This is the FCNB podcast network area MASA that we won't with say, then we won't to say, oh we gott it does. No one can take that, Owen. This gonna be okay a press that we won't with pay and then we won't to say, oh we got it does. No one can take that, Owen, don't be okay. Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Just Listen to Yourself. I am Kira Davis, and this is the podcast where we take hot topics, how button issues, and we discuss the talking points on those issues, and we draw those talking points all the way out to their logical conclusion. Today is a j lt Y plus that means that we deviate from the typical format of me just talking to myself and we invite someone else on the show to have some conversations. And today I'm really excited to welcome my good friend Ed Morrissey. He is the managing editor at hot are dot com. He's a published author. He hosts the Ed Morrissey Show, which is the daily podcast, and I have had the privilege of appearing on his podcast a couple of times. He's one of the really truly one of the most interesting people that I've ever met, so I invited him on the show to prove to you how interesting he is. ED, welcome to the show. Well, Kira, thank you, and like, there's no such I feel no pressure now whatsoever to deliver after that introduction. Very kind, thank you so much. Well, yeah, you better bring it. My listeners are only used to the absolute best, obviously. Now I'm probably the most amateur podcaster my listeners have. Well, I just really wanted to talk about some issues that are going on in the culture and going on in the news today. But before we get started, I have a couple of icebreaker questions I'd like to pose to you. If you're ready, I'm ready, all right, Ed, what is the most amazing animal? The most amazing animal? Wow, that's an interesting question, my goodness. There's a lot to choose from, and we can. It doesn't have to be the most but an animal that you look at and you're you're just always completely sort of surprised by. I will say for me, although this doesn't technically qualify as an animal, but you can extend it out to all of the different species, I would say the honey bee. The honey bee. Honeybees I find to be really fascinating, and how they set up their society, their their work production. They can fly really far, like miles and seven to ten miles. They can fly, and they have the incredible honing instincts. So honey bees would be mine. You know, it's a good choice actually because we keep finding out more and more about the bees, and that would that's actually a really good choice, you know. I would have to say for me, it would probably be animals that are in a limited environment, like, for instance, pretty much everything in Australia is weird, right, everything, and it's just strange. I mean, they got they got spiders the size of volkswagons down there, and they're just cool with it. Oh yeah, there's oh yeah, that's that's fine. It's dangerous, it's poisonous, don't worry about it's fine. I can't go with that. I'm sorry, but you know, I guess probably I would say the kangaroo to me is just a really fascinating creature because you look at that and you go, how the heck did that evolve? What evolutionary process produced that? Or was an intelligent design? And if it is intelligence design, that raises other questions like why we thought about this. You're you're so right about the kangaroo. Whenever I see a mama kangaroo with or palatin like that is so weird. I don't know what God was thinking. There's a lot of animals I'm going to ask questions about when I get to God, and one, you know, definitely a lot of the insects, like mosquitos. I'm gonna have some questions about mosquitoes. That's a good one. That's a good one. Kangaroos, they are very odd and you're right, and they probably do belong in a place like Australia. Oh yeah, yeah, you know, because it's it was a it was an isolated environment until really just you know, a moment ago in terms of in terms of you know, world history, you know the history of the Earth, and so you had this sort of isolated evolutionary environment that produced all sorts of weird things. And I keep you know, I'm on Instagram too much these days. Care I'm just on it way too much. And Australians keep putting these these these reels up about their spiders and their snakes and the other things. It's like, yeah, I'm never visiting there. I kind of wanted to go to Australia. They're like, no, no, no, no, Texas is bad enough. I'm good with Texas it is. I do want to visit there as well, but it seems frightening. Australians don't like it when you point that out. They don't like they don't like our fascination with their weird animal kingdom. They find it offensive. But it is weird. Then stop putting on stop putting those things on Instagram. Please, I beg of you stop putting that. Yeah, those wolf spiders are no joke. Okay, one more question. What book besides the Bible? And I'm only excluding the Bible because it's such a hugely influential work. Most people will answer any book question with the Bible. What book had the most significant impact on you? Oh, that's a really good question. Yeah, to choose something and think about, go ahead, and you have to you have to exclude the Bible because it's just too easy to answer everybody to say, oh, the Bible, and it's almost kind of virtue signaling. Oh you know, it's the Bible is the biggest influence on me, despite the fact that I'm a rotten sob and you know, I haven't. I haven't taken one lesson out of it and applied it to my life. But the Bible was the most imploruant, you know, So that's three politicians answer is the Bible. Obviously. It's like I saw you at the hotel bar last night with five prostitutes. For sure. The Bible. Yeah, and they'll and then they'll tell you, well, I was just I was exploring all of the nuances of the Book of Hosea. Yeah. No, I don't think so. The prophet. Yeah, but no, I'm gonna say something weird. Peanuts books. Peanut I like the Christian I learned to read. I learned to read through Peanuts. I was just a voracious reader of the Penix comic strips. And I mean, I my mom used to say, you used to walk around like Charlie Brown. You just when I was a little kid. I just identified with Charlie Brown so much. And that was before I was bald, by the way. I just want to make sure that that brain understands had hair at the time. And yeah, and I think it was really kind of formative. There's a there's you know, even maybe even more than the Bible at that period. Of my life. There's a certain recognition of humility in Peanuts and and in how larger forces are in play, and sometimes it's not always great for you. A lot of prototypical, you know, human interactions take place in this. You know, Linus being the intellectual, Lucy being the bossy, dominant person, Snoopy being the person. You know anthem, you know, anthema poor, you know anthem a porphised or whatever. Anthromorphized can do person can do it all, person right, and the kind of person who you like, but really kind of makes you recognize the fact that you've got limitations. So I would say, if I was to pick the most formative thing that I read, it was probably in my childhood, and it would be definitely the Peanuts books and the comics. If you're asking about my adult life, this is almost going to sound like a Bible saying the Bible, But I would say the Screwtape Letters. And I didn't read it until maybe fifteen years ago for the first time. And if if you want a really good look, a very entertaining look, this is not it's not deep in terms of language, it's very accessible, but it's a great look, very detailed look, very theological, look at spiritual warfare in a very entertaining mode. And I read the book and then I heard John Cleese do the audio version of it, and oh my goodness, if you ever want to hear an audiobook perfectly, perfectly performed by somebody other than the author, you have to find John Cleese doing Screwtape Letters. And it's not easy to do. Some of it's on YouTube, but I actually had to go on eBay and buy it because they don't publish it anymore. I got a four CD set from somebody in the UK. Took three and a half weeks to get there, and I was like waiting for it to arrive. And I don't even know what that feels like anymore. Because I ordered some lotion on Amazon yesterday and it was here by five o'clock. Yeah, you know, I live in Central Texas, where you know, you don't really get next day delivery. It's usually two or three days. So you know, I'm I'm, I am the living embodiment of Carly Simon's anticipation. I figured, you know, that's going to be my theme song from now on. But but yeah, maybe Screwtape Letters would be the most influential book that I've read in terms of, you know, just how life works. Yeah, that's a good one actually, and I've been thinking a lot lately about spiritual warfare as it relates even to politics, and so maybe that's a good one for JLT. Why listeners to go out if you've never read it and you are a person of faith, I don't even think you need to be a Christian, but it helps. Yeah, you you will be really interested in this and there's a lot of relative stuff in there. And if you don't want to read it, take Ed's suggestion and find an audio. I have the audio. It's not John Cleeese, but I had the audio and it's fun. It's really a great performance piece. Actually, it's almost written to be performed. So definitely get that one. I would have to say, if I'm thinking about influential books for me, Helter Skelter was maybe one of the money. Read that when I was thirteen growing up in Los Angeles. Yeah, that was yeah, I know how old I was when I read it, ed eleven, Yeah, yeah, And the only reason I read it was because we've lived in the country. As you know, I grew up in a small island community in Canada, and we lived in the country, so there's no libraries. You had the bookmobile. It will come around every two weeks. Could only check out a limited I can't remember. It's like eight or nine books at a time. And my mother and I were always voracious readers, my mother especially, and you know, use her allotment and then half of mine. And so I would go through my books really pretty quickly. I mean a book a day, especially in the summer when there wasn't much to do, and I would I would go through my books. I'm like, okay, I've got ten days till to the book. My bill come back, and then I would start going through my mother's books. It's how I've I've absorbed, you know, a lot of the classics and just being bored and reading my mom's books. Well, she had Helter Skeltering. And my mom's a hippie, she's a boomer, so that was like a very sign significant event in her cultural zeitgeist. And so that's why she got it. And I read it when I was through my books and had pictures in it, and it was so shocking and stunning and horrifying. I couldn't stop reading. I think it was my first encounter with actual evil but also true crime. And so to this day, I'm a huge I hate say fan, but I really enjoyed the true crime genre, both in books. I used to read all of and rules stuff, for instance, and and on TV. You know, so I got you know, Discovery I D or I D Discovery whatever it's called the True Crime channel, most of which is kind of you know, I want to say, most of it's not very good stuff, but you gotta fill little channel, be very careful. You gotta fill the channel with with with with some stuff, right, So, but a lot of it's really good on I D Discovery And that's where I you know, I ran across Sergeant Joe Kenda and or Lieutenant Joe Kenda scum me Lieutenant Joe Kenda and Homicide Hunter, which is one of my favorite shows, and he's one of my favorite figures, just because I just loved the guy on camera. But yes, same exact thing. It happened to be. My parents had it. It happened to be laying around the house. I picked it up. I think if they'd known that I was reading it, they might have warned to be off of it. But when I was thirteen, it would have been nineteen seventy six, So this is only six years after the murders, right, or seven years. I think it was nineteen sixty nine. With the murders. It was only seven years after the murders, and they were still talking about these guys and still arresting a couple of them. This was not long after Squeaky From had taken a shot at gerald Ford, a couple of years after Squeaky From had tried to assassinate gerald Ford. And yeah, so it was still very much in the news. And yeah, same thing. Fascinating, horrifying, scared the crap out of me. Would read it at night and couldn't fall asleep. Yeah, it was. I mean we lived in the country too, and so I just imagined these people, you know, sneaking around in the dark. Even though I lived on an island. You know, we probably had there was one murder my entire life on that whole island. So but you know, the things that go bump in the night, I'm really fascinated by that stuff. As you know, I love horror, and I am really fascinated by the things that go bump in the night and how we respond to those things. I want to back up, though, because you said a couple of the interesting things in your book discussion A. You said you are addicted to scrolling through Instagram now, which is to the club. And you said your favorite book I'm using air quotes was Peanuts. And I thought it very interesting that you know that you mentioned a cartoon. And of course when I think of Peanuts, I think of the Sunday cartoon or the cartoon in the papers. And uh. And I'm wondering if and there and everything you said about it was valid and exactly right. This is why we we love those books, this is why we love those characters. And I was wondering, you know, we don't have papers anymore. We all have Sunday funnies, we don't have Sunday papers or comics anymore. And I was wondering, do you think that the modern meme has replaced cartoons? Yeah? And you know, to some extent, yes, I think that that's a I think that's an interesting observation to never actually thought about that. But yes, I think to some extent we're using memes and reels on Instagram as our way of having some sort of instant entertainment that is light fluffy. It might or might, you know, in terms of reels, sometimes they're they're they're very serious and sometimes very heartrending. But but yeah, I think that that's I think that fills that space, you know. And I feel bad that the comic strip is probably passing from history. I mean, I know that they're still out there and they're still producing them, but they don't have anywhere near the cultural significance that they did when news when everybody got a newspaper, right and I used to call that, you know, I used to say, I read the intelligent part of the newspaper, the comic strips, and and it really kind of was. I mean, there were there were classic comic strips apart from Peanuts, you know. When I that I got into when I was older. It was a very big fan of the comic strips. You know. Berkeley Breathers, Bloom County, I think was one of the best comic strips of all time. Is very political, but at least in the first few years, it was more or less it would he would target all sorts of different folly in politics, and so it wasn't really it wasn't as partisan as it got later on, and I think he backed off of it when he realized that he was starting to get too strident, and then he kind of left and came back left and came back a little bit. He's still writing them and he puts them up on Twitter now, I think he does, you know. But you know Calvin and Hobbes, you know, all these, all these, I mean, I could come up with a bunch of them. They're all good. Oh, I can't think of the one that you know, Scott Adams and Dilbert. I started reading Gilbert when I started living in cubicle farms, you know, at work, so it was just and I'm an herd, right, so I mean it fit me all sorts of different ways. And then Pearls before Swine is the other one I was thinking of, which is still going on strong today and it's a really good, really good comic strip. Dilbert is still going on. But I don't think that they have the impact or the cultural draft that they used to, just because the platforms on which they exist no longer have that type of cultural strength. And for good reason, the newspapers have pretty much squandered their credibility in that regard, and so people just simply aren't as invested in them as they used to be, nowhere near as invested in it as they used to be. I was thinking as were speaking. You know my friend Bridge you may know her Bridget Fetasy on Twitter. Yeah, she was complaining the other day about how she's complained about gen Z and how they don't know anything about something, And I said, you know, I think about this issue every time I do my New York Times crossword puzzle. I doubt I have the app now, and I pay way too much money for it, But I love the crosswords. That's another thing my mom always did. And whenever I do the crosswords, I feel a little I think about this literally every time. I feel a little sad because I look at the clues and I think there's no way that young people could fill out this puzzle. There's so so many cultural touchstones that need to be common and commonly known and historical to lead a crossword that I just don't think kids have that base of knowledge. And I think that's the way. That's what I was thinking about when you were speaking with cartoons. I don't even know if we could have these political cartoons or these political comic strips, like you said, back in the day, whenever that was at the founding of the country, or even in the seventies when you were reading Helter Skelter, there was a common understanding of what was going on in politics. Maybe everybody didn't know all of the details, but everyone knew something because there was one news program to watch at night, and there were four newspapers to read, and there wasn't all of this dearth of information that has been good and bad in a lot of ways. So we don't even have the common cultural ground to support political cartooning, I think anymore. You know, Kira, I agree with you, but I think the problem is exactly the opposite. Is that back in the day, there was usually was just one newspaper in a metropolitan area. If you're lucky, there were two. I actually when I was when I was a young man and a teenager and a young man, there were actually three in the Los Angeles area that I would access. There was Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and then there was La Weekly, and there were some other publications you know, that were out there but those were the three that you could buy from the you know, from the machines, right, you could put your quarter in or fifty cents in or whatever it was, and pull pull the newspaper out. And I would buy all three and just read them on my lunch break, just put through my lunch breaks when I was working. I think the problem now is is that there are so many different sources of information, and most of them don't have anything to do with newspapers any longer. But there are so many sources of informations that we are what's the name of the that genre of games choose your own adventure. We're choosing our own adventures. So it's very fragmented, and it means that there's not a lot we're we're isolating ourselves from other points of view because we can, because we have that opportunity. We have five hundred channels on cable rather than you know, three network channels and maybe a couple of local channels. Again, growing up in LA, we've had I think four or five different you know, local TV stations plus the three you know, the big three network stations a network affiliates. So in LA we had a greater range of choices than that, but it was still when you went to school in the morning, you were talking about what happened on you know, Three's Company, or what happened on you know, Happy Days or Laverne, And surely because a third of America was watching those things, so we all had a common frame of reference. And I think what's being lost here, and the reason why cartooning doesn't matter as much or doesn't have the same draft is because we don't. We no longer have much of a common frame of reference. Most of our common frame of reference is basically found on social media platforms now where we engage in a public square, but which itself is a choose your own adventure sort of environment too. So yeah, I mean, I don't know necessarily think that that's all bad, because I like the idea of being able to have, you know, a million different sources and choosing the ones that I want to get information from. But there is something lost in that, and I think it's the common frame of reference the common culture. Even if you're not happy with where the common culture is going, at least you're in it, and you know, everybody else has a some sort of stake in it. Do they I'm wondering. This is interesting because we talk about this. When I say we, I mean me. This show is just me. But we talk about this a lot on this show, which is I'm beginning to think that there's touch emission. We don't and because there's so much information, we don't have the common grounds. There are niches of common grounds, but the common experience has disappeared. And I think that's very visible in our line of work, especially when we're debating people from the other side of the logical fence. A lot of times it's like we're in two different worlds. We're not even arguing from the same point of reference here. I often say ed that looking at the information age effects and the consequences of this information age, I suddenly have a new understanding of why God told I mean you donate of that tree of knowledge of good and evil, because we look look at what we do with all the information we have, and pretty much anything you want to know or think you want to know is at the tip of your fingertips. It's it's the push of a button away you type a phrase, you can know anything that you want. We have more information available to us than any group of people at any point in human history, and this is what we do with that type of information. Look at us, We're an utter chaos, We're an utter ruin. Imagine what we would do if we knew everything you know? And that is I think that is I'm looking at at this information age as like, yeah, we're not meant to know everything. We can't, we cannot handle it, and it destroys our common bonds. Did Paul Revere really say the British are coming? And how is George Washington chosen to lead the first American Army. Join us for the Growing Patriot podcast, a place for curious kids to ask the big questions about our nation's history and get kid friendly answers from the country's top experts. Help your child learn about and cherish America's exceptional history. Subscribe to Growing Patriots on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts today. Well, this is this is the story. I mean, you're right, you're landing on the story of Genesis, right, which is that the lesson from Genesis is that human beings are always inclined to want to become their own gods. And it doesn't matter what age you're in, it doesn't matter what, you know, what books you read as a kid, doesn't matter whether or not you read Helter Skelter. So we're off the hook. We're off the hook for doing that. But this is original sin, right, Original sin is disobedience in pursuit of trying to challenge God for his Authority's that's what original sin is, and it's it's it is part of human nature, is part of falling human nature. And we see that play out over and over and over again in politics and every place else. By the way, but you know, that's that's the that's the whole transgender thing, that's you know, uh, trying to believe that you can, you know, remake biology to suit your feelings is a form of trying to play God. Right. The whole Marxist concept is supposed to be a method of perfecting humanity right by stripping it up its materialistic desires. That was the that was I mean, that's an explicit part of Marxism. That the whole New Soviet Man was the idea that you could perfect humanity through a political and economic system, and if you weren't being perfected, you needed to be discarded. Basically, is how that went. Bill little by the way, not to promote somebody else's stuff here, but the series he's doing on the Soviet Union, the early days of the Soviet Union over at the Daily Wire Plus is amazing. I can't wait for the last two episodes to drop. I've watched all six episodes and I can't wait for the next two to drop. Just absolutely amazing stuff. But I mean, behind all of that, what you see is the evil that that unlinashes. And it all comes when God said, don't eat the tree, don't eat the fruit of that tree. I'm telling you, you need to listen to me. You don't want to eat that thing. And they, oh, why don't we want to eat that thing? And the serpent comes up and says, well, it's because you'll become gods if you do. Oh, let's go eat the Let's go eat the apple. That's the that's the impulse for a lot of the evil that's in the world is simply refusing to trust God. And that's the basis of all sin. And I mean, and I'm an expert on this because I send a lot. I'm not coming holier than now a person. So I'm just saying though, but that's that's the pattern, and that's pattern for a lot of the evil that we see in the world. Yeah. Absolutely. I don't know if you've seen this clip running around. I love following Megan Bosham Fashim on Twitter. She's she's, yeah, the Daily Wire religious editor, and so she kind of stays on top of theological Twitter, which is not my jam, but I love seeing the stuff that comes out of it. And she posted this video. I don't know if you've seen it, but I don't know what I'm using the term past or quite lightly. I think a United Methodist or something like that, one of the you know, a modern Rainbow church. But he has a sermon that's gone viral and he's sort of becoming the new the Ebrahm Kendy of of you know, progressive theology, and the sermon is titled what If God Worships Us? And it's actually, I feel like I'm in danger just saying the title of the sermon that I just to see the title. Then I went and watched. I watched the whole thing and was absolutely mortified and worried for my own soul just for hearing the words. But what you've described is what that man really was preaching about what that is? It that is the message of Genesis, of the story of the Garden of Eden, which is humans saying, what if I'm the God here? What if I'm the one that you know has all that? And that is it's deeply flawed, but it's also inherently dangerous. I feel like we live even politically speaking, I feel like we live in a society now, we're our quote into actual betters are telling us you can you can be like God if you just have the right laws around you. And the results are this chaos that we're sitting in. Yeah, and I mean, and it's predictable. One of the one of the reasons why I like the Screwtape Letters is because it talks about this a little bit. And the for those who aren't familiar with the structure of the screwtape letters, the screwtape letters are letters that are being written by a senior demon to a junior tempter. Right, so this is on how to trap your patient as as as it's called to make sure that they're trapped in hell. And he said, we are basically pursuing two contradictory paths. One is that we're trying to convince people that there is no there is no spirituality, there is no you know, there is no true He doesn't use the word magic. I'm trying to remember the word that he uses that C. S. Lewis uses in this context, because magic comes into it later. That everything is is material, there's there is no other alternative. And at the same time, we're trying to promote the idea of you know, magic that enables human beings to to assume their own authority. And we will have reached our our goal when we produce the first materialist magician, which is which is supposed to be a contradiction in terms. It is a contradiction in terms. But but that's that's that's the process, you know, And that's one of the things that you know again, if you it really puts Genesis, the Garden of Eden story in the front of my mind for a lot of our political battles. And it's not that I say everybody needs to be Christian, or everybody needs to be Judeo Christian, or you know, you know, everybody everybody to go to church. I'll say that too, but that's not what I'm let me, let's not let's up there everybody go to church. Everybody go to church at say, yeah, everybody go to church. But beyond that, right go to church, go to church, and beyond that, it's just a recognition. Everybody needs the recognition that they're that they are not the highest power in the universe, that they you know, human beings are are not the creator. There is a creator. You're not it. There's a great line from the movie Rudy, you know with Sean Asten, you know Notre Dames. Definitely, I love that movie. And about halfway through the movie or so, uh, based on a true story, Rudy's sitting in church and he's crying because he's worked really hard and he's over it. I think it's Uh. It's at a city college in South Bend, trying to earn his way into Notreed and he just isn't making it yet, and he's crying. He's sitting in church and the president of Notre Dame, the priest who's the president of Notre Dame, walks in and he's talking to Rudy, and Rudy says, I've been praying, I've been doing this, I've been doing that. You know, what more can I do? And the priest says to him, he says, in thirty five years of being a priest, I've really only learned two things. There is a God and I'm not him. And I mean, and that's such a basic lesson that we keep forgetting, and it's a root of a lot of our misery because a lot of people think, not only are they the god of their own universe, but everybody else needs to recognize them as such. Hence, you know, you must use my pronouns sort of thing I'm picking on the left. There's some of this on the right too. I mean, this is it's a human thing. It's not a left thing. It's a human thing. But I mean the idea that you know, you can pick your own pronouns and that people should use them when you only use pronouns when you're not actually directly addressing a person. I mean, when was the last time that you looked at somebody and said, you know, he, she, they, whatever you are, rather than just say hey, Kira, I don't say hey, she, how's that hanging in her right? It's sort of it's narcissism. It's a narcissism that is at its root part of the original sin. That's in that Garden of Eden story, and whether or not you believe that that's literal or not, it speaks to a very deep truth about human nature, which is that we are inclined to think of ourselves as gods and inclined to impose our reality on others. And both of those things are bad. Yeah, absolutely, And the more I spend time in this indis the more I feel that is the real battle. I mean, people who recognize that they're not in charge of everything and they can't control everything, and people who believe that there is some way to control everything, including human nature, and they just haven't found the right balance. And I think this is why I'm so interested and even on this show that I find my conversations and my topics are continually lately skewing towards the spiritual, just because I'm seeing these connections. Although I'm not in the religious space as far as media is concerned, I do think that these ideas are connected. And one of these ideas is that there are some of us, some of us are more equal, right this Orwellian idea that some of us have have the key, we have the knowledge, we've eaten from that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And we have the knowledge and it's up to us to impart onto everyone else. But the unwashed masses don't necessarily, they don't necessarily have the ability to process knowledge. So we'll process it for them first, We'll contextualize it for them first, and that way we can help everybody know what to believe, which is just another function of I'm your God, and I'm going to tell you what to believe. I was watching a little documentary on Egyptian pharaohs last night and they were talking about how you know, I can't remember. I think it was tutan Common's father who came in and said, you know, I'm not We're changing this from a polytheistic society to mono theistic. And I am the guy, I'm the sun God, I am the guy that everyone will work. The whole point is that is that I am going to set for you what you should believe. That's what we're up against, ed, I feel like we're up against a lot of little gods, and there's just so many of them, it's absolutely overwhelming. Yeah, you're exactly right. That's the problem. That's the problem, you know. And and I'll say something else, too, is I think culture has been sliding this way a long time. And there's something that's been on my mind. It's kind of been tickling my mind for a few years, actually, and I've never really found a great way to express this. I think I've I think I've mentioned it in some other cultural observations. I'll run this by you, is that in Western civilization, formed by the Judeo Christian traditions and scriptures, humility had a cent role in how we all related to each other. Right, and even if you weren't necessarily a believer in Judeo Christian faiths, you were still sort of formed in that sense of recognizing your limitations, recognizing that you know equal, you have equal dignity to me, I have equal dignity to you. Now, there are plenty of examples where we didn't do that, and it was policy, and the state run slavery being the best example in the Western world. But with all of that, the cultural square, if you will, was had at least a sense of humility. And I'll say about forty years ago humility really started exiting, started exiting the arena. I mean, it was Elvis, and Elvis has left the building. Maybe about the same time that Elvis actually left the building, where you know, cultural figures dispensed with humility and engaged in a sort of non ironic agrandization, self aggrandization. You know where I'll put it in the sports terms, because that's where I really recognize it at first, where sportsmanship kind of went out the window and everything was an in your face celebration of you know, really the most mundane things. You scored a touchdown, congratulations. Literally one hundred thousand people before you has done that same thing, but you're jumping up and down like it is the singular achievement of humanity that you managed to, you know, run in from ten yards out. And I don't mean to pick on athletes, you know, the dances and the end zones, the celebrations there, but I mean it kind of reflected I don't even think it started to reflected where society was going, which was that we're done with humility. Now we're just going to talk about how great I am. And you know that leads us to the current republic can banner Carrier And I know that that may take off a few people here, but you know, Joe Biden's no better. I'm just saying that Donald Trump sort of has always been sort of the embodiment of that. Since the nineteen eighties, Donald Trump has made himself He's been this sort of you know, self promotion machine where he's the greatest and everybody else is wrong and I'm the only one that can do this and you know, he's he reflects He's not the cause of this. He's the reflection of what the culture has become pro you know, sort of a pro wrestling culture. It's you know, we can talk about you know, different you know, genres of music and how they contribute to it, but it's you know, gaming, the gaming community. But it really is a cultural thing. We've just cut loose from the idea that humility is how we can all get along by recognizing that we're not you know, we're not the end all and be all of anything. And it just seems like it's that is really kind of one of the roots of the issues that we have culturally right now, is that we've disconnected ourselves from that. That's really interesting actually wrote that down. Humility is how we can all get along better, And as you're speaking, I'm trying to think, Yeah, where would I trace that back to and I realized, you know, my sense of history obviously is quite limited by my present moment. You know, it's hard to reach all the way back the nuances. Yeah, because it is for everybody. Yeah, you're hmm, looks like we had a little bit of an interruption there. Sorry about that. Character, Yeah, we had a little bit. I just took my phone off the internet. It was drawing on the internet. Sorry about that, can hear me? Oh yeah, yeah, no, what You're good now? Yeah? Absolutely, But yeah, I was trying to think about and you know, I guess as a gen xer, I really trace a lot of stuff back to the boomer so though you could probably trace it back further than that. But I think I wonder if maybe you can respond to this. I wonder if there was a time when we could sort of pinpoint our slide away from judaicalues. Humility is it's really a Christian value that was that was really I don't popularize by christ I don't know how to say it. I'm not a theologian, but listen to Christian value humility is, which is born out of the idea that that you're not God, you don't deserve anything, and when you realize how low you are and what you've been rescued from. That does create a natural sense amilody and I don't know where we would trace step back to. I would say that the boomers were the first real me generation, you know, the generation of like, what do I want, what do I need? What's good for me? And that of course leads to a sense a loss of humility. I'm not sure how else to frame that. I don't know you have thoughts on that. No, it's I mean, it's a good observation because I grew up in the nineteen seventies and we were literally called the Me generation. Actually it was really the people who were about ten years older than me, because it was the adults in the nineteen seventies that were called the Me generation. I was a teenager at the end of that. But I think you got to go back farther than that too. I mean, they're the product of their times, right in the times that of their parents, who were probably too indulgent after World War Two, and all they wanted was peace and quiet and didn't want to rock the boat and wanted to just sort of pass, you know, kick the can down the road on some social issues, civil rights being one of those, rather than deal with them right, and so they those things festered until the boomers got to be teenagers, by which point in time, by the way, most of that had been resolved. Right. The Civil Rights Act came out nineteen sixty three, civil the Voting Rights Act was six before, I think, or was the other way around, And so by the time these guys are getting into college, most of this had already been dealt with, at least in terms of legislatively. Obviously culturally that was done A long ways to go. But I think you've got to take this back maybe to World War One, because there was a social order that wasn't always good, right, especially in more feudal imperial societies, there was kind of a social order that provided a meaningful structure by which people could late. And World War One is basically the death of empires. And I have become convinced as we've gone along that we are in a post imperial stage and we have no idea where we're going with it. This is the last century has been a trans The last century since World War One has been a transitional stage. World War II resulted because they screwed up the end of World War One, and they wrote a terrible treaty versus I was a terrible treaty. They wanted to punish people and make them bleed, understandably so, but they left themselves wide open for another World War twenty years later, which is exactly what they got. The United States then became sort of the United States and Russia became the main imperial powers after that. Now you know, China's part of that mix, and we're still in an era of trying to figure out what post imperial, a post imperial world is supposed to look like. And the reason why I bring it back to that is because those empires had a lot to do, relied a lot on religion. First off, a lot of them were to some extent monarchies that had been at least at one point in time founded on the principle of you know, divine grant of power, right they were. You know, the British monarchy still to this day is it just isn't talked about a lot because it's a constitutional monarchy and they mostly are. They're mostly ceremonial. But the king, now, which sounds weird, you know, in my entire life it was queen, so it's always the queen, right, But the king is the seat of divine authority, which is the reason why the King of England is the head of the Church of England. So technically speaking, not even technically speaking, literally speaking, King Charles is the head of the Church in England and is supposed to direct its operations. That too, is mainly ceremonial these days, but it's that those were structured. It was structured around, you know, a faith in God. And I'll say this, I mean Western civilization is Judeo Christian, right, but all religions posit that there's a God who is supreme and divine, and we all are supposed to be, you know, submitting to his authority. Islam is submission, right that Islam teaches that too. They teach a lot of other things, but they teach that, and that's mostly been applied in the East. You know. Buddhism teaches that, I think that we're all basically nothing, that there is a creator where the rest of us are basically nothing. Hinduism is a series of gods that serve one God. You know. It's not the fact that people are departing from Christianity it's that they're departing from the idea of faith itself, and not even faith, they're departing from the idea that there is a creator authority and embracing the idea of basically materialist magic. Right. Oh, we just all popped up out of nowhere, and it doesn't matter because we're all going to go back to nowhere. So whoever can order the you know, the objective reality is God for the day, right, God for a day. That's that's my new that's my new Uh, that's my new show. I'm gonna I'm gonna get that one on some weird, some weird cable channel. Who wants to be God for a day, Well, we'll we'll give you a little scepter and you know ball and you know, like Bruce Almighty, you can screw things up good. So I mean to me, that's that's where this is going, is that it's a loss of faith in a creator God. It's also a loss of faith and institutions. And that has been a century long process as well, for different reasons and in different ways. But you know, the imperial institutions, as problematic as they could be, especially in places like Russia where they believed in, you know, absolute monarchy right up until about six seconds before the nineteen seventeen revolutions. You know, could be very problematic. I mean, the Russian serfs were still slaves basically until the mid nineteenth century, but there was a certain structure to it. And I think that we are still trying to slug our way through that. And I think that the only way that you can really make sense of any of this is that all of these institutions are our way of trying to create a sort of Jacob's ladder to the creator of the universe, however you conceive of him right, And they don't really work because we're not good at this. Did Paul Revere really say the British are coming? And how is George washing? And chosen to leave the First American Army. Join us for the Growing Patriot podcast, a place for curious kids to ask the big questions about our nation's history and get kid friendly answers from the country's top experts. Help your child learn about and cherish America's exceptional history. Subscribe to Growing Patriots on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts today. You know science, for that matter, you know real science. Science, real science started off as a way of comprehending God's creation, because they knew that God created the universe, and therefore it must be orderly in some way. And what did they do. They found the order you know, the the the astronomical you know, what's called celestial mechanics is incredibly precise, very very orderly. And they found this in science. They found this in biological science. And certainly there's variations and you know, ambiguities, but it's incredibly orderly and it's incredibly well planned. And that was what science was was it was a way to find God through his creation. And we've even lost that because now science is basically a way to find ways that we can become gods ourselves by manipulating nature. So you get back to the materialist, magician construct all over again. That's so good. Yeah, that is so true. And I think, just to piggyback on what you've just said, which is great, the idea. You know, we started off this conversation sort of talking about being created and evolving animals. I think the prominence of evolutionary theory, at Western evolutionary theory, Darwinism, and the way that it had itself has evolved over the years. I do believe it's had a tichological impact on Western society because once you start thinking that humans are accidents, right, I mean, you just that just extends through everything. If I'm an accident, that don't have to treat people. You know, there's no moral guide, there's no there's no you know, secret of life. What is the meaning of life? There is no meaning, but all you can extend that out to how we view life itself, how we view babies and coming into the world, and whether or not they have the right to live. They're just accidents, then it's not a moral question. It's not a question of if they have value and have the right to be here. And we can say that about anything really, if everything is accidental, even the very nature of my birth is also I can say that I'm not who I was born as I can change that. And the whole idea of accident versus purpose. Perhaps that's what all of this gets down to, accident versus purpose. And when you remove purpose of any kind, but when you remove purpose from the foundation of your building it it must start to sink. Because purpose is the original driver of humanity. Even to just take it back to take a biblical you know, we don't see Adam and Eves sort of laying around the garden of Eden eating bond buns and doing nothing. They had jobs. They had purpose that you could say, the original purpose was to walk with God and worship God. But also Adam had work. He named the moles, he named the fauna and the plants, and there was purpose there. And perhaps we've bled out this concept of purpose and it's bled into everything else. But I do want to ask you, I do want to ask you this about well, no, I'll hang on to that. I'm gonna ask you that, Dan, Okay, I'm sorry, I do if you would just comment on that though, the idea that there is, we can even extend that politically to what we're seeing left versus right, conservative versus liberal, and the angst in the political space right now that we're not really no one's really sure about what their purpose is. What are we supposed to be doing? What does Supreme court? What does the Supreme representative do? What does your school board do? What do you do as a voter? We are just completely removed from our purpose. And I think that I see the fallout of that all over. Well, I think you're right about that. We're removed from our purpose, you know. And again, every religion sort of has a way of living that is supposed to keep us connected to our purpose, right, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, pretty much every that's the purpose of religion seven the purpose of cults. And that's where it gets really bad. But the reason why I think we get lost is because again we simply don't recognize our own limitations in this. You talk about foundations, the foundation of all of this is just objective reality. Right. Just to get back to the evolution question for just a second, Evolution is a process that is demonstrable in science. If you study for instance, you can see it even better where you have rapid turnovers of procreation and populations. Right, So, especially when you talk about like bacteria, viruses and stuff like that, you can see how evolution works in a very short span of time as opposed to you know, eighty million years. But what evolution doesn't talk about is purpose. What evolution doesn't talk about is a meaning. So you can look at genesis as either you know, textually accurate's not the right word but basically saying that this is the literal. You can take it at it's literal meaning, right, the textual literal meanings say, well, it has to be how it happened. Or you can look at Genesis as an explanation of why we're here, what our nature is, how God tried to lift us up and we rejected him, and the consequences of that, and either one of those is probably valid. If you're reading the Bible, you can read it either way, because evolution in the end really doesn't talk about purpose. It doesn't talk about why we're here, what objective reality is. And when you disconnect evolution from that, then you get eugenics. Then you get oh, I know how we're gonna solve the Down syndrome problem. We're simply going to kill the people who have Down syndrome. And literally Iceland is doing that happy about it. It was congratulating themselves about it like they did, like they've ended down syndrome. They haven't ended down syndrome. They just kill everybody that's got it or that that is in you in in utero that will be born with it, because it's not a disease, it's it's simply a genetic condition, and those genetic conditions are going to continue to happen. It's not that if you eliminate down, the people who have Down syndrome are not the are not the the antecedents of the people who had it before. It is a genetic is a genetic drift. It's a genetic mutation, and you can't cure it. There's no such thing as carrying it, just the same way as with all the other chromosomal conditions. They're conditions, they're not diseases, and you learn and that doesn't mean that there those lives have any less meaning than yours. Does mean that you're gonna you may need to do more work for those people. But those people are have dignity and value and are beautiful people and deserve to be allowed to live. And that's what happens when you disconnect evolution from purpose. Your mistake, people mistake. I almost said you, because I know that you don't actually and I don't want to frame it that way. People think of the mechanics as the purpose, and that's what happens when you think that we're all just accidents. The mechanics are not the purpose. The purpose, the purpose is the purpose. The mechanics are what we have to live, how we live and try to work for the purpose. And the purpose, you know, if you're a Christian, is to spread the news of salvation through Christ. If you're you know, whatever other religions are doing. But the idea is to find a way two have a relationship with God and live the live life so that others can do the same. And yeah, it's not easy, it's hard to even define. But the real trouble here is that people mistaking the mechanics for the purpose. I love that I wrote it down. We're mistaking the mechanics for the purpose. Absolutely. Perhaps another way to say it is, you know, we worship the created, not the creator. We worship the creation, not the creator. But yes, I we're an hour in now ed I we need How do we have a show where me and you just talk all day every day? That's what we do. We need to live in the same place so we can do that. Well, I don't know if I can get out. I don't My passport isn't isn't renewed to get out of California, to get to Texas. I know there's a lot. Texas is very string about us coming your way these days. Yeah, you know there, you know. I'll tell you this really quickly before we go. When I first moved here, there was a sign that was really just right down the street from our house, and I didn't notice it until we'd actually after we bought the house, and it said all its said on the sign. It's all it said is just this one sentence, why did you move to Texas? There was nothing underneath it. No, you know, go to this website whatever. This is all it says, why did you move to Texas? And the message was very clear, you came here to be part of Texas. Don't bring non Texas and try to make Texas into nons I'm taking it, signed down. Love it. It's actually up for about a year asking morful questions. That's perfect. I love it. Well. Before we go, I've got one last question to ask you, and it sort of flies in the face of what we've been tumility and being your own God. But I have a lot of plans for what I will do when America becomes a dictatorship and I am the Empress. I have a lot. So let's just suppose for a moment that tomorrow you are named Emperor of America, you are given full control over what can be done. You can make anything illegal. What's one thing you're going to be illegal when you're the ruler of America? You know, I want to say something stupid, like no more mushrooms on pizza. You know, every pizza, every pizzas shall have pineapple on it. And so nobody will like me. But you know what I mean. Honestly, if I was, if I was, and I I hesitate this Emperor of the United States because that's not what I'd want to be. I'd want to be President of the United States if I was anything. But honestly, the one thing I would change is to get rid of the agency law and tell Congress that if you guys want regulations, then Congress is going to have to pass them. Means you're all going to have to take votes on things that are going to be unpopular. Have fun with that, but that's what's in the constitution. So we're shutting everything else down. DoD stays open, Department of Justice stays open. Maybe I don't know, Department of Homeland Security gets folded into the Department of Defense because that's where it belongs. I rename it the Department of War. So that's what actually is, and then pretty much everything else is like no, federal government doesn't do that unless you want to pass the constitutional amendment that says that federal government has the authority to get into housing and urban development, or you know, I guess you'd have to keep the Department of the Interior because that actually is about federal land. But or you know, Health than Human Services, or especially the Department of Education. Bye, all those things are going to be gone. And when Congress and if Congress wants to regulate the the amount of grass that you can mow on something that's next to a river that actually doesn't go anywhere some you know, swamp, then Congress can pass the law to do that, and Congress can deal with the with the political accountability that comes with it. So I have actually thought about that quite a bit. I don't know why I actually have, and I think I think it's absolutely adorable ed that I gave you the powers of government and you used your powers to just disperse powers to the rest of the people, which is Congress. So you haven't You're still working from a constitutional framework, even though you can do anything. I just think that's a horrible This this is why we need more Ed Morris's in the world. He's like, I'm going to use my ultimate power to put more power in the hands of the actual people, which means getting rid of all of these extraneous departments. I love it because Munser was going to be I would make it illegal to drive in the left lane unless you're passing. But I might do that. One might do that one first. I might do that one first, no mushrooms on pizza, No driving in the left lane unless you're passing, which is actually the law in most states anyway, they just don't enforce it. And then after that it's like that's it. I'm done. This is my one of my was one of my favorite things about Texas when I you know, I took my road to Texas and by the way, Texans are do not care for California license plates. They do, they don't, they don't. They don't like your California car on their roads. But there but in Texas they really do import They have no law and they enforce it. And I'm so used to just being a left lane citter in California because of a because of the traffic you know. I mean, it's just really there's no such thing as real passing lanes, so you're always passing somebody, but people are sit in the left lane. Sometimes you've got to be creative about how you drive. So sometimes I would forget that I'm sitting in the left lane, and people, let you know, in Texas, like, get the hell out of the left lane you're in, by the way, don't just move to the right line. If it's lower than some cars in the right line, right lane, you better get over to that third right lane. And Texas are unforgiving about that. And I really appreciate that about Texas well. They are in they are on the freeways. My pet peeve about my hometown here is that we have one real main drag where most of the retail businesses are at, because I live in a sort of a suburb of a smallish town, and it's two lanes both directions, and everybody who drives slow is in the left lane because they have to look for where the business is at so they can turn left to go into the business. And before they turn left, they slow down to like ten miles an hour and then move over into the divider. And I don't yeous. You never heard me say a curse word. But if you, if you were in the car with me ten minutes, Cara, I could teach you all sorts of new new vocabulary because I curse like a drunken sailor. When people do that in front of me, and my wife is like, do you think that they that that that that that's going to help? It's like, well it helped me, yeah, yeah. And see this one. You would like my America and I think you would thrive in my silent find me up for Cures of America. Okay, great, you heard it here first, folks. So I've got at least one supporting will be in my cabinet. I have other things too that I want to do, but the left lane sitting is a big one. It's been, as usual, wonderful to talk to you. And before we let you go, tell everybody where they can find more of your stuff, more of you online? Sure, thank you. You know, most of my stuff is just at hot air dot com. So if you go to hot air dot com you'll find my stuff there. I do. I do a lot of VIP programs, so you know, Cure was on off the beaten path with me. A couple of times. We've got the Amiable Skeptics with Adam Baldwin, the actor. Adam Baldwin's a friend of mine. I do the Weekend Review with Dwayne, I do VIP gold Chats with Cam Edwards, another friend of cures, and and then I also write. I'm still writing there. I actually do most of the headlines, so if you're reading the headline, Marquee, I have a lot of micro blogging that I do. I call it micro blogging, which is basically throwing in short comments on important stories or just funny stories, just whatever I think is going to entertain you. And uh, and I'm on Twitter at Ed Morrissey two rs, two s's. And I'm on Instagram same thing at Ed Morrissey. But I don't really post things there. I mostly just mostly just I just scroll. I just you know. That's that's that's that's my new that's my new advice. I got to break myself home scrolling doom scrolling, yeah, doom scrolling eve Block at night for you. Yes, it's terrible, it's terrible. Well, I I actually why while I'm thinking of this, let me just say I I you you mentioned your micro blogging, you write the headlines, you just write a couple of thoughts under that, which I love. I think more people should do that actually on their sites. It's very helpful. But I just want to thank you for you're You're one of my biggest fans. You you post stuff that I write. When I was in the town Hall fam working for Red State, that was much easier. But even if I left, I'll know if I have an Ed Morrisy hit because my numbers shoot way up, and I'm always surprised at what you're reading of mine because I just have such a respect for your intellect and and you're situation. So thank you so much for all the support you give my voice. I see it well, thank you. I appreciate that. But I I link it because it's always interesting and always intelligent and uh and I enjoy it a lot. So that's the reason why. That's the reason why you see it over there. So people who are watching I appreciate already know this stuff. I appreciate that, Ed, And if you listeners and viewers want to see more of what I'm writing, you can go find backage. Just cra Davias that substack dot Com it's just not it's only me. It's actually called just here a Davis Like, just listen to yourself, and of course you can follow me on Twitter at real Kia Davis. And of course don't forget to go buy my book until we meet again. Everyone, don't forget every once in a while, just stop and listen to yourself. Opreaders, masodad that we won't with say then we won't to say, oh we gott it does. No one can take that. Owen, this gonna be okay? O Breadsoda that we won't with say then we won't to say, oh we gott it does. No one can take that. Owen, don't bay this, don't be okay. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network, where Real Talk lives visitors online at fcbpodcasts dot com.
