Point of View June 26, 2026 : Weekend Edition

[00:00:04] Across America Live, this is Point of View. And now, Kirby Anderson. Thanks for joining us. It is the Friday Weekend Edition. We're so grateful you could join us. We are going to be talking about a lot of different issues. As you might imagine, as I mentioned yesterday, we'll be talking about this issue of socialism.

[00:00:31] John Funn talks about socialism is on the march. Dr. Merrill Matthews says, Democrats are becoming Berniecrats. And that always gets a smile when I mention that to individuals. We have a number of other articles in terms of whether or not we could teach the Bible in English classes, the issue of Gen Z and the rest. But we thought we'd start out by, as we oftentimes do, talk about some religious liberty cases. Dr. Merrill Matthews is here, Liberty McCarter. And Liberty, we're going to be talking in just a minute with Stephanie Taub.

[00:01:00] But we have for many years now been following the case out of Alaska Airlines where Lacey Smith and another individual flight attendants were wrongfully terminated from their positions. This case then went to the Circuit Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit. You always have doubts about what that's going to be. Yes. But we actually have good news, don't we? Yes.

[00:01:21] So I'm really excited to hear from Stephanie because I think I am very encouraged by this, a little surprised considering it's from the Ninth Circuit like you alluded to. But I think any Christian who is in the workplace right now needs to be paying attention because this is great news. Stephanie Taub is the senior counsel at First Liberty Institute. She's doing a number of interviews today, but was able to join us for a few minutes. And Stephanie, again, you might give a little bit of the background. And then again, this is good news, isn't it?

[00:01:53] Oh, really glad to be here. So what the Ninth Circuit held today or this week, I should say, is that Marlee Brown and Lacey Smith, these two wonderful Christian flight attendants who were fired because of their Christian posts on an internal employee only network, the Alaska Airlines website that was only for employees. So they were fired. So they were fired.

[00:02:16] And the Ninth Circuit said that there is enough evidence of their firing that this was religious discrimination for this case to be sent down for a jury. And so we are looking forward to bringing this case to a jury and getting that jury decision that this was religious discrimination. And again, this was a particular case in which they were talking about the Equality Act, which we've talked about on this program before. And they asked for comments.

[00:02:41] And Lacey Smith, I'll pick on her for just a minute, said, as a company, do you think it's possible to regulate morality? Of course, Marlee Brown also posted something similar. But I think it is fair to say, Stephanie, that they were asking for comment as soon as they got a comment they didn't like. And actually, all it was was a question that was justification for firing them. Isn't that viewpoint discrimination? Yeah.

[00:03:08] So this is discrimination because the company did not like their religious beliefs. So that's absolutely right. Lacey's comment was just that one question. And then Marlee's comment was a little longer. But she was expressing her concerns that the Equality Act would negatively impact the church, impact religious freedom, impact people and their conscience rights, and then also open up women's safe spaces in a way that wasn't safe for women and girls.

[00:03:33] And so because of these comments, the company immediately that same day took down their comments and started an investigation. And then that investigation led to their firing. Let's, if we can, just talk about one aspect of the opinion. This one relates against to Marlee Brown. Indeed, Alaska was fully aware that some would object to the Equality Act for religious reasons,

[00:03:56] that Alaska created a forum for employee discussion on controversial issues, then fired, in this case, Brown, after she had made religious objections to the kind that Alaska anticipated. That provides further reason for regard in this case as presenting a genuine dispute effect on the reason for Brown's termination. So you aren't through yet. Now it allows you to deal with the case.

[00:04:22] But given the Ninth Circuit, as Liberty mentioned just a minute ago, that is probably better than you might have expected. Is that fair? Yeah, this is fantastic. And it creates, it really creates a legal precedent here that employers cannot get away with discriminating against their employees of faith just because they don't like their religious beliefs.

[00:04:43] So this is, it's so important because oftentimes employers think, oh, someone might be offended by your religious beliefs and try to use that as a justification for firing them. But the law actually protects you. The law protects people of faith against religious discrimination. And so that's, that's exactly what happened here. Well, Stephanie, I appreciate you joining us. I know you have some other interviews to do, but we wanted to put you on to the start of the program just to, as we always do, talk about some of these religious liberty cases.

[00:05:13] Wonderful. Thank you so much. Liberty, this is good news and more than many of us might have expected. You know, I think it just shows how out of line Alaska Airlines clearly was for the Ninth Circuit to say, okay, you can't do this. Because, again, typically, and anybody who pays attention to point of view and has heard people from First Liberty Institute speak, they know that this isn't exactly, you don't expect many victories out of the Ninth Circuit. But I think, again, it just shows how out of line Alaska Airlines was.

[00:05:42] Dr. Merrill Matthews, just again, some things that we might have not expected. I might have expected, and I think there have been a few new judges put on the Ninth Circuit, which were Trump appointees, and they have balanced it a little bit more. Because you always expected the Ninth Circuit was the most overturned appeals court, I believe, in the country for several years. Yes. I just thought before we take a break, we will probably talk about some of this next week.

[00:06:07] But the Supreme Court has had a number of cases, some having to do with Second Amendment, this one having to do with the issue of immigration. And if nothing else, you've got to love our friends at the Wall Street Journal, Trump refugees in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court justices say no judicial review in the law means no judicial review. And what it has to do with the fact is that this is a case of Mullen v. Doe, and it has to do with the fact that it's the Secretary of Homeland Security,

[00:06:35] in this case, of course, former Senator Mullen, actually has the ability to address these issues. And in the law, it specifically says that it does not allow for judicial review. In other words, you have to let an individual responsible for the border and for immigration make that decision without having a judge look over their shoulder. And yet there were a number of liberal judges that said, no, we're going to stop all of that. And I think the Supreme Court said that's what the law says.

[00:07:03] If you think the law is wrong, change it. But we're not going to allow you to have judicial review when it says no judicial review. And the court has gotten a lot of pushback. But again, it's from people who want to have a preferred outcome rather than what the law says. And so if you're going by the law, you have to come up and say this is what the law says. Congress is free to change it if they want to change it. But we're going by what the law says. Yes. And again, that's just one of those interesting areas of common sense, Liberty.

[00:07:32] The originalism right there. It's right there. If that's what's in the law. It wasn't even going that far back to the originalism. The part going back to the 18th century. We just go back to the way it was written. The word of the law. And you know, again, if you pay attention, we don't have any of our First Liberty lawyers with us. But next time we will do that, we'll get into it in more detail. Neil Gorsuch, who is a Supreme Court justice, has made the case that, look, if you don't like the law, change the law. Don't make us in the courts change the law. Right. And I just thought of nothing else.

[00:08:01] You have to love the sense of humor of the editors of the Wall Street Journal. The Supreme Court justices say no judicial review in the law means no judicial review. So I just thought I'd mention that real quickly. There are some other cases coming down here, one having to be with the issue of ballots. And we'll get into some of that as well. But many of you have wanted to kind of hear all the comments around the table about socialism.

[00:08:26] It's been in the news because we, of course, already have a mayor in New York, a mayor in Seattle, and soon probably a mayor in the District of Columbia. But now we have some other members or future members of the congressional delegation from New York. We'll talk about that right after this.

[00:09:00] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. This year, millions of Americans will visit our nation's capital to celebrate the 250th anniversary. I've encouraged many who plan to visit Washington, D.C. to look for all the references to God in the government buildings and national monuments. In the past, I've encouraged visitors to get a copy of Newt Gingrich's book, Rediscovering God in America, because it's almost a walking tour of God in the capital.

[00:09:28] But now I encourage them to go to the Museum of the Bible. They can enjoy a virtual flying tour called Washington Revelations, where you see various biblical references in our nation's capital. The top of the Washington Monument has a cap that bears the inscription, Laus Deo, which is Latin for, Praise God. The Lincoln Memorial has Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address that includes two Bible verses, Matthew 18 and Psalm 19.

[00:09:53] The Jefferson Memorial has his famous observation that God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these are liberties or a gift of God? If you walk over to the National Archives, you see the Declaration of Independence. As I've mentioned in previous commentaries, it includes four references to God, including the clear statements that were all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. In the U.S. Capitol, the face of Moses looks down upon the proceedings.

[00:10:23] The phrase, In God We Trust, can be seen directly over the speaker's chair. And the Supreme Court has a sculpture of Moses holding the Ten Commandments. Everywhere you go, you can find references to God in the Bible. All of this is a reminder that Christian principles were part of the founding of this country and the framing of the government. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:10:49] Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, Merrill Matthews, Liberty McCarter in studio with us. A little bit later, we might open up the phones. I suspect she'll have some comments because socialism has definitely been in the news.

[00:11:17] And we didn't open up the phones the last couple of days because our producer was out, but he is back, and we're excited about that. But, Dr. Merrill Matthews, let me come to you for just a minute because this first article comes from John Funn. You've interviewed John Funn. I've interviewed John Funn. We've known him for years. This really was written almost five days ago before the election.

[00:11:35] But I kept it in there because it gives you some history because he reminds us of the fact that when you look at some of these individuals that are running off of the, if you will, DSA platform, Democratic Socialists of America, they have a platform right now that calls for the abolishing of the U.S. Supreme Court, defunding the Pentagon, offering universal amnesty to illegal immigrants,

[00:12:02] transferring the ownership of major corporations to the public, and replacing the President and the Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress. Other than that, we're talking about completely changing and rewriting the Constitution.

[00:12:22] And a while back, you actually went to the various proceedings of this DSA convention and wrote a very good piece, which is still available on our website, on the Hill. If you want to take some of the craziest ideas you can possibly come up with, those are the ideas of the platform of these individuals now winning, in some cases the primaries, or in a couple of cases actually prep mayoral elections.

[00:12:47] Yeah, the Democratic Socialists of America was created in, I think, in the 1980s. And it was an attempt to be just a voice within the Democratic Party. Increasingly, they're becoming the Democratic Party, and that's the change that's going on. And people need to realize this, and you need to look at what the Democratic Socialists of America are advocating. You've mentioned what John was talking about there is some of the changes in their platform.

[00:13:13] If they could become even more left, they are moving even further to the left. And the real threat here, because I wrote my piece about Berniecrats, my deadline's Monday, so it came out Tuesday, and then you had the primaries. And Mamdami's endorsed candidates won seven of eight races there. Mamdami won vote seven of eight races. And these are amazing people in how far left they are.

[00:13:43] And the problem that Democrats are facing now is all the energy is behind Bernie Sanders. I mean, you can see pictures, Bernie Sanders holding the hand of all of these candidates. And they are behind. They're moving further to the left, and Democrats are going to either have to figure out how to drag the party back to being traditionally far left as opposed to far, far left. And I don't know that they'll be able to do it.

[00:14:10] And from the Mamdami endorsements, they can say, look, we're winning races. We're where their energy is. You need to get on board with us if you want to win elections again. And that'll be a compelling message to a lot of Democrats, especially younger Democrats. Help our listeners for just a minute, because we used to talk about blue dog Democrats. We used to talk about yellow dog Democrats. Yeah, yellow dog Democrats. We also talked about just left of center Democrats.

[00:14:37] And yet many of them were defeated in these primaries, were they not? Yes, they were. So many of the Democrats that were defeated, and some of them were sort of popular, but they were defeated by wide margins. I mean, it's not like for some of them it wasn't even close. But a blue dog Democrat was one who is considered to be a largely moderate, not conservative so much, but generally moderate Democrat. I don't believe there are any blue dog Democrats. We talked about those in the late 90s, early 2000s.

[00:15:07] Those are mostly gone. Yellow dog Democrats is somebody who always voted for a Democrat, no matter what the person is. Even if it was a yellow dog. Even if it was a yellow dog. But the moderate element of the Democrats are being phased out if they haven't already gone. And you have some people, and I've mentioned this, Rahm Emanuel, who used to be Barack Obama's chief of staff, was also the mayor of Chicago, ambassador to Japan. You have Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

[00:15:36] And he's, these are people of the left, but they're rational people, reasonable people of the left. And then Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, who's been reelected in Kentucky, which is generally a red state. And so the question is, as we move past this next election and presidential candidates start emerging, who are we going to see pop up? Alexandria Ocasio, of course, says she will be old enough to be president.

[00:16:00] Yeah, I think what we've talked about for a long time is the fact that socialism has really, it really is sweeping through the ideologies of younger adults. So it has been with millennials for a long time. Bernie Sanders has historically been very popular with millennials. And I liked the line in your article where you said at this point, you know, Bernie's too old to be king, but not too old to be kingmaker.

[00:16:26] And so it's interesting that I think as you're seeing this new generation of Democratic politicians starting to get elected to certain positions, who are they looking at as kind of their hero and their idol who they want to follow? And it's Bernie Sanders. And they are so extreme. It's like even the examples, Kirby, you read from the DSA platform. They're not wanting to operate within our existing constitutional system.

[00:16:55] They want to completely change it. And I just wonder. Well, would it be better? Why are you why are you trying to get elected here in America? You don't seem to like anything about it. And so it's just it really is so extreme. You know, I was listening to Bernie Sanders has a list of candidates. He's endorsed both House and Senate and at state and local elections. So I've got a list of those and there's a bunch of them there.

[00:17:23] But I was listening to NPR earlier this week. The state of Utah has redistricted, has drawn redistricted their lines. And they created what is considered basically a safe Democratic district in there. So they the reporter from NPR was going around with the person who's campaigning for that as a Democrat. And they have the microphones on and he knocks on the door and somebody answers and said, hi, I can't remember. I'm such and such. I am a progressive Democrat, Democrat endorsed by Bernie Sanders.

[00:17:53] And then he moves on to talk about what he wants to do. And I thought, this is amazing because this this came out after I heard this after I did my piece. But he is in Utah. Utah is a very red state. You hadn't been a hadn't been a strongly pro Trump state, but it's a very red state. They've got a safe blue district there. And the person is knocking the door and he introduces himself as a progressive who's endorsed by Bernie Sanders.

[00:18:16] And my point being is the day is coming where where progressives want to say I'm endorsed by Bernie Sanders in the same way that Republicans want to say I've been endorsed by President Trump. You're seeing that sort of split come. Well, and the other part is that this first article by John Fund says that there were people that arguing that they have turned the whole Democratic Socialists of America into a machine.

[00:18:43] And Mayor Zoran Mamdani is its boss. You know, think about the machine. The other and of course, your article points out that Bernie Sanders will be 87 years of age by the next presidential election of 2028. So obviously, too old to be king, but not king maker. And these are two king makers right now. That's right. And unlike Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders is still going strong. So he's got he'll be giving speeches.

[00:19:09] He and Ocasio-Cortez have been going and doing what are they called? Billionaire tours or something like that around. And they're going to red states and they're giving speeches and they're drawing big crowds. One of the things Donald Trump was able to do was to draw big crowds. Big crowds are now starting to turn out for some of these progressives. You know, I might just hold up. This is the February issue of Outlook. And that was on our Christianity and Socialism compatible.

[00:19:35] And of course, there are articles in there by Liberty and by myself and by a number of other people that you would know that are addressing this issue. So we've recognized that this is something that we will continue to address. Of course, I might hold up some of the booklets that we have. And as we go to the break, let me just mention that we are in the midst of raising funds for our fiscal year end, which ends on Tuesday, the 30th. And we also have a match. The match is very significant.

[00:20:03] And so far, about $25,000 of it has been met. But the good news is, if I've done my math right, almost $70,000. I think it's about $68,446, you want to be exact, is still available. So if you have been saying, boy, I'm hearing about socialism. I'm educating myself. I want to educate my children and grandchildren about this issue. This is socialism on the march. How do we respond? We will be continuing to talk about this issue.

[00:20:33] We'll be producing more material. And your gift allows us to do so. So let me encourage you to do a couple of things. First of all, you can go to our website, pointofview.net. You can scroll down and find a banner that says Restoring America's Godly Heritage. There's a red button there that says Give Now. There's a way in which you can give either a one-time gift or a monthly gift. Hope that some of you might consider giving at a monthly level because our bills come in monthly. And if the income comes in monthly, it matches up pretty well.

[00:21:02] But more importantly, some of you might even like to talk to someone off the air, give your credit card, or ask some other questions. I will give that phone number because it's a great time to call 800-347-5151. 1-800-347-5151 for your gift. And most importantly, as we talk about this issue of socialism, as we talk about where this country is going, we talk about America's godly heritage, we need to hear from you. We'll take a break. Be back with more right after this.

[00:21:32] President Ronald Reagan reminded us once that freedom must be defended by each new generation. But how will a generation defend freedom if they were never taught what freedom means in the first place? America's schools have failed to pass a knowledge and a love of freedom on to the next generation.

[00:21:56] And that is why we see trends of people despising America, those who want to erase our founders' legacies and ignore America's blessings. We can change that, but it starts one family at a time, one person at a time. It starts with you. When you support Point of View, you equip families around the nation with the truth they need to pass freedom on to the next generation.

[00:22:24] Act today and have your gift doubled when you give this month at pointofview.net. Or you can call 1-800-347-5151. That is pointofview.net and 1-800-347-5151.

[00:22:51] Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson.

[00:23:17] Back once again, if you'd like to join the conversation, that number is 1-800-351-1212. That's the on-air line, which is different than the one I gave just a minute ago. For those of you that would like to join with us and help us out as we want to end our fiscal year in the black, your help would be greatly appreciated. And we have a match on the table. It's a dollar-for-dollar match. Your gift of $100 becomes $200. If you decide to join at the Truth Team level, maybe at $30 a month, that $30 becomes $60 a month.

[00:23:46] And so, whatever you can do, we would greatly appreciate that. But it does seem to me we do need to stay on this issue of socialism a little bit longer. And I posted this piece by Charles Cook. One, because I love Charles Cook. But two, because he takes the time to look at one of the candidates. And again, you're going to have some debate about how to say her name. But Darylisa Avila Chevalier, although some people just say Chevalier.

[00:24:11] But nevertheless, an individual that was one of these congressional candidates in a Democratic majority congressional district. So winning the primary almost assures she's going to serve in Congress. I want to, for just a few minutes, just mention a few things that show how radical she is.

[00:24:36] And here, Charles Cook talks about the fact that she wishes to prevent all deportations of illegal immigrants, irrespective of the severity of their crimes they have committed. She hopes to abolish prisons entirely, including for convicted murderers. And oh yes, this one jumped out at me. She is fighting for the eradication of Western civilization. She says our intifada, she said that two years ago, is an international one.

[00:25:03] An intifada, of course, is the idea of being anti-Jewish. And that is certainly some of the case. And so again, Charles Cook says, do I get to vote on that? Because he says, this all seems somewhat extreme to me. Western civilization is me. It's my wife. It's my children. It's my town. It's my state. My country. And liberty, there are some people that say, well, well, I guess they're just a little bit more liberal than your average Democrat.

[00:25:29] They're calling for a whole scale change of America. And there were people that went to the polls and voted for these individuals who are so radical that even, I think, Zoram Mamdani said, well, I didn't know about some of those statements, but still endorsed her anyway. And they now probably will be serving in Congress. Yeah. You know, it's interesting when you can tell that people have gone back and scrubbed their old Twitter posts and X posts and things like that. That tells you everything.

[00:25:58] Because there were some doozies in there. And, you know, I think one of the things, at least for me, it's like, okay, that's pretty much all I need to know. The day after the October 7th attack in Israel, she attended a pro-Palestine rally that included speakers who were actually celebrating the violence. And including, you know, a lot of her past tweets have people have tried to tone them down. There was one example. I can't remember if it was in that article or one that I read in the Wall Street Journal

[00:26:27] where she had talked about abolishing all policing. And somebody else had said, what we mean by this is we want to reform policing and change the way it looks. And she responded and said, no, what I mean is I want to abolish all police. And so it's like, and basically, like you said, Mom Donnie has kind of said, well, I didn't know about some of those statements. And she said, that was in the past. I've grown. Okay. Well, it wasn't that. I think their statement said that was half a decade ago. Okay.

[00:26:57] Half a decade ago is not that long of a time that, you know, I can remember five years ago. So it's, I mean, it is just concerning that people who really do hold these views, like you said, just fundamentally un-American, completely different. We're not talking about disagreements over politics or voting red versus blue and those things that have been American tradition for a long time, but completely restructuring the entire nation and political system.

[00:27:27] And these are the people who are getting elected. They've let the beast out of the cage. Did you think you'd come to a time where Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, panelist Jayapal would be considered the moderates in the Democratic Party, which is where they're moving. And it's not clear yet. And I have to say, I've listened to Mamdami when he was interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

[00:27:54] And it was a – he comes across very likable. He sort of pushes aside any radical stuff. And he just seems like a likable person that you'd like to sit down and go have a cup of coffee with or something like that. When they come across like that and they're not stressing their policies – the policies are sort of in the background. They just say, we're going to take – we're going to make affordable housing. Yeah. We're going to make food affordable again. And that's going to reach out.

[00:28:20] That's going to attract a number of people out there who feel like, well, we've had liberal Democrats running the city for years and they haven't solved the problem. Let's go one step further because they always say socialism hasn't really been tried yet. And give us a chance to make it work. Again, one of the things we have in our booklet on a biblical point of view on socialism is a list which was compiled by Dinesh D'Souza of all the different countries where this was tried.

[00:28:47] And there's more than 25 of these failed experiments. And the argument, well, it just never was quite right. But this particular candidate for just a minute, I thought I might just mention – you're never going to hear me mention James Carville, the raging Cajun too often. But here, nevertheless, is James Carville, who, of course, does not like Donald Trump. That's obvious, all the things he said lately.

[00:29:12] But he was also very concerned about Darylisa Avilia-Chiwai because he says we cannot allow her to even join the House Democrat caucus because he says she's so hateful. Here's his quote. Her views are totally against anything that any Democrat has. She doesn't even believe in interracial dating.

[00:29:33] You go down the list of all the things that this congressional candidate, the presumptive member of Congress, believes in. And there's a point somewhere, I think, Liberty, where some leadership needs to say, okay, we're a big tent, but some of this is outside the tent. Just as years ago – and I'll get this in just a minute when I talk to Dr. Romero Matthews – you had William F. Buckley and some of them stand up in the Republican Party.

[00:30:00] But no one in the Democratic Party, other than – let's give credit to John Fetterman – but almost no one else wants to try to police how wild these ideas are that are now under the tent of the Democratic Party. Yeah, it's so true. And I've been the first, and people have heard it many times on Point of View with conservatives.

[00:30:22] If there is a very radical wing in trying to make anti-Semitism cool again or things like that or talking in hateful ways that are antithetical to what I believe conservatism and Christianity is all about, I will call that out and say, hey, yeah, big tent, but exactly, you have to have some principles here.

[00:30:46] And I think that conservatives have been willing largely to do that, but like we've been demonstrating, it seems like in the Democratic Party right now it's moving further and further and further to the extreme. And where are their principles? Where is their boundary line of saying we're not going to tolerate intolerance towards people groups?

[00:31:08] Because these policies that the DSA and their candidates are really promoting are not tolerant. They're very extreme. They are hateful. And so, yeah, I would like to see somebody put a line somewhere and say the tent stops here. Well, Liberty is exactly right in stepping in and stopping this extremism that's on the right. And I listened a little bit to one of Nick Fuentes' podcasts this week. Yes.

[00:31:38] And I was just, I was stunned. I mean, he's saying women are the problem. We need to put the women in jail. He went on to say Hitler put the Jews and the gypsies in jail to keep them from disrupting society. We need to do the same thing with women. And I'm listening to this and thinking, where did this come from? Where did this come from? He had dinner with President Trump back before the election. He's had some influence in the right.

[00:32:03] And people listen to this and you think, ah, we've got our own problem here on the right as well as the left having a problem. Let's give some history for just a minute. And that is, I mentioned William F. Buckley. There was a time when, and they said in the Republican Party, yeah, we believe in a big tent, but we don't allow crazies in the tent, right? Is that what he said? Yes. Essentially. Yes. And he also said he will vote for, in terms of the more moderate, he said, I vote for the most conservative person who can win an election, which is another important point.

[00:32:33] It's not just a conservative. It's a conservative who can win. So, yes, they set up a set of principles in 1960 at his home in Connecticut called Sharon. It was in Sharon, and they've called it the Sharon Principles. Sharon Principles. You've got other groups of what we call the Freedom Conservatives who have adopted a similar group of principles. Principles First, who have dropped it. They're more anti-Trump, but they've dropped it as a group of principles. And the notion is we have principles we believe in. We believe in these principles, not people. And so we want to live by the principles rather than people.

[00:33:03] Well, well said. By the way, speaking of Nick Fuentes, a very good piece by Jim Garrity today, which maybe we'll cover next week, in which he points out that on one point, Nick Fuentes talks about how unaffordable the world is. And yet he makes, he figured out, $60,000 a month doing what he does. Unfortunately, we reward bad behavior. I could almost live on that. Yes. I mean, just unbelievable. So we will speak out. And we, of course, have spoken out again about anti-Semitism on the left or the right. But right now, we're talking about this.

[00:33:32] And when we come back, Cal Thomas has a piece on the anti-socialist strike back. We'll talk about that for just a minute. And then we'll get into some other issues because we're still trying to bring about peace in the Middle East. We've got some questions about what can be taught in schools. All that coming up right after this.

[00:34:01] Although it's Pride Month, June hasn't seen much LGBT hoopla here in Texas. The Washington Stand reports that throughout the country, such celebrating has been dialed back to a stunning degree. The news publication Suzanne Bowdy writes that in Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, and Oklahoma, leaders are replacing Pride Month with declarations of Nuclear Family Month. Pride celebrations are part of what theologian Carl Truman describes as the liturgical calendar of this present age.

[00:34:27] Gay pride is destructive because it elevates LGBT desires over the needs of children. Eleven years ago, during Pride Month, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, extending same-sex marriage to every state. In the five years following the decision, public support for gay marriage rose from 60 to 70 percent. Then it plateaued. Democrats still back gay marriage at 87 percent.

[00:34:49] But Gallup polling shows that among Republicans, approval of same-sex marriage stands at 37 percent, down from 55 percent four years ago. The opinion in Obergefell, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, emphasized the good of marriage to a society, describing it as a keystone of our social order and essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations. Advocates argue that allowing same-sex marriage would strengthen marriage. But the hoped-for revival of marriage has not materialized. The pre-Obergefell decline in marriage continues.

[00:35:18] In redefining marriage to meet the needs of homosexuals, societies seem to ignore that children really need to be in homes with their biological moms and dads. More Americans are connecting those dots. But wokeness persists, especially in blue states. In New York, state legislators are considering new child custody and parental laws, in which the term mother is replaced with gestating parent and father with non-gestating parent. Suzanne Bowdy points out that in at least 11 states, legislators have introduced bills to roll back same-sex marriage.

[00:35:48] Marriage was God's creation for human flourishing. To redefine it is prideful. For Point of View, I'm Penna Dexter. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Once again, one of the questions I think some people have is, okay, what are you going to do? And, of course, I've mentioned that we have, here's a booklet on socialism. Here's an Outlook magazine that we produce.

[00:36:16] We're going to do some much more, as you can probably imagine. But Cal Thomas talks about the fact that they even, I love this, an anti-communist film festival and some others. Matter of fact, today we were chatting with somebody who said one of his favorite films was Dr. Zhivago, and that's listed here as well. And there's a sense in which, Dr. Matthews, that we have recognized for some time

[00:36:40] that whether it was communism or socialism, there's a trend and there's a need to provide alternatives, and Point of View is trying to provide some of those. That's right. And the way to get these booklets is to join Point of View. That's one way to do it, make a donation. Yes, and I actually, I went through, I've had the last two or three of your booklets in, and I went through them the other day, and some of those are just so good. And then, of course, you and I talked about the one on the seven stages of civilization

[00:37:07] and how they can sometimes pass away, and we're in the fifth stage right now, and we're looking at YouTube to find out what that's all about. So those are great. And the problem is we don't have, there's not many voices out there that are both anti-communist but reasonable in everything else we're doing. Yes. And that's the one voice that we have here. Well, I want people to see that Cal Thomas gives one of the solutions, of course, another one.

[00:37:33] And, of course, there's just a real need, Liberty, for us to recognize that we're going to be gearing up for this and whether it's the next generation roundtable that you do with younger people because in some cases it's the younger person more likely to accept socialism or the Know Why podcast, that is the case. But there just is, I think, a need for us to not sit back and say, well, that's just New York, it's going crazy.

[00:37:57] But we're starting to see a movement that we've been predicting for many years be coming to fruition. Yes, we are. And I love the idea of a film festival, but it reminded me of the need to really capture the imaginations of young people because we've been talking about how, like Mom Donnie, for instance, he does seem like a nice guy. He talks about real problems, affordability, things that are on young people's minds, and he paints this vision.

[00:38:27] And it's not based in reality, but there it is. It's a vision that's being given to the next generation. And so how can we portray a true vision of what actually is good, what actually works, the principles and the values that our nation was founded upon that can work for everyone? And so we need to do a good job, whether that's through storytelling and artwork, but also being educated on the worldview.

[00:38:51] And so one of the issues, articles I recently wrote, I think for an issue of Outlook magazine that's about to come out or will soon, is on the underlying worldview of Marxism that really underpins this new movement and a lot of the things about that that people don't understand. And so that's what we try to educate people on here on Point of View. You know, there's a long time saying that those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. I think that's basically what it says.

[00:39:18] And what's happened is if you lived in the 50s and 60s, you saw what happened in Korea when the communists tried to take over Korea. You saw what was happening in Mao's China, what was happening in Russia. People from that age looked at that and said, we don't want any part of that communism or socialism. Many of them didn't. They may have called themselves communists, but they also called themselves socialists.

[00:39:42] So we have that history in our background and we know how bad those systems can be, even Cuba. And yet our younger people, many times raised through public schools, didn't get the full education in that, may have gotten some pro-socialism from some public school teachers, and they just don't know the failures of the system. Socialism has never worked, not because it hasn't been tried, but because you cannot make it work.

[00:40:11] And as a result, you end up having people starving. You usually end up getting somebody in there who's an autocrat who just takes over, and then you don't have the ability to be able to run your society anymore. Well, again, Dr. Merrimanth, you've talked about some of the booklets. I got the one on socialism here, one on capitalism and socialism, even one on the road to serfdom, because it occurred to me that a lot of people probably would not even know who Friedrich Hayek is, probably think he's the father of Selma Hayek or something like that,

[00:40:38] but wrote a very good book on the road to serfdom. And these are resources that are available to you. And as we are coming to the end of our fiscal year, Liberty, I'd like to come back to you, because we certainly have a match on the table. It's a dollar-for-dollar match. Haven't really had anybody call today, and this would be a great time, as we're coming to a top-of-the-hour break, for you to make that call. It's 800-347-5151.

[00:41:06] And since there's a match on the table, I've noticed my own wife today has been calling and giving our credit card out to a couple of different organizations that she knew had a match on the table. So oftentimes there are people saying, well, I'd love to support Point of View. I'd love to give a fiscal year-end gift. Is there a match? And the bottom line is there is, and so far we've used $25,000 of it, but there's still almost $70,000 left. And that's something that people can act on right now.

[00:41:35] I like to give during a match as well. And I myself will donate to Point of View during a match because somebody has pledged to double what you give. And so it's a great time to do that. And I would just encourage people, if you listen currently and you appreciate Point of View and you feel like it has helped you to form or maintain a biblical worldview and make sense of everything that we're seeing around us, then consider a donation.

[00:42:04] And if you want the next generation to also be able to take advantage of that, we are actively building our online presence. We've got podcasts going out. We're going to talk about all of these tools that we are using to be able to get this information out to the people that we've been talking about who need it. They want answers. They have concerns. And there are answers out there. And Point of View has been doing this for over 50 years. And so it would just be great if we can continue to reach the next generation.

[00:42:32] You know, a week from tomorrow, we'll be celebrating the 4th of July. That's right. If you want to support something that has held to the principles of our country from its founding, Point of View is one of the very few places you can go. We're not drifting to the left. We're not drifting to the right. We're staying right where the country and the founders wanted us to be. And you can support that by giving to Point of View now. What I just mentioned here is the, of course, latest outlook that many of you are starting to receive. It is understanding America's Christian heritage.

[00:43:02] That's why we have the Restoring America's Godly Heritage. And when people are supporting this ministry, you mentioned, of course, they're supporting the podcast, the broadcast, and all the resources that are there. But they're also bringing just very good voices to this particular program. And next week we have Michael Ferris, don't we? Yeah, I was really excited to hear that, that he's going to be on next week on Tuesday, I believe. So I'm not sure if he remembers who I am.

[00:43:28] But he has been involved in my family going way back, which I think I've told this story before. But when my mom was actually arrested for homeschooling my siblings in the 1980s in Oklahoma, Dr. Michael Ferris was one of the ones who made a few phone calls so that charges could be dropped because it was, in fact, legal to homeschool, even though not very many people knew it at the time. And, of course, he's been involved in defending homeschooling throughout America,

[00:43:54] reinvigorating the Christian classical liberal arts, founding Patrick Henry College, which is my alma mater, involved in religious liberty as well. So I'm excited to hear that interview next week. So that's what you're supporting. And, again, we need to hear from you. First of all, you can go to the website, pointofview.net. There's a red button there under Restoring America's Godly Heritage. Give now. And there's a way in which you can give a one-time gift. I hope that some of you will think about clicking on that button that says Ongoing,

[00:44:21] because there's a way in which your monthly gift continues to help us. The other way is, of course, you can give us a call. That is 1-800-347-5151. 1-800-347-5151. If you are waiting to the end of the week, well, it's the end of the week. So it's a great time for you to make that phone call. And if you agree with the kinds of things that we are doing,

[00:44:47] I'd love to hear from many of you, including some of you that maybe have listened to Point of View for many years and have never supported us. Even a one-time gift would be a way of saying, I've been listening. I appreciate what you're doing. So give us a call, 800-347-5151. When we come back, we have a lot of other things to talk about, which we'll do right after these important messages.

[00:45:16] President Ronald Reagan reminded us once that freedom must be defended by each new generation. But how will a generation defend freedom if they were never taught what freedom means in the first place? America's schools have failed to pass a knowledge and a love of freedom on to the next generation. And that is why we see trends of people despising America,

[00:45:42] those who want to erase our founders' legacies and ignore America's blessings. We can change that, but it starts one family at a time, one person at a time. It starts with you. When you support Point of View, you equip families around the nation with the truth they need to pass freedom on to the next generation.

[00:46:07] Act today and have your gift doubled when you give this month at pointofview.net. Or you can call 1-800-347-5151. That is pointofview.net. And 1-800-347-5151. Point of View will continue after this.

[00:46:46] Across America, live, this is Point of View. And now, Kirby Anderson. Second hour today, we certainly have talked quite a bit about socialism, and I figured we might. But let's see how we can get into a couple of other issues. One of those that I posted, a roadmap to the next Middle East war.

[00:47:13] And in studio with me today, Liberty as well as Merrill. And Dr. Merrill Matthews, it does seem to me that last week we did talk about the memorandum of understanding. And some people have a different understanding to that memorandum. More of a memorandum of misunderstanding. So that is the case. But this, first of all, reminds us of something else. Even if we bring about peace in Iran, we are dealing with Middle East problems.

[00:47:42] And it is sort of a whack-a-mole issue, if you will. Even if you could bring about peace in one of these countries, and we have not, it is not like where we go into Venezuela and turn it around almost instantaneously. That's the difficulty that we have. And this is a reminder of the fact that even if you're looking at Iran, you've also got to look at Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis. You've got to look at Lebanon and a number of other issues.

[00:48:11] And if the president wanted to kind of move beyond, as we jokingly said months ago, he'd have to just bomb a little bit, then declare victory and leave. Because the only other way is to have a forever war, and he doesn't want that. And it's certainly not going to help in the midterms. Yes, the war in Iran has sort of stirred the pot there now. And several of the countries are trying to figure out what's the next step. Saudi Arabia and Iran have had a lot of tensions. There have been some shells going back and forth over time.

[00:48:40] Does Saudi Arabia say, now we're just going to work with Iran, especially if they're going to have control over the Strait of Hormuz? Oman is there. United Arab Emirates. So many people have gone to United Arab Emirates as a place to be able to go to a very expensive, very high posh place. But it's a Muslim place, but it has been welcoming to let Christian tourists and others come in. There's no persecution there. And we don't know how that's going to all shake out now.

[00:49:09] It's not entirely clear. And the point, the article that you put up there by Seth Cropsey sort of gives some indications as to how this might go, because we don't really know right now, because the regime that we do, we had some people change in the regime, but we haven't had regime change. And I just, I feel sorry for the Iranian people who were hoping for something different now. President Trump had said, you know, back several months ago when the Iranians were,

[00:49:37] the IRGC were killing their own people, hold on, we're coming, we're coming to the rescue. And now you've got a country that has been devastated by the bombing, may have some money coming in as we unfreeze assets, but the regime is still there. And I'm not sure that they're going to be able to get much of a change. As I oftentimes mention, my wife and I walk twice a day, and we run into individuals that have come from Iran, mostly Persians,

[00:50:05] who were very enthusiastic about the fact that bombing might bring about that kind of change. But Liberty, even though we've talked about the fact that one of the fastest growing churches in the world, by percentage, is the Iranian church. There are still a lot of Christians there, and there are a lot of Muslims that are not agreeing with the Ayatollahs, but no real change has taken place there. And there's a sense in which the president and even the country might have to move on.

[00:50:34] Yeah, and that's something that we have to remember to pray for are the people of Iran and the persecuted who are there. And then you wonder, okay, once this blows over, are they going, if they expressed any sort of support in the protests or the rallies or for the United States, what repercussions do they have waiting for them if there isn't total regime change? And so I think we need to be in prayer for them.

[00:51:00] But I also think about the younger contingency here in America, especially on the right, who I think lean more America first in terms of even foreign policy, and we're very skeptical of this engagement to begin with. And so I had kind of hoped that the objectives could be achieved and, you know, we're going to quickly do this and then get out. You know, maybe that was a very high bar.

[00:51:25] But if there's not much that is really accomplished and then we get drawn back into ongoing conflict here and there or negotiations or things don't pan out at all, then I think you're going to have younger voters again saying, why did we get involved at all? And that's going to impact foreign policy leanings going forward in the Republican Party. And, you know, Iran has been a problem not just for us but for the whole Middle East. Because they're the Sunni country and most, excuse me, Shiite country.

[00:51:53] Most of the others are Sunni countries. And that's going to be a real problem. We don't know, you know, Hamas has been really put back on its heels, but it hasn't gone. Hezbollah is still there in Lebanon. And then you've got the Houthis there in Yemen. And it's not clear that Iran, I mean, Iran has not said we're not going to back these country, these proxy groups anymore. So do tensions just continue? And how do you work that out?

[00:52:20] And I don't know that we know how this is all going to play out. But from an Iranian standpoint, if I were an Iranian leader, if I was a mullah there, I would feel like I won the war because we're a smaller country who did nobody expected to win, and yet we survived. Survived. And now it looks like the president's sort of moving on, but he's kind of gotten tired of this and moving on. And we may be empowered to do more things. Well, again, the piece that we had yesterday from Robert Knight is that, indeed,

[00:52:49] Iran knows that the clock is ticking and that they are well aware of the fact that eventually the president would move on. On the one hand, you see some people cheerleading for the president. And certainly let's talk about the fact that compare the Middle East, say, to October 2023. For example, the day that Hamas goes into Israel and how many changes have taken place there. There is the devastation of the leadership of Hamas, Hezbollah.

[00:53:19] As a matter of fact, most of the leaders in Hezbollah don't want to use pagers anymore, things like that. I mean, all sorts of things. Understandably. Operation Midnight Attack and all those others, as well as actually burying the nuclear resources. So on the one hand, yes, we'll give credit there. But on the other hand, you have not only Iran but a lot of the legacy press saying, well, it looks like we lost. Well, I don't think we lost. But at the same time, there are some ongoing problems.

[00:53:45] And as we've said in this program so many times, it's difficult to really build or even plant a democracy in Muslim soil. If you start with the assumption, which is in the Koran, that a Muslim has more rights than a non-Muslim, a man has more rights than a woman, there's no sense of equal protection. There's no sense of rule of law and things of that nature. And this is just an ongoing problem. Well, let's give credit where credit is due.

[00:54:13] President Trump has done some things that no other president in 47 years wanted to do. But we still have this festering wound, and it's called Iran in the Middle East. And we don't know how this is going to affect our relationships with Israel, because there's apparently been some tensions between Netanyahu and President Trump. And Israel is a sovereign country, and if they're going to be shot at by Hezbollah out of Lebanon, they want to feel like they have the ability to go in there and stop it.

[00:54:41] And that's creating other tensions for the group. So it's less clear now than what it was when it was status quo and unclear. Well, if nothing else, I did want this to be available to you because it gets into a little bit of the history, the memorandum of understanding. We won't get into all the details there. The benefits that come to Iran, the, if you will, carrot and stick that exist,

[00:55:07] and also just the fact that, let's just be honest, the Middle East is the Middle East, and it has been a vexing problem, whether we're talking about Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan, all the way up to, of course, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and now again where we find ourselves today. So it's available to you on the website. We'll take a break, come back with more right after this.

[00:55:42] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. This year, millions of Americans will visit our nation's capital to celebrate the 250th anniversary. I've encouraged many who plan to visit Washington, D.C. to look for all the references to God in the government buildings and national monuments. In the past, I've encouraged visitors to get a copy of Newt Gingrich's book, Rediscovering God in America, because it's almost a walking tour of God in the capital.

[00:56:09] But now I encourage them to go to the Museum of the Bible. They can enjoy a virtual flying tour called Washington Revelations, where you see various biblical references in our nation's capital. The top of the Washington Monument has a cap that bears the inscription, Laus Deo, which is Latin for, Praise God. The Lincoln Memorial has Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address that includes two Bible verses, Matthew 18 and Psalm 19. The Jefferson Memorial has his famous observation

[00:56:38] that God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these are liberties or a gift of God? If you walk over to the National Archives, you see the Declaration of Independence. As I've mentioned in previous commentaries, it includes four references to God, including the clear statements that were all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. In the U.S. Capitol, the face of Moses looks down upon the proceedings. The phrase, in God we trust,

[00:57:06] can be seen directly over the speaker's chair. And the Supreme Court has a sculpture of Moses holding the Ten Commandments. Everywhere you go, you can find references to God in the Bible. All of this is a reminder that Christian principles were part of the founding of this country and the framing of the government. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. Go deeper on topics like you just heard

[00:57:34] by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, if you'd like to join the conversation, 1-800-351-1212, which again is a different number to call, which we'll give a little bit later if you want to donate, and I would hope that you would do so. But Dr. Matthews, you suggested we might use this article from the Wall Street Journal,

[00:58:03] which I thought was very appropriate. Do Bible passages belong in English class? It's cultural literacy, they said, to read about the valley of the shadow of death. Now, you and I are the two old guys around the table, and we can remember, and I was growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and even there in junior high school, I remember reading the book of Genesis and talking about the Bible, and you grew up in a time when not only did you read the Bible, you even prayed in school. We did.

[00:58:32] And that's not so long ago, if you think about it in terms of Western culture. In Longview, Texas, we did exactly that, and most of us were, because sometimes the teacher would call on us to pray. This is the second and third grade, so we didn't really know what we were doing. I know. And so we were hoping they'd call on our neighbor sitting next to us, and occasionally they would call on us, and I got called on at one time. But yes, we used to pray in school, and the notion of discussing Bible, religion, and other things was just part of the general discussion,

[00:59:01] but no one was ever pushing this as a religion on anybody that I recall. And again, I grew up in a place where there was more of a secular attitude, but it's still kind of the idea in English class that how could you understand all of the phrases that Shakespeare used, phrases and idioms that we use all the time, to be an educated person, you needed to at least know something about the Bible. And so Liberty, let me come to you for just a minute because we were talking about those booklets.

[00:59:30] The next booklet coming out is yours on AI in education. We also have a Future Outlook magazine coming out on education, and it does seem to me that a well-educated person should have read the Bible, needs to know how much of our history and even our English language comes from the Bible. Yes, you know, I love this editorial because they cite several examples. Of course, we know Shakespeare references the Bible multiple times.

[00:59:59] There are other poems and books, but even some rap hits that people will know, and so that reference passages of scripture. So it really is cultural literacy, you know, just like reading Homer, and I think that kids should be exposed to the Odyssey and the Iliad, and maybe they will be in theaters a little bit this summer. I don't know how... Yes, I think they're making a new Odyssey, aren't they? They are. They are. I would recommend the source material first. But, you know, we... It's funny, from a Christian school perspective,

[01:00:28] when I taught high school literature and we were reading that, you did have some Christian parents say, why are we studying all these pagan cultures? And you talked about, well, this is such an integral part of Western civilization and just people's kind of collective imagination and psyche, and so it's important to understand the stories that influenced Western civilization for a long time. I think you make the same argument for the Bible from the other side. Well, if I'm not a Christian, why do I want my kid to study the Bible in public school?

[01:00:58] It's cultural literacy, and again, if we're operating in reality, then in our nation, the founders assumed a biblical worldview, as we've talked about so many times. So even if you just want to understand the way they were thinking, it can be helpful to read the things that they were educated on and very familiar with. So this is just kind of basic cultural understanding that, yes, people need. And even if you're looking at early speeches given in America, they were oftentimes peppered

[01:01:27] with little quotes from the Bible, references to the Bible and so forth, and you wouldn't know what they were talking about unless you had seen that and was just aware of the general aspect of the Bible in both our history and in our literature. Let's just, if we can, since we don't have a lawyer here, so I don't claim to be a lawyer or practice it on television, but nevertheless, I have enough experience to know that a lot of the question that is surrounded that goes back to a case in 1963,

[01:01:56] Abington School District v. Shemp, and that's where the Supreme Court said that this would be an establishment of religion, but what they were talking about is where there were mandatory Bible readings, oftentimes read over the intercom, which they then would say was an establishment of religion. But even at the time, they also said that there was a literary and historical value to those, and if I may quote from them, they said, nothing we have said here indicates that a study of the Bible or religion, when presented objectively

[01:02:25] as part of the secular program of education, may not be effectively inconsistent with the First Amendment. And the argument was that there is a historical value. Well, more recently, you might remember the Kennedy decision, which also recognized, as well as the one of the Bradensburg Cross cases, in many cases, talking about the historical value of these monuments. And so there, I think, is a very powerful case to be said

[01:02:53] that it is part of our literature. And in a time when we've had sort of this woke idea, we're going to throw out everything that comes from dead white leaders and writers and poets and musicians, there is a sense of common sense coming back and saying, look, there's just no way that you could really be considered to be educated if you didn't at least know a little bit about what's in the Bible, looking at it, at the very least,

[01:03:23] from its historical point of view. Yes, its historical point of view, its impact over history, there are multiple genres of different kinds of literature in the Bible. And so, and I mean, yes, they have criticized the dead white authors and things like that, but you know, you've got a lot of non-white authors behind the Bible, so I think that would be a point in its favor, but yes, I think it's so important and so I hope that this is upheld.

[01:03:52] And you know, just the values, even most of the founding fathers would have claimed to be Christian, the vast majority would have. Many of them were evangelicals, what we would call evangelicals in their beliefs, but they generally accepted the framework of the moral worldview within the Bible in their laws and so forth, so that was just part of their makeup, so even if they weren't quoting it, the notion that you have monogamy and other things of that nature, those were just sort of generally accepted things

[01:04:21] as part of the Western worldview based upon the Bible. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the Texas State Board of Education has been considering, again, whether or not to re-evaluate these reading lists, which did include excerpts from the Bible. Now again, we were talking about some of these radical socialists. One of the individuals testifying there was arguing that not only should we not have the Bible in any of these reading lists, we actually need to take

[01:04:50] all of those out and instead insert all of the articles and quotes from the Quran that were instrumental in the founding of this country. And at this point, you just start rolling your eyes. Was there one? Yeah, hitting your forehead. And it's like, what in the world? But nevertheless, these are the kind of really bizarre things being suggested. So again, the argument always is, well, if we look at the Bible, couldn't we look at other religious literature? Well, we could. And in some cases, we do.

[01:05:20] As a matter of fact, I do recognize that there are some influences. You can't talk about, for example, Arabic numbers and things of that nature without recognizing that influence. And this is, again, looking at the broadest sense. So it doesn't matter whether you're Protestant, Catholic, or even if you're a secularist, you still would have to recognize whether you agree with it or not that the Bible was so instrumental in the founding of this country. And if not, I'll be glad to send you a copy

[01:05:49] of the July issue of Outlook, which talks about the historical understanding of the Christian heritage. We've got articles there by Tim Gegline. We have articles by, of course, Liberty and by myself, as well as Mark David Hall and Jerry Newcomb who's going to be on with us next week and William Federer was on this week. This is just, I think, an illustration that you can't almost read any of the founders without seeing them either directly or indirectly

[01:06:18] quoting from the Bible. If you understand America, you understand English, you want to understand our literature and history, you have to understand the Bible. Yeah, you absolutely do. And I am all for reading things that you disagree with. In fact, I think encouraging students to do that and then say, let's compare and contrast. Let's evaluate these worldviews. Let's try to understand them. Why are you so afraid of being exposed to ideas that aren't yours? Nobody is saying you've got, we're forcing you to have some sort of conversion experience

[01:06:48] here in school. We're just reading different ideas, little passages of different ideas that have formed our nation. And I think the wider you read, the better. That's how you actually get educated and understand the world around you. And if you see the value of Bible passages in English class in the public schools, well, that's just another article we've posted. And again, as you are probably listening to Point of View, you might say, you cover a lot of different topics. Yes, and we have more to cover when we come back from the break. But in order for us

[01:07:17] to do what we do, we, of course, need your financial support. And if you've never given before, I want to challenge some of you as we go to the break here, think about giving us a call. That's 1-800-347-5151. 1-800-347-5151. Might even tell somebody answering the phone, never given before, but I thought I'd give a one-time gift because I appreciate the conversation taking place here. If you're a regular giver, I want to encourage you to continue. And one of the benefits, of course, if you are a monthly giver is to receive

[01:07:47] the Outlook magazine. If you join at the Truth Team level, you'll receive those booklets. And so again, let me encourage you to give us a call, 800-347-5151. Of course, the website is pointofview.net. Just go and scroll down to that banner that says Restoring America's Godly Heritage. We'll come back with more right after this. President Ronald Reagan

[01:08:16] reminded us once that freedom must be defended by each new generation. But how will a generation defend freedom if they were never taught what freedom means in the first place? America's schools have failed to pass a knowledge and a love of freedom on to the next generation. And that is why we see trends of people despising America. Those who want to erase our founders' legacies and ignore America's blessings.

[01:08:46] We can change that, but it starts one family at a time, one person at a time. It starts with you. When you support pointofview, you equip families around the nation with the truth they need to pass freedom on to the next generation. act today and have your gift doubled when you give this month at pointofview.net or you can call

[01:09:15] 1-800-347-5151 pointofview.net and 1-800-347-5151 Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View.

[01:09:47] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. In fact, once again, if you'd like to join us on air, 1-800-351-1212 is a different number to call, but that's again the on-air line. And I thought for just a few minutes one of the pieces that, again, Liberty suggested is one that has come out. It's a Gallup particular survey which says

[01:10:17] many Gen Zers missing a sense of meaning or purpose in life. Now, again, let me just recognize that as you are supporting Point of View, of course, one of the programs we do on a regular basis is the Next Generation Roundtable, not to mention, of course, the podcast that Liberty does, the Know Why podcast. But Liberty, here's another good example of the reason that you do what you do. The youngest generation, the so-called Gen Zers, are individuals that in many

[01:10:46] cases say that it's very true or pretty true that their life has meaning or that they have sense of purpose, but they are still having some struggles with that. So even though there is a positive element, there's a negative one as well. And I think we can say it's the best of times, the worst of times, but I think if you really buy into this kind of secular mindset, and if you don't have

[01:11:16] something that is worth living for, like the gospel, people, I think you can understand why the whole generation of individuals are sort of aimless and have no sense of purpose. Yeah, and this is really key to understanding the outlook of so many young people, even maybe some of the political radicalism that we have been discussing, because think about it, if you don't feel like your life has any meaning or purpose, that's just, that's so depressing, and we are seeing people being depressed,

[01:11:46] we've talked about young men feeling like they don't have a purpose, but this is from Gallup, I think I am going to do a Know Why podcast episode on this, because this is something worth really digging into, but just kind of an overview here, overall, one in three members of Gen Z struggle to either feel like their life is meaningful or have a sense of purpose in life, and to drill down a little more, when you look at, they have a kind of breakdown of Gen Z including teenagers, but when you look at just

[01:12:15] Gen Z adults, 24% don't feel like life is meaningful, and 21% don't feel like they have a sense of purpose in life, or no, sorry, it's the opposite, only 24% feel like their life is meaningful, and only 21% feel like they have a sense of purpose in life, that's such a small percentage, and one of the interesting things is that they did say that if they have a job that is focused on helping others,

[01:12:45] that is a sense of fulfillment, but what's interesting is that they also have a perception that having those kinds of jobs that are focused on helping people don't pay enough, so they also feel a lot of depression due to financial pressure, so this helps us understand just, again, kind of the malaise that so many members of Gen Z are feeling, and then how they perceive their ability to get that fulfillment, and they're perceiving it through their work,

[01:13:15] but a kind of job that they really can't afford to have. Do they have an explanation as to why that's the case? When I was young, once you got out of high school or college, the notion was go to work, get some ambition, go to work, and if I said, I feel depressed because people said, what's the matter with you? Get busy, and so I'm just wondering, why do they feel that's the case? All this says here is that the

[01:13:45] perceived barriers to seeking helping-focused jobs, the top one, 49%, I don't think those jobs pay enough. Second, 46%, these jobs tend to be hard or emotionally draining. There's little or no career advancement, and it kind of goes down from there. Now, a little context that I'll add just based on some other research that I've read recently is that when you look at Gen Z and what they value, I think we've talked about this, especially Gen Z women, what they value more than even having a

[01:14:14] family is their career. And I can say from a millennial perspective, too, a lot of young adults from the time they were little, what's the one question that kids often get asked? What do you do when you grow up? Exactly. What do you want to be when you grow up? But when you focus on that so much and think about schools, they're not focused on whole person education, but preparing you for the workforce. Pick a major, pick an activity so you can get a scholarship, pick a degree, go find fulfillment in your work.

[01:14:44] Don't get married, don't have a family, put that on hold. You've got to get your career fulfillment first. Well, guess what? That's not fulfilling. And then if you think, well, the only way I have any identity is through my career, so if I want to feel like my life is purposeful, I've got to go work for the animal shelter or something like that, but that doesn't pay enough to pay my bills. And it's all turned around because as Christians we know anything you do can be a form of service unto the Lord and unto other people and work

[01:15:14] is not your whole identity. But it's just interesting to understand that that's where their mind is. I wonder if it's going to be, if it's exacerbated as we're moving into a time where companies are laying off, I'm reading stories after stories of people who are coming out of college having trouble finding a job and even in things that they thought they might do well in like finances or engineering or something. And so I wonder if that ends up exacerbating this problem. I think so. I mean, if you are dependent on not only your

[01:15:43] sense of identity as a person and worth to come from your job and your career and having again, career advancement, if you are also expecting it to not to be fulfilling emotionally and never be emotionally draining while work is going to be like that sometimes. And if you're expecting that to be the source of your sense of purpose in life, then if you are having a hard time finding a job or a job that you feel like meets all that, yeah, you're not

[01:16:13] going to be in a good place. You know, Kirby, I've also just seen, and my wife and I have talked about this several times, a lot of kids coming up through high school and they graduate from high school and they just want to play video games. They don't necessarily want to go to work. We know a family where the parents said, we're going to put you in college, we're going to pay for it, we're going to help you fill out all the forms that you have to do. And they finally, after a couple of years, brought the kid home because he was failing to thrive in college and because

[01:16:42] what he wants to do is play video games. And again, I posted a commentary that I did a while back called American Idol, I-D-L-E, the idleness. Good play of words. And that comes from the fact that the Department of Labor in April concluded that one in three men were neither working nor looking for work. Now think that through for just a minute. Now of course we've quoted Mike Rowe, we've quoted Nicholas Eberstadt who wrote the book, A Man Without Work. And again, it's worth mentioning,

[01:17:11] these are not people not working, they're not even looking for work. And if you dig into the numbers, male joblessness is an issue because there are many jobs that are available. I think AI may change some of that, but right now there are places looking for good individuals that have a work ethic, but we have a whole generation, or at least a good number in the generation that don't have a good work ethic. And like you said, they are disabled either emotionally or

[01:17:41] they are interested in being entertained, they are addicted to their screens, they're addicted to pornography, they're addicted to things that keep them from being effective. And this is why then you have a number of women saying, you know, I don't really see any great male prospects out there, right? And so in some respects, you sometimes have the men, the Gen Z men are more interested in getting married and having a family than the Gen Z women. And I think some of that gets back to this joblessness

[01:18:11] and just the lethargy that seems to be in this generation. Liberty also talked about the pay that people felt like they weren't going to be compensated well enough. And several years ago, the BBC has thrown me over to England twice to do a television program on welfare reform and the camera crews would follow me around as I was interviewing people and they were taking me and introducing the producer had me go and talk to people who were on what they called on benefits there, people on welfare. And I would say, do you want to work? Absolutely.

[01:18:41] I take a job today if there was a good job out there. And I'd say, but you know, and they were still part of the European Union at the time, and I said, but people from Poland are coming over and taking jobs here in England. Oh, that's because they don't pay anything in those jobs. They don't pay enough. And I said, so is the issue that you don't want a job because it doesn't pay enough or you don't want a job because there's no jobs out there because there appears to be jobs out there? And they would say, well, you know, I'm trying, I'll take a job, but it's got to pay enough.

[01:19:11] And so they were staying on welfare benefits because they didn't think, and I'm not sure they really wanted a job unless they got a really plum job that paid a lot. And that's the thing, the social safety net in that country, and now liberty in this country make it possible for a lot of men to say, you know, I really can just work part time or not work at all, stay in my parents' basement and play video games. Yeah, that's so real in your children a sense that the world does not

[01:19:40] revolve around them. I recently read an article from Senator Ben Sasse's, former Senator Ben Sasse's daughter, and as we know, he's facing terminal cancer right now, but she said every single day he would ask his kids, who did you serve today? And that that was such a great framework. My husband and I read that and we said, we're going to adopt that because that's how we want, that's the mindset that kids need to have. Well said. Some of that relates to our conversation yesterday with Paul Pettit. You might check that out as well,

[01:20:10] but we come back, we are talking about a celebration this time next week. We will not be on the air, we'll probably run a tape, and of course the day after that is the 4th of July, but what about Freedom 250 and America 250? A little bit of a difference, we'll talk about some of these celebrations right after this.

[01:20:42] Although it's Pride Month, June hasn't seen much LGBT hoopla here in Texas. The Washington Stand reports that throughout the country, such celebrating has been dialed back to a stunning degree. The news publication Suzanne Bowdy writes that in Tennessee, Arkansas, Indiana, and Oklahoma, leaders are replacing Pride Month with declarations of Nuclear Family Month. Pride celebrations are part of what theologian Carl Truman describes as the liturgical calendar of this present age. Gay pride is destructive because it elevates LGBT desires over

[01:21:12] the needs of children. Eleven years ago during Pride Month, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, extending same-sex marriage to every state. In the five years following the decision, public support for gay marriage rose from 60 to 70 percent. Then it plateaued. Democrats still back gay marriage at 87 percent, but Gallup polling shows that among Republicans, approval of same-sex marriage stands at 37 percent, down from 55 percent four years ago. The opinion in Obergefell written by Justice Anthony

[01:21:41] Kennedy emphasized the good of marriage to a society, describing it as a keystone of our social order and essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations. Advocates argue that allowing same-sex marriage would strengthen marriage, but the hope for revival of marriage has not materialized. The pre-Obergefell decline in marriage continues. In redefining marriage to meet the needs of homosexuals, society seemed to ignore that children really need to be in homes with their biological moms and dads. More Americans are connecting those dots,

[01:22:10] but wokeness persists, especially in blue states. In New York, state legislators are considering new child custody and parental laws in which the term mother is replaced with gestating parent and father with non-gestating parent. Suzanne Bouty points out that in at least 11 states, legislators have introduced bills to roll back same-sex marriage. Marriage was God's creation for human flourishing. To redefine it is prideful. For Point of View, I'm Pena Dexter.

[01:22:42] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Pat Wetzke, and of course, we've been talking about coming to fiscal year end, which will end on Tuesday, but then also this time next week we'll be running a tape, and the next day is the 4th of July. And I thought it would be good for just a few minutes since we won't actually have a Friday weekend edition next week to talk about this article, Freedom 250 and America 250. Now, you might say, what's the difference? Well, America 250

[01:23:12] was established by Congress to have a special celebration of America because of the 250th anniversary since 1776. Freedom 250 is Donald Trump. And I love it says, Freedom 250 versus America 250, who's doing the sesquicentennial better? Well, I think we know what a showman the president is, but again, I think it's an illustration that however people celebrate, first of all,

[01:23:42] I think it would be good to recognize that most Americans want to celebrate, but there's a growing number of people that don't think we should celebrate this country. And it is really sad because you see some of those individuals talking about how awful America is. And then we've had all these people coming from Europe, from South America, from Asia, to watch the World Cup, and they're just fascinated, liberty by the food, the fact you get refills, that you have bread brought to you that you

[01:24:11] didn't order, that whether they go to Bucky's or Texas Roadhouse or barbecue or whatever, they just can't believe our abundance and our freedom. And many of them said we've been lied to. Yes, and that has been something that is so fun to watch and just seeing people blown away by things that Americans take for granted or even complain about. And I, you know, I'll admit, I don't watch soccer. I've never played it. I'm more of a basketball person.

[01:24:40] So when I, you know, realized a couple of years ago or whenever that the World Cup was going to be here in the United States, including some areas around DFW and everything, I was like, man, the traffic, the busyness, you know, I was a little bit grumpy about it. This is the coolest thing to be happening in our 250th anniversary year to have all these people come over and just celebrate America for us. And I think a lot of Americans have gotten excited about that

[01:25:10] because you also get to feel down when you get told by politicians or the DSA or, you know, people online all the time, America's so bad, it's so bad, it's so bad. And it can be hard to just say, I want to feel good about my country and I want to celebrate it. And, well, enter some Europeans over and some other people who, people from Japan and things like that who are very excited to celebrate America and I think it's getting the spirit going. And, you know, there's just a lot of unity in this even though people are having a lot of competition

[01:25:40] and you see you had the Japanese and you had the Swedens coming in, they were here in our area and the Japanese are all dressed up in their Japanese stuff and the Swedes are all dressed up with their hats with horns on them and so forth and it's just very fun to see people coming and having a good time, having a competition that they want to see and enjoying the lifestyle while they're here. And then go out to Texas Roadhouse afterwards. Some of these places, some of the, you know, we've got

[01:26:10] here in Texas, they've got various places where people are having parties that hold thousands of people and they're staying for, they're staying hours afterwards and they're talking about, well, we're having a good time, we're visiting people, we're drinking, we're just enjoying the moment. One of the things they are doing is actually burying a congressional time capsule in the Emancipation Hall in U.S. Capitol with the idea of showing people in the future what we are. And that's always interesting to figure out what you're going to pick. Any thoughts here? Oh, man,

[01:26:40] I actually wondered about that. I was like, gosh, what are they? And they're keeping it, they're burying it for 250 years. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I got it. What are they going to think? Are they going to bury maybe some screens and some devices and some things like that? But I think it's neat. You see a range of different kinds of celebrations. So I think, you know, you've got the fireworks and the flashiness and the rah-rah America, which I think is fun. I mean, we're going to go to something like that that our town is having this weekend

[01:27:09] with food trucks and music and firecrackers and all those kinds of things. And then you have things like a time capsule and things like that, too, where you really take time to remember. And I think their full range of celebration is appropriate. One of the things I think they're having is the state fair on the mall in Washington, where you've got a number of states. Some states didn't come because they didn't want to participate. But they're coming and they're doing and I think at least one governor showed up to shake hands with people. And that

[01:27:39] sounds like it's just a lot of fun. I do think the presence 250 thing is a bit more about him than I would prefer. We understand that. Having said that, though, there does seem to be a lot of things going on that just made it a very good time there even in Washington. You know, and again, if you go back 50 years, in the 200th, the bicentennial, they had the various flags, they had the ships, they had a number of

[01:28:08] other things, and people wondered at the time, will we have the same kind of celebration for America's 250 that we had for the 200th? And in some respects, maybe not as much, simply because of some of the things we talked about. There are just a good number of people on many of these cable shows that are saying, I'm not going to celebrate this as a country full of racism, and as a country full of inequality, and sometimes we just need to come back liberty and say there would be value if a few

[01:28:38] of the individuals complaining about America would show just a little bit of gratitude because we are the healthiest, wealthiest individuals in the history of the world, and to complain about some of what we oftentimes refer to as first world problems, maybe is just a little over the top. You know, a lot of people from around the world are having their eyes opened about how great America is because they're coming here. Maybe more Americans should travel to some other not-so-great places around the world, and not just

[01:29:07] the touristy places. Yes, but really have your eyes open to how good we have it, and none of that is to say that you can't talk honestly about America's problems, but if we didn't have the kind of founding that we had, if we didn't have those words in the Declaration about our unalienable rights from our creator, we would not have been able to achieve what we have achieved as a nation. That is something for people to look up to and continue to strive for. So if we forget that, then what are we striving for? What's our

[01:29:37] foundation of belief here? You know, an awful lot of Americans just look for any excuse to go out and have a good time. That's true. And they are having a good time right now. Well, and again, we might just mention that the USA soccer team yesterday lost, but it was not a significant game which they played against Turkey. But if nothing else, they are in the knockout round and who would have predicted that U.S. soccer team would beat anybody other than maybe the Dominican Republic or

[01:30:07] something like that? Not many people, and my understanding is they actually ran some of the subs yesterday because they were going to make it go into the next one. part of the second half, and I do follow a little of that. We actually watched the game last night. My son begged us to, so we did see it. But anyway, it's just an opportunity to once again talk about the significance of America. As I mentioned before, the July issue is again one on understanding America's Christian heritage. We're going to be talking about George Washington on Monday.

[01:30:36] Peter Lielbeck will be with us as we talk about Washington's sacred fire. You know where that quote comes from, and we're going to have a really good week next week. But again, since we won't actually be on Friday, to wish you a happy 4th of July, if I could wish him that ahead of time. But Liberty, one last time, we're encouraging people to as we come to the end of our fiscal year to support this ministry. That's right. Point of View will never fail to celebrate America and also defend the faith and the family and the freedom that have made this nation great.

[01:31:06] And so if people want to partner with us in that and preserving that freedom, that's really what we do at Point of View, and now is a great time to give because your gift will be matched. I might just mention that even though we're going off the air, you can still give us a call at 800-347-5151, 800-347-5151. I know some of you listen to this program during the weekend. You can call and leave a voicemail and we'll call you back because we certainly do want to make sure that we don't miss you. But again, there's a great opportunity for you to respond.

[01:31:35] Of course, at 24-7, you can simply go to our newly revamped Point of View website and I would encourage you to do so. First of all, I want to thank Megan for engineering the program. Steve, great to have you back as the producer and we'll see you back here on Monday right here on Point of View. President Ronald Reagan reminded us once that freedom must be defended by each new generation. But how will a

[01:32:05] generation defend freedom if they were never taught what freedom means in the first place? America's schools have failed to pass a knowledge and a love of freedom on to the next generation. And that is why we see trends of people despising America, those who want to erase our founders' legacies and ignore America's blessings. We can change that, but it starts one family at a time,

[01:32:34] one person at a time. It starts with you. When you support Point of View, you equip families around the nation with the truth they need to pass freedom on to the next generation. Act today and have your gift doubled when you give this month at pointofview.net. Or you can call 1-800-347-5151.

[01:33:02] That is pointofview.net and 1-800-347-5151. Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries.