Sponsor Message and Founding Principles: Aligning Government with Divine Rights and Biblical Worldview
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Nicole Hannah Jones's Article: A Public Reckoning with Woke Idealism and Parental Responsibility
This is Jenna Ellis in the Morning.
Jenna Ellis: Good morning. It is Tuesday, September 22, and perhaps among all of the negative headlines, this is actually a positive one. this coming from Newsweek. Nicole Hannah Jones may have just written a eulogy for woke idealism. And you'll recall that Nicole, Hannah Jones was, the prominent, quote, unquote journalist. I think, I think that's fair to put that in air quotes. known for her coverage of racial discrimination in American schools and for her work on the 1619 project for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. So even with all of that, she is now, making a case that, she may have actually failed her own daughter in her advocacy for school integration and preferring other children and basically the collective over her own child. so this whole article, is a pretty wild read. It's in the NewSong York Times entitled, in Fighting for every Black Child, Did I just Betray my own? And so the commentary in Newsweek, is actually really good, because it's basically saying that what she admits is, isn't just that the school failed, it's that Hannah Jones knew that there were problems, kept going anyway. And now she says she cannot forgive herself for what her decision meant for her own daughter. Quote. When it comes to the choices my husband and I made about public education these days, I feel. I feel I failed both my values and my child. She writes. She goes further than regret. Describing the moment she understood what nine years of emails and unanswered complaints had cost her daughter, she writes, I felt overcome with regret. My daughter deserved better. They all did. But she was mine. This girl, my only child, looked to me to protect her and to give her what she needed to thrive. And I had not chosen her. So let's welcome in, Calvin Robinson, who is a priest and also a pundit and, you know, great commentator on, the.
The Clash of Ideologies: Family Values Versus Collective Good in Modern Parenting and Education
The biblical worldview. So love having him on the program. And, Calvin, this just struck me as one of those moments. The WOKE ideology just runs 100 miles an hour against a brick wall. And, and maybe, Nikole. Hannah Jones is recognizing that actually family matters and that children are a gift from God and that parents are the ones who are ultimately responsible for their own children, not for the good and the collective of the whole community. And perhaps she's realizing that. That her values are actually off. But, do you think that this is accurate, this, this Newsweek headline, that this may be the eulogy for WOKE idealism?
Calvin Robinson: Thank you, Jenna. I think it's a start. I really do. I think people are finally waking up to the idea that woke isn't working. You know, one of the biggest WOKE commentators this week took his, him or his, pronouns out of his Twitter bio, for example. People are realizing that it doesn't have the impact on society that they think it does. But I think it's spot on when you use the word ideology about Nicole Hannah Jones, because she has here made her ideology an idol. It's almost become a religion for her. And that's what I did for. It happened for many liberals in that there's a meme that goes around on the Internet that shows a graph of, of conservative people, protecting their own. And by their own, I mean their family, their nation, the people around them first, and then the other liberal mindset wants to protect the other first and then their own. It's an inverse, and it doesn't work in reality. It sounds good. It sounds very empathetic. It sounds very, noble to protect the other first. But within Christianity, we have order amoris. We have this order of love in that, of course, a mother or a father is going to protect their own children first, and then the people around them. You know, your local parish, your local community, then your nation, and then the other nations in the world. And this. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Yes, we are called to love our neighbor, but not at our own expense, and not the expense of those that we are responsible for. And you use that word as well. You said responsible. I think that's so important. Parents are ultimately responsible for their children. So the children don't belong to the parents. They are owned by the parents. They're Owned by God. Children, all children belong to God. But parents are responsible for raising them, nurturing them, and passing on the faith and values to them. And for so long in modernity we've forgotten that since about the 50s we've been obsessed with handing children over to the state and the state is somehow expected to raise our children.
Critique of State-Mandated Education: Indoctrination and the Erosion of Parental Authority in Values Transmission
And then at the end of a few years in education, we look back and say, well, why, excuse me, why don't my children have the same values I have? Why do they have the values that built this society? Well, it's because they've been indoctrinated with liberal progressivism through the state system, because it's the state's interests to have them put the state first rather than the parents and their parents values. And so this is what we're seeing reflected in this Nicole Hannah Jones article in that she put her own values first over her children. And her child rebuked, her and said this was not good for me. And the response from Nicole was to try to gaslight her child, say oh, your school's not that bad. And the child turns around and says no, look at the results, look at the statistics, it's a bad school. And Nicole's response was, well, I never really got the education I wanted. That's a direct quote. It seems that she wanted to be surrounded by other black children. She wanted a black education and she wanted it to be a certain way. But it wasn't realistic and it wasn't putting the best interests of a child first. Every parent should want their child to have the best education. And that really, truly, I think mostly these days should be home education. It should be the parents educating their children as best they can, usually in some kind of hub with other parents and other specialists. But if not, if you send your kids to a school, you send them to a good school where they're going to get good values and good grades for goodness sake. You don't send them because you want them to be around other people of a certain color because that's your political ideology and you think that black is best. Firstly that's racist, but secondly is detrimental to the child's well being.
Jenna Ellis: Yes, so, so well said and so much to unpack there. But but it's so true that, you know, we, we have lived for a while in this culture that has told parents that it has to be community first and you have to build your community before you build your family.
The Dangers of Collectivism: How Prioritizing Community Over Family Undermines Individual Identity and Traditional Values
And so family has lost its identity as you know, one man, one woman in the covenant of marriage for life. And in that context you bring in children and you in the fear and admonition of the Lord because they are gifts from the Lord and you are responsible, and stewarding their discipleship and their upbringing so that then when they become adults they can do likewise. And so this whole inverted perspective and priority has been for a long time to say, build the community first and that then ultimately erodes the individual identity of children and of families. To say you're just part of this big collective and that's exactly what the state wants and what the liberal state wants. So that we're all just cogs in this system and we do whatever the state wants and we don't have these individual passions to go and pursue, God's best for us and our own individual calling. And so it's a completely warped mentality and warped ideology. And when her daughter now is finally confronting her about the logical end result of those leftist liberal values, she's seeing that now in real time. And so how much of this, and this, I mean, I'm actually surprised that she was even willing to write this article and you know, maybe just totally out of guilt for her daughter. I mean, I don't know her motivations. But to actually be willing to write this I think is a moment where it could cause the left to say, okay, wait a minute, one of our fiercest champions for part of the most woke ideology, that we have been perpetuating for, you know, decades is now saying this didn't work in my individual circumstance. I don't think that that's going to make the left, you know, suddenly have a literal come to Jesus moment. It should, but it won't. But this very same thing I think is going to happen, Calvin, with the, the left who are advocating for socialism currently. I mean in the very same way they've been advocating for this Marxist woke, frankly racist ideology, that was perpetuated by the 1619 Project and others, is now a similar ideology that's being promoted in this whole collectivist mentality to say that socialism is better. We, we shouldn't pursue individual things, we shouldn't own anything, we should just go, pay more taxes. We should all have everything the same. that's the very same type of ideology that if America goes down that road, in decades to come, people are going to realize the very same lesson that Nikole Hannah Jones is realizing now.
Calvin Robinson: Yeah, I think, I think you're right, but I think a Lot of this they have to learn the hard way. we on the right tend to be more pragmatic and more logical. And we try to be evidence and say, this won't work.
Learning Through Failure: The Inevitable Collapse of Idealistic Ideologies When Confronted by Reality and Pragmatism
Socialism doesn't work. You know, critical race theory doesn't work, et cetera. It will produce negative results. But on the left, they are more idealistic and less, evidence informed. And so they don't believe us and they think we're wrong. I think we're evil. They think we're the bad guys. And so they almost have to create this horrible socialist environment first and have to see it fail. What was that? There was a city during COVID that was kind of set up with cordoned, no go zones. And you had to be liberal to live there. And it failed within, within days. This is what happens, what we're seeing here in Nicole's article, she says, I felt overcome with regret, like she's had to put her child through this awful experience. She's had to give her child a bad education because she was ideological, and the results are that her child is upset and unhappy, and the mother is now realizing that she's regretting her decisions. Like she had to live it herself. Unfortunately, she had to learn the hard way. But if only they could listen to us in the first place. In the beginning of this article, she's talking about, her daughter's list of top schools. They were heavily wired and screen to their students. The type of public school I have spent my career arguing against. Again, she wanted different type of system, but that system doesn't exist. We operate within the system that we have right now. And you're responsible to, for your child right now, not in where you want the future to be. And so if you're, if you're looking at schools and for example, a school screens their children and there's some kind of academic, ability test or something. Great, because it means only people around your child are going to be of similar ability to your child. And they can all learn together. Wonderful. Let's have more of that. You know, it's funny that you can have screening for sports, you can have screening for music, but having a screening for academic ability is somehow looked down upon. It's actually a good thing. We've, we've seen this all across the world. But, you know, I did my theology at Oxford, and Oxford's a prime example of. It used to be the best university in the world, and now it's changing its entry criteria to make it easier for ethnic minorities to get in. Now I'm an ethnic minority myself, half black, half white. I didn't need the criteria lowering down for me to get in. But this is what they're doing now because they want to see the numbers go up for dei. But what it means is by lowering the entry criteria, you lower standards. And then when people get in based on lower criteria, they don't have the academic ability to complete the courses. And so actually it doesn't help them. If we want to help society, if you want to help young people, if you want to help increase DEI numbers and all that kind of stuff, you have to change things actively. You have to bring people up. You can't bring the system down, you can't bring the entry criteria down. And this is exactly what Nicole's done. This is exactly what socialists do. They try to make everything equally poor, equally bad.
Equality Versus Excellence: The Left's Pursuit of Sameness Undermines Standards, Merit, and Human Flourishing
Because at the end of the day, equality is more important to them than raising up standards.
Jenna Ellis: Yes, and standards and competition are good things so that we can have quality, we can have merit, we can have the best people doing the best things. And And yet, you know, we see the, this clash of ideology that the left is always wanting to put forward an ideology that is fundamentally against a natural law and the biblical worldview. And so we see these systems fail at every turn when the left or when individuals and people are trying to, to advance a system that is fundamentally in conflict with what God tells us is best for human flourishing and what we see in scripture and the reason that we're conservatives and that our founders understood human nature. I was talking to a friend yesterday, you know who. And we were talking about how the systems, in other nations that don't recognize that human nature is fallen and that these, these people. And I think, you know, Nicole, Hannah Jones is one of them. She thinks that people are intrinsically good. And she doesn't even realize that the definition of good, is in her paradigm is very subjective. And the only reason we have a definition of good is because we have the person of truth, God himself. And so we have a, an objective definition of right and wrong, good and evil. And so it's only within the biblical, in government, in community, in society, in the family, that we can truly flourish because we understand the human condition, we understand a biblical anthropology and we also understand that this world is fallen and, and that we have to have, the government is implemented to have these safeguards to promote good and restrain evil. But in their paradigms it's always, let's make everything equally good. And they don't realize that in that type of equality, some do, but, but the ones who are actually doing it, you know, with this, this value set, they really strongly believe that they're making everything good for everyone when really it's not going to work.
The Biblical Worldview as Objective Truth: Contrasting Divine Morality with Subjective Ideals in a Fallen World
And so, you know, when, when we are attempting to promote a biblical worldview, and right now, you know, ahead of the midterms, we have this clash of two different systems of reality, two completely different paradigms, and we have the mostly at least better biblical worldview. You know, I mean, it's not perfect. Obviously the Republican Party has a lot of flaws. but overall, conservatives, that conservative paradigm is so much better than the left. I think we have to continue to explain why these false ideologies simply do not work and the outcome that they're trying to achieve will never happen because their, their worldview doesn't work in reality.
Calvin Robinson: Yeah, I don't think you've hit the nail on the head there when you talk about, they think it's good, but how do they define good? It's, it's arbitrary to them and it changes from day to day. One of the examples that often stands out to me is J.K. rowling was held up as a feminist figure because she fought for women's rights. But then the moment the trans rights movement comes up and she's like, no, because this contradicts, this conflicts with what we've been fighting for. This is taking away from women's rights. She gets left behind and all of a sudden the woke movement hate her, and see her as a Nazi. And clearly she's not a Nazi. She's not at all on the, on the right wing spectrum of politics. She's still very much left wing, a socialist, and still, still very much, a feminist. However, the M movement has moved along and so what was good five minutes ago isn't good now. And that's why we have, instead of an abstract, arbitrary definition of good, we have an absolute definition of good because we get it from God himself, who is good. And so he tells us what's good and what's not good is evil. And so we can set our whole worldview around, around Christ. And that makes it objective rather than subjective. Which means we don't have to change our values every five minutes. We don't have to try and play catch up. We're not trying to see, okay, what is the new virtue signal that I need to let out today. It's like we're trying to strive towards the virtues we're trying to strive towards holiness and we, I think we need to remind people of that because for some reason the world has determined that we can all individually say what is good, because we, we generally know what is good. This is the message that people give out. It's only because they've grown up in Christendom and they've grown up around Christian virtues that they kind of have, an underlining understanding of what good is. But, you can't live in Christendom without Christ. You can't have Christian values without Christ. It doesn't work. But he is the centerpiece, he's the foundation. The moment you take him out, everything else just eradicated. And that's what we're seeing with wokeness, with socialism, with leftism, with progressivism, liberalism. It's all just trying to cling on to the fruits of Christendom without Christ himself. And so I think we on the conservative Christian side are saying, look, we, we, all these things are good, Christian values are good, but I mean nothing without Jesus.
Jenna Ellis: Amen. Absolutely amen.
Preserving the American Foundation: The Indispensable Role of Christ and Biblical Worldview in National Identity and Morality
And we've got to take a break here, but Calvin Robinson, I always love your commentary, so appreciate your time. And it's so true that, all of these people on the left, I mean even those who are coming in, like Zoran Mamdani, who, you know was born in a different country, comes here to America, can live the American dream because we are a society that is premised in and built upon, upon the foundation of recognition of truth and the biblical worldview and Christ at the center. And the, the left is taking advantage of that while trying to undermine it. And that's what we have to prevent if we are going to move forward in America, building a moral and upright society and the best union possible so that, why, so that we can have the advantages to protect our, our right individually to raise our own families. We'll be right back with more.
Threats to American Culture: Examining Muslim Immigration and the Insufficiency of Banning Sharia Law Alone
Hi, I'm Jenna Ellis. Did you know that this content is listener supported? Without people like you, this podcast would not exist. And that's why we need you. A generous monthly gift of any amount will help sustain American Family Radio and specifically this podcast. Please consider becoming a monthly financial partner today by visiting afr.netforward/give. That's afr.netgive. welcome back to Jenna Ellis in the Morning on American Family Radio.
Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. Well, speaking of preserving the Christian foundation of this nation, the biblical worldviews that are premised in a truthful view of reality, one of the other biggest, threats to our culture, to our society has been the growing Muslim population. And our Good friend Oren McIntyre, who is a columnist and host at the Blaze, wrote a really great thread on X, where he says, when I talk to, well meaning Normie cons, they all understand that a growing Muslim population is a thing threat to the country. But they all have this strange plan where we will ban Sharia law and declare Islam, quote, not a religion, because it's political or something. I Talked to about 20 very nice people, with the exact same Rube Goldberg machine solution to this weekend. So it must be getting traction somewhere in the commentariat. I then explained that the simple solution, and the only one that will work, is to ban all Muslim immigration. So Orin McIntyre joins us now and you've gone on. I won't read the full thread, but people can follow you and read that, on x at Orin McIntyre, but, Orin, you know, I think this is a fair point that while banning Sharia law and that emphasis is, I think a good thing and a good step, it doesn't go far enough. because as you rightly point out, Sharia law is what Muslims do. And when you have a majority Muslim country like what we're seeing, over in, you know, the uk, the growing Muslim population, then naturally the, the consequence is that your laws become more and more Muslim because you have the population that wants that. And so we need to to not just think that when we ban Sharia law. Okay, well then fine, the fight is done.
Auron MacIntyre : Yeah. I was in Texas recently and of course Texas is experiencing a growth in Muslim, immigration to the point where now they have record numbers of mosques being constructed. They have Muslims trying to create their own separate towns that are going to be Muslim only or, you know, majority Muslim on purpose, oriented around the culture and the faith. And a lot of people in Texas are absolutely, correctly, very worried about this, you know, because obviously this doesn't belong to the United States. These are people are incompatible with our culture. They're radically changing the values and the very God that is being worshiped in Texas. but the solutions that a lot of people are floating are, you know, like you said, I ultimately support the banning of Sharia law. That's fine. you know, it doesn't belong here. We shouldn't have any law but the law of the United States. But it's just insufficient. At the end of the day, it's mainly kind of performative because the thing about law is it's not Just what's on paper, it's what's lived. And so what we've seen repeatedly for in places like Europe, where large Muslim populations have grown up, is even if no Sharia law is technically allowed by the country Muslims are in, they ultimately start creating the side courts. They create these extra legal, extra judicial courts that run on Sharia law. And that's where all the business for Muslims is done. They don't even go to the main courts. And so that my point to people that I'm trying to get them to grasp is that you're not going to educate Muslims out of Sharia law. You're not just going to turn them into good Americans by banning Sharia law. Because once you get enough Muslims, it doesn't even have to be a majority, it just needs to be a sizable minority. They will do Sharia law because that is what Muslims do. It's the same reason we have English Common Law. Don't get me wrong, I think English Common Law is objectively great. But we didn't just choose that because we ran it up against every other system and decided that was the best one. We have English Common Law because we're an Anglo descended country. That's our tradition. It's what our forefathers were used to. It's the rights they believed were due to us. And so we continue that tradition in our own American way today. But this is not the same for Muslims. They have a wildly different culture with no connection to this understanding of law. And so they do law the way that they have always done it whenever they have the option. And they're going to have the option once they have enough people.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And you know, it's such a great point that history and tradition matters.
The Importance of History and Tradition: Passing Down Christian Foundations and American Heritage to Future Generations
And this is where so many of the, of the left, who don't want to teach the history and the tradition and the Christian foundations of our nation, want to get is because they don't want that heritage and that understanding of our rights and that they come from God our Creator. And why we have the system that we do in place. They don't want that to be passed on to the next generation. Why? So that we aren't advocating as a society for not only our history and tradition, but ultimately for the truth and for the biblical worldview so that we are more easily taken over by whether it's Sharia law or some other type of false ideology and a lesser system that doesn't work. And so you know how much of this is not only about immigration banning certain, ah, people from certain countries, which I don't think, should be illegal. I think that that's perfectly acceptable for any country and any sovereign nation to say. There are certain types of people with certain beliefs that don't assimilate here, don't belong here, they're fundamentally in conflict. It's not racist, it's, it's simply saying, you know, we want to protect our nation and our standards and our values first. but how much of this is about immigration banning, but also educating and assimilating our own, next generation of Americans into our own history and tradition? Because I think both sides of that coin are contributing to the problem.
Auron MacIntyre : No, that's absolutely correct. I mean on one side, as you say, it's perfectly reasonable and by the way, it was perfectly legal to do this. Throughout American history, the founding fathers wildly restricted immigration to particular sets of people. We had that throughout our history, all the way up to the Heart Cellar act, before the Heart Seller Act. We had a preference for European immigration because we knew it was the most likely to be Christian, the most likely to be culturally compatible with our ways of life. you know, and this was only in the 1960s. It's not like this is some far off distant thing that we can't access. Like this is perfectly recent and it's a reasonable thing to consider when you're deciding whether or not people should be able to come to the country at all. that said, you're right that also we have to make sure that the people of this nation value that tradition. And by the way, one of the ways that you have to do that is to keep the population steady when you have a constant churn of lots of people coming in. It's very difficult for people to understand America as a place with a permanent tradition that's being carried on. People tend not to preserve a tradition when all the other people from around the world are coming in with their own and have competing ideas. You need that strong, stable base of population so the few people you bring in do have something to assimilate to. And then I think it's really important, as you're saying, to have that tradition grounded. We need to have that idea that yes, we have values, we have principles, right? Like those things are very real. But those values and principles, those truths are tied to our history. They are tied to the way we have lived our life. And so they're not just free floating things that people accept or reject.
The Erosion of American Culture: Loss of Shared Values, Identity, and the Decline of National Unity and Purpose
They are the way that we have lived our lives as Christians, as Anglo descended people for a very long time. Those are the pillars of what make America what it is, is that tradition along with that faith. It is the interweaving of the two that make us who we are. And so when we're following a law, yes, we're following it because we're a nation of laws and because it's the correct thing to do. We're also following it because it is the way in which our ancestors live, the way that has developed the type of lives that we want to lead. And when you have a much more, I think, historical and biblical grounding for what you're doing, it makes the law a far more serious thing that people value.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, it's culture. I mean that's what we're talking about is culture. And that's what we've lost in, in America. we have lost a respect and a, a pride frankly, for the shared beliefs, values, customs, everyday practices of our way of life and the social norms that guide how people act and relate to one another. And our history and tradition is all part of that shared heritage and that culture. And when our culture has become a basically saying you can't be proud anymore to be an American. You can't say that our culture is necessarily Christian and that the the epicenter of the community is the church and that we want to orient our, our government and our society around the traditional nuclear family that is premised on a biblical worldview and natural law. I mean that used to be and was the heritage and culture of America. And now in this, in this whole postmodern, post truth, religious pluralistic society, we have completely abandoned this idea that we have a shared culture. I mean I, I look around and and, and think, okay, they're. Everybody else in every other country can have their pride in their culture, their traditions, their their clothing, their, their heroes. You know, all of those things that are part of passing down the tradition and the heritage. Accept American right, because for some reason, you know, our flag is now a symbol of, it's triggering everybody. And there are even statistics now that if you have an American flag outside your house, you're less likely statistically, to have, you know, intruders or burglars because they think that you're more likely to, to actually have guns to defend yourself. And it's like, well, why? Because probably you are conservative. And when did the American flag become a symbol of just the right. No, this should be a symbol of American culture. That we all participate in. But we have lost this understanding of a shared, common culture in favor of diversity, which necessarily, by definition, breaks apart unity. And unity is not what we have anymore as Americans. And this is what we need to get back to. So that when we look at what, you know, who we are bringing into this country, what their values are, their lack of assimilation, you know, all of these things, we actually have unity and one common purpose, one common culture, shared beliefs and values and customs, and then behaviors that will drive our society toward our goals. And I think when we have such fracturing, if you look at the two parties, I mean, even the Republican Party, we can't even agree on what our goals are anymore. I mean, that you can't have a common purpose and a trajectory if you don't have a shared belief system and a shared values and a shared goal.
Defining American Identity: Reclaiming a Shared Culture and Tradition in Contrast to Diversity's Divisive Nature
Auron MacIntyre : Yeah, I mean, we're absolutely in a scenario where we have discarded the idea of really the core American identity. We're not allowed to have American identity. The American identity is everyone. Everyone can be an American. everyone can be accepted. America is just a melting pot. You know, there is no American culture. You're, you know, if you bring that up, then you probably have, you know, some kind of racist idea. If you're, you know, think that there is something that is an American, that you can identify what an American American is. And if you can't, if you can't identify what an American is, then how can you have traditions? How can you have shared values? How can you have a shared culture? You know, the entire idea is predicated on having an American identity. And for most of American history, there was no problem understanding what an American was and what it took to become an American. You know, if you wanted to. This was something that was critical throughout. Again, American history is. Yes, you had to be culturally, assimilable. It wasn't that everybody could come to the United States that from everywhere around the world and easily become American. But also, even if you were someone who was relatively assimilable, you had to work hard to do it. You know, there was a real period in American history where, for instance, Germans were not assimilating. And we had to work very hard to kind of break the kind of German ethnic enclaves that exist in the United States and get them to speak English and teach their children English and send them to school and get them to adopt American folkways. And that's the people that most people think are very compatible today. So we have to understand that America is a real Thing. It's not just some, amorphous commitment somewhere. It's. It's a, ah, string of history and heritage and tradition and beliefs that are also adopted by many people along the way that has made the America very strong and great. But ultimately, you know, there is a core of people here that matter. And I think this is why it's become conservative and, you know, to have an American flag. I think in many ways, you know, the gop, for all of its many, many, many faults, is the America Party and the Democrats are the not American party. Like, it really does seem to be having the lines drawn around those identities all by themselves.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, so well said. And you know, America is not just an idea, like you said. It's not this just, you know, sort of amorphous, vague, ah, concept that you can't quite pin down. I mean, it is a nation, with borders and boundaries and people and history and heritage and culture. And you know, this conversation is exactly why, this famous quotation from Breitbart now in this context, hopefully makes even more sense, to people listening that politics is downstream from culture. When we have a culture, if we ever did, you know, God forbid, in America that is predominantly Muslim and you have a Muslim culture, what do you think the politics are going to be and what do you think the law and the system is going to be? It's going to be Sharia law, it's going to be, Islam. And that's why, we have to make sure that we protect our way of life, the Western tradition, Christian culture. And this isn't just about Christians engaging only in politics.
The Holistic Battle for Western Civilization: Engaging Every Aspect of Culture to Protect Christian Values and American Identity
This is why we have to engage in the culture predominantly. I mean, even in, in the arts and philosophy, in education that we're talking about in the last segment, we have to make sure that in all of our, I mean, in science, in you know, the fields of, healthcare, and recognizing that, every philosophy and every discipline and everything that we do has to be predicated on a Christian worldview. Otherwise we are ceding that to some other view that ultimately is going to shape our law and ultimately our communities. And so, Oren, just in the last about, you know, minute and a half or so, we have in this segment, you know, kind of put it all together for us because this isn't just about party, it's not just about politics, it's not just about immigration. I mean, this is holistic to make sure that we understand that Christians have to engage in every, aspect of our culture. So that we protect Western civilization. I mean, that's how big this conversation is.
Auron MacIntyre : Yeah. You know, I wrote a book called the Total State about how all of our institutions kind of collaborate to destroy what has been our, democracy. And ultimately, I think we have to understand that all of these institutions, all these cultural aspects are contributing to our identity and who we are. And so, as you say, we have to take it seriously. From education to entertainment to government to business, all across the board, we have to understand that these are shaping American identity and defining our future. And if we want our values to continue, if we want American identity to continue, then it needs to be infused into all of these organizations, all of these institutions, all these cultural operators.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, so well said. Well, we've got to take a break here.
The Imperative of Unity: A Call for a Common Mind in Christ to Advance Truth and Preserve God-Given Rights
but Orin McIntyre, really appreciate it and this is a great thread again for, listeners. You can find. Follow him. Orrin McIntyre on X encourage you to do that and, you know, think about the consequences of culture. I mean, this isn't. More diversity isn't the answer. More unity, is actually the answer. And Paul talks about that in the NewSong Testament in Philippians 4. In fact, you know, my dad was preaching at our, church I was visiting this past week in Colorado, and he was talking about Paul calling for unity in Christ and that God Christians need to have one common mind. Why? So that we can continue to advance the truth of the gospel of Christ and how that plays out, not just in the salvation which of our souls, which is paramount, but then into everything that we do protecting and preserving the rights that come from God. Why? So that we can raise our families according to the truth. We'll be right back with more.
Saving Lives, Spreading Hope: Preborn's Mission to Provide Ultrasounds and Support for Mothers in Crisis
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The AI Race and Regulation: Examining OpenAI's 'Hugging Face Incident', Financial Struggles, and China's Role
Welcome back.
Jenna Ellis: Well, the other world view issue that we are confronting and will still need to confront as a nation is the rise of artificial intelligence. And you may have heard about the Hugging Face incident, also known as the Open AI, hugging Face incident, which occurred back somewhere between May and July of 2026 when autonomous artificial intelligence agents built by OpenAI broke out of their secure testing environments and carried out an unguided coordinated cyber attack on external infrastructure, including the machine learning platform called Hugging Face. Thus the the Hugging Face incident. And so you. This raises the question about regulation and what parameters and contours America is going to push for, especially in the AI race against China. And so Bloomberg had an interesting piece, earlier this week. Besent, Secretary, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the responsibility for the recent hacking incident involving OpenAI's advanced artificial intelligence models was with the firm's managers. While stopping short of suggesting any consequences. Bessant also said that President Trump's idea of appointing an AI czar would quote, put context, shape and contours around these questions and they're very important. But does this go far enough? Well, let's welcome in Scott Eulinger who is a retired CIA officer. And Scott, there are so many national security implications with this and my concern is that the older generation frankly of the Trump administration is not as concerned where you know, some. I'm more in the J.D. vance camp where you know, he's focused on AI and having America be the leader on that in terms of regulation and policy. And I think that's a much better direction for the future security of the nation.
Scott Uehlinger: Well yeah, that's, that's true. The We certainly need to be very careful about it. I'm never going to say that that is not the case. However, I am glad that Bessant made that announcement because it's clear that we're being played by the CEOs of of Open Air and Anthropic, because it's very interesting the timing of all of this stuff. And so I'm inclined to believe Bessant's explanation that it was basically the manager's failings that led to the hugging face incident more than the AI itself. And it was a convenient, it's a convenient boogeyman for them to trot out at this time because you know yesterday Scott Besson publicly stated that the taxpayers money is not going to cover the liability for Anthropic and Open air reckless private credit borrowing. So that puts Altman and Dario Amade, who they're both involved with Anthropic and open AI. It puts them in a tough spot because the Trump administration refuses to bail them out. And I think OpenAI is afraid to go public because that's how bad their account books look right now. See so like you know they were about to come out publicly but their books are all messed up because they have sunk so much money into this that that there's almost no way out. And so they want, they all of a sudden are all about government regulation for themselves because they not only want economy bailed out, they want like a liability protection like Big Pharma was given for their abuses. And then also of course once they get into the government, of course they have incredible amounts of money then they can prevent smaller startups from coming in to eventually replace them because that's also what's happening. What we've been seeing over the summer is, is that is that the closed AI models which is like OpenAI and anthropic are losing market share. So right now open models have like a 78% of the token volume but the closed models like, like the two I said are only 22% of the market. But in June they were 40% of the market. So in other words they are rapidly losing market share. And that is why you're seeing this panic Anthropomorphic. And then of course the other thing is that when suddenly I see Obama and Bill Gates and everyone else weighing on the side of Open AI and Anthropic, I am automatically highly suspicious.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and you know that's, that's a great point as well that this is a, this is convenient timing for the managers because you know AI seems like a market bubble that's about to burst. And you know a lot of studies are showing that there are a lot of these models that are just never going to be profitable and yet so much money has been sunk into AI. so do you think that this is more about stoking fear of national security when really, this is more than about, the managers of AI wanting the government, financial backing and security because they know that bubble is about to burst.
Scott Uehlinger: Yes, there's no question about it. That that is exactly what's going on. The other interesting thing is that, you know, I'm old enough to know I've seen these kinds of things before. It's another grift, much like for instance, the no nukes grift, which was in the 70s because people profited from that and that that was put out there. And so. And so we didn't develop nuclear power for like 30, basically most of my lifetime. And of course, suddenly, then when we get data centers, suddenly the exact Same people who 30 years ago were screaming no nukes. Suddenly want nuclear power because it's convenient for them now. But it was. But you know, they basically deprived the US public of reduced dependency on, other fuels because the nuke stuff was stopped. And you can also see parallels in the climate change lies. So, so yeah, we have to be careful about this stuff.
Misinformation and Manipulation: The Nefarious Underpinnings of Anti-AI Narratives and China's Propaganda Efforts
but on the other hand, it is not nearly the picture that's being painted by these people because they're very concerned about their own companies. And like I said, it's not the responsibility of the American taxpayer to bail these guys out because they made really bad business decisions. the other thing that's interesting is the, Because I can see it where I am in rural Pennsylvania is the data center, controversies. Because there's been a lot of. There's been a lot of misinformation put out there about data centers. And I see, for instance, I see signs against data centers all in my area of rural Pennsylvania, because they're talking about that. But you know, it's interesting, where is that money coming from to finance those posters and stuff like we see with these spontaneous quote unquote demonstrations that start up. And so like I just read yesterday that, you know, more disinformation. Oh, well, you know, data, centers use a lot of water. Data centers use half the water of a golf course. And these things are being. These lies are being put out. And as a CIA guy, I'm telling you that China is definitely involved. It is much easier for them to finance the no nuke or the now, the no data center mentality so that they can maintain an edge in AI because right now they're falling desperately behind. So this is how they use propaganda and subversion to turn the American people against progress.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And do you think that, Vance and some of, these People in the Trump administration that are pushing for a. And all this get this whole big picture.
Scott Uehlinger: I think, I think that they do. I think that they understand, what's going on. And like I said, I think it's. And also it's a tribute to Trump that Trump was. Because as a businessman, he instinctively knows the way these businessmen think, and their timing and stuff is way off, you know, and so he, he has tweeted about that and then Bessant's statements, obviously in consultation with Trump, tell us that they are not going to get what they want. And, you know, regulation is fine, but, but by the way, overregulation is to be avoided. Apparently this morning, you know, 20 European nations, none of whom are leading the world in AI, you know, the EU is talking about, you know, regulating, regulating AI. Because another thing about AI, I think that they fear, and like I said, there are, there are concerns, but what they fear is more power to the people, because that's another thing that potentially AI is able to do is giving more power to the people. And so that has to be squashed by the state. They can't stand to have something that is not in their control, and that's why they want to regulate it.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And, you know, I so appreciate. Scott Ewlinger. We're already at a time, but that you're, bringing attention to, you know, the more nefarious, underpinnings of some of these headlines. And this is why we need to know what's going on and not just take, you know, some of these, these things that we're hearing and, and react immediately, but actually ask ourselves, okay, what's really going on here and how should we react?
Navigating the Future of AI: Responsible Development, Avoiding Taxpayer Bailouts, and Protecting American Interests
And, all of these questions around AI are going to continue and whether, it's the regulation, obviously I don't think the taxpayers need to be involved in any of sort, sort of bailouts or liability shields. We've seen how that's worked in the past. but we've got to continue to make sure, that all of this is done in, the best way possible for Americans. So always appreciate it, as always. You can reach me and my team, Jenna fr.netpreborn has rescued over 400,000 babies from abortion. And every day their network clinics rescue 200 babies lives. Will you join PreBorn in loving and supporting young moms in crisis? Save a life today. Go to preborn.com afr.
Sponsor Message and Founding Principles: Aligning Government with Divine Rights and Biblical Worldview
Jenna Ellis: We would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, PreBorn. When a mother meets her baby on ultrasound and hears their heartbeat, it's a divine connection. And the majority of the time she will choose life. But she can't do it without our help. Preborn needs us, the pro life community, to come alongside her. One ultrasound is just $28, and to donate, dial £250 and say the keyword baby or visit preborn.com afr 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.
Nicole Hannah Jones's Article: A Public Reckoning with Woke Idealism and Parental Responsibility
This is Jenna Ellis in the Morning.
Jenna Ellis: Good morning. It is Tuesday, September 22, and perhaps among all of the negative headlines, this is actually a positive one. this coming from Newsweek. Nicole Hannah Jones may have just written a eulogy for woke idealism. And you'll recall that Nicole, Hannah Jones was, the prominent, quote, unquote journalist. I think, I think that's fair to put that in air quotes. known for her coverage of racial discrimination in American schools and for her work on the 1619 project for which she won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. So even with all of that, she is now, making a case that, she may have actually failed her own daughter in her advocacy for school integration and preferring other children and basically the collective over her own child. so this whole article, is a pretty wild read. It's in the NewSong York Times entitled, in Fighting for every Black Child, Did I just Betray my own? And so the commentary in Newsweek, is actually really good, because it's basically saying that what she admits is, isn't just that the school failed, it's that Hannah Jones knew that there were problems, kept going anyway. And now she says she cannot forgive herself for what her decision meant for her own daughter. Quote. When it comes to the choices my husband and I made about public education these days, I feel. I feel I failed both my values and my child. She writes. She goes further than regret. Describing the moment she understood what nine years of emails and unanswered complaints had cost her daughter, she writes, I felt overcome with regret. My daughter deserved better. They all did. But she was mine. This girl, my only child, looked to me to protect her and to give her what she needed to thrive. And I had not chosen her. So let's welcome in, Calvin Robinson, who is a priest and also a pundit and, you know, great commentator on, the.
The Clash of Ideologies: Family Values Versus Collective Good in Modern Parenting and Education
The biblical worldview. So love having him on the program. And, Calvin, this just struck me as one of those moments. The WOKE ideology just runs 100 miles an hour against a brick wall. And, and maybe, Nikole. Hannah Jones is recognizing that actually family matters and that children are a gift from God and that parents are the ones who are ultimately responsible for their own children, not for the good and the collective of the whole community. And perhaps she's realizing that. That her values are actually off. But, do you think that this is accurate, this, this Newsweek headline, that this may be the eulogy for WOKE idealism?
Calvin Robinson: Thank you, Jenna. I think it's a start. I really do. I think people are finally waking up to the idea that woke isn't working. You know, one of the biggest WOKE commentators this week took his, him or his, pronouns out of his Twitter bio, for example. People are realizing that it doesn't have the impact on society that they think it does. But I think it's spot on when you use the word ideology about Nicole Hannah Jones, because she has here made her ideology an idol. It's almost become a religion for her. And that's what I did for. It happened for many liberals in that there's a meme that goes around on the Internet that shows a graph of, of conservative people, protecting their own. And by their own, I mean their family, their nation, the people around them first, and then the other liberal mindset wants to protect the other first and then their own. It's an inverse, and it doesn't work in reality. It sounds good. It sounds very empathetic. It sounds very, noble to protect the other first. But within Christianity, we have order amoris. We have this order of love in that, of course, a mother or a father is going to protect their own children first, and then the people around them. You know, your local parish, your local community, then your nation, and then the other nations in the world. And this. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Yes, we are called to love our neighbor, but not at our own expense, and not the expense of those that we are responsible for. And you use that word as well. You said responsible. I think that's so important. Parents are ultimately responsible for their children. So the children don't belong to the parents. They are owned by the parents. They're Owned by God. Children, all children belong to God. But parents are responsible for raising them, nurturing them, and passing on the faith and values to them. And for so long in modernity we've forgotten that since about the 50s we've been obsessed with handing children over to the state and the state is somehow expected to raise our children.
Critique of State-Mandated Education: Indoctrination and the Erosion of Parental Authority in Values Transmission
And then at the end of a few years in education, we look back and say, well, why, excuse me, why don't my children have the same values I have? Why do they have the values that built this society? Well, it's because they've been indoctrinated with liberal progressivism through the state system, because it's the state's interests to have them put the state first rather than the parents and their parents values. And so this is what we're seeing reflected in this Nicole Hannah Jones article in that she put her own values first over her children. And her child rebuked, her and said this was not good for me. And the response from Nicole was to try to gaslight her child, say oh, your school's not that bad. And the child turns around and says no, look at the results, look at the statistics, it's a bad school. And Nicole's response was, well, I never really got the education I wanted. That's a direct quote. It seems that she wanted to be surrounded by other black children. She wanted a black education and she wanted it to be a certain way. But it wasn't realistic and it wasn't putting the best interests of a child first. Every parent should want their child to have the best education. And that really, truly, I think mostly these days should be home education. It should be the parents educating their children as best they can, usually in some kind of hub with other parents and other specialists. But if not, if you send your kids to a school, you send them to a good school where they're going to get good values and good grades for goodness sake. You don't send them because you want them to be around other people of a certain color because that's your political ideology and you think that black is best. Firstly that's racist, but secondly is detrimental to the child's well being.
Jenna Ellis: Yes, so, so well said and so much to unpack there. But but it's so true that, you know, we, we have lived for a while in this culture that has told parents that it has to be community first and you have to build your community before you build your family.
The Dangers of Collectivism: How Prioritizing Community Over Family Undermines Individual Identity and Traditional Values
And so family has lost its identity as you know, one man, one woman in the covenant of marriage for life. And in that context you bring in children and you in the fear and admonition of the Lord because they are gifts from the Lord and you are responsible, and stewarding their discipleship and their upbringing so that then when they become adults they can do likewise. And so this whole inverted perspective and priority has been for a long time to say, build the community first and that then ultimately erodes the individual identity of children and of families. To say you're just part of this big collective and that's exactly what the state wants and what the liberal state wants. So that we're all just cogs in this system and we do whatever the state wants and we don't have these individual passions to go and pursue, God's best for us and our own individual calling. And so it's a completely warped mentality and warped ideology. And when her daughter now is finally confronting her about the logical end result of those leftist liberal values, she's seeing that now in real time. And so how much of this, and this, I mean, I'm actually surprised that she was even willing to write this article and you know, maybe just totally out of guilt for her daughter. I mean, I don't know her motivations. But to actually be willing to write this I think is a moment where it could cause the left to say, okay, wait a minute, one of our fiercest champions for part of the most woke ideology, that we have been perpetuating for, you know, decades is now saying this didn't work in my individual circumstance. I don't think that that's going to make the left, you know, suddenly have a literal come to Jesus moment. It should, but it won't. But this very same thing I think is going to happen, Calvin, with the, the left who are advocating for socialism currently. I mean in the very same way they've been advocating for this Marxist woke, frankly racist ideology, that was perpetuated by the 1619 Project and others, is now a similar ideology that's being promoted in this whole collectivist mentality to say that socialism is better. We, we shouldn't pursue individual things, we shouldn't own anything, we should just go, pay more taxes. We should all have everything the same. that's the very same type of ideology that if America goes down that road, in decades to come, people are going to realize the very same lesson that Nikole Hannah Jones is realizing now.
Calvin Robinson: Yeah, I think, I think you're right, but I think a Lot of this they have to learn the hard way. we on the right tend to be more pragmatic and more logical. And we try to be evidence and say, this won't work.
Learning Through Failure: The Inevitable Collapse of Idealistic Ideologies When Confronted by Reality and Pragmatism
Socialism doesn't work. You know, critical race theory doesn't work, et cetera. It will produce negative results. But on the left, they are more idealistic and less, evidence informed. And so they don't believe us and they think we're wrong. I think we're evil. They think we're the bad guys. And so they almost have to create this horrible socialist environment first and have to see it fail. What was that? There was a city during COVID that was kind of set up with cordoned, no go zones. And you had to be liberal to live there. And it failed within, within days. This is what happens, what we're seeing here in Nicole's article, she says, I felt overcome with regret, like she's had to put her child through this awful experience. She's had to give her child a bad education because she was ideological, and the results are that her child is upset and unhappy, and the mother is now realizing that she's regretting her decisions. Like she had to live it herself. Unfortunately, she had to learn the hard way. But if only they could listen to us in the first place. In the beginning of this article, she's talking about, her daughter's list of top schools. They were heavily wired and screen to their students. The type of public school I have spent my career arguing against. Again, she wanted different type of system, but that system doesn't exist. We operate within the system that we have right now. And you're responsible to, for your child right now, not in where you want the future to be. And so if you're, if you're looking at schools and for example, a school screens their children and there's some kind of academic, ability test or something. Great, because it means only people around your child are going to be of similar ability to your child. And they can all learn together. Wonderful. Let's have more of that. You know, it's funny that you can have screening for sports, you can have screening for music, but having a screening for academic ability is somehow looked down upon. It's actually a good thing. We've, we've seen this all across the world. But, you know, I did my theology at Oxford, and Oxford's a prime example of. It used to be the best university in the world, and now it's changing its entry criteria to make it easier for ethnic minorities to get in. Now I'm an ethnic minority myself, half black, half white. I didn't need the criteria lowering down for me to get in. But this is what they're doing now because they want to see the numbers go up for dei. But what it means is by lowering the entry criteria, you lower standards. And then when people get in based on lower criteria, they don't have the academic ability to complete the courses. And so actually it doesn't help them. If we want to help society, if you want to help young people, if you want to help increase DEI numbers and all that kind of stuff, you have to change things actively. You have to bring people up. You can't bring the system down, you can't bring the entry criteria down. And this is exactly what Nicole's done. This is exactly what socialists do. They try to make everything equally poor, equally bad.
Equality Versus Excellence: The Left's Pursuit of Sameness Undermines Standards, Merit, and Human Flourishing
Because at the end of the day, equality is more important to them than raising up standards.
Jenna Ellis: Yes, and standards and competition are good things so that we can have quality, we can have merit, we can have the best people doing the best things. And And yet, you know, we see the, this clash of ideology that the left is always wanting to put forward an ideology that is fundamentally against a natural law and the biblical worldview. And so we see these systems fail at every turn when the left or when individuals and people are trying to, to advance a system that is fundamentally in conflict with what God tells us is best for human flourishing and what we see in scripture and the reason that we're conservatives and that our founders understood human nature. I was talking to a friend yesterday, you know who. And we were talking about how the systems, in other nations that don't recognize that human nature is fallen and that these, these people. And I think, you know, Nicole, Hannah Jones is one of them. She thinks that people are intrinsically good. And she doesn't even realize that the definition of good, is in her paradigm is very subjective. And the only reason we have a definition of good is because we have the person of truth, God himself. And so we have a, an objective definition of right and wrong, good and evil. And so it's only within the biblical, in government, in community, in society, in the family, that we can truly flourish because we understand the human condition, we understand a biblical anthropology and we also understand that this world is fallen and, and that we have to have, the government is implemented to have these safeguards to promote good and restrain evil. But in their paradigms it's always, let's make everything equally good. And they don't realize that in that type of equality, some do, but, but the ones who are actually doing it, you know, with this, this value set, they really strongly believe that they're making everything good for everyone when really it's not going to work.
The Biblical Worldview as Objective Truth: Contrasting Divine Morality with Subjective Ideals in a Fallen World
And so, you know, when, when we are attempting to promote a biblical worldview, and right now, you know, ahead of the midterms, we have this clash of two different systems of reality, two completely different paradigms, and we have the mostly at least better biblical worldview. You know, I mean, it's not perfect. Obviously the Republican Party has a lot of flaws. but overall, conservatives, that conservative paradigm is so much better than the left. I think we have to continue to explain why these false ideologies simply do not work and the outcome that they're trying to achieve will never happen because their, their worldview doesn't work in reality.
Calvin Robinson: Yeah, I don't think you've hit the nail on the head there when you talk about, they think it's good, but how do they define good? It's, it's arbitrary to them and it changes from day to day. One of the examples that often stands out to me is J.K. rowling was held up as a feminist figure because she fought for women's rights. But then the moment the trans rights movement comes up and she's like, no, because this contradicts, this conflicts with what we've been fighting for. This is taking away from women's rights. She gets left behind and all of a sudden the woke movement hate her, and see her as a Nazi. And clearly she's not a Nazi. She's not at all on the, on the right wing spectrum of politics. She's still very much left wing, a socialist, and still, still very much, a feminist. However, the M movement has moved along and so what was good five minutes ago isn't good now. And that's why we have, instead of an abstract, arbitrary definition of good, we have an absolute definition of good because we get it from God himself, who is good. And so he tells us what's good and what's not good is evil. And so we can set our whole worldview around, around Christ. And that makes it objective rather than subjective. Which means we don't have to change our values every five minutes. We don't have to try and play catch up. We're not trying to see, okay, what is the new virtue signal that I need to let out today. It's like we're trying to strive towards the virtues we're trying to strive towards holiness and we, I think we need to remind people of that because for some reason the world has determined that we can all individually say what is good, because we, we generally know what is good. This is the message that people give out. It's only because they've grown up in Christendom and they've grown up around Christian virtues that they kind of have, an underlining understanding of what good is. But, you can't live in Christendom without Christ. You can't have Christian values without Christ. It doesn't work. But he is the centerpiece, he's the foundation. The moment you take him out, everything else just eradicated. And that's what we're seeing with wokeness, with socialism, with leftism, with progressivism, liberalism. It's all just trying to cling on to the fruits of Christendom without Christ himself. And so I think we on the conservative Christian side are saying, look, we, we, all these things are good, Christian values are good, but I mean nothing without Jesus.
Jenna Ellis: Amen. Absolutely amen.
Preserving the American Foundation: The Indispensable Role of Christ and Biblical Worldview in National Identity and Morality
And we've got to take a break here, but Calvin Robinson, I always love your commentary, so appreciate your time. And it's so true that, all of these people on the left, I mean even those who are coming in, like Zoran Mamdani, who, you know was born in a different country, comes here to America, can live the American dream because we are a society that is premised in and built upon, upon the foundation of recognition of truth and the biblical worldview and Christ at the center. And the, the left is taking advantage of that while trying to undermine it. And that's what we have to prevent if we are going to move forward in America, building a moral and upright society and the best union possible so that, why, so that we can have the advantages to protect our, our right individually to raise our own families. We'll be right back with more.
Threats to American Culture: Examining Muslim Immigration and the Insufficiency of Banning Sharia Law Alone
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Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. Well, speaking of preserving the Christian foundation of this nation, the biblical worldviews that are premised in a truthful view of reality, one of the other biggest, threats to our culture, to our society has been the growing Muslim population. And our Good friend Oren McIntyre, who is a columnist and host at the Blaze, wrote a really great thread on X, where he says, when I talk to, well meaning Normie cons, they all understand that a growing Muslim population is a thing threat to the country. But they all have this strange plan where we will ban Sharia law and declare Islam, quote, not a religion, because it's political or something. I Talked to about 20 very nice people, with the exact same Rube Goldberg machine solution to this weekend. So it must be getting traction somewhere in the commentariat. I then explained that the simple solution, and the only one that will work, is to ban all Muslim immigration. So Orin McIntyre joins us now and you've gone on. I won't read the full thread, but people can follow you and read that, on x at Orin McIntyre, but, Orin, you know, I think this is a fair point that while banning Sharia law and that emphasis is, I think a good thing and a good step, it doesn't go far enough. because as you rightly point out, Sharia law is what Muslims do. And when you have a majority Muslim country like what we're seeing, over in, you know, the uk, the growing Muslim population, then naturally the, the consequence is that your laws become more and more Muslim because you have the population that wants that. And so we need to to not just think that when we ban Sharia law. Okay, well then fine, the fight is done.
Auron MacIntyre : Yeah. I was in Texas recently and of course Texas is experiencing a growth in Muslim, immigration to the point where now they have record numbers of mosques being constructed. They have Muslims trying to create their own separate towns that are going to be Muslim only or, you know, majority Muslim on purpose, oriented around the culture and the faith. And a lot of people in Texas are absolutely, correctly, very worried about this, you know, because obviously this doesn't belong to the United States. These are people are incompatible with our culture. They're radically changing the values and the very God that is being worshiped in Texas. but the solutions that a lot of people are floating are, you know, like you said, I ultimately support the banning of Sharia law. That's fine. you know, it doesn't belong here. We shouldn't have any law but the law of the United States. But it's just insufficient. At the end of the day, it's mainly kind of performative because the thing about law is it's not Just what's on paper, it's what's lived. And so what we've seen repeatedly for in places like Europe, where large Muslim populations have grown up, is even if no Sharia law is technically allowed by the country Muslims are in, they ultimately start creating the side courts. They create these extra legal, extra judicial courts that run on Sharia law. And that's where all the business for Muslims is done. They don't even go to the main courts. And so that my point to people that I'm trying to get them to grasp is that you're not going to educate Muslims out of Sharia law. You're not just going to turn them into good Americans by banning Sharia law. Because once you get enough Muslims, it doesn't even have to be a majority, it just needs to be a sizable minority. They will do Sharia law because that is what Muslims do. It's the same reason we have English Common Law. Don't get me wrong, I think English Common Law is objectively great. But we didn't just choose that because we ran it up against every other system and decided that was the best one. We have English Common Law because we're an Anglo descended country. That's our tradition. It's what our forefathers were used to. It's the rights they believed were due to us. And so we continue that tradition in our own American way today. But this is not the same for Muslims. They have a wildly different culture with no connection to this understanding of law. And so they do law the way that they have always done it whenever they have the option. And they're going to have the option once they have enough people.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And you know, it's such a great point that history and tradition matters.
The Importance of History and Tradition: Passing Down Christian Foundations and American Heritage to Future Generations
And this is where so many of the, of the left, who don't want to teach the history and the tradition and the Christian foundations of our nation, want to get is because they don't want that heritage and that understanding of our rights and that they come from God our Creator. And why we have the system that we do in place. They don't want that to be passed on to the next generation. Why? So that we aren't advocating as a society for not only our history and tradition, but ultimately for the truth and for the biblical worldview so that we are more easily taken over by whether it's Sharia law or some other type of false ideology and a lesser system that doesn't work. And so you know how much of this is not only about immigration banning certain, ah, people from certain countries, which I don't think, should be illegal. I think that that's perfectly acceptable for any country and any sovereign nation to say. There are certain types of people with certain beliefs that don't assimilate here, don't belong here, they're fundamentally in conflict. It's not racist, it's, it's simply saying, you know, we want to protect our nation and our standards and our values first. but how much of this is about immigration banning, but also educating and assimilating our own, next generation of Americans into our own history and tradition? Because I think both sides of that coin are contributing to the problem.
Auron MacIntyre : No, that's absolutely correct. I mean on one side, as you say, it's perfectly reasonable and by the way, it was perfectly legal to do this. Throughout American history, the founding fathers wildly restricted immigration to particular sets of people. We had that throughout our history, all the way up to the Heart Cellar act, before the Heart Seller Act. We had a preference for European immigration because we knew it was the most likely to be Christian, the most likely to be culturally compatible with our ways of life. you know, and this was only in the 1960s. It's not like this is some far off distant thing that we can't access. Like this is perfectly recent and it's a reasonable thing to consider when you're deciding whether or not people should be able to come to the country at all. that said, you're right that also we have to make sure that the people of this nation value that tradition. And by the way, one of the ways that you have to do that is to keep the population steady when you have a constant churn of lots of people coming in. It's very difficult for people to understand America as a place with a permanent tradition that's being carried on. People tend not to preserve a tradition when all the other people from around the world are coming in with their own and have competing ideas. You need that strong, stable base of population so the few people you bring in do have something to assimilate to. And then I think it's really important, as you're saying, to have that tradition grounded. We need to have that idea that yes, we have values, we have principles, right? Like those things are very real. But those values and principles, those truths are tied to our history. They are tied to the way we have lived our life. And so they're not just free floating things that people accept or reject.
The Erosion of American Culture: Loss of Shared Values, Identity, and the Decline of National Unity and Purpose
They are the way that we have lived our lives as Christians, as Anglo descended people for a very long time. Those are the pillars of what make America what it is, is that tradition along with that faith. It is the interweaving of the two that make us who we are. And so when we're following a law, yes, we're following it because we're a nation of laws and because it's the correct thing to do. We're also following it because it is the way in which our ancestors live, the way that has developed the type of lives that we want to lead. And when you have a much more, I think, historical and biblical grounding for what you're doing, it makes the law a far more serious thing that people value.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, it's culture. I mean that's what we're talking about is culture. And that's what we've lost in, in America. we have lost a respect and a, a pride frankly, for the shared beliefs, values, customs, everyday practices of our way of life and the social norms that guide how people act and relate to one another. And our history and tradition is all part of that shared heritage and that culture. And when our culture has become a basically saying you can't be proud anymore to be an American. You can't say that our culture is necessarily Christian and that the the epicenter of the community is the church and that we want to orient our, our government and our society around the traditional nuclear family that is premised on a biblical worldview and natural law. I mean that used to be and was the heritage and culture of America. And now in this, in this whole postmodern, post truth, religious pluralistic society, we have completely abandoned this idea that we have a shared culture. I mean I, I look around and and, and think, okay, they're. Everybody else in every other country can have their pride in their culture, their traditions, their their clothing, their, their heroes. You know, all of those things that are part of passing down the tradition and the heritage. Accept American right, because for some reason, you know, our flag is now a symbol of, it's triggering everybody. And there are even statistics now that if you have an American flag outside your house, you're less likely statistically, to have, you know, intruders or burglars because they think that you're more likely to, to actually have guns to defend yourself. And it's like, well, why? Because probably you are conservative. And when did the American flag become a symbol of just the right. No, this should be a symbol of American culture. That we all participate in. But we have lost this understanding of a shared, common culture in favor of diversity, which necessarily, by definition, breaks apart unity. And unity is not what we have anymore as Americans. And this is what we need to get back to. So that when we look at what, you know, who we are bringing into this country, what their values are, their lack of assimilation, you know, all of these things, we actually have unity and one common purpose, one common culture, shared beliefs and values and customs, and then behaviors that will drive our society toward our goals. And I think when we have such fracturing, if you look at the two parties, I mean, even the Republican Party, we can't even agree on what our goals are anymore. I mean, that you can't have a common purpose and a trajectory if you don't have a shared belief system and a shared values and a shared goal.
Defining American Identity: Reclaiming a Shared Culture and Tradition in Contrast to Diversity's Divisive Nature
Auron MacIntyre : Yeah, I mean, we're absolutely in a scenario where we have discarded the idea of really the core American identity. We're not allowed to have American identity. The American identity is everyone. Everyone can be an American. everyone can be accepted. America is just a melting pot. You know, there is no American culture. You're, you know, if you bring that up, then you probably have, you know, some kind of racist idea. If you're, you know, think that there is something that is an American, that you can identify what an American American is. And if you can't, if you can't identify what an American is, then how can you have traditions? How can you have shared values? How can you have a shared culture? You know, the entire idea is predicated on having an American identity. And for most of American history, there was no problem understanding what an American was and what it took to become an American. You know, if you wanted to. This was something that was critical throughout. Again, American history is. Yes, you had to be culturally, assimilable. It wasn't that everybody could come to the United States that from everywhere around the world and easily become American. But also, even if you were someone who was relatively assimilable, you had to work hard to do it. You know, there was a real period in American history where, for instance, Germans were not assimilating. And we had to work very hard to kind of break the kind of German ethnic enclaves that exist in the United States and get them to speak English and teach their children English and send them to school and get them to adopt American folkways. And that's the people that most people think are very compatible today. So we have to understand that America is a real Thing. It's not just some, amorphous commitment somewhere. It's. It's a, ah, string of history and heritage and tradition and beliefs that are also adopted by many people along the way that has made the America very strong and great. But ultimately, you know, there is a core of people here that matter. And I think this is why it's become conservative and, you know, to have an American flag. I think in many ways, you know, the gop, for all of its many, many, many faults, is the America Party and the Democrats are the not American party. Like, it really does seem to be having the lines drawn around those identities all by themselves.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, so well said. And you know, America is not just an idea, like you said. It's not this just, you know, sort of amorphous, vague, ah, concept that you can't quite pin down. I mean, it is a nation, with borders and boundaries and people and history and heritage and culture. And you know, this conversation is exactly why, this famous quotation from Breitbart now in this context, hopefully makes even more sense, to people listening that politics is downstream from culture. When we have a culture, if we ever did, you know, God forbid, in America that is predominantly Muslim and you have a Muslim culture, what do you think the politics are going to be and what do you think the law and the system is going to be? It's going to be Sharia law, it's going to be, Islam. And that's why, we have to make sure that we protect our way of life, the Western tradition, Christian culture. And this isn't just about Christians engaging only in politics.
The Holistic Battle for Western Civilization: Engaging Every Aspect of Culture to Protect Christian Values and American Identity
This is why we have to engage in the culture predominantly. I mean, even in, in the arts and philosophy, in education that we're talking about in the last segment, we have to make sure that in all of our, I mean, in science, in you know, the fields of, healthcare, and recognizing that, every philosophy and every discipline and everything that we do has to be predicated on a Christian worldview. Otherwise we are ceding that to some other view that ultimately is going to shape our law and ultimately our communities. And so, Oren, just in the last about, you know, minute and a half or so, we have in this segment, you know, kind of put it all together for us because this isn't just about party, it's not just about politics, it's not just about immigration. I mean, this is holistic to make sure that we understand that Christians have to engage in every, aspect of our culture. So that we protect Western civilization. I mean, that's how big this conversation is.
Auron MacIntyre : Yeah. You know, I wrote a book called the Total State about how all of our institutions kind of collaborate to destroy what has been our, democracy. And ultimately, I think we have to understand that all of these institutions, all these cultural aspects are contributing to our identity and who we are. And so, as you say, we have to take it seriously. From education to entertainment to government to business, all across the board, we have to understand that these are shaping American identity and defining our future. And if we want our values to continue, if we want American identity to continue, then it needs to be infused into all of these organizations, all of these institutions, all these cultural operators.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, so well said. Well, we've got to take a break here.
The Imperative of Unity: A Call for a Common Mind in Christ to Advance Truth and Preserve God-Given Rights
but Orin McIntyre, really appreciate it and this is a great thread again for, listeners. You can find. Follow him. Orrin McIntyre on X encourage you to do that and, you know, think about the consequences of culture. I mean, this isn't. More diversity isn't the answer. More unity, is actually the answer. And Paul talks about that in the NewSong Testament in Philippians 4. In fact, you know, my dad was preaching at our, church I was visiting this past week in Colorado, and he was talking about Paul calling for unity in Christ and that God Christians need to have one common mind. Why? So that we can continue to advance the truth of the gospel of Christ and how that plays out, not just in the salvation which of our souls, which is paramount, but then into everything that we do protecting and preserving the rights that come from God. Why? So that we can raise our families according to the truth. We'll be right back with more.
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The AI Race and Regulation: Examining OpenAI's 'Hugging Face Incident', Financial Struggles, and China's Role
Welcome back.
Jenna Ellis: Well, the other world view issue that we are confronting and will still need to confront as a nation is the rise of artificial intelligence. And you may have heard about the Hugging Face incident, also known as the Open AI, hugging Face incident, which occurred back somewhere between May and July of 2026 when autonomous artificial intelligence agents built by OpenAI broke out of their secure testing environments and carried out an unguided coordinated cyber attack on external infrastructure, including the machine learning platform called Hugging Face. Thus the the Hugging Face incident. And so you. This raises the question about regulation and what parameters and contours America is going to push for, especially in the AI race against China. And so Bloomberg had an interesting piece, earlier this week. Besent, Secretary, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the responsibility for the recent hacking incident involving OpenAI's advanced artificial intelligence models was with the firm's managers. While stopping short of suggesting any consequences. Bessant also said that President Trump's idea of appointing an AI czar would quote, put context, shape and contours around these questions and they're very important. But does this go far enough? Well, let's welcome in Scott Eulinger who is a retired CIA officer. And Scott, there are so many national security implications with this and my concern is that the older generation frankly of the Trump administration is not as concerned where you know, some. I'm more in the J.D. vance camp where you know, he's focused on AI and having America be the leader on that in terms of regulation and policy. And I think that's a much better direction for the future security of the nation.
Scott Uehlinger: Well yeah, that's, that's true. The We certainly need to be very careful about it. I'm never going to say that that is not the case. However, I am glad that Bessant made that announcement because it's clear that we're being played by the CEOs of of Open Air and Anthropic, because it's very interesting the timing of all of this stuff. And so I'm inclined to believe Bessant's explanation that it was basically the manager's failings that led to the hugging face incident more than the AI itself. And it was a convenient, it's a convenient boogeyman for them to trot out at this time because you know yesterday Scott Besson publicly stated that the taxpayers money is not going to cover the liability for Anthropic and Open air reckless private credit borrowing. So that puts Altman and Dario Amade, who they're both involved with Anthropic and open AI. It puts them in a tough spot because the Trump administration refuses to bail them out. And I think OpenAI is afraid to go public because that's how bad their account books look right now. See so like you know they were about to come out publicly but their books are all messed up because they have sunk so much money into this that that there's almost no way out. And so they want, they all of a sudden are all about government regulation for themselves because they not only want economy bailed out, they want like a liability protection like Big Pharma was given for their abuses. And then also of course once they get into the government, of course they have incredible amounts of money then they can prevent smaller startups from coming in to eventually replace them because that's also what's happening. What we've been seeing over the summer is, is that is that the closed AI models which is like OpenAI and anthropic are losing market share. So right now open models have like a 78% of the token volume but the closed models like, like the two I said are only 22% of the market. But in June they were 40% of the market. So in other words they are rapidly losing market share. And that is why you're seeing this panic Anthropomorphic. And then of course the other thing is that when suddenly I see Obama and Bill Gates and everyone else weighing on the side of Open AI and Anthropic, I am automatically highly suspicious.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah, and you know that's, that's a great point as well that this is a, this is convenient timing for the managers because you know AI seems like a market bubble that's about to burst. And you know a lot of studies are showing that there are a lot of these models that are just never going to be profitable and yet so much money has been sunk into AI. so do you think that this is more about stoking fear of national security when really, this is more than about, the managers of AI wanting the government, financial backing and security because they know that bubble is about to burst.
Scott Uehlinger: Yes, there's no question about it. That that is exactly what's going on. The other interesting thing is that, you know, I'm old enough to know I've seen these kinds of things before. It's another grift, much like for instance, the no nukes grift, which was in the 70s because people profited from that and that that was put out there. And so. And so we didn't develop nuclear power for like 30, basically most of my lifetime. And of course, suddenly, then when we get data centers, suddenly the exact Same people who 30 years ago were screaming no nukes. Suddenly want nuclear power because it's convenient for them now. But it was. But you know, they basically deprived the US public of reduced dependency on, other fuels because the nuke stuff was stopped. And you can also see parallels in the climate change lies. So, so yeah, we have to be careful about this stuff.
Misinformation and Manipulation: The Nefarious Underpinnings of Anti-AI Narratives and China's Propaganda Efforts
but on the other hand, it is not nearly the picture that's being painted by these people because they're very concerned about their own companies. And like I said, it's not the responsibility of the American taxpayer to bail these guys out because they made really bad business decisions. the other thing that's interesting is the, Because I can see it where I am in rural Pennsylvania is the data center, controversies. Because there's been a lot of. There's been a lot of misinformation put out there about data centers. And I see, for instance, I see signs against data centers all in my area of rural Pennsylvania, because they're talking about that. But you know, it's interesting, where is that money coming from to finance those posters and stuff like we see with these spontaneous quote unquote demonstrations that start up. And so like I just read yesterday that, you know, more disinformation. Oh, well, you know, data, centers use a lot of water. Data centers use half the water of a golf course. And these things are being. These lies are being put out. And as a CIA guy, I'm telling you that China is definitely involved. It is much easier for them to finance the no nuke or the now, the no data center mentality so that they can maintain an edge in AI because right now they're falling desperately behind. So this is how they use propaganda and subversion to turn the American people against progress.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And do you think that, Vance and some of, these People in the Trump administration that are pushing for a. And all this get this whole big picture.
Scott Uehlinger: I think, I think that they do. I think that they understand, what's going on. And like I said, I think it's. And also it's a tribute to Trump that Trump was. Because as a businessman, he instinctively knows the way these businessmen think, and their timing and stuff is way off, you know, and so he, he has tweeted about that and then Bessant's statements, obviously in consultation with Trump, tell us that they are not going to get what they want. And, you know, regulation is fine, but, but by the way, overregulation is to be avoided. Apparently this morning, you know, 20 European nations, none of whom are leading the world in AI, you know, the EU is talking about, you know, regulating, regulating AI. Because another thing about AI, I think that they fear, and like I said, there are, there are concerns, but what they fear is more power to the people, because that's another thing that potentially AI is able to do is giving more power to the people. And so that has to be squashed by the state. They can't stand to have something that is not in their control, and that's why they want to regulate it.
Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And, you know, I so appreciate. Scott Ewlinger. We're already at a time, but that you're, bringing attention to, you know, the more nefarious, underpinnings of some of these headlines. And this is why we need to know what's going on and not just take, you know, some of these, these things that we're hearing and, and react immediately, but actually ask ourselves, okay, what's really going on here and how should we react?
Navigating the Future of AI: Responsible Development, Avoiding Taxpayer Bailouts, and Protecting American Interests
And, all of these questions around AI are going to continue and whether, it's the regulation, obviously I don't think the taxpayers need to be involved in any of sort, sort of bailouts or liability shields. We've seen how that's worked in the past. but we've got to continue to make sure, that all of this is done in, the best way possible for Americans. So always appreciate it, as always. You can reach me and my team, Jenna fr.netpreborn has rescued over 400,000 babies from abortion. And every day their network clinics rescue 200 babies lives. Will you join PreBorn in loving and supporting young moms in crisis? Save a life today. Go to preborn.com afr.
Jenna Ellis discusses the implications of a recent article by Nikole Hannah-Jones, reflecting on the failures of woke idealism in the context of education and parental responsibility. Joined by commentator Calvin Robinson, they explore how ideological commitments can lead to detrimental outcomes for children and families.
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