0:00:00 - 0:00:33 I wanted to speak a little bit on this idea of the foundations of our society being removed to, to give this, to give this a gospel backing or to root it in the gospel. I guess I'll start by saying that the value of a promised land comes from the consequences of the laws lived, a promised land is defined 0:00:32 - 0:01:01 by laws, the set of laws that are lived by the people there. The United States is a special place and it was founded on a set of unique principles. But the larger picture of the prosperity of the United States, it's based on more than just the founding principles of the country. It's, it's also based 0:01:00 - 0:01:25 on sort of this, this amalgam of culture. Uh just to be precise, people use culture for, for very, very different reasons than or or use it very different meanings that I'm implying here. So let me just be specific when I say culture, I mean a set of beliefs that someone lives by. Well, I'll skip over 0:01:25 - 0:01:48 specifically delineating how people use that in a much different way than I'm using it here. So what I'm saying is that the culture of the United States is not explicitly limited to the contents of the Constitution, for example, or even the Bill of Rights or um any of the many letters written by the 0:01:48 - 0:00:00 founders defending or arguing, arguing for against these principles. Historically, there was a tendency to try to maintain that culture. And so when there were deviations from it, whether from an individual or a political party or some new idea had come along, that was an alternative to these ideas. 0:00:00 - 0:02:48 There would be attempts made to compare the two to somehow repel the new idea if that was what was merited. But somehow along the way, this process became more subversive and it fell below the radar of almost anyone. Really, the only people that knew about it were the ones who were orchestrating it and 0:02:48 - 0:03:12 the few who were wise enough to see it happening. The situation today is such that these foundations have been removed and really no one has noticed, you know, I've warned about this on several occasions and I know that some people no doubt thought that that was an extreme warning that it was unfounded 0:03:11 - 0:03:39 and ironically right, unfounded without foundation. Um But I think as time goes on, you're seeing more and more examples of this. The most recent perhaps is this set of individuals who've decided to remove Donald Trump from the presidential ballot for 2024. And I see in the news that Maine has the secretary 0:03:38 - 0:04:05 of State of Maine has joined the party along with a few judges from the Colorado Supreme Court and others who are either clamoring for this or who have already done it. Here's, here's the thing, there's two ideas I want to bring up here. One is what happens in a system that's so sensitive to change when 0:04:05 - 0:04:28 just one person does something that's radically different from what's been done in the past. What happens there when the system is complex enough, one person can bring it down completely. And I, I'm not suggesting that that's what's going to happen because of these ballot removals. I'm just saying, here's 0:04:28 - 0:04:52 the general idea. Here's a specific example. Here's why it's super dangerous. Just one person doing something very different can bring down a system that's complex enough. So there's enormous incentive to make a, a system robust to that, to keep a system from becoming so complex that it's susceptible 0:04:51 - 0:05:18 to collapse from one person's actions. Obviously, that's, that's something that is important because there you can roll the dice and bet on the probability of some crazy person coming along, right? Or some downright evil person. So you do things to prevent that. In this case, tremendous effort was, was 0:05:18 - 0:05:44 exerted to have a system of checks and balances on power so that it was, it was very difficult for one person to bring down the system. You'd have to get a concert of people who are all crazy enough to lean in one direction to make it happen. So the other thing, that's the first thing the other thing 0:05:44 - 0:06:19 to talk about here is what is revealed when you see multiple people doing the same extreme thing while not coming together and orchestrating it. So independent people doing the same crazy thing. If just one person, let's say this, this Secretary of State of Maine was the first person to remove Trump 0:06:19 - 0:06:48 from the ballot that would show that were in problem. Number one where a crazy person is doing untold damage to complex system, that would suggest that something has to change there. The fact is that now we have a concert of people that don't know each other who are doing the same thing. That's equally 0:06:48 - 0:07:15 crazy. That suggests that there's a systemic problem, right? If there are four or five or six or 10 people who feel this way, there's a lot more than 10 people. And it's not just because they're judges in a Supreme State Supreme Court or Secretary of State in a state or whatever, Lieutenant Governor 0:07:14 - 0:07:42 of California, there is an ideology who thinks that this is ok and there happened to be millions of people who agree. And so because the idea is destructive enough, if the people who hold it are in positions of sufficient power, everything can go haywire. And here's the thing, crazy people aren't just 0:07:42 - 0:08:07 crazy in one way. So this should give everyone pause. And when I tell you again and again, look, you just don't understand how fragile this all is. This all being, look around you. Do you like climate control? Like, do, do you like air conditioning in your house because you live in Texas? Guess what 0:08:07 - 0:08:26 ? You have no idea how fragile it is. Do you like having fresh food in your fridge in the dead of winter? Guess what? You have no idea how fragile that is. Do you like the, the fact that you can hop in your car and drive 200 miles in any direction that you want to go see someone or do something and you 0:08:26 - 0:08:50 never have to go through a checkpoint. You don't have to bribe anybody. You can just do it. You have no idea how fragile that is. You have no idea how much, all that depends on how much has to stay exactly the same or very close to exactly the same in order for that to go off like it does and you're 0:08:50 - 0:09:17 surrounded by these things in your life and if you were to take out all those things that are super sensitive to change, you would be left with almost nothing. So what this is like is a giant pile of extremely dry wood doused in gasoline and you've got kids lighting matches and throwing it in the direction 0:09:17 - 0:09:41 of the bonfire and most of them, I'm sorry, all of them to date have missed the bonfire and little little fires have popped up on the sides because a little bit, a little tuft of grass caught on fire. If you have a, here's another image for a complex system. If you have a pile of sand and you're just 0:09:41 - 0:10:02 dropping one grain at a time on it, that pile won't really change until it does. And so it'll just, you know, gently, you can, you can see this in your mind, it'll just gently continue the conical shape and it'll grow little by little. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, a third of it will just 0:10:02 - 0:10:27 drop off the side. That grain that you added was no different than all the others. There was nothing you could do to predict that that would cause half or a third of this pile to, to landslide off of the pile. And that's what it's like. And so if you're watching that and you know that this is the case 0:10:27 - 0:10:46 , you're gonna be thinking in your mind, either this is going to make no noticeable change or it's gonna be catastrophic. And I have no way of knowing from grain to grain. Although I can say with certainty that most grains will not cause significant change, I can also say with certainty that eventually 0:10:46 - 0:11:22 one will and that's the situation. Now, another thing I've said is, is that one of these foundations is that is the rule of law and that it's gone, not it's going, it's gone there are only two cases where the law is enforced right now. One is in all the ways that do not impede the agenda. The other is 0:11:22 - 0:11:46 when it needs to be enforced to support the agenda. And if you're wondering the part that's left out here is when the enforcement of the law would not directly support the agenda when they would contradict it or prevent it or impede it. So the people who've been in prison since January 6th without trial 0:11:45 - 0:12:14 , they don't have the rule of law because the agenda needs them in jail without a trial. We don't enforce the constitution in obvious ways that it's broken on a daily basis. But all of a sudden when there's some color of law that can be invoked to keep your political opponent off the ballot. All of the 0:12:14 - 0:12:44 sudden, let's start quoting the constitution while ignoring other parts of it due process. This is how to spot these things from a mile away. Is that that it's, it's contradict, it's self contradictory. Ok. So nothing I'm saying here is, is in favor or against any political party. This you could call 0:12:44 - 0:13:07 it stupidity or evil. It's a mixture of both is everywhere. It's everywhere. But I'm bringing this up to show you to help you understand how awful the situation is. It's already gone. That sand pile is coming down. The question is just which grain is gonna do it. And as I've said before, it's not, it's 0:13:07 - 0:13:29 not one time that the, about a big chunk of the pile is gonna fall off. You're not looking for, what's the grain that's gonna set it all off. It's a collection of things. This is where it's, we're talking about something much more complicated than a pile of sand. And so it's a steady decline with, with 0:13:28 - 0:13:55 sudden drops. That's what it's like. It's, it's a ramp with cliffs plural. So I wanted to bring this to your attention because I know that there are people who read the headlines and they don't necessarily put this together. And it's very important to see if, let me give you this analogy to help bring 0:13:55 - 0:14:22 it home murder. It's illegal. Right. Let's suppose that I called someone a bad name. I said, you're a stinky poo poo head and someone saw that and they really don't like me. And they said, oh, he just murdered that guy. Let's convict him, let's put him in jail, let's charge him with murder. You would 0:14:22 - 0:14:46 hope that the array of people that would have to go along with that, that somewhere in that chain would be at least one person who said, are you stupid? This isn't murder. It's not illegal to call someone a do do head. Right. So even if that person's nuts who accuses you, maybe the, the they call the 0:14:46 - 0:00:00 cops and the cops come and they say, look, why did you call the cops? This isn't murder. This is just someone calling someone a name, you need to go do something else or else, you know, I'm gonna arrest you for harassment. Maybe the cop also hates you. Maybe you're wearing a blue shirt and they say, 0:00:00 - 0:15:28 you know what I hate blue shirts. And so even though I can see that this is absurd, I'm going to arrest you under the pretense that you've committed murder because I don't like you and I've got someone willing to accuse you. And then it goes to the next person and the next person and there's a judge 0:15:27 - 0:15:49 and there's a jury, there's the public, there are all these people who are part of this ecosystem. And if someone doesn't stand up and say, hey, the emperor has no clothes, this is absurd and actually we should punish all the people making the false accusation. You know, as time goes on the law of Moses 0:15:49 - 0:16:11 makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? I remember as a young person, one of the strong arguments constantly trotted out against religion was, oh, the law of Moses, the 10 commandments and the penalties for the law of Moses. They're so draconian. The laws of Moses are so draconian. This is, this is primitive 0:16:10 - 0:16:34 . Why would anybody believe that? And as time goes on, there's just more and more and more evidence supporting that. This is actually not such a bad idea, right? One of the laws stated that if you accuse someone of a crime they did not commit. And that was discovered as part of the trial, you would be 0:16:33 - 0:16:58 guilty of uh sorry, you would receive whatever punishment was prescribed for the crime you accused them of. And I know at least one case where it was suggested that that become a part of our law in recent times by a politician. And you have to look at that and say, hm, that seems extreme, but we are 0:16:57 - 0:17:24 surrounded by at least some of the effects of not having something like that. So maybe that's not so extreme. So the the situation today is that that level of absurdity of using laws that have no that weren't written by people trying to describe this situation. Totally different situations are being 0:17:23 - 0:17:47 used really for political purposes. But to support ideologies instead of the truth, they're, they're supporting ideologies contrary to the truth, not that the ideologies are contrary to the truth, but they're opposing the truth in order to support their ideology. It's like the ends justify the means 0:17:46 - 0:18:18 . But in this case, the means includes total dishonesty and breaking principles left and right. The problem with the principle is that you can't just apply it sometimes to violate it once is to break it forever. That's what a principle is. That's it, it means something we're gonna do all the time. So 0:18:17 - 0:00:00 that, that's not the only meaning, but that's a, that's a very important property of principles. That's why they're so powerful is you look across a range of general things and you say, you know, is there something we can derive that would apply across the board? And then by applying that principle, 0:00:00 - 0:19:02 what we do is we gain power in the situations where we'd be tempted to do something really stupid and be blind to it. So the principle protects you in your blind spots. So then if you trot out to those blind spots and say, yeah, I know. I mean, the principle is important. Freedom of speech is important 0:19:01 - 0:00:00 . But what about the Children? It's always the Children. What about the Children? Consider the Children or he called me a really bad name. So, in this case, I don't think freedom of speech is important. He really doesn't like me and he wishes I was dead. I think freedom of speech doesn't apply here. 0:00:00 - 0:19:40 Well, is it a principle or isn't it principles can't be infringed? They're, they're, what we all agree is going to be the highest priority. And if there's a contradiction to that, then the, the thing that contradicts it is what's going to have to go and that we all agree on that. They're all broken folks 0:19:40 - 0:20:10 , they're all broken and maybe you're not gonna get that until you're the one that's directly affected. And if that's the case, your time will come, we're in big trouble, big trouble. And I don't, I don't say this to scare you. I don't say it to cause you to take upon yourself some radical new behavior 0:20:10 - 0:20:34 . I'm saying it to help you prepare by gaining a willingness to do what you would otherwise not do, not in terms of some extreme thing, but the things that are right in front of you, let me just be super, super, super explicit when I say things like, hey, there's a much higher cost of sending your kids 0:20:34 - 0:20:55 to public school than you realize. You should think about homeschooling and you're like, yeah, that's extreme. You're just, you're a zealot, whatever. Th this is what I'm talking about. The things in your own backyard. You, you could probably do differently and you probably should do them differently 0:20:54 - 0:21:17 as a result of these big old things that are out in the world that are totally jacked up that you're vastly misunderstanding the impact of just the other day. Had a conversation with my kids on this note, one kid in particular who's being really defiant about something kind of shockingly defiant. And 0:21:16 - 0:21:47 I said, look, um how's this gonna work if we're in a life or death situation? And I need to be able to count on you to trust that I know what I'm talking about in a thing that's obviously in my wheelhouse as the dad and you're just gonna go off and directly defy what I'm telling you to do. That's a problem 0:21:46 - 0:22:10 . That's a big problem. And we talked through some situations where that would be a life or death for, for this child or someone else in the family. It's a really big deal. So you should think about when you see these things in the world, you need to understand the magnitude of what's happening, what 0:22:10 - 0:22:31 it shows you, it's out in the open. If you have five people in a nation doing this sort of thing, you can guarantee that there are 5 million people who would be willing to do it, that, that it's not unique. There's no reason to believe that this is unique to someone in a special political office, a particular 0:22:30 - 0:22:55 political office, which would obviously be a smaller set of people. So what, what's the, you know, someone who thinks like this, what are they going to do if they're a policeman responding to some call or something? What are they going to do if they uh your boss at work or your colleague at work? What 0:22:54 - 0:23:20 are they going to do if they're the people you go to church with, what are they going to do if they're the parents of your child's friend and on and on and on? And what you see is this matters and what other things are like this. There's all kinds of other things. So if your, if your kids, public school 0:23:20 - 0:23:42 teacher, for instance, thinks that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, you might say, well, I disagree with that, but that doesn't hurt all the other things that they talk about and I can just diffuse that bomb at home. I can decode them from that. Uh, ok. Do you really think someone could have 0:23:42 - 0:24:07 such an absolutely absurd extreme view on something so fundamentally obvious? And they, they have perfectly normal views on everything else? Do you think that that's the case, if someone thinks that they can unilaterally pull a president of pre presidential candidate who happens to have majority support 0:24:07 - 0:24:39 right now from a ballot unilaterally based on the contents of an amendment to the constitution that precludes insurrectionists from holding office when that person has not been charged, let alone convicted of such in a court of law. What can they do to you? And I, I made this ridiculous example of I'm 0:24:39 - 0:25:10 wearing a blue shirt. Therefore I'm a murderer kind of thing. Well, it's not absurd because the same principle that prevents that from happening is the one that's being openly violated. You have to understand the situation. It's bad, it's bad and it's coming for you. So, what to do about that? Of course 0:25:10 - 0:25:30 , is a different situation, different questions. But I've already said, look to your own backyard, reconcile your life to the magnitude of what's happening. Not, not in terms of like, oh my gosh, I, I better just put on my backpack and run off into the woods or go to Ecuador or something. What I'm saying 0:00:00 - 0:00:33 I wanted to speak a little bit on this idea of the foundations of our society being removed to, to give this, to give this a gospel backing or to root it in the gospel. I guess I'll start by saying that the value of a promised land comes from the consequences of the laws lived, a promised land is defined 0:00:32 - 0:01:01 by laws, the set of laws that are lived by the people there. The United States is a special place and it was founded on a set of unique principles. But the larger picture of the prosperity of the United States, it's based on more than just the founding principles of the country. It's, it's also based 0:01:00 - 0:01:25 on sort of this, this amalgam of culture. Uh just to be precise, people use culture for, for very, very different reasons than or or use it very different meanings that I'm implying here. So let me just be specific when I say culture, I mean a set of beliefs that someone lives by. Well, I'll skip over 0:01:25 - 0:01:48 specifically delineating how people use that in a much different way than I'm using it here. So what I'm saying is that the culture of the United States is not explicitly limited to the contents of the Constitution, for example, or even the Bill of Rights or um any of the many letters written by the 0:01:48 - 0:00:00 founders defending or arguing, arguing for against these principles. Historically, there was a tendency to try to maintain that culture. And so when there were deviations from it, whether from an individual or a political party or some new idea had come along, that was an alternative to these ideas. 0:00:00 - 0:02:48 There would be attempts made to compare the two to somehow repel the new idea if that was what was merited. But somehow along the way, this process became more subversive and it fell below the radar of almost anyone. Really, the only people that knew about it were the ones who were orchestrating it and 0:02:48 - 0:03:12 the few who were wise enough to see it happening. The situation today is such that these foundations have been removed and really no one has noticed, you know, I've warned about this on several occasions and I know that some people no doubt thought that that was an extreme warning that it was unfounded 0:03:11 - 0:03:39 and ironically right, unfounded without foundation. Um But I think as time goes on, you're seeing more and more examples of this. The most recent perhaps is this set of individuals who've decided to remove Donald Trump from the presidential ballot for 2024. And I see in the news that Maine has the secretary 0:03:38 - 0:04:05 of State of Maine has joined the party along with a few judges from the Colorado Supreme Court and others who are either clamoring for this or who have already done it. Here's, here's the thing, there's two ideas I want to bring up here. One is what happens in a system that's so sensitive to change when 0:04:05 - 0:04:28 just one person does something that's radically different from what's been done in the past. What happens there when the system is complex enough, one person can bring it down completely. And I, I'm not suggesting that that's what's going to happen because of these ballot removals. I'm just saying, here's 0:04:28 - 0:04:52 the general idea. Here's a specific example. Here's why it's super dangerous. Just one person doing something very different can bring down a system that's complex enough. So there's enormous incentive to make a, a system robust to that, to keep a system from becoming so complex that it's susceptible 0:04:51 - 0:05:18 to collapse from one person's actions. Obviously, that's, that's something that is important because there you can roll the dice and bet on the probability of some crazy person coming along, right? Or some downright evil person. So you do things to prevent that. In this case, tremendous effort was, was 0:05:18 - 0:05:44 exerted to have a system of checks and balances on power so that it was, it was very difficult for one person to bring down the system. You'd have to get a concert of people who are all crazy enough to lean in one direction to make it happen. So the other thing, that's the first thing the other thing 0:05:44 - 0:06:19 to talk about here is what is revealed when you see multiple people doing the same extreme thing while not coming together and orchestrating it. So independent people doing the same crazy thing. If just one person, let's say this, this Secretary of State of Maine was the first person to remove Trump 0:06:19 - 0:06:48 from the ballot that would show that were in problem. Number one where a crazy person is doing untold damage to complex system, that would suggest that something has to change there. The fact is that now we have a concert of people that don't know each other who are doing the same thing. That's equally 0:06:48 - 0:07:15 crazy. That suggests that there's a systemic problem, right? If there are four or five or six or 10 people who feel this way, there's a lot more than 10 people. And it's not just because they're judges in a Supreme State Supreme Court or Secretary of State in a state or whatever, Lieutenant Governor 0:07:14 - 0:07:42 of California, there is an ideology who thinks that this is ok and there happened to be millions of people who agree. And so because the idea is destructive enough, if the people who hold it are in positions of sufficient power, everything can go haywire. And here's the thing, crazy people aren't just 0:07:42 - 0:08:07 crazy in one way. So this should give everyone pause. And when I tell you again and again, look, you just don't understand how fragile this all is. This all being, look around you. Do you like climate control? Like, do, do you like air conditioning in your house because you live in Texas? Guess what 0:08:07 - 0:08:26 ? You have no idea how fragile it is. Do you like having fresh food in your fridge in the dead of winter? Guess what? You have no idea how fragile that is. Do you like the, the fact that you can hop in your car and drive 200 miles in any direction that you want to go see someone or do something and you 0:08:26 - 0:08:50 never have to go through a checkpoint. You don't have to bribe anybody. You can just do it. You have no idea how fragile that is. You have no idea how much, all that depends on how much has to stay exactly the same or very close to exactly the same in order for that to go off like it does and you're 0:08:50 - 0:09:17 surrounded by these things in your life and if you were to take out all those things that are super sensitive to change, you would be left with almost nothing. So what this is like is a giant pile of extremely dry wood doused in gasoline and you've got kids lighting matches and throwing it in the direction 0:09:17 - 0:09:41 of the bonfire and most of them, I'm sorry, all of them to date have missed the bonfire and little little fires have popped up on the sides because a little bit, a little tuft of grass caught on fire. If you have a, here's another image for a complex system. If you have a pile of sand and you're just 0:09:41 - 0:10:02 dropping one grain at a time on it, that pile won't really change until it does. And so it'll just, you know, gently, you can, you can see this in your mind, it'll just gently continue the conical shape and it'll grow little by little. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere, a third of it will just 0:10:02 - 0:10:27 drop off the side. That grain that you added was no different than all the others. There was nothing you could do to predict that that would cause half or a third of this pile to, to landslide off of the pile. And that's what it's like. And so if you're watching that and you know that this is the case 0:10:27 - 0:10:46 , you're gonna be thinking in your mind, either this is going to make no noticeable change or it's gonna be catastrophic. And I have no way of knowing from grain to grain. Although I can say with certainty that most grains will not cause significant change, I can also say with certainty that eventually 0:10:46 - 0:11:22 one will and that's the situation. Now, another thing I've said is, is that one of these foundations is that is the rule of law and that it's gone, not it's going, it's gone there are only two cases where the law is enforced right now. One is in all the ways that do not impede the agenda. The other is 0:11:22 - 0:11:46 when it needs to be enforced to support the agenda. And if you're wondering the part that's left out here is when the enforcement of the law would not directly support the agenda when they would contradict it or prevent it or impede it. So the people who've been in prison since January 6th without trial 0:11:45 - 0:12:14 , they don't have the rule of law because the agenda needs them in jail without a trial. We don't enforce the constitution in obvious ways that it's broken on a daily basis. But all of a sudden when there's some color of law that can be invoked to keep your political opponent off the ballot. All of the 0:12:14 - 0:12:44 sudden, let's start quoting the constitution while ignoring other parts of it due process. This is how to spot these things from a mile away. Is that that it's, it's contradict, it's self contradictory. Ok. So nothing I'm saying here is, is in favor or against any political party. This you could call 0:12:44 - 0:13:07 it stupidity or evil. It's a mixture of both is everywhere. It's everywhere. But I'm bringing this up to show you to help you understand how awful the situation is. It's already gone. That sand pile is coming down. The question is just which grain is gonna do it. And as I've said before, it's not, it's 0:13:07 - 0:13:29 not one time that the, about a big chunk of the pile is gonna fall off. You're not looking for, what's the grain that's gonna set it all off. It's a collection of things. This is where it's, we're talking about something much more complicated than a pile of sand. And so it's a steady decline with, with 0:13:28 - 0:13:55 sudden drops. That's what it's like. It's, it's a ramp with cliffs plural. So I wanted to bring this to your attention because I know that there are people who read the headlines and they don't necessarily put this together. And it's very important to see if, let me give you this analogy to help bring 0:13:55 - 0:14:22 it home murder. It's illegal. Right. Let's suppose that I called someone a bad name. I said, you're a stinky poo poo head and someone saw that and they really don't like me. And they said, oh, he just murdered that guy. Let's convict him, let's put him in jail, let's charge him with murder. You would 0:14:22 - 0:14:46 hope that the array of people that would have to go along with that, that somewhere in that chain would be at least one person who said, are you stupid? This isn't murder. It's not illegal to call someone a do do head. Right. So even if that person's nuts who accuses you, maybe the, the they call the 0:14:46 - 0:00:00 cops and the cops come and they say, look, why did you call the cops? This isn't murder. This is just someone calling someone a name, you need to go do something else or else, you know, I'm gonna arrest you for harassment. Maybe the cop also hates you. Maybe you're wearing a blue shirt and they say, 0:00:00 - 0:15:28 you know what I hate blue shirts. And so even though I can see that this is absurd, I'm going to arrest you under the pretense that you've committed murder because I don't like you and I've got someone willing to accuse you. And then it goes to the next person and the next person and there's a judge 0:15:27 - 0:15:49 and there's a jury, there's the public, there are all these people who are part of this ecosystem. And if someone doesn't stand up and say, hey, the emperor has no clothes, this is absurd and actually we should punish all the people making the false accusation. You know, as time goes on the law of Moses 0:15:49 - 0:16:11 makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? I remember as a young person, one of the strong arguments constantly trotted out against religion was, oh, the law of Moses, the 10 commandments and the penalties for the law of Moses. They're so draconian. The laws of Moses are so draconian. This is, this is primitive 0:16:10 - 0:16:34 . Why would anybody believe that? And as time goes on, there's just more and more and more evidence supporting that. This is actually not such a bad idea, right? One of the laws stated that if you accuse someone of a crime they did not commit. And that was discovered as part of the trial, you would be 0:16:33 - 0:16:58 guilty of uh sorry, you would receive whatever punishment was prescribed for the crime you accused them of. And I know at least one case where it was suggested that that become a part of our law in recent times by a politician. And you have to look at that and say, hm, that seems extreme, but we are 0:16:57 - 0:17:24 surrounded by at least some of the effects of not having something like that. So maybe that's not so extreme. So the the situation today is that that level of absurdity of using laws that have no that weren't written by people trying to describe this situation. Totally different situations are being 0:17:23 - 0:17:47 used really for political purposes. But to support ideologies instead of the truth, they're, they're supporting ideologies contrary to the truth, not that the ideologies are contrary to the truth, but they're opposing the truth in order to support their ideology. It's like the ends justify the means 0:17:46 - 0:18:18 . But in this case, the means includes total dishonesty and breaking principles left and right. The problem with the principle is that you can't just apply it sometimes to violate it once is to break it forever. That's what a principle is. That's it, it means something we're gonna do all the time. So 0:18:17 - 0:00:00 that, that's not the only meaning, but that's a, that's a very important property of principles. That's why they're so powerful is you look across a range of general things and you say, you know, is there something we can derive that would apply across the board? And then by applying that principle, 0:00:00 - 0:19:02 what we do is we gain power in the situations where we'd be tempted to do something really stupid and be blind to it. So the principle protects you in your blind spots. So then if you trot out to those blind spots and say, yeah, I know. I mean, the principle is important. Freedom of speech is important 0:19:01 - 0:00:00 . But what about the Children? It's always the Children. What about the Children? Consider the Children or he called me a really bad name. So, in this case, I don't think freedom of speech is important. He really doesn't like me and he wishes I was dead. I think freedom of speech doesn't apply here. 0:00:00 - 0:19:40 Well, is it a principle or isn't it principles can't be infringed? They're, they're, what we all agree is going to be the highest priority. And if there's a contradiction to that, then the, the thing that contradicts it is what's going to have to go and that we all agree on that. They're all broken folks 0:19:40 - 0:20:10 , they're all broken and maybe you're not gonna get that until you're the one that's directly affected. And if that's the case, your time will come, we're in big trouble, big trouble. And I don't, I don't say this to scare you. I don't say it to cause you to take upon yourself some radical new behavior 0:20:10 - 0:20:34 . I'm saying it to help you prepare by gaining a willingness to do what you would otherwise not do, not in terms of some extreme thing, but the things that are right in front of you, let me just be super, super, super explicit when I say things like, hey, there's a much higher cost of sending your kids 0:20:34 - 0:20:55 to public school than you realize. You should think about homeschooling and you're like, yeah, that's extreme. You're just, you're a zealot, whatever. Th this is what I'm talking about. The things in your own backyard. You, you could probably do differently and you probably should do them differently 0:20:54 - 0:21:17 as a result of these big old things that are out in the world that are totally jacked up that you're vastly misunderstanding the impact of just the other day. Had a conversation with my kids on this note, one kid in particular who's being really defiant about something kind of shockingly defiant. And 0:21:16 - 0:21:47 I said, look, um how's this gonna work if we're in a life or death situation? And I need to be able to count on you to trust that I know what I'm talking about in a thing that's obviously in my wheelhouse as the dad and you're just gonna go off and directly defy what I'm telling you to do. That's a problem 0:21:46 - 0:22:10 . That's a big problem. And we talked through some situations where that would be a life or death for, for this child or someone else in the family. It's a really big deal. So you should think about when you see these things in the world, you need to understand the magnitude of what's happening, what 0:22:10 - 0:22:31 it shows you, it's out in the open. If you have five people in a nation doing this sort of thing, you can guarantee that there are 5 million people who would be willing to do it, that, that it's not unique. There's no reason to believe that this is unique to someone in a special political office, a particular 0:22:30 - 0:22:55 political office, which would obviously be a smaller set of people. So what, what's the, you know, someone who thinks like this, what are they going to do if they're a policeman responding to some call or something? What are they going to do if they uh your boss at work or your colleague at work? What 0:22:54 - 0:23:20 are they going to do if they're the people you go to church with, what are they going to do if they're the parents of your child's friend and on and on and on? And what you see is this matters and what other things are like this. There's all kinds of other things. So if your, if your kids, public school 0:23:20 - 0:23:42 teacher, for instance, thinks that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, you might say, well, I disagree with that, but that doesn't hurt all the other things that they talk about and I can just diffuse that bomb at home. I can decode them from that. Uh, ok. Do you really think someone could have 0:23:42 - 0:24:07 such an absolutely absurd extreme view on something so fundamentally obvious? And they, they have perfectly normal views on everything else? Do you think that that's the case, if someone thinks that they can unilaterally pull a president of pre presidential candidate who happens to have majority support 0:24:07 - 0:24:39 right now from a ballot unilaterally based on the contents of an amendment to the constitution that precludes insurrectionists from holding office when that person has not been charged, let alone convicted of such in a court of law. What can they do to you? And I, I made this ridiculous example of I'm 0:24:39 - 0:25:10 wearing a blue shirt. Therefore I'm a murderer kind of thing. Well, it's not absurd because the same principle that prevents that from happening is the one that's being openly violated. You have to understand the situation. It's bad, it's bad and it's coming for you. So, what to do about that? Of course 0:25:10 - 0:25:30 , is a different situation, different questions. But I've already said, look to your own backyard, reconcile your life to the magnitude of what's happening. Not, not in terms of like, oh my gosh, I, I better just put on my backpack and run off into the woods or go to Ecuador or something. What I'm saying 0:25:29 - 0:25:53 is look at your daily life and think about bring it down to that level. And how, what are you doing? Are you still living like, it's 1996 because almost all parents are. It's not 1996 people get with it and think about what you need to do differently in your daily life. This is a very big deal.