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National Guard soldiers arrive in Washington, DC · The Daily Article

• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us for the Wednesday, August, Thirteenth, twenty-twenty-five edition of Dinnison Forum's Daily Article Podcast.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Chris Elkins, new rating to Days Daily Article, authored by our co-founder, Dr. Jim Dinnison.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: National Guard troops began arriving in Washington, DC yesterday, as part of President Donald Trump's historic federal takeover of the nation's capital.
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Armored vehicles were seen at urban centers and tourist sites around the city last night.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: During a white house briefing on Monday, Mr. Trump announced that he would deploy eight hundred National Guard soldiers in the district.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: saying the action was to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Between one and two hundred soldiers are expected to patrol the streets at any given time.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, called Mr. Trump's directive, unsettling and unprecedented, but said the city would cooperate with the administration to the extent the law allows.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Others were far less positive.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, called Mr. Trump's crime narrative a political boy.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maryland Democrat Senator Chris Van Holland said the president is testing the limits of his power.
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Democratic Mayor's Association accused Mr. Trump of a charade.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Critics of the President's action site, the MPD Metropolitan Police Department, Statistics, showing a twenty-six percent drop in violent crimes so far this year, compared to the same period in the previous year.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, a White House report stated that in twenty-twenty-four, Washington, DC saw a homicide rate of twenty-seven point three per one hundred thousand residents, the fourth highest homicide rate in the country.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the district were a state, it would have the highest homicide rate of any state in the nation.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So far, in twenty twenty five, there have been nearly one hundred homicides, sixteen hundred violent crimes, and nearly sixteen thousand total crimes reported in Washington, D.C.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: The report also noted that vehicle theft is more than three times the national average.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Black boys and men in the district die by homicide at a rate nearly three and a half times higher than the national rate.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: These rates of death are on a par with those of American combatants in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there are significant questions regarding the accuracy of statistics showing a decrease in crime this year in the district.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The police union claims police supervisors manipulate crime data to make it appear violent crime has fallen considerably compared to last year.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The union's leader said claims that violent crime is down significantly are preposterous.
• 2:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever your view of the president's action and the conditions that prompted it, no one can disagree that crime in our nation's capital is too high, whether national guard troops can help or not remains to be seen.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But even they cannot remedy the problem that underlies all our nation's other problems.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: In his recent New York Times article, David Brooks begins with the good news that, quote, more people around the world report that they are living better lives than before.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Brooks sites a new Gallup survey showing that the number of people who say they are thriving has been rising steadily for a decade.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, the share of the population that is thriving in America
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Canada, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand is falling.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: In two thousand seven, sixty-seven percent of Americans and Canadians said they were thriving.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now that number is down to forty-nine percent.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Said differently, nations with some of the highest standards of living are seeing the greatest declines in well-being.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: What explains this disparity?
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to Brooks, quote, we in the West have aggressively embraced values that when taken to access our poisonous to our well-being.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Since the nineteen sixties we have adopted values that are more secular, more individualistic, and more oriented around self-expression, then values that prevail in more religious societies.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Brooks concludes, let's be clear about what happened here.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: greed.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Americans have become so obsessed with economic success that we've neglected the social and moral conditions that undergird human flourishing.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Schools spend more time teaching professional knowledge than they do social and spiritual knowledge.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The prevailing values worship individual choice and undermine the core commitments that precede choice.
• 4:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are love for family?
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: neighborhood, nation, and the truth.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of cultural work to do.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Economic success attempts us to choose the God of Self in ways that less self-sufficient cultures would not consider.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It cannot be a coincidence that, as Brooks reports, the wealthier we are, the less happy we are.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: God clearly warns us in first Timothy six verse ten.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.
• 5:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: One reason is its fleeting nature and the quest it drives for more.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the richest man in the world testified in Ecclesiastes five verse ten, he who loves money will not be satisfied with money.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: nor he who loves wealth with his income.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Another factor is the fact that money cannot meet our deepest needs.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jesus urged us in Luke twelve verse fifteen, be on your guard against all covetousness.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: For one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is why we're warned in Hebrews XIII verse five, keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have.
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: As crime in our nation's capital illustrates, greed can also drive those who do not have money to victimize and steal from those who do.
• 6:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: By contrast, as we noted yesterday, those who submit to God's Spirit are changed into the character of Christ and serve others sacrificially in his name and nature.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: We do this out of gratitude for the grace we've received, taking Jesus at His Word in Matthew twenty five verse forty that, as you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: John Wesley noted, quote, one of the principal rules of religion
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: is to lose no occasion of serving God.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And since he is invisible to our eyes, we are to serve him in our neighbor, which he receives as if done to himself in person standing visibly before us, in quote, I know of no other remedy for the greed and criminality that afflix our secular eye society than the grace that transforms sinners into people of grace.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: When last, did you serve Jesus standing visibly before you?