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Jenna Ellis: The U.S. constitution obligates our government to protect biblical rights

Jenna Ellis in the Morning on American Family Radio.

Jenna Ellis: I love talking about the things of God. Because of truth and the biblical worldview, the U.S. constitution obligates our government to preserve and protect the rights that our founders recognize come from God, our Creator, not our government. I believe that scripture in the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raised up each of you, and God has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment in time. This is Jenna Ellis in the Morning.

James Lindsay: Young Americans being radicalized by Communist nonprofit Code Pink

Jenna Ellis: Good morning. It is Friday, July 10th. yes, we're already well into July. And one of the biggest headlines that is circulating after, some of these primaries have already taken place in states across the country is the rise of the socialist, communist, Marxist, Democrat left. And the fact that the Democrat leadership doesn't even seem to be in too big of a hurry to actually call this out or recognize the threat to not only their own party, but America at large. And I think there's a really simple explanation for that, which is they don't care how America falls and how they undermine our Christian founding. They just want to do it in any way, shape or form. So, of course they're going to have a big tent and say, basically, as long as you don't believe in the values of the founders, hey, you're welcome into the Democrat Party. but for Republicans and conservatives that hopefully are at least trying to, to combat this and to educate especially young voters who may be taken in by the rise of what seems like a reasonable explanation for government, even though socialism has failed every time that it's ever been tried. we need to have a good explanation and also understand, this headline coming from the NewSong York Post, how young Americans like, like Kala Walsh and Ilhan Omar's daughter are being radicalized by Communist nonprofit Code Pink, this is a really important story. So, the group sent controversial Democratic Rep. Ilhan omar's daughter, who's 23, on a highly criticized mission to Cuba and bankrolled an emergency, quote, unquote, progressive conference in Botaga, Columbia, featuring ex NewSong York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. the group is run by Jody Evans, 71, who's a radical Hollywood filmmaker and the wife of a millionaire Maoist, Neville Singham. Together, they control a $100 million web of nonprofits which spread Chinese Communist Party propaganda in the US According to reports. And so campaigns their groups are behind in the US they're still coming from NewSong York Post include China Is Not Our Enemy, Hate, Hands Off Iran, and protests in favor of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro after he was removed by the from the country by US forces in January. And additionally, Code Pink, which describes itself as a feminist grassroots organization, chartered a plane and boats to Havana to deliver 6,300 pounds of medicine and aid, according to their website. And Cuban exiles and online critics quickly dismissed the trip while calling those on it champagne socialists and communista. Ah, decavia online. And so this is a really important problem that we need to discuss because this isn't just a sudden rise of these these ex profiles who maybe are really good at social media like the Zoran Mamdamis. There's actually a lot of money behind the indoctrination which with deep links to the ccp. So to discuss all of this and more, let's welcome in James Lindsay, who is an author, prolific writer and has been one of the foremost voices that has been calling attention to all of this and the worldview aspect.

James Fara: The rise of socialist candidates in America is concerning

So James, what do you make overall of the rise of these socialist candidates, these communist candidates in America?

James Lindsay: I make of it exactly what they say about it themselves, which is that this is the rise of Woke 2.0. even in their own training videos, the DSA is calling themselves Woke 2 and saying that Woke 3 is on the horizon. So the identity politics driven woke, whether it's BLM, critical race theory, the queer theory, the drag queens, the transition, all of that, they got as much juice out of that lemon as they can and they're moving on to another project. And this project is just as inorganic, it is just as fun, but it's not funded by the kind of nice globalist side of the Democratic Party like the George Soros and so on. It's funded by radical communists and their backers like this Neville Roy Singham that you mentioned. and the goal is to transform the Democratic Party. They explicitly say that it is to hollow it out from within and take it over and to turn it into a functioning Communist party for the United States. Wow.

Jenna Ellis: And what are we doing, in either the gop, which as we know really doesn't do anything, or any sort of conservative nonprofits to call this out and to fight back against their purposes?

James Lindsay: Well, from what I understand, everybody's kind ah, of favorite Republican data analyst. Data Republican has done quite a bit of digging into some of these networks and this money and how they're tied together and has done quite a bit of exposure. We've seen the Justice Department start to clamp down on some of these ties to Cuba that are running through Code Pink and through Singham and so on. So whatever the Republican Party might be doing, whatever we might be doing in the political sphere, or whatever we might be doing in the cultural sphere, you know, some people are waking up to this reality, and I think it's going to be incumbent upon us to do so much more quickly and much more thoroughly. At least we do see actual movement in the Trump administration trying to combat this, even if it's just a humble beginning compared to the size of the problem.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And if foreign governments and their proxies are helping fund ideological activism in America, and we know that they are, and they have been for a really long time, Congress and the doj, and even the states need to respond differently than they have, what are some better solutions that we could provide? Because even Florida now, there was a recent decision, I think it just came out yesterday, that, was overturning Florida's anti, woke law, which, there was a brilliant dissent by one of the judges that was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis. And we need more of that. But it seems like the elected officials are doing everything they can to actually facilitate this type of propaganda.

James Lindsay: Yeah. So, I mean, a long time ago, I realized that our elected officials are very rarely going to be the direction that we need to pay attention to to solve this problem. all of this stuff is actually bordering on criminal activity. And this is going to be the department. It's going to be, you know, the state Attorney general's office. This is going to be state Department, departments of justice that are going to have to go in as state prosecutors and dig into the details. If you look at how some of the things that are happening at the federal level with the DOJ to take on these exact kinds of problems, what you're looking at them doing is catching things that look an awful lot like how they took down the old mafia, tax evasion, working with sanctioned groups. But what we have to start doing is taking that very seriously. The states need to start looking into who's working with some sanctioned foreign entity who's violating Fara. Ah, who's doing. Then this all has to get prosecuted. This. This cannot be taken lying down. And it can't be taken like it's just some silly new wave in the culture war, because it's not.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that for, previous culture wars, Republicans, either didn't see the depth of the concern and weren't immediately and strongly, coming against it, or they backed off after they were attacked for, you know, well, you're just wanting censorship or you know, some of these other, or racism or you know, some of these other ridiculous sort of attacks that then the left threw back at them. And so how is this type of foreign influence even allowed to begin with? I mean it seems like we should be able to protect our way of life and our American values without allowing foreign entities to come in and run these types of activist organizations that are undermining our very system of government and way of life.

James Lindsay: Yeah, I wish I had a good answer for that, but the answers are probably not good. Either we've been asleep at the wheel or officials have been co opted or paid off not to get involved at the prosecutor, level. And if we don't, again, if we don't take this seriously, our country's in major danger. What's actually happening with so called Woke 2.0 is too cute of a name. This is a almost direct replication of what happened in the precursor to the Soviet Union and Russia where Vladimir Lenin's ah, Bolshevik party decided that the Menshevik side of the Social Democratic Party was too soft and they systematically hollowed out the Social Democratic Party, took it over, turned it into the Bolshevik Party which then won the Revolution in 1917 and established the Soviet Union. If you go read Lenin from the early 20th century, you see immediately that this is exactly the same mentality and exactly the same kinds of moves and it's being bankrolled by major players. So the Democratic Party is not willing or maybe not equipped to deal with what's about to hit it. But they're about to get replaced. And this has all got to be investigated. And this, I mean this is serious, this isn't culture war, this is prosecutory level kind of involvement. And hopefully, like I said, the Trump administration, Trump said that he's been waiting for this moment and so hopefully he and his administration lead the way in a productive way. But I would love to see states like Ron DeSantis, Florida get clear eyed on this and take bold steps but at the least end up in court to force the argument and force to force moves on the board.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, I mean, just like how Governor DeSantis, essentially outlawed in Florida the use of central bank digital currency and you know, some of these other things that pose an existential threat to the state. He could do something similar here and not allow you know, foreign dollars and activism to come into the state. And that's what needs to happen on a national level.

Do you think Democrats are aware of the threat posed by socialism and communism

But turning Back to the Democrats and the. Do you think that people like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are actually aware of this and they're too scared because of the power threat and the money behind this and the people behind this to actively combat this? Or do you think that they are totally unaware and just, you know, think that, well, this is just making our party stronger because, a lot of these socialists are really liked by the younger generation and they just want Democrats to succeed regardless.

James Lindsay: I think there's definitely the enthusiasm that they're scooping up the youth. and so that is a very dangerous game that they're playing. But they're certainly not unaware of what's happening. So that would be a fatal mistake for us to make, to believe that the Democrats aren't fully aware of what's happening. Even some of them have said so. They've said that this is a communist takeover and they're going to go to war, but they're not going to. And I think the reasons are because they like invigorating the youth. They like winning these small elections, which will get bigger. They like gaining that momentum. And so I don't think we're going to see them fight. I think you're right also that they're very concerned for very good reasons about, like, the scale and scope, amount of money and the types of people backing this movement that are, you know, very dangerous people to go up against. The Democratic Party is, at no point in the past 30 years, demonstrated the least amount of courage. So to think that they would have any courage here, if they're even interested in that, is just a mistake.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And, well, encourage needs to, at the bare minimum, need to come from the right. And a lot of the rhetoric that I've seen, even from Speaker Johnson and, you know, some. And Trump himself. I think Trump and Speaker Johnson do get this, you know, certainly the threat that socialism and communism poses. But I'd like to see them go deeper, like you are, to actually explain that, you know, this isn't just a worldview clash. It is that, but it's, But it goes into prosecutorial arenas and to expose the funding and the, the Chinese Communist Party and the Maoists and all of this behind this, because I think that that type of proof and that type of investigation, would show more of the actual agenda behind it rather than, you know, kind of approaching this how, secular pluralism, just saying, well, you know, capitalism at the end of the day needs to win out because we have Better ideas, but we'll allow socialism on the stage as a relevant, legitimate argument. I mean, that's. That's almost equating the two, as if they're both reasonable positions. And the US Just needs to go to capitalism, because that's how we were founded. I mean, it's almost the same mistake, in my opinion, that Trump is making in the negotiations with Iran, that he almost assumes that. That their leadership want to have a society like America. Well, no, they call us the Great Satan. They don't want that. And so you're not debating actually with reasonable people, and here you're not debating with reasonable ideas. The agenda is far more sinister. And so I would like to see Republicans actually address this and not just what makes communism attractive to some young Americans. And I want to get into that a little bit later. But overall, what the actual agenda here is. I mean, do you think that Speaker Johnson understands that? And what should Republicans and conservatives be saying to expose this?

James Lindsay: I make absolutely no, guesses about what any elected official understands any longer. All I've done in the past five years is make those guesses and be disappointed by people who are either cowards, cravens, or craven or fools. And so I have no idea what Speaker Johnson understands, what I do. What I would like to see, I suppose, though, is, for example, there are places where teeth could be applied, where teeth have never been applied and are not being applied. To hold public office in the United States of America, you have to take an oath. To even become a citizen, you have to take an oath to support the Constitution. Well, if you're a known member of an organization like the Democratic Socialists of America, bsa, which openly declares that its mission is to fundamentally overthrow the United States, it is not possible to take that oath in good faith. Now, we can say that philosophically, but I'd like to see some peace. I would like to actually see whether it's Speaker Johnson, whether it's Republicans in the House, whether it's legislators at the state level somewhere take an actual stand, or even a governor or, President Trump to come out and take a clear stand and say, look, your oath of office is going to be null and void. If you belong to a group that chants death to America, that says their goal is to overthrow the system that we have, overthrow the Constitution, therefore, you cannot take this oath, therefore, you cannot step into office and to create actual legal roadblocks that look a lot like the Communist Control act, but updated for the actual circumstance that we have in a way that the courts are going to be able to uphold.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and I completely agree with you. And I think for too long Republicans have couched their cowardice under a justification of, well, we don't want to go against constitutionally protected political speech and, you know, we don't want to have censorship. And yet there is a fair distinction that policymakers should draw the line between constitutionally protected political speech and foreign influence operations and things that actually go against the oath of office like you're describing. And yet it seems like at every turn that's the knee jerk sort of justification as well. You know, we can't undermine our own Constitution. Meanwhile, by doing that, the Republicans are allowing the entire country to be undermined.

James Lindsay: There's no reason to conflate the idea of a citizen's free speech, freedom of conscience. If you want to be a communist in America and you want to read Lenin and you want to believe this and you want to have meetings that teach it, so long as you don't tread into actual seditious conspiracy, go for it, who cares? You're an American. You have every right. And we should all defend the right if you want to believe that stuff. But it's another matter altogether. If you think you should be able to hold office or that you should be able to organize actual seditious conspiracies, those things need to be addressed differently. You cannot hold office if you cannot take the oath of office. It's very simple. Like, so, look, I'm from the state of Tennessee. The state of Tennessee has one of the best state constitutions in the country, which was, established and ratified in 1796. So it's really old and it says very clearly that there will be no religious or political test for office in the state of Tennessee. This is the kind of thing that you'll hear trotted out in rejection of what I'm talking about. But then it doesn't say. It doesn't just say that, though. If you actually read the entire clause, it says there'll be no religious or political text beyond an oath to the Constitution of the state of Tennessee and the United States Constitution. So if you cannot fulfill your oath to uphold the constitutions of your state or of your country, or both, even the most, you know, liberty minded, old American thinking on the matter reflects that, no, you have to be, if you can't fulfill it oath, you can't actually hold office. This is not a mere religious or political test. This is people who have openly declared their allegiance with an organizational program and an ideological program that wish to unmake the Constitution and we. This is not. They can go scream it on the street corners. They can have their conferences, they can do. They have all the speech in the world. It's another thing entirely when they do one of two things or three things I suppose. One is try to hold political office under such beliefs where they cannot take their oath of office in good faith. Second is to organize in a way that leans into an attempt, a meaningful organized attempt to overthrow the sitting government of the United States, which is sedition. And three is when they start operating with foreign entities, taking money, getting organizational training, running down to Cuba to do whatever it is that the pretext is so they can get training and network with communists and sanctioned regimes and with sanctioned agents of foreign, foreign governments. You can't do that. And we should be taking deadly seriously that this is happening. It's happening at scale. So we need investigative work that's serious digging into these connections, these webs, who's doing it. We need the DOJ all over it. And this has to be taken seriously by every administration. That at least is controlled by Republicans, but ideally even the Democrats, because they're going to lose their party, to a bunch of radicals who, just like the Bolsheviks did to the mensheviks in the 1910s in Russia are not going to treat them well, who see them as part of the bourgeois problem, who see them as right wing bigots or whatever else and will destroy them. M too, wow.

Jenna Ellis: And this is absolutely a critical moment in America's history and we need to take a break here. But James Lindsay, we're going to be back with him to talk more about this and the literal existential threat that this poses to America. We don't want this kind of foreign influence and especially when it's coming in through our own elected officials. Like you said. I could not agree more. So we will be right back with more here on Jenna Ellis in the Morning.

James Lindsay says communists are targeting young people with ideas of socialism

Welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the Morning on American Family Radio.

Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. I'm still here with my special guest James Lindsay, who is the founder of NewSong Discourses and who has several books that you need to read. You can follow all of that@new discourses.com he also has a really great podcast and goes around the country and actually around the world talking about the, the threats of the ideology that is antithetical to truth and the reality of our rights that come from God our creator, and that the sole purpose of legitimate government is to preserve and protect those rights and how, you know, so much of the theories that come from the left, we've seen throughout world history how that has not gone well for humankind and for the, the governments that start embracing these kinds of things. And so we're talking about how the Chinese Communist Party and these really wealthy networks of foreign influence are infiltrating the United States and even coming through some of our elected officials and some of these organized trips that are sponsored by them and by some of these, some of these activist groups. And I want to talk for a moment, as we mentioned earlier in the program about these ideas that are being propagated to young people because as much as, you know, we, we can and we should prevent elected officials from even taking office if they're communists or they're Maoists or they're, you know, part of the ccp. like we saw, you know, one elected official actually was a Chinese spy that you know, got caught and was prosecuted fairly. So we need to stop all of that from happening. But we also do need to prevent the ideology from taking hold, especially in young people. And so why do you think, James, that so many, young people, college age, particularly Americans, seem more skeptical of communist or of capitalism than previous generations?

James Lindsay: I mean the main reason is, you know, that they're. It's like, you got to think of like soil and seeds, right? So the soil, which is what they've been tilled and cultivated, their entire learning environment, whether it's been schools, whether it's been the media and entertainment, whether it's been the shows that they watch, whether it's in the social networks that they end up getting involved in because of the reflection of the soil that represents their mental state, their psychological and social state has all been bent towards socialism their entire lives. Then you add in the fact that they're now going through this massively disruptive period. many of them grew up in the COVID 19 era. Their lives have been massively disrupted. many of them are facing what they see as catastrophic affordability issues. This is all, it's bread and butter technique by communists, especially targeting young people throughout all of history. It is bread and butter technique to take advantage of these problems and then point the finger and say that these problems are all the result of your political enemies and in particular Donald Trump and his Republican Party. And they've been very effective. Of course we all know about the so called, you know, mental illness called Trump derangement Syndrome. Well this has been a manufactured and induced widespread mental illness that's designed to get people to blame their personal problems on Donald Trump. And since the 1960s, going into the 1970s, this technique has been refined to an extraordinary level to train, you know, propagandists, educators, and so on to reach into a young person's life, connect emotionally to them, to the problems that they feel like they're facing, and then to offer the interpretation for that, in terms of if your political enemies are out of the way, if your, if the political system, capitalism, economic system, capitalism, I should say, were out of the way, then you could have a better life, you could have a good life, you would be free, you could live the life you want, you could afford things, and all of this, comfort that you've come to expect would be able to be extended and amplified. But no, the Republicans are making things unaffordable. President Trump is making everything chaotic, whatever it happens to be. And they're extremely good at this. And so the propagandists are trained to take advantage of a circumstance, and this has been totally immersive. And the circumstance that they take advantage of is any circumstance that they find that your average young person finds as negative has a political explanation that your political enemies are causing it. This is their bread and butter. And like I said, it's been on steroids since Mao Zedong developed it. And then Paulo Faredi in, Brazil developed it into an educational program. And this is exactly what our young people have been raised in. So listen to Hassan Piker, who is one of the biggest cheerleaders of this. Listen to Sorrown Mandami. What are they saying? Actually, listen to what they're saying. We're going to get affordability under control. You're going to be able to live the life that you want. We're not going to have any more bigotry, whatever. The key, and it's affordability, primarily. Key inflammation points are for young people who wish to live, frankly, very bourgeois city lives. They're very, very skillful at manipulating those young people, into, mobilizing against the country, against the Constitution, and against the Republican Party and the conservatives that they see as causing all the problems in their lives.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and, and it's so tragic that the young people are buying into this. But, but often when we talk about that, you know, we think of kind of these militant, students on campus, we think of more of the leftists. But, there is a segment on the right that is also not only concerned about affordability, they're saying, you know, we can't live the American dream like our parents and our grandparents used to. And they also are incredibly skeptical of institutions, I think, in part, rightly, but to the extent that a huge segment of them, like, for example, the Candace Owens followers, who don't even believe in the. In justice and what law enforcement has credibly, shown and, and I think are proving this week during the preliminary hearing of Charlie Kirk, I mean, they're so skeptical of any institutions that even their own champions, like Dan Bongino, for example, who then go into the FBI immediately, then he becomes the enemy because now he's part of the establishment and he's part of the FBI. So they don't even trust their own champions that they send into the administration or even people like Donald Trump, for example. And so, is there a segment on the right that, you know, maybe they're skeptical, rightly, of institutions because they live through Covid. You know, they are in this affordability crisis, granted. But their response to this is rejecting legitimacy and embracing some of the very same concepts that are undermining, the American fabric and the Constitution.

James Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. And the exact same techniques. And I bet you if we trace a lot of the money, you're going to find out that it's a lot of the same people funding it, whether it's Singham or whoever. it's the exact same techniques. So you even just described it. You know, people on the conservative movement, on the right are right, rightly skeptical of things like the CDC of the FBI, of the CIA, et cetera. They're rightly skeptical of all these deep state and globalist interventions that they've seen happen, or at least perceived to be happening. They're rightly skeptical of so much that we've been lied to visibly about, so much that we got blamed for things like a pandemic of the unvaccinated with Joe Biden's fists raised in the air before a red backdrop, looking like a dictator of old. So they're distrustful. But this is that same soil versus seed. So the seed spreaders come along, the propagandists come along. And whether those are Russian propagandists, whether they're Iranian propagandists, whether they're Palestinian, Arab League, Chinese, it doesn't matter. They come along. Or even Native American, just plain American ones. You come along and they throw in these seeds. The reason that your life is unaffordable is because we're wasting money on Israel with the $3.8 billion in foreign aid. The Reason your life is unaffordable is because the GOP is all a bunch of cowards, because they're all bought off and they're all in on it. And this same exact existential fear with no solutions except to throw away the entire system that we have to say that the Constitution was the source of this problem. That the problems that we face are the logical outgrowth. Those same seeds are being planted in that same soil, but using right wing language and right wing themes and right wing talking points as opposed to themes and left wing talking points. So it's exactly the same. As a matter of fact, if you listen to people like Tucker Carlsen at this point, it's nakedly clear that the man is a socially conservative socialist. Sure, he might not be for a drag queen showing up to your kid's school, because that would be socially left. But he praises Nicolas Maduro for having a socially conservative communist regime in Venezuela. He's got the same program. They want to have a common good economy, which is just another brand of socialism sold to right wingers. So it's the exact same method, the exact same thing. Derived again from Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong's math line is the general technique. It got refined into an individual radicalization program by a Brazilian Marxist. He said that's what he was using to do. It became called Education for Liberation. This became renamed critical pedagogy. And every single person who's been educated in the United States since the early 2000s has learned under critical pedagogy, every single person, right, left, center, doesn't matter. Wow.

Jenna Ellis: And you're so right that the exact same themes are just packaged differently to the right. And that's the problem because these, these movements often begin by redefining concepts like, justice, oppression, truth. You know, some of those things that maybe we can on the right call out as, okay, you know, the social justice warriors or some of these other concepts that are pedaled to the left. But we need to be able to call out the concepts that are being pedaled to the right and call that out. Where even the so called conservative champions that maybe used to be, Neil Tucker used to be one of the best on, on Fox. I mean, I always loved a lot of his monologues. But now the kind of propaganda that he is peddling is, not just wrong and insincere, but it's actually motivated by, I think a clear message that is undermining American legitimacy. And so how do we give young people the tools to be able to identify Some of these concepts that are being sewn from within the conservative movement itself.

James Lindsay: I mean the same challenge that we've been facing with the left and we've had, you know, not the best track record with doing it. So I don't have a good answer for this, but showing the techniques for being the techniques that they are, showing that there is an agenda that does not actually serve America, that's operating in somebody else best interest was again as Iran, whether that's Russia or whatever.

We've got to teach young people about the failures of socialism

Showing that this is a math like with Tucker Carlsen. A very effective technique I've seen several people on the Internet make use of is that they show compilation videos of Tucker Carlsen three years ago versus Tucker Carlsen today saying exactly the opposite things, you know, being hard on Sharia to being literally pro Sharia, in a small amount of time. Well, something caused him to flip flop, something caused him to change his mind and then finding out what that something is is probably going to be like the, that's an investigative journalist question. It's a hard question. We can all speculate, but none of us know. So kind of exposing that this is an inorganic movement that's being run by people who seem to have some kind of an agenda that's against the Constitution, that agrees with the left and the Democrats on probably 80% of things that are openly saying they won't support or vote for the Republican Party anymore. All should be big red flags that these people are trying to take American conservatives and right wing young people in particular for a ride. we've got to also educate people, frankly educate people about the failures of socialism. Like President Trump said, I'll be the greatest communist, I'll give everybody everything for free. It'll be awesome for three years and then you're in the dump, everything will fall apart. And so you have to be able to give people this longer range, understanding that socialism eventually runs out of other people's money, that the only productive way to do things is to actually go out and get a job. We've also, we've really got to teach people, the Gen Z, I hate to say this because they get so upset about it, but the fact is that like you know, video after video study after study is showing that a large part of the affordability crisis is that they live on doordash but they literally are not making sound financial decisions. So teaching that it is normal, especially at their age, to be frugal, to save, to try to build, not to, you know, expect to eat dinner out every night of the week or order it in every night of the week, but rather that you cook and that you cook modest things with real ingredients that are. Beans are cheap. you know, ground beef is very expensive right now, but it's relatively cheap compared to whatever you're buying off a door dash. And teaching them that this is literally not just normal and what every single other person in history went through, but it's good and that they can embrace this instead of going to some weird trad lifestyle where it's all performative and they're wearing, you know, old timey clothing and churning butter by hand or something, which is very inefficient. They can actually learn frugality and kind of the basics of a real, actual modest lifestyle from which you can build a foundation. Because this affordability crisis that's hitting them so hard in so many places, I hate to say it, a lot of it's self imposed upon them by their own lifestyles. So they need to be shown that there are other ways to live life and in fact that they're good, and they're rewarding and they're fun and they're interesting.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah. You know that it's so true that for so many people who claim they can't afford certain things, if you actually would go in and see what they spend their money on, this, isn't, you know, it's, it's not someone who, for most young people who are trying to live very frugally and recognizing that maybe some of the luxuries that their parents afford after, you know, 30, 40 years of, of working their jobs, I mean, I remember my parents saying, you know, frequently growing up, how difficult it was for them to get started and the sacrifices that they made. I mean, and they got married, when they were 18, you know, they did, they couldn't afford all of the things that, kids now at the same age believe that they should be able to afford. So, so I think you're right that a lot of it is self imposed and a lot of it is kind of looking at the Instagram lifestyle and thinking that they should automatically be entitled to that without necessarily the years of hard work that goes into it. and so that's in part though why this whole, well, you can have everything for free and is maybe appealing to them because hard work for people who are entitled doesn't really translate. They don't want to actually put in the time and the effort. And they're not being told by especially the Democrats, but even by some on the Right. That they need to necessarily do that. And so from a worldview perspective, though, I mean, it seems like it's so much easier to instill the propaganda of communism and socialism without all of the detriments and what it eventually leads to. Then, you know, the hard work of the actual American dream. And that's really frustrating because it, there is dignity and there's actually purpose and value and joy in hard work and actually providing for yourself. And it seems like for some reason conservatives aren't doing a very good job of actually showing what the American dream truly is and instead just trying to talk about the ills of communism. That really isn't translating to a lot of young people.

James Lindsay: I agree, absolutely. Like we've got to follow the dream as well, the positive dream that is America. and what that becomes is it's like having an immune system actually to prevent people from getting pulled into these narratives that pull them into radicalism, left or right. If they believe they have a shot in the system, then they're not likely to want to blow the system up. This was the big lesson that the Western Marxists figured out in the 1930s and 1940s when they were inventing the critical theory and amplified in the 1960s when they launched their attempted revolution, in the late 60s, which was then, that people who have a stake in the system, who believe they can get somewhere in the existing system, become stabilized, they become conservatives, they become counter revolutionary and they cease to be, as, ah, Herbert Marcuse, the famous new leftist phrased it, they cease to be the organic basis for the revolution. And that's exactly what we need to be teaching people is, look, young people, I understand, things are more expensive. It's harder to buy a house now, proportionally speaking, and so on. You have to buy a phone. They're expensive. I understand there's a lot of differences, but the fact of the matter is you also have greater economic opportunities than any generation before you. That is a clear, blatant fact. You don't have to go through the traditional pathways of, you know, an education in a university, whatever. You can go build something new and different that was not even possible for people in your parents generation or grandparents generations. But you also have to consider carefully, how do you make your life affordable? Like that's an active set of choices that a human being makes. How do I live within my means? How do I extend my means once I'm on that foundation and once you are on that, you are, by the way, living the American dream. It is not like you said the Instagram dream. It's the American dream where everybody works hard, everybody contributes, bring something to the table that other people benefit from, and then you can actually build a successful next generation. And that is the immune system to this Marxism or the fascism or whatever else that wants to throw out the Constitution and pretend it can indefinitely give people a free and easy life.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And I think, you know, while this, we talk about this primarily as a political movement, you know, which it is this, type of recognition of, you know, this spiritual void and the identity and purpose and community crisis that young people are facing in so many different ways. I think this is an attempt by the left to fill that with something that ultimately doesn't satisfy and isn't truly the American dream. That was of course, premised on the Christian worldview that, has a totally different understanding of human nature, of purpose, of the reason we're here, which is ultimately, of course, to worship God and to understand who he is and come into relationship with Him. That work is good, that purpose, is fulfilling, and actually providing for yourself and your family is a very good, good thing. And so those differences, and the assumptions underlying Marxist ideology, I mean, I think this is at its core, not primarily a political movement, but a spiritual one.

James Lindsay: I do too. And I believe that America has a deep spiritual malady. I think it has afflicted the generations across the board, but as they get younger to a greater degree. And that spirituality is actually, you could say, people say pride and envy or whatever, but at the root of it's ingratitude or at least the doorway to making a difference in your own life, gratitude. So when you talk about the Judeo Christian worldview, the foundation of the west, you're talking about a, ah, worldview that is oriented toward being grateful to God for every single thing you have, whether it's your life, whether it's the modest things that you've been able to accrue, whether it's the opportunities, the ability to do something, the capacity to serve others and to receive a just reward for that. This is something we're all supposed to be grateful for. I have this picture of the west, and I know it sounds like Stephen Pinker, which is a bit cringe, or it sounds like Louis CK with his comedy bit that he did. But I have this picture of people flying in business class, across the ocean to a major event in a 787 on a life lie down flat, you know, seat, in front of an airplane with all this luxury, writing about the sad decline of the West. And it's just a reflection that they're not grateful. If you begin with gratitude, which is, by the way, an individual choice that every single person gets to make every single day, if you remember what it says in the Bible as a command, which is, this is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. So you're going to have to be grateful for what you have first. You can't rejoice in a crappy day if you're not grateful for the blessings that are actually hidden within it. If you start with that and you start that disposition, you turn into somebody who wants to build. You turn into somebody who's not entitled. You turn into somebody who's not envious because you're grateful for that which you have, including living in a country and under a system that gives you the opportunity to build something even greater for yourself. And if you're truly Christian, to give all the glory to God, Jewish, too. And so this is a spiritual malady that runs deep, and this has been a spiritual war that has been waged against us. But for me, from what I've been deciding over the past, I don't know, six months, is that the absolute key at the individual level of taking action and changing your own life is whether or not you are capable of being grateful for the blessings in your life and the situation and systems that made those blessings possible. And if you are, you're immune to Marxism. And if you are not, you're going to get the mind virus.

Jenna Ellis: Amen. Amen. Well, James Lindsay, we've got to, end here, but I so appreciate you coming on for this segment. And this is why the truthful biblical worldview matters. We'll talk about that more right after for this.

Jenna Ellis: Everyone has a worldview. We can't change that

Welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the Morning on American Family Radio.

Jenna Ellis: Welcome m back. And we've been talking about the existential threat to America of communism, Marxism, Maoism, and basically all of these worldviews that are false. And so you either have the truthful worldview that is premised on a recognition of God, our creator, the God of the Bible, and the natural law law that flows from him as the divine lawgiver, and for his own sovereign purposes, created the reality to which we're presented. We can't change that. We can only discover it. We can then understand the world around us, who we are as human beings made in the image of God, and then our relationship to God, our Creator and who he is. And that theology, the understanding of God and of Truth then necessarily dictates how we understand truthfully the world around us. This isn't just perspective. It's not what we call standpoint epistemology that, you know, our perspective in my truth versus your truth differs depending on our perspectives. Well, it doesn't matter if you have a perspective that is different from truth. Truth is what it is without your opinion on it. So as Christians, we can't assume that the next generation will recognize false ideas simply because they're false. I mean, first you have to understand what truth is so that you can recognize deception. Deception is very easy to fall into when you don't have a standard and a baseline to compare and contrast it against. And every generation is discipled by someone. Every generation believes a version of what they think truth is. Everyone has a worldview. If the church and Christian are not intentionally teaching biblical truth, theology and a distinctly Christian worldview, the culture. And of course these foreign adversaries who have their worldview that they believe in wholeheartedly, they will gladly fill that vacuum with competing ideologies. We should not have the Chinese Communist Party and these foreign entities have more of a drive to proselytize into their ideology than Christians. Christians. That is a condemnation of the responsibility that Christians have in our culture. And to the next generation, Marxism doesn't just offer a different political system. It begins with a fundamentally different understanding of human nature, justice, morality, and even our need for redemption. What is it we need to be saved from? what is the purpose ultimately of man? Scripture tells us that the problem with the world is just simply economics or social structures or institutions. It's sin. The answer is not class revolution. It's ultimately Jesus Christ. And this is why biblical literacy matters. Theology matters. And it isn't easy to go and study Scripture and compare and contrast different ideologies to what Scripture says. I, mean, it's very easy to just go and sit in your pew on Sundays, and a lot of Christians don't even do that much. But it takes a lot of discipline and understanding of why this matters to actually read through the whole Bible to be literate in theology. Why does that matter? So that first and foremost we know the true God and we can worship him correctly and with passion, but also so that we can, as Scripture warns us and commands us to do, rightly divide truth from age error. Parents and pastors and churches have to move beyond this kind of feel good Christianity. That's basically nothing more than a TED Talk and a motivational speech to teach believers not only what the Bible says. But why it is true and how it applies to the ideas that are competing for their hearts and minds. If your church is not actively connecting theological concepts to what's going on in the world today and to politics, to society, which is, you know, truth in our civil, institutions and to the relationships that we naturally come into contact with, with each other, then your church is not doing a good job at teaching theology. This isn't just about what we believe in, some kind of esoteric concept about God. This directly applies to our everyday lives lives and our civil society. If we want Christians who can stand firm in a culture that is increasingly shaped by secular and communist and Marxist and Chinese propagandist funded ideologies, we have to raise disciples who know God's word well enough to recognize a counterfeit when they see one. If we send our children to Caesar, are we really surprised when they come back as Romans? That's exactly what we're doing with a lot of these state funded educational institutions that are teaching this kind of false ideology. Truth doesn't defend itself through silence. Yes, truth is what it is, regardless of the defense, but it must be faithfully taught, lived and passed on to the next generation. So my call to action for you today day. Think about this through the weekend and on Sunday morning. What are you doing to pass on the truth to the next generation and actively live that in civil society? As always, you can reach me and my team, Jenna afr.net.