Point of View September 4, 2026 – Hour 1: Weekend Edition

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, this is Point of View. Kirby Anderson. Thank you for joining me. I hope you're getting ready for the Labor Day weekend, but we are still live here on Friday. We'll be branding a tape on Monday. But let me just say that first of all, we're going to talk about the Supreme Court, some of the things having to do with the socialist agenda, which is our August issue of, of course, the Outlook magazine. Dr. Merrill Matthews with us today. We're going to be talking about Medicare for all really means Medicare for none.

[00:00:41] And reasons not to be depressed about depression. Figured it'd be now a good opportunity also to talk about the Lindsay Clancy trial, since that's kind of in the news, Iran and a few other issues. So again, Dr. Merrill Matthews, good friend of the ministry for many, many years, sometimes sits in this chair for me, and has spent 25 years as resident scholar of the Institute for Policy Innovation. Now, of course, doing all sorts of great articles that you will see in The Hill.

[00:01:08] And also Aaron Smith, associate counsel at First Liberty Institute. And Aaron, the first two articles are ones about the Supreme Court. But anybody that's been listening to you or Kelly or anybody else have been warning that the Democrats, as soon as they get into power, and they're hoping that will happen real soon, they want to pack the Supreme Court. What's going on?

[00:01:31] That's right. Yeah, the Democrats have been very transparent about what they want to do. They want to pack the Supreme Court with a bunch of their own appointees and justices to say to do what they want them to do, to accomplish the very liberal agenda that they have for the court.

[00:01:51] And they don't, it's, it's really what it is, is they don't care about the law, they care about the outcome, they care about getting what they want, what they think is best. And the way to, the court is a unique facet of our constitutional order. They interpret the Constitution and the way that it applies to the people. They interpret the laws that Congress passes and says, what, what does it mean? What does the law mean?

[00:02:17] And there are different methods to getting to that answer. In my mind, a good justice starts with the text of the law and says, here's what it says and here's what that means. Some justices will come at it from the other, the other side, right? What do I want the outcome to be?

[00:02:36] Now let me work backward and figure out a way to manipulate the words to say what I need them to say to come to the outcome I want it to come to. The Democrats are so focused on this. Well, the conservative presidents, Republicans have appointed more people at six to three. You know, we don't have a majority on the court, so we need to put more of our people in. And if they do that, I don't know how they don't understand that we're going to end up with a 100 person Supreme Court.

[00:03:02] Like it's going to we'll just keep doing this over and over and over again. And so we'll keep flipping the table. Every time there's a new president, every time there's a new Congress, we're going to put in more people to try to outnumber each other. And that is what's not going to work. First of all, explain the difference between an originalist and a living Constitution. Supreme Court justice.

[00:03:23] So great question. So an originalist is someone that believes, right, we need to look at the original meaning, right? The original understanding of the text at the time that the Constitution was. I've lost my train of I've lost my word was put into place. Sure. Ratified is the word I was looking for. At the time it was ratified. What do the people understand this to mean when they read the words in the in the in the Constitution?

[00:03:52] Now, a living constitutionalist will say that the meaning of those words changes as history goes on. So whatever the framers meant, whatever the people understood the First Amendment to mean when it said, you know, Congress shall establish, you know, no religion. Well, that means something different today to people, maybe.

[00:04:13] And so you kind of saw that a good example of the difference was in the Bostock opinion that came out interpreting the word sex in Title seven saying, right, you can't discriminate on the basis of sex. The word sex. Now, people use to encompass this gender identity idea. But there's really no valid argument to say that in 1964, people understood that sex meant transgender or gender identity or the same sex attraction.

[00:04:42] So how does an originalist deal with something like you've got it? You've got a constitutional amendment to be secure in your papers and now have email. So it's not paper. It's digital. It's not in my desk drawer. It's on my laptop. So how does an originalist take this and sort of say, what's the principle here and how do we apply it? I'm glad that I'm not a Supreme Court justice and this is not my job or a judge, a judge right now.

[00:05:09] I'm still very much learning. But, you know, you think, is this the kind of thing that they would have thought about or goes in this bucket or this category? Yes, there are modern things that we have to apply a rule against. Right. They're talking about, you know, searches and seizures of homes or whatever it is. Right. That we've what does a home what does the home mean?

[00:05:35] What what do what did they mean when they said that, you know, you have the right to due process? Like there are all these questions that the Supreme Court exists to help us answer. And, yeah, part of their job is saying, does this thing is it encompassed by what they originally meant? What is a paper now? Obviously, we don't get documents. And, you know, I think that we have very, very bright justices that sit on the Supreme Court that can do that.

[00:06:02] But their job really is to say, would this have been something using the history that we have? Would this have been something that that they would have wanted included or would have thought? Yes, this would be included with the advancements in modern technology. And I realize I just danced 50 feet around your question because, you know, that's a hard that's a hard thing to do. I'm glad it's not me. But again, it's like Bible interpretation. I'm going to be teaching my Sunday school class on Sunday and I'm going to be talking about this is what Titus three says.

[00:06:29] And this is what it meant when Paul wrote that to Titus. Or you could talk about here's our latest booklet, shameless promotion, woke Christianity, where some people actually just read into the Bible what they wanted to say. James Tallarico and others that are certainly engaged in that. And so whether you look at the original meaning of the Bible or the original meaning of the text, that is the case. And Dr. Matthews, if you think about this, we do use this idea of originalist every day.

[00:06:57] Let's imagine that you were to die and your wife were to find a particular will that you wrote. And you would be from heaven really upset if they said, well, this is what he said, but that's not really what he meant. And at this point, we hope that words have a meaning through time. And if a lawyer or some other individual, maybe one of your children said, no, I know that's what the will says,

[00:07:24] but it really meant that I should get more of this particular asset. You'd say, well, that'd be a violation of an original interpretation. Right. We're originalist with regards to the Constitution. We're originalist with regards to the Bible. And so, yes, you try to figure out what they meant at the time, and then you apply it. And sometimes things change a little bit, and you have to ask the question, how does that carry over and apply today? And so it's interesting.

[00:07:51] One of the things we'll talk about, I hope, in the next segment is Steve Moore is willing to change a few things with regard to the Supreme Court. And I'm not necessarily opposed to that, at least one of those things that he's proposing. I could live with it if they do it. Yes. Well, and he already got my attention because he's talking about, I could live with expanding the Supreme Court to 12 justices. First of all, I'm not sure where they'd sit. I don't know why it wouldn't be an odd number. Let's do an odd number. Right. Exactly. And then support a mandatory retirement at 75.

[00:08:21] Well, I'm getting kind of close to that, so that's got my thinking. But let's come back and talk about that because that is our first article, Steve Moore. We've both interviewed him over the years, really appreciate him, and he gives some ideas about how to stop the Democrat scheme to pack the Supreme Court. But our second article, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said, I got an idea. Why don't we just make it nine forever? But that didn't go very well, but we'll talk about all that right after this.

[00:09:00] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:35] We'll be right back. Kyle Smith says that today the Democrats are the annoying party. Not only do they criticize eating hamburgers, but they also complain about every perceived social ill and promote lots of irrational ideas. In just over two decades, perceptions have changed. Back in the 1990s, Republican leaders were often accused of intruding into people's lives because they were promoting family values and telling kids to just say no to drugs.

[00:10:01] Today, Americans who want to be left alone are more likely to side with the Republican Party rather than the Democratic Party that seems filled with political busybodies. Will this perception change? Jonah Goldberg goes on to say that he doesn't think so because the left are the aggressors in the culture war that will never end. The moment that the left wins a victory, they immediately push forward to the next fight, which is even more extreme.

[00:10:27] The day after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, progressives started pushing transgender issues. So during this election season, many candidates on the left will lose because they have a hamburger problem. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my point of view. Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net.

[00:10:55] That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. By the way, I did put together years ago a little booklet on judicial interpretation talking about the two different ways to interpret the scriptures and the two different ways to interpret the law and all those kinds of things. And the example I use is a will because if you actually write something down in your will,

[00:11:21] you're expecting that 20, 30, 40 years ago or later, I should say, that people would still interpret it the way you intended it. But nevertheless, let's get back to Stephen Moore. You and I have known Stephen Moore forever. He's been with the Wall Street Journal, is now with National Review. But he says we should stop the scheme to pack the court. First of all, it reminds us the reason we're having this debate is because, I love his line here, when you nominate Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Kamala Harris,

[00:11:49] well, that's why you don't have some of those kind of justices on the Supreme Court. Praise the Lord. But then goes on to simply say something that you and I want to talk about for just a minute because he says, I personally would have no problem expanding the Supreme Court to 12 justices if it could be done in a fair and nonpartisan way. Lots of luck with that. But I also support a mandatory retirement of 75 for all future justices on the court.

[00:12:15] First of all, I think that Clarence Thomas is still doing pretty well at his age. But, okay, what about some of those ideas? They're pretty intriguing. Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily propose a term limit, an age limit for the justices. But if they were to pass one, I'd probably put it up to 80. Alan Dershowitz is over 80. Bernie Sanders is over 80. And those people are still sharp and able to make good, convincing arguments about things. Well, not so much with Bernie Sanders.

[00:12:44] He can at least make an argument without it being a word salad. So it wouldn't be my proposal if they passed an age limit on there. I'd say 80. I'd be fine with that. Or at least I'd be okay with it. Adding more members to the court. It would take a constitutional amendment to change that because it's a lifetime appointment for the Supreme Court right now. So that's a tough process. Probably won't get done.

[00:13:12] That brings to the other one because Mike Johnson, who is Speaker of the House, proposed a constitutional amendment that would prevent Democrats from packing the court. That would take a constitutional amendment too, wouldn't it? And I would argue that was a messaging bill because you have to do a constitutional amendment. You have to have two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the Senate vote for it. And then three-quarters of the states approve it within, I think, seven years is what they typically give it.

[00:13:38] But my goodness, with the number of Democrats in the House and Senate, there was no chance that was going to pass. So you do what's occasionally called a messaging bill to say, here's what we want to do. We want to show you who's against it. And we use that in the election. Right, right. Coming right up on midterms, right? They're going to be pulling those voting records and saying who voted how and then whether or not they're worth keeping.

[00:14:04] It gives them a good talking point for candidates in the House and Senate, Republicans, to say I voted for this and we couldn't get it passed because of Democrats. That's right. That's right. It was smart. I – yeah. No, I just – there – I – you know, it's an interesting argument to make. I don't see a world where you could get the right breakdown of, like, how do you do that in a bipartisan manner?

[00:14:29] Because the way the justices are put on the court, right, you have nomination by the president and then the Senate confirms them. Whoever's in power at that time gets to pick. So, you know, the other side's not going to be willing to do it or it would have to be some sort of crazy supermajority to be able to change some of the stuff and make it stick. But, yeah, I don't – I'm not optimistic about it happening.

[00:14:56] But what I am concerned about is the Democrats wanting to get rid of the filibuster and then put a bunch of people on the Supreme Court. All right, and let's go to SupremeCoup.com. Now, you have to know how to spell coup, C-O-U-P. But that is the website that you and Kelly Shackelford at First Library have put together. And if you go through that, Aaron, you realize that we do have some examples. Let's pick Venezuela since it's been in the news.

[00:15:23] And the picture that you have there of the number of justices that were put there in Venezuela looks like actually the seating chart for a large lecture at the University of Texas, or since Derek's here, we'll call it Texas Tech today. And it's just how in the world you got there. But, again, it gets back to, Aaron, what you said just a minute ago. So, okay, you put on four.

[00:15:52] Next time we put on our four, we put four. Pretty soon you're going to be like Argentina. You're going to be like Venezuela. You're going to be like many of these countries that actually just have literally packed the court. And there's not enough room in the Supreme Court building for all the justices that you would be putting on the court. That's right. And even back in the 80s, President Biden was like, this is what he called a boneheaded idea to do this. And so it's been amazing to see the absolute flip of all of these Democrats.

[00:16:22] Until he became a bonehead. So I have a sense, I may be wrong, but I have a sense that there are Democrats who would not like to see the changes in the Supreme Court or the filibuster, who have not spoken up because they were willing to let Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, two Democrats, who stopped that from last time. So I may be wrong about this. And I think John Fetterman would not be willing to do that. I think he's one.

[00:16:51] It wouldn't surprise me if there weren't a couple of other Democrats who said, I don't want to end the filibuster because the day is going to come if they have the majority can do it. Well, we won't have the majority again and then Republicans will be able to run roughshod over. So might be wrong. But I think there are probably some closet Democrats who would be hard pressed to do it and are glad they haven't had to face the media on that yet.

[00:17:14] Well, again, the last quote here is from Senator Ed Markey, who just won the primary race and said, when Democrats control the Senate and the next Congress, we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court. By the way, I mentioned earlier in the week, Ed Markey was on a debate with another Democrat who's a member of Congress, and they asked a question about AI and ChatGBT and Claude.

[00:17:39] And Senator Markey knew nothing about what they were talking about and gave just this kind of rambling answer about it. It sounded like Google. And that's where his opponent, who's also a Democrat and a member of Congress, saying, that's why we need to get rid of some of you old guys because you are going to be writing regulations and rules and even laws about artificial intelligence. And you don't even know what you're talking about, which I thought was kind of an interesting statement. So he may not know about AI, but he does know one thing.

[00:18:06] If we control the Senate, then we as Democrats are going to get rid of the filibuster, and we're going to do all we can to increase the number of Supreme Court justices. Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad idea. Thumbs down for that idea. Big thumbs down. Two of them. The worst part of increasing the number of Supreme Court justices is you'd have more concurring opposition and positions there that we'd have to read in and take off a whole lot longer. Well, that's right. That's right.

[00:18:33] And I'm not looking to add to the reading that I have to do. But I will say, you know, the cool thing about the court, right, we have, you know, we know that from history, pure democracy doesn't really work. You have, you know, this majority rule and you can oppress the rights of people that you don't like or don't agree with if you have the majority. And so the role of the Supreme Court really is to stand in the gap and say, OK, you've crossed the line, right?

[00:19:03] We have this constitution. We have structure. We have rules. And so they kind of stand as this counter to the majority. And so they say, no, we're going to we everyone has the same rights. You can't just trample over them because you have the majority. And so with packing the Supreme Court, it would become kind of the same problem, right? The majority amount of justices would get to trample on the rights of the people that they disagree with.

[00:19:26] And one of the things we should mention is I mentioned that if you in order to change, put an age limit on the Supreme Court, you would have to have a constitutional amendment. Right. But to add more people, you don't. You can change the number instantaneously. Just before I take a break, first, Liberty is going to love what I'm going to do right now. If you click on the picture of Aaron, it will pop up. There's a pop up about the court that protects your freedom. And they have a special report that they've been making available.

[00:19:51] And so if you find yourself saying, OK, I'm trying to figure all this out, what about judicial independence? What about religious liberty? What are some of the stories behind some of these landmark Supreme Court cases and things of that nature? I don't know if it goes into the difference between originalists and others, but it goes into all sorts of details. And so if you go to First Liberty, the pop up will actually take you right there to a free copy. And they're making that available. Also, if you go to the news section, we haven't really talked about it,

[00:20:20] but maybe next time we gather together, we'll talk about the fact that there are some really interesting cases having to do with the Amish and having to do with Native Americans. And even recently in the Nashville charter schools, removing some books about same-sex marriage and, of course, the ones about the parents facing all sorts of discrimination, as well as students facing discrimination right now, especially at Liberty University.

[00:20:45] If you want to major in almost any area, you can receive a grant. But if it is even a little bit religious, well, then you don't get it. And so that's a very important case that might be considered by the Supreme Court. Last time I had Kelly in here, he said you've got, do I count right, nine cases right now that you're looking at, maybe before the Supreme Court. So there's a prayer target for you to see if the Supreme Court will take some of these really important cases.

[00:21:11] When we come back, though, I thought it would be good to remind ourselves that we're still dealing with socialism. And Dr. Merrill Matthews, Medicare for all means Medicare for none. We'll talk about that right after this. There are so many big stories happening literally everywhere.

[00:21:36] So much information, documents released, grand jury testimony, political accusations and claims on all sides. How in the world can any of us keep up? How do we weed out the truly important from the merely sensational? None of us can do it alone. I've been in media for more than 45 years. I've trained my skills. And yet, even with that, I am glad for the more than 50-year track record of the team here at Point of View.

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[00:22:36] Please give today. Better, sign up and help monthly. Pointofview.net and 1-800-347-5151. Point of View will continue after this. You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:04] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. In studio with me today, Aaron Smith and Merrill Matthews. And let me, if I can, point you to our third article. This one was by Dr. Merrill Matthews. It appeared in The Hill. Medicare for all means Medicare for none. And all I have to do is read the first sentence. You know where we're going to go.

[00:23:30] It may be one of the most deceptive public policy marketing schemes in modern history. For a man, that tends to be a little more obtuse and maybe a little more benign. That, I think, gives us an idea of why you think this is such a disaster. Well, it is. Let me just say, the marketing campaign is actually very good. More and more Democrats are signing on to it.

[00:23:54] And because the marketing campaign is to say, in saying Medicare for all, it implies that the most popular health insurance program in the country, Medicare, which when they do polls, 85, 90 percent of seniors say, I love my Medicare program. What it sounds like is everybody is going to get to be in Medicare. That is wrong. If you are on Medicare or if your parents own Medicare, you can kiss that puppy goodbye.

[00:24:21] Because it will be completely eliminated under Medicare for all. Medicare for all is a government run health care plan in which we will pay higher taxes and the government will essentially take over the health care system. It is not clear yet. Will doctors be government employees or will they, in essence, be contractors? Will hospitals be government employees or government entities or will they be contractors where the government just gives them a set amount of money?

[00:24:47] There is a lot of essentially government run health care plans out there. Most major economies have one like that and they run them somewhat differently. But it would be a government run health care plan in which the government would decide what you can and can't have in the health care system. So if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. And Bernie Sanders isn't even making that case. That won Barack Obama the lie of the year in 2013.

[00:25:17] Let's just talk about all the differences. Medicare really has multiple parts. For, again, some people that are not on Medicare or have never even researched it may not realize how complex that is and how different what Bernie Sanders is talking about. Right. It's not a defense of everything Medicare does because it has a number of problems. Yes. But Medicare historically had Part A, which paid for hospital expenses, Part B, which paid for doctor's expenses.

[00:25:42] They added Part C in 1997, which is now we call Medicare Advantage. And then they added Part D in 2003. That's the prescription drug benefit. Part C, which is Medicare Advantage now, changed in 2003. Fifty-five percent of seniors are in Medicare Advantage. And they really, really like that program. But it is a private sector health insurance program. Sort of like what you'd have from your employer. So it might be UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Aetna, Cigna, one of those plans.

[00:26:12] And you're in a private sector plan. And the federal government just gives the insurance company money, and then you get your health insurance through that plan. So that's become fairly popular. Democrats hate that because they never wanted the private sector involved in Medicare. And because now Medicare Advantage is growing, and I will add it's growing among low-income and inner-city populations because it doesn't cost them as much.

[00:26:38] Many people in traditional Medicare, that's 45 percent right now, will go out and buy a supplemental policy from Blue Cross or UnitedHealth or AARP, something of that nature. They pay a monthly premium for that. If you're in Medicare Advantage, you don't have to do that. So there's a lot of variations to this. But people like their Medicare program, and it would go away under Obamacare.

[00:27:00] Now, the reason Medicare still works and is not as bad as the government-run health care systems in other countries is because the health care system in the U.S. is still largely covered by the private sector. Right. And so what happens is private sector insurers, roughly half of the country, gets their health insurance through an employer, either a worker or a dependent. So some people go out and buy individual policies.

[00:27:28] But those insurance companies pay essentially a higher amount to doctors, to hospitals than Medicare. So they cross-subsidize Medicare. When you get into a government-run health care plan, you don't have that anymore. And so Washington decides, and this is the key point, if you go to a Medicare for All, well, Washington will decide how much money the government will spend on health care.

[00:27:53] And because there's lots of claims on the government for money, from education, welfare, defense, Social Security, all of those things are claims on government money, there's never enough money to go around. And so the government has to make a decision, how much are we going to spend on health care versus education, defense, and other things. And, of course, we have a $2 trillion deficit right now. So there's a lot of pressure on them not to spend anymore.

[00:28:18] And so the result is those people with the most challenging cases, if you have a disease that's relatively small, many people in it, that's not who the politicians care about because the vast majority of people just go to the doctor a few times a year, get a shot, get to see something about the cold or something like that. If you keep them happy, you keep the large majority of people happy, and that's how you make it work in a democracy.

[00:28:45] So the cuts come from people who have the most expensive drugs, most expensive diseases, older people who may need a heart transplant or something like that. Insurance just may not cover it. Yes. Well, Aaron, you know, I'm holding up our little book, or actually our magazine on socialism, and one of the arguments I use, and this is important because a lot of young people your age and younger, saying, well, we like the idea of socialism, we like the idea of Medicare for all.

[00:29:12] And so the question I suggest you ask is, do you like when other people tell you what to do? And they go, no. Well, you're going to like it even less if a bureaucrat who you've never met decides whether or not you can have this particular treatment, whether or not you can have this particular drug where that drug's on the formulary, and all those decisions are being made by someone else, and you're just going to have to live with the consequences. That usually changes their mind pretty quick. That's right.

[00:29:37] That's one of my favorite questions to ask, you know, when I'm talking to my friends about, you know, they're saying that, well, this is a great idea. Like, why would we not want, you know, why would we not want to help people? You know, it's usually, it's some sort of empathetic argument. Like, we write, we should care about people. And so one of the questions I ask is, well, do you think there should be rules? Like, do you think there should be rules about this? Or what if, you know, the rules are not, what if this is the rule? If you think there should be rules?

[00:30:05] And they're like, well, I don't, I don't really want rules. I just want people to be able to do what they want to do. I'm like, okay, well, that's, this is the opposite of people being able to do what they want to do. If you want to do what you want to do, because it's your life, and you want to make decisions about what's best for you or for your family, the answer is not give that power to the government. The answer is keep that, right, keep that to the people to decide. Or even elected officials much closer to you than the massive federal government that's got to answer to everyone.

[00:30:33] So the two systems that people tend to point to is Great Britain system called the National Health Service or Canada. Both of them have single-payer systems. In Great Britain, this is still, I haven't looked lately, but they allow people to opt out. So about 15% of the people opted out and went and bought private insurance and opted out of the system, even though they were paying the taxes for it. In Canada, they didn't allow you to do that. If something was paid for by the Canadian system, which they call Medicare there, you did not have the ability to pay outside the system.

[00:31:03] And I used to carry around, I've been looking for it, a news article said that was from Canada, humans wait in pain and dogs don't. And what happened was at a hospital just outside of Ontario, they had a radiology center. The radiology center was open from 8 to 5. After 5, you could not go as a human. And you couldn't pay to go outside the system. So an enterprising radiologist opened up the radiology system after 5 o'clock.

[00:31:32] And if you had a dog or a cat and you wanted to bring it for a CAT scan, you could pay $300 and you could get it that day. If you were a human, you had to wait weeks and weeks in order to be able to get it. And so they interviewed this guy named Greg Moulton. He said, I've been having head pains for weeks, and I want to go get a CAT scan to see if it's a problem. I can't go because I'm in a waiting list. If I were a dog, I could pay $300 and I could get it today.

[00:31:59] But because you can't pay for something that's covered by the system, you had to wait. And so you had some of these interesting things. And I actually had a New York Times article. I can't find it either. But it's from several years ago where a person who had a brain injury or brain trouble went to a radiologist and a veterinarian radiologist and checked in as a dog named Fido. Put down his name as Fido so he could get the CAT scan and then he could go take it and get it read.

[00:32:28] Well, again, our listeners in Michigan, you have an opportunity to vote for Abdul El-Sayed. And he, of course, is really into this idea of Medicare for all, which is really Medicare for none. I give no hope to our listeners up there in Vermont with Bernie Sanders or even the ones in Massachusetts. But nevertheless, there are some very important facts in this article. And again, if you want to see how bad it is, you just mentioned Canada, but if you go to the National Health Service in the U.K.,

[00:32:57] what a disaster that has become. And so it sounds real good, like Aaron said. You know, if you're compassionate, I want to provide as many opportunities for people, especially that are marginalized people. Well, again, if you've got a cold, you're in good shape. But if you want a heart transplant, you're out of luck. Just so we're clear, the rich, powerful, and well-connected will find a way. It's everybody else who has the problem. That's right. Amazing how many people from Canada come down here to get health care sometimes. That's right. That's another issue.

[00:33:26] Well, we've covered a lot. We'll come back and cover some more, because Dr. Matthews has written about reasons not to be depressed about depression. Fascinating article as well. And we'll talk about that right after this.

[00:33:40] How have we come seemingly so quickly to the place where Marxists and Islamists are reshaping the democratic primaries? In an article for First Things, Shai Goldman provides one explanation.

[00:34:10] He writes of his years attending Columbia University as rabid anti-Semitism was exploding on campus. Mr. Goldman's time at Columbia overlapped with that of Daria Liza Avila-Chevalier, who recently became the Democrats' nominee to represent Upper Manhattan in Congress. She was a leader of the Gaza movement, which spread throughout the student body. Much of the core curriculum at Columbia is taught in small seminars. Mr. Goldman writes, At every seminar, 20 of us would sit around a table, each with the same goal,

[00:34:39] to fool the professor into believing we had read the assigned material. He admits, We would attempt to expound on texts in a manner that appeared profound and reasonable, without revealing that we actually had little to no idea what we were talking about. This often elicited praise for critical thinking. Two years later, Mr. Goldman says, I have come to believe that this game lies at the heart of what has gone wrong at America's top institutions of higher learning. He continues,

[00:35:05] When college seminars reward students for speaking confidently about topics they do not understand, the students learn to become experts at doing just that. And now, they're doing it on a national stage. Daria Liza Avila-Chevalier is calling for the seizure of property from landlords and the abolition of police and prisons. She and other young radicals are winning primaries, based upon promises that sound good to their peers, but are often misinformed and could potentially destroy our economy and system of government.

[00:35:35] In the 90s, parents became concerned that schools were short-changing basics. We were told our children were learning something better, critical thinking. Students and candidates may sound smart, but without serious study of a subject, critical thinking yields misguided and dangerous conclusions. For Point of View, I'm Penna Dexter. You're listening to Point of View,

[00:36:03] your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, let's, if we can, get into another piece by Dr. Merrill Matthews, Reasons Not to Be Depressed About Depression. While we're talking about depression, I think we'll probably bump this to the next hour. I think it's about time to talk about the Lindsay Clancy trial and a couple other issues that we will get into. But first of all, I think it is interesting that the number of Americans you point out, Dr. Matthews, being treated for depression has grown significantly.

[00:36:31] Now, we've known that among the younger generation, but if you look even just over all the different age cohorts, it is something. And so looking for an effective therapy or even just how to manage the disease is really an issue and it's become a bigger issue than ever. And you've got some good news. Yes, I have. And I was surprised, as you mentioned, Kirby, that the Gallup poll says,

[00:36:56] recent Gallup poll, an estimated 48 million Americans end up with depression at some point. And Yale is suggesting that one in five people will have a serious bout of depression at some point in their lives. That's a huge percentage of the population. And so they have, and depression has never been, it's always been a challenge for people because many medications work on almost everybody.

[00:37:24] When you're talking about mental health medications, they will have a fairly low response rate. Just to give you an example, going back when I was on the Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation at Southwestern Medical School, this was the committee that approves all the human experiments that go through there. They were looking at one for depression.

[00:37:47] And this was one where they were going to put somebody on a randomized placebo-controlled pill. And so they were going to have, these were people with severe depression, and they were going to take them off their meds, their current meds, for three months. And possibility of suicide and other major depression. And I raised the question to the principal investigator of this. I said, isn't this a problem? I mean, you have people with major depression who could commit suicide, and you're taking them off. Normally you would do what we call standard of care.

[00:38:16] They would stay on their medicine and compare that to the new one. They said, well, in this, the most effective drug that we have is 50%, and the placebo effect was 35%. Isn't that something? And I said, you mean we're doing this for 15 percentage points? It just struck me as odd at the time. Isn't that sad?

[00:38:38] Yeah, but the placebo effect for mental health is huge, much bigger, probably 20 points, 25 points more than in normal medicine. And so, yes, a lot of medications don't work. And with what they call persistent or resistant depression, they can try two medications. If you fail on two medications and you need to go to the third one, that's resistant depression. And so they're looking at psilocybin, which is a hallucinogenic drug.

[00:39:06] I'm not normally a big fan of these things. I know. But they're looking to see if these things can work to help people in depression. There are several others, drugs along that line that they're looking to see, and there's tests going on, clinical trials and other things. And so I make the case that some of these may actually end up being effective for people if they figure out what is actually working in this, how do we capture it, how do we dispense it, and can we be sure that it's safe and effective. Talk about clinical trials for just a minute.

[00:39:36] People are unaware of the fact that you have to go through these clinical trials. And, again, in some respects, those can be expensive and, as you said, a bit risky sometimes. The clinical trials are going on across the country and all kinds of things. But you usually have to go through a phase one, phase two, and phase three clinical trial. Phase one tries to find out if it's just going to be effective for people. Phase two, they may sort of change the dosage amount to see if that works. And phase three is usually a much larger trial.

[00:40:03] So those go on and it needs to pass all three in order to be FDA approved. So, again, Aaron, one of the reasons we're talking about this is because these kinds of trials and this kind of experimentation is happening in a free market. Just imagine what probably would not happen in a government-controlled set of health care. Right. I mean, do you like going to the DMV is the question. Do you like messing with the government when the government's running some sort of organization?

[00:40:33] Is it efficient? Are they innovating? And that's the beauty of the free market is that there is room for innovation because there's competition. There is – okay, there's this problem that we're seeing more and more people struggle with. There is incentive, and it's monetary incentive. If someone can figure this out, right, if they can figure out these things, a safe way to produce it, a safe way to dispense it, a safe way to monitor people that are taking it to make sure that it's working appropriately,

[00:41:02] there is a market there to make a lot of money. And with a lot of these problems that more and more people suffer with, there grows an incentive. And so, like, the free market is working in itself. And so I think – why mess with – why mess with something that works? You know, one of the things with the drugs that have hallucinogenic properties, they get a stigma with them. Yes. And so people will say – some people will say, oh, man, I've been taking this for years. It helped me.

[00:41:30] And you think, oh, do I really trust that anecdotal evidence? So what they're trying – and you have a lot of pressure for that. But what they're trying to do is to take a lot of these drugs – Yale's doing some of this. Johns Hopkins is doing some of this. And they're trying to see what works in these drugs. Can they be effective? Can we figure out what a right dosing range would be? And can we make sure that they're not going to hurt people? Are they not going to be addictive at some point in the future? And that's where some of the trials are going on.

[00:41:58] Again, as you said, addictive because then they are on them for some time or they are on for life. And so in some respects, back to Aaron's comment, sometimes there's an incredible financial incentive. Of course, we talked about this just the other day when we talked about the transgender issue. I mean, once you have the surgery and everything else and once you have the hormones, you're really there for life. And so in some respects, we see how that profit incentive worked the wrong way in some of the doctors and hospitals,

[00:42:28] hence the study that came out, doctors in a wolf's clothing and things like that. But nevertheless, this would be a real significant boon. And so in some respects, we're involved in clinical studies right now. And with many people, they will need to be on it for life because you can't even hear the story of the person who got off their meds and then the symptoms started coming back. And with mental health issues, it's so often, and I know some people who have done this, who said, I've got this under control.

[00:42:57] I'm doing fine now. And they drop off their meds and within a month or two or three months, they start seeing the issues coming back and they don't realize it's coming back. And then they have to go back on those meds and it gets them under control again. And I've seen that too many times, even in our extended family. So that is certainly the case. Well, we just were talking about depression. But after the break, I thought we'd maybe talk about Lindsay Clancy. We haven't talked about the trial, but of course, we have what looks like a mistrial.

[00:43:26] But if you're not familiar, this is the woman that is admitted to strangling her three young children. And then, of course, the counts before her, three counts of first degree murder, which now may be in a different trial, different. And also the whole question of whether or not she's not guilty by reason of insanity. So we'll talk about that in just a minute. Let me just, before we go to a break, mention that this week we announced that we do have the Point of View Radio Talk Show mobile app.

[00:43:53] And so some of you are saying, well, you've redone the website. Yes, we had to redo the website. So you've got the show materials and you've got all the information on the viewpoints, commentary, and our action items. That was all done so that it can now fit onto your phone. Now, this app has been really significant in that, first of all, you can listen to or watch any one of our daily broadcasts. You can do a search and go back and find that again. There are a way in which you can find our podcasts.

[00:44:20] People forget that we actually have a podcast for this program. We have a podcast which is the, if you will, the highlights of Point of View, which is on Spotify. And then we have the one by Liberty, which is the one on Know Why podcast. My Viewpoints commentaries, including Panadexter's commentary, which we'll talk about before the end here. And then some of the action items are all there. And just the other day when I was trying to just go to Spotify to find something, I had to find my user number, my password.

[00:44:50] And then it wanted me to tell me on the picture how many bicycles were there and how many. And finally I said, it's just easier in our app. So if you've not downloaded our Point of View radio app, just go to the Apple Store or Google Play. And it's another way you can keep in touch with us. We'll be right back.

[00:45:15] Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Those are the words of President Ronald Reagan, a staunch defender against socialism. Sadly, too many Americans have failed to educate this generation about the dangers and failures of socialism. Surveys show that a majority of young Americans hold favorable views of socialism. And here's what's really surprising.

[00:45:44] More than a third of churchgoers prefer socialism to capitalism. How can we prevent freedom's extinction? It's up to patriotic Americans like you, those who believe in the existence of truth, to band together and defend freedom's legacy. Thankfully, there is a team dedicated to doing just that, the truth team. And we have a spot for you. Join us in defending freedom's legacy.

[00:46:14] Learn more by visiting pointofview.net or call 1-800-347-5151. That's pointofview.net and 800-347-5151. Point of View will continue after this.