Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#669 The Practical Side of Ignoring God: ICE as "Gestapo" and School Union Honors Violent Radicals
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Start with an unsettling premise: if law becomes optional and truth becomes personal, justice becomes impossible. That’s the thread we follow with veteran crime investigator Thomas Hampson, who connects the unrest of the 60s–70s to today’s culture wars and explains why this moment feels more chaotic—and more consequential. We move from historical context to the present day: immigration laws that exist but go unenforced, ICE agents smeared as “Gestapo,” and school unions celebrating violent revolutionaries. Along the way we draw a crucial line between doing wrong for gain and choosing harm to erase the good, and why that distinction explains so much of the confusion flooding our institutions.
Visit Tom Hampson's SubStack The CTU Honors a Cop-Killer
Help Young Men! Read Jacks latest Blog on Substack: Act Five: Stepping Up to True Love
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The Bible defines that there's only three kinds of people on earth, and that is good people, evil people, and fools. Those are the three kinds of people, and good people seek to do God's will, evil people seek to thwart God's will, and fools can't tell the difference from one to the other.
SPEAKER_00:I'm excited to be back with my good friend Thomas Hampson. Tom's a crime reporter, crime investigator, was undercover for child sex trafficking, child porn. I mean, you've seen it all, Thomas. You've seen a lot of stuff in your career, didn't you? I have, yes. Thank goodness it's all slowing down. No, it's not. Well, I'm I'm excited to have you on as always. It's always good to see you. I speak so much about the spiritual battle going on, and and uh I always like to be grounded by you. I know that you understand that it's a spiritual battle too, but you're but you investigate real practical stuff. And I think it I think it's so good because when I'm speaking about some things, I sometimes I say, Well, I can't believe this. It can't be true. All this evil can't be true. And then I always look for you to bring me the perspective to say, Yeah, Jack, it's it's it's true. Yeah, well, yeah, so what do you been uh go ahead? I and I was just gonna ask you what you're working on because I always know you're investigating other things and uh one thing after another. So so tell us a little bit about what we what you've been doing lately.
SPEAKER_01:Well, one of the things I'm looking into now is is just what's happening to our country and the division that's going on here that is similar to the division we had back in the sixties and seventies when I first started working for for government. Um you know, during the late sixties I was in the Air Force Intelligence and I was over in in Europe, and at the time they had all these leftist organizations were getting started. Rudy Dutchki and in the Germany, the Bader Meinhof gang, all these organizations were getting started. And here, of course, we had the anti-war activism and the riots here in the United States, and that that continued into the seventies, and today we're we're seeing the same kind of thing, and I I'm looking at similarities, but one of the things I see is uh is a big difference. Back in those days in the sixties and seventies, there was a difference of opinion about whether or not the United States should be or the West, it all of the Western countries should be involved in a war in Vietnam. And that's clearly a political kind of decision. But today uh and it it didn't have to do with any particular laws that were on the books already, but today the big division is is around illegal immigration. It's around um what is a man and what is a woman. These are uh so we have the immigration issue, which is a not uh which is a legal issue. There is there are laws on the books that nobody seems to be trying to change. There's nobody in in power that's trying to change them. Nobody is proposing that they change them, they just say we should ignore them. So basically we should ignore the laws, break the law, we shouldn't prosecute them because they've been they've been oppressed. And so there's a there's that difference that I see uh today is uh almost seems more insane than what was going on in the 60s and 70s.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean there was a look at I was I was the last one of the last guys, uh the last I graduated from high school in 1975. Well, if you graduated in 73, you still signed up for the draft. They weren't really taking guys, uh they were not taking guys, I don't think, after 72. By 74, they didn't take anybody. And by 75, my year, uh, we went to sign up for the draft, and they told us you didn't have to sign up for the draft. Right. And so of course we didn't. And uh but we were not excited about going because by then it had become an you know, like you said, a political issue where we didn't know if that was the right thing to do anymore, you know, and and so there I think there could be good, you know, two sides of that, right? We saw some people say, hey, if communism is allowed to spread, it's gonna keep spreading, blah, blah, blah. So we had some dialogue about that. Today, that communism, that that train of thought, right, atheism has has infiltrated to the point uh in our country, and atheism really to me is just a uh it's not that you don't believe in God. In fact, I think they do believe in God, but they they they don't want to uh they want to throw them out of the culture, right? Out of their lives, out of the culture. Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_01:They're classically what evil is in the Bible, that somebody is working, is um purposely working to thwart the will of God, and that is atheism. It's an effort to counter God's will in on on earth.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great point, Tom. And it's you know, it's just to stay on that for a second, is that yeah, it's taking good out, right? God and Jesus said, you know, only God is good. So to your point, taking God out, taking good out of people's lives. We see this with all the work that we're doing with stolen innocence and and people actually stealing the innocence and obliterating the moral imaginations of children and sex trafficking. Being griefful about it and and actually being enthusiastic about it. And so let's just make this definition for people, because I think it's a good point. You know, you can have bad people out there. I think some of the people that are robbing these mobs that are robbing these stores, these young people, they're bad, they're doing bad things. They they become bad people. But but you can rob, you can lie, you can even kill people and be a bad person, but not really be an evil person. Right. Where an evil person comes in and he does it not not for something, not for a gain, right? So these mobs go in and they'll do bad things to get clothes, to get money, to get drugs, to get all kinds of things. Well, but evil, well, let me just I I'll just say this, Tom, but evil, you're doing it just to take out the good. Right. Well, you have no no no rationale. And I think, and I'll throw this back at you, I think that's why people are struggling and saying that doesn't make rational sense. And if they're evil people doing it, it won't make rational sense.
SPEAKER_01:Well, the Bible defines that there's only three kinds of people on earth, and that is good people, evil people, and fools. Those are the three kinds of people. And good people seek to do God's will, evil people seek to thwart God's will, and fools can't tell a difference from one to the other. They just kind of they just kind of operate on their w whatever whatever motivates them at the moment. And I think the majority of people that we see that are out there doing bad things are people that fall into the clutch category of being a fool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I agree with that.
SPEAKER_01:And so, but there are a number of evil people out there that are actively seeking to do uh everything contrary to God's will. And I think uh look, God's will is for people to recognize that there are there are male and female. So anybody that's out there trying to promote the idea that a male can become a a female, that is an evil person or is so deluded that they they don't know what reality is. Yeah. But the the main thing that we've got going right now is is uh is people who are let's look at the what's happening in in Chicago and Portland. We have all this violence that's going on around the immigration issue. People seem to think that this is a this is a good way to operate, that this is the way that we're supposed to we're supposed to operate. This what's happened is all of the radicals in the 60s and 70s who weren't part of a political party have basically taken over the Democrat Party. Every one of these radicals that was back there in the in the 60s and 70s later became a Democrat. Karen Bass, Vince Ramos Brigade, she was a total communist. Um she's the mayor of of Los Angeles. Bernie Sanders was a activist, anti-war activist during the uh during the sixties and seventies.
SPEAKER_00:And and and and and you could hear him mocking. I mean, they they mock God. I mean you can see getting back to our point, not you know, not to berate it, but but they they they visibly actively mock God in the public square, and you can see that. These are evil. These are evil people. A ALC ALC, I think, has become evil, even if she might have been naive in the beginning, Tom, but she's making her own decisions now, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'm not sure. I I can't really the ones that that promote the idea of being anti-God, those are the ones that are definitely the evil ones that you can identify as being evil. Most of them, I think, still fall into the category of being a fool. But the the concern that I have is I'm not sure how to deal with it. In in uh the sixties and seventies, we could address these these disdivision in a political way. You could you could uh compromise with people like with the anti-war movement decreased once the war they decided to pull out of Vietnam, which I think was a mistake, but really what really triggered it was they stopped drafting people. Now once they, you know, once somebody wasn't concerned about being drafted, they lost interest in in being a being concentrated for the most of it.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Yeah. That's and that's another great point. You know, that's how bad, when bad things, right? Again, whether you agree or disagree, whether bad things happen, that's how they usually do happen. They either get exhausted. Right. You either agree, you know, or or you just it just falls by the wayside that another issue comes up. But evil people that we're talking about now, like uh like the Bernie Sanders of the world, the Pritzkers of the world, those people are going to just do rebellion after rebellion, just for rebellion's sake, right? Take out, always taking out the good. And you know, Tom, it doesn't matter to them whether it's a gender, whether it's the border, whether it's climate. You see vaccines, whatever it is, whatever they're gonna do, 1619 projects in the schools, and you say, Well, why are they doing all these things? How are they connected? They're connected because they all are going after the good, all creating division among people, right? For power, money, control, all those things.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and that's really one of the things that the even back in the 50s that the Communist Party was trying to you know to foment chaos within the United States and create division and pr and foment division um, you know, throughout the country in every every sphere. And and we see that going on now. It's d in in uh in uh 2020 when they had the riots after the lockdown, they had the riots over George Floyd's death. Black Lives Matters wound up getting tens of millions of dollars of donations from major corporations, which I don't know, they they lost their minds supporting an organization like that. Today, what was it? I just did I just did an article uh uh about the Chicago Teachers Union honoring Asada Shakur, who who just died.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, let's talk to talk uh uh break that open for our audience a little bit, will you?
SPEAKER_01:Well Asada Shakur was her real name, her original name was Joanne Chessamard, and she was a member of the Black Liberation Army, and she and several other members were stopped by by a New Jersey highway patrol, and they got in a gun battle and they killed this one patrolman Forrester, and she was convicted, sentenced to prison. The Black Liberation Army broke her out of prison, fled, and she wound up going to Cuba and getting protected by a Castro in Cuba. So she lived a protected life in Cuba for her whole life. And she's been one of these people that the left has revered as somebody who was a freedom fighter and somebody that was interested in in promoting uh the rights of people.
SPEAKER_00:What what what was she interested in? I mean, what did she stand for? In other words, did she have some kind of a cause, Tom, that you can remember? Well, because I don't remember what what her what their actual stance was.
SPEAKER_01:Just to take down the government or yeah, the Black Liberation Army was uh a spin-off of the Black Panthers, and they they were a radical spin-off of the Black Panthers. They were kind of like the Black the Simonese Liberation Army was even more radical. So they had a bunch of these radical groups that were they were running around back in the sixties and seventies, and they were um they were working to overthrow the government and take power, you know. And one of the things that the Black Panthers said, all power comes from the barrel of a gun. And so that they were looking for an armed revolution against the United States. And they supported their cause by doing bank robberies and and other kinds of other kinds of crimes, and that's one of the reasons why this group was running around armed, because they were uh they were they were doing bad things.
SPEAKER_00:Who gave them Tom? Who gave them an award? I think that's what brought it up, right? Somebody was awarding them the Chicago the Chicago Teachers Reunion honored them in a in a post on X.
SPEAKER_01:Wait, pause on that for a second.
SPEAKER_00:The Chicago Teachers Union. Right. I mean, what what do they have? I mean, for anybody, first of all, honoring somebody that murders uh uh you know uh another person, you know, you have to be very careful about their cause, huh? Before you start to honor somebody like that. Not that you can't kill people in self-defense, etc., etc., but that's not the case here. But the Chicago Teachers Union, what what was their motive, Tom, for doing something like that?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the Chicago Teachers Union is a communist organization. It did it started off uh it was uh uh local one of the Chicago Teachers Union was taken over by a radical group of of teachers who were openly communist, and so they took it over several years ago and they run it from they still run it right now. That's one of the reasons why, because they control it. Um the 1619 Project is part of the standard curricula in um in Chicago public schools, which is a a rag of a of a history. Totally wrong.
SPEAKER_00:It's it's and just again for people that don't know, the 1619 Project, in essence, says that the United States is systemically racist. Not that there weren't racists, we understand that, right? We understand that there is racism, and it still goes on today. But to say that our country is systemically racist, what they say is you can't do anything about it. If you're white, a white national, you're a white nationalist, uh Christian, you are systemically racist, which is really bad because it's going to cause division, and there's nothing you can do except a violent extremist taking you out.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, because what they what they say is that we were founded for a nefarious purpose, therefore, there's nothing good about our founding principles or documents, so it has to be completely wiped out and started, and we have to restart from scratch, from the from the foundation. We have to build ourselves back up from the foundation and uh I mean even the foundation has to be completely rooted out and and changed.
SPEAKER_00:Which, which, which which, which, Tom, again, I'm I'm assuming some of our audience don't realize this, but that's what Marxists do. It's always a new revolution. They never get to their utopia. They never have, they never will. But history has proven this, don't they? They they're always looking for the next revolution. Right.
SPEAKER_01:So the my concern, the thing I'm looking at now, is even uh even the the whole issue of left and right and people, these ICE agents are being referred to on X, on Facebook by politicians as being Nazis, stormtroopers, Gestapo. Well, this this makes their life their their career and their and their um their work even more dangerous than it already is. You have to wonder, they are out there trying to catch people who have already broken U.S. laws. And I'm not talking just about breaking the law of coming in here illegally. They're actively seeking people who have been been convicted of crimes in the United States, crimes even as much as murder, or who had had committed murder in the in the country that they came from and they were allowed in mistakenly, and they're trying to get them off our streets to save Americans from being victimized by these criminals, the Trend Aragua people, the MS-13 people.
SPEAKER_00:Tom, it's chaos. You know, there's chaos in these inner cities that it's the amount of violence is is uh amazing, you know, that these people have to live with every day.
SPEAKER_01:Stop and think what this means is that we have an entire political party in this country that is supporting the protection of criminals from our law enforcement. And they're they're inciting the citizenry to resist our own law enforcement agents. And it just I'm not sure how we get out of that. I'm not and I I just don't even know how to approach it because there's no reasoning with people.
SPEAKER_00:And and you know, uh the point is, and the same thing I think about all the time, is that if when you have enough citizenry, right? Enough citizens in a state like Illinois, Chicago, who don't uh have morals and virtues and values, in other words, cannot tell the difference between right and wrong, then you're in trouble. And that's why, Tom, you we can't figure out a solution, because the solution would be to change the government. The solution would be to get those people out. But you can't do that when the citizens won't stand up, not only won't stand up against it, but too many of them are complicit in this and and are there for the handouts. And here's another Marxist uh socialist ideology and part of what they do, part of their their whole plan, they get enough people on food stamps, enough people used to getting some handouts, and they'll just keep going along for those peanuts. It's really something how we'll put a little carrot out there and people will do we'll choose the carrot versus choosing the right or the good, like we were talking about.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Nate that that's a good example is the is the benefits that these people get too. One of the issues that they brought up that you know the shutdown right now, they're saying, well, this is over health care. The one side says they don't want to allow illegal aliens to have health care, and the Republicans say that it's uh that's ridiculous. They're trying to allow illegal aliens to have health care, and the contention is that they're not getting health care. Well, that's that is absolutely false. There is a law, there's a federal law, and every state has a similar law, that if you show up at a at an emergency room in a hospital, they have to provide treatment to you. Well, where are all these illegal aliens going to get health care? They're going to the emergency rooms, they're jamming the emergency rooms all over in hospitals all over the country, and somebody is paying for that. Well, who do you think's paying for it? They're not paying for it. Um, so that that's that's jacking up the health care costs of everybody. Just the idea of wanting to keep them here, trying to keep them here is going to increase the health costs, and yet they're resisting getting rid of them so we can lower the health care costs for everybody.
SPEAKER_00:And and again, when you think about this, there are some innocent people that got wrapped up, these immigrants. Right. They weren't all criminals, obviously. They they came here for they heard there was a dream, right? The American dream was alive and well when when the Biden administration opened that border, they knew what was going to happen, that these people would flood in, right? With the idea that that their life was going to be better. You can't blame some of them for that. So we're in this predicament, but it was intentional because they knew we would get to this point, and they thought they would just overwhelm the system, and there's nothing we can do about it. And their plan was blown by this crazy guy called Donald Trump, who talk about violence, was almost assassinated twice. You know, Charlie Kirk stood up against this stuff, and he was assassinated. You know, I remember John Paul II, uh, you know, when he was only Pope for a couple years, pushing back against the evil of his day, which were communists. He was a big anti-communist person, of course. Yeah, and uh and against abortion and all those types of things, right? And you know, he made it you know very clear that we have to take care of, we're you know, we have to take care of the poor and all those kind times of things. What happened though, Tom, is the socialists came in, they take all the money from the middle class, and they you're forced to pay them taxes, not voluntary anymore, but forced to pay them taxes. They want to dole that out, and then they can control this populace. And when they when you get when you talk about your ICE agents, those immigrants now that came in that didn't commit crimes, at least so far, they say to them, these ICE agents are after you, and they are the Nazis, like you said, and the Gestapo coming in. And those people don't know, and so that's what they hear, you know. So so when you say how are we gonna get out of this, it's a conundrum for sure.
SPEAKER_01:Well, because there's people are not people in power are not telling the truth. I heard Winsom Sears um in the news this morning, who in in Virginia saying Is she gonna run for governor? Yeah, she is running for governor. Yeah, and she is good. Oh, yeah, really good. She's going against that Spanberger who's a leftist. But Winsom Sears says that the Democrat Party is is inciting violence in order to win power. That's exactly what's happening. Um and it's we're all suffering for it, but the other thing, it isn't the violence that I'm most concerned about. It's the division that we're creating in our country that I'm most concerned about. Because I don't see any way out of the division. We live in a post-truth world where where truth is viewed as something that doesn't exist. That it's your truth or my truth or his truth, that there's uh there's a whole universe of truths out there that you can never come to an agreement on what one truth is.
SPEAKER_00:No, but there is a truth.
SPEAKER_01:There is one truth.
SPEAKER_00:And this is if you can't even get people to agree on that, then there's no need to debate because where you debate Fulton Sheen and John Paul II, and I'm Catholic, right? So I study their histories, they both warned about this, and they said that that that the problem they're gonna have in the West, the Western world, France, Germany, Italy, the United States, then is that the the decline of the morality of its people will not be able to defend against that evil that comes in. So when they see the evil, to your point, since there is no God, we're atheists. That's this abyss that we're we're swirling around in.
SPEAKER_01:Well, even you know, here in the United States, the Barna did a study here that of those people who call themselves Christian, less than 9% of them actually hold a Christian worldview. They call themselves a Christian, but they don't believe in what the Bible says. They modify the Bible to accommodate what they want. Well, this is not a Christian.
SPEAKER_00:It's very interesting, isn't it? Because I you and I speak to these people and they say, Well, I believe in God. And I say, Okay, well, what does that mean to you, to your point? What does that mean to you? Well, I believe in Jesus Christ. I said, Satan believes in Jesus Christ. He's seen them. It's not enough to believe in God, right? Right. You have to live it. You have to practice it. And to your point, we're not practicing. I see it in the Catholic Church all the time.
SPEAKER_01:It isn't just they have to know what to practice. People don't even know what it is that they're supposed to practice. And so they think there are Christians. I had an argument with one of them that they think that it's perfectly okay to, you know, for these uh for violence against ICE agents because they're they're they're Nazis. Well, wait a minute, you're a Christian.
SPEAKER_00:Um it's it's the same it's often the same people that are Catholic or Christians for abortion. And so look at the violence there. If you don't know the difference between a violence of taking the life of a child, you're not gonna know the difference of taking a life of an ice agent. Right. I mean, you know, it it's all blurred. This is the this is what we're in right now. It's it's a very exciting time to be alive, but you better uh get down on your knees and open yourself up to the truth because otherwise uh you know the good news is, Tom, here's the good news in all this. If you do stand up for the truth, it's a win-win situation because you might be able to do some good. And at the end, it's about eternal salvation. And so, you know, we win that's eternal salvation. We try to do a little good in the world and and it's over in a blink of an eye, my friend, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm not so worried about myself. I know I know where I'm going, and I'm just I'd be just as happy to go any at any time. But what I am concerned about is what we're leaving the people behind us, and we're and we're not leaving them a very in a very good situation. There's there's still so much work that needs to be done. I feel at a loss sometimes even what to write, what to say at or at uh the Stolen Innocence presentations in order to not just inform people but to try to motivate them to get involved, to to engage, to I've written several articles about uh criticizing the church because the the pastors just don't take a uh a uh activist approach to facilitating what the to facilitate what the Bible tells us to do and to be and to change the world. We we have a motto at our church uh love God, love people, change the world. Well, you know, that sounds real good, but what are you doing to change the world? Or you're not doing anything.
SPEAKER_00:That was my point about when I said a win-win. Right. In order to win that eternal salvation, I have to be winning souls for Jesus Christ. In order to win souls for Jesus Christ, I have to be out in the public square proclaiming there's a there's a saying.
SPEAKER_01:It's more than evangelism. See, this is the thing that the the modern church has become focused on evangelism as the way to as our our primary goal. But our goal isn't social justice, it's justice. We're supposed to help bring about justice in this world, and we're not doing it. We're not actively involved in Yeah, so that's a great point.
SPEAKER_00:So you want to unpack that just a little bit for people again, because I think that is a confusing term. You hear the word social justice and you think, okay, well, we got to take care of the poor, we got to take care of the homeless, we have to take care of the, you know, say the mental illness in the world. And that's all true. But to your point, that is not enough. That that we have to bring justice in the world. Our country, our country, Tom, has to be a just country. Otherwise, to your point, it's injust to our children, to our grandchildren, and all the other people that are young growing up in this world that deserve a place to live. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Well, uh social justice, very simply, is is uh is focused on achieving equity. That's not that is not biblical justice. Biblical justice is right and wrong as God defines right and wrong. And we're supposed to be his partners in bringing about justice on earth. Not social justice, but justice. And we're not doing it. I I've told I I even wrote in in uh one of my articles very uh bluntly that if we had the same pastors today that in 1776 that we have today, we would still be under the British Empire. Because these pastors today are so weak they won't even go out and challenge abortion. They won't challenge the issue of what's a man and what's a woman. They they just want to be totally passive on social issues that are going on, our cultural issues. I'm not talking about equity things, I'm talking about cultural issues, about sex education in schools, where are they on uh you know, they wanna even uh marriage, where are they on the marriage issue?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And and again, if somebody's new joining us, you know, there's a difference between you know equality and equity. Right, yes, right? We're we're all created equal, meaning, you know, we came into the world and uh and we have the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. But that doesn't mean I'm supposed to be rich just because you're rich, because that's exactly how the Marxists do it, right? If we can get enough people jealous, jealous of the rich, then you start to create divisions. Jesus was very clear on this. He said, if your treasure is on earth, then that's all you're gonna get. Your treasure better be in heaven. And and you know, he was poor and uh a lot he didn't try to make the people around him rich, did he?
SPEAKER_01:No, and and social justice is is the creation of Marxists. That it wasn't a creation, it was not a biblical creation, it is a creation of Marxists. And because that's that from each according to their needs to each according to their or from each according to their ability to each according to their needs is is what Marx's philosophy is. So But that's by force. That's not by it's not by being generous. God wants us all to be generous. Generous to you know to be open with our funds, help people that are in needs, but it has to be voluntary or it's meaningless.
SPEAKER_00:And and Tom, that's exactly what we're supposed to do because when I give money, I'm supposed to do it voluntarily, and then I'm supposed to, you know, it's it's it's very gratifying when you build up your communities, when you build up the poor, or you know, when you see the poor around you, when the government takes that money, you know, there's only a small percentage of it. You know, here I'll give you an example. So we we have you know the Vincent DePaul Society in our church, like they do in most churches. We collect money, and 99.6%, I think, in our parish, or 99.3%, something like that, goes to poor people. They're all volunteers to do it. Uh, there's really no administration except for the bookkeeping, right? We have to keep our records and stuff. So there's a little bit of money that goes out. But it's just they come in, they make an announcement at the pulpit, and they just say, hey, we'll be in the back of church. Here's here's what we did last year, here's the people in our community we're trying to help. That's that's good stuff. But when I give that money to the government, when I pay my property taxes, Tom, to the Chicago, you know, if I'm at Cook County paying at the Chicago public schools so they can, you know, fund all of their programs, that's involuntary, and we're actually hurting the people we're supposed to be helping. And then the the last thing I'll just say again, when when the government takes that money, they set up network after network after network, and I've and and you know, I lose track of how much actually gets to the poor, but it's a very small percent that actually gets to the people that need it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and I I love the quote, uh I use the quote quite often from Eric Hoffer, that every great cause be starts as a movement, becomes a business, and degenerates into a racket. And you can apply that to the church, you can apply that to every charity that's out there, you can apply that just to the idea of child protection. Child protection in this country today is a racket. There are as many hucksters in the area of child protection as there are in this whole all the race baiters out there, all of the race hustlers that are selling, you know, Ibrahim Kindi and all these other people trying to say that the white people are the oppressors and you know they can't be anything but so.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and getting back to that, you know, now you remind me when you say that, getting back to that 1619 project, yeah, they do not teach that it was the same Christians in Great Britain and United States that took down slavery. Yeah. And so, yeah, there was a little time, there was a progression, but it was they don't say it was those white Christian guys that fought the Civil War. You know, six hundred thousand died in that war. Many, many, many of them, most of them were white, young white guys. Right. Uh, and on the Union side, they fought for what? To liberate, you know, the black people and keep the union together. So, you know, they don't tell you about that.
SPEAKER_01:I saw a YouTube thing by a black guy over in Africa, and he says, you know, that it wasn't it wasn't white people that created slavery. He says white people got into it pretty late, actually.
SPEAKER_00:That's right.
SPEAKER_01:And uh he says, but it was white people that stopped it, or at least tried to. It's still active today. And it's still active today. There's not white people involved in the in the trade today. There's every other thing.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if people realize there's more slavery today than there ever was in the hi in in history. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know. And when you add in the sex uh trafficking and all those things that happened right here in the United States when we opened the border, we were adding to that slavery, and they're right here in the United States. Young people, right, children and women being sex trafficked.
SPEAKER_01:It isn't it isn't just uh you know, there's there's they estimate that it's over 300,000 of these unaccompanied minors got into the uh into the were trafficked, wound up being either labor or child or or sex trafficked. And uh they found some of them down at a in a um uh marijuana grow place down in California. They they uh w rounded up a bunch of illegals down there and and ten of them were were children who had been forced to work on in this marijuana farm.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And you know what? I I had a guy on, JJ Kurrell was on, he testified in in front of Congress, he wrote a book on this, and nobody has ever come back against him with this. There are what they what he called child hunters, and child hunters are he was in the military, just as you were. Child hunters are are former military guys in essence that that go in and really hunt down these these kids, look for these kids and and try to get them out of uh sex trafficking. And they described it, Tom, the sickness. Now, so that's one thing to work in a marijuana plant, that's bad enough, right? I mean, these poor kids. But but would they say when you go down into a basement of a home or or a facility where there's sex trafficking these kids, three, four, five, six, seven years old, he said it's the most despicable thing you've ever seen. He said every single orifice in their bodies, every single one, including their mouths, are full of sores and stuff from guys raping them over and over and over. And he said most of them are drugged because the pain is so bad, they don't want to hear the kids scream and they have them on drugs, and when they finally wear out their bodies, they're selling them for sex organs or just burying them. He said it's disgusting. The smell is disgusting. The the what they're doing to those kids chained up uh to a bed or tied to a bed, it's sick, Tom.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and it's not it isn't only the children either, because there's a lot of these people that just about everybody in the world wants to come to the United States. And people will sell themselves into slavery in order to get here, and a lot of them are doing it, and they wound up they wind up becoming um at best indentured servants for years, at work and at worst slaves of uh whoever uh brings them in.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, well, what else? Is there anything else on your radar before I let you go here today? I mean, we we haven't solved a ton of problems, but I think just by opening by opening this up to your point, everybody we've been saying this for a long time, Tom. You know, if you're gonna save your own soul, you've got to step up and do something good in the world. You can't just be apathetic. Jesus said, you know, either be hot or cold, either be good or evil.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:If you're lukewarm, if you're apathetic, I'm gonna spew you out. So people are gonna be surprised, I think. You know, people are gonna be surprised. I, you know, I I hope I'm not one of them, right? You you you better have done something with the time and the talents that I've given you to bring some good into the into the world.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's like Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, anybody that's out there, you better better do more than just exercise cheap grace because that's uh um that isn't advancing the kingdom in any way at all.
SPEAKER_00:And it takes courage today. It really takes courage. I mean, it always took courage, I think. You see Charlie Kirk, you know what happened to him, you know, and and but Charlie said before he died, he said, I'm not afraid of of dying. He said, I'm I'm afraid of not living the way God wanted me to live and to proclaim the gospel. So this amazing young man, you know.
SPEAKER_01:See, this is the thing that's so frustrating to me. People are not being called to be Charlie Kirk. But what they can do is they be they can run for office against people like that woman in District uh three hundred that tweeted Karma's a bitch in response to Charlie Kirk's death. That woman should not be in any public office now or ever, and yet we are allowed to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00:She was the pre she was the president. That's a local, that's a local, you know, for us. We're in the Chicagoland area. It's a local school board. She was the chairman of that school board. From my understanding, people protested. They were on both sides of that issue. But anyway, she was taken out of being the board chairman, but she wasn't taken off the board.
SPEAKER_01:Well, she's still on the board, and whoever people need to run who have you need to get Christians in these positions and people that will act like Christians, not say, well, I'm not supposed to be a Christian in public office. Well, yes, you are.
SPEAKER_00:You know, and and don't think you're underqualified because if you stand up, if you know the truth, you'll learn on that, you'll learn on the job, and there'll be other people there, and there's training programs, there's there's all kinds of ways to get up to speed on that. So it's not like you just get thrown to the wolves on there. Uh so by the time you get elected, you start running, by the time you get elected, there's courses out there. The Heritage Foundation does a great job. There's other foundations out there that do a great job of training people. And uh so yeah, if you if you feel called to do it, don't let fear hold you back.
SPEAKER_01:Well, no, don't wait for the call. You gotta, you actually have to, you have to to follow God's bigger call. We're supposed to become engaged in the world, whether you feel like it or not. This is not something like, oh, well, I don't feel like it today. No, I I don't feel like getting up some days, but I still get up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and to the and and to you know, to another point, you know, I may not have the time or inclination to run for office, but you can certainly find out who you should be out there for, and you can certainly canvas and uh and help those people get elected. I mean, that's the very least. I you know most people that that don't even vote in the school board elections, Tom.
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah, I know. At least vote. I know many people who don't vote at all, who don't vote uh uh about anything.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then you wonder, and so so back to your uh your conundrum. Right. Why you why can't you find a solution? Well, uh okay, we did answer it now. We answered it because we have too many apathetic people. And uh John Adams said that, Madison said it, uh this this republic is only for a moral religious people. And uh and Benjamin Franklin said, uh, yeah, I'm giving you a republic if you can hold it. If you can hold it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we gotta get we we need some more intolerant pastors in the pulpit, though, too, to tell people.
SPEAKER_00:Well, good luck with that, Tom, because uh we've been I you know I've been saying that in the Catholic Church, you know. You know, we got we had a woke Pope Francis. I was I had high hopes for Leo the 14th, but it looks like he's he it's not it isn't taking him that long. It looks like it looks like he's following uh on the in the footsteps of uh Francis, which is really uh disappointing, you know. And so to you to to what is the solution to that? It's for all of us to step up, you know. It's for all of us to step up. We have to fill those shoes. You know, that's why I think uh Tom, it's an exciting time to be alive because you realize that, you know, you know, G.K. Chesterton, you know, when they ask him what's wrong with Christianity, he said, I am. And and to your point, you have to step up and you have to take the responsibility. There's there's no knight in shining armor riding on a big white stallion in public office or in the church that can rescue us without us. Without us.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, that's uh that's what's on my mind these days anyway.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing I want people to watch for, again, it's a Bishop Sheen thing when he when the communists were coming in, and he saw this. He saw this coming in, and he knew it was going to continue unless people stood up and we didn't. And he said, three things will happen. We have reason and intellect and free will. That's who we are as human beings when we have some grace. He said, your reason will become unreasonable, you become irrational, and that's what we're seeing out there. He said the second thing will happen is you'll see violence. And he said you saw it right away. Genesis, Adam and Eve turn away from God. The next generation, Cain actually kills Abel, and that's the good, right? He was offering a sacrifice to God. He didn't have to kill his brother. His brother wasn't doing anything to him, but he saw the good, and that was the evil. It started right away. He said, so the second thing you'll see is violence, and the third thing, he said it's always an atheist. And he said it's not an atheist, he said again, isn't someone who doesn't believe in God. He believes in God, sees the good, and is going to be violent. And that's what you're seeing against the churches. Burning churches in Canada, in the United States, all over the world now. Uh, you know, you have uh people attacking Christians in Africa and murdering them by you know by the scores in these churches, you know, and so you see the violence. So those three things irrational, violence, and atheists. And don't think atheists don't believe in God. They they don't believe in the good, huh? They want to throw God out so that they can live as they want. And and so it's it's this is the reason we don't understand it all, Tom, is because this is really a battle between good and evil.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I know it's uh hard to it's hard to fight it. It's hard to be involved in that battle when so few people want to join in and fight as well. They'd rather go to their weekend cabin.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, look at it. Started with 12, and they they were very poor. They were fishermen, and uh they threw a tax collector in there just for the heck of it. St. Paul himself was persecuting Christians, actually imprisoning them. Some were murdered. You know, we saw the the beginning when uh right off the right off the bat he saw witnessing right to that Stephan, the first martyr, and they gave they put their cloaks at his feet to get the okay from him to stone Stephan, our first martyrs, and then he became a great apostle. So where does it start? It starts on your knees, it starts on uh you know opening yourself up because you're gonna get the courage, the grace, the fortitude, all of the uh virtues that we're gonna need to be able to step into this arena. So, yeah, start on your knees and then and then go out, Tom.