Become Who You Are

#685 Electing Socialist Majors Across America Will Not Solve the Abuses of Unconstrained Capitalism: "The Third Way"

• Jack • Episode 685

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Feeling pressured to pick between Socialism and Capitalism? We challenge that trap and make a case for a third way that takes human dignity seriously, starts in the heart, and rebuilds culture from the ground up. We walk through why many young people gravitate toward socialism when family and schools fail them, and why unconstrained capitalism—when severed from God and moral law—leaves the soul hungry and communities brittle. 

Then we chart a different path rooted in a Christian vision of freedom ordered to the good, where love of God flows into love of neighbor, and where formation shapes the kind of people who can actually sustain a free society.

You’ll hear hard critiques—of socialism and hypercapitalism’s nihilism—paired with hopeful, concrete steps: prayer that grounds the day, the sacraments that renew the heart, small groups that build accountability, and local action that serves the poor, protects life, and strengthens communities.

We also discuss the Claymore battle plan as a practical map for spiritual formation and cultural rebuilding. The goal isn’t outrage; it’s forming men and women who can love well, raise families, start businesses with integrity, and anchor parishes that become bright centers of mercy and truth. 

If you’re tired of false choices and hungry for a life that unites faith, work, and citizenship, this is your invitation to begin. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review with one habit you’ll start this week to live the third way.

Read "Directing Our Passions and Desires to a Love that is Beautiful" Here are the links to Jack's Substack and  X https://x.com/JP2Renewal

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Jack:

Welcome to the Become Who You Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center. I'm so glad you're with me. I want to especially help some of these young people that we're working with understand or answer this question. Why would the good people of New York City, of Chicago, my hometown, Minneapolis, Seattle, why would they elect socialists slash Marxists as mayors? Socialism has never economically succeeded anywhere, and it's never succeeded in making human life better anywhere, ever. It demeans the human person and his dignity. It's fallen man's proposal to arrest the chaos, of course, caused by our secular worldview. God and morality was thrown out, chaos, crime, and violence came in, and as a consequence, marriage in the family, along with education that would normally nurture and protect a young person, inform them, no longer does. The family is broken down in far too many cases. The public school system is corrupt and incompetent. So to overcome this lack of nurturing and protection that would have provided these young people, children growing up into adulthood with identity, with meaning and purpose for their lives, there is only one non Christian solution that is now available to them. This is what they feel at least, the state. Because the state now is father, mother, family. Socialism then is the secularized atheistic version of a community of man, which in reality only Christian love and truth can really engender. What happens when you take that out? Well, young people are feeling unmoored from their roots, and they are. And they're told that among other things, that they're being oppressed by a free market capitalism that has no concern for them. And you know what? We all have been in a certain way. We saw this during COVID, right? Big pharma, for just one example of many, that along with mass propaganda and the corrupt Biden administration brought great harm on the American people. Along with millions of people losing their jobs for not getting the jab, small businesses were forced to shut down while the government picked winners who could stay open. Winners, of course, that were in their pockets. Today, by the abuse of freedom under liberalism of a capital system, run amok, and here's the point. Unconstrained capitalistic system that these young people are looking at becomes just like socialism Marxism, a secular worldview. Unconstrained capitalism then without God and moral law, where money becomes God, so we see this old order of liberal capitalism that we can just be free to do anything we want, it's dying. It doesn't work either, and the young people sense that something's wrong. Yet without knowledge of history, without a good education, without family structures to hold them together, without God in their lives, they're easily seduced by these silver tongued Marxists who spew ideologies that sound like solutions. But of course, as history has proven time and time again, they're they're they're the worst of the worst. So what's the solution? If not socialism or unconstrained free market capitalism, and this is the the only option these young people see. So one uh is becomes morally corrupt and money and power, so they run to socialism and Marxism. That of course will destroy them by the millions, destroy all of us, take down this beautiful country. But do we run back to uh this free market capitalism that's that's really harmed so many in our culture already? Well, there's a third way, of course. And that third way is going through the narrow gate, got off that broad uh highway, huh, that goes to nowhere. It's called the Christian way. And it's the only path concerned for not just oneself, but for the common good in reality. Simply stated, it's the two great commandments. Love God, be filled with divine life and love, and then go out and love your neighbor. It's not brain surgery. It's what made America great in the very beginning. It's what our founding father said. You know, John Adams again, you know, this republic was made for a moral and religious people. You are free, but you are free to choose the good, to choose what's true, to choose what's beautiful. You are free, and hopefully your virtues, your values, you take into that freedom and build something beautiful. But when our morality, when God has thrown out, our founding fathers warned us what would happen. So this is why the John Paul Renewal Center launched Claymore. Claymore is this three part battle plan for it to help these young people restore their individual human hearts, to understand what human dignity is, what marriage and a family is, the culture, and our nation. The importance of self-educ is a big part of the Claymore battle plan. So let's take a minute to consider the failure of the American public school system. So important. John Paul II said this. I'm thinking of young people who are deprived of the opportunity of education, often even at the elementary level. This state of affairs must be improved, he said. For education in the truth is one of the fundamental benefits of human civilization. To a great extent, the future of the whole society depends on it. Now, John Paul said this, you know, a few decades ago. He was talking about this back in the in the 60s and 70s and became Pope in the late 70s. He continued on this vein. He saw what was happening, right? To marriages and the families, and then to our educational system. He said, ooh, this is going to be bad. So that's why the Claymore Handbook came apart about. I I just finished writing it. It's going to the publishers now, and hopefully we have that back in within a couple of months to help young people build a foundation on the truth. You know, imagine walking into a classroom where every lesson is designed not to teach you how to think, but to tell you what to think. This isn't education, of course, it's indoctrination. Marxists know all about this, huh? For generation, the shaping of young minds for control rather than the truth and freedom has taken place in our universities and colleges. We knew this. That they were once places, you know, when you go back to Harvard and Stanford, Yale, institutes where we would actually study God, what's true, what's good, what beautiful, how should people live? That's what they were that's what they were founded for. These places where young adults uh could explore ideas, they could wrestle with the truth, and they grew into independent thinkers. Unfortunately, over time, these institutions, as we all know, became breeding grounds for radical ideologies, radical professors and administrators steeped in Marxist philosophy and secular humanism, gradually turned classrooms and whole universities into platforms for social engineering rather than places of learning. And this was all done on purpose. But today, the indoctrination no longer begins at the university, does it? It reaches children at the most vulnerable and impressionable stages of their life, even going down at the preschool. And it's even worse for so many children who by the time they even enter into kindergarten have been already introduced to distorted ideas about identity, family, morality. What was once confined to graduate seminars now appears in brightly colored storybooks, animated lessons, an inclusive curricula aimed at shaping false beliefs about their identity? What constitutes marriage in the family? These are all being twisted and distorted. Can you imagine being a young person? It includes hatred for the nation before a child can even read. It tells them that they're systemically racist depending on just the color of their skin. This is no accident. It's a result of a deliberate, calculated effort spanning decades already. All we're seeing is the acceleration of this step by step. Those who reject God and His truth have worked to capture the education system, knowing that whoever shapes the minds of young people shapes the future of a nation. Perhaps you were one of the fortunate ones who escaped these modern indoctrination camps known as the American public school system. Maybe you were lucky. Most young adults in America today did not escape those indoctrination camps, and now a rising generation is being taught not to pursue truth, but to accept lies, lies about God, about humanity, and even about themselves, their own identity. So let's talk about this, this introduction, let's say, to the third way that we're talking about, to go through that narrow gate, huh? To understand what the gospel and the church teaches about this. The third way tells us what you're sensing, your anxiety, your sense of unrootedness. There's a reason that you feel like that. We have to recapture that, and there's a way to do that. And why there's still hope in this third way. You can feel it in your bones, right? Something in America is coming apart and you're feeling this. You sense this. Your generation wasn't handed a roadmap, though. So you're handed a maze and told to just walk through that maze. And that way you can be controlled. Skyrocketing anxiety, collapsing families, a culture addicted to distraction. Ooh, this is all done on purpose. Politics that sounds like a bad group chat argument, a system that tells you the only choices are from an economic, a structural, a polity. You either can be ruled by the state, socialism, Marxism, or be consumed by the market that doesn't care about you either. But deep down you sense there has to be something more, something better, something older, steadier, more human. Catholic popes from Leo XIII to John Paul II saw what was coming long before we did. They're filled with wisdom. Ah, I want to continue to talk about wisdom as we go along. Wisdom is something ordained by God. You know, information you can Google. Wisdom, how you see the world, how you put these all together. Ooh, that's what these popes said. And they warned us what was coming when they watched whole civilizations crumble that forgot about God, forgot about what marriage and the family meant, forgot then about the poor, about their neighbor, forgot the meaning of work, and forgot that freedom without truth eventually devours itself. This is a spiritual principle, huh? A metaphysical principle. And we see the reality of this manifested in these fallen countries and civilizations all through history. Yet when they spoke these truths, these popes saw what was coming, but they didn't panic. They had a belief in Jesus Christ, huh? They go out and speak the truth. So they didn't retreat like today's shepherds do. They'd become so apathetic. These popes were much different, weren't they? They certainly did not surrender to f the future, to ideologues, to politicians, without at least standing up for the truth. Instead, they offered something astoundingly sane, a third way. They let us down then and showed us a path that refuses the suffocating collectivism of socialism and the soul draining individualism of hypercapitalism, a new path that begins not with Washington or Wall Street, but with the human heart, huh? The human person, extending out to marriage and the family, the parish, understanding the dignity of work and the sovereignty of God, a path built on solid pillars and principles with one unshakable truth, you were made for communion and union with God, and this was expressed in this in this world through love of neighbor, through love of others. You were called to greatness. And then to go out on a mission to proclaim the gospel and to restore that's all true, good, and beautiful in the world. This is what Christ always called us to. The third way is not a political platform, it's a cultural blueprint, a spiritual revolution, a way of life, of human flourishing, of human freedom. And it's the only vision strong enough to rebuild broken communities, revive the dignity of work, heal our loneliness, restore hope to a generation that has forgotten what hope even looks like. The Claymore Battle Plan and the Claymore Handbook being published is not built on a theory, it's a map. And it's life, your life, which includes your faith, friendships, your future family. And it's a field where this map becomes very, very real to you. The world doesn't need more cynics. It needs architects, it needs saints. This is the third way. Welcome to it. So I'm going to ask you, and I've said this, of course, many times, print out the Claymore battle plan outline. That's ready right now. Young guys are using it all over the place. Share it with your friends. I'll link it in the show notes again. It's only, it's it it's not very, very long. And uh review it, focus on it. And if focus especially, review the whole thing. It won't take you long. And then go to number three, spiritual formation. Why there? Let me read from the battle plan itself. So when we're talking about formation, this is not an optional part of discipleship. It's the forge where the warrior is tempered. It's where you get your heart back. Every soldier of Christ must be trained, heart, mind, and soul, to fight the good fight with discipline. Formation is not about perfection, but about conversion, the daily dying and rising with Christ that makes a man fully alive. Spiritual formation starts with your own heart. So that's where I want you to start. Print that out. Go to number three, these five aspects of formation as soldiers of Christ, Militus Christi. Focus on a 10-minute morning ritual. And what do we do there? We kneel as the first act of the day in humility. You know, you know, you look up at the Redeemer, Jesus Christ on the cross, who also is humble, huh? So read through that, go through those steps, understand we got to get our hearts back first, right? Now let's reflect on the catastrophic consequences of a political system now that rejects the objective moral order. John Paul II, drawing from an experience in Poland under Nazism and communism, describes these regimes as ideologies of evil that emerge from a deliberate rejection of God and the moral law. The evil of our times, he called them, and it consists in the first place of a kind of degradation, a pulverization, he called it, of the fundamental uniqueness of each individual human person. That's what these collective ideologies do. They no longer see you as a person, right? They just see you as a tool to be used. So this degradation, as he calls it, stems from denying the Imago Dei, the divine image in every person. Don't forget our founding fathers knew this, that our dignity came from God, not from government, not from somebody else trying to push an identity on me. So when we're reducing individuals then to mere tools of the state is what these collective ideologies do. Nazism, too, exalted racial supremacy, right? While communism suppressed human freedom under the guise of equality. You hear these words all the time. Marx used them. Lenin used them. Both of these systems sought to replace the crater with human constructs. These ideologies strike at the very foundation of human morality, influencing the family and promoting a morally permissive outlook. Our culture accepts divorce, free love, abortion, contraception, the fight against life, even in its final phases. We have youth in Asia when you are no longer to be used as an object of the state. We don't need you. So let's euthanize you. Let's kill you. I mean, have we become numb to all of this? These so-called programs he would call the culture of debt, supported by enormous financial resources. He saw this already, not only in individual countries, but on a worldwide basis. You saw this with the with Carl Schwab and these World Economic Forums, and Pope Francis sending people there to partake in this kind of stuff. It's another form of totalitarianism, subtly concealed under the appearances of democracy. Oh, you live in a democracy. Ah, but as they take away our actual freedoms, huh? You know, the number one freedom is freedom and liberation from sin. So why are marriage and family so important? As John Paul II stated, the family is the first school of human dignity where individuals learn their worth as persons created in the imagade in the image and likeness of God. When ideologies promote practices like abortion, contraception, they undermine the family's role as the cradle of life and love. And what happens? It happens over and over, leads to moral decay and social fragmentation. When we are considering economic systems, the popes through history have condemned socialism and praised democratic systems, and this is very important for their potential, democratic systems, for their potential to uphold human dignity and protect rights, offering a framework for freedom absent in socialism, Marxism, authoritarian regimes, right? Yet they warn that democracy, you know, capitalism is not inherently virtuous. When we enact laws contrary to natural law, the moral order established by God, it risked being what he called a thinly disguised totalitarianism. And John Paul II connects this to the historical lessons that he himself saw in this country of Poland when they were invaded by first the Nazis and then the communists, noting that today's democracies can perpetuate similar moral errors, errors to subtler means. We think we're free, right? But the morally permissive outlook, John Paul would talk about, he says, look what happened. And I'm thinking about young people, abortion that would destroy them right in their mother's womb, divorces, marriages that aren't working out. And again, you know, the children that are that are left behind by these marriages that break up, you know, it affects these children uh tremendously. The attacks on human life are amazing today. And they find new expression in these democratic institutions that prioritize individual autonomy or freedom over objective truth. You can be anything you want, you can do anything you want. This is license over authentic freedom, which is freedom to love, huh? To be filled with divine love. And love has a meaning and a purpose, and it's self-giving. When you take that away, when you throw out God, we become very selfish, right? A striking example then of twisting and distorting marriage in the family is we codified into law homosexual unions as alternative families with rights to adopt children. See my podcast number 683 on on that. You know, when you hand a little baby to two men that never even had a chance to to bond with them, the mother, they wash this baby up, take it away from its mother, and and I almost get sick when I start thinking about those kind of things. But I think about the child, right? We codify into law also what? The right to murder children, but not just any children, our own children. Don't become numb to this. We've normalized sin, we've normalized the fall, but you're gonna just see the evil spring up all around us. Today, these blue states, like we're here in Illinois, are pushing abortion and taking of human life, taking the lives of children from from actually up until nine months now. They want to take them to the moment before they would be born. And what if a child who survives the womb? This culture of death would render them sterile, mutilate their bodies to these gender ideologies is a demonic attack on children, an example on just how dire the situation is that we find ourselves in. So today, in a runoff between socialism and lazy fear, you know, or free market capitalism with no moral foundation, no concern for the common good, which one wins? Well, to young people, socialism and communism can sound very, very good because young people are accepting the propaganda they hear because what do they hear from these silver-tongued socialists? Ah, we care about you. We care about the common good. The system doesn't, but we do. You know, it's a lie, of course. But the population without God has no wisdom again, no understanding, no fortitude, no knowledge, no counsel, prudence, no humility, right? We hear pride, pride will be can be like God's. But they have no relationship with God. Because all of these things wisdom, understanding, fortitude, these are gifts of the Holy Spirit. When we throw out God, our reason becomes very unreasonable. We see this in the way people act today, right? John Paul II framed this as a profound challenge to the moral and social order. It is legitimate and even necessary to ask whether this is not the work of another ideology of evil, more subtle and hidden, perhaps, intent upon exploiting human rights themselves against man and the family. This ideology of evil, he said, is supported by these vast financial and cultural resources. We see this. The money that flows into these concepts of the culture of death, abortion and these gender ideologies and et cetera, et cetera. Well, it mirrors the totalitarianism that he describes. It cloaks itself in the language of tolerance. We hear this. You have to be tolerant. Well, what does tolerance really mean? It's tolerance of everything. There's no morality. Well, if everything's an opinion, who wins? It's always the guy that gets the power. He redefines everything. He redefines the family, what a human being is. But the family, founded on the lifelong union of a man and woman, is the basic building block of every civilization. And throughout history, it's created to reflect the communion of love and truth within the Trinity itself, divine love itself. When democracy undermines this truth, it destabilizes society's claim to serve. So society says we claim to serve all these truths, but when you twist and distort the truth, you don't. So we're in a spiritual battle. Bishop Fulton Sheen said this even before John Paul II. He said modern culture replaces truth with sentimentality, with emotions. We see this bubbling up, prioritizing feelings over objective reality. We live in a state of moral relativism. He said the denial of absolute truth leads to a moral vacuum where power and opinion reign supreme. For young people, this is a call to step back from this, to go into prayer, to discern the world's promises of freedom often mask an agenda that erodes the family's sacred role and attacks the human person. This is the very core of who we are. The lessons of history and the challenges of modern democracy reveal a timeless principle. Laws and political decisions must be grounded in truth and the moral order. Otherwise, the pulverization of human dignity that we saw under Nazism, communism, today's democratic socialism, but they all stem from the rejecting of God. And we do, you reject the human person, create an image and likeness of God. We are redefined by the state, huh? Today's democracies, though less over overtly violent than you say, than Hitler or Stalin, well, they impose similar ideologies to cultural influence and legislation, promoting a morally permissive outlook that attacks the family through divorce, abortion, contraception. More people are killed through abortion than in all the wars throughout history. Millions and millions and millions of children being being killed, huh? Both paths erode human dignity, they destabilize society, particularly by targeting the family. And children always bear the cost of this the most, as the family is their first educator. We're supposed to be teaching them virtue, faith, humanity. But when its structure is redefined and or its sanctity is undermined, whether through alternative unions or practices that devalue life, the child's right to a stable, loving environment is compromised. And you see these young people growing up like that today. So again, the third way is to come back into Christianity. That's where our hope is. We've been given an incredible reprieve today with the election of Donald Trump. No, he is not perfect. He's not God. He's a sinner just like the rest of us. And he may even be just a nominal Christian, I don't know. But we do know that he speaks about God. He praises Jesus Christ in his talks, you know, more than any other modern president, that's for sure. Something perhaps more important, though, he surrounded himself with Christians that actually live out their faith in his cabinet and beyond. What is lacking then? You are. I am. We're called to bring light into the world. We have to build this up from the grassroots level. This is what Christ always did. I want to play a speech from Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, who sums up everything I've been talking about here. Speaking at the memorial for Charlie Kirk. It's an incredible speech, so I'm going to play the entire thing for you. I hope you can watch it all the way through. It's about six and a half, maybe seven minutes. It's a powerful vision of what I've outlined so far. Before I do, though, I just wanted to say a word on Charlie Kirk, huh? He's a martyr for Jesus Christ. He gave up his life to proclaim the gospel, fight for the rights of children, both in the womb and beyond. He educated young people on the building blocks of all civilizations across the world and across time, marriage and the family. He talked about children's right to a mother and father, a right to be born, a right to a quality education. He talked about what was going on in the university systems and the school systems. He talked about what it means to be patriotic, to love our country here in the United States, the greatest country for human flourishing in all human history, and the importance and the dignity of each human person created in the image and likeness of God, to know what that means and live that out so that each person can find their freedom, their meaning and purpose in life, to be built up and understand that they were created for greatness, for eternal life. The number one freedom, don't forget this, the number one freedom is freedom or liberation from sin. Only then does one find peace, joy, meaning the purpose that brings happiness in the midst of chaos and evil all around us. See, Charlie had that vision and it came from wisdom. Wisdom is more than information. Again, you can Google information. Wisdom is of God. Charlie spent a lot of time in prayer, huh? And reading the gospels, and he developed that wisdom. He was given that wisdom by God. You know, Mark Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State, sums this all up and more. So let's listen to this.

Senator Marco Rubio:

About uh maybe 10 or 12 years ago, a person I knew very well had been very helpful to me in my campaigns when I was in the Senate, came to me and said she had met this very impressive young man. And he was going to start this group to go on college campuses and try to convince young Americans that ours is the greatest country in the history of the world and that Marxism was bad. And I remember thinking back then, I was I'm gonna admit to you guys, I was a little skeptical. I said, College campuses, you're gonna do that? Why don't you start somewhere easier? Like, for example, communist Cuba, you know. But my skepticism was proven wrong. And place after place, over the last 12, 14, 16 years, we've seen this renaissance. Understand where we were at that time in our history. Understand where we are still today in many places, where young Americans are actively told that everything that they were taught, that all the foundations that made our society and our civilization so grand, they were all wrong, they were all evil, that marriage is oppressive, that children are a burden, that America is a source of evil, not of good in the world. And here was this voice that inspired a movement in which young Americans were told that is not true. The highest calling we are called to is to be in a successful marriage and to raise productive children. And a movement that taught them that ours was not a great country, but the greatest, most exceptional nation that has ever existed in the history of all of mankind, and that it's worth fighting for, it's worth defending, it's worth preserving, and it's worth passing on to the next generation. This was the mission and the work of Charlie Kirk. And a couple things that stand out about him, he led this movement, but he did so with incredible knowledge. It's unbelievable how much he knew. He came to me very recently. He said some quote. He said, I said, Who said that? He said, Marcus Aurelius. I said, What district does he represent? I kind of knew who it was, but uh he said back, no, it's a Roman, you know, philosopher king or emperor, his incredible knowledge. Let me tell you that one of the last messages I had with him was just a few days before his passing, where he wrote me from overseas, I'm in South Korea, I have many concerns I want to share with you when I get back. He was constantly expanding his horizons, but he just didn't have knowledge, he had wisdom, an uncanny amount of wisdom for a man as young as he was. Wisdom that sometimes it takes a lifetime to accumulate. He had it in just 31 years. He was also bold. It is so easy, and listen, I've been guilty of it. I think many of us have been guilty of this. You hide behind the walls and you surround yourself with people that agree with you. We do it as a society all the time. Increasingly, people are moving into neighborhoods with other people that agree with them politically and isolate themselves from people that do not agree with them. But Charlie Kirk was bold, he actively sought out to engage peacefully, respectfully those who he disagreed with. As recently as two days ago, we learned of one of the hosts on CNN who said that one of the messages he had gotten just a few days before Charlie's passing was from him inviting him to dialogue. And he did this on campuses, he did this on podcasts, he did this on radio shows, he did this on television shows. Time and again he sought to engage those he disagreed with because he understood that we were not created to isolate ourselves from one another, but to engage. The irony in all this is that what our nation needs, one of the many things it needs is the ability to discuss our differences openly, honestly, peacefully, respectfully. And Charlie Kirk did that more than anyone alive in America today is doing. Impactful because of all the things I said, but look around this place. There's a hundred something thousand people here. The president of the United States is here, his entire cabinet is here. Television audio outlets and media outlets from all over the world are covering this. I just came from overseas, and every country I stopped, they gave us their condolences for his passing. Impactful in just 31 years of life. He made a difference. He mattered, and he will matter now more than he ever has before. And let me close with this. How do you remember? This is a memorial service, it's to honor him. How do you best remember it? I'll take the liberty of saying what I think we can best do. Look, I think he had a tremendous impact on young Americans in general. I think he had a very special and direct impact on young men in this country. That's one of the greatest developments I've seen. It's been very positive. I think we remember him for that. I think we remember him for constantly saying, you want to live a productive life, get married, start a family, love your country. These are powerful messages. But I hope many who are watching, I imagine there are people watching here tonight that didn't know much about Charlie Kirk until 11 days ago. Maybe they were disengaged from politics, maybe they were partially engaged. I hope one of the things they take from this is that the movement Charlie Kirk led and started and gave fuel to was about politics, but not only about politics. It was deeper, it was broader. And I would say that taking the liberty, but I'm confident he would agree, one of the things he wants us to take away from this, from all of this, is the following his deep belief that we were all created, every single one of us, before the beginning of time, by the hands of the God of the universe, an all-powerful God, who loved us and created us for the purpose of living with him in eternity. But then sin entered the world and separated us from our creator, and so God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us, and he suffered like men, and he died like a man, but on the third day he rose unlike any mortal man, and then to prove any doubters wrong, he ate with his disciples so they could see and they touched his wounds. He didn't rise as a ghost or as a spirit, but as flesh, and then he rose to the heaven, but he promised he would return, and he will. And when he returns, because he took on that death, because he carried that cross, we were freed from the sin that separated us from him. And when he returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will all be together, and we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love. Thank you, and God bless you.

Jack:

What an incredible speech, huh? Make no mistake, huh? We are in a ferocious spiritual battle against the evil of our day. It seems that the serpent, the hydra, you know, a serpent with many heads, knows that his time is short, and he, along with human beings who cooperate with them, with him, no longer trying to hide anything. It's very clear that evil is everywhere. So we have to be bold, as Charlie was, each of us standing before that tree of the knowledge of good and evil in our lives. And it's we're making the most important choice of our lives. Where to spend eternity, in hell with Satan or with God? And this all begins today. We're all gonna die. And we when we have our eye, though, on our destiny, where we're going, we know that our actions today determine this outcome for ourselves and the people that we love, and for our nation and our culture. Charlie knew his mission was not only to inform and educate, but to save souls. We're all called for that, and starting with our own soul, and he paid the ultimate price. But it always was and is today the blood of martyrs beginning with Jesus Christ Himself hanging on that cross that builds up the church, the bride of Christ. The future will belong to those of you who are builders. You've seen the two dead ends, socialism and this liberal uh capitalism without God, without morality. You've heard the Pope's warnings, you've experienced the cost of a fallen culture, a fallen nature, human nature without God, the results loneliness, anxiety, cheap pleasures that don't bring lasting happiness, so called progress that's replacing real human relationships with these tiny little screens. You're seeking something more than this culture provides, and now you're seeing the way out. The third way is not nostalgia, it's not a compromise, it's not a vibe, it's not propaganda or some kind of political pose. It's a countercultural revolution that we're all taking up for authentic freedom. And the number one liberation is freedom from personal sin. Then to go out, what else is freedom for? Marriage and children, the family. Then what? For love of country, to protect what we're building from the ideologies of totalitarianism, from socialism that seek to destroy what it means to each of us to flourish as human beings. It tells you what? The freedom we requires responsibility, not freedom to do whatever you want. Own a home, build families, because love is the engine of civilization. Serve others, including the poor, because your life is not your own. It's only when we go out and we give ourselves away that we find ourselves. This is the gospel. Put God first because he's the source of life and love. Everything else will turn to dust. The third way is not a theory you admire, it's a life that you choose. Print out the Claymore battle plan. Don't forget, the handbook's on the way. This is the way to share life with and disciple others to build a community. You know, Jesus said when two or more are gathered in my name that I am there. Know also that you're going to get very little from the most of today's compromise and weak shepherds in the church. You know, it's find a great pastor, find a great church, go there, build communities there, go right to God Himself in the Eucharist and prayer, adoration, the sacrament of confession. Play the rosary. Because we have everything we need. Most decisively Christ in his church. Pray for Donald Trump, an imperfect man and a sinner, again as we all are, but who God sent us, and for certain he's standing up against that deep state and fighting so much corruption and evil. It's beyond comprehension. Most men could not endure that, and he's almost 80 years old. So we've been given a window to do our job to rebuild this from the ground up in local communities, local places. And here is the secret that every saint understood. Your small decisions in your life can rebuild the world. Don't forget that God is behind us. He can take our small actions to do great things. Meals with your family around your table, the family in prayer, gratitude for everyone around us. Find a way to get out of this rat race. Build a business for yourself. And it starts with your own integrity, huh? The children you welcome, the parish community you build, the elderly neighbor you take care for. Be bold and be a prayer warrior free. Takes courage to refuse and push away the lies of this present age. These things echo across generations, though. Our forefathers fought for this. Politicians cannot save us. Technocrats cannot design the human future. Influencers cannot preach us back to sanity. Only people, real people, rooted in the truth, sacrificial people can rebuild what is crumbled. And that means you and I. You are not too young, you're not too late, you're not too small, you're exactly the kind of person God uses when the world is shaking. The popes weren't offering abstract principles, they were handing your weapons. They were training you, educating you for a mission. They were telling you long before you were born, knowing that you would arrive on the scene after them. And they said, John Paul, be not afraid. Be not afraid to go out in love, to build, to speak the truth. We gotta begin. Because the future will belong to those who walk the third way. Remember that eternity doesn't mean tomorrow. Eternity means forever. You are an eternal human being, the day that you exploded into history. Begin today. As Jesus said, put your hand to the plough and don't look back. God bless you. Talk to you again soon, everybody.