Point of View July 26, 2024 – Hour 2 : Weekend Edition

[00:00:00] Marrow Matthews, CEO, First Liberty Institute, and Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, and Liberty McCarter, who is with the Know Why podcast and also the Millennial Roundtable. So, we've been talking about all the things that have been going on this past week, focusing

[00:00:43] mostly on the Biden speech, farewell pat on the back speech. But we had another speech in Washington this week that I thought just went really, really well and that was Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the joint houses of Congress.

[00:00:59] And I just, Kelly, I just thought he knocked it out of the park with that speech. I don't get to listen to him give full speeches all the time, but man did he hit the points and hit them right.

[00:01:09] Yeah, I forget how many standing ovations from Congress he got, but it was 30 or 50 or it was a bunch. It was a lot. Every few sentences it seemed. Yeah. And meanwhile, you had Representative Tlaib holding a sign, you know, protesting in there

[00:01:26] and you had the vice president Kamala Harris not showing up and sitting where she would normally be behind him. Right. Yeah. So it was it was it was odd in a lot of ways. And I think Israel has a very, very difficult task. Right.

[00:01:44] I mean, what Hamas did is just there's no words for it. I mean, I like to put cowardice with it amongst with everything else to do what they did to women and children and the hostages and everything. And so but the problem with Hamas is they're terrorists.

[00:02:01] So they hide around civilians. So how do you wipe out an enemy that's surrounding itself at all times with a hospital, with families, with you know, and but if you don't if you don't get rid of them, this is just going to continue to happen.

[00:02:17] So so how do you do that? So I mean, that that's Israel's in a very difficult scenario. They're trying to do everything they can to avoid civilian casualties. But with cowardice terrorists like this, that's part of what's going to happen. So it's it's very difficult.

[00:02:35] So and then to have America kind of under Biden to kind of start out supportive, but then kind of shift away way over a little bit. Yeah, that's and you know, one of the interesting things I thought about is what would it have

[00:02:48] been like if Donald Trump was president? Well, number one, it most likely would have never happened because this money for Hamas comes from Iran. And because of the sanctions Trump had that they wouldn't have had the money to do this. But let's say they did.

[00:03:07] How would have how would Trump have handled this? I mean, those were Americans killed over there and they still have American hostages. I I really think that it would be a lot different. I think we'd be over there.

[00:03:20] Yeah, I think I and I think that there would be, you know, I mean, heads would roll basically that and I don't even know if they would do it in light of the fact that I mean, one of

[00:03:33] the bad things about Trump is people are not sure what he's going to do. Right. And sometimes you're disappointed by some of the things he says that he shouldn't say and and other things like that.

[00:03:42] But I think that's an advantage in foreign policy because because people are a little less quick to do stuff that hurts our interests because he's liable to respond. And in fact, he did a lot and it kind of stopped a lot of that.

[00:03:56] So I I just think it would be very different when you think about this, because we're looking at a presidential race. How to be different with Trump as commander in chief versus Kamala's as commander in chief.

[00:04:07] You know, Liberty Speaker, when you're a speaker and you're going into audience, you need to know your audience and speak to that audience. And of course, you have the United States, which is racially mixed and so forth.

[00:04:19] And so I thought one of the more effective points that Netanyahu made was he talked about the soldiers and then he pointed up and had some of the soldiers there. And one of them was a soldier from Ethiopia. So an African-American person, an African person.

[00:04:35] Another was a Muslim of Arabic background who was one of their soldiers there. Then he had one who a Jewish soldier who had lost his arm in an attack, one of the attacks.

[00:04:47] And then he mentioned that he just had found out that there was another soldier there who had lost a leg and highlighted that. So he highlighted all four of these people.

[00:04:55] And the person who had lost his leg had a crutch there with him, held it up and shook it up in the air. And you had the standing ovation. But you know, you hit you have that the black person, the Muslim, you have the wounded people.

[00:05:10] It was it was, I thought, just very effective. The whole speech in how he's reaching out to an audience that ought to be, I think, in general, very receptive to him. Many people are, but some of the left are not right.

[00:05:24] You know, and he just did such a good job articulating what he shouldn't have to articulate, which is that Israel deserves to be a nation. The Jewish people and the many people who call Israel home now that like you mentioned,

[00:05:39] you know, who have, you know, come to Israel and now they serve in the IDF. They deserve to have a nation. They deserve to have a home to live in. And, you know, the terrorists, their goal is to destroy it and to completely take it away.

[00:05:54] And I thought he had so many important points, including, you know, just the the people who were protesting, proving his point. He pointed that out and how they are siding with terrorists. They are siding with the people who have done these horrible things.

[00:06:10] And then the members of Congress who even if they disagree with some of the ways that, you know, maybe the IDF is handling things or they disagree with some of Israel's policies

[00:06:18] to not even be there for America's ally and to said side with these people who are basically supporting just grotesque terrorist attacks. I just thought he did a really good job of illustrating the stark difference there.

[00:06:32] You know, as he was speaking, the protesters were, I think, at Union Station. And that they were up there defacing some of the statues at Union Station, burning the American flag and so forth. And you look at this and you think, how? I mean, Netanyahu is surprised.

[00:06:47] How do you support this given this is this is Hamas, a terrorist group that goes on? And he pointed out they don't they see they see hostages as a strategy. They use hostages. And he pointed this out.

[00:07:02] And we've seen several quotes from Hamas leaders saying essentially the same thing. Yeah. One of the ones he highlighted, I don't remember the exact words, but, you know, it was one of the Hamas leaders saying Palestinian women and children make excellent human shields.

[00:07:15] You know, they're not hiding the fact that this is their strategy. And, you know, I think we have to remember that they are fighting a war not only in the Middle East, but for the minds of Americans.

[00:07:28] And so that is why it is so important to stand on the side of truth and to stand for Israel and to remind people this is what they're doing. And so this is what you're siding with whenever you are supporting protesting in support of

[00:07:42] Hamas, because that that's one of their strategies is and you can see it in the way that they're funding organizations that are funding these protests that call it happening on college campuses. And so it's really a battle for the American mind as well.

[00:07:54] Well, Kelly had mentioned something which Trump had mentioned in his acceptance speech at the RNC, which was he had it would not have happened because he would have unfunded these various things and kept Iran from they have Biden's removed some of the sanctions.

[00:08:08] So Iran is outselling, if I remember right, the last time I looked at three million barrels of oil a day, not a huge amount, but it's enough to bring in the money so that the mullahs have the money to be able to fund this terrorist organizations.

[00:08:20] And you have to stop that. You have to get those groups defunded so that they can't keep continuing what they're doing. It's it's an amazing thing. When we come back, I want to go back to his speech and what whether or not we think this

[00:08:34] actually had the intended impact because it's got to go through Biden and Kala. So stay with us. We'll be back in a minute. This is Viewpoints with Kirby. We can see some cycles in history. And yesterday I talked about a political cultural cycle.

[00:09:07] Today I want to talk about a technological cycle and a financial cycle. There appears to be about a 50 years technological cycle in which we see important technological revolutions. In the 18th century, we saw the beginning of what today we refer to as the Industrial Revolution.

[00:09:22] 50 years later was the age of steam and railways that changed the world significantly. Up until that time, we had manpower and horsepower. Now people could move faster and carry heavier loads. 50 years after that, we had steel and electricity.

[00:09:37] 50 years after that, we had oil, automobiles and a revolution in mass production. By the 1970s, we had the age of information and telecommunications. Today we find ourselves in a world of fast computers and artificial intelligence. Some of the financial cycles parallel the technological revolutions.

[00:09:56] America moved from an agricultural society to an industrial economy to an information society. And as we look at the wealth cycles of nations, we see that they had an average about 100 years. Perhaps you've seen a chart that shows many of the changes from Portugal to Spain to

[00:10:12] the Netherlands to France to Britain to the United States. As I've mentioned in previous commentaries, this country along with other countries around the world are experiencing a debt crisis. But this is happening as all three cycles, the political, technological and financial are converging. What's on the horizon?

[00:10:30] I think we're likely headed for a massive change in the future. We should all be in prayer for our leaders and prepare ourselves for possible turmoil ahead. I'm Kirby Anderson and that's my point of view.

[00:10:47] For a free booklet on biblical reliability, go to viewpoints.info slash biblical reliability. Viewpoints.info slash biblical reliability. You're listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth. Welcome back to Point of View.

[00:11:05] We've been talking about a number of things happening this week in the presidential election. If you would like to call and have a question or want to express a comment, 1-800-351-1212. 1-800-351-1212. Give us a call. The lines are open and we'll take that call.

[00:11:24] We talked about Netanyahu came and he's got a really difficult situation. I think he would like Trump to be president, but he's got Biden as maybe president in the presidential. Kamala Harris is maybe the acting president right now. We'll see.

[00:11:43] But he had to go and meet with both of them, even though they did not meet with him immediately. They met with him the next day, I believe. And he has to make a case for them.

[00:11:52] And Kamala wanted to go out and give a speech without him there talking about her position, how she's pressing him on the issue of bringing into this for the hostages, a two state solution.

[00:12:05] And, you know, I think as I understand it, Netanyahu, he didn't say a two state solution. I don't think he wants to do that now. But he said we would like to be able to have a situation where the Palestinians can rule themselves.

[00:12:18] But the leaders can't be anti-Israel. They can't be supporting the death of Israel. And that makes perfect sense to me. But do you think he's going to be successful in maintaining the support for Israel? You know, Americans get tired of long wars.

[00:12:33] This isn't a terribly long one yet. And we're giving money and weapons to them, but they get tired of this after a while. Yeah, I you know, I mean, I think back to what I guess it was General Gates trying to

[00:12:49] think of who it was that says that he couldn't remember a single decision on foreign policy that Biden didn't get wrong. No, I mean, he's got a long career of making a lot of really bad decisions.

[00:13:02] So so I you know, the fact that that's where it's coming from at this point, I don't necessarily have great confidence that a great decision has been made. Biden first started out being supportive of Israel and then with the politics started

[00:13:18] moving with the Muslim votes in in Michigan. And so I just don't expect a great or a good decision there. I do think, though, that Americans know that Israel is one of our most important allies and America is with Israel.

[00:13:37] They saw what happened, how how just horrific it was and and that Hamas is a horrible terrorist group that needs to be removed. And so I think that they're limited in, you know, that they couldn't just turn away from Israel.

[00:13:52] But at the same time, I think that there would obviously be a big difference in what we would be doing based upon who is the commander in chief. Yeah, you know, I do think that your point about people being tired of wars is relevant.

[00:14:06] And I think that we're seeing more of this kind of populist, semi isolationist trend. And, you know, part of that is also being promoted by Trump and now his running mate, J.D. Vance as well.

[00:14:19] So I hope that even amidst that change that we're seeing on the right where, you know, people on the right are less interested in, you know, getting involved in other situations and in other people's wars, that we still remain a strong supporter of Israel among

[00:14:35] the people because that's just so important. And I know Netanyahu talked about, I thought it was smart again in his speech how basically with what they're doing over there, it keeps it from coming here.

[00:14:47] Right. Which, you know, kind of does try to get through some of that connection that it's not just isolated. Yeah, it's and it's different now. He he stressed Iran. He stayed away from speaking about China and Russia.

[00:15:00] But what you have is a sort of a combination between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. And they are working interactively with weapons, with money and minerals, oil and so forth. And so you've got a much bigger group of countries that are on expansionist. Russia is territorial expansion.

[00:15:24] China's territorial expansion. I would argue that Iran is ideological expansion. I don't know that they necessarily want to rule these other countries. I think they just want Islam in some of these other countries. And this is it's this is a dangerous situation.

[00:15:36] It's quite I call it the new axis of evil, evil, going back to something George W. Bush said back in in one of the State of the Union speech, I think around 2004, where he used Iraq, Iran and North Korea, I think.

[00:15:48] But now it's Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. And they have got major resources. They've got money. They've got economies. It's a it's a threatening thing. And they are working together. So Iran and Iran is spearheading these attacks now in the Middle East.

[00:16:05] And his whole point is we're in the way Israel is in the way of them being able to take over the Middle East and then they'd come after us. There's no doubt. And and there's been some, you know, there are there a lot of these issues.

[00:16:21] There's more unanimity amongst biblical believers on the issue of Ukraine. There's there's definitely some split, you know, some people I think most people know that if we didn't have a weakened president that had just come out of this really

[00:16:40] disgraceful exit of Afghanistan, that it probably never would have happened. Right. But it was almost invited. And if Putin can take land, he's going to take land while Trump was president. He didn't do any of that. Right. Because Trump's allowed to do anything.

[00:16:55] And so he wasn't going to he wasn't going to go there. So so I just, you know, I think that, you know, the foreign policy is something we don't look at a lot. But a lot of people I know, Christian people, I was just with Secretary

[00:17:11] Pompeo, for instance, who has been supportive of of us giving resources in in the fight for Ukraine. But I know other people that think that this has been a really foolish strategy to pump this up because all it's doing is forcing Russia into the hands of

[00:17:28] China to where they would become a great coalition. And so there is a lot of disagreement. Of course, who knows if what he says is true. But Trump says if he were to win before he would be inaugurated and placed into office,

[00:17:46] he said there would be the end of the situation in Ukraine. That would be wonderful. I think that would solve the dispute that's going on. But right now it's bad in a lot of ways. We're giving all of our I mean, a lot of our money over there.

[00:18:02] And then we're also creating this this increasing relationship between Russia and China. Yeah, I mean, I understand the concern there for sure. And so I think it's something that Americans need to be aware of.

[00:18:16] There are so many issues that vie for our attention here at home in terms of, you know, the struggles that Americans are feeling personally with inflation and the economy. And now all this chaos is happening with, you know, who are who's actually going to be on

[00:18:32] the ballot when I go and vote in November. But we have to keep these foreign policy issues in mind as well. And so I think Netanyahu's speech is bringing that to mind for a lot of Americans who will

[00:18:42] be voting. You know, the foreign policy, the general the conventional wisdom is foreign policy doesn't drive presidential elections, but it's certainly playing a major undercurrent in this one. And I guess my question is, does anybody think it would be any better with Kamala Harris in

[00:18:59] there? I you know, I don't think people know what she would look like as a commander in chief. I mean, Biden again had this sort of penchant for making all the wrong decisions.

[00:19:09] That was kind of the the statements by a lot of the people that were in foreign policy. And he and he continued to make those. I think if you put at the top of the list of the three biggest things that Biden hurt

[00:19:24] himself on and created the biggest problems for him, it would be inflation, the border and Afghanistan. Those are the top three. The thing about Trump is there's apparently, at least in the media, some handwriting about

[00:19:40] if Trump is president, you know, is he going to take us out of NATO? Would he abandon Taiwan? And as I understand Trump, and you kind of have to read between the lines for him, I don't understand him wanting to come out of NATO.

[00:19:53] I understand him wanting NATO to pay more. Exactly. Of their of their. It's a false charge. It's a false charge. And he said something along the same lines of, you know, I have Taiwan ought to be paying more for this. And I agree with that.

[00:20:05] Taiwan's a prosperous country. And if you're if if you may have to depend upon the United States, but you ought to be preparing for your own defense against China if they were to attack. Yeah, if he's holding allies accountable without abandoning them, you know, then I think

[00:20:21] that that's a preferable strategy. And I think, you know, we've had so much happen with Ukraine and Israel and everything else, you know, in the years since Afghanistan. But I mean, Biden took a sharp dive in approval after that happened among everybody.

[00:20:34] And it was kind of like, I'm just going to do this for the sake of doing this. And it was not well thought out. And I think once people start remembering that, they won't want to see that repeated with Kamala, who is tied to his legacy.

[00:20:46] R. Shapiro, George W. Bush's press spokesperson told me that he said, you know, when Bush would go over there, when Clinton would go over there, they all said you need to spend more in NATO needs been more on foreign on your foreign policy and on your defense.

[00:21:01] And none of they'd all say yes, but none of them would do it. And now and Trump, he highlighted this in his speech. He actually got him to do it. They're spending more. And now he's thinking about bumping it up from two percent up to three percent, which

[00:21:13] makes a certain amount of sense given the turmoil that's going on in the world. Well, we've got links to some of these articles there on the point of view, a website point of view dot net.

[00:21:22] When we come back, we're going to turn to a study that Kelly's organization has produced about religious liberty in the States. In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas.

[00:21:40] London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism and legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. London was in many ways the center of the world economically, militarily and intellectually. Marx sought to destroy religion, the family and everything the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers.

[00:22:04] Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth. It is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today? Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox when

[00:22:22] you sign up for the viewpoints commentary at point of view dot net slash sign up every weekday in less than two minutes. You'll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time. It's free.

[00:22:36] So visit point of view dot net slash sign up right now. Point of view dot net slash sign up. Point of view will continue. You are listening to point of view. The opinions expressed on point of view do not necessarily reflect the views of the

[00:23:08] management or staff of this station. And now here again, Dr. Merrill Matthews. And we're back with our final half hour of point of view, Kelly Shackelford, First Liberty Institute and Kelly Liberty McWhorter, who is with the Know Why podcast is with me in studio.

[00:23:26] And, you know, Kelly, we we often talk about religious liberty, but we're usually talking about the First Amendment when we're talking about religious liberty and the constitutional guarantee there. But states can play a role in religious liberty also.

[00:23:39] And you've published a study at First Liberty looking at that. Yeah, we you know, we thought there needed to be a really rigorous, objective, you know, survey not survey study of an index that was real, not not like you put your thumb on the scale.

[00:23:59] And so we had an economist and people who do these studies and said, let's let's look at all the states in the country. Let's see which laws they have passed that provide protections, extra protections

[00:24:14] than is in the First Amendment, because obviously a lot of things in the First Amendment are not real specific to your situation. So if you don't have a statute on that, you might not get protection.

[00:24:25] So let's see what you know, let's just say this is what's great about America, right? This is federalism is is one state does something. The other state goes, hey, that looks pretty good. They tried that and it seems to be a good thing. Maybe we'll do that.

[00:24:37] Well, we did that and we did a list of all of the ones. And then we said, OK, now we know what's possible and let's compare everybody and let's see who has the most protections. And it's just as simple as counting the different statutes and stuff.

[00:24:57] And it's a little surprising to some people. I mean, when you look at some of the results, I mean, Texas is like, you know, you'd think Texas, for instance, to be way up the top of the list. It's not. It's not.

[00:25:09] You know, you you see, you know, places like West Virginia that was literally at the very bottom of the list last year. They're starting to rise up, though. And that's the neat thing is you can go to this. It's religious liberty in the states dot com.

[00:25:23] So it's kind of easy to remember religious liberty in the states dot com. And you can look at your state, see where you are. But the great thing is it's so interactive. You can look at every bill that other places have that you don't have.

[00:25:37] And it's real simple if you're a legislator. You've had lots of legislators come to us and say, hey, we want to move up this list. You know, we want we want to have more of these freedoms.

[00:25:46] And the mistake to make is to say, well, I'm in a place that this is really protected. So we don't really need these things. What you find is that one of the top states to everybody's shock is Illinois. Well, why? Because when they had control of the legislature.

[00:26:05] They passed through a bunch of protections back before you got to the 60s and and later when it became Illinois, we started getting more and more liberal. And now you're not going to pass any of these things, but those protections are there.

[00:26:21] So it's the perfect time if you're in a place that you might think is a little more conservative or favorable to religious liberty to pass these things. And I'll never forget, I gave a talk on this last year when we released it and had a

[00:26:34] line of legislators at this big national meeting come up to me want to talk afterwards. But one of them was a guy who said, I want a list of every single bill that we didn't pass in our state because I'm offering every one of them.

[00:26:49] And that's what we want. We want this competition to occur for people to have more religious freedom. And I think this year you looked at the ones that were really starting to shoot up Florida, Montana. I mean, so you can see the right the quickest movers right now.

[00:27:05] But it's a great thing because everybody who's listening can actually do something. They think, what can I do? Your state legislator hears from very few people. I mean, state legislators do not get overwhelmed with people to show them something like this. I mean, this is a great thing.

[00:27:23] If you're a legislator, you think, well, I'm going to pass a religious liberty bill. I mean, that's a popular thing to do, you know, across the board. So it's something that everybody can do by saying, hey, why?

[00:27:35] Why are we? Because if you go to religious liberty in the states dot com, you can look at your state. It'll pop up. It'll show you exactly where you are. It'll have why it'll have links to all the different things. It's something you can do real easily.

[00:27:49] All the work's been done and you can improve your state with regard to protections for religious liberty. So Calvin Coolidge, the president, once said it's better. I'm paraphrasing. It's better to kill bad legislation than it is to pass good legislation.

[00:28:02] So do you in order to be on high on the list? Do you have to pass good legislation or if a state just ends up killing bad legislation saying, look, we just we're not passing legislation because we assume you have religious

[00:28:16] liberty here. So can you pass bad and can you kill bad legislation and get a ranking? No, it's only based upon, you know, it's none of the subjective stuff of and it's not really about who has the best atmosphere for religious liberty.

[00:28:31] Right. That that has to do with all kinds of factors like of what people are like and what they believe and all this. It is real specific who has the most protections in law for religious liberty. And it's something that's very measurable, that's very easy to do.

[00:28:49] And why not do it if you have the ability to do it, because you or your kids or your grandkids might, you know, praise your name in the future for for having those protections in place.

[00:29:01] And, you know, liberty, it's important because a lot of the issues we've seen some going before the Supreme Court were states going after somebody under on religious liberty grounds. Right. Yeah. I'm so glad that this is being highlighted because especially in a

[00:29:15] presidential election year, all of our focus is on Washington, D.C. But, you know, all of the time there is so much important stuff happening at the local level, at the state level. And you can really impact the culture, your own community, your own state.

[00:29:33] And like you said, Kelly, your own future by getting involved at the local level. So the fact that, you know, they're more likely to listen because they're not getting overwhelmed, you know, as a lot of national legislators are.

[00:29:46] And so I think that that's such a great resource for people like really go look at those, take action and start promoting some of those in your state, because, I mean, just what a great resource and a great action to be able to take simple things to, you

[00:29:59] know, like, you know, the states that have now passed laws that say the state can't say a church is this unessential and close the church. So there's there's things that are very simple, very easy that can be done that have

[00:30:14] been done in a number of states that are passing these. And I think that's probably good, too, just because a lot of people may not understand all the ways that religious liberty is being attacked, you know, in cities with things like building usage and everything.

[00:30:28] So this could probably help them become more aware of how it really falls down. So give us a few examples of the states that have done well and some that are low on the list. Where's California? I would say I guess California is down at the bottom.

[00:30:42] It's California is pretty low. New York is pretty low. The shocking one was, you know, that West Virginia was really low. But but the difference is West Virginia literally saw this and and said, we got it. We got some catching up to do.

[00:30:57] And they they are starting to rise now. And so whereas Illinois, which is, you know, if you look at the top like five, you'll see you'd kind of expect it to be more southern states, right, that are more pro religious freedom. There's more religion there.

[00:31:13] And that's true. But there's an anomaly, which again shows you that this is honest. Right. It's not just picking who you want to pick. It's it's what does the data really show?

[00:31:22] And so it actually caused them to look into they go, how is Illinois so way up here? And they found out, you know, there's a lot of Catholic influence there. And if you look back in the history and it's like the 1930s to a certain year, they

[00:31:36] really pushed through a lot of religious liberty legislation. But if you watch what's happening now is they're not adding anymore and other places are. And so I fully expect them to be passed in the coming years in the process. Do some of these hit the culture issues?

[00:31:53] If I'm a pharmacist and I don't want to provide, say, an abortion or something of that nature, that is religious liberty carry over into cultural issues and not just my ability to go to church or. No, absolutely.

[00:32:06] In fact, I think one of the bigger areas which you might guess if you're creating legislation is in the health care field. It's it's it's freedom of conscience for people. You shouldn't you shouldn't force people to violate their religious conscience, whether

[00:32:22] it's a nurse being forced to do an abortion or any of these type of situations that we're now seeing. So that's an example of where you would see legislation, even things like people that have really strict voting rules. You had to vote on this day.

[00:32:40] Well, what if that is a particular requirement of your faith that you are supposed to be in a in a it's a religious ceremony situation where you can't vote? Do you provide an ability for an absentee ballot for that person for that reason?

[00:32:58] Again, real simple to do, but it's really the best of who we are. I mean, one of the things that's so great about America is not only when you think of the majority beliefs of religious freedom, but all we want to accommodate everybody.

[00:33:12] Right. If we can accommodate you without causing a problem with other people, then we want to accommodate you, whether you have a Sabbath on Saturday that creates a problem with your work. That's seven day Adventist or Orthodox Jews or whatever.

[00:33:27] We have a real history of accommodation in the country and trying to let everybody live out their faith without restriction. OK, good. When we come back, couples are deciding not to have children and that's affecting our birth rate. We'll look at it when we come back.

[00:33:56] Normal Americans are repulsed by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. This was a bridge too far, even for people who buy into careless threat to democracy rhetoric from Trump's opposition. Their recoil reminds us that we must take care to preserve our constitutional republic.

[00:34:13] Our system of government is meant to help our nation avoid political violence. Under constitutionalism, we have systems that allow differences of opinion on government policy to be handled by negotiation and at the voting booth. A prominent constitutional scholar says the escalation of political violence in the last

[00:34:31] 15 years has tested the bounds of constitutionalism pretty aggressively. Yuval Levin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor at National Affairs and the New Atlantis. In an essay for the Free Press, Dr.

[00:34:46] Levin says the nearly successful attempt to take out a once and perhaps future president is far from a natural next step from the violence and threats of violence against public officials we've been seeing in recent years.

[00:34:58] He says this moment feels like a sharp break that gave us a terrible glimpse of what it would be like to live beyond the bounds of our constitutional republic. Within the constitutional republic, our differences may be stark, but there are

[00:35:11] institutions in which those disputes can be settled through competition and negotiation. Dr. Levin points out that in a constitutional republic, there's a prevailing assumption that our political victories and defeats are temporary and that the people on the other side of our political disputes aren't going away.

[00:35:29] Step outside of constitutionalism and you have a realm of violence and pain where there is no expectation that the people we disagree with today will be here tomorrow and have to be accommodated somehow. As Dr. Levin points out, our constitutional system exists to help us disagree well.

[00:35:46] We must put a stop to its degradation. For Point of View, I'm Penna Dexter. You're listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth. There's been a discussion about the demographics of the United States, and there have

[00:36:05] been some people coming out saying it's good that we're bringing in that so many people are coming to the states because we have a low birth rate and people are not having children like they used to. And that is a situation that is arising.

[00:36:19] People are getting older, married couples and just deciding not to have children or having fewer. I think it's interesting to look at how drastically this has changed even in the last decade. So Pew Research had some numbers recently where among adults who are under 50 and don't

[00:36:37] currently have kids and say that they are unlikely to ever have kids. That was 37 percent in 2018 of childless adults that were still young and saying that they would never likely have kids. Now or last year in 2023, it had jumped up 10 percentage points to 47 percent.

[00:36:57] So we're really seeing this cultural shift. Just, you know, we're seeing people get married later. A lot of people who want to get married are struggling, you know, on the dating scene or finding that partner that aligns with their views on things and being able to get

[00:37:13] married. And so that delays having kids. But then a lot of people are just simply making the choice that they don't think that's in their future. That's not for them. And that's really changing our culture and obviously is going to change a lot of things

[00:37:26] practically for us going forward. You know, we've had a dramatic rise of women who work now who are in the workforce and they're moving into professions, attorneys, medical professions and so forth. And so they may not feel like they have the time to be able to do that.

[00:37:41] You also I know at least one couple that said, we just think we live in a terrible world and we don't want to bring kids into a world that has all these problems. So there and then some are just they like traveling.

[00:37:54] They're like going around and just being free, because if you have a child, it does sort of restrain you in some ways. It is a sacrifice. And so I think, you know, this is where as Christians we need to make sure that we can

[00:38:05] clearly articulate a Christian biblical worldview on this issue, because for so many generations it was just taken for granted that you would get married and have kids and it didn't really matter what you believed, because that was the cultural norm.

[00:38:18] Now that it's not the cultural norm as Christians, are we able to say, well, you know, here's why kids are important. Yes, it's a sacrifice. We don't want to lie and say it's not hard at times, but it's worth it. And can we articulate that?

[00:38:32] And I think, you know, individually, every couple is going to have to make that decision with their spouse in the Lord. But culturally, I do think it would be it. It's important to have these conversations and say, you know, kids are worth it because a

[00:38:48] lot of the reasons that we're seeing are more self-centered in terms of like, this is just I don't want to do this. It doesn't fit within my lifestyle. And those are kind of the reasons people are saying, you know, I mean, obviously we know from Scripture, right?

[00:39:03] Children are a blessing from the Lord. And there's a richness even when you read like blessings and curses in Scripture. One of the curses is I will not allow you to enjoy the weddings of your children. I mean, there's stuff like that in here. There's just so much.

[00:39:20] And so I'm just curious because I just have the hardest time understanding these folks. And I'm not from that generation. So what what do you find amongst especially those who aren't necessarily strong believers or biblical? What do you find is the reason that they're doing this?

[00:39:40] Is it a selfishness? Is it a fear? Is it a mixture of things? I think it's a mixture. And I will say, you know, I have kids and so and among my friends that have kids, I

[00:39:51] think our generation does a good job of kind of splitting the tasks because me and my friends who have kids like we're all working at least part time. But, you know, husbands are very involved. And so I think that's a great new trend in that regard.

[00:40:05] But among people who aren't having kids, I think that we just complicated things. There is a lot of people saying, but I just can't afford it. And if I have kids, I've got to have this much money saved first. And not that saving is not wise.

[00:40:20] It is. But I think that our culture has added so much on to what really should be more of a simple thing. And so I think we've just put our priorities upside down.

[00:40:30] And so a lot of people feel like they can't and that it is going to be too much to sacrifice to add kids into their lives because of the way the things that they've been told by culture.

[00:40:41] And, you know, with the inflation we've had recently, the inability I've seen articles of people who said we just got a new child. We need to get a bigger house, but we either can't afford a bigger house or the

[00:40:52] interest rates too high or we can't find one available out there. So there are those kinds of economic dynamics that come in. And another problem here, if our workforce declines, it's going to be harder for us to keep Social Security and Medicare alive.

[00:41:08] When we first started out back in the 50s, it was 32 workers for every retired person. Now I think we're about 2.3 workers for every retired person. And at some point it's going to be there's a joke about a bureaucrat who was just comes into office disappointed.

[00:41:27] And he said, why? Well, because the person who was going to be paying my Social Security died. You know, you got the demographics play a big role here and it's happening around the

[00:41:37] world. Yeah, I wish I you know, I'm just thinking I wish, you know, I think of rides like when I go to when I've gone to Disney, like soaring over California or whatever the ones that those virtual reality rides where you're you're kind of flying and you

[00:41:53] get to feel what it's like to fly over these fields. I wish you could do that for young people about having children and you could almost go through the ups and downs, but the absolute joy and especially when you get those

[00:42:08] grandkids. Yes, I was going to say, if you don't have kids, you can't have grandkids. And and just, you know, you wish you could show them and they could realize that these things that are keeping them are really whispers from the enemy that are going to steal

[00:42:21] joy from their life because they're going to miss out on something so, so powerful. Right. That God created is part of how he made us to have great joy. These are the blessings of life.

[00:42:33] Now, some people they can't go there for certain reasons, you know, that's but that's that should be not the choice that should be. I mean, there's numerous scriptures from the Lord to tell us that things are a blessing

[00:42:47] that we might not understand, but we need to believe him and walk in that and we'll find much greater blessing than we would by not listening to what he's telling us. Well, take a little time to tell us about First Liberty and about the First Liberty

[00:42:58] podcast as well. First Liberty is the largest legal group in the country that all we do is religious freedom. Probably the one thing I would really focus. I know a lot of point of view listeners already get this, but if you don't, I highly,

[00:43:13] highly encourage you to go to First Liberty or gets also at Point of View that net. You can find it there. But go to First Liberty dot o.r.g. And just scroll down just a little bit of the page and there'll be a deal that says, be

[00:43:26] an insider. And if you sign up for that, we don't ever give anybody's information out. But every Friday you will get an email on the biggest battles that are going on in the country. We'll pick four or five of the many, many.

[00:43:39] And it'll it'll allow you to pray for things. It'll educate you on sort of things that you might didn't know are happening in your community. And it also encourage you because there are a lot, a lot of victories and a

[00:43:51] lot of people standing for their faith and it'll embolden you to live out your faith. So I would just encourage people go to First Liberty dot o.r.g. Again, you can go to Point of View dot net and find our link there.

[00:44:01] But sign up for that insider. We have over a half million people who have signed up for that and every Friday. And it's growing because people aren't being told this in the secular media.

[00:44:11] They're not going to know about the big Supreme Court case or the big, you know, religious liberty battle that's going on. And so this is a way for them to make sure they're in the loop and can be involved. And Liberty, the Know Why podcast.

[00:44:24] What's coming up? Yes, we know why podcast dot com. So if you have any young adults in your life or millennials and Gen Z, we really dig into the why for including issues like kids and politics and culture and everything

[00:44:37] else. So definitely check out Know Why podcast dot com. Well, thank you both for joining us in this really busy week. We may have an even busier week coming up next just because of all the things that are going on. And thank you for joining us.

[00:44:50] I'd encourage you to go to Point of View dot net. You can see the articles that we were discussing today. You can also see a donate button there. And I would encourage you to go and press that donut button and give generously to Point

[00:45:03] of View. Point of View will be back next week. Thank you for joining us at Point of View. We believe there is power in prayer. And that is why we have relaunched our Pray for America campaign, a series of weekly

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