[00:00:04] Broadcasting live from atop the Rocky Mountains, the crossroads of the West, you are listening to the Liberty Roundtable Radio Talk Show. Happy to have you along my fellow Americans, it's Sam Bushman live from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the home of brotherly love ladies and gentlemen. I've been here all week with my buddy Zach Gillies. Welcome Zach. Hey, thanks Sam.
[00:00:32] Tremendous stuff happening all week. We are at the interesting Braver Angels organization annual conference if you will. And they've had us in Philadelphia here at the incredible university. What's this university called Zach? It's called Temple University. Temple University ladies and gentlemen, the big T. Interestingly enough we're staying in the dorms so we're grateful for that and their hospitality.
[00:00:57] We've been able to go to the cafeteria and have some wonderful food. They've got wonderful buildings all over the campus. The only difficulty is for old men like me walking around the campus it gets pretty rough, but they say I'm getting my steps in so there you go, Zach. Yeah, no absolutely. And they have some really awesome things that they've been doing at this event to allow us to have transport to the historical Philadelphia. We were able to go see the Liberty Bell, which was an awesome experience that I've never seen. Anyway, they had some tours.
[00:01:26] Zach got his photo right by the bell. I got my photo right next to the bell. Thumbs up for that. Went up there and just rang the thing. No, I'm just kidding. I didn't do that. But anyway, it was a very cool experience. I guess they actually used to let people touch it and do things and someone vandalized it with some hammer or something crazy. Yeah. And then they stopped everybody from... I mean, I can't imagine somebody really doing something like that. What are you thinking? Oh man, yeah. Some kid apparently brought a hammer and just took a nice hammer to it, put another crack in it. No, they didn't put another crack in it, but they literally said that it happened.
[00:01:55] It's like, hey, you can't vandalize the Liberty Bell, people. Oh man. So anyway, we checked out the Liberty Bell. That was pretty awesome. We also had a wonderful guide that was a partner of Braver Angels who basically took us on a guide and did tour. We put on headsets and followed him around. Then he showed us the different buildings and the context and Benjamin Franklin's location and some of the experiences and some of the stories relating to Liberty and the history.
[00:02:20] There was a lot of Jewish representation back in the day where they weren't getting a fair shake as well. But, you know, eventually the city of Brotherly Love gave them support and that turned out really well. Benjamin Franklin's historical reality is here too. We didn't get to see what Independence Hall though. I guess that's just because of the 250 celebrations. It's just so crowded, Zach, we couldn't even get in.
[00:02:44] Yeah, it was an incredible environment with the spirit of freedom around here, especially around this time. It's just going to be an amazing day. I'm really excited and looking forward to celebrating our nation's birthday, 250. It's going to be fantastic. Yeah, I'm almost 250 years old. No, it's my birthday too, but I'm only going to be 59. But I've enjoyed 59 wonderful years out of the 250 of those years and what a blessed place to live.
[00:03:13] Anyway, we had a great day touring that. It was really dang hot though. The humidity just gets to me. I can't hardly take it. You've got to stay up on your water and you're drinking of salties or whatever you drink for hydration, but man, it gets hot. You've got to really think back of the founding era. It's hot for us, but then we go into AC and after a couple of hours we get cool water and stuff like that.
[00:03:38] You just think about James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and a lot of these other people that were here in 1787 working on the Constitution and things like that. What a sweltering heat for them and there's just no real relief from it. Right, Zach?
[00:03:55] Right. I can only imagine being in a Constitution convention and just dealing with that, one, that heat, but also the tension that took place with all the different opinions.
[00:04:10] And I guess that kind of takes us back to this event of Braver Angels to where their whole event was based on this, where they had lots of different breakout sessions where they brought together the red side and the blue side and put them all in one room to have discussions and debates and different things that really relate to what our founders had started.
[00:04:38] One of the things that's interesting about Braver Angels too, you know, a lot of times when people try to bring the red and the blue together or the right, the left, the Republicans, Democrats, whatever you want to call it, they usually avoid a lot of the hard topics. They try to go to softer topics in an effort to try to get along and build relationships. One of the key hallmarks of Braver Angels is listen, you don't have to give up your beliefs. That's not what we're talking about. You don't have to abandon your beliefs or put your views on the altar of, you know, but what you have to do is learn to deliver your beliefs.
[00:05:07] Your viewpoints in respectful, respectful, dignified ways where it's not attacking people. It's more, hey, I can articulate where I stand and my beliefs and why I think what I think and others can do the same. And we give everyone the grace, everyone the respect, everyone the dignity to have their views, even if their views are off the charts in somebody else's mind, whatever that side be.
[00:05:32] The goal is to learn to hold your tongue and the goal is to learn to control your language in ways that build bridges. Zach, that was really a hallmark of the whole conference. I mean, they made it that point multiple times. And I thought that's really impressive because they will take on the hard topics. Yes, they will. And one of the one word that stood out to me is polarization. Mm hmm.
[00:05:53] Now, Sam, can you kind of explain what polarization is to help kind of our listeners understand what that means and what Braver Angels is really striving to accomplish to avoid this polarization that our nation's facing? Yeah, so polarization is this idea of this huge divide. And the more we talk, the more we legislate, the more we dig into our own viewpoints or our own side, so to speak.
[00:06:23] Polarization just continues to foment that divide and make that divide greater and greater to the point where there's anger, there's violence, there's refusal to talk. And that polarization happens for political reasons, opinions on different issues of the day. And the sad part is that polarization gets so egregious or so belligerent and so separative, if you will, that it not only relates to people on the right and the left side of politics, but it divides families.
[00:06:51] It divides parents from their children, you know, husbands from wives, you know, parents from every, you know, parents are divided. Everybody's divided. And what happens is when the polarization becomes somewhat complete, if you will, people won't even talk. They've just sworn off some of their people. So we were able to watch some movies at this event that really kind of highlighted some of this factually. And they give some examples. One's called All The Rage. It's a movie coming out here pretty soon, alltheragemovie.com to learn more.
[00:07:21] But we watched some clips of that movie and they asked us for feedback to give them guidance and stuff like that. And I brought up one of those polarization issues where I said, hey, you know, when kids swear off their parents and refuse to talk to their parents, their parents can't see their grandchildren and things like this because they're adult children. They're not little kids. They're grown up, but adult children. And they're divided and they swear off their parents for political reasons or, you know, transgender reasons or racial reasons or who knows what. See, this polarization becomes complete. And it's a tragedy.
[00:07:50] And Braver Angels really has spent time to focus on what causes this and what can we do to rectify it, Zach? Yeah. And some interesting things that they do. So right when you get there, when you're registering, they give you these badges and the badges, the lanyards, they're different colors. And so the different colors they have are red, blue, white and yellow.
[00:08:18] And Sam, tell them what lanyard we grabbed first. Okay. So as everybody understands, red is Republican, blue is Democrat. And everybody needs to understand that yellow stands for independent and white stands for, I don't want to tell you. I don't want you to know what I am. I'm keeping that a secret. Thank you very much. And so what I did intentionally, and Zach kind of went along, I chose a blue one. And I'll tell you why.
[00:08:45] I wanted to see how people would treat me if they thought I was blue versus if I was red. And so we got these blue ribbons and Zach looks around and he sees how people look at us and how people are, believe it or not. And this is not, you know, and Zach, I want you to speak to this too, because I'm just, this is just basically what you told me. I can't see anybody's colors. I can't see anybody the way they're looking at me. So I have no idea. But Zach felt like people actually looked at us differently when we had the blue lanyards on. Right, Zach? Yeah. And it's perception.
[00:09:17] And honestly, in a way, I kind of perceived it as, hey, I'm wearing this blue thing. What are they going to think of me? Because I'm not that kind of guy. So was it the way they were looking at you? Or is it the way you were thinking? It was the way I was thinking. If you want to be dead honest about that. But also. But that's important though, Zach. It is. It's very important to understand. And the amazing lessons that you learn at these events, you know, it's not about, it's not
[00:09:46] about that judgment. You know, you got to focus on, you got to focus on not judging somebody by the color of the, of the lanyard. Lanyard. Yeah. And I had some really powerful conversations with some people that we can get into. Yeah. We'll get into those in a second. But I want to point out though, this affected you because you didn't want to be considered
[00:10:12] blue and you thought people might've been looking at you weird, but on reflection, you kind of feel like maybe they weren't really looking at you as weird as you think it may have been an internal thing, but that didn't affect me at all, Zach. Yeah. I mean, I guess in a way it was more of. You want to know why? Sure. Because blue is my favorite color. See, and that's kind of what I was going for at the beginning because I didn't necessarily know what, what they meant at first as well. I actually did. So that was another reason why I grabbed it.
[00:10:41] And then when I kind of realized, oh, I'm like, you know, I don't really believe that way. I want to change my, my status so people can understand kind of how I believe. And at first we were thinking blue, Sam's favorite color. That's right. Blue is the beat crew company that we represent. We use a lot of blue in our colors. Yes. And so, hey, that makes sense. It matched. But then when Zach realized the divide, then he goes, I want to go get a red one. And then we're like, hey, do we really want a red one? Are we really going to stake out the Republican claim to? Then we decided we wanted a yellow one. That's right.
[00:11:10] Well, then a buddy of ours decided to join and he comes in and he starts with the red one and we explain all the lanyards to him. And he goes, oh, I don't need a red one. I need all of them. So he goes and gets a red, white, and a blue one. And he twists them all together. Right? Yep. True American right there. And you know what? I was like, I'm doing that. I'm going back. It was cool. And I'm doing that. I want to do that. Get rid of this yellow. And some of the, actually some of the conversations I had, I was like, you know what? I'm ready for everybody to just take off these lanyards.
[00:11:39] And honestly, day to day, we don't have lanyards on. That's right. We don't have lanyards on. There's people everywhere. We don't know them. We don't know their status. You're right. That's right. And it's very difficult to even know their status. Until you hear something out of their mouth and then you instantly go, bam, judgment. Triggers. So here's what we asked them about this. And we're like, why do you guys have lanyards? Why don't you just, and they're like, it's more fun that way. And what they mean by that is it's more fun to, I don't want to say force you, because it's not forced.
[00:12:09] But the whole goal is to try to say I'm going to reach out. And so you're literally paired red and blue, red and blue. You're literally encouraged to talk to people who you completely disagree with. So I get in line right at the start of this conference, the very, very start. And this guy's behind me in line. And he was saying something about abortion. And so I'm like, hey, what do you think about abortion? Now this guy's got a blue lanyard on. He says, I love abortion. I think it's great. He says, I even want late term abortions, man.
[00:12:37] And at first I'm about to be triggered. And I'm just going to go, dude, are you off your rock? You're crazy. But I had to hold my tongue. I had to. And I just said to him, can you tell me why you feel that way? Help me understand. Because I'm, without being argumentative, I'm super, 100% pro-life. And I don't understand. I just want to learn. And so he starts to tell me these stories about how he's worked in situations with youth
[00:13:05] and young people that have parents that don't want them because they can't afford them, where they're abused and they're put in foster homes and they just have really hard lives. And where there's mothers that are even raped by their husbands or different things that happen. And so he believes that abortion, even late term, is actually the kinder or more kind, I should say, thing to do. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't agree with his conclusion, but I will honestly say I had to take a step back and
[00:13:34] say, rather than thinking this guy's just a killer and he wants to kill everybody and he hates babies and he's this awful evil guy. The truth is he's coming from a viewpoint of compassion. Now, it's hard for me to really get there because I still don't think it's compassionate. That's my view. But at the same time, I had to give the guy some grace and say, he's seeing suffering. He's seeing children with all kinds of serious disabilities. He's seeing mothers not wanting their children partly because they're on drugs or partly because
[00:14:03] they were maybe raped even by their supposed spouse or live in boyfriend or whatever, or where they can't afford the child. And so they resent the child, even though, you know, they shouldn't, but yet it's hard because they don't have the skills to make a living. And he sees all this poverty and all this sadness and all this turmoil. And in his mind, he's trying to pick the compassionate road. Anyway, all I'm, my whole point isn't to agree with him in any sense of the imagination, but I at least gained some understanding that I, without braver angels giving me this prompt,
[00:14:33] so to speak, to say, Sam, zip your lip, buddy, shut up. Don't talk. Just listen. And I did. And I was kind of surprised, Zach. So I was on the opposite side of the spectrum. I met a guy at lunch today and he, I started, I don't know how the conversation got into this, but I started telling him about a shirt that I own. And the shirt is a man and a woman holding hands. This basically, they look like the bathroom signs.
[00:15:03] They're pulling hands and it says, it says straight pride. Okay. And that's on the front of the shirt. Okay. So right off the bat, people are thinking, okay, is that, is this a slight to the gay pride stuff? And on the back of the shirt, it actually says this. It says, um, thank someone today. Uh, thank the person who gave you life. Um, straight pride, you know, thank the person who gave you life straight pride.
[00:15:32] And I'm thinking, you know what? Not everybody in this world has parents and you can thank them for that. But the reason why I got that shirt wasn't for that. And a lot of people can have a lot of perceptions of why I got that shirt. Um, or maybe that's what I think they think. Right. Yeah. And that's kind of the point, right? Yep. Um, and so I was telling him this, I said, the reason why I got that shirt is because I've, um, struggled,
[00:16:00] me and my wife have struggled with fertility and haven't had the ability to have children. And, you know, that, you know, really stood out to me to thank the person that gave me life and have that ability to be straight and to be able to, you know, have the ability to have, uh, have a, have a kid. Um, and be grateful for that. And I'm so grateful for my parents.
[00:16:30] Um, and anyway, so that, that was something that I was sharing with this other guy. He actually did not have a badge on. And so he, I did not know what his status. So he was like the world where, you know, in the, in this conference, we get to see what people are. If they're honest about what they are. I first tried to put on a different stripe to see what people would do or whatever else. And then someone said, well, are you honest by doing that? And I'm like, well, I just want to see how people would treat me. So it was an experiment, but at the end of the day, this guy didn't have one. So it's more real world as ask cause you didn't know where you stood.
[00:17:00] Right? Yeah, exactly. And the other thing that's fascinating is people have life experiences and have their opinions and their ways because of a lot of the experiences that they have. I know that that's not the only reason why they have those opinions.
[00:17:21] Cause it could be, um, probably from their friendships with other people, their relationships, um, how they grew up and how they were raised. Yeah. But it's everything combined. And that's really the point of braver angels is to say, listen, you might think someone feels some way or about something or has an opinion or a belief or a, they advocate for something. And you put then your story or your reason, how they're the devil, they're the bad guy.
[00:17:47] They're the, um, but when you really step back and hold your tongue and listen, before you speak more, you come to find out that people's stories are really why they think what they think, how they think what they think. So the story of, of me and this abortion example, I had to listen.
[00:18:07] And even though I don't agree with his outcome, I do understand why he would think that with Zach's story that he just told, you would understand why Zach would be so, you know, grateful about life and pro-life and grateful for, you know, his parents and the fact that they brought him into the world and that, you know, they wish they could bring children into the world too. And someday they might, or, you know, other things might happen to where they can raise children.
[00:18:32] And, you know, it's very easy to think things that aren't true when you don't hear the real. And so that's why we've got to learn to talk and hear the real and listen to people's stories and braver angels. Really? That's probably the biggest thing I'd take away from the whole conference, Zach. I think so. And one of the hardest parts for me was when I was having that conversation with that person, I was so, I felt so passionate about how I, how and what I believed in.
[00:18:59] And he was listening to me, man. It wasn't me. I was like, oh man, I've been talking this whole time. I haven't even really even given you a chance. And so you got to think about that. You got to take a second. Let's listen to what they're saying too. Anyway, that's something else that I learned and want to continue to improve on. So there were so many things at this braver angels conference that I really think are worth discussing, Zach.
[00:19:26] And we can get into more of it as we, as we talk here, but braverangels.org is their website. And their goal isn't really to take just the red and the blue either. It's not a Republican Democrat thing. What they'd really like to see is parties not dictate who we are. So a lot of times people think I'm a Republican. Therefore, the Republican platform defines me and anything that's not the Republican platform is out or Democrat. Same kind of view. Their goal is to say, let's not have party.
[00:19:55] So there was a great amount of independence there as well. There was a lot of yellows, right? Zach. There were a lot of yellows. It was a very good mix. Honestly, it was a great blend. At first I thought, oh, there's a lot more reds here than blues. But then I looked around and I started to see there were a lot of everybody. There was the least amount of whites probably though. I mean, everybody was pretty much willing to declare where they stood for the most part, right? I agree.
[00:20:23] There were about probably a little over 800 people that were at the event. Anyway, it was a sight to behold. And there were probably an even split between male and female too, right? Yes, it was absolutely split male and female. I didn't see a majority of male or female. And the reason I bring that up is because usually, Zach, these kind of conferences that are political are usually more male dominated, right? I think for the most part that's true.
[00:20:52] But right now I feel like the world that we live, I think everybody's starting to want to get involved and share what they know. Anyway, so it was a great mixture and great to hear different sides of things. And even though there were some things that were hard to hear, it was amazing because we go back to that polarization.
[00:21:18] And right now our nation is currently divided because of a lot of this polarization that's taking place. And that was one thing that I mentioned to another person. They did like introductories to people and they blew a whistle. And right when they blow the whistle, you have to go find somebody that's not your badge color and just start talking to them. And they had different questions and stuff.
[00:21:45] And I started off one of my conversations with somebody and said, you know, the biggest problem that I see happening right now is when I share something that I have the right to share and believe. And someone else doesn't believe it. And so they don't want to have a relationship with me.
[00:22:11] And or they'll threaten to they'll threaten my relationship with them if I am not on their side and don't believe what they believe. And for me, I believe they have the right to believe what they believe. But I had hoped that they would reciprocate that belief that reciprocate that to me and allow me to believe what I want to believe without kind of the force of how, man, I don't want to ruin this relationship. There were this family relationship.
[00:22:40] Sam mentioned this movie and it shows a Thanksgiving dinner just getting torn apart because of the divide. There was a there's two, two liberal, two liberals and I think two Republicans and one independent in the family. And there was just this this big fight. And it's and one of the family members completely shut off the family. Super sad.
[00:23:10] The owner of Braver Angels, he shared his story and said, you know, one of my one of my children right now, I'm completely out of communication. And I think that's just it's it's very sad to see that families are being torn. The nation's being torn just because people can't talk. They don't know how to have this dialogue.
[00:23:40] And Braver Angels is really showing a way to make it possible so that that stuff doesn't happen. It gives us hope, ladies and gentlemen, we'll take a quick pause. You're listening to the one and only Liberty Roundtable live hard hitting talk radio at your fingertips. I'm Sam Bushman. I've got Zach Gillis with me. We are live in Philadelphia at BraverAngels.org conference. What a blessing to be here back in seconds on your radio.