Latest / The Mark Belling Podcast / Mark Belling Podcast #117: Is the American Dream still alive? The case of a flamboyant film critic and raconteur is instructive. It's the Memorial Day podcast but how many people even know anymore what Memorial Day is? And, way more women than men are getting college degrees.
Transcript
- 0:08Speaker 1: The Mark Belling Podcast is presented by you Live for
- 0:12Speaker 1: quality shipping and industrial supplies. You Line has everything in stock.
- 0:16Speaker 1: Visit you line dot com. The Markbelling Podcast is a
- 0:20Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio Podcasts.
- 0:27Speaker 2: This podcast is being released on Memorial Day. I don't
- 0:31Speaker 2: know when you're all listening to it, because that'll be
- 0:33Speaker 2: all over the map. But as such, today's podcast is
- 0:38Speaker 2: going to have a special theme and it's going to
- 0:41Speaker 2: start with Memorial Day. The first point that I'm going
- 0:48Speaker 2: to make I've made over the years, and I want
- 0:51Speaker 2: to make it clear it's not an original point. All
- 0:56Speaker 2: sorts of people make the same point that I'm about
- 0:59Speaker 2: to make. The problem with it is there are two
- 1:02Speaker 2: types of people. People who are on this point and
- 1:05Speaker 2: people for whom it just doesn't sink in. There is
- 1:12Speaker 2: hardly anything more annoying that a Memorial Day, or even
- 1:17Speaker 2: Memorial Day weekend to hear one of these mindless commentators.
- 1:22Speaker 2: They're usually like talking heads on television who don't particularly
- 1:29Speaker 2: like the military, but they feel as though they have
- 1:33Speaker 2: to give like their lip service at a time like this,
- 1:36Speaker 2: and they'll say, and this is the day in which
- 1:38Speaker 2: we thank all who served. No, it's not This day
- 1:43Speaker 2: is not honoring all who served. It's not thanking all
- 1:47Speaker 2: who served, and it's not for all who served. We
- 1:54Speaker 2: have a day for that, it's called Veterans Day. We
- 1:57Speaker 2: have Armed Forces Day, which is related, and I think
- 2:01Speaker 2: it's focused mostly on people currently in the armed forces.
- 2:05Speaker 2: Memorial Day is not for all who served. Have you
- 2:10Speaker 2: served in our military and you're listening right now, We
- 2:13Speaker 2: appreciate that, but this isn't your day. Memorial Day is
- 2:18Speaker 2: for the people who died in the service of their country,
- 2:26Speaker 2: either immediately in combat or sometime later because of the
- 2:31Speaker 2: injuries or the condition that they sustained during the time
- 2:34Speaker 2: that they were in combat. That's what Memorial Day is.
- 2:40Speaker 2: Veterans Day honors millions and millions. Memorial Day honors the
- 2:46Speaker 2: individuals who died. I believe that our society is more
- 2:54Speaker 2: narcissistic than ever. Hard to prove that always had people
- 3:00Speaker 2: who think only about themselves. But I don't know if
- 3:06Speaker 2: the Internet drives this. I don't know if the spoiled
- 3:09Speaker 2: way in which we raise some young people today is
- 3:12Speaker 2: driving it. There's more hedonism, not just more selfishness, but
- 3:18Speaker 2: more self centeredness. The only way you can convince someone
- 3:29Speaker 2: to put their life on the line for someone else
- 3:34Speaker 2: is if that is, if at first that person has
- 3:37Speaker 2: accepted the notion that they have a duty to do it.
- 3:46Speaker 2: We learn the stories in the religious context of the martyrs,
- 3:51Speaker 2: the people who died for their faith, rather than the
- 3:55Speaker 2: renounce their faith. They were willing to be put to death.
- 4:02Speaker 2: They were willing to be put to death because they
- 4:03Speaker 2: believed that after they were killed, they'd be immediately in heaven,
- 4:07Speaker 2: a better place, so deep was their faith. Most of
- 4:12Speaker 2: us have never had to confront this. We don't know
- 4:16Speaker 2: what we would do. We think we know if somebody
- 4:22Speaker 2: was holding you hostage in requiring you to make a
- 4:25Speaker 2: video in which you condemned your faith, no matter what
- 4:28Speaker 2: that faith is, could you do it? Or would you
- 4:31Speaker 2: say screw you and have them kill you? Don't know.
- 4:35Speaker 2: It certainly seems to me, though, that there is a
- 4:38Speaker 2: smaller percentage now of that than there were in the past.
- 4:43Speaker 2: More thoughts on that in a moment, you line moves
- 4:46Speaker 2: fast so your business doesn't miss a beat. From shipping
- 4:49Speaker 2: and industrial supplies to office furniture, you line offers a
- 4:52Speaker 2: wide range of products that are in stock and ready
- 4:54Speaker 2: to ship the same day. If you order by six pm.
- 4:57Speaker 2: Even the big Stuff. You Line's expert cuts Cstomer service
- 5:00Speaker 2: team is available twenty four to seven to answer your questions,
- 5:04Speaker 2: help you quickly and easily place an order, or assist
- 5:07Speaker 2: with any other business needs. Visit uline dot com. I've
- 5:13Speaker 2: told the story in the past, so many of you
- 5:15Speaker 2: have heard it, but it's still one of the most
- 5:18Speaker 2: amazing stories I've ever heard. I'm going to tell it again.
- 5:21Speaker 2: There's a guy I bumped into it probably was twenty
- 5:25Speaker 2: five years ago. Remember where it was. It was the
- 5:28Speaker 2: Phiro's Pizza east side of Milwaukee, and somebody else introduced
- 5:32Speaker 2: me to him. I've seen the guy around as an
- 5:34Speaker 2: older guy. I don't think during the time I've talked
- 5:38Speaker 2: about this. I've given his first name, and I only
- 5:41Speaker 2: know the first name. But some people who know him
- 5:44Speaker 2: will know of the story because he didn't tell a
- 5:45Speaker 2: lot of people this, but he told it. He was
- 5:48Speaker 2: part of the D Day operation. For those of you
- 5:51Speaker 2: completely ignorant of history. D Day was in nineteen forty four,
- 5:55Speaker 2: the first two and a half years of American bobmin
- 5:57Speaker 2: in the war. We got our butts kicked. Germany and
- 6:01Speaker 2: Japan were winning the War. The War in Europe, as
- 6:05Speaker 2: opposed to the War in Japan, had its own timeline.
- 6:08Speaker 2: The first two years that the United States was in
- 6:11Speaker 2: the war, it was a fortifying and a battle to
- 6:14Speaker 2: stop the progress of the Nazis. Some of it was
- 6:18Speaker 2: fought in northern Africa to stop them from controlling the
- 6:22Speaker 2: Mediterranean on all sides, some of it was fought as
- 6:26Speaker 2: resistance in the interior of Europe, and much of it
- 6:29Speaker 2: was fought defending Great Britain. While this fortifying was going on,
- 6:35Speaker 2: in the American war machine, so many of our industries
- 6:38Speaker 2: were converted to making materials to help the troops and
- 6:42Speaker 2: help the war effort. Once we got enough to actually
- 6:46Speaker 2: take the fight to the Germans, we had to invade
- 6:49Speaker 2: western Europe. Virtually all of Europe had fallen. The UK
- 6:54Speaker 2: was still standing on the other side of the channel fallen.
- 7:01Speaker 2: It all fallen, meaning we had to invade Europe to
- 7:04Speaker 2: try to retake it from Germany. And D Day was
- 7:08Speaker 2: the day they did it. And again I realized most
- 7:12Speaker 2: of you know this, but there's a point in telling
- 7:14Speaker 2: the story of the way that I am. They made
- 7:17Speaker 2: the decision and they came up with the day. I
- 7:18Speaker 2: don't know that they had the greatest weather forecasting tools
- 7:21Speaker 2: then to look at long range forecasts. But it is
- 7:23Speaker 2: a terrible day. So in the early morning hours June
- 7:26Speaker 2: six forty four, pouring rain, the visibility was terrible, and
- 7:32Speaker 2: this was the day that we were sending in all
- 7:34Speaker 2: of these bombers to fly on to France and Belgium
- 7:39Speaker 2: and drop bombs, and in the meantime have a massive
- 7:42Speaker 2: invasion of ground troops who came in from the sea,
- 7:45Speaker 2: crossing the English Channel, hitting the beaches of France and Normandy. Obviously,
- 7:51Speaker 2: the Germans were waiting, and when they decided which division
- 7:56Speaker 2: in which Platun would go first, nobody wanted to be
- 8:00Speaker 2: in the first or second wave, because you were almost
- 8:03Speaker 2: certainly going to be killed. You were cannon fought. The
- 8:09Speaker 2: war plan was to simply have them keep coming and
- 8:11Speaker 2: coming and coming and coming and coming and coming, because
- 8:14Speaker 2: as the Germans are shooting, we're getting our shots in
- 8:17Speaker 2: as well. And to just have so many people charging
- 8:21Speaker 2: that you would overpower them and shove them back. And
- 8:23Speaker 2: in the meantime we were dropping paratroopers from the air
- 8:27Speaker 2: to get behind the enemy line, so you'd have the
- 8:29Speaker 2: Germans bottled in from the front of the rear. How's
- 8:33Speaker 2: the word plan? By any way, this guy that I met,
- 8:38Speaker 2: he went on to be a railroad engineer in life,
- 8:40Speaker 2: so for people know you know him. This is the game.
- 8:42Speaker 2: Referring to his job, he was one of the people
- 8:47Speaker 2: that was on the boats that were going back and forth,
- 8:50Speaker 2: and the boats that were bringing over the ground troops
- 8:54Speaker 2: to invade. They would come over and make a run
- 8:57Speaker 2: and then they go back to Britain, grab another group
- 8:59Speaker 2: and bring him back. So the mots are ferrying troops
- 9:02Speaker 2: back and forth. This guy was stationed on one of
- 9:04Speaker 2: those votes. And I don't think he was making the
- 9:08Speaker 2: story up. I just don't, because how do you make
- 9:11Speaker 2: the story up. His job was to make sure that
- 9:16Speaker 2: nobody chickened out. Now again, think about this, eighteen nineteen,
- 9:20Speaker 2: somewhere old their mid twenties coming over. You can already
- 9:24Speaker 2: see the bombs that are coming. They had to be
- 9:26Speaker 2: scared out of their minds. But you clearly couldn't have
- 9:30Speaker 2: a mutiny. You would have destroyed the war effort if
- 9:32Speaker 2: you would have had a bunch of troops refusing to
- 9:36Speaker 2: do it. So he was They put people, he said,
- 9:39Speaker 2: on every one of the boats to make sure that
- 9:41Speaker 2: everybody got off. Well, how do you make a good off? Well,
- 9:43Speaker 2: if you refuse to attack, I was to kill you.
- 9:48Speaker 2: This is the message in all the troops saying, look,
- 9:49Speaker 2: if you don't if you if you try a mutiny,
- 9:52Speaker 2: if you try not to cooperate, I'll kill you. I
- 9:57Speaker 2: didn't have to shoot my gun. Nobody did. There was
- 10:00Speaker 2: known refusal to serve on D Day. Think about that.
- 10:12Speaker 2: They all came. We sustained hundreds of thousands of troop
- 10:18Speaker 2: losses in World War Two, not quite ten times the
- 10:24Speaker 2: number that died in the longer war Vietnam, And of
- 10:28Speaker 2: course there was massive loss in the war in the
- 10:30Speaker 2: Pacific as well, the war against Japan. Yet our country
- 10:39Speaker 2: had all of these people. I mean we had a draft,
- 10:42Speaker 2: but we also had those that weren't yet drafted signing
- 10:45Speaker 2: up in droves. If you were a male that didn't
- 10:49Speaker 2: have lots of other personal responsibilities and were in any
- 10:52Speaker 2: kind of physical shape, you went to the wary. All
- 10:57Speaker 2: did it until Japan hit us. We were not directly
- 11:04Speaker 2: threatened by the growing menace of the Germans. Japan attacked
- 11:08Speaker 2: Pearl Harbor because they thought we were going to enter
- 11:10Speaker 2: the war, so they wanted to knock out our military
- 11:13Speaker 2: forces and all of our equipment in Pearl Harbor and Hawaii,
- 11:16Speaker 2: and they did. Then we got involved. So you can
- 11:19Speaker 2: certainly say, well, we did this because we were attacked,
- 11:21Speaker 2: and there's certainly some truth to that, but the reality
- 11:23Speaker 2: is that there was just a given this was not
- 11:26Speaker 2: that long as seventy five years ago, eighty years ago,
- 11:30Speaker 2: that these Americans that were willing to end mass go
- 11:35Speaker 2: and die for their country, and families that were willing
- 11:39Speaker 2: to see their sons go and die for their country.
- 11:44Speaker 2: As a result of their dying, our civilization was saved.
- 11:48Speaker 2: Western Europe was liberated, Japan was saved, the Pacific was saved,
- 11:52Speaker 2: our way of life was saved, and the United States
- 11:55Speaker 2: became the world's greatest superpower. But the ones that are
- 11:58Speaker 2: dead didn't get to enjoy any of that. They're dead.
- 12:04Speaker 2: That's why we have memorial Dare you look around now
- 12:11Speaker 2: the amount of narcissism and self centeredness, this embrace of socialism.
- 12:16Speaker 2: I want free this, I want free that the people
- 12:23Speaker 2: that show over bigotry toward anyone who is right of center,
- 12:30Speaker 2: attacking people wearing mega cabs, attacking Jewish people, all concerned
- 12:34Speaker 2: of a me me, me, me, me, the whiny, sniveling.
- 12:39Speaker 2: I'll watch these police videos on YouTube. Some twenty four
- 12:41Speaker 2: year old woman is being pulled over for something ether
- 12:44Speaker 2: screaming and calling for her mommy. I mean, you've got
- 12:46Speaker 2: people that are twenty six asking for their moms and
- 12:49Speaker 2: their dads when they're facing arrest. You think any of
- 12:54Speaker 2: those kids, and that's what they were on D Day,
- 12:58Speaker 2: or for that matter, anywhere else World War two, we're
- 13:01Speaker 2: asking for mommy. There was a sense of service and
- 13:07Speaker 2: duty and a notion that there are some things more
- 13:11Speaker 2: important than you and even your life. We have clearly
- 13:17Speaker 2: lost that. I think there is a flip side to this.
- 13:21Speaker 2: The flip side is we have some people who are
- 13:23Speaker 2: never at risk of losing their own life, who are
- 13:25Speaker 2: way too willing to commit young people to die for them.
- 13:31Speaker 2: There are the people that are are in favor of
- 13:34Speaker 2: any war that takes on, any adversary that's getting in
- 13:37Speaker 2: our way, without regard to how many Americans die. I'm
- 13:40Speaker 2: certainly not that either. But for all the selfishness and
- 13:49Speaker 2: all of the sense that well, I'm betrayed, I'm screwed this,
- 13:53Speaker 2: I'm that do understand that everything that you're screaming about
- 13:56Speaker 2: includes the way of life that you have is there
- 14:00Speaker 2: because people died for you. They died for you, for
- 14:06Speaker 2: your crybaby whiny as self. I never served in the military.
- 14:10Speaker 2: There was no draft when I was of age. I
- 14:12Speaker 2: think I would have flunked the physical and terrible eyesight.
- 14:15Speaker 2: I don't know that. So I never did a damn thing.
- 14:20Speaker 2: In this world in which nobody wants to give somebody
- 14:22Speaker 2: else more credit than themselves, I certainly acknowledge that I
- 14:27Speaker 2: am less worthy than those who have served, and those
- 14:31Speaker 2: who served and lived also are secondary to those who died.
- 14:40Speaker 2: You know. I go back and forth on the three
- 14:43Speaker 2: day weekends. Memorial Day used to be May thirty first,
- 14:46Speaker 2: then a long time ago as a kid. I don't
- 14:48Speaker 2: remember exactly when, but I still remember when Memorial Day
- 14:50Speaker 2: was in a Monday, but I was really little. I
- 14:53Speaker 2: think turned we took many of the holidays and put
- 14:57Speaker 2: them on Monday. Thankfully, we have not yet screwed up
- 15:00Speaker 2: my birth of the fourth of July. It still stands alone,
- 15:02Speaker 2: and it's the fourth of July. Thanksgivings a Thursday. It's
- 15:05Speaker 2: it's so on now it's a four day weekend, but
- 15:08Speaker 2: Friday off. But we've taken a lot of the holidays,
- 15:10Speaker 2: President's Day, Memorial Day, a few others and move them
- 15:16Speaker 2: to a Monday to create a three day weekend. Part
- 15:20Speaker 2: of it is practicality. People who had a holiday would
- 15:22Speaker 2: go often want to take vacation after and it screwed up.
- 15:25Speaker 2: Employers just became easier to move it to a Monday.
- 15:28Speaker 2: And with regard to Memorial Day itself, which started, Remember,
- 15:32Speaker 2: my grandmother always used to call it decoration Day, and
- 15:34Speaker 2: I think that's because they decorated the graves in the cemetery.
- 15:41Speaker 2: One of the things that you lose by putting the
- 15:43Speaker 2: holiday at the end of a three day weekend is
- 15:45Speaker 2: the third day at the three day weekend is a nothing.
- 15:50Speaker 2: You're going to look at the roads, you know, on
- 15:52Speaker 2: Memorial Day, Monday morning, everybody's coming back from up north.
- 15:57Speaker 2: They pack up and they leave by eight thirty or
- 15:59Speaker 2: nine o'clock in the morning so they can get back
- 16:01Speaker 2: at a reasonable hour. Monday isn't the holiday, it's the
- 16:04Speaker 2: day in which we're ending the holiday weekend. And I
- 16:08Speaker 2: sometimes think that the result of this is is that
- 16:12Speaker 2: we forget about Memorial Day itself. The turnaround to that is,
- 16:16Speaker 2: there is more convenience to it. And if we acceptance
- 16:21Speaker 2: start calling it a Memorial Day weekend, which most people do,
- 16:24Speaker 2: then the whole Memorial Day component is part of it,
- 16:27Speaker 2: and people will now fly the flags all weekend rather
- 16:31Speaker 2: than just the one day. I just hope that in
- 16:35Speaker 2: this day we don't lose sight that this day is
- 16:40Speaker 2: for a specific group of people, mostly men. There were
- 16:43Speaker 2: a few women who died in the service of their country.
- 16:52Speaker 2: Now that we have a military that he is completely
- 16:57Speaker 2: integrated on the basis of gender, women in combat and
- 17:00Speaker 2: women in more military rules, that number of women that
- 17:03Speaker 2: are dying in combat is growing. Back in the World
- 17:06Speaker 2: War II era, there would support personnel, military nurses and
- 17:10Speaker 2: so on, some of them who died, but it was
- 17:12Speaker 2: mostly a male thing. But that's going to change over time.
- 17:18Speaker 2: Somebody dying for their country willingly is a concept that
- 17:25Speaker 2: even for somebody like me who embraces it, is still
- 17:29Speaker 2: hard to imagine. Most people are scared of death, and
- 17:36Speaker 2: you know, I'm now at the age of world. A
- 17:38Speaker 2: lot of people I know are starting to die, especially
- 17:40Speaker 2: those that are a little bit older than me. And
- 17:43Speaker 2: you know, if the past like eighty seven or ninety.
- 17:45Speaker 2: You'll often say to comfort the family, you live the
- 17:48Speaker 2: long life, You had a good life. You sure can't
- 17:51Speaker 2: say that to some twenty one year old kid who's
- 17:54Speaker 2: killed serving their country. Can you? Several people now have
- 17:58Speaker 2: died in the war with a red They served their
- 18:01Speaker 2: country without regard to what you think about the war.
- 18:05Speaker 2: They did that. They didn't quit. They put themselves in
- 18:09Speaker 2: a position where that could happen. Memorial Day needs to
- 18:16Speaker 2: be something more than just another day to go to
- 18:18Speaker 2: the casino. Better go out and have a picnic, or
- 18:23Speaker 2: cook some brats on the barbecue. There's a reason the
- 18:29Speaker 2: day exists. I don't want to shift gears to another story.
- 18:36Speaker 2: I found a column in the newspaper. It's about a
- 18:40Speaker 2: week and a half old, but I saved it for
- 18:42Speaker 2: this show. That surprised me by how interesting it was.
- 18:47Speaker 2: First of all, I don't even like the writer. Peggy
- 18:51Speaker 2: Noonan was a speechwriter for Reagan. She's now a columnist
- 18:54Speaker 2: for the Wall Street Journal and she has a column
- 18:55Speaker 2: on the weekend newspaper. I'm just telling you, I think
- 18:58Speaker 2: she lacks any in I've got a friend who just
- 19:00Speaker 2: loves her column, and he's always telling me to read
- 19:02Speaker 2: Peggy Nuon, I'm not going to read it again. I
- 19:05Speaker 2: can't stand reading him. I find that she's a snob.
- 19:10Speaker 2: And when she comments on society and politics, she's always
- 19:13Speaker 2: looking in the rearview mirror, telling the obvious. You know,
- 19:17Speaker 2: like after Trump wins, explaining what it was that we
- 19:20Speaker 2: all should have picked up on with regard to the
- 19:23Speaker 2: middle Americans who were embracing Trump. She never writes that
- 19:26Speaker 2: column five months before the election predicting that Trump is
- 19:29Speaker 2: going to win. She's just the master of the obvious.
- 19:32Speaker 2: In my opinion, I'm actually surprised I started to read
- 19:37Speaker 2: this column. I just had extra time because I normally
- 19:41Speaker 2: just disregard Peggy Noonon for that reason. But she cranked
- 19:43Speaker 2: out a brilliant column by focusing on you would think
- 19:47Speaker 2: one of the least noteworthy people in this country. There's
- 19:51Speaker 2: a guy named Rex Read and as she points out
- 19:56Speaker 2: on the column, it's hard to even de find what
- 19:58Speaker 2: he was. Guy that came from nowhere, very flambuoyant guy,
- 20:04Speaker 2: good looking, flamboyant, if you know what I mean. And
- 20:08Speaker 2: he came in and you know he was at first
- 20:10Speaker 2: he was like a gossip columnist. Then he was an
- 20:14Speaker 2: actor in bad movies. He was in Myrabreckenridge, and for
- 20:18Speaker 2: most of the remainder of his career became a movie critic.
- 20:21Speaker 2: I think for a while he was one of those
- 20:23Speaker 2: that did one of the shows that was spawned off
- 20:25Speaker 2: of Ciskel and Ebert Sneak Previews or one of them.
- 20:28Speaker 2: He might have been on there long life. Wrote was
- 20:31Speaker 2: a critic for New York newspapers back especially in the
- 20:34Speaker 2: seventies and the eighties. He was a constant figure on
- 20:36Speaker 2: shows like Johnny Carson. Peggy Noonan writes, He's passed away.
- 20:42Speaker 2: Peggy Noonan writes a column about him about how extraordinary
- 20:49Speaker 2: it was that Rex read even came to be because
- 20:53Speaker 2: if you didn't know anything about it, and I admit
- 20:55Speaker 2: before I read this, I didn't know much about him
- 20:56Speaker 2: other than these things that he did. I would have
- 20:58Speaker 2: just thought that he was somebody who was worn into
- 21:00Speaker 2: money on the East Coast and therefore could do stuff
- 21:03Speaker 2: like this because he was living off of a rich relative,
- 21:07Speaker 2: one of these people of privilege. How did he get
- 21:09Speaker 2: into the jet set crowd and the hoity toity social
- 21:11Speaker 2: scene crowd because he was proud of it? No, not
- 21:16Speaker 2: the column She writes about This is instructive about our country,
- 21:20Speaker 2: and I'm sure a chunk of it here, Peggy Noonan.
- 21:25Speaker 2: I want to mention America's wide openness. I don't mean
- 21:29Speaker 2: our traditional openness to foreign born citizens, which is its
- 21:33Speaker 2: own triumph, but our wide openness to ourselves. It is
- 21:38Speaker 2: unique to us, a tradition and a thing of lore.
- 21:42Speaker 2: The thought is prompted by the death this week and
- 21:44Speaker 2: again this is ten days old of the movie critic
- 21:47Speaker 2: Rex Read eighty seven, who was the object of an
- 21:50Speaker 2: affectionate appreciation by his friend Miron Kroto, who was Read's
- 21:55Speaker 2: editor at The Observer. Karoto tells of a Southern boy
- 22:00Speaker 2: who knew no one had no connection in the professions
- 22:04Speaker 2: to which he was drawn entertainment and journalism, and rose
- 22:08Speaker 2: to the top. Reid was born in nineteen thirty eight
- 22:12Speaker 2: and adopted by a family in Fort Worth, Texas, and
- 22:15Speaker 2: was an only child whose family moved around a lot.
- 22:19Speaker 2: He attended more than a dozen schools and found permanence
- 22:23Speaker 2: not in places or friendships, but in the movies, which
- 22:27Speaker 2: he loved from childhood. He went to Louisiana State University,
- 22:31Speaker 2: studied journalism and quote interviewed anyone who would came South
- 22:35Speaker 2: to make a movie. When Paul Newman, Lee Remick, and
- 22:38Speaker 2: Orson Wells came to Baton Rouge to film The Long
- 22:41Speaker 2: Hot Summer in nineteen fifty seven, it was big local
- 22:44Speaker 2: news and Rex showed up to cover it for the
- 22:46Speaker 2: school paper. His friend Elizabeth and Cole begged to tag along.
- 22:51Speaker 2: She caught the acting bug so severely that she dropped out,
- 22:54Speaker 2: moved to New York City, changed her name to Elizabeth Ashley,
- 22:57Speaker 2: and landed on the cover of Life. Within a year.
- 23:00Speaker 2: Reid moved to New York, took a job in movie publicity,
- 23:04Speaker 2: and was laid off. The first that the firing liberated him,
- 23:09Speaker 2: he began freelancing show business profiles. Coroto quotes read, I
- 23:15Speaker 2: took the lowest form of journalism, the celebrity interview. It
- 23:18Speaker 2: did something with it. For a boy with no money,
- 23:21Speaker 2: who didn't know a famous soul, to come to New
- 23:24Speaker 2: York and make a name in journalism, that was no
- 23:26Speaker 2: small achievement. He wanted to live in the famous Dakota
- 23:30Speaker 2: and bought an apartment there before he had furniture. His
- 23:34Speaker 2: first night, the doorbell rang. It was the celebrated film
- 23:37Speaker 2: actor Robert Ryan, head of the co Op building's board,
- 23:40Speaker 2: welcoming him talk about dreams come true. Reid went on
- 23:44Speaker 2: to write act and became a quirky and incisive film critic.
- 23:49Speaker 2: He was operating at the top of the celebrity world
- 23:52Speaker 2: as America was becoming celebrity nation. But the important part
- 23:56Speaker 2: is he knew nobody had no connections, no family ties,
- 24:01Speaker 2: no history, and the whole system was wide open to him.
- 24:05Speaker 2: It's very open here. It still is. You can zoom
- 24:09Speaker 2: up to the top and the top will accept you
- 24:12Speaker 2: and say, hello, what do you got. It's an attitude
- 24:16Speaker 2: of spaciousness built into a system of economic freedom, and
- 24:21Speaker 2: we don't want to lose it. You can think within
- 24:25Speaker 2: two seconds of stories of nobodies who became somebody's in business.
- 24:30Speaker 2: You can go from before Andrew Carnegie to after Steve Jobs.
- 24:35Speaker 2: Beyond business, you'll think Lincoln in the dirt floor log
- 24:39Speaker 2: cabin becomes president. Oprah Winfrey of rural Mississippi hardship invents
- 24:44Speaker 2: a media empire. You could think of Yap Harburg of
- 24:48Speaker 2: Manhattan's Lower East Side, whose father worked in a sweatshop
- 24:52Speaker 2: and who went on to write Over the Rainbow, and
- 24:54Speaker 2: brother Kenya spare A dime and became a reigning Broadway presence.
- 24:58Speaker 2: Jay Z from public housing in Brooklyn became a cultural
- 25:02Speaker 2: powerhouse and a wealthy man. The wide openness of the
- 25:06Speaker 2: system in which they rose has always been has always
- 25:10Speaker 2: distinguished America. It's part of our mythos, our ethos, our style,
- 25:16Speaker 2: and it's no accident. All this is so obvious it
- 25:19Speaker 2: feels embarrassing to talk about. But I continue to think
- 25:23Speaker 2: about the political challenges to our traditional ideas of economic
- 25:27Speaker 2: freedom that will becoming the next few years. We will
- 25:30Speaker 2: be grappling with fundamental questions. How to approach the idea
- 25:34Speaker 2: that a lot of capitalism has devolved into some kind
- 25:37Speaker 2: of financialism in which people who are good with numbers
- 25:41Speaker 2: move them around and get rich. How to solve the
- 25:44Speaker 2: problem of a tech universe that produces wild and awesome wealth,
- 25:49Speaker 2: the concentration of which seems weird, unnatural, And what about
- 25:54Speaker 2: artificial intelligence? All that is going to be decided by
- 25:58Speaker 2: voters in the next decade or so. But the answer
- 26:02Speaker 2: isn't socialism. The old idea that is rising again. Free
- 26:07Speaker 2: market capitalism is a vast, imperfect mess of a system,
- 26:11Speaker 2: but it was created and involved with wisdom in America
- 26:15Speaker 2: new wealth and success wouldn't be tolerated by establishments so
- 26:19Speaker 2: much as taken as proof that America got the economic
- 26:23Speaker 2: end of things right. There would be no unseen ceilings,
- 26:27Speaker 2: no sense you don't go beyond your station as there
- 26:31Speaker 2: was in old Europe, and things were set up so
- 26:35Speaker 2: you could you could rise quickly. You could go from
- 26:38Speaker 2: Irish present to American working class family. Then the division
- 26:41Speaker 2: manager Wall Street Titan Broadway producer. Because it could happen
- 26:45Speaker 2: so quickly. It was witnessed. When you witness something, you
- 26:50Speaker 2: believe in it. Clarence Thomas and Sonya Sotamyor came from
- 26:54Speaker 2: little in a material sense. He from tiny Pinpoint, Georgia.
- 27:00Speaker 2: She from a bronx tenement and later a housing project.
- 27:03Speaker 2: They are now on the Supreme Court. Did that little
- 27:07Speaker 2: boy and that little girl understand who they'd be in history, Well,
- 27:11Speaker 2: they'd probably seen others rise. They'd been witnesses too. This
- 27:17Speaker 2: faith that you can change and improve your circumstances, it
- 27:20Speaker 2: has a powerful effect on our country's temperament. It is
- 27:24Speaker 2: unbelievably corny and retro to say free market capitalism was
- 27:29Speaker 2: built on the little guy. Let it be corny and retro.
- 27:33Speaker 2: In Europe, the banker's back people they knew socially, those
- 27:37Speaker 2: with a name. In Hungary, America, investors would back people
- 27:41Speaker 2: with no name but a brilliant idea. That could be anybody.
- 27:45Speaker 2: It could be a young and deaf Thomas Edison. Private
- 27:49Speaker 2: property the rule of law. In the American system, common
- 27:53Speaker 2: people could make binding agreements, own property, open businesses. You
- 27:59Speaker 2: didn't have to be fancy to own something. Bankruptcy laws
- 28:03Speaker 2: helped by making failure survivable. You fail and try again
- 28:07Speaker 2: without being destroyed. None of it is perfect. It never
- 28:11Speaker 2: was perfect. Other systems have geniuses too, but America, like
- 28:15Speaker 2: no country before, it offered its genius as a stage
- 28:18Speaker 2: and a chance to star on the show. State socialism
- 28:22Speaker 2: has always been constrictive, heavy, static. It has trouble creating anything.
- 28:28Speaker 2: It isn't physy and alive. What it does is allocate,
- 28:32Speaker 2: but allocators always and inevitably favored their own interests and networks.
- 28:37Speaker 2: In the Soviet Union, the governing class, those who held
- 28:40Speaker 2: the party party posts, there's always somewhat in power in
- 28:45Speaker 2: every system, tended to be mediocre and hackish at best,
- 28:49Speaker 2: utterly corrupt at worst. Their system didn't work and couldn't grow,
- 28:54Speaker 2: and the geniuses were denied a stage. American free market
- 28:58Speaker 2: capitalism generates, It allows things to be brought to life.
- 29:02Speaker 2: Socialism merely distributes what is, and in the end it
- 29:07Speaker 2: always relies onlies, the first of which is always that
- 29:12Speaker 2: it works. One way of doing things is unpredictable, chaotic,
- 29:19Speaker 2: and can break your heart. People compete, and competition can
- 29:23Speaker 2: be painful. People lose. But our system was invented to grow,
- 29:29Speaker 2: to throw off wealth and energy and make room for you.
- 29:34Speaker 2: That's what we have to make sure continues. It's fantastic
- 29:37Speaker 2: wide openness. And yet for those of who want to
- 29:40Speaker 2: track that down, that was Peggy Noonan in the Walls
- 29:41Speaker 2: through Journals about ten days ago. Wall through journal pieces
- 29:44Speaker 2: are sometimes behind paywalls, sometimes you can find them. She
- 29:48Speaker 2: uses the example of a guy who came from nothing,
- 29:52Speaker 2: Rex Read, who became like the most unlikely, got to
- 29:58Speaker 2: rub elbows with the rich and fame us and the
- 30:00Speaker 2: celebrities of the world and prove that you can literally
- 30:04Speaker 2: come from anywhere. The thing that I just think is
- 30:08Speaker 2: so frustrating and seeing so many young people embrace socialism
- 30:11Speaker 2: is their response is yeah, well it probably won't happen
- 30:14Speaker 2: to me. Yeah, it probably won't, but it could. And
- 30:18Speaker 2: whether it does or it doesn't certainly has something to
- 30:23Speaker 2: do with where you come from. Those who are the
- 30:26Speaker 2: children of rich people have a leg up, but it's
- 30:29Speaker 2: never the ultimate. You do have a chance to bust through.
- 30:34Speaker 2: You do have a chance to make a difference, and
- 30:35Speaker 2: the people who make a difference are the ones who
- 30:37Speaker 2: make everything better for the rest of us. But there's
- 30:40Speaker 2: no guarantee, and no, you probably won't make it. And
- 30:43Speaker 2: if all you want to do is eat your gummies
- 30:45Speaker 2: all day and have no ambition and look for somebody
- 30:47Speaker 2: else to hand it to you, You're never going to
- 30:50Speaker 2: find any fulfillment in your life. You're always going to
- 30:53Speaker 2: have angst and frustration. You're always going to know that
- 30:56Speaker 2: all of us are nobody's and all the great stuff
- 30:59Speaker 2: you want to given to you for free, none of
- 31:02Speaker 2: it's going to exist because we've taken away the incentive
- 31:06Speaker 2: from all of the geniuses who would have created it.
- 31:11Speaker 2: You know, I can relate to the whole story. I
- 31:14Speaker 2: am an unlikely success in the world of talk radio
- 31:17Speaker 2: and no podcasting. Who is ill? I understand how fortunate
- 31:23Speaker 2: I was, and I also understand that I have a
- 31:25Speaker 2: lot of talent. I admit most people don't have a
- 31:28Speaker 2: lot of talent in anything. They're the people who have
- 31:31Speaker 2: to battle along in our world. Trump is certainly appealed
- 31:36Speaker 2: to many of them, the forgotten people who have no
- 31:39Speaker 2: one to speak for them. The thing that we can't
- 31:42Speaker 2: do is think that because most of us are never
- 31:46Speaker 2: going to make it huge, that we should throw away
- 31:50Speaker 2: the entire system, because it destroys the incentive of those
- 31:54Speaker 2: who do make it huge, and it destroys the ability
- 31:58Speaker 2: for any of us to get the great things that come,
- 32:02Speaker 2: be it art, technological advancement, great things to do and
- 32:11Speaker 2: see that come from the people who do make it
- 32:16Speaker 2: and got the reward for doing what it was that
- 32:20Speaker 2: they did. This is the Mark Belling podcast. This is
- 32:27Speaker 2: the Mark Belling Podcast. There's a stat that I'm going
- 32:31Speaker 2: to share with you that I mean, I knew this
- 32:34Speaker 2: was the trend. I didn't know how far had it gone.
- 32:40Speaker 2: We're right now, right in the middle of the period
- 32:42Speaker 2: kind of ending it. College graduations. I mean, I understand
- 32:49Speaker 2: why so many of the millennials went to college. It's
- 32:52Speaker 2: not the college is easy, but I will say the
- 32:54Speaker 2: schedule's pretty soft. You know, the semester starts like January
- 32:58Speaker 2: twenty second and your grand graduate on May seventh. They're very,
- 33:02Speaker 2: very short. I don't remember if they were short when
- 33:05Speaker 2: I was in college. Anyway, we're in commencement season or
- 33:10Speaker 2: winding down commencement season. Some numbers here in the current year,
- 33:19Speaker 2: or at least the last year in which they've kept numbers.
- 33:22Speaker 2: Mark Perry is the source of this. He posts on
- 33:25Speaker 2: X sixty four point six percent of the associate degrees
- 33:30Speaker 2: in the United States went to women. Associate degrees are
- 33:34Speaker 2: usually two year degrees. Fifty nine point eight percent of
- 33:38Speaker 2: bachelor degrees went to women. Now, the writer points out,
- 33:45Speaker 2: if this was reversed, it would be considered to be
- 33:47Speaker 2: an American crisis. Why are women being left behind? Only
- 33:54Speaker 2: two out of every five persons of graduating from college
- 33:56Speaker 2: as a woman. Instead, it's the reverse way. More women
- 34:02Speaker 2: are now college educated than men. It's a remarkable trend.
- 34:09Speaker 2: I'm not sure if this is necessarily bad. I know
- 34:12Speaker 2: it's not all bad. I think one of the things
- 34:16Speaker 2: that's happening is something that I've been arguing for many
- 34:19Speaker 2: years should happen. I think you are seeing a lot
- 34:23Speaker 2: of males who leave high school make the decision not
- 34:28Speaker 2: to go to college and pursue careers that do not
- 34:32Speaker 2: require college degrees. Most of the positions, not all, most
- 34:37Speaker 2: of the positions and the trades. People seem to think
- 34:40Speaker 2: the tradesman construction trades. No, the trade is any kind
- 34:43Speaker 2: of skilled or mostly skilled position. There is tremendous economic
- 34:50Speaker 2: opportunity there. And no matter how high tech the world is,
- 34:56Speaker 2: we still need people to install and design plumbing system
- 35:00Speaker 2: and air conditioning systems. Maybe AI can figure out how
- 35:03Speaker 2: to be a brick player, and maybe some of that
- 35:05Speaker 2: stuff can be done robotically, but there are all sorts
- 35:08Speaker 2: of jobs that still have to be done physically with
- 35:11Speaker 2: human beings. They do road construction, you still have people
- 35:15Speaker 2: out there doing the road work. When there's a fire burning,
- 35:18Speaker 2: there's still firefighters who show up. When you go into
- 35:22Speaker 2: the hospital, there's still doctors and nurses who treat you.
- 35:25Speaker 2: There are still people that clean the buildings and change
- 35:28Speaker 2: the bedpens and bring you the food. And what's happened
- 35:32Speaker 2: over the years is we have pushed so many young
- 35:34Speaker 2: people to college, including some that were ill suited for college,
- 35:37Speaker 2: and worse, then push them into majors for which there
- 35:39Speaker 2: were scant economic opportunities, employment opportunities that there's been a
- 35:45Speaker 2: drastic shortage of people in all sorts of skilled trades. No,
- 35:51Speaker 2: I'm in Florida four months of the year in Wisconsin
- 35:53Speaker 2: eight months of the year. When I have to call
- 35:56Speaker 2: for anything that's service anymore, any kind of service anything
- 36:03Speaker 2: anything from a housekeeper to somebody who comes in and
- 36:07Speaker 2: fixes something or anything like that, it's either a really
- 36:11Speaker 2: old person in other words, right in your retirement, or
- 36:15Speaker 2: an immigrant. There are no young people who seem to
- 36:20Speaker 2: know how to do any of these things. I think
- 36:24Speaker 2: I mentioned in the last program that I needed a
- 36:26Speaker 2: plumber in Florida. It's always going to be somebody who
- 36:28Speaker 2: can't speak English. Because the only young people that are
- 36:32Speaker 2: going into plumbing down there are people that are not
- 36:34Speaker 2: originally from the United States. So I think that's reversing.
- 36:39Speaker 2: I think one of the reasons why you're now seeing
- 36:41Speaker 2: sixty percent of university bachel's degrees going to females is
- 36:45Speaker 2: a good chunk of the males are returning to the trades.
- 36:48Speaker 2: They realize the money can be much better than in
- 36:52Speaker 2: many of the positions where they're going to college degrees.
- 36:54Speaker 2: Will you end up ruling the world? Probably not. But
- 36:58Speaker 2: even of the people who go into the trade, some
- 37:00Speaker 2: are going to end up owning the businesses in the
- 37:02Speaker 2: fields that they work for. So again, I don't think
- 37:06Speaker 2: that this trend is all bad, but there are parts
- 37:09Speaker 2: of it. While I mentioned that one of the best
- 37:14Speaker 2: pass to making the upper middle class is in the trades,
- 37:17Speaker 2: and in a lot of these jobs that don't require college,
- 37:19Speaker 2: the overwhelming majority of the people who become super rich
- 37:23Speaker 2: you still have a college degree. Are we moving toward
- 37:26Speaker 2: a world in which all of the bosses are women?
- 37:32Speaker 2: If so, are we ready for that? Given the fact
- 37:38Speaker 2: that the women are also the ones who have the children.
- 37:42Speaker 2: Are we ready for that? For the longest time, the
- 37:47Speaker 2: American society was one in which the man was the
- 37:50Speaker 2: money earner and the guy was the one way more
- 37:54Speaker 2: likely to go to college. Then the women's movement kicked
- 37:58Speaker 2: in and the numbers started to even out. I think
- 38:02Speaker 2: it's a problem if they start getting top heavy on
- 38:04Speaker 2: the other side. Although as I say, I don't think
- 38:07Speaker 2: it's all bad, I do think that some of the
- 38:11Speaker 2: women that are going to college shouldn't be going either.
- 38:15Speaker 2: There's nothing that stops women from doing Most of these
- 38:18Speaker 2: tradesmen jobs themselves, and some women do them, and you
- 38:24Speaker 2: still have way too many people getting involved in degrees
- 38:27Speaker 2: that lead to nothing. Where does your women's studies degree
- 38:30Speaker 2: take you? The only thing that it leads to is
- 38:33Speaker 2: becoming a professor in women's studies, But there are way
- 38:36Speaker 2: more people getting the degree than there are jobs needed
- 38:38Speaker 2: for professors who teach it. Well, I go into that
- 38:41Speaker 2: because I'm interested in it, But where is it leading you?
- 38:48Speaker 2: Those numbers, though, are rather stark, and as I say,
- 38:50Speaker 2: this would be described as a societal crisis where the
- 38:54Speaker 2: numbers reversed, but they're not. One of the ramifications of
- 38:59Speaker 2: the women's movement, a cousin of which is the gender movement,
- 39:03Speaker 2: is there is no men's movement, and I'm not suggesting
- 39:06Speaker 2: that there should be, but stories like this are noteworthy.
- 39:10Speaker 2: You know, we go back to twenty and thirty years
- 39:13Speaker 2: ago is when this really started, this whole girl empowerment thing,
- 39:16Speaker 2: and you know, girls were academically behind boys in school,
- 39:20Speaker 2: and girls were less likely to go to college. And
- 39:22Speaker 2: we pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed,
- 39:25Speaker 2: but in the process we wimpified men. And I'm not
- 39:30Speaker 2: saying the failure of young men to go to college
- 39:32Speaker 2: is because they're all woosies, because many of them are
- 39:34Speaker 2: making smarter decisions with their life. But what we have
- 39:38Speaker 2: done is we have depressed their ambition by suggesting that
- 39:42Speaker 2: anything that men did to get ahead was toxic toxic masculinity.
- 39:50Speaker 2: I would hope that there would be a leveling off here,
- 39:53Speaker 2: because you would say the same percentage of women seeking
- 39:57Speaker 2: alternatives to college as men, rather than man either opting out,
- 40:04Speaker 2: which is bad and just doing nothing, or going into
- 40:08Speaker 2: skilled trades and pursuing career paths that don't require college,
- 40:12Speaker 2: which is good. Last weekend, President Trump hosted that prayer
- 40:29Speaker 2: festival on the National ball. There are a lot of
- 40:33Speaker 2: people who showed up. When you saw the aerial coverage,
- 40:36Speaker 2: the crowd sizes were very large. These are people who
- 40:41Speaker 2: because they were part of this group or that group,
- 40:43Speaker 2: were there. There's been a backlash to this from the
- 40:47Speaker 2: people way of separation of church and state, which we don't.
- 40:51Speaker 2: There are people who are threatened by religion unless the
- 40:55Speaker 2: religion is Islam. I think that this begs the question,
- 40:59Speaker 2: and today is a good day to discuss it. Of
- 41:02Speaker 2: what the proper rule of faith, and Christian faith is
- 41:07Speaker 2: with regard to our society and our government. America was
- 41:13Speaker 2: premised on religion. The people who believe in the separation
- 41:18Speaker 2: of church and state keep pointing out the Constitution where
- 41:20Speaker 2: there's nothing in there about God or religion. There isn't
- 41:24Speaker 2: the founding document of our nation wasn't the Constitution. The
- 41:26Speaker 2: Constitution founded our government. The founding of our nation was
- 41:30Speaker 2: the Declaration of Independence, the more broader based document, the
- 41:36Speaker 2: one that claimed that the reason we needed to create
- 41:39Speaker 2: our own country is that our rights are being taken
- 41:41Speaker 2: from us. Where did the rights come from? That document
- 41:44Speaker 2: was very clear they came from God. That's why the
- 41:47Speaker 2: rights were inalienable. For all of the talk of separation
- 41:54Speaker 2: of church and state, we had the same Constitution in
- 41:56Speaker 2: the late seventeen and the seventeen nineties as we did
- 41:59Speaker 2: in the eighteen hundred, as we did in the first
- 42:00Speaker 2: half of the nineteen hundreds, and religion was openly practiced
- 42:05Speaker 2: and Christianity was accepted as a component of America. I
- 42:10Speaker 2: don't know how it's supposed to violate the Constitution now
- 42:13Speaker 2: when nobody thought that it did for the first one
- 42:15Speaker 2: hundred and sixty years of our country's existed. What we
- 42:19Speaker 2: have done to ourselves is made our nation much worse
- 42:27Speaker 2: by trying to excise Christianity from it. Are we a
- 42:32Speaker 2: more moral nation now? Are we a more well adjusted
- 42:37Speaker 2: nation now? Or are we a more selfish nation? Are
- 42:42Speaker 2: we more? Are we more a nation of discontent? Are
- 42:45Speaker 2: we more a nation of people disrespecting? What we cannot
- 42:54Speaker 2: have is a state imposed religion. That's what our Bill
- 42:57Speaker 2: of Rights makes clear. And that was a reaction to England,
- 43:01Speaker 2: where they did have a state imposed religion, the Church
- 43:04Speaker 2: of England, which we in the United States we call
- 43:05Speaker 2: the Anglican Church. It was the official church of England then.
- 43:09Speaker 2: And the people who first left Britain, the original colonists,
- 43:16Speaker 2: the Pilgrims, they were rebelling against it. They wanted to
- 43:19Speaker 2: practice their own faith. So our United States roots are
- 43:22Speaker 2: very very clear. We were not to have a government religion.
- 43:26Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that the government isn't going to
- 43:28Speaker 2: allow you to practice your religion, or having a religion
- 43:31Speaker 2: of your choice isn't good. And for most people who
- 43:34Speaker 2: came to the United States, they were Christians, and most
- 43:39Speaker 2: of the tenets of Christianity in addition to Christians believing
- 43:44Speaker 2: that it is their pathway to God and that that
- 43:46Speaker 2: religion is the only one that is true. Whether you
- 43:49Speaker 2: believe that or not, most of the principles of Christianity
- 43:52Speaker 2: lead people to be a good and productive citizen. Are
- 43:58Speaker 2: we better off by ourselves of all of it? By
- 44:05Speaker 2: celebrating Christianity and accepting the role of Christians in American society,
- 44:12Speaker 2: we are not imposing that religion. You can still be
- 44:17Speaker 2: Jewish and we could celebrate your Judaism. You can be Muslim,
- 44:22Speaker 2: you can be an atheist. Government's not stopping you from
- 44:26Speaker 2: doing any of those things. But I applaud Trump for
- 44:30Speaker 2: ending this notion that we have to be embarrassed of Christianity.
- 44:36Speaker 2: You can be a nation that accepts the predominant religion
- 44:40Speaker 2: without being a bunch of monstrous tyrants like those in
- 44:48Speaker 2: states that adhere to Shariah law, in which Muslim is
- 44:54Speaker 2: not only the official religion, it's the only religion that's
- 44:56Speaker 2: allowed in the tenets of Islam taken to their extreme,
- 44:59Speaker 2: is how we run our gun Like some of the
- 45:03Speaker 2: countries in Africa where Christians are being slaughtered right now,
- 45:06Speaker 2: or in China where they're going back to imprisoning Christians.
- 45:11Speaker 2: We don't have that. We shouldn't have that. When we
- 45:16Speaker 2: say that our country was founded on Judeo Christian principles,
- 45:19Speaker 2: it's a statement of fact. We were, and that's not
- 45:22Speaker 2: a bad thing. Doesn't mean that you have to be Jewish,
- 45:27Speaker 2: which is where the Judeo part comes from. Are Christian,
- 45:29Speaker 2: we all know where that comes from. Doesn't mean that,
- 45:33Speaker 2: But it doesn't mean that those principles are bad. It
- 45:35Speaker 2: doesn't mean that the worshiping of God and the worshiping
- 45:37Speaker 2: of Christ is bad. We got to be the greatest
- 45:42Speaker 2: nation of the world when we embraced and championed that.
- 45:50Speaker 2: Trump's openness to making it clear that his government is
- 45:56Speaker 2: welcoming of and supportive of Christianity doesn't harm anyone and
- 46:03Speaker 2: doesn't impose anything. I could make other points here, but
- 46:11Speaker 2: time is limited. I do think, however, the people that
- 46:17Speaker 2: are so determined to put the Korean in school libraries,
- 46:22Speaker 2: and are so willing to accept corruption by Muslim groups
- 46:27Speaker 2: who take over government social service programs, and are so
- 46:31Speaker 2: hell bent on citing any kind of opposition to any
- 46:34Speaker 2: of it as being anti Muslim bigotry, they are the
- 46:38Speaker 2: ones that are so willing themselves to suppress Christianity and
- 46:42Speaker 2: say that it has no role in our society. Well,
- 46:46Speaker 2: it does have a role, because most Americas are Christian.
- 46:51Speaker 2: And to the extent that we are purging that from
- 46:53Speaker 2: our society and trying to talk people out of it,
- 46:57Speaker 2: we have badly suffered. You know. I've done some segments,
- 47:03Speaker 2: and many are making note of what seems to be
- 47:05Speaker 2: a religious revival among young people. There have been others
- 47:08Speaker 2: who are pointing out and pointing out that that's mostly
- 47:11Speaker 2: a revival among urban, well educated young people, that there's
- 47:15Speaker 2: no revival at all from middle class or lower middle
- 47:18Speaker 2: class people forward returning to church and so on. Perhaps so,
- 47:24Speaker 2: we have never been a country in which our religious
- 47:27Speaker 2: beliefs were atheist, never, And atheism is a religion itself,
- 47:33Speaker 2: it's a belief system. The absence of a belief in
- 47:35Speaker 2: God is in and of itself a religious belief. For
- 47:39Speaker 2: those who want us to have a nation in which
- 47:42Speaker 2: there is not even an acknowledgment of God, they are
- 47:46Speaker 2: the ones that are imposing religion. The religion that they
- 47:50Speaker 2: are opposing is the religion of none, the religion of atheism.
- 47:54Speaker 2: And again, everyone has a right to be atheist, and
- 47:56Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting we do anything to anyone who's atheist,
- 48:00Speaker 2: but we need to re embrace the faith of the
- 48:04Speaker 2: majority of the people in this country, and to the
- 48:08Speaker 2: extent that we do, the better off we will be.
- 48:11Speaker 2: You're listening to the Mark Belling podcast. All right, that's
- 48:16Speaker 2: it for today's podcast. Again. We drop new podcasts every Monday, Wednesday,
- 48:20Speaker 2: and Thursday. Make sure to subscribe without regard to the
- 48:23Speaker 2: platform that you're on, and you can get notifications as
- 48:25Speaker 2: to when the new ones are around and it'll save
- 48:27Speaker 2: it on your system and so on. Talk to you soon. Bye.
- 48:36Speaker 1: Action of iHeartRadio Podcasts production and engineering by Jason Gotch.
- 48:41Speaker 1: The Mark Belling Podcast is presented by you Line for
- 48:44Speaker 1: quality shipping and industrial supplies. You Line has everything in stock.
- 48:48Speaker 1: Visit you line dot com. Listen to all of Mark's podcasts,
- 48:52Speaker 1: always available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
- 48:57Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite podcasts.
- 49:00Speaker 2: Six