair among middle-aged white

Americans, which started in the early nineties, was the aftermath of a

declining religiosity in the United States, specifically by the same group.

It's true that religion in general has declined, but especially for these

now middle-aged white guys, they left the church in very large numbers.

You might be able to think of your own memories depending on how you were

raised of, maybe you went to church as a kid, maybe you didn't, and even

if you did Daddy always go to church?

I bet in a lot of cases it was just Mommy took the kids to church and

daddy stayed home and watched football.

That phenomenon exploded over the last 30 years.

Why did this happen?

Why did this group leave the church?

I think in large part, that group left the church because of supposed reforms of the

churches that went on during the 1960s.

, you saw this, you certainly saw this in the mainline Protestant churches,

which at this point are basically like L G B T far left morning tea hour,

I think of the poor Episcopalians or the Methodists have gone complete

and certain shades of Presbyterians have gone completely over the edge.

You saw this in the Catholic church too, even with the weight of 2000 years

of inertia and the magisterium and divine institution in, certainly in my

view, even then, you saw in the wake of the second Vatican council liturgical

deformations that made even the holy mass kind of effeminate and shallow,

much more shallow than the tradition.

You, you.

completely changed the orientation of the mass.

You now have the priest facing away from the altar facing the

people frequently telling jokes.

As a priest friend of mine once described, telling jokes like a ham

actor in a dying vaudeville show, who would do well to limit his

repertoire to the little barbs that St.

John told the blessed mother while her son bled on the cross, I think

drives the point home pretty well.

You replaced beautiful singing and serious chanting and elevating music

with a bunch of mariachi bands and these lame inci ditties from the 1970s

that weren't even cool 50 years ago.

And then you expect a man to go there.

A man who had previously been singing good old proper hymns, good old

English hymns or older chanting.

And then he goes there and he's gotta, he's gotta sing these 70 songs.

I will

raise you up

on eagle swings.

And it's just so lame.

And the only people that kind of deformation appeals to are.

Squishes and Libs and women, and only a specific subset of women who

d do not speak to a traditional and certainly not to a masculine culture.

So for these reasons and more men leave the church and now they're

depressed and killing themselves.

There's a political aspect to this as well, though.

This group of economists looked at the impact of blue laws across the country and

how the increased repeal of blue laws are followed by a loss in church attendance

and an increased secularization.

So we all agree.

I think we could, even if you're an atheist or an agnostic,

you don't go to church.

You could, it's very easy for people to see how a change in

the culture of the church can lead people to leave the church.

What's a little harder for people to accept is how political changes

in the government and the political order, even outside of the church,

can drive this sort of thing.

But it does.

as I have tried to make clear for years.

Politics is downstream of culture.

Sure, that's true.

Movies and songs and rituals and things certainly affect the kind

of laws that we're going to pass.

But I do find that phrase to be a little bit of a libertarian cope and an excuse

not to engage in the political order and not to wield just political power on the

happy occasions that people give it to us.

Because politics though, downstream of culture in some ways cul

politics can also lead the culture.

Culture can be downstream of politics as well.

East Germany is atheist today.

West Germany is mostly religious, though of a kind of confused religiosity.

Nevertheless, more than half of West Germans would call themselves religious.

Why is that?

Is that because of regional variations in brw?

No, it's because Godless communism was the dominant regime in East

Germany for much of the last century.

Even after the Berlin Wall falls down, there are after effects of that from

the political order onto the culture.

So what do we do about it?

I think we've gotta take on both issues.

Yes.

At a personal level, yes, we should work on our own inner spiritual life.

Of course, I'm not, I don't mean to diminish that.

And then from the cultural level, cult referring to cults, referring E,

even at a deep level to religion, we need to reform the churches so that

they are more serious and reverent and conducive to men going to church.

And we've gotta change the political order such that the incentives in the

culture in our political order are.

Go to church or to have belief, or to have hope, or to be good citizens or to

perform acts of charity for one another are oriented toward the common good.

There's no neutrality here.

The government is always going to be creating incentives and

disincentives to different actions.

For all of American history, we had incentives toward all of those good things

and disincentives toward the opposite.

We had blue laws, we had laws against adultery.

We had blasphemy laws for goodness sakes.

Okay, so don't tell me that it's out of the American tradition to take

these kinds of issues seriously.

That is the American tradition.

But now what do we have?

We don't have a neutral political order now we've just got incentives

for all the opposite stuff.

We've got incentives for people to leave their families . We've got incentives

for people to do a bunch of drugs and get involved in weird sex stuff

and ignore the common good and only pursue their own selfish interests.

We've got interest.

We've got incentives for that on the left and the right.

We've got it throughout the whole culture.

, we've got incentives for during the Covid lockdowns, we shut down the churches.

We keep the pot dispensaries open in California.

Okay.

Those th those are completely skewed incentives and disincentives, and

they're, it's having real effects.

I know that, a lot of people who are a little more skeptical

of religion or they just, they, that's religion's not their thing.

They say, oh, Michael, come on, who cares?

We got bigger issues to talk about.

I don't know.

Do you think there's a bigger political issue than Americans dying, than the

average life expectancy decreasing that a huge group of Americans, middle-aged

white guys just killing themselves and o ODing on drugs because of a loss of hope?

Is there any bigger political issue than the loss of hope?

Than the loss of faith and the loss of charity?

Love Philia Central to any political order?

Is that, I don't think there's anything, I don't think tax rates

are a bigger issue than that.

I don't think deregulation is a bigger issue than that.

I don't think immigration is a bigger issue.

Immigration's a big issue.

The loss of faith, hope and charity, that's the whole game and I think we ought

to pay a little bit more attention to it.

What caught your intention?

Because I know there are a couple of things that stood out to me.

The first thing I wanna say is Michael's right about a lot of things.

He's right when he is talking about the problems that our culture is having.

He's right when he is talking about men in the church.

I think he's even right when he is talking about mini Protestant and

Catholic churches that have liberalized on their standards and stuff.

I think he's right and all that.

And I think those are real problems where I think the danger arise.

is the mechanism for fixing that.

So I think I, I think often of the quote from our second president, John Adams,

where he said that our constitution was devised for moral and religious

people and was wholly inadequate for the governance of any other.

That's true.

But how do you get morality?

How do you get righteousness?

How do you get good citizens?

And I think the difference here between what Michael's saying and

what I would say is I don't believe enforced virtue ceases to be virtue.

Andrew Klavin actually makes a point, another daily wire host

in his book the Truth in Beauty, that the dilemma that we're facing

is that we need virtuous people.

We need virtue in our society in order to be free.

Yet, once you enforce virtue, it ceases to be virtue, right?

That's the dilemma.

And that was just the first thing.

Mr.

Struck.

Maybe we can get into the conversation.

What was your thought?

. Gio: The whole notion of blue laws, I

there's a town in Paramus that totally closed because blue laws still exists.

But why are blue laws there, He mentioned it's part of the American fabric, but

that doesn't mean it makes it right.

Not everything that is old in the American tradition is correct because you have

people that worship on different days.

You have people who, like Jews who worship on Sabbath, Ben Shapiro, you have

Muslims who have Friday as a holy day.

Why should blue laws incentivize people to go to church on Sundays if that is not

the religion that somebody may adhere to?

So once again, you start going down that line with blue laws of whose religion

are you incentivizing and what you said, When you begin to force it, it

becomes, tyrannical and not virtuous.

That is always catching my attention.

That's a really good point you make.

I think of just Michael, right?

So he was talking, he was laying out there, right?

He's a Catholic.

Obviously we're Protestants, but even among Protestants, right?

There are how many of us, right?

And there's so many different doctrinal agreements.

I think there's core things we can agree on.

That's the point of this podcast, right?

To how do we live together.

But I think when when people start talking about the church needs to, needs to

exercise this authority to put out its its dictates or what it believes is right?

Should we create a society right?

Where each individual religious sect in each individual Protestant church

or the Catholic church are vying for power to enforce their dogma on other

Christians or those who don't believe.

And one other point that struck out at me too from Michael's comments is he.

I remember, and I recommend everybody go back and watch our episode on church

and state, but it's something that he does where he talks about blue law.

We had laws, we had blue laws, we had laws against adultery, we had laws he

talked about like drug laws and stuff.

He mixes different aspects of the natural law and he he totally ignores

the principle of the two tablets.

So in other words, I actually agree in a certain sense with laws that

with dis privileging adultery, right?

I think adding no fault divorce was a mistake, but I think if you cheat

on your wife, you should legally.

be held to account cuz you made a covenant not just before the church,

you made a covenant before the state to be honest and true to your family.

If you abuse that.

That is part of the natural law.

The second tablet.

Which is man relating to man.

So I agree there.

But he mixes that in with blue laws, right?

Which enforce, the fourth commandment or a version of the

fourth commandment on everyone.

And that's between man's relationship with God, right?

That is outside of the realm of the government.

So he is just he's of mixing that up where I think he should split it a little.

And that's where we argue against that combination of church and state.

He also mentioned blasphemy laws.

Blasphemy laws are strictly a religious thing.

Freedom of speech, even though I don't want anybody talking

bad about Jesus or about God.

Freedom of speech allows that.

And that becomes an issue of worship in which I'm not comfortable and you're not

comfortable in government putting their 2 cents into when or when I cannot worship.

And so by mixing the two goes back to his faith tradition.

Catholicism in Italy, for example, in Rome, in the Vatican, that is

a mix where you can get in trouble for, violating certain, laws based

that are purely religious laws.

And yet that's not something I'm comfortable with here

in the United States.

And it goes back to your religious tradition.

Catholicism sees no problem with mixing

the two.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think of.

I think it comes down to I think from a Christian perspective,

what happened in heaven, right?

How did this sin thing started Lucifer, he spoke lies against the character of God.

What did God do with that?

Did God strike him dead right away?

Did he enforce anybody who was listening to him to stop listening to him?

No.

He let it play out.

He let him come to earth and play out the ideas of his government, because

ultimately, God is a god of love.

What do we call forced love in our society?

It's a dirty word, starts with, all right, rape.

God is not a cosmic rapist God loves.

And so that's why God allows freedom of worship.

So who are we to in, to, in, to force worship on our fellow men, right?

When God doesn't enforce it on.

Yes.

And he mentioned, I wrote some things down.

He mentioned that, right now in society there seems to be

an incentive by the government.

He says the government is not neutral to incentivize everything that's lawlessness.

That is true, but the appeal to that is not to swing with the religious

club, it's to swing with natural law and to make arguments and references

that are based on natural law.

Not an appeal to scripture, nor an appeal to the church protecting our kids.

It's something we can all agree on, whether we are religious or not, laws

against harming other people and stealing.

And we've spoken about this, but it's interesting to hear

somebody who, for the most part we're fans of, say things that we

disagree with.

Absolutely.

And.

We see the ramifications of this.

So I know and Michael's talking at another place.

I know he wrote a book called Speechless.

It was actually a very good book.

Had really good information where we basically call, he basically

criticizes the idea on the right of free speech absolutism, right?

In other words, right?

So we criticize the left and the woke for the, PC standards and for

centering our speech on social media.

And we criticize them by saying, no we should be for free speech absolutism.

And Michael says no, we shouldn't be for free speech absolutism, right?

People don't necessarily have a right to say whatever they want, but the danger

there and I see this kind of growing in certain spheres of the right, which

I'm a part of the right, but I see growing, there is this willingness.

To use the state to squash debate, right?

We've seen that on the left already.

They'll do that, right?

If you're a Christian Baker who doesn't want to exercise your speech

to promote gay marriage, right?

They'll come after you with the full force of the law, right?

Luckily, , the Supreme Court which has Catholics and Jews on it.

And, but luckily it's ruled correctly on that.

And it said he has a right not to say things he doesn't believe.

And I totally agree with that and I applaud the Supreme Court for that.

But I see a growing desire among some people.

It's I think it's vengeance really.

It's like we've been shut out for so long, we've been excluded.

We're gonna give back what we got.

And that's not a great spirit.

I, the God says vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.

It's not ours, but we have to do.

And I'm gonna go back to Andrew Klavin again cause he's another daily wire host.

But something he says is we can't become the left in order to fight

the left if we become the left.

If we adopt their ways, guess what happens?

We're just stuck in a place when there's no good guys.

So it.

Yes.

It's hard right when we get censored by the left, right?

Whatever it's hard to not want vengeance and to take the power back.

But ultimately we have to have the spirit of George Washington, the guy

who could have been king, but he gave up the power for the sake of liberty

and for the sake of creating a republic.

Is this lust for power over, others?

In other words, I'd say let's go back to the constitution.

Let's go back to those.

Good.

And I do believe Protestant principles upon which our country was founded, which

include a separation of church and state.

Yep.

And I would add Judeo Christian principles for those listening.

But I like the point you make.

We cannot fight the left.

Using their own weapons because we don't agree in those, using the state to squash

speech and look, there isn't anything really that is absolute freedom of speech,

we have agreed in society that you can't yell fire in a crowded

movie theater, And there are laws against for example, tarnishing the

name of somebody else, because if they sue you, you can get to law.

And so free speech is, we're proponents of it, but anything

good can be taken to the extreme.

But what we don't want to do is incentivize the

state to begin to regulate.

Because once the state has power, when does the state ever give up their power?

It takes a revolution for that.

And so we're not, that's not what we're advocating.

What we're advocating is that everybody needs to have, equal voice in the

public forum and then let truth win out.

And if we get back to that, I think we could be a better society for it.

Yeah.

And one one point I'll make right is one thing that has happened

right, is people have conflated.

So for.

Whenever we talk about free speech, people will then, talk about pornography, right?

And people have conflated, I think, wrongly pornography.

Which is an action, with speech.

And so in other words, if I say, oh, I'm against pornography, some people will say,

oh you're not a free speech absolutist.

No I think I am, but I don't consider pornography speech.

Just like I don't consider, the guy walking down the street, naked

I don't consider him exercising his speech.

He's, assaulting others, he's committing sexual assault.

That's not speech.

So I would clarify there of course.

And I think that's a good point.

But when it comes to ideas, when it comes to arguments, when it

comes to, yeah I despise communism.

I think it's horrible.

But yes, communists have a right to make their.

and I have the right to rebut it, right?

I have the right to say, Hey, that's a load of crap.

Part of my language, . But I think that's important, right?

That exchange of ideas.

That's what makes this country one of the, one of the things

that makes this country so great

and that's what makes freedom.

So in a sense, dangerous but needed for a free society, Because when ideas

are involved in the public forum, you have to be persuasive, they have to be

logical, and you have to hope that the majority of the people clinging to truth.

And unfortunately, what we're seeing now is that only one side of the story

is being told usually through media, usually through our universities.

And we've been warned by Martha Luther that unless truth is pursued in our

universities, they'll be the gates of hell and all this countercultural

things that we're seeing today.

Our being funneled through our universities.

that's why we have to, those of us who have conservative values have to

fight for our children and have to fight to regain the public square so

our ideas can have a full viewing by the majority of those who are looking

to decide which side are they on.

And the beauty I like about our side is that our ideas not only play

out in the mind, but when you put them to practical purposes, they've

been the bedrock civilization for all our earth's known history.

And when we deviate from that, a great example is the French Revolution and

everything where they try to throw away anything religious, it was a disaster.

They even try to do away with a seventh day week.

, which is established by God and tried a 10 day work week and that was a disaster.

So our side has stood the test of time and our side will stand the

test of time, even though right now it doesn't always seem like it.

Yeah, and I think we had the text of the First Amendment so I'll read it now.

It says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or a bridging the freedom of

speech or the or of the press or of the right, of the people peacefully

to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And what I love about this right is.

Like we were saying earlier, right?

There are the mini sex of Christianity, obviously, right?

The one that I'm a part of, right?

I believe it's true.

I wanna be a part of it, but I don't believe anyone should be

forced to worship how I worship.

To worship the way my conscience and my reading of scripture has led me to.

And I don't want to be forced to worship the way someone else's

conscience has led them to.

And so I think our founders when they wrote the Constitution,

were brilliant in this way.

And I, there was, listen, there was a lot of debate and there was a lot of

argument that went into creating this.

And ultimately, I believe that God had a hand in inspiring their minds.

I'm not saying not inspiration in the same way scripture, but in the way that

God speaks to all of our hearts and works in our hearts when we're living for him.

And I believe he had a place and he had a role in setting up this

country as a beacon of religious.

And by the way, historically, the church has thrived in America, right?

We have done, the vast majority of worldwide missions have been launched

from the United States of America, right?

I think of the second grade awakening, right?

Whereas a Bible study movement that ended up spreading around the world

and reviving interest in scripture that started in America, in the

East coast and the Midwest, right?

The state where I'm in now, Michigan was a lot of it, but New York as

well, and parts of Massachusetts.

That's where this whole awakening started and it spread around the world

of knowledge of scripture, right?

So I just think what we have here is so rare in history of this world, right?

We should protect it, right?

Like that constitution, like it's gold, right?

So threats from the left and threats from the right should be opposed.

I definitely believe.

and I want to

put the quote back up because I like that first part.

It says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

And I think that's where my liberal friends get it wrong.

They think that all religion should be excluded from every

avenue of the public square.

And if you read that once again, I'll put it back up, it says, or

prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Look, I don't wanna enforce my religious views upon you, but my views

are informed by my religious views.

And they should have a, a say in the public square.

As long as I don't violate your religious views, then mine and yours have are

gonna inform who we are as people.

They inform our characters.

And for me, And for you, Joey, I know that the bottom line

is we are called to love God.

That's our private relationship with our faith, right?

We love God with all our heart, mind, body and soul.

But then the second part of that is that I appeal to all who disagree

with is that I'm gonna love you as God has commanded me to love you.

I'm gonna love you.

The second commandment of that says, love your neighbor as yourself.

I'm gonna treat you in the loving manner, but where we disagree, part of

that love is to share the disagreement and hopefully we can do it amicably.

Yeah.

And to your point about displays of religion in the public square, that

is a part of our country's history.

And I think that's good, right?

Like for instance, right?

I know in our courtrooms we make people swear on the Bible.

I.

Also if Muslims can swear on other books and stuff.

Historically people have sworn on the Bible.

I think that's a good thing.

I think that's an honorable thing.

I think of, in my church right, on our platform, we

have the American flag, right?

What do I think that symbolizes, I think that symbolizes that we're

grateful to live in a country that gives us the freedom of speech, right?

And I don't think any of these kind of displays are bad.

I think they're a good thing.

So I would say our liberal friends would say, that's a violation of

separation of church and state.

And I simply just don't agree with that, because freely exercise it.

Our congress people, they have a freedom of religion as well.

I think of Chaplain Barry Black of the US Senate.

He's a chaplain hired by the Senate and he leads the Senate in prayer.

I know he leads bible studies with Senate members and I think

that's a really good thing.

Yeah, no, it's not right.

You, you can exercise your religion even in public, in a public square,

even in government, I think.

No, I know Every single one of our presidents that we've ever had, including

Biden, including President Trump, Obama have quoted scripture in speeches.

That's a part of our American culture and that's part of the First amendment.

And so sometimes some people say, no, we gotta get all signs

of religion out of government.

And that's like what you're pointing to the French Revolution.

So I don't agree with that either.

And what you said about all our presidents quoting scripture, that is

fine and dandy as long as they're not trying to pass laws that uphold one

church over another, or even uphold one religion over another, because

that wouldn't be fair to others of different faith like Muslims and Jews.

Because this is the beauty of this country, and it's the first time ever

in the known history where there is that freedom of plurality, that freedom

to worship not only the Christian God, purported gods of Islam and

Judaism and Hinduism and Buddhism.

We need to learn to get along without denying that we all have

our faiths and yet without imposing one particular faith over the other.

That being said, when the liberal side says, oh, we have to get rid

of all religion, . We just saw Sam Smith and the Grammys promoting devil

type worship, Where he was dressed in Satanic clothing type or imagery.

Satanism is not a secular thing.

It is a religious thing.

Yet they are applauding that.

So you can't have it both ways.

And what Joey and I are after is that you have to be consistent in your argument.

If you're gonna deny Christianity, then you have to deny anything appealing

to the occult as well, because that's a religion that's not secular.

So you have to be consistent.

And I think our worldview, our biblical worldview is the most

consistent with the world we

live in.

Yeah, absolutely.

Let's talk about what Michael Knowles said.

Even though religion is declining here in Europe where many people fled

from to find religious liberty here in the United States, Christianity

is declining very quickly.

And we wanna talk about a couple of points that this article

make, and I'll bring it up here.

Take us through this article because it's fascinating and yeah, share

with us what you wanna point out.

, Joey: and we'll link this in

wants to read the whole thing.

But I'm just gonna read these points here.

So number one, it says secular secularization is widespread in

Western Europe, but most people in the region still identify as Christian.

And we go on to the second point.

It says, even though most people identify as Christian in the

region, few regularly attend church.

And if you go and you look up other articles, you Google about the circulation

of Europe, you can see Europe has greatly secularized, very rapidly,

particularly since the second World War Europe has just secularized like crazy.

And Europe, the establishment of religion that was Europe, like both Protestant

countries and Catholic countries, right?

That's how it was divided, right?

Germany established the pro, the Lutheran church, right?

Obviously Rome and many countries, Spain stuff had Catholic establishments.

England still has an established church to this day.

The Church of England, right?

Europe was the land of establishment, right?

And so if that was the thing that kept Christianity true and pure and kept people

moral, then you'd expect Europe to be this vibrant Christian civilization today.

But what we've seen is, while there's been a secularization trend in the United

States as well, the United States is still far more religious than Western Europe.

We have not secularized to the degree that they have.

There are far more people who regularly attend church.

And think that's an important thing to keep in mind, right?

So for my integralist Catholic friends or my Christian national Protestant friends,

I would point you to Europe and say it's if establishment worked right, if it was

so good, then why is Europe so secular?

And why is Protestant America so much more religious?

And I would say, Because there's two kinds of power for the church, right?

There's the power of the state, right?

And that's a power that can animate churches.

It has in the past.

And then there's the power of the Holy Spirit, right?

And I believe that when churches, and when Christians have, they've lost

the power of the Holy Spirit, right?

When they've lost, good Bible religion, right?

That causes them to love God with all their heart and love their fellow man.

When they've lost that power, that's when they start seeking the power of the state.

That's when they start seeking the sword, because they've lost

the power of the Holy Spirit.

So what I want, I wanna see, listen, I think I want the same thing

in many ways that Michael wants.

I wanna see the church have the full power of the gospel.

, right?

But I want that through the power of the Holy Spirit, not the state.

And I think when we see a revival of one writer called it primitive

godliness, when we see that we won't need the clamor for the state to give

the church power to go out and use the sword to convert a conversion by

the sword is no conversion, right?

That's a lot of things, right?

It creates a lot of liars, . But that's not a conversion, that's not what I want.

I want people whose hearts are transformed by the Holy Spirit.

So that's the first

thing.

, that and this quote here in the article that I want to point out the

second point, it says, even though most identify as Christian in the

region, few regularly attend church.

And I think that's the danger there, when religion, when Christianity becomes just a

cultural thing and not a heart thing, then you get Christians appealing to the state.

But when it becomes a heart issue, then you seek that balance that

you and I are trying to promote.

The last thing I want is to go back to the medieval church where they would

prosecute and kill people and burn people at the stake or pull people apart or

hang them simply because they did not believe what the church was teaching.

I wanna prevent that.

And what's dangerous to me, and I'll use that word dangerous of what

Michael knows was saying, is that he is Unwittingly or wittingly mixing

and heading us back in that direction where the church has secular power.

The church does not need secular power.

It's never needed secular power.

The church thrives when it has Holy Spirit power, and we as citizens

of the United States do not need to appeal to the state in order for our

ideas that we believe are good for everybody to permeate the culture.

Absolutely.

And the other thing, that I want to say about this is right.

Political power corrupts , right?

That's why our constitution divides power among three branches at the

federal government and it divides power between the federal government and the

state's government because it doesn't, and we don't have a king, right?

These things does that to divide power because concentrated power corrupts those.

It's concentrated into, and that's why I think our constitution's so brilliant.

But what happens when the church takes on that political power?

What do we see?

What did we see in the Middle Ages Church?

We saw corruption, right?

And I believe it was actually a Catholic writer who said this, but he.

. And I thought it was really true, but he said the road to hell will be paved

with this walls of bishops because these bishops, what would they do?

They would sell indulgences, right?

So in other words, people were coming, they want him to

forgiveness of Christ, right?

And they'd committed sins.

They'd done wrong things.

So they'd come to the priest and then the priests in the middle Ages would

say yeah, you can be redeemed, you can be saved, but you need a first, you

need to buy this indulgence, right?

And yeah, then we'll, you'll receive absolution.

And that was one of the things that prompted Martin

Luther to nail his 95 thesis.

That was one of his 95 points was this sale of indulgences.

But this corruption comes, right?

Because then they see, cuz think about it, a relationship with Christ

and your spiritual destiny, that's the most intimate thing about you.

So what won't a person do, right?

If they think their spiritual life is on the line?

And , when you introduce this power dynamic right over people's

spiritual lives, you just lead the way for corruption because

the priests are no more holy than any one of the rest of us, right?

They're prone to corruption too.

And so when you give them political power, right?

When you give pastors political power, you just, you incentivize

the worst in human nature.

They get greedy with that power.

And I wanna show you a quote.

I just looked it up, which I think summarizes what we're trying to say.

And it was by Ben Franklin, and I think you've seen this quote

before, but it's a wonderful quote.

It says, when a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself.

And when it does not support itself and God does not take care to

support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the

civil power to sign, I apprehend.

Of it being a bad one.

So to summarize from the old English, if the church has to appeal to the state

for power, then it's not a good church.

It's not a good religion.

And I think Ben Franklin nailed it there.

When summarizing what we're trying to sum up.

Sum up, yes, our religious views have, right to be in the public

square, but we're not gonna appeal to the authority of the state.

And we don't want the liberal left to appeal to the authority

of the state to enforce their anti-religious views as well.

Let's segue to the second portion.

Of this next clip, Joey, introduce us to this next clip, which is

about Governor Sunu and his thing before we show it to the audience.

Yeah, so this was actually a really interesting clip cuz here

Michael's critiquing an actual, a conservative Republican governor

has someone I actually like.

But he's critiquing him on very interesting grounds and so

well, we can just play the clip and then we'll flush it out.

It'll be illuminating.

Chris Sunu, governor of New Hampshire says that he's going

to run for president, or at least he's strongly implying that he's

going to run for president and.

Here's this platform you've been

talking about, trying to remind the party that Republicans

are about limited government.

Yeah.

You said recently Republicans are almost trying to outdo Democrats at

their own game of being big government and having a solution and a say on everything.

Who were you thinking of when you

say that?

Oh, there, there's a lot.

I think there's a lot of leadership out there that forget, that forgets

at heart, I'm a principled free market conservative, let the markets decide.

So there's no individual per se, but there's a lot of leadership that says,

you know what, when we're not getting that result out of a

private business or locality we'll just impose from the top down our

conservative will.

You're

not talking about the Florida governor and Disney, for example.

That's a bad example.

Yeah that's an example one, one of the many examples.

Ron DeSantis may be running for president as well.

Sure, yeah.

Yeah.

Look, Ron's a very good governor.

He is.

But I'm just trying to re remind folks

what we are at our core, and if we're trying to beat the Democrats

at being big government, authoritarians w remember what's going to happen?

Eventually they'll have power in a state or in a position, and then they'll start

penalizing conservative businesses and conservative nonprofits

and conservative ideas.

That is the worst precedent in the world.

That's exactly what the founding fathers tried not to, tried to avoid,

and the award.

For the most out of touch Republican goes to drum roll please.

Governor Chris Sununu.

Wow.

Congratulations, . Oh my goodness.

It's as though Chris Sununu, he got, he was cryogenically frozen in 2010 for 2009

and he just fr maybe even earlier, and he froze there and he just was melted

out of that freeze and he said, Hey guys, we, if we ever use the government,

the liberals might use it against us.

Oh Chris, you must have missed the last 10 years.

Really?

You must have missed the last 70 years of US politics.

They're already doing that.

But guys, if we do anything to fight back in the real world, then the

Democrats might hypothetically keep doing what they've been doing for 70 years.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's not a hypothetical then.

It's not, if we do this, then they might do this.

That's not the situ.

The situation we're in is the libs are already doing the thing, and the

question to us is, are we going to fight back in a just way in accord

with what the founding fathers wanted?

I love when these people invoke the founding fathers.

Say the founding fathers would never want us to wield political power, bro.

What, where do you, what are you talking about?

We had many more social regulations at the time of the founding fathers.

We had many more social regulations even 20 years ago than we do today.

We had blasphemy laws on the books for much of this country's history.

We had blue laws all over the place.

We had very strict immigration controls for much of this country's history.

We had very strong standards that we enforced with the weight of the

government, with the weight of the state, on education, on religion, on social

norms between men and women, all of that.

What if we.

If we start, listen, I'm a strong conservative, I want to cut taxes.

Yeah.

Life is about more than cutting.

I like cutting taxes too, but countries are about more than that.

Life is about more than that.

What a waste elect me and I'll keep using the same loser strategy

that cost us the entire culture wouldn't even allow conservatives

to conserve the women's bathroom.

There was a lot there, brother.

Go ahead.

I'll give you the first word.

So the first thing I wanna say, first of all, . I like Governor Sununu.

The one thing I would say is that neither of them.

, and obviously if you're in a news clip, there's only so much you can say, but

neither of them really got to the heart of the principle of, again, I'm gonna

come back to this a lot throughout this podcast, the two tablets, right?

, right?

There is natural law.

There's the last six commandments, there's worship, right?

So in other words, for instance, the law that was brought up by the news

anchor about Rhon, DeSantis and Disney, I actually agreed with that law, right?

I think when a company accepts benefits from the government and then they tried to

sexualize children, I think the government can take those benefits that it gave away.

So I agree with that law.

I just wanted to, I wanted to say that, but no, the principle

that Governor Sun NUNUs laying out is just basic wisdom, right?

It's the first of all, the principle of, yeah, if you give the government a

certain power to wield it in ways that you think are just, whether they're

not eventually your opponent in a democratic system, eventually at some

point, , your opponents are gonna have their hand on those same levels of power.

I think of an interesting example from the Senate that happened.

I don't remember exactly what year, but it was shortly it was around,

the time, I think it was around the death of Anton and Scalia.

Yeah, it was a, it was after the death of Antonin Scalia, who

was a Supreme Court justice, a conservative Supreme Court justice.

When he died pre president Barack Obama was president.

The Democrats controlled the Senate where they appoint judicial nominees.

And before there had been a thing called the judicial filibuster,

meaning that in order to get a justice through, you had to have two-thirds

of the Senate right to vote in favor.

Democrats had 50% of the Senate, but they didn't have two-thirds.

And so what they did was the man, the majority leader at the time,

was Democratic Senator Harry Reid.

And they broke, they voted to break the filibuster, meaning all

you needed was a simple majority.

and the minority leader, right?

Republican Mitch McConnell, he said, you'll rule the day that you

got rid of the judicial filibuster.

And ultimately what happened is, because the judicial filibuster has been gotten

rid of, Republicans have appointed I think three good justices, right?

In a Trump administration without two-thirds vote, because the

Democrats blew up the rule that it was actually, it was a decent rule

cuz it meant that you had to get agreement from the, from both parties

in order to get candidates through.

But they blew it up thinking, we have the power now if we can get

a justice through, it's worth blowing up this filibuster, right?

So they de they, they lost sight of foresight and saying that eventually from

the democratic perspective, Republicans are gonna control the Senate again.

So it's if you blow up this rule that benefits us

all, , it's gonna hurt you too.

And I think the point that Governor sunk was bringing is a good one.

And it is, these principles, and I like that he said, limited government,

not small government, because limited government applies that we want limits

on the power of government and the scope of government, but it's not small.

We have a gov, we have a 330 million people, right?

We have, 50 states.

We have, several territories, right?

It's gonna be a big government right in size, but it's limited

in it, the scope of its power.

And give Michael A.

Little bit of credit here.

He's right?

That sometimes com libertarians can just not want to do anything with government.

The government exists for a reason.

Romans 13 clearly lays out.

God has invested earthly governments with power and authority.

So it's like there are just things that they can do in the realm of

the last six commandments, right?

In the realm of the natural law, right?

Like point you brought out earlier protecting children,

I think of abortion, right?

Yeah.

I want the government to outlaw all, like all elective abortion, certainly, right?

Anything other than to save the physical life of the mother, which

technically isn't really abortion, but the discussion for another day.

So it's yeah, I want the government to do just things, but we have to lay

out the principle of what that is.

And I think Governor Sununu was making a really good attempt

at that and I applaud him.

And that's where, once again with Michael, let me start with him

before I get to the governor, is.

I agree in principle, but the way we play it out is different because

once again, he's talking about we had blue laws and blasphemy laws,

and we need to protect children.

Those three things are not the same.

Meaning blasphemy laws and blue laws deal with the first

tablet of the 10 Commandments, which we should not impinge on.

Religious freedom of people protecting children is in the second tablet.

And yes, I'm gungho for that, which brings me back to Sununu.

Protecting children is the role of the government.

And if a company's not gonna protect children, then the

government needs to step in.

That has nothing to do with religion.

That has to do with the fact that all of us should be in the

business of protecting our children.

And if we differ on what that protection looks like, every.

Every opinion and every voice should have equal voice in the public square.

And that's where DeSantis is not doing that on his own, per se.

He was voted by the majority of people in Florida who are expressing their re not

their views on morality based, not on the church, but on common sense and decency.

And in that sense, DeSantis is not acting as a dictator.

He's protecting his constituency who voted him in.

And thereby freedom is expressed by who we vote.

DeSantis is not gonna stay there forever.

You can vote him.

. Joey: Yeah.

And the other thing I would, the difference I would lay out

is Disney can still make the woke crap that they're making.

It just, they can't do it with the same government benefits that they had before.

So it's not not depriving them of their freedom of speech.

They can still say the same stuff they're saying, but they're just not gonna get

the same benefits from the government.

So the next clip we're gonna watch is president John F.

Kennedy.

And he was a Democratic president from a different era, , I would say

quite a different kind of Democrat than we're used to seeing today.

But I disagree with him on some things, but I think this clip that we're gonna

show represented an attitude he had.

For one, he was a stalwart anti-communist.

Which I love that.

But I think the clip we're gonna show really illustrates something, deeply

American about President Kennedy.

So we'll get into that and then we'll discuss that as we wrap up.

Reverend Mesa, Reverend Rock.

I'm grateful for your generous invitation to state my views.

Father, the religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight.

I want to emphasize from the outset, but I believe that we have far more critical

issues in the 1960 campaign, the spread of communist influence until it now festers

only 90 miles from the coast of Florida.

The humiliating treatment of our president and vice president by those

who no longer respect our power.

The hungry children.

I saw in West Virginia the old people who cannot pay their doctor's.

The family's forced to give up their farms and America with too many

slums, with too few schools and too late to the moon and outer space.

These are the real issues, which should decide this campaign, and they

are not religious issues for war and hunger and ignorance and despair.

No, no religious barrier.

But because I am a Catholic and no Catholic has ever been elected president,

the real issues in this campaign have been excu obscured, perhaps deliberately in

some quarters, less responsible than this.

So it is apparently necessary for me to state, once again, it's not what

kind of church I believe in for that should be important only to me, but

what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state

is absolute, where no Catholic pate will tell the president.

Should he be Catholic, how to act and no Protestant minister would tell his

parishioners for whom to vote where no church or church school is granted any

public funds or political preference and where no man is denied public office

merely cause his religion differs from the president who might appoint him

or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish,

where no public official either request or accept instructions on public policy

from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical

source where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly

upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials and where

religious liberty is so indivisible.

That an act against one church is treated as an act against all for a while.

This year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed.

In other years it has been and may someday be again, a Jew or a

Quaker, or a Unitarian or a Baptist.

It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to

Jefferson's statute of religious freedom.

Today, I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you until the whole fabric

of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday

end, where all men and all churches are treated as equals for every man

has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice.

So there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no black voting

of any kind, and where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews at both the lay

and the pastoral levels will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and

division, which have so often mod their works in the past and promote instead

the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe, and it represents

the kind of presidency in which I believe a great office that must

be neither humbled by making it the instrument of any religious group

Norton by arbitrarily withholding it.

Its occupancy from the members of any one religious group.

I believe in a president whose views and religion are his own private affair,

neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him.

As a condition to holding that office.

So the one thing that I would say I slightly disagree with is he

said directly or he said, no church or no minister, whatever should directly

or indirectly influence, politic or, I, I don't necessarily think that's

true or the politics of the nation.

I don't necessarily think that.

I think directly.

Absolutely.

But what does indirectly mean?

If you mean by indirectly like subtle hints that like you should

do the pass this legislation.

Then I agree, but it's indirectly influencing the politics of the

nation to preach truth, right?

To preach, for instance.

A good example is evangelical churches, particularly in the north

during slave, the times of slavery.

Many pulpits could be heard preaching against the sin of slavery.

I think of one of the founders of my church where they were very abolitionist

and they actually one of the founders of my church actually told members of our

church that they could not vote for that.

And they could not in good conscience vote for anything that would

uphold the institution of slavery.

So I think in a way that's an indirect, so I just a slight disagreement, right?

I think when you're talking to your parishioners, you should talk about

principles and that's, that might cross that line, but I don't think that my

church or my pastor should have the authority to force me to vote anyway or

should be given the hand of the state.

So that's, that was my only slight agreement.

But other than that, What John f Kennedy's laying out here is a uniquely American

view that all men are created equal and that we have the right, and that's

what we're gonna come back to is right.

The right to worship God according to the dictates of our conscience.

Meaning the state does not have the authority to shut our church down

because of a pandemic, and the state does not have the authority to force

us to put something in our body, right?

If we may believe that it's not good for us, right?

And we believe our bodies of the temple of the Holy Spirit, and also the church

does not have the authority to force someone else to worship the way they

believe God is telling them the worship.

Yeah.

And

what I like about the Kennedy clip is that you can tell he's at least

thinking about both sides of the art.

He is thinking about truth.

And how that truth affects both sides of the aisle.

Today, we have too many ideologues people, both on the right and on the

left who only see their view, but to me, truth stands in the middle.

The left may have some truth, the right may have some truth, but we

need to seek ultimate truth and that balance is critical if we're gonna

continue to thrive as a nation.

My issue or what I see coming to this country is that right now we are in

the media and in politics, way left.

There's going to be a swing back to hard, right.

And what I fear and what I know it's going to happen is that it's going to

go too far and the very abuses that the right is now decrying on the left.

They are going to be tempted and will yield on the right.

And Joey and I promise our listeners and our audience that we're

going to keep it based on truth.

Neither far right nor far left because it's not a middle ground.

It's a different ground.

It is truth.

And that's what we're after.

And I hope everybody listening is after truth and not after party politics.

Party politics will be the ruin of this country.

We need to seek after truth.

Joey, any final thoughts as we wrap up?

I like the point that you said it's not a middle

ground, it's a different ground.

Because sometimes especially when you look at different issues, right?

The truth may be more on the right or the truth may be more on the left saying

something like, . Traditionally, they've been more in favor of like freedom

of expression and freedom of speech.

Not so much the woke left, the truth on any particular issue may

be more with the left or the right, whatever, and we'll discuss that.

But, so it's not an issue of being directly in the center, right?

I don't want a middle ground between killing babies and not killing babies.

And I don't wanna middle between sexualizing children and not, but it's

like we're gonna stand on truth and we're gonna stand on firm principles.

I like what governor Sun Nunu said, he's I'm a principled conservative, right?

It's so it's not like I'm gonna go with any fad on the right, but it's, or

I'm gonna go with any fad on the left.

I'm gonna go for the truth, right?

And I'm gonna pursue truth and justice and quote Superman, right?

Make it all the way in the American way.

truth justice in the American.

Yes.

And above all do it God's way.

Frank Sinatra didn't have it right when he said, I did it my way,

Joey and I want to do it God's way.

And God's way is respecting the freedom of the individual.

But we know that when you violate truth, it has its consequences.

Joey, another great episode and I hope everybody enjoyed it.

Comment below

and subscribe.

Yes.

Hi, brother.

Take care.