Ep. 1838 - Make America Pregnant Again

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I got good news and I got bad news.

The good news is that the White House just announced a plan to encourage Americans to have more babies after our birth rate has been below replacement for over 50 years.

The bad news is that part of the plan involves promoting IVF, which listeners to the show will know I and many other people consider intrinsically immoral for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that it causes the destruction and indefinite freezing of countless human beings, it commoditizes human life, and it establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of human life.

Also, it involves guys committing a gravely disordered act in a gross medical room.

This is a family show.

I'm not going to paint too much of a picture here.

We'll just leave it at that.

All of that said, the policy should not come as a surprise.

IVF is extremely popular with the public.

70%, I think, of American adults think IVF is a good thing.

Only 8% know that it's a bad thing.

Also, it's not surprising given that it's a relatively new technology that most people just have not had the opportunity to think through.

Also, the policy clearly comes from a place of good intentions.

Most people think it's pro-life, including President Trump, who campaigned and won on it.

Now, also, also, also, also, there is a silver lining that I've not seen many of the understandably disappointed pro-lifers point out.

Many of us, after the campaign, after this talk of IVF, which is a 70 or 80% issue, many of us were bracing for an IVF insurance mandate that would have forced companies to pay for IVF.

Happily, that part has been shelved.

This policy more or less just seeks to lower the cost of IVF, which, though bad, is basically the least bad way to fulfill the campaign promise.

Most Americans, and even most Republicans, still have not grasped the moral horror of IVF.

They will start to do that soon enough as designer babies saturate the market.

You're already seeing that happen.

In the meantime, though, I want everyone to consider a practical argument.

Put the morality aside for a second.

The practical argument for IVF is that it's going to increase the birth rate.

But there is very little reason to believe that promoting IVF will actually increase the birth rate.

And there's a lot of reason to believe that promoting IVF will lower the birth rate.

Because IVF is not particularly effective.

The likelihood of a live birth after a cycle of IVF for women under 30 is just about 42%.

For women between 40 and 41, it's 11%.

Women 42 to 43, it's 5%.

Women 44 and over, about 2%.

In the meantime, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars per cycle.

And the very existence of IVF as an option gives women a false sense of security that they can postpone having children when in reality, every year they put it off,

the likelihood that they will have children drops lower and lower, whether through IVF or the old-fashioned way.

Even the liberal media have covered this.

The women who say, I'm going to freeze my eggs and then, you know, in 10 years, I'll have a child.

And then, you know, they get the big splashy liberal magazine cover and they say, oh, actually, it didn't work.

And now they don't have kids.

I have said for years at this point that the Trump administration gets it right 99.7% of the time.

Who could ask for more than that?

This man is a mere mortal.

And the heart is in the right place on this one, as the heart is in the right place for the 70% of Americans who support IVF right now.

Some parts of the pronatal policy are great.

We need more babies, and we need more babies in ways that work,

both practically and morally.

I'm Michael Knowles.

This is the Michael Knowles Show.

Welcome back to the show.

I am very excited today to be joined by someone.

I say this without one iota of exaggeration or flattery.

One of my very favorite people in all of politics and media.

We will get to that in one second.

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That would be my friend, Allie Beth Stuckey.

Allie, how are you?

I'm doing well.

How are you, Michael?

I'm doing very well.

So I decided, we're mixing it up today.

Okay.

Generally, I just sort of pontificate, I blab into a camera.

And I said, Friday, you know, casual Friday, I want to maybe, I don't know, bring some friends on or something.

And you just completely obliterated you.

It was an actual masterclass on Jubilee.

We'll get to that clip in a moment.

First, as one of the few people with

very, very precise moral clarity on all sorts of social issues.

What do you make of the IVF announcement?

Yeah, I loved what you said because it was very balanced.

On the one hand, this is a very popular policy.

It doesn't surprise me at all that Trump is in favor of it.

A lot of people around him are probably in favor of it.

But I'm sure he's also got people in his administration, like you and me, who hopefully have the strength to say, look, there are some ethical issues with this.

And I am disappointed in some of the Republicans standing behind President Trump on this, on the congressional side, that I know probably do know better and have heard the ethical and moral arguments when it comes to the sanctity of life.

It's a very inconsistent philosophy.

If you say that a person is a person no matter how small, that all people, no matter their stage of development, deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, we shouldn't murder them.

But that also means that we shouldn't discard them, that we shouldn't freeze them indefinitely, that they shouldn't be eugenically picked out to decide, you know, know, what gender and what characteristics that you want.

It's inconsistent not to hold both of those positions, but it just takes a little bit more intellectual and moral effort to get there.

And that's why you and I exist.

We're trying to get people there.

Yes, totally right.

The chief argument I hear against this from people who I think mean well, not the ones who are just kind of cynically going along, but the ones who I think sincerely mean well is they say, well, look, we don't have enough babies and we want more babies and more babies are always always good.

So, how can you oppose IVF?

Right.

And I heard what you said that statistically, I mean, most of these IVF situations are not actually ending in a live birth.

And what that means is not just a number.

We're not just talking about pregnancies and births.

I mean, when we say that, we are talking about children, living human beings who have died because adults with maybe good intentions have decided that the risk of a person's life is worth them possibly fulfilling their good desire to be parents.

And that's starting out life disordered morally because it's adults who are supposed to make sacrifices for children, not the other way around.

And so, yeah, I understand wanting more babies.

I think there are different ways to incentivize that and to encourage that.

But the IVF industry actually kills more unborn children every year than the abortion industry does.

And so it's just not consistent.

There's also, look, the most provocative kind of answer to this question I found is they say, well, how can it be bad?

You know, if something results in a new baby, then that has to be a good thing.

And the obvious rejoinder that offends a lot of people is, okay, tell me about rape, because rape can result in a new baby.

And I know people who are conceived through rape and, you know, they have a right to life and we love them and they're just as human as anybody else.

Yeah.

That obviously doesn't justify rape.

And they say, how dare you compare IVF to rape?

And I say, well, I guess I am comparing them, but I'm only comparing them in as much as you are making the claim that all ways to produce a child are morally justified and should be legal and promoted.

And I'm just pointing out that rape is a way to create a child.

So obviously, at least in one case, you're saying there's a way to create a child, which is a good thing, but that the way to create the child is not in any way justifiable.

Exactly.

Just because we believe that every child conceived should be born without being murdered doesn't mean that we support every mode of conception.

We also are against sex outside of marriage.

We're against getting pregnant before you get married.

But just as you said, no matter the circumstances surrounding someone's conception, they have a right to life.

We're trying to stop the conception that is disordered and that leads to more brokenness and stripping these unborn children of their rights.

Yeah, that's right.

And just creating a market for baby.

We don't want markets for babies.

Okay, I want to turn to a much more important topic, Allie, J-Lo.

J-Lo just went on Howard Stern's show.

Apparently, Howard Stern still has a show.

I actually thought his show got canceled, but it didn't.

I guess he still has a show.

Me too.

And so J-Lo has been married four times, and she's been engaged reportedly six times.

And she's, you know, she's...

I'm not saying she's an old lady, but she's now a woman of a certain age.

She's been around for a long time.

And she's come to a conclusion about why her relationships haven't worked.

It turns out it's always the other guy's fault.

Do we have it?

No.

No.

And do you think you really have experienced loving someone?

Yes.

You have.

Yeah.

And when you can't get that love back.

What I learned, it's not that I'm not lovable.

It's that they're not capable.

They can't love.

They don't have it in them.

They need to appreciate the little person inside of them.

They need to love them.

Yeah.

You've been in relationships with them.

And they gave me what they had.

Right.

But they gave me all of it every time.

But it's this much.

All the rings, all the things I could ever want.

Right.

Try to give me the houses, the rings, the marriage, all of it.

But they didn't love you.

They didn't.

And didn't know you.

And I didn't love myself.

Is it possible that I'm mistaken?

No, it's the children who must be wrong.

Allie, your take.

Oh my goodness.

There's some trite saying that I see going around on Instagram sometimes, and I can't even remember what it is, but it's something along the lines of it's not that you're too much, it's that they're not enough to handle you or something like that.

And it sounds like that's what she's saying here, that it's, it's not that I'm a narcissist.

It's not that I am a diva.

It's not that I have unrealistic expectations, is that they cannot meet those expectations.

And, you know, if that continues to be her mentality, she will probably die a very lonely and sad woman, which is her prerogative.

But this road to self-fulfillment that so many women are on serving this God of self always leaves in a dead end.

I was listening to a homily not that long ago, probably like a month ago.

I was at the live action summit, speaking of birth and bioethical issues.

And there was a great, great homily from a priest.

And he said, you know, there's this vision of hell.

And in hell, you've got this whole banquet table arrayed before you, delicious foods and good booze and desserts and everything.

But the problem is, you're all sitting there, you and all the damned, and the fork is so big that when you reach down to get your pasta carbonara, you can't get it in your mouth.

And that's the torture that you have for eternity.

And the funny thing about it is that when you go up to heaven, it's the same banquet table and it's actually the same forks.

It's exactly the same.

But the difference is the people in heaven spear the nice cannelloni and then they feed them to the people across from them.

So the forks work just fine.

And the entire distinction, I thought it was a very cute homily, actually pretty profound.

The entire difference between heaven and hell is one of charity.

It's one of, in hell, you're just completely obsessed with the self.

And in heaven, you are caring for others and ultimately, you know,

looking toward God.

And it just seems to me that if I were, I don't know how old Jennifer Lopez is, and Lady Never Tells, but if I had had four marriages and all these failed engagements, I might say,

is there a common denominator here that is not Ben Affleck?

I guess he was two of them, but anyway, there must be some other common denominator, right?

Yeah.

You know, she said at the end there, I don't think she liked it when Howard Stern said, they didn't love you.

I think she was kind of appalled by that.

Like, what, no, they definitely loved me.

She said, no, I didn't love myself.

That's what it always comes down to.

And I've been saying for a long time, you've talked about this too.

We do not have a deficit of self-love in this country.

That is not our problem.

We don't have a self-esteem issue.

And women are told this all the time that you're enough.

You're perfect the way you are.

You're so beautiful.

It's always them.

Cut the toxic people out of your life.

Those people never end up happy.

They end up divorced.

They end up lonely.

They end up destitute in a lot of ways.

And they end up very confused because they've been told this lie that the self can be both the problem and the solution.

That if you're depressed and anxious and lonely, you should go to the same place where your problems are to find the solution.

And that, of course, doesn't work.

You have to go outside of yourself, namely to the creator who made you, to find out who you are and why you matter.

As soon as you step outside of yourself, this is kind of part of the paradox of Christianity, you actually find the satisfaction that you have been looking for.

Maybe Jayla will figure that out before she dies.

I hope so.

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Okay, back to politics, Ali, if you don't mind, because

you've been following the Jay Jones debate, the attorney general candidate in Virginia who wants to murder all of us and our children and like doubled down on it in texts and phone phone calls said, yeah, I'm not joking.

I really, when Republicans have kids, they're breeding fascists.

So they finally had a debate last night.

And he has not lost one Democrat endorsement.

He has,

he might well be the next Attorney General.

Jason Miares, who's the Republican candidate for AG, he took the opportunity to really drive this home.

Here's what he had to say.

Val.

And I find it a little bit stunning that today you say one of the pillars of your public safety platform is protecting children.

Were you protecting Jennifer's children when you said you wanted to see them die in their mother's arms?

How can anybody who's ever worked in any of the crimes against children, all of the areas of federal and state local law department, how can they ever take you seriously, be the top prosecutor, knowing that you view that children should die to advance a political agenda?

It's unconscionable, and if you were truly sorry, you would not be running for this office because you disqualified yourself.

Well said, I'm sure we all agree with it.

The question is: will there be any actual political consequences for it, or are the Dems too far gone?

Well, I think it's yet to be seen.

I mean, certainly, I think if people were going to be denouncing him, if Democrats were going to be trying to cut ties with him, they would have done that in the immediate aftermath.

Now they're playing the strategy of just waiting it out because they understand the news cycle moves fast.

They're going to look for something to distract their people or something that they can convince their people, hey, what they're doing over here is actually worse.

We probably saw that with the

Politico

article about the young Republicans and saying some of the things that they said.

So, I think that that's their play right now.

I think that if they found this morally repugnant, they would have said so from the get-go, but they haven't.

And so, I think that at least shows where their heart and their mind is at this point.

If they're pushed to do anything, like give any kind of consequence, it's certainly not because it's genuine.

um it's you know a cynical power play but i'm not even sure that we're going to get there so there was a poll that came out before the the leaked text messages and it showed that uh jay jones was up he was leading in the race not surprising virginia's pretty democrat after the messages he had dropped about 10 points So there's now, who knows?

The only poll that matters is the poll on election day.

I do wonder, even though the news cycle is going to move on, even though the Democrats are holding firm, trying to keep their heads down,

there there are scandals and there are scandals you know there's like he gets caught you know with i don't know with his arm around a girl at a bar that's one thing or he talks about how he wants republicans children to die in their mother's arms that's that's a little bit different

does this

hit viscerally women does this hit

is this different in kind as i guess i suspect it is or

no i mean you got the democrats basically broadly excusing minimizing or even celebrating political violence, certainly since Charlie was murdered.

Even before that, though.

Is this not as visceral as I suspect it is?

Gosh, well, I think so.

Of course, there are probably some progressive women who are inviting the propaganda.

Well, Republicans want to take this way and do this.

And they basically want your children dead because of what they believe about healthcare and immigration and all of that stuff.

Maybe that works on some women, which is why I think that text needs to be amplified over and over again.

To have this level of cruelty, cruelty, to want to manifest a mom's worst nightmare, their child dying violently, period, but holding their child as they die.

I mean, what a cruel and just dark and disturbed, wicked person you have to be.

And to be in the position of administering justice, especially on behalf of children in the state of Virginia, this person needs to be nowhere near power, but especially a position like this.

Hopefully, even progressive women in that state can say, you know what?

I'm not going to be on board with Republicans, but this is just too far, especially in the wake of Charlie Kirk, when we see that rhetoric like this, that thoughts like this actually do translate to action pretty quickly for some people on the left.

I don't think we should be playing around with this anymore.

And hopefully, hopefully people will be able to sober up to see at least that.

You know, I love the vice president's response when there's the New York Young Republican group chat gate, you know, where it's these like 20-somethings sending spicy memes in a group chat.

And

JD was asked about this and he says oh yeah no i have a lot to say i mean can you believe these kinds of text messages where where someone would call for the murder of his political opponent's children and accuse him of oh no wait that's not the new york young republicans oh no that's the guy who wants to be attorney general of virginia that's totally how i feel about this oh yeah kids sent naughty naughty jokes in a group chat kids you've never heard of even 20 somethings you've never heard of sent naughty jokes in a group chat and spicy memes oh naughty naughty naughty let's get back to talking about jay jones because I don't want to hear about these distractions.

Totally, absolutely.

Now,

speaking of the youths, so there's some good news coming out of religion in America, which was not the case for like 20 or 30 years, but there seems to be a lot of good news.

Specifically, though, I don't, I'm not just talking about the declining Christianity stopping.

I'm not just talking about people going back to church.

That's all awesome.

On the Catholic side of things, we've had liberal priests and prelates, you know, kind of growing and growing for 50 years now.

There is a chart going around social media and coming out of a really great study that shows that if you look at priests by age cohort, so priests ordained before 1975 and then 75 to 79, 80 to 89,

you know, moving forward, you're seeing, I think some of the numbers are actually screwed up a little bit on the chart, but they're moving up to, I think,

1990.

You can see there's very liberal priests, somewhat liberal priests, moderate priests, conservative priests, very conservative priests.

All of the energy consistently for decades is the priests are getting much more conservative, much more orthodox.

You know, we're not talking conservative like Republican or Democrat exactly.

much more orthodox, much more traditional, much more concerned with scriptural fidelity and not trying to innovate.

And the other thing is you got to remember that all of this is lagging by a lot lot because, you know, bishops tend to be a little old, popes tend to be a little old.

So if you're looking at this crystal ball, it just seems like for priests before 1980 and then 1980 to 1999, then 2000 or later, they say, what are the most important things to you?

Climate change and ecology.

All the like boomer priests are all about climate change.

The younger priests, not so much.

Immigration and refugee assistance, yeah, okay, but you see it's the boomers who are really focused on that stuff.

The LGBTQ, all the, but then Eucharistic devotion, it flips.

The boomers don't care.

The young people do.

Access to the traditional Mass, it flips.

And so I don't know.

To me, this is all like really, really good stuff on the Catholic side.

Are you seeing anything like that reflected on the Protestant side?

I don't know about statistics of people going into seminary.

I would love to see that because a lot of the seminaries, unfortunately, have been captured.

A lot of the Bible colleges have been captured over the past 20 to 30 years, at least with woke light professors and scholars and students going in there.

And then, of course, a lot of that accelerated in 2020.

But I am seeing, at least among my cohort, a backlash to that, a willingness to call out the institutions, to call out the seminaries, to call out the theologians that have basically been able to preach this stuff with impunity for years and say, no, no, no, that's not true.

Look at what scripture says.

And I'm encouraged by that.

I certainly see a lot of interest among young people, especially over the past month and a half or so, and just learning what the Bible says and reading the Bible and trying to understand it.

Of course, a lot of people have been talking about the Charlie effect that, okay, what is this faith that this man died for?

If he was willing to sacrifice his life for it, it must be worth looking into.

But honestly, as you know, a lot of that stuff had been building up.

before Charlie's assassination.

There was a lot of interest.

And when I talk to people, and you've had these kind of conversations too, what surprises me is that so many people nowadays who come to the faith, it's not necessarily because of they first encountered Christ or first encountered goodness.

It's because they encountered real evil, either in their own lives or in the world.

They looked into the face of darkness.

They realized there's something spiritual going on and that's scary.

I don't know what all of this is, but I know I don't want to go that direction.

That certainly, I think, is awakening, an awakening that's happening.

Of course, I'm very hopeful that it will have a positive effect on my evangelical cohort over here.

And I'm certainly seeing the rumblings of that, even if I don't have the same statistics about seminaries that you have about the priesthood, which I see as a very good thing, by the way.

And I would love to hear at some point your analysis of.

like why that is.

Does it have anything to do with Vatican II?

I'm so interested to know why it's gone this direction in the Catholic world.

Yeah, I think, you know, the short version of it, though, there's a much longer discussion is

councils take a while to implement for good and for bad.

You know, councils kind of take, it's not, these things don't just like happen overnight.

And there were all these insane reforms that followed the council to like totally upend the mass.

And you had all these like 1970s libs just like screwing up everything.

It was, it was just, it was just awful.

And so then you get this kind of hangover and then reality starts to reassert itself.

And you're seeing that all work out.

And it's the great conservative consolation that like reality comes back, you know, and the gods of the copybook headings come back.

Look at that.

Yeah.

I think that's it.

You know, I mean, I think we're seeing that now play out, especially the young Catholics are, you know, to the right of Genghis Khan and they're like, they, they want the truth.

I'm, I am hearing this from my Protestant friends, not just you, but, you know, Meg Basham had her big, best-selling book on kind of the screwy pastors.

And even in the main church, mainline Protestants, like the Ray Conquista movement, you know, American Reformer has been big behind that.

So it's like something's obviously going on here.

But to your point on the occult, even that, ironically,

I think when people encounter evil, when they encounter real sin, that's undeniable, it's so tangible, it's so manifest, not only does that point people to Christ as

salvation, but I think it points them to a much more orthodox kind of religion.

In my experience,

woke pastors don't really speak that much about spiritual warfare.

They don't really speak that much about

spiritual acts of mercy or the importance of the

not so social justicey things.

It's really easy to be an NGO and say we need to like feed poor people.

It's good to feed poor people.

But when the rubber meets the road and we talk about like devils and stuff,

the kind of woo-woo, happy-clappy people, they don't really want to get into that.

It's the hardcore orthodox, faithful, traditional guys.

They're the ones who are speaking about that

reality.

yeah and i can't speak to why that you know exists in the catholic world because i know social justice has long been like a big thing in the catholic world the social gospel and all of that and we certainly do have that in evangelicalism and one thing that i will tell you is that it's not only that they have a different view of god a different view of man a different view of sin a different view of salvation uh but also a different view of eschatology and what it means to advance the kingdom of god and what a new heaven and a new earth really look like and we won't get into all of that, but they truly believe these kind of so-called social justice Christians that they are manifesting the kingdom of God here on earth and that that will be a political reality in which everyone will have equal outcomes.

And so that is why when you start talking about spiritual warfare and things going on in the heavenly places, the principalities that Ephesians 6 talks about, they roll their eyes because they think that might be a metaphor.

Maybe that's an allegory.

Like that's not something they're interested in.

They are interested in maneuvering politically to gain enough power to, you know, create their multicultural utopia here on earth that they think that they are responsible for.

So yeah, it's deep and really messed up.

And like we said, a lot of it starts, unfortunately, with the capture of the seminaries.

I am reminded of the quote by Richard Niebuhr, who says that modern religion is a God without wrath leading a people without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.

Pretty much sums it up.

Now, I want to get to, speaking of religion, I want to get to the Muslims and the Jews in a second because the students for justice in Palestine are getting bloodthirstier than usual.

And obviously that Gaza War seems to be wrapping up, maybe, sort of, kind of, I don't know.

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The Students for Justice in Palestine, which is one of the pro-Palestine groups on campus, probably the biggest one.

The national organization just posted a poster that says, Long live Salah al-Jabba.

I can't read behind him, and I don't know how to pronounce his name properly, but I don't know.

He's some like jihadi.

And then it says, Death to the occupation, death to collaborators.

Is it fair to say?

I actually don't know who this guy is.

So maybe it's not fair to say he's a jihadi.

I don't know.

I don't know.

He kind of has the look, but maybe not.

Forget about who that guy is.

What about just the

slogan?

Death to the occupation.

Okay, I get so death to Israel, but as students for Justin Palestine say that a lot.

Death to collaborators.

So that means death to the Gazans who are not totally on board with Hamas, I guess, because Hamas right now, after the ceasefire and after the peace deal is kind of underway, Hamas is going door to door and pulling people out, Gazans, and killing them.

because they're accusing them of collaborating with Israel or the West or whatever.

And I don't know.

I have the least popular view on the Israel-Palestine conflict in that I broadly support Israel, but I criticize Israel pretty intensely sometimes.

And

I am sympathetic to the Palestinian people.

My personal interest is really just in the Christian holy sites and the broader cause of justice, but I have no

misconception that we're going to

have a coalition with people we've been fighting for 1400 years.

So anyway, that satisfies no one and offends everybody.

What is the proper Christian view on this kind of statement, on this conflict broadly?

You know, I know there's some Christians who are slavishly pro-Israel, the nation-state of Israel.

There's some Christians who hate the nation-state of Israel.

I don't know.

What are we supposed to think?

Yeah, so I'm not a dispensationalist.

I think some people who aren't as familiar with the different

eschatologies out there assume that everyone who is Protestant, evangelical, everyone who grew up Southern Baptist is dispensationalist.

I know a lot of people who are.

They've got their biblical arguments for that.

And also, Allie, can you explain to me,

I'm not being cute.

I don't really have a good definition of dispensationalism.

Is that

dispensationalism is the one that says the Jews don't need Christ?

Or some people say that's not an accurate description of it's the one where you get beamed up at some point.

Or what is it?

What does it actually mean?

It goes back to John Nelson Darby and the Schofield Bible.

There's so many.

Yeah, there's so many different parts of that.

I did an episode on this to try to kind of explain it to people because it is confusing, but it's the belief in dispensations of grace, seven dispensations of grace that were given by God throughout human history and that we see throughout the Bible.

And there is the belief within that, that God kind of has a separate plan for Israel, that Israel is still God's chosen people, that when we read the Old Testament and when we read the prophecies, that we are still talking about Israel there.

That is that belief in that the church is a different covenant, that the church kind of has a different plan.

Now, I will say to be charitable, that those people still believe that the Jews have to be saved through Christ.

They don't believe that there is no opportunity for them through Christ.

But the reason why sometimes it kind of translates into a lack of evangelism to the Jewish people is because they do believe that there is going to be a separate time in the end times for the Jewish people to specifically hear and accept Christ.

And so, yes, there is a rapture in the part of that.

I mean, we all believe in the second coming of Christ, of course, but they believe that believers will be raptured up before the tribulation.

Tribulation will happen.

Jews will have their time to be able to, you know, be specially evangelized to, and then the believers and Jesus will come back.

That's not what I believe.

That's not the historic view of eschatology.

I mean, we could go on and on

about that.

But I, of course, believe that all of God's chosen people are God's chosen people through christ whether you are a jew whether you are a gentile that is god's covenant god's covenant through the blood of jesus christ um and so i don't even remember exactly what the question what the question is well then it ties it back into because yes there are some people who are dispensational uh because

and

their view of religion leads them to say well we have to support the nation state of israel because the bible tells us to basically and so there are plenty look there i'm i don't mean to you know know, deride these people.

There are plenty of people who have that view.

On the other hand, there are some people who are Christian and say, actually, the Bible tells me I have to just despise the modern nation, state of Israel, or I can't accept it under any terms.

I don't know.

And so, well, I don't know.

What are we supposed to think?

Yeah.

Okay.

So I don't think the Christian has any obligation to support the modern state of Israel.

I don't believe that they have any biblical responsibility to do that.

However, probably like you, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, I think it's a good idea in general.

Like, if we have to pick, which I don't say that people have to pick, you could say, you know, I'm not interested in what goes on in the Middle East.

Okay, I think there's arguments for why America should be somewhat interested in that.

But if I have to pick, if I have to pick between Israel and pick between Hamas, yes, in general, I am going to support Israel in that conflict.

If I have to pick a nation that is run by the Jewish people, that is generally democratic and generally respectful, it seems, of the idea of human rights, the more Western-leaning country in the Middle East versus the barbarians that want to see me dead, then yeah, I'm going to choose Israel.

I think that there's this really weird desire to ally with Islam, like in the Christian right, this belief that, oh, actually, we have more theological commonalities with Islam.

Actually, they have a better view of Jesus than the Jewish people do.

I think that is so completely wrong and depraved.

You actually don't have to pick.

That's kind of like a false choice.

You're just a Christian.

But it's just not true.

This weird idea that somehow Muslims and Christians are going to like ally against the forces of evil.

It's not true.

It's not real.

It's dumb.

So people seem to

politics go, I think it's better to support Israel.

Go ahead.

Yes, going back, you know, people forget that the conflict between Christendom and political Islam didn't start 20 years ago or, even a few hundred years ago or even in the Crusades.

It started in 732, really, and it started in Poitiers, which is 150 miles outside of Paris.

Not outside of Mecca, not outside of Medina, outside of Paris, because Islam was on the move.

And thankfully, Charlemagne's grandpa booted them out.

But they landed in Iberia and they were in Iberia for 800 years.

And I don't know.

There's been a long-term conflict here.

And also to this point,

that Islam takes a more favorable view of Christ.

I think it's worth remembering you know, the kind of distinguishing features of Judaism and Islam vis-a-vis Christianity are that Judaism rejects the resurrection, which is too bad because there's a lot of evidence for the resurrection and people should believe in it because even as an ordinance of reason, but also

they should believe in it.

However, Islam rejects

the crucifixion.

They say they crucified him not.

And I'm reminded, I'm not as good at quoting chapter and verse as my Protestant friends are, but I think it's in the the letter to the Philippians 3.18.

I could be wrong about that, where St.

Paul writes, there are many walking now, and I tell you, even weeping, who are enemies of the cross of Christ, because it occurs to me that Christ conquers death.

He doesn't conquer death actually in the resurrection, though that's a sign that he's conquered death.

He conquers death on the cross.

And so, you know, this kind of Gnostic or heretical view of Christ that you see in Islam, like, okay, I'm happy when people say nice things about my Lord, but

they deny the central axis on which the whole world turns.

You know, that's not uh, not ideal,

no, not ideal.

And

their entire ideology is one that is based on pillaging and destruction.

And everywhere they go, they infest the nation with more violence.

That's just true.

As an ideology, I'm not saying every individual Muslim is violent or in favor of that, but certainly as a religion, as a worldview, it is one of chaos and destruction.

And that is, of course, why their nations are the way they are.

And to your point, this idea that, oh, just Christians and Muslims have been fighting for the past few years, even if we look at American history, at the beginning of American history, there was a fight against the Muslims.

And I'm just very thankful that Christians then believed in a...

muscular Christianity that said, you know, it actually is for love for my neighbor and love for women and children that I'm going to fight against this evil ideology.

We have a very neutered Christianity today that believes that Christ's command to turn the other cheek means that we're not supposed to fight against true oppression.

And that is completely wrong.

And a lot of people have died because of that faulty belief.

Too many pacifists in the church militant, as a great priest friend of mine pointed out.

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I want to get to more murder and destruction, but first my favorite comment yesterday is from Space Dreamer9000 who says, apparently I'm disabled.

Oh, because Katanji Jackson said black people are disabled.

Apparently I'm disabled.

Does that mean I can park in the handicap zone now?

I think you can.

That's good.

When do they get their stickers for their cars?

Okay, Ali, real quick before I let you go.

President Trump is, you know, if you listen to the liberal media, he's sending in the 101st airborne to, you know, conquer American cities.

It's kind of silly because they're American cities.

So obviously the federal government has some interest in this.

No one ever objected on the left when

Eisenhower and Kennedy were sending in the National Guard to desegregate schools.

But now that President Trump is trying to stop the rampant murder in places like Chicago, that's apparently a bridge too far.

Here is what President Trump had to say on crime in Chicago.

I used to watch these cities with the murders.

Chicago recently had one deal where they had 11 murders in one weekend, and they said, well, yeah, yeah but it was a holiday weekend they actually told me that was the reason like it was okay because it was a holiday it was labor day

these people are the worst first of all i love the whole bit you know you know these people let me tell you about these people you know all you all know my doctor dr vinny boombats and then you know he says these people they tell me well it was a holiday you know like come on give us a break we were just celebrating by killing our friends is it i know there's some people on the right who say this is an overreach and this is a threat to federalism and we don't imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and if we we do this now, then when the Democrats take power, they're going to use the government to blah, blah, blah.

You can tell my view of this argument.

Should we be, should we have any trepidation about this?

Is there any legitimate reason to oppose Trump sending in the National Guard to stop the murders and the chaos?

No, I think it's actually exactly what we were talking about, not in the sense of like muscular Christianity per se,

but in a muscular fight against evil.

I mean, this is peace through strength, and you shouldn't have to do this when it comes to domestic violence.

But unfortunately, we do.

Like, do we want to save people's lives or not?

Do we care about the poor kids in the poor neighborhoods who are getting slaughtered or not?

And I wish it didn't come to this.

That's my regret.

My regret isn't that Trump is doing what he can to fight crime.

My regret is that we got to the point where the federal government is looking at once beautiful and safe American cities and saying, well, that's a disaster.

And on behalf of the vulnerable people who live there, I guess we have to do something.

And the people in charge there should be embarrassed.

They should be embarrassed that that is necessary.

And that's why they're reacting the way they are.

They're insecure about their ineptitude when it comes to their leadership.

And I think Trump is looking good.

I know that progressives don't agree with me there, but I love it.

I love it.

I love it.

And even, you know, you talk about Chicago.

It's an American city.

And I think we need our cities to be nice.

I think that's a national understanding of the country.

There's nothing contrary to federalism or the Constitution in that.

I don't even like Chicago.

I do like American cities, even though they're almost all liberal.

I love New York.

I love D.C.

I love Boston to some degree.

I even love Los Angeles, Gomorrah by the Sea.

I do like a lot of these.

I don't like Chicago.

Chicago does nothing for me.

I don't like the casseroles that they call pizzas.

And I don't, it just doesn't do that much for me.

Still, we shouldn't have 11 people getting murdered over a weekend.

We shouldn't have, you know, two people getting murdered every day on average.

It's like, come on, it's a city.

We got to to do it.

Okay.

Uh, before I let you go, also, this time, I promise, I know you're very busy.

But before I let you go, I have to compliment you.

Your performance on Jubilee, on Surround, I've done Jubilee.

A lot of our friends have done Jubilee.

Charlie did Jubilee.

And it can be fun.

Some people have done well.

Some people have not done well.

It's two hours.

And if you screw up even 90 seconds of it, that's the clip that's going to go viral and you're going to, you could lose your career.

So it's a high-pressure environment.

You were magnificent.

You were excellent.

You're just a little taste of it.

Of what I think is toxic empathy.

And this will probably unleash a can of worms, which will be fun.

If I feel so deeply that someone who sits across from me says, you know what, I was assigned male at birth, but I am trapped in the wrong body and I identify as a girl.

I would say that feeling so deeply how that person feels that you get to the point of affirming their identity and saying, yes,

you are the opposite of the Bible says.

The Bible doesn't condemn transgenderism.

Let's get there.

Hang on.

That is an example of what I would say is empathy that has turned toxic because you are affirming something that is not true and is destructive for the individual.

If it's not true, then you're saying that God is not sovereign because He is not.

Of course He is.

He made their body whatever He sovereign in the moment of conception.

Then He also created their body.

Biology is their identity.

Their mind is their identity, their consciousness, because biology is not an individual identity.

That's not a biblical idea.

To separate your identity and your spirit from your body is dualism.

That's more of a kind of a Gnostic idea, not a biblical idea.

We see in Genesis 1, 27 that God created us male and female.

We don't see any other category or a possibility to identify as something other than what you biologically are.

So I would say it is toxically empathetic to feel so deeply how someone feels that you affirm the lie that you can be born in the wrong body.

Be still my beating heart.

It was so good.

You can't pick just one clip.

There's so many others where you're hitting chapter and verse and then political philosophy and anthropology and all cool as a cucumber, totally unflappable.

The reason I bring it up is not just to puff you up, Allie, though it was really, it was marvelous.

I noticed something in the participants, which is, when I did the show, you know, I think I did well.

I think I won the arguments and everything.

But for most of the people there, I did not persuade them.

I maybe 20 years from now, they'll be persuaded, but I don't think I persuaded them in the moment.

I might have persuaded the audience, but not them.

i think

if you just look at their faces you kind of persuaded some of them and i think it was it was so weird about the episode is they not only were you nice and gracious to them they sometimes even were nice and gracious to you is that is there a shift is there an earthquake happening

Yes, and I'm sorry, there's some noise in the background that I can't control right now, but hopefully you can hear me.

Okay.

Yes, it was.

And actually, I don't know why, but Jubilee cut this out.

My first opponent or participant who sat down, this was the day before Charlie's memorial.

And he sat down.

And before we started, he said, I am so sorry about your friend Charlie.

And two or three more participants did the same thing.

And I had already made it my aim to try to out-kindness them.

That was one thing I had been saying.

I was like, I'm going to try to out-compassion them and charm them and all of this stuff.

But truly, they did the same to me.

Not all of them.

Some of them were aggressive and hard to talk to, but more of them were kind and soft and gentle.

And I don't know if everyone just kind of, there was like a little bit of sympathy in the room because they understood that this was the weekend that we were going to go to Charlie's Memorial and that I was friends with Charlie.

I don't know, but the producers even remarked on it after.

They were like, we've never had a jubilee like this.

And maybe it's also because these people identified as Christians.

And so there was something there that they wanted to represent their Christianity well.

Yeah, but I definitely tried to, like my biggest thing that I would say is that I tried to go back to my like strengths every time.

If they tried to veer off the reservation into something that I didn't know about and that happened multiple times, just go back to the claim and where you feel like you can properly defend yourself.

I did wonder if a difference between, you know, I did an episode, it was LGBT activists and yours were liberal Christians.

And liberal Christian is a contradiction in terms because liberalism is an ideology that is in conflict with Christianity.

And so,

you know, sometimes they can kind of uneasily go together.

But the problem for someone like Joe Biden, who would be a liberal Christian, the problem is when the liberalism and the Christianity do come into conflict, like on abortion, say, the liberalism always wins with Joe Biden.

So much so that his administration or administrations he's a part of will like sue nuns and jail pro-lifers and stuff like that.

So they just don't, they don't go together.

But the fact that these people at least identify as Christian, I do wonder if that inclined them a little more toward charity.

Maybe that was it.

I hadn't considered the timing of the filming with Charlie.

The fact that, you know,

I don't know if he would be surprised by it.

You know, he knew that cool stuff was happening.

I remember not to reveal private conversations, but there was one time after the election, I said, yo, Charlie, this is, we were at one of the events.

It's like, this is pretty crazy, man.

You know, we're kind of talking about his role in the party and his influence.

And there, there was a slight acknowledgement of, yeah, it's pretty wild, huh?

You know, it was like, whoa, this is pretty, pretty nuts.

And so,

but I do think even he would have been kind of surprised by the national and even global effects of

his murder.

The fact that he could make the combatants on Jubilee be nice to Allie Beth Stucky.

I don't know that he would have predicted that.

Yeah, you know, I think you're right.

And we had talked a lot about this Jubilee debate before I did it.

And I was just very thankful for the advice that he gave me and i would love to hear his like reaction and response to it now um but you're right i was surprised by that too because i watched your debate i watched all these other debates and especially to charlie people were so hostile to him so many like they

terrible things about you know stupid stuff about his appearance about his family one person said a horrible thing like about his daughter and so that's what i was expecting because liberal christianism you say it's a contradiction in terms i didn't expect the Christianity to change much about the hostility because I've seen what people like that say about me on the internet.

It's no different than the secular progressive, the worst kind of names, the worst kind of threats.

But I was like, I was very pleased.

I felt like most of them were very respectful.

And a lot of liberal Christians just haven't thought about why they believe what they believe.

So I could see their wheels turning too.

And praise God for that.

All we can do is plant seeds and then God does the rest.

So we'll see.

Totally.

There's a great

friend of mine who I've been going to his bakery since I was a kid.

And he's this Italian guy in the Bronx and, you know, kind of born again.

He's like a born again, you know, evangelical Catholic.

He goes to daily mass, but he kind of has the affect of like an evangelical Protestant.

And he wears an I Love Jesus hat.

He goes, hey, buddy boy, I do my best and God does the rest.

That's what I do.

Allie, magnificent is always to see you.

If you're not listening to Relatable, you should be doing that.

It's crazy that you're not.

If you haven't seen Allie on Jubilee, you got to go watch the whole thing.

And just follow her generally everywhere.

Allie, always a delight.

Thank you.

Thank you, Michael.

Okay, folks, would you like a sneak peek preview of my face-off with Mary Morgan?

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You know, I was on Lower Broadway last night.

No.

Yeah, yeah, I was.

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Michael, I am within choking distance.

So Ben Davies has his show, and the show,

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