Point of View May 29, 2026 : Weekend Edition

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View, and now, Liberty McCarthy. Welcome to Point of View, it's the weekend edition and we're excited to have you with us. Lots to talk about today, as there always is on Friday, and joining the roundtable today, Dr. Merrill Matthews and Kelly Shackelford. So, thanks for being here. Glad to be with you.

[00:00:34] Yeah, nothing going on. Busy week. I read an article that said this morning, it was like, it's been a, it was a long year last week. Yes, I saw that. I think that's a sentiment that a lot of people have when you're keeping up with the news. So we'll get to some of those headlines and of course, dig into them next week and just keep applying a biblical perspective to everything. But Kelly, let's start with some religious liberty updates as we always like to do. And I thought that this was encouraging.

[00:01:02] We've talked about the effort at First Liberty Institute to restore faith because you've won so many victories. But how do we educate the American people about how they can actually apply that and hey, you're free to do this now. And there was kind of an example of that here in our neck of the woods in North Texas with regard to installing some Ten Commandments and everything. So what happened with that?

[00:01:25] Yeah, when we won the Coach Kennedy case, I think most people knew that Coach won, that he had a right to go back and go to a knee and say a prayer after all the football games.

[00:01:36] But a lot of people didn't know, in fact, the vast amount of people didn't know that there was a major precedent overturned, the Lemon decision that had led to really nativity scenes coming down and menorahs not being allowed at Hanukkah and Ten Commandments being pushed in the closets and all this sort of panic about religion in public for the last 50 years. That was all thrown out.

[00:02:28] That's the easiest type mindset. And it really harms your country. And I think we've seen that. The great news, though, is in Coach Kennedy, that was reversed. And so one of the things we did is we thought we said, let's create an effort just to educate people. And let's have all the groups that are out there, you know, that want to be a part. Just join in. Let's get the word out. And so we created a website. It's RFIA.org, restoringfaithinamerica.org.

[00:02:58] And people can go there and they can get an email every month that says, here's something you can do in your community. That's so great. And so what's happening is people are bringing faith back. This is like one in many Ten Commandments monuments that are going back up. The state of Kentucky just put theirs up back on the state lawn. Indiana has started their process to do that.

[00:03:27] I was over in Fort Worth, Texas, where right outside the Tarrant County Courthouse, they put one up for the first time. Wow. And then you just mentioned Rockwall, and I just heard there's – it's starting to happen across the country. And it's one of many examples of things that local people – because you say, what can I do? Well, you can go to your county commission or, you know, wherever, outside your courthouse, whatever.

[00:03:54] You can go to that entity and say, why don't we have a Ten Commandments? You know, it's in the Supreme Court. On the walls, it's all these other places. And so there's just a lot of opportunity. And same thing, I think, especially when you get to Christmas and Hanukkah is – it used to be a great thing. We had, you know, a nativity scene. We had a menorah. We celebrated that time of year, and it was stopped. But it's now all okay again.

[00:04:24] And so it's just a matter of people taking back their own communities. And so Restoring Faith in America, RFIA.org, is a great way to kind of just get hooked into that, to know what you can do, to have ideas every month, and to have people – and then to see what other people do in the posting of what they did then helps people go, well, I can do that. Oh, yeah.

[00:04:47] I mean, I think it's kind of contagious, Dr. Matthews, when you see what somebody else has taken a step, and they were able to do it. It kind of builds courage. And so hopefully people are having that effect now that there are more Supreme Court precedents in place. You know, Kelly mentioned the Supreme Court, and I was looking at my newest issue of Biblical Archaeology last night. And they usually have a picture of something and say, you know, where is this located?

[00:05:15] And they had this thing that looked like a Roman building, and you've got Moses sitting up there with the Ten Commandments up there. And I looked at that, and I said, I bet that's Washington, D.C. And I looked on page 26, and it was Washington, D.C. It's the Supreme Court that you've got. Why did you walk in there? Yeah. It's amazing. It's all through – I mean, there's really almost probably no place you can go and not see a Ten Commandments.

[00:05:42] Because if you wanted a symbol or something that reflects that sort of unique Judeo-Christian heritage, the morals, the religious heritage, the legal, all that background, it's a great example of that. And it should be taught in all the public schools that this is a part of where we came from. It doesn't mean you have to agree with the Ten Commandments. I mean, again, thou shalt not murder. I don't know a lot of people that are there.

[00:06:11] But I think it's just basic teaching. And I think we've lost a lot of that. You know, I used to think, you know, symbols are not a big deal. But after doing cases for many decades now, I think of the Bladensburg Cross, you know, these memorials for those who died, I think they're actually more important than words even.

[00:06:36] They bring together a lot of powerful truths that – I don't know. Symbols are almost more powerful than words. And so I think, you know, what I saw with a lot of other countries is when totalitarianism came in, the first thing that goes are the religious symbols are taken down and government symbols are put up. And so – Goes at the second. Yeah. So I think it's really important, these symbols.

[00:07:04] And so it's an opportunity really for everybody at Point of View to bring those symbols back to their community, bring that religious history and heritage of our country back. It only helps people remember kind of some basics of, you know, wrong and what is evil and what is good and what is right and what is wrong and kind of what are mirroring – where they come from. We're not just – we believe that our liberties came from God and no one can take them away. Right. That makes us very unique.

[00:07:34] And it goes back to a picture is worth a thousand words. A symbol is a picture. And the other thing is it encourages people to say, young people, mom and dad, what is that symbol for? Why is that there? And then it gives you a chance to explain. Whether you're coming from religious faith or just in some cases from history, it gives you a chance to talk to young people and others who may not know. Yeah. I love that point. And it reminds me of what we see in the Old Testament where God reminds his people to put up a monument

[00:08:03] to remember what he had done for them in the past. So when we get back, we'll talk about some other religious liberty updates. But I do want to kind of focus on that question for a bit and just equip listeners because many people listening probably already understand this. But I do hear this even from Christians when you're talking about displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools, for instance. Well, isn't that a violation of the Establishment Clause? And obviously this is an issue that First Liberty has helped to clarify.

[00:08:32] But just for the average person who maybe they get that feedback at a school board meeting or something like that, how can we articulate that this is good? So we'll discuss that and more when we get back from this break.

[00:09:00] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Colonist Bob Green noticed a connection between TV dinners and smartphones. In fact, he says that the 1950s meal was a gateway drug for screen addiction. He believes that our zombie-like addiction to screens had its origins decades ago. It used to be that you would eat dinner and then move into the den to watch television. But soon there were advertisements for TV trays.

[00:09:27] These metal trays with tubular legs could be unfolded in front of a TV set so you could watch while you eat. Swanson Company then developed what came to be known as TV dinners. Frozen meals were arranged in a heat-and-serve aluminum trays with three compartments. The main course with fried chicken, turkey, pot roast, or Swiss steak. Soon they added a fourth compartment for dessert, apple crisp. Bob Green says the seductive power of the screens beckoning families from their dining rooms was unstoppable.

[00:09:56] The Swanson Company took out newspaper ads encouraging Americans to watch their favorite TV shows and enjoy a TV dinner. He believes that the TV dinner was an early, if unintended, step towards our current world in which unblinking people can't look away from the screens they carry everywhere, oblivious to what is going on around them. Long before we had smartphones, I recommended to parents that they not have a TV on during dinner. This could be a family time for discussion and encouragement.

[00:10:23] When the TV is blaring in the background, little family bonding could take place. Of course, we now have to fight to get people to put down their phones during any meal, whether at home or in a restaurant. Bob Green may have been on to something. We may have been training a generation to look at a screen even before those screens were on our phones. 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. Okay, so before we talk about the firefighters who may be going to the Supreme Court, let's continue talking about the Establishment Clause.

[00:11:13] So if someone says, okay, I want to be a part of helping there to be a Ten Commandments monument in my town or in my school, and then I get opposition, maybe even from a fellow Christian that says, hey, that's pushing religion on people. How do we answer that? Well, what people typically say is, well, that's a violation of separation of church and state. So you've got to start with that, number one, those words are nowhere in the Constitution.

[00:11:42] People think they are. They're not. Even the concept is misused. The whole concept was about the institution of the church and the institution of the state. We didn't want there to be a Church of England. That's what they were. The founders didn't want that situation where you were forced to go to one church, where you were forced to give to one church. And that's the establishment of religion, which is the Establishment Clause.

[00:12:11] So, number one, you just realize, okay, there's nothing violated by teaching people the religious and historical basis and traditions that the founders and the country. I mean, if you don't understand those things, you're really badly educated. So, like these cases, like, let's take the one in Texas where they put a Ten Commandments on the walls of all the schools, and they're supposed to teach about these things.

[00:12:40] And then they came in with the ACLU lawsuit. Or you can't. You can't post something religious. And one of the questions during the oral argument by one of the judges was, so we can't have Martin Luther King's letter from the Birmingham jail? You know? I mean, this is ridiculous, right?

[00:12:59] The idea that we're going to censor history and things that are really big and a part of our history and our foundation and those original principles because it's religious. We don't ban religious parts of our history. This is just basic education. It's kind of like, you know, if you read Shakespeare and you don't know what the Bible is, you're going to miss, I think the last I saw, it was over 1,200 references. Wow.

[00:13:30] As our producer Steve could affirm. Yeah. You don't even know what those things mean. Yeah. Those phrases, those. So it's part of education, really. No matter what you believe. And again, nobody should ever be forced to do anything that violates their faith. But that doesn't mean that we erase our history. You know, and it also reminds me when they had the Texas Ten Commandments monument. It was there on the lawn of the Texas Capitol outside, right outside the Capitol. And a lawsuit was brought.

[00:13:59] And everywhere around the country, they were being taken down. This is obviously before the Coach Kennedy victory, which changed everything around. And we did something a little different in that case. We really encouraged the state to take a different approach. Instead of just focusing on this monument, look at all the monuments on the lawn of the Texas, you know, ground right outside the Capitol.

[00:14:25] It's like all these celebrations of things, very little of, almost none of which were religious. And so it made it clear that what was being attempted wasn't, oh, well, there's, you go out the Capitol and there's this, all this religious stuff. It was that they wanted to sort of, you know, religiously cleanse the religious parts of our history.

[00:14:50] And so even back then when you had lemon and all this bad case law, the Supreme Court upheld it. Because I think people know there's nothing wrong with that, you know, and and that was the new test that they set in place in the Coach Kennedy case. How do you analyze establishment clause cases, whether something violates the establishment clause?

[00:15:09] And step one that they laid out is if it's something that's a part of our nation's history and traditions, then or the type of practice like that, then it's presumptively constitutional unless there's something else that we don't know about. I mean, we have chaplains say prayers to open Congress. Right. I mean, there's all kinds of things like that. So you can't say you can't have a prayer before a public meeting at a government meeting. You can.

[00:15:37] And and so so I think they were going back to more what the founders intended by the First Amendment. And but we had 50 years of hostility where anything religious was on government grounds anywhere. They wanted to shut it down, whether it was a chaplain, the famous case out of Nebraska that they filed to try to stop that Marsh v. Chambers, whether it was a moment of silence in Alabama came and have a moment of silence.

[00:16:07] We could just go through a whole long list of things. And it was it was really a hostility to religion, which was not consistent with our Constitution. But the thing that people need to understand is that's different now. It's all changed. It's OK to do things. Never coercion with regard to anybody. Everybody has their freedom of their own beliefs. But that doesn't mean we move religion and religious history and tradition, you know, out of what we're teaching our kids, out of what we display in public. That's all fine.

[00:16:36] The of course, the First Amendment starts out. Congress shall make no law. And I believe when they passed that, there were some state sponsored churches at the time which have all gone away. So the question is, if the First Amendment specifically says Congress, what's the role of a state being able to promote or not promote religion? Well, they later they did some cases.

[00:17:00] It's called the incorporation where they they use the 14th Amendment to say that it incorporated all of these First Amendment rights to the state. Now, most of us who are honest think that's not what the 14th Amendment did. It was about slavery. It wasn't trying to take all these other rights. But that's what the Supreme Court did many, many years ago. And I don't see any votes to overturn that.

[00:17:25] You know, if you if you didn't have that, you'd obviously have every state could could violate all of the First Amendment. Right. If they wanted to. Yeah. And so I don't I don't think people are comfortable with that. I'm not saying that that's the right constitutional interpretation. But sometimes people go to policy and let it trump their constitutional interpretation. Well, it is, you know, true.

[00:17:48] And Dr. Matthews, we were mentioning on the break that you've done interviews on point of view just recently on the really Jewish influence in the founding of our nation. And back to symbols, when you look at the Supreme Court, I'm forgetting what all is up there. But I know Lady Justice is represented and she's blindfolded to represent that justice is supposed to be blind. And then we are a nation founded on the rule of law. And so that's what the Ten Commandments help to represent as well.

[00:18:17] So just those symbols are important and they the symbols themselves can can teach us about our founding and what we have in as our freedoms. But talking about the First Amendment, you did have a case. Of course, we've talked about this. The Snohomish eight, the firefighters who were penalized for not wanting to take the vaccine. And so they really have had a lot of support come around them in this petition for the Supreme Court to take their case.

[00:18:42] Yeah, the way things work when you file at the Supreme Court, you know, there's a lot of there's about six thousand requests a year. And and they took 56 last year. So, I mean, your odds are not good. Yeah. And so most people will not file what's called an amicus brief, a friend of the court brief, because it costs money and takes effort and all that. And so if you get like three or four or five amicus briefs, I mean, that's kind of a big deal.

[00:19:08] We had 12 filed in favor of these firefighters. And one of the briefs was by 22 states and their attorneys general. So this is a big issue, this whole issue of religious freedom in the workplace and non-discrimination. And especially when it comes to some of these medical issues like, you know, the covid vaccine and things like that.

[00:19:34] You know, it people say things and they really don't pan out by the government. The government just and then private employers are this way somewhat, too. They just want to say, well, you just do what I tell you to do. And, well, that might be fine in some cases, but not when it comes to people's faith. Yeah. And so so that's what this case really is about, is the protection that people have in the workplace to follow their faith and to have a right to an accommodation.

[00:20:02] And in this case, this one, you know, fire department, you know, you know, cut all these people loose because they could not violate their faith. Every other government entity around them hired these people. There's nothing wrong. There was it was easy to accommodate. And didn't the department that actually let them go continue working with those neighboring departments anyway, thereby violating their own supposed regulations about the vaccine? And then they brought them back. Yeah.

[00:20:32] But they never restored their benefits. So so it's you know, it's a it's a it's a good case. There's some pretty top lawyers that joined us on this case. And it'll be a big case where the right of people in the workplace everywhere to make sure that their religious freedoms are protected in the workplace. Absolutely. Well, you can read these press releases and more details about these cases we've talked about at point of view dot net.

[00:20:56] And that was a really interesting one to follow, too, because we were just talking about, you know, the Ten Commandments and whether or not that's an establishment of religion. But what's really interesting to me is that you have actually a diversity of religions represented in these briefs. So this is something that applies to protecting people of all faith as First Liberty does. So check those out when we come back. Let's talk about a potential Iran deal.

[00:21:21] We mentioned it a little bit earlier this week, but let's see what progress has been made, if any, and what our roundtable thinks about it. We'll be right back. It was not that long ago that censorship appeared to be almost inevitable. Free speech was being attacked and strangled in many places. And some of us wondered if this was the end.

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[00:23:05] 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 Liberty McCarter. All right. So we talked a little bit about a potential Iran deal earlier this week. It was also the topic of our Pray for America email that went out yesterday.

[00:23:25] So I do encourage you to, number one, be praying about this because it has major implications for United States security, for our allies, for innocence in Iran. Everything that we've discussed up to this point is going to be affected by any deal that comes to fruition or not. So we should definitely be praying for our leaders and their wisdom here. So this was reported.

[00:23:47] I think this is the latest reliable information that we have reported by Axios yesterday, just confirmed reporting in the Wall Street Journal. I'm looking at an article now. So basically, U.S. and Iran have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding. So this would extend the ceasefire.

[00:24:07] And basically what this would do is allow the relevant parties to come to the table and hammer out more of an actual deal, an agreement, extending the ceasefire by 60 days. So what they are trying to – and this is yet to be approved by Trump, according to the reporting that we have. But if this memo stands, Iran would commit to demining the strait within 30 days. Traffic through the strait of Hormuz would be unrestricted and untold.

[00:24:37] And then also, of course, a big sticking point for the United States is that all nuclear materials need to be disposed of one way or another. So I think Trump has come out and said there are going to be some red lines that they are going to hold. And so, Dr. Matthews, my concern, as I talked about earlier this week, was just going back to the original objectives, which I think Rubio did a really good job of articulating.

[00:25:00] He argued why did we have to strike now and was talking about how close they were to being able to build a nuclear weapon in addition to just other ballistic strikes towards the United States and our allies. So apparently they were really close to being able to do some of these things, which we know that the Iranian regime would want to do, and they needed to act now. So my concern is, well, are we going to accomplish that objective or are we just setting it back and kicking the can down the road?

[00:25:30] And I think one of the triggering reasons is that Israel knew where some of the leaders were, and they wanted to be able to take them out. And so when you know where they are, you've got to act quickly because people can move. So, yes, that was – but, you know, they were actually in negotiations before we started with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff meeting with the Iranian people and some of the Iranian ambassadors. And I'm not sure right now that we're much further along.

[00:25:59] We've destroyed their Navy and their Air Force, so we've had that, and we've created some huge economic problems for them. But it sounds like we're sort of discussing the same things, which are we wanted you to get rid of the – enriched uranium. We want you to stop your nuclear program, and we want you to stop funding proxies other places.

[00:26:19] And that – they are – what we've done, as I understand from the Memorandum of Understanding on MOU, is we're agreeing to spend some more – 60 days discussing the things that we had been discussing. Agreeing to try to come to the table to agree. And I point this out just because Iranians are really good at postponing these things. They're good at negotiating, saying, well, we need to come back and do this. Okay, if you do that, we'll do that. And if we're going to do that, we need to go and think about it a little bit longer.

[00:26:47] And they have every interest in dragging this out. The Trump administration has every interest in trying to get this thing wrapped up. And we'll just have to see how that plays out. Yeah. So one of the assessments that I saw reported on earlier this week was that Tehran went from near certainty of the ability to build a nuclear weapon within months to facing far longer timelines with substantially lower odds of success.

[00:27:11] That still doesn't encourage me as much to say, well, it's just the timeline has been kicked back. But we'll see. Kelly, I am sure that Trump is feeling the pressure of the midterms in wanting to get this wrapped up as soon as possible.

[00:27:28] Yeah, and it's not that complicated what the president wants, which is they want the nuclear material destroyed and the program to stop to build any sort of nuclear weapon. And they want the straight open, which is international law. I mean, you don't have a right to go and do anything like what they're doing.

[00:27:53] It should be kind of an easy yes and be over because, as I understand it, the only two countries that can go into where that nuclear material is and get it out is the United States and China. Nobody else has the capability. I've got to think it would be incredibly dangerous if you didn't know what you're doing to go and get that material, to have it destroyed.

[00:28:18] So it's odd because, I mean, they just seem to always, as Buddy was saying, I mean, they just always just delay, delay, delay. And then even if they ever gave you an agreement, you know you can't trust what they say anyway. So this whole process is just bizarre because it's hard to do a contract with a pathological liar. I mean, that's kind of what we're dealing with.

[00:28:41] And the president is under just great pressure from people who say you started, and this is Israel and a number of people in America, you need to go in and finish the job, take it, put boots on the ground if you need to, but get this done. And others who say, no, you need to negotiate and come up with something, and others who just criticized going in in the first place and never should have done it. And the president is in a difficult position right now because he sees the midterm elections. He said this week he didn't care about them.

[00:29:10] I don't believe that. But going back to 2006, you had a situation in which George Bush was president over an unpopular war. Iraq was initially popular, but by that time it was unpopular. And his ratings were going down. Democrats were running in a midterm election in 2006, and they were able to turn that unpopularity.

[00:29:35] Other problems we were getting on the cusp of beginning to start the great recession that came up and started in 2007. And Democrats had a blue wave, and we could be back there if Trump does not find a way to resolve this. And we will start early voting in about, what, four months now, three or four months. Yeah. So something needs to be done.

[00:29:57] And even just with the elections that we had on Tuesday, both the Cook Political Report and Larry Sabato's crystal ball from the University of Virginia Center for Politics both moved Texas from a lean Republican to a likely Republican, sort of giving it a bit more of a nod toward a Democrat. You could lose the Senate as well. And so it's a challenge for Trump. Yeah.

[00:30:26] I wouldn't want to be in the position of doing that, which is why we need to be praying for him and the others as well. So, yeah, I mean, it is – he's definitely stuck between a rock and a hard place, I'm sure, because of the different wings of his own party who are – you know, maybe one side is idealistic in what they want to accomplish, even though a lot has been accomplished. But I think there are some legitimate concerns there.

[00:30:49] I know I share them of wanting to make sure that, hey, we did go in, I think, for very understandable reasons, good reasons even, but let's finish the job. And we're talking about the pressure of the midterms, but there are other things at play as well, including, you know, the United States is watching what's happening with Russia and Ukraine, has been – is watching China and Taiwan. So how is our weapons stockpiled? Do we need to conserve resources?

[00:31:17] And I don't know all the ins and outs of that, but you hear we definitely have been going through resources really quickly with all the strikes on Iran. And so I'm sure that maybe a little bit of conservation might be coming into the calculation as well. And then there's also Venezuela, which is – we started a good process there, but it's still on – let's just say it's a work in progress. And there's Cuba. And the president would like to be able to do something in Cuba, but he said, I'm managing a war in Iran right now. I can't focus on – I have a thing called Iran.

[00:31:48] Yeah. So it's – he's got a lot on his plate right now. Yeah, absolutely. Well, be praying for that. We'll definitely keep an eye on it here on Point of View. But let's turn to something else, and we'll get into this more after the break. But, Dr. Matthews, you had an article in The Hill this week on Medicaid fraud. Speaking of money and resources, we sure have a lot that have been going to waste, don't we? We do.

[00:32:12] And the good thing is the Trump administration, the Department of Justice, is really looking into this and addressing – and trying to get this addressed. Every administration says we're going to go after waste, fraud, and abuse. Almost none of them do it. It looks like the Trump administration, Dr. Oz at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Justice, is actually putting people in jail and capturing some of this money. And some of the things that are happening are just amazing.

[00:32:37] I mean, you look at this and think, my goodness, all this fraud that was going on. It's just – Liberty, it's just unbelievable how much fraud there is out there. And this is what the taxpayers' money has been going to. So, yeah, it's definitely a concern. We will talk about that more. Get into some of these kind of mind-blowing examples of just what people have been able to get away with that didn't – as you mentioned in the article – didn't raise any eyebrows, apparently.

[00:33:05] Or either maybe people were looking the other way. So we will get into that when we come back on Point of View. But I mentioned the Pray for America a couple of times. I do just want to remind you to go to pointofview.net because we want to equip you. We want to inform you with trustworthy information that you can really know that we're giving you the true information, but also equip you to take action about that. So there are action alerts at pointofview.net. We alert you about different legislation and ways that you can contact your representatives.

[00:33:33] But the most important way to take action, as we believe, is prayer. So if you don't get the Pray for America emails, sign up for them at pointofview.net. It's just once a week. It'll help you pray for our nation. And we'll be right back to talk about fraud after this break.

[00:34:00] Two years ago, I complained that radical transgender directives just keep coming from the executive branch of the federal government. There's been a stunning reversal. States fought back against these federal decrees. In May 2023, the Texas governor signed a law prohibiting medical facilities from providing drug and surgical gender transition interventions for minors. At that time, the White House was all in with its support of so-called gender-affirming care, the drugs, hormones, and surgeries that were devastating the bodies of so many confused young people.

[00:34:29] The Texas law came just as the public learned that Texas Children's Hospital, the world's largest pediatric hospital, was providing these therapies, including mutilating surgeries to minors as young as 11. A courageous whistleblower, surgeon Ethan Heim, provided investigative reporter Christopher Ruffo with evidence that the hospital was miscoding gender transition procedures for minors to conceal them from outside scrutiny, even after the hospital had publicly claimed to stop all such procedures. Chris Ruffo published a report exposing these activities.

[00:34:59] He maintains that in the documents Dr. Heim shared with him, all personally identifiable information was redacted. Still, the Biden administration indicted Dr. Heim on four federal felony counts for violating HIPAA. Once President Trump took office, the charges were dismissed, but the hospital was not held accountable until now. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department and the Texas Attorney General announced a settlement with Texas Children's Hospital, which includes a commitment by the hospital to never again carry out gender transition procedures on minors.

[00:35:29] Under the settlement, the hospital must pay $10 million to cover its fraud against Medicaid and fire five doctors who perform the transition procedures. The settlement requires the hospital to establish what the AG's office describes as a detransition clinic designed to help reverse the damage caused by these draconian interventions. Some damage never disappears. Ethan Heim says, I've seen true evil up close. For Point of View, I'm Pena Dexter.

[00:36:00] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. All right, Dr. Matthews, give us some examples of just how bad this Medicaid fraud was, which I'm thankful that it's being exposed, and it's just insane that so much taxpayer money was wasted. An awful lot of taxpayer money, yes. In the article I wrote for The Hill, which we have available on pointofview.net, you can go and you can click on that link to the New York Times,

[00:36:27] which New York Times did a series of articles in 2005, so we're talking 21 years ago, about fraud that was going on in New York. It came to the conclusion that roughly 40% of the Medicaid spending in New York was fraud. And it mentions in there, I highlight a dentist who claimed to have performed 991 procedures in a day, and that includes extractions and root canals. And that was before AI. That was before AI.

[00:36:57] 991 procedures in a day. They had people who had nursing homes that were not taking care of people, but they were making a lot of money from that. They had, I don't mention in there, but they had a transportation service, which was supposed to take people who had mobility problems to get people on Medicaid with mobility problems to the hospital. Reporters were watching these services, and they were picking up all kinds of healthy people who were walking fine and dropping them off places, and then charging Medicaid for it.

[00:37:26] That goes back 21 years, and it goes back even further than that. And what we found out recently is both in Minnesota and California, the administration is really putting pressure on this. In Minnesota, you had a lot of child care places, which when Nick Shirley was going around, the sort of personal investigative journalist, independent investigative journalist, he'd go to some of these places, and there's no kids there. I mean, they're empty rooms.

[00:37:52] They've been going in California to places that, especially around the Los Angeles area, where they're claiming to take care of people with autism. They're going and finding empty rooms, empty warehouses. Nobody's there. Dr. Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, says they have cut off funding for about 800 centers in California, mostly around Los Angeles. And what he said was only a handful of them actually reached out to him to complain about that.

[00:38:21] And so there may have been hundreds that were just simply fraudulent-based things. And so people in Minnesota have been putting jail for this. A woman who was 41 who was engaged in this recently apologized. And I find these apologies interesting. I really didn't – you know, I really didn't – I hurt my family. I hurt my friends. And you also hurt the taxpayer by millions and billions of dollars. And they will go out, and they'll buy Bentleys. They'll buy two or three luxury homes, one in Florida, one in Hawaii.

[00:38:50] It's just amazing the kind of fraud that goes on there. And the Trump administration is trying to get a grip on this. Part of the reason they want to go toward a work provision for Medicaid is to get people to – if you're not really in need of this, then you ought to be out working and getting health insurance either through employer or buying it yourself. But they're trying to find ways to limit the fraud.

[00:39:14] What I point out is they haven't gone back and proposed a thing that had been a Republican proposal for years, which is to say under Medicaid the states spend money, but the federal government gives each state some money. It's called the federal match. That federal match is depending upon how much money the state spends. And the states also go through various types of procedures to – you could say scam the system, but you might want to just say game the system if you want to be generous about it,

[00:39:42] in efforts that allow them to draw down more federal money than they're actually entitled to. So what the Republican proposal had been for years was to just say each – the federal government should give each state a block grant, set amount of money. Here's your money for Medicaid. Now, there's still the issue of how much per person you're paying on that and how many people do you have in the state. We can work that out. But you give them a set amount of money and the state wants to do more things, they can pay for it.

[00:40:09] If the state decides not to pay any attention to the fraud that's going on, it's the state taxpayers, not the federal taxpayers, who are harmed by that. Yeah. But I wonder, you know, Minnesota, for instance, do they even care about that either? You know, it's really horrible. You know, I wonder about – I mean, do they – I haven't looked into this, so I don't know. It might be an easy answer. But, you know, they had this key Tom ability to file a lawsuit.

[00:40:36] And if you are the kind of the whistleblower or the ones who said this, you actually get some of the winnings of the savings for the taxpayer. It seems like if that was allowed here, that would be a boon. I mean, people could get a lot of money and they could also save the taxpayers a lot of money. And, you know, what's happened on some of this – this happened especially in Minnesota because so many of these are Somali – people of Somali origin.

[00:41:02] When the federal government came and looked at it and said, you know, we're wanting to check on this. Oh, you must be a racist because you're going after this particular group of people and that must be – must have racist inclinations behind it. It sort of stopped any effort to go in and look at these things for fear of being called a racist. And my question is, I mean, just for this example, in California, between 2014 and 2023,

[00:41:28] the number of hospice providers increased by 330 percent. Yeah, 330 percent. And how do – Everybody was dying evidently. I mean, how do people just turn a blind eye to this? It seems to me if all that money is being wasted and you care about the people who really need Medicaid, wouldn't you want to stop the fraud so that more people who are actually in need can get the benefit?

[00:41:54] Tim Walls, as governor of Minnesota, had reports of this happening. He pushed back and never went and investigated. Same thing is true in California. And so once it becomes a major scandal, then you find them dancing around trying to cover their bases so that they don't look as bad as they were. And part of this may be because liberals tend to think Medicare, health care ought to be out there available for anybody.

[00:42:20] So if you're saying I'm taking care of these people in hospice or autism or children or something like that, they may say that's fine. In fact, for years – and it's still really, I think, really the rule – Medicare had what was called a pay-and-chase model. That is, if you signed up as a Medicare provider, you were going to be providing durable medical equipment, home care or whatever. The government just said, we'll pay your bills.

[00:42:46] And then if they found something that looked like an anomaly, like 991 dental procedures in a day, then they go and check on you. And that pay-and-chase model meant the money went out the door. And then when you go and try to get these people, they've already spent most of it. You get the luxury cars and the luxury homes, but you don't get the money. Yeah. Yeah. This is – you know, it's basic human nature, right?

[00:43:12] If you're spending your own money, you're going to be careful how you spend, right? If, let's say, somebody close to you is spending your money, they're a little more freer, even though they're maybe trying to be. When the government is spending your money, I mean, if you don't have some major accountability system or incentive system like the Key Tom or something, I mean, this is what's going to happen.

[00:43:38] It's why it's never good to have your money funneled through government and then back to your local community for some purpose. It's not handled very well. One of the stories 10 or 15 years ago was how many of the crime families, the Bonanno family in New York being one of them, moved from New York to Florida to engage in Medicare fraud because it was so, so easy, and then you weren't taking anybody else's turf that you could fight over. 60 Minutes did an interview, and people can go find this on YouTube.

[00:44:08] About 12, 13 years ago, visiting with a person who was in jail, he got caught, and he's interviewing him, and he said, yeah, you know, I think he made like $20 million off Medicare scams. He finally got caught because all of them get greedy, and once they get so greedy, then they are able to, the government catches it. But if they were just willing to take $5,000, $10,000 a day, they'd have been fine. Just, just $5,000, $10,000 a day.

[00:44:37] Well, I'm glad that you are highlighting this for us, and again, people can read that article at pointofview.net, and I'm glad the administration is going after this. You know, you would think that more people would be concerned about it in this day and age. You have a lot of people who are complaining about billionaires and capitalism. What about the people who are getting rich off of a system that is supposed to help the needy in our country? So maybe that will get a little bit more attention, but we're about to go to a break. When we come back, we have a lot to talk about.

[00:45:04] Falling birth rates, the gospel according to Karl Marx, finding God in Silicon Valley, some really interesting topics that we'll discuss on Point of View right after this. At Point of View, we believe there is power in prayer, and that is why we have relaunched our Pray for America campaign, a series of weekly emails to unite Americans in prayer for our nation.

[00:45:31] Imagine if hundreds of thousands of Americans started praying intentionally together on a weekly basis. You can help make that a reality by subscribing to our Pray for America emails. Just go to pointofview.net and click on the Pray for America banner that's right there on the homepage. Each week you'll receive a brief news update, a specific prayer guide,

[00:45:59] and a free resource to equip you in further action. We encourage you to not only pray with us each week, but to share these prayers and the resources with others in your life. Join the movement today. Visit pointofview.net and click on the banner Pray for America right there at the top. That's pointofview.net.

[00:46:25] Let's pray together for God to make a difference in our land. Point of View will continue after this. Across America, live. This is Point of View.

[00:46:58] And now, Liberty McCartney. All right, let's talk about something that we have talked about quite a lot on Point of View, the decline in fertility, not only in the United States but around the world. Dr. Matthews, you sent me this article from the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. People can read it at pointofview.net. But it is interesting. So the argument that this article makes is that the falling birth rates are a mystery. So here's something interesting. And I think this is so true.

[00:47:27] When you look at what's to blame, people really just kind of fall into their ideological preconceived explanations. Conservatives are going to blame the collapse of marriage rates and the rise of feminism. Progressives blame lack of affordable child care and fathers failing to do enough housework, even though I will just mention statistics show that dads are actually more involved with their kids' lives than ever in a very hands-on way,

[00:47:52] which is a positive thing but doesn't really explain the decline in birth rate. There are housing advocates who are going to blame property prices and environmentalists who are blaming the climate crisis. And millennials and Gen Z, people of my own generation, have often cited that as reasons why they don't want to have kids. But you really are – none of those offer a good enough explanation because you really see fertility rates declining all around the world in very different countries.

[00:48:22] So what did you think was interesting? Yeah, and many times people will say it's the economy. We just can't afford children based upon our incomes. But my goodness, we had children we couldn't afford. It didn't stop us. So I don't have a good sense other than I think people may like a little more independence and a little less – and be able to focus on one or two children more rather than three or four or five.

[00:48:49] I think when I was young, it wasn't unusual to see families with four or five or six kids. And now one or two, maybe three. The eyebrows start going up once you get three or more kids. You can even get some pushback if you've had more than, say, three kids. People can lean on you and feel like you're hurting the earth by doing that. I actually – my first inclination, like you say, maybe it was a prejudice, but I think it's true, was religion.

[00:49:18] I think when you move away from what God teaches, you move from life to death. And you see the population rates go down. And so I looked up, and there was actually some good articles on this that actually had data, I mean real data.

[00:49:36] And so they delineated the different reasons why religion and faith, people of faith, actually move you in the right direction and not towards depopulation. So here's explaining how religion does it. Number one, religion provides a source of transcendent meaning that people of faith want children. And there were studies on that.

[00:50:05] The second one was religion is a cultural bridge between men and women. And that made a lot of sense. I never even thought of that. The third was – and again, we're aware of this – the people who are religious have greater happiness in mental health. There's less depression, et cetera. So obviously there's going to be more relationships in marriage.

[00:50:34] Fourth, faith communities are a social network which makes it easier to have children. Yeah. So there's a support network there. Didn't even think about that either, but it's true. And then the fifth was faith groups confer status on mothers and big families, which is exactly what you talk about. Whereas secular, it's a negative. It's like, oh, you're like a big carbon footprint.

[00:51:04] And so – and then they studied the countries and said countries that were really oppressive of religious practice were the worst as far as population growth. And so I don't think that surprises, like point of view listeners, people of faith, that, of course, God is life. And that makes sense. But I think having it delineated – and they had graphs on all these things from real studies that showed the numbers.

[00:51:35] I never thought a lot of the aspects of this. You know, even the simple thing of just having a religious community gives you support structure in certain ways, both to the relationship, to your children, to – I mean, you know, how many people – I mean, people do this anyway. But think of people when they have a baby and people sign up for meals. Yeah. Right? I mean, that started out of the church. Now it's beyond the church.

[00:52:04] But those kinds of things I think really do make a difference and we don't pay attention to them. And, you know, the day may come where this turns around because, as you remember, China had its one-child policy for decades. And then they realized they've got a declining population. They're getting older and they don't have the children there to be able to come up and be able to provide.

[00:52:24] And that will end up being a problem for the rest of us as well because as the fertility rate goes down, you're not going to have workers being able to pay into Social Security later on and Medicare to take care of us. So it's not just a sort of a moral and a social problem. It's an economic problem as well. Yeah. I mean, it touches every single aspect. God made humans for a reason. You kind of need humans to keep the whole earth thing going.

[00:52:52] But, Kelly, I really appreciate those statistics because that is one of the things I was going to mention as well. Religious communities still have higher fertility in the United States specifically. And we're talking about, you know, biblically-based religions most of the time. And so many of those reasons explain why. And one of the interesting countries that has had declined fertility was actually Iran.

[00:53:17] Well, okay, very religious but totally different because when you said the bridge between men and women, there is research from the Institute for Family Studies showing that Christian men who are not just nominally Christian but really involved, regular church members, super involved in their faith, are the least problematic, the least abusive, the most involved fathers. And, again, that shouldn't surprise us because those are the family values. To me, this is the big question for America too.

[00:53:46] Charlie Kirk had this message when he was asked over and over again by men at these colleges, you know, sort of the number one thing. He would say, get married, have a family, you know, and you really push that as being don't wait, you know, until you're, you know, 30-something. And the men really have gone that direction. The women, though, have gone the other direction.

[00:54:13] I mean, they've been against, if you – and I never thought I would even see this in my lifetime where men, young men, were more seeking after having marriage and family than the young women. And so one of the things I – when I saw Erica is now writing this, I thought, I wonder if she would be able to speak to the young women.

[00:54:36] And, you know, of course, she's under all these ridiculous attacks and everything from conspiracy theorists that, you know, are based upon nothing. But you just wonder if that would be a possibility. So is – these young men are going back into church. They are interested in having marriage and family. That could change our – the depopulation problem. I think we're at 1.6. Is that right? 1.6 or 1.7. Far below the replacement rate. 2.1.

[00:55:05] 2.2, 2.3. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so I – you know, the one thing that can change – I think when you – typically when you start going down, you do not come back. But the one thing that could have that happen is a revival, a great awakening, and we seem to see some instance of that. Yeah. It's encouraging. I want to talk a little bit about this some more when we get back from this short break.

[00:55:41] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Columnist Bob Green noticed a connection between TV dinners and smartphones. In fact, he says that the 1950s meal was a gateway drug for screen addiction. He believes that our zombie-like addiction to screens had its origins decades ago. It used to be that you would eat dinner and then move into the den to watch television. But soon there were advertisements for TV trays.

[00:56:08] These metal trays with tubular legs could be unfolded in front of a TV set so you could watch while you eat. Swanson Company then developed what came to be known as TV dinners. Frozen meals were arranged in a heat-and-serve aluminum trays with three compartments, the main course with fried chicken, turkey, pot roast, or Swiss steak. Soon they added a fourth compartment for dessert, apple crisp. Bob Green says the seductive power of the screens beckoning families from their dining rooms was unstoppable.

[00:56:37] The Swanson Company took out newspaper ads encouraging Americans to watch their favorite TV shows and enjoy a TV dinner. He believes that the TV dinner was an early, if unintended, step towards our current world in which unblinking people can't look away from the screens they carry everywhere, oblivious to what is going on around them. Long before we had smartphones, I recommended to parents that they not have a TV on during dinner. This could be a family time for discussion and encouragement.

[00:57:04] When the TV is blaring in the background, little family bonding could take place. Of course, we now have to fight to get people to put down their phones during any meal, whether at home or in a restaurant. Bob Green may have been on to something. We may have been training a generation to look at a screen even before those screens were on our phones. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view.

[00:57:31] 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. I did want to follow up on something you said, Kelly, about Charlie Kirk's message, because there was a letter to the editor in response to the article we've been discussing. One of them was by Lyman Stone.

[00:57:58] He does a lot of demographic research, particularly for the Institute for Family Studies. He said, marriage recession varies in scope and speed, but is observable in nearly every country on Earth. He does say that marriage rates are a big part of the decline in fertility rate because people aren't getting married or they're getting married a lot later. We did see that message from Charlie Kirk.

[00:58:25] I think that Erica Kirk can definitely be a part of that as well for the women. And I think what women have been told for so long, and this goes into our decline with religion as well, is that your value is going to come from your job. I mean, everybody's been told that in my generation. Really, it's all focused on what are you going to do when you grow up? That's your whole identity. And then, you know, young people have been told, focus on college, then get established in your career.

[00:58:55] Then you can think about getting married and then have some time, travel, see the world, then think about having kids. And you're expected to, like, live a whole life by the time you're in your early 30s. And in reality, and I, you know, obviously I'm here. I enjoy my work. I'm very appreciative of my career, so I don't think it's that women shouldn't be working. But the timeline has been very miscommunicated. You know, I got married young, right out of college. A couple years in, we started having children.

[00:59:24] It was a lot easier to have kids early and then as they grew and kind of got to school age, then be willing or able to still kind of establish work instead of having a decade or more of that and then, you know, maybe taking some time off. I just, I think maybe women don't realize there is more flexibility now, but you have a lot more flexibility when you start young. One of the things that has happened, and this has affected this, is in the 1970s, women started going into entering the workforce in larger numbers,

[00:59:54] much larger than they had before. But oftentimes those were more ancillary jobs. They had secretaries, things that they could have that didn't take a lot of education or practice for. That's changed. I think the majority of people in medical school right now are women. So often now if I see a list of doctors in there, most of them will be women's names. When I was young, that was not the case. And so the point being is that women are moving into STEM jobs, science, medicine, health,

[01:00:23] and other things that these are higher paying jobs, but they also in many cases take a bigger dedication to training and education before they actually get that freedom. And that's just, that's one of the changes that are coming here. And I suspect an awful lot of women are more dedicated on their career than they have been in the past. And they want to make sure that they are able to get that career going before they get married. Yeah, I just, I feel so, I feel bad for many of these young women.

[01:00:52] They've just, they're being, they have been and are being lied to a lot, right? I mean, I hear story after story after story of the person that thought they were supposed to do this for their career, do that. And now they're 35 and they're not married. And their ability to have children is sort of beginning to flee. And they just have this moment where they go, what have I done? You know, I mean, you think of your own life, Liberty.

[01:01:20] I mean, you think about how at the end of your life you would look back even now and you would, how you would compare the value of career with your children. I mean, it's not even in the same universe as the joy and the wonder and the blessing. And so many women are missing this completely because of this. Yeah. It's sad. And, you know, one of the things, one of the things I think has changed over the years, my wife and I talk about this.

[01:01:48] When we were young, our grandparents or you go to the grandparents, hi, you know, go over here and play. You know, come, we'll call you when dinner's on or something like that. But now all the people I know, give us grandchildren. We want some grandchildren out there. Oh, yes. Quit stalling and get some grandchildren here. Well, yeah. Because we just love playing. And once you get them here, we're going to take them and spoil them on the weekend and give them back to you. It's a great system. It is.

[01:02:14] So, yeah, I would encourage people, too, that, again, I think we have been, yet my generation has been so pushed toward a timeline that is not family friendly. I think men and women have been lied to about where your value really lies. And when you look at statistics, you know, in terms of who's the happiest, that people who are married are statistically happier and women who are married with children are statistically happier.

[01:02:43] Of course, that doesn't mean you can't be happy and find joy and follow Christ, you know, as a single person because that's just life for some people. But the lie that we hear from culture so much is that family is going to ruin everything. And in reality, it just is such the opposite. So I would encourage young people to think in terms of seasons, too. You know, everything is a phase. And I think another thing is kids tend to be contagious. So I don't know the big answer to the fertility rates.

[01:03:12] But when you're hanging around people and your friends have kids, you're statistically more likely to have kids. If you're hanging around people who are getting married, you're more likely to get married. So I think it's really a cultural thing, too. One thing I did want to add is that in terms of more of the global fertility decline, back in the late 1960s, you had a book, The Population Bomb. Paul Ehrlich published that. Died recently.

[01:03:37] Okay, so I know that this came from even further back, Thomas Malthus, I believe, really predicting that human population was going to outpace our ability to produce food. The opposite has turned out to be true. He didn't take human ingenuity into account in being able to really grow crops much more efficiently, things like this. But what's interesting is in response to that, you saw a lot of countries really discourage fertility.

[01:04:06] And you saw the United States Fund of Population founded, UNFPA. There are so many just really horrific scandals of how they went into often poorer countries. And without going against those countries' own values, there's a lot of this happened in Africa, where you have very many pro-life nations, women being forced to take birth control or forced sterilization and things like that in response to the scare of overpopulation.

[01:04:34] So I just wonder if that is still hanging over the whole world, really, in terms of fertility rates. And that's euthanasia. That was pushed as well. I mean, I think I just saw a story in the last week, at least, that in Canada, since they've legalized it, there's been over 100,000 people. Oh, it's crazy in Canada. And they're moving it to mental health and not just physical health issues. And, I mean, look, what's behind everything you just described is literally hell is what's behind that.

[01:05:03] This is from the enemy. I mean, you know, God is a God of life, not of death. And what's amazing is a lot of these predictions, how off they are, right? I mean, we're going to run out peak oil. We're going to run out of oil. We're not going to have any ability for that. You know, oh, the population is going to get so big that we're going to all be crowded right next to each other. You know, we're not going to have any room to breathe. Texas alone has enough land, I think, for the United States, for everybody to live in.

[01:05:32] That was the theme of Soylent Green, if you remember that science fiction move with Charlton Heston. People were everywhere, and all they could eat was these little pills. And it turns out at the end, the pills are dead people that they've put in the pills because the population was overcrowded. Yeah, and then now let's go to Al Gore's, right, the old climate change and how, you know, we're supposed to be flooded and all dead by now, right? And the polar bears are supposed to be extinct.

[01:06:01] But I think they're actually coming back, aren't they? They're coming back, yes. God takes care of things pretty well. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, I think this is a really important issue. Let's just look at our own country. You know, we need people to – this is very vivid in my mind. My youngest child just got married last weekend. He's 26, married a girl who's 25.

[01:06:28] And, I mean, nothing more joyful than to be at a wedding of your child and to somebody that is great. And it was just full of joy. And they're ready. They're ready to – and, you know, look, I do think it's harder for younger people now financially. But you can do it. You can do it. And you'll never regret starting earlier. Like you said, it's better to have your kids when you're younger.

[01:06:57] But it's financially tougher. But, you know, I've watched all my kids do this, and it was tough. But they're all growing. They're starting to grow out of that. They're starting financially getting to do that. They just had to pinch their pennies, you know, when those kids were coming out. And it's just such a blessing. I just wish people – young people wouldn't be fooled into giving up something even for a moment of time. But maybe forever that is the greatest blessing in their life.

[01:07:26] Yeah, you know, the penny-pinching, which I think sometimes we have unrealistic expectations about what you need to be able to provide before you have children. But – or the difficult baby stage. Or maybe stepping back, you know, and both prioritizing family and then waiting to do some big career moves later down the line. All of that is temporary. But the souls you're bringing into the world are eternal. And the joy that you get from family is lifelong.

[01:07:55] So we may not have all the answers to this big question of global fertility decline. But we can all be more pro-family. Encourage that in our families, in our communities. Support young families. That's something we can all do. But we'll be right back on Point of View after this short break. In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle. Not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas.

[01:08:23] London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. London was in many ways the center of the world economically, militarily, and intellectually. Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything the Bible supports. Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers. Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth.

[01:08:52] It is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today? Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox when you sign up for the Viewpoints commentary at pointofview.net. Every weekday, in less than two minutes, you'll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time.

[01:09:19] It's free, so visit pointofview.net slash sign up right now. pointofview.net slash sign up. Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View.

[01:09:46] 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 Liberty McCarter. You know, we write a lot about socialism and trying to understand that here at Point of View. I know Kirby has multiple booklets about that. We've got Outlook magazine articles that we've written on that and future ones coming as well.

[01:10:09] And one of the big questions that we often ask or talk about here on the Roundtable is, why are so many young people falling for socialism, especially when you look at the historical record? But I thought this article that you sent, Dr. Matthews, did such a great job. It's from the Wall Street Journal, The Gospel According to Karl Marx, and really helping us understand the underlying worldview of Marx and why it is so appealing.

[01:10:38] It really goes beyond just political principles because, I mean, honestly, if you look at how they are – it might sound nice. Socialism or communism might sound nice, but as soon as you look at a country where it's really been implemented, you see that it doesn't really work out. Why are people so passionate about this? Well, it really is because it's more of a religious and spiritual appeal even than a political one. You know, I think it's Francis Schaeffer who used to say humans have a God-shaped void in them, and they will fill it with something. Yeah.

[01:11:07] And so Karl Marx, whether for better or worse, well, at least whether intentionally or unintentionally, created one that does that. If you need a book, you've got capital and the Communist Manifesto. If you need – it has an eschatology. This is where we're going. Yeah. This is a process of how we're going – sanctification. This is how we're going to get to where we're going. You even have ideology in there. You have a theory of human nature.

[01:11:33] You have a whole range of things that sort of matches, parallels with various aspects of Christian theology or just religion in general. And for those who were turning away from Christianity coming in the 19th century, it started filling a void. But Charles Darwin sort of helped create that opening when he said – when he addressed the issue of creation, there's ways to have – there's ways we've got all these things without having to have a creator God there.

[01:12:01] And then once you do that, then you can find ways to sort of create a society that you think works, that reaches for a goal in eschatology. And that was – and Marxism helped fill that. Kelly, at the beginning of the show today, we were talking about freedom from religion versus freedom of religion. But this reminds me of that because even when people shake off their perception of religion, they just replace it with something else. Oh, absolutely.

[01:12:29] I'll tell you another place I've seen this in addition to Marxism. And, you know, I'm trying to remember the name. I guess it was a book on communism, the famous book by the former CIA guy from the 50s or whatever. I can't remember the name of it right now, but Naked Communism. Oh, yeah. That was – I'll think of his name. But I remember when I read that, I was like, you know, I never thought about the fact that behind all this communism, Marxism is atheism.

[01:13:00] And it's just necessary for the argument. I see the very similar type thing in the world of science. Yes. I mean, there's certain postulates, certain dogma. And all through the history of science, you see somebody come up with something through the scientific method that shows that one of the dogma is actually not true. Mm-hmm.

[01:13:29] And what – Climate change. Yeah, what you then proceed to do is watch the other, quote, scientist try to, you know, throw rocks and kill the person who has brought the scientific method forward. I mean, it's so – there's so many people in science – not everybody, obviously – but who are not – don't have religious background. And science is their religion. Mm-hmm.

[01:13:53] But yet they treat it in a way that's not even consistent with the scientific method and what you would want them to do. So you see this. I read a book years ago called The Psychology of Science. And it talked about all this and how that system works in sort of protecting the dogma and attacking people. And there's just some horrible stories.

[01:14:19] And it's very consistent throughout history of some of the greatest sort of discoveries where the poor person who discovered it just gets destroyed. And so it's amazing how, you know, as Meryl just said, you know, that vacuum's – I mean, you know, people had a God-shaped vacuum and they will fill it with something. If it's not God, it'll be some other thing. Yeah. And people that – things that they're not paying attention to.

[01:14:49] They might not even think about that that's what they're doing with – and science, that they're creating a religion within that whole world. But they obviously do. And it's just – it's hard to imagine how dedicated people who embraced Marxism were. I mean, it's – you've got China is still embraced on – I mean, that's still divided – guided by Marxism.

[01:15:10] You had Russia, which was through the Russian Revolution in 1917, guided by Marxism, even though there was some debate among Lenin and Stalin about how – what's the best method of Marxism? How do you actually do this? Because Russia was doing it in a way that wasn't actually supposed to be done, according to Marx. And they said, okay, we'll just jump over that anyway. The idea behind communism was you get a strong industrial society, then it shifts over to being a communist society, and Russia did not have an industrial society.

[01:15:40] And so the question is, can we go from sort of a farming agricultural society with just a little bit of industry over to a full-blown Marxist system? And that was where the issue came in. But you had so many things happening in the 19th century with Darwin, I mentioned him, Karl Marx providing an economy, Freud providing a way for us to understand the – what's the good and evil? We have these ideas. Do we do evil things? Do we do good things?

[01:16:10] Creating the id, the superego, and so forth. And then you have Einstein coming in and his theory of relativity, and he didn't really mean it to be relative in ethics, but people took up this idea of relativity and applied it to ethics, and so everything is relative in ethics. And you do something like that, and you get just a perfect storm of things that are going to create problems for society. Yeah, all those core questions found alternative answers. Exactly right. So, you know, on the point of the science, this is just a while back.

[01:16:40] I think I probably mentioned this at some point, but there was a podcast episode the Free Press Point put out with a former climate activist saying that when she was in – really in the inner circles of the climate, you know, movement, that it was very zealous in nature. There was an eschatology, the world is going to end, there was the sin of humans causing too many carbon emissions, yes, and then restoration.

[01:17:10] And so even when she started looking at some of the evidence and realizing, oh, some of these predictions aren't true or like some of the science is just wrong, she was diligent enough to actually notice that, she was shut down and told, you can't say that. But same kind of reports we're seeing coming out of people like all of those college protests after October 7th and the, quote, anti-Zionism, which is really, I think, anti-Semitism now.

[01:17:39] But again, raising any objective, any question, and you're squashed down. It's because it becomes a religion. And this is something I don't know if y'all have read Total Truth by Nancy Piercy. I know she's been on Point of View, and it's just so good. I read it for the first time. It's been out for a long time, but I read it this year, and she talked about the worldview grid, which was so helpful because it really is what this article is discussing, how everybody is answering three questions.

[01:18:09] How did we get here? What went wrong? And how do we restore it? And if you apply that to any worldview, like we're doing right now with Marxism or the climate activism or anything, you see that, like with Darwin, we got here by evolution. So there's no inherent dignity or design with human beings. And then what went wrong? Well, it could be, again, the carbon emissions, or it could be capitalism or the ownership of private property. And then there has to be some sort of restoration with Marxism via revolution.

[01:18:39] And we see that play out over and over and over again, that same cycle. And it just makes it click of like this is why it's so compelling. And the denunciation of heretics, somebody who's believed and then stepped away like your friend. This person now becomes a heretic, and so we have to oppose that person. Yeah. The blasphemy. Yeah. To disagree with.

[01:19:00] You know, the other thing, the thing that I think is really, I don't know, maybe it's not, but it's always seemed really unique about Marxism to me is this whole idea that there's the oppressed and the oppressor. And that if we just cause a revolution and sort of get rid of all the oppressors, that somehow there be this nirvana, this, you know, and there's never an explanation for why that is. Yeah. How come that hasn't happened yet? Yeah. Nowhere.

[01:19:30] And so I'm just, boy, that it's unlike Christianity, which is actually, you know, involves evidence and truth and, you know, in history and all these things. These are just ideas, you know, Karl Marx, just ideas based around atheism, really, that don't pan out very well and that don't even have a really good rational explanation when it comes to the end of them getting to their heaven.

[01:19:58] Nobody has ever explained why it is that it's going to be really great when you kill off all the, quote, oppressors. Bizarre. Yeah. Yeah. If they, if you don't accept the biblical story and you don't accept the reality of sin, then you have to explain evil. And then you've got to accuse somebody of being the bad guys. But let's apply this to Silicon Valley. I want to apply the worldview grid to what's happening in tech when we come back from this break.

[01:20:29] Two years ago, I complained that radical transgender directives just keep coming from the executive branch of the federal government. There's been a stunning reversal. States fought back against these federal decrees.

[01:20:52] In May 2023, the Texas governor signed a law prohibiting medical facilities from providing drug and surgical gender transition interventions for minors. At that time, the White House was all in with its support of so-called gender-affirming care, the drugs, hormones, and surgeries that were devastating the bodies of so many confused young people. The Texas law came just as the public learned that Texas Children's Hospital, the world's largest pediatric hospital, was providing these therapies, including mutilating surgeries to minors as young as 11.

[01:21:21] A courageous whistleblower, Surgeon Ethan Heim, provided investigative reporter Christopher Ruffo with evidence that the hospital was miscoding gender transition procedures for minors to conceal them from outside scrutiny, even after the hospital had publicly claimed to stop all such procedures. Chris Ruffo published a report exposing these activities. He maintains that in the documents Dr. Heim shared with him, all personally identifiable information was redacted.

[01:21:46] Still, the Biden administration indicted Dr. Heim on four federal felony counts for violating HIPAA. Once President Trump took office, the charges were dismissed, but the hospital was not held accountable until now. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department and the Texas Attorney General announced a settlement with Texas Children's Hospital, which includes a commitment by the hospital to never again carry out gender transition procedures on minors.

[01:22:09] Under the settlement, the hospital must pay $10 million to cover its fraud against Medicaid and fire five doctors who perform the transition procedures. The settlement requires the hospital to establish what the AG's office describes as a detransition clinic designed to help reverse the damage caused by these draconian interventions. Some damage never disappears. Ethan Heim says, I've seen true evil up close. For Point of View, I'm Pena Dexter.

[01:22:40] You're listening to Point of View, your listener supported source for truth. All right. I briefly mentioned this, I think, on Tuesday, searching for God in Silicon Valley. And I said that we would talk about it more on Friday. So promise fulfilled. But this is so interesting to me. And it just meshes really well with the Karl Marx article we were discussing and the worldview grid.

[01:23:04] So this article is from the Free Press opens up a running joke at Bay Area parties is that AI researchers are building God. Now, again, this is a joke, but I have read quotes and I've talked about them from people who are on the cutting edge of this technology that are building artificial intelligence that do say we are building God. And they may not mean that in a supernatural sense.

[01:23:32] But a couple of things to understand is that most of the people working in these fields are atheists or they're materialists. So they don't believe in a spiritual world. And yet we just talked about that hole that we have in our hearts for God. So it's interesting to me. And this article points out, even though not written by a Christian, actually written by the chief of staff to Dario Amade, who's the CEO of Anthropic.

[01:23:58] She says that she's an agnostic, but that the people who are working on these technologies who are not religious have all of the markers of what you would think would make somebody happy. You know, being fulfilled and working on something you believe to be meaningful is like statistically likely to make you happier. So these people have that, but they aren't really getting the benefits from that that they should.

[01:24:27] So they're exploring churches. These are tech leaders and founders and researchers, AI researchers who are they're going to meditations. They're going on these spiritual, you know, retreats and things like that, looking because the article says that basically what this does is that this kind of work where they are working with the technology and a science that is so impressive and beyond really human capabilities.

[01:24:56] And they're up close and personal with it. It's they're realizing it's putting them in proximity to those old questions we were talking about of meaning in life and everything. So one of the I don't say definitions, but one of the descriptions of God is God is all knowing. God is all powerful. You can see people who think AI is getting is moving in that direction. And then, of course, one thing is God is all good. And one of the questions they're struggling with right now is why are some of the AI answers coming out with things that aren't good?

[01:25:24] But that's that if you if you have a definition of God like that, then you begin to see a sort of replacing God in some sense, because we think it's so powerful. We think it's going to know everything. And I'm going to go to the to AI for my answers to things. That sounds like a God.

[01:25:46] Yeah, it just reminds me of something that we look at and we think is really dumb now, which is back in the Old Testament days when they made idols. Yeah. Right. And it's like, like, like a piece of wood is somehow God. And what a ridiculous right substitute for the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.

[01:26:16] And and, you know, that's all this is. It's just a current day piece of wood. Yeah. Anything that man, you know, that men and women make is so I mean, I don't even know what the word is. It's it's just such a joke to compare it to God. You know, oh, is that an uncaused cause? Is that something that has always been and always will be?

[01:26:43] You know, take your science and go back. OK, where did you come from? And then where did they come from? And then where did you know, eventually you get to the the thing that always was the person that always was. Yeah. And your little piece of wood doesn't even get in the, you know, anywhere in the universe. So it's just so. But you're exactly right. I mean, and and not only that, think about how they shape this.

[01:27:10] And these are people that don't generally believe they're not believers. Think of how the A.I. they shape will answer the questions that people ask because people will begin to think, well, they've got all the answers because they can run through the Internet and stuff of what people have said. And so they'll tell me the questions I need to know about God.

[01:27:33] And that's a real danger for for the body of Christ is the kind of information people are going to get when people are already starting to depend upon that for their answers, for any questions they have. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things and we're already seeing stories of people who have gotten so dependent upon A.I. that it was taking over their lives. And, of course, if you think A.I. has all the answers and there's a sense in which you could see A.I. as being somewhat transcendent. It's not a person standing in front of us coming out of my computer.

[01:28:04] So it's it's amazing. And I think we're going to see a lot more of this before it gets better. If it does get better, simply because of the that God shaped void in people who are looking for some kind of answer somewhere. And if A.I. comes up and says, I can give you those answers, we're likely to see people beginning to rely on that. Yeah. For people listening who think, well, that's crazy.

[01:28:28] Maybe you have a biblical worldview and you know that A.I. isn't God and that it doesn't actually know anything. But people around you are going to get fooled. And Kelly was pointing this out in the Old Testament. We see this, the the the contradiction when it says you take a piece of wood and you put one of it on the fire to keep you warm. And you take the other piece and you carve a God and bow to it. Yeah. How somebody just doesn't see that as bizarre.

[01:28:58] And yet I suspect we'll find people who see A.I. as a type of God in their lives. Well, this is interesting. So I've done a know why podcast episode on this, but there is an A.I. product literally called friend. Avi Schiffman is the developer of it. And it is a necklace that you wear that is a little A.I. device inside. And it will text you. It reads your surroundings. It's like what kind of those meta glasses or whatever. So it sees your surroundings.

[01:29:28] It texts you first. And it's something that you can respond to. This is so dark because it's keeping you from talking to actual people. But he said in reporting on this, he told journalists people are becoming less religious, but they still crave a super intelligent, omniscient, omnipresent figure to talk to. And this product is going to fill that hole.

[01:29:53] So the people creating it, they even know they know what people are going to use it for. And Kelly, I think you're both of your comments on the idols is so important. One thing I was rereading recently was about the golden calf. And why was that such a big deal? There are some arguments that even, you know, why couldn't they have just used it as maybe they were trying to worship God through it.

[01:30:19] But God did choose to image himself on earth via human beings. We bear God's image and God is different. He's a living, breathing God. And so I think that's just really important for us to remember what it means to be human and what it means to be made in God's image, because God gave the role of representing him on earth to us. And then it's just it's going to be so sad if we look for that in an AI. There's a lot of dangers. There's a lot of dangers.

[01:30:47] Obviously, the Pope came out with his. Yes. Wasn't really in depth, but it did talk about humanity. And this is a big issue that's going to change our society and going to be a challenge in a lot of ways. And the church is going to have to rise up. Yeah, absolutely. It's it's one of those major, major, major changes to the entire world. Yeah. Well, it's been a great conversation. This is an interesting place to end. I encourage people to read those articles at pointofview.net.

[01:31:15] But Kelly, Dr. Matthews, thanks for being here on Point of View today. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah. Great conversations. And of course, thank you, Steve and Megan, for producing the show and putting it together. Don't forget to sign up for the Pray for America emails, because, man, we talk about all of these issues and what's happening in our nation. We can take action. We can discuss it. We can learn about it. But first, we need to pray. So pray with us at Point of View. Also, make sure that you check out the articles that we posted at pointofview.net. And look at Penn's commentary.

[01:31:44] You heard it if you were listening online and check that out as well. And you'll hear Kirby on Monday. And so make sure that you stay with us on Point of View next week. It almost seems like we live in a different world from many people in positions of authority. They say men can be women and women men. People are prosecuted differently or not at all, depending on their politics.

[01:32:10] Criminals are more valued and rewarded than law-abiding citizens. It's so overwhelming, so demoralizing. You feel like giving up. But we can't. We shouldn't. We must not. As Winston Churchill said to Britain in the darkest days of World War II, Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

[01:32:38] And that's what we say to you today. This is not a time to give in, but to step up and join Point of View in providing clarity in the chaos. We can't do it alone. But together, with God's help, we will overcome the darkness. Invest in biblical clarity today at pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151.

[01:33:04] Pointofview.net and 800-347-5151. Point of View is produced by Point of View Ministries.