Point of View March 31, 2025 – Hour 2 : Updates from the Weekend

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View, Kirby Anderson.

[00:00:20] Back once again in the second hour, and let me just again reiterate what I said the first hour, but I know people tune in and tune out, so you may not have heard, and you will receive an email from me, I'm looking at it right now, in which we point out that we did have a fundraising goal and were able to exceed it.

[00:00:37] So again, this victory as I point out is because of the generous supporters like you, who gave to Point of View during our Truth Team Week, and the donations that flooded in last week, including many monthly giving commitments will help us keep truth on the air for generations to come. So I thought I would mention that again. As I mentioned last hour, we actually still have some match left over, so if you were saying, I didn't give last week, or I meant to, I was out of town, or didn't hear the program,

[00:01:07] we still have the banner up that says Anchored to Truth, and our goal, which we now have reached, but we still have match money on the table, and I'd kind of like to see if we could finish that off. So if there are a few of you that are saying, well, I meant to give, but I didn't get around to it, well, we've given you that opportunity to do so. And when we talk about truth, you're going to start seeing some things over the next couple of weeks, so I thought I'd give it to you right now.

[00:01:32] Our first article is entitled, Who's Really Twisting the COVID Record? Now, what's that all about? You might remember, five years ago, you probably weren't in church on Easter, were you? No. And as a matter of fact, if I told you six years ago on this program that this coming Easter, not only will you not be in church on Easter, no one else will be in church on Easter.

[00:01:57] I saw one post today where they're talking about five years ago where the Pope was speaking to an empty group because, of course, everybody's fearful of COVID. And we've all been through that, and that's in the rearview mirror. But now comes what I think is one of the most difficult set of circumstances that any country faces, and that is who's going to write the history. And, of course, the old line, especially from progressives, is, well, history is written by the victors.

[00:02:28] Well, there is some truth to that. But the reality is now just the opposite. History is written by the progressive liberal professors, the history professors, the people that write books. And, more importantly, you're starting to have some people that are making some pretty outrageous statements. So, this first article is by Jack Butler. I've never really interviewed him. I think I need to because he really is on top of some issues.

[00:02:54] But he actually quotes from an article that was in The Atlantic by Jonathan Chatt, who forgives, as he says, the ideological compatriots their COVID-era sins. Okay, it's a long way to simply say this, that some of the things that the Biden administration got wrong, some of the things that Anthony Fauci got wrong,

[00:03:19] some of the claims that were made that were not accurate, many of the various ways in which social media actually removed individuals, deplatformed individuals, demonetized individuals. Well, you know, that's just, you know, because we got some of it wrong because we didn't know more. And, to be honest, a couple of weeks ago, that might have been a good argument.

[00:03:48] Because, if you remember, oftentimes around this table, Kelly Shacklewood would say, look, I'm not so upset about somebody getting it wrong, but I was more upset about people being so dogmatic when they didn't know. And so, the reality sometimes was, because the American people are pretty forgiving, well, we didn't really know how bad the virus was. We didn't know how it was transformed. We wasn't sure how it was transmitted. We didn't necessarily know where it was coming from, on and on and on.

[00:04:16] And so, the only thing we could really be upset with is the fact they were so dogmatic about that. Well, now you can sit down, and I would encourage you to do so, and read the so-called Twitter files, and recognize that we have emails showing that everybody pretty much knew that the virus came from a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute for Virology. Didn't come from some kind of wet market.

[00:04:45] That there were very strong reservations about how effective masks were in the first place. There were people early on even expressing their concerns about whether or not we should have a complete lockdown. So, this article, I think, is an attempt to say, look, the article in Atlantic really overstates the case

[00:05:09] for the idea of some kind of leftist introspection, and instead it gives them just a tremendous amount of grace. And then for our listeners in Georgia, he recalls that the Atlantic, the one that is the article that we're quoting from here, is one that declared that the Georgia Governor Brian Kemp's loosening of the COVID restrictions was an experiment in human sacrifice.

[00:05:37] So, before some people forget about how dogmatic, even mean-spirited some of this was, it might be really important. And then he points out that the person that's kind of leading the charge is a man by the name of Dr. Anthony Fauci, which, first of all, he plays, as he said, word games between the terms shutdown and lockdown, saying, well, we did shut down some of this, but we didn't lock them down.

[00:06:04] We didn't do what other countries did, where you couldn't even leave your house. You couldn't go to work. Oh, I remember some places where you couldn't do that. And so, again, trying to talk about such fine distinctions really ignore the fact that we did keep people out of school. We did keep people out of work. We kept people out of parks. We arrested people sometimes if they were walking by themselves on a beach. So, let's not forget all of that.

[00:06:31] And then points out Anthony Fauci at one point saying, look, you know, in the fall of 2020, I was saying open the schools as quickly and as safely as possible. Open the schools. Close the bars. Well, again, this article goes on to point out, actually, that was until almost early December. So, maybe that's fall, but not really. And, again, he was saying things like, it's much better to close the bars and keep the schools open to keep the bars open.

[00:07:00] But, again, you know, it was still then pretty soon saying, no, we need some more resources. And then, of course, the Biden administration, influenced in large part by the teacher unions, actually said, no, it's not good to open the schools. And so, then you had Anthony Fauci even back off from that as well. So, one of the things I thought was interesting, you can read this article, but you'll also notice something else. Near the end, there were all these quotes and comments.

[00:07:29] And one of the comments was simply, well, it's hard to find middle ground. Well, again, we tried to provide that. But you can remember that when this virus began to unfold, we brought an individual in here to counter some of the myths going around about the virus. Although, unfortunately, he died later of COVID. But you can remember when we brought in Curtis Chang.

[00:07:55] Matter of fact, we quoted from him last week and other individuals on one side. But we also brought in Jay Richards and those individuals that wrote the book, The Price of Panic. And that was even before Anthony Fauci said some of this, in which they'd run the numbers and saying, look, these lockdowns are not doing any better than having an open society. So, we were giving various kinds of views. Sometimes we even talked about some of the concerns with the vaccine. But, of course, you know what happened.

[00:08:25] As long as you towed the line with the Biden administration, no problem. The moment you disagreed, then we got deplatformed and actually censored in all sorts of ways. So, it was really hard, even though we tried to provide some middle ground and to give both sides. That wasn't allowed in that debate. That's why I think this first article is one you might want to read. We're going to take a break. We'll be back with more right after this.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. If you want to understand the collapse of the Judeo-Christian consensus in this country, you need to look beyond individual programs and policies and take a more expansive view. In a speech for Hillsdale last year, Christopher Ruffo of the Manhattan Institute provided a multi-decade description. The original leftist dream expected a rebellion from the working class in America. That never took place by the end of the 1960s.

[00:09:24] Leftists, therefore, abandoned their original plan of waging a revolution with a proletariat and instead focused on the elites. The idea can easily be traced to an Italian communist by the name of Antonio Gramsci, who I sometimes mention on my radio program. He proposed capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society. This long march through American institutions began a half century ago.

[00:09:52] And if you look around today, you can see that it has been most successful. Christopher Ruffo says that he has looked at the federal bureaucracy, the universities, K-12 schools, and big corporations. What he found is the revolutionary ideas of the 1960s have been repackaged, repurposed, and injected into American life at the institutional level. He adds that most Americans were shocked to discover this. They were outraged that children were being taught gender theory and critical race theory,

[00:10:19] that the educational elite saw no problem with teaching about race, sex, and gender at very young ages. Those revelations and the inevitable backlash had an impact on various state and local elections and will continue to be issues parents will need to address in the future. The lesson here is that all of this didn't happen by chance, but was planned decades ago. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:10:46] For a free copy of Kirby's booklet, A Biblical View on Inflation, go to viewpoints.info.info.inflation. That's viewpoints.info.inflation. 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. I want to talk about an election tomorrow in Wisconsin. Again, this is a national program, but in some respects, people think that from time to time,

[00:11:16] some of these special elections or even mid-term elections are significant. And the reason for that is this. Voters in Wisconsin will go to the polls tomorrow to elect a state Supreme Court justice. That wouldn't necessarily have national significance, but this one does.

[00:11:35] Because whoever is elected will determine whether or not the court will maintain its current 4-3 ideological balance. And so, in some respects, it's begun to be significant in terms of what might happen in the future in the state of Wisconsin, in terms of everything from how these gerrymandered districts are actually put together,

[00:12:02] might make a difference into whether or not Wisconsin is something that Democrats have a better chance of winning than Republicans, how it might affect the presidential election and the rest. But because of its national influence and certainly its significance, now we also know, this is the other part of this story,

[00:12:24] that nearly 5,000 potentially illegal voter registrations have been recovered just in the city of Milwaukee. Are you with me? On close elections, 5,000 can make a big difference. And this came from a challenge backed by the Federal Help America Vote Act and a long list of statutes, including the Milwaukee Election Commission.

[00:12:52] And so let's, if I can, very quickly, I don't want to overdo this, break down these 5,000 questionable voter registrations. 2,926 registrations listed incorrectly or missing apartment numbers. 5,926 registrations. 5,926 registrations listed PO boxes as physical addresses. That's actually a violation.

[00:13:22] 377 had filed permanent change of address requests out of state, yet still they managed to vote in Wisconsin. 281 moved to a different county. 217 left no forwarding address. All the way down, you can get the idea. And so once again, it shows the problem with the voter rolls. So if you're a conservative, you've got to say, hey, this thing going on in Wisconsin,

[00:13:47] this concerns me because we have what seem to be a lot of illegal voter registrations. However, if you're a liberal, you're going to point out something else, and that is Elon Musk. Many people think that this election tomorrow will be a referendum on Elon Musk because, first of all, if you're not familiar, Elon Musk is really involved in some of these elections.

[00:14:15] He had a Sunday night town hall, and before the town hall, he had actually, many weeks ago, offered, and this is what one individual called a cheeky offer, to give two $1 million checks in a sweepstakes to people in Wisconsin who signed a petition against activist judges. The petition says judges should interpret laws as written,

[00:14:42] not rewrite them to fit their personal or political agendas. Not that controversial. Anyway, of the individuals that signed it, they, I guess, had a lottery, and he, last night, gave two $1 million checks to those people in Wisconsin, which, of course, has led to all sorts of signs. If you have not seen them, Wisconsin Supreme Court is not for sale.

[00:15:10] Wisconsin is not for sale. The picture of Elon Musk and the rest because two people were actually enticed to actually sign the petition. Now, the argument is that he's actually buying votes. He's not really doing that, but if you want to talk about buying votes, you can go all the way back to George Washington. If you don't know this story, George Washington, the first time he ran for the House of Burgesses,

[00:15:40] his opponent actually gave people, I think it was beer, whiskey, rum, maybe even wine, if they voted for him, and George Washington lost to the House of Burgesses. So next time he learned his lesson, and so he was giving out whiskey as well and a variety of other forms of alcohol. So we don't allow that to happen any longer, but you can see that all of a sudden

[00:16:08] Wisconsin has been sort of ground zero, as if the various places where Tesla cars are being distributed and sold isn't also a ground zero. It is quite possible with even the latest action by Elon Musk that he may become the most hated man in America, but it illustrates again that what is going on in Wisconsin is very significant.

[00:16:37] And so some of the progressives have argued, and it's probably true, that this petition, signing this petition, might have motivated some of these low-propensity voters who might have stayed home to actually go out and vote. And of course, on the other hand, we can point out that we have at least 5,000 voter registrations registrations just in the city of Milwaukee that are somewhat suspect.

[00:17:03] So welcome to the problem of elections in America. And again, I thought I would mention that since you may be hearing some stories about this particular race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Maybe now you'll know a little bit more about what's kind of going on behind the scenes. But just before we take a break, let me just mention that over the last couple of weeks, I've been doing articles about the fact that

[00:17:29] if indeed Donald Trump is bringing jobs back to America, and it does seem that some of these tariffs are working, I'm going to have more to say about tariffs tomorrow, but today, let's just say that obviously we're going to create more jobs in America. The problem is we have a lot of people that aren't willing to work in those jobs. Which brings me to this article from Fortune magazine, in which they have pointed out a very disturbing trend.

[00:17:58] And the trend is this. Over 4 million Gen Zers are jobless, and experts blame colleges for their worthless degrees. What they're really talking about is a new acronym I think I would teach you about today. It's called NEET. N-E-E-T. The N stands for not, E stands for education, E stands for employment, and T stands for training. What they're talking about is there are 4 million individuals

[00:18:28] who are in the Gen Z. Remember, the other articles I've talked about are those who would be in the millennial generation or older. But now we're talking about the younger generation, Generation Z. And the article says that now some Gen Zers may fall into this category because they're taking care of a family member, but most of them are not. They're not in education and not getting a degree. They're not employed, and they're not even getting training.

[00:18:56] They're not learning how to program computers. They're not learning as an apprentice how to be a plumber, a carpenter, or electrician, whatever it might be. And again, one of the political commentators in this article blames society's values because they say we've sent these kids off to college for worthless degrees, which he says have produced nothing for them at all, and then concludes they would be better off if they apprenticed to plumbers or electricians.

[00:19:25] They'd be able to look forward to a much more abundant and satisfying life. But of course, part of that problem is we've made it sound like the only path to financial success is a college degree, and yet many of those that graduate skills necessary for the 21st century because I will argue that just as robotics have changed the nature of employment in factories, artificial intelligence now may really be changing

[00:19:53] the white-collar job market. But as we've talked about so often before, there isn't just a skills gap, there is a will gap. What about these individuals that are not in school, not in education, they're not employed, and they're not getting training, and they seem to be a little less work-motivated than previous generations, and the article then laments that Gen Z finds doom-scrolling

[00:20:22] at home more enjoyable than navigating an economy completely different than what their teachers promised them. Doom-scrolling is where you just scroll through your phone, you know what I'm talking about, so I won't go any further. So again, there's an obvious argument meant to be made for the fact that maybe pastors from the pulpit, certainly parents, certainly other leaders in the business world need to really encourage this generation to deal with the two issues, the skills gap,

[00:20:52] but most importantly, the will gap, and maybe develop, once again, a Christian view of the work ethic. And so it's just another one of those articles. This one appeared in Fortune magazine. So again, when we come back, we're going to talk about two articles, one that appeared in the New York Times and another that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. And so again, we can see that a lot of people are talking about some of the same issues we address here on Point of View.

[00:21:22] Maybe a little too late, a little too late, but we'll take them whenever we can get them. Let's take a break. We'll come back and talk about those right after this. The Bible tells us not to worry, and yet there is a lot of worrying stuff in our world today. Thankfully, the Bible doesn't stop at telling us not to worry. God gives us a next step. He says we need to pray. But sometimes, even knowing what to pray can be difficult.

[00:21:52] And that is why Point of View has relaunched our Pray for America movement, a series of weekly emails to guide you in prayer for our nation. Each week, you'll receive a brief update about a current issue affecting Americans, along with a written prayer that you can easily share with others. We'll also include a short free resource for you in each email so you can learn more about the issue at hand.

[00:22:21] Will you commit to pray for America? Go to pointofview.net, click on the Pray for America banner at the top of the page to subscribe. Again, that's pointofview.net, click on the Pray for America banner. Let's pray together for God to make a difference in America. Point of View will continue after this.

[00:22:57] 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. Back once again, we've got quite a bit of time left that we can still cover some issues. It will be a little busier tomorrow because we have Coach Joe Kennedy with us for the entire hour, and then we have Gary Chapman for about a half an hour, so many of these things that I'm talking about,

[00:23:27] I'm trying to slip in today because there won't be a whole lot of time tomorrow, but we can always cover it later in the week if we might actually avoid too many problems by posting some of this late. But I am going to in just a minute quote from the New York Times, but there was an op-ed in the New York Times, which I've just got to begin to mention briefly. If for no other reason than this gets down to shamelessness, chutzpah, there's another

[00:23:57] word or two you can think of, and that is the op-ed that appeared in the New York Times. Now, the New York Times obviously wants to comment on the scandal that developed last week when you had various leaders, and it's Pete Hegseth and Mike Waltz and a number of others that were communicating on signal, and as a result also had the editor of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, part of that. I do believe that

[00:24:26] there's a possibility that was done intentionally by one of the lower staffers, but we'll leave that for another day. But when it came time for them to post an op-ed, an opinion piece, in the New York Times, you might say, well, who would they possibly get? And Jim Garrity says, well, you can probably guess who they got, Hillary Clinton. Now, just think about this for a minute, because she's actually writing about the fact

[00:24:56] it's not the hypocrisy that bothers me, it's just too pity, we're all shock, shock, shock, and then you're saying, wait a minute, is this not the woman, is not the leader, is this not the Secretary of State, and then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who had plenty of classified information in just her emails, who actually then admitted she wasn't thinking about whether her emails were sufficiently secure when she worked as

[00:25:26] Secretary of State, and then at least eight times we can document she lied about what was in those emails, and then of course, you even have the former FBI director at the time, James Comey, who said that he would not prosecute her, but certainly admitted that she was extremely careless in handling very sensitive, highly classified information,

[00:25:55] and you have to wonder who's running the editorial desk of the New York Times. Of all the people you could pick, Hillary Clinton is the one that actually had the op-ed there, and Jim Garrity, tongue-in-cheek says, well, my goodness, almost literally anyone else on earth is on more solid ground when it comes to criticizing the Trump team for being reckless and sloppy about protecting America's secrets. What,

[00:26:25] was Julian O'Shaughnj not available? No, Edward Snowden not available? I guess the only reason the Times didn't run an op-ed by Sandy Berger is because he died in 2015, and if you remember Sandy Berger, he actually went into a secure site of archives and was stuffing down his pants. I'm not making this up, some of these classified documents, and again, you have to wonder who is running the editorial desk of the New York Times.

[00:26:55] But with that as a little bit of an embarrassment to the New York Times, let me now try to deal with the fact that the New York Times has finally recognized that it's time for them to say to the leaders of the Democratic Party, you have a problem. The title of this came out March 29th, it was our second article here, the Democrats are in denial about 2024, and the bottom line is this comes from the editorial board

[00:27:25] of the New York Times. I'm quoting now from the editors. Last year's election was close despite President Trump's hyperbolic claims about his margin of victory. Still, the Democratic Party clearly lost, and not only the presidential race, it also lost control of the Senate, failed to recapture the House of Representatives. Of the 11 governors' races held last year, Democrats won three.

[00:27:59] putting the facts out on the table, which seemed to have eluded a few individuals. I'll skip a couple of paragraphs and say, look, the key argument being used right now by some of the Democratic leaders was voter turnout. Party leaders claim that most Americans still prefer Democrats, but that voter apathy allowed Donald Trump to win. Now, they said according to this logic, Democrats do not need to worry about winning back Trump voters, but instead

[00:28:28] should just try to animate the country's natural liberal majority, which, of course, is fallacious. But then, they even post a quote from the governor of Minnesota, you might remember him, Tim Walsh, ran as vice president, which Tim Walsh said, I don't think we're going to win over those 77 million that voted for Donald Trump, so instead he says, we'll just try to find the ones that didn't vote, which is interesting. And what the editors of the New

[00:28:57] York Times said, let's give them credit, an unfortunate echo of Hillary Clinton saying that millions of Trump voters were deplorables in irredeemable. So again, you wouldn't have expected the New York Times to say that. They said part of the story, of course, is inflation. Prices surged during COVID supply chain disruptions, and so that might have hurt some incumbent parties, but then they point out that yes, some of the parties did lose power in the United States, Brazil,

[00:29:28] Britain, places like that, but other incumbent parties managed to win re-election. They go through this long list, Denmark, France, India, Japan, Mexico, and all the rest, Spain, so that's not the case. And so they say, look, we recognize the Democratic Party is in a difficult position. It must compete with a Republican party, now they've got to get their shots in, that shows an alarming hostility to American democracy, and we urge Democrats to speak out against not Mr. Trump's authoritarian behavior,

[00:29:57] but even after they've kind of taken their shot at Donald Trump and the Republicans and all that kind of stuff, they then have three steps. So here's the three-step solution to the Democratic Party from the New York Times editorial board. Number one, first they should admit that the party mishandled Mr. Biden's age. You think? That alone probably lost so much credibility when people with their own eyes

[00:30:26] could see that Joe Biden was not the same Joe Biden of decades before, but nevertheless they need to admit that they mishandled it, maybe even apologize for that. Haven't seen that yet. Second, Democrats should recognize the party moved, and again, this comes from the editorial board of the New York Times. The Democratic Party moved too far left on social issues after Barack Obama left office in 2017.

[00:30:57] The old video clips of Kamala Harris that the Trump campaign gleefully replayed last year on decriminalizing the border and government funded gender transition surgery for prisoners highlighted the problem. She goes on, the editors go on to say, even today, the party remains too focused on personal identity and on Americans' differences by race, gender, sexuality, and religion rather than

[00:31:26] our shared values. On these issues, progressives sometimes adopt a scolding, censorious posture. And so, again, he said, the editors mentioned that it's alienated growing numbers of Asian voters, black voters, and Latino voters. So far, so good. I'm sure some of us would have probably said the same things, but this came from the editorial board of the New York Times. So, first, admit mishandling

[00:31:56] Joe Biden's age. Number two, move too far left. Number three, and this is important, too, the party has to offer new ideas. When Democrats emerged from the wilderness in the past, they often did so with fresh ideas. They updated the proud democratic tradition of improving life on all Americans. They talk about Bill Clinton, they talk about Barack Obama, talk about a number of examples of that having taken place

[00:32:25] in the future. And so, again, they point out how Kamala Harris failed to be able to do some of those things in the campaign. and if nothing else, ends with this very important statement. Defeat has a long history of inspiring honest reflection in politics. In this time of frustration and anxiety for Democrats, they should give it a try. You've got to love the editorial

[00:32:54] board of the New York Times, and if you'd like to read it all the way through, again, it's five pages of point after point, some of which we've shared around the table, and as I've said before, it is sometimes surprising that eventually common sense breaks out, and they are really trying to say to the Democratic leadership, you need to rethink some very important issues, and most importantly, if you're

[00:33:24] going to continue to camp out on these really far left, progressive, leftist ideas, and offer no significant solutions, you're going to lose more elections in the future. Three cheers for the New York Times editorial board. We've got more to cover right after this.

[00:33:55] You're listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth. Back for a few more minutes, let me just mention that I've heard from a number of individuals that we still have some of that match money available, because some of you might have said, okay, I heard at the very beginning of the program that you met your goal, and we're grateful for that, and we're actually going to use some of that for equipment that desperately needs to be replaced. But some of you might say, well, if you met your goal, fine, but the bottom line is,

[00:34:25] as I mentioned, as we were coming to the end of Friday, we had an individual put a $10,000 match on the table. So it turns out that over the weekend we were able to get some of that taken care of, but we still have some on the table. And I remember years ago, Brad Fisk used to say, you know, if you put $10,000 on the table and then you took away say $8,000, there's still $2,000 left, I don't know what the numbers are right now, or something like that, you still wouldn't leave $2,000

[00:34:55] on the table. And so I just thought I'd mention for some of you that are wondering, if I give right now, if I go to the website pointofview.net, click on the button that says join now on Anchored to Truth, will that be matched? And as far as I've heard just a few minutes ago, it will be, or of course you want to call that number again, it's 800-347-5151, 1-800-347-5151. Apparently we still have a match on the table. I'd love to

[00:35:24] get that taken care of, just for no other reason. It's just a unique situation we never had before. Usually we meet the match before the end of Friday, and we did not, because it came in so late. So if you've been waiting, maybe you didn't have a chance to give last week, you meant to, or maybe you didn't hear the program, and you're just maybe even right now just tuning in, hearing me talk about just a few minutes ago an article from the New York Times, now I'm going to talk about an article from the Los Angeles Times, while I'm talking, or even as we go off the air, you could still make

[00:35:54] that phone call, or go to the website. But I did want to get to this one because it's another good example of something we've been talking about for some time here on Point of View, and that is the issue of civility and rudeness. As a matter of fact, we have a booklet where a good section of that deals with civility. I might even make it a whole booklet in the future, but Mark Baraback, I don't know much about him, although he's pretty obviously an anti-Trump individual, which is almost irrelevant other than

[00:36:24] the fact that he blames Donald Trump for the lack of civility and rudeness, but he certainly acknowledges that a lot of this has been going on for some time. But he says, if you've driven on the freeway in recent years, been to a grocery store, attended a movie or a live performance, heck, if you've even been sentient, the findings of a new poll will startle you about as much as the sun rising at dawn and setting at dusk. The poll illustrates that people have gotten ruder.

[00:36:55] I wasn't even sure the word ruder is a word, but he uses it, so it must be. People are very rude, probably a better way to say it, and then goes and gives you a poll that came from the Pew Research Center. By the way, we've done some polls over the years. I've checked into it. I think I would always go to the map, a mat, on the Pew surveys. They do a very good job. They're very professional, and they found that just under half of U.S. adults polled,

[00:37:25] 47%, said the way people behave in public these days is ruder than before the pandemic, and two in ten say today's behavior is a lot ruder. Then they point out there's a few people that actually thought people would become more polite, and they wonder, do these people have been under anesthetic? Okay, but here we are. So they take into account a couple of things. First of all, politics and polarization. Everything's a war,

[00:37:55] Don Sippel says, who's a veteran communication strategist. Everything's a battle. There's no collaboration. There's no coordination. No civic pride. And so that is the case. But then you have to maybe say, okay, where do people see the greatest amount of rudeness? This was interesting in the Pew poll, because, for example, three-fourths, 77% said it's rarely or never acceptable to smoke around others.

[00:38:25] I don't think that'd be top of the list, but okay, I would agree, but it just surprised me that that one's up there. 74% said the same about taking a photo or video of somebody without their permission, which is interesting. And then about two-thirds said it was rarely or never acceptable to bring a child to an adult venue, like a bar, upscale restaurant, something like that, or to visibly display swear roots on a t-shirt or things or curse loud in public. And that gets back to this whole idea

[00:38:55] of civility. When we started doing programs, as a matter of fact, I think I started doing a program, Marlon asked me to do one, I think it was in August of 1986. And shortly thereafter, I had a chance to interview an individual that had written a very good book, a professor at Yale, on civility. And really, since the 1990s all the way now into the 2020s, I've talked about this issue of civility. civility. And the original book actually got

[00:39:25] into a little bit of it from a biblical point of view. He's an African-American professor and came from a church background, but it really wasn't kind of a deep dive into what does the Bible say about civility. And so I began to develop talks. I, of course, have some of that in one of our booklets and all of the rest. And one of the things I began to conclude is as this culture moves away from a Judeo-Christian foundation, rudeness is almost a natural byproduct.

[00:39:55] After you move from a time in which we would think that you would want to treat another individual as you would like to be treated, that's called the golden rule, you can see why people have become more rude. And as a result, I've argued that just because we are recognizing a lack of civility doesn't mean that we need to give everybody maybe some training in mismanners because the

[00:40:25] problem isn't whether or not you have a curse word on your t-shirt, whether or not you chew somebody out, whether you cut somebody off on traffic, it has to do with the fact that there's kind of a deeper issue there as well. And so, again, in this article, so interesting, Mark Baraback reminds us, of course, again, here's where he shows his bias, of Republican presidents who actually had to apologize for something they said. I'll just read one.

[00:40:55] Back in 1992 when President George Herbert Walker Bush referred to his Democratic rivals, at that time it would be Bill Clinton and Al Gore, as two bozos, he later apologized for that and had to. But it's interesting that, then he gives another example or two, but they're all Republicans, and I was thinking, has he not just read the New York Times we just read a minute ago, which reminded us of Hillary Clinton referring to anybody that supported Donald Trump as

[00:41:24] deplorables and irredeemables? Was he completely unaware that Barack Obama was caught on mic as referring to people in the Midwest and even in some of the Rust Belt states as people who are bitter and cling to their guns or religion? So, again, he wants to lay a lot of the blame on the rudeness on the president of the United States, who does have a mouth, not denying that at all, but I think

[00:41:53] some of this happened long before people ever thought that Donald Trump would run for the presidency, and it's an ongoing cultural issue, but let's at least give him credit. He recognizes that rudeness is a problem, and, again, this is a place where maybe we as Christians can model better behavior in a culture and maybe begin to turn a culture around. We saw that happening during Victorian England. I think it can happen again.

[00:42:23] So, if nothing else, last two articles, one from the New York Times, one from the Los Angeles Times, I thought you'd find them interesting indeed. Don't forget tomorrow we're going to spend some time talking with Coach Kennedy and a couple of other individuals, but one last time as we go off the air, if you'd like to join with us in our truth team or give even a one-time gift, again, the banner anchored to truth is on the website, pointofview.net, and the line that you can call,

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