Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.65 – Dr. Robert George: Fidelity Month Inspires Unity Through Faith | Traditional Values | Faith And Family | Moral Philosophy | Conservative Thought

Transcript

Ep.65 – Dr. Robert George: Fidelity Month Inspires Unity Through Faith | Traditional Values | Faith And Family | Moral Philosophy | Conservative Thought · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

• 0:00
  ABI George, you're the, I would say, the premier legal flop,
• 0:03
  political philosopher and conservative in the US by
• 0:06
  extension of the world. What's it like to have such a
• 0:10
  big target on your back? Well, I'm not sure that I
• 0:16
  deserve to be described as a person of that sort of stature,
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  but the slings and arrows do come.
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  Fortunately, the Lord made me with with a constitution that
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  enables me to take those kinds of criticisms and attacks with
• 0:32
  equanimity. It really doesn't bother me.
• 0:35
  It comes with the territory. I'm accustomed to it.
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  So I just try to bear witness, say what I think, stand up for
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  what I believe in, tell the truth as God gives me to see the
• 0:49
  truth. And if I do that, I consider
• 0:51
  that I've fulfilled my mission. So I think I think what makes
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  you so effective is your equanimity, charity, kindness,
• 1:01
  and fearlessness in speaking the truth.
• 1:04
  And one example of this is Fidelity Month, which I'm happy
• 1:07
  to share with my audience. Can you talk a little bit about
• 1:11
  the development of that and what your vision is with that?
• 1:13
  Well, yes, I'll be happy to talk about Fidelity Month and thank
• 1:16
  you for the invitation to to discuss Fidelity Month.
• 1:20
  Well, back in 2022, I guess, I happen to see a story in the
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  Wall Street Journal about some recent survey data which showed,
• 1:35
  alarmingly to me that the faith or the belief of Americans in
• 1:45
  the importance of certain values that have historically been
• 1:49
  considered central in our culture.
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  The belief has been eroding. These are values that I myself
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  deeply believe in. These are values that have
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  historically united Americans of different races and ethnicities,
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  of both sexes, of different religions, different cultural
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  backgrounds. And we need such values in the
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  United States because, after all, we are not a nation whose
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  unity and strength is founded on blood or soil or throne or
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  altar. We are from many different
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  ethnicities, many different races, we're from different
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  cultures, we have different religions.
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  So if we're to be bound together, if we're to have
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  sources of strength and unity, can't be any of those things,
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  what's it going to be? Well, a commitment to our shared
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  constitutional principles, that's for sure, but also
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  certain fundamental beliefs, beliefs and fidelity to God, For
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  example, that's shared by Protestants and Catholics,
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  Christians and Jews, people across the different religious
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  denominations. Nevertheless, historically,
• 2:55
  Americans have been united by faith in God.
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  Our national motto was in God we trust, we proclaim in our Pledge
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  of Allegiance that we are one nation under God, indivisible
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  with liberty and justice for all.
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  Similarly, we've been united by our shared belief in the
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  importance of marriage in the family and a fidelity in
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  marriage. That's not a Catholic thing or a
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  Christian thing or a judeo-christian thing.
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  It's something that Catholics and Protestants and Jews and
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  Christians and Muslims and everybody else in the United
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  States historically has agreed about, and we've built our unity
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  in part on that belief. Similarly, Americans have been
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  united by our belief in the importance of loyalty to our
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  country and to our communities, that we're not just supposed to
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  be takers from our country or from our communities, were to be
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  givers, were to, were to give back, were to, were to
• 3:56
  contribute. And yet the survey data that
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  were reported in the Wall Street Journal showed that belief in
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  the importance of religion had significantly diminished, belief
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  in the importance of family and marriage had very significantly
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  diminished, belief in the importance of patriotism and
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  concern for the community had diminished.
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  In fact, the only value that had increased, according to these
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  data, were that Americans felt even more than they used to that
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  money was very, very important. Well, now money is an important
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  thing. And we want a flourishing
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  economy and you know, we certainly want to be financially
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  secure as individuals and as families and as a as broader
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  communities. But money is the least important
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  of those things. It's certainly less important
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  than God and family and marriage and patriotism and, and
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  community. So I was alarmed because this
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  country cannot survive without sources of unity and strength.
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  And since they can't be blood and soil or thrown and altar,
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  they've got to be these other traditional moral commitments.
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  So by the power vested in me by absolutely no one, I declared
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  the month of June, henceforth and forevermore to be Fidelity
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  Month, where we unite across the historic lines of division,
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  whether it's racial difference, ethnic difference, political
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  difference, religious difference.
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  Whereas Americans, all faiths, all ethnicities, all cultural
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  heritages unite to reaffirm and rededicate ourselves to
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  fidelity. Fidelity to God, fidelity to
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  marriage, to spouses, to families, fidelity to our
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  country and to our communities. And I was gratified that this
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  seemed to ring a bell. It seemed to touch people's
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  hearts. And so several 10s of thousands
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  of people joined in the first fidelity month, and then several
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  hundreds of thousands of people joined in the second fidelity
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  month. And now we're headed into our
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  third Fidelity month. And I'm hoping that we'll this
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  time register in the millions. What can people do to
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  participate in Fidelity Month? First thing is go to our
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  website, fidelitymonth.com, www.fidelitymonth.com.
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  Learn about what Fidelity Month is, remind yourself about the
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  importance of these values, and there you'll find a list of
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  things, just suggestions. This is a grassroots movement.
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  It's not dictated from the top down.
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  They're just suggestions for what we as individuals and in
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  small groups, churches, other private associations can do to
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  reawaken Americans sense of the importance of these these
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  values. So for starters, just number
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  one, just a little tiny small thing we make available to
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  everyone free of charge, our logo, our Fidelity Month logo
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  featuring the Myrtle wreath, A historic ancient symbol of
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  fidelity. We make that logo available for
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  anyone to just copy and use for the month of June as their
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  profile picture on their social media accounts, on their Twitter
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  accounts or their Facebook accounts or, or, or what have
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  you. There's a starter that helps us
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  to spread the the message of Fidelity Month.
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  And it's a beautiful little logo.
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  You'll, you'll enjoy it and be proud to use it on your social
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  media accounts. Talk to your pastor.
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  If you're a member of a church or other religious community,
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  talk to your pastor about doing an event for Fidelity Month.
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  Or it doesn't have to be a church.
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  It can be a book group. It can be another association.
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  Talk about doing something special for Fidelity Month.
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  Have a speaker have a panel discussion on any aspect of
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  Fidelity Month, on anything having to do with the great
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  moral values that have traditionally united Americans
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  across our various differences. Have a talk with your mayor or
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  write a write a e-mail to your mayor or your representative in
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  the state legislature or in the Congress and say, hey, you know
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  what? You should make a statement
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  recognizing Fidelity Month and discussing the importance of
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  these values to the success of our American experiment in
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  republican government and ordered liberty.
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  Our founders knew that the flourishing of civil society, of
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  religion, of family, community were essential to the success of
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  the broader experiment in republican government.
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  Well, let's remind our politicians and ask our
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  politicians to remind their constituents of the importance
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  of those values and of those virtues, of the virtues
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  associated with those values. So there are lots of things like
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  that that we as individuals can can do to help spread the word
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  about Fidelity Month. And the reason for spreading the
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  word about Fidelity Month is so that we can renew people's
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  commitments or encourage people to renew their own commitments.
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  Really. That's a better way to put it to
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  these values. Beautiful.
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  If someone is an influential executive, can they pass out
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  little tiny Fidelity Month flags for people to put on their desk?
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  And for those who refuse to put on their desk, quietly persecute
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  those individuals. I know we don't persecute
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  anybody. That's the other month.
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  Oh. Sorry, I got confused.
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  Yeah, that might be the other month, but we're we don't do
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  stuff like that. What what we do is we propose.
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  We don't impose, we propose. And we think we've got something
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  very good to propose that doesn't need to be forced on
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  anybody. Because once people just pause
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  for a moment to consider what are the sources of our national
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  unity and strength, they'll quickly see it's not blood, it's
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  not soil. Can't rely on those things.
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  Can't rely on church, we can't rely on altar, throne and altar
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  that we're all members of one religion or we're all under a
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  king or something like that. It's nothing like that.
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  Those things cannot provide unity and strength, but we need
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  unity and strength. So if they're to be provided,
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  people will quickly see that they're provided by these core
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  values, these basic commitments that Americans have shared since
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  the founding of the Republic. Despite all our other
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  differences. We've, we've shared these and
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  now they've rooted and their erosion is dangerous.
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  It's dangerous to the Republic, but we can't get them back just
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  by Fiat, by a court ordering it or by an act of legislation.
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  If we're going to get them back, we the people need to lead the
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  way. We need to celebrate these
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  values. We need to renew and rededicate
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  ourselves to these, to these values.
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  So I think when people hear the message, when they're reminded
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  of the message, it's a message that they find they want to
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  embrace. You're Speaking of the pillars
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  of faith, family, and country. I wonder if the biggest enemy to
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  that is secular humanism, which is so rampant.
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  And I would love to hear how optimistic are you that this,
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  this mess, this positive message of truth, beauty and goodness
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  really can spread and overcome? Well, I think the main, what
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  would the word be? Opponent the main impediment to
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  our reaffirming our traditional values is apathy.
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  To some extent. We've grown very, very
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  prosperous as a nation and very content and happy.
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  You know, we're, we're unhappy and disaffected in many other
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  ways, but we're, you know, we're, we're, we're pretty self
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  reliant and rich as a people. Not everybody, obviously, but
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  you know, you can forget what's important in life and you can
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  get caught up in the things that matter, but not all that much.
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  Things like wealth and power and celebrity and fame and influence
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  and status. Those things do matter.
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  They're not bad in themselves. You can do good things with
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  them. You can do good things with
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  wealth. You can do good things with
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  celebrity. You can do good things with
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  influence. But they're not good in
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  themselves either. They matter, but they're not the
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  things that ultimately matter. The things that ultimately
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  matter are the things that are good not just as means to other
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  ends. They're things that are good in
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  themselves, good for their own sake.
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  Faith, family, friendship, knowledge, beauty, integrity,
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  honesty, community. These are not mere means to
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  other ends. These are ends in themselves.
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  So they are the things that really matter.
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  But for a successful, especially economically successful people
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  like ourselves, sometimes we get caught up in the things that
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  don't matter all that much. I find this with my students.
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  They're very ambitious, they're very driven, but their focus is
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  on wealth, power, status, influence, prestige.
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  And again, they're not bad in themselves.
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  Those are things worth aspiring to, but they've got to be put in
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  second place behind the things that really matter.
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  Faith, family, friendship, knowledge, beauty, integrity,
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  honor. So I think the first impediment
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  is a kind of apathy or kind of forgetting about what is really
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  important. And the second thing is what you
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  called secular humanism, which is especially potent, of course,
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  at the elite level in our, in our in our culture.
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  This is a a kind of philosophy of life that was captured by
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  Abraham Lincoln as far back as the mid period of the Civil War
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  when Lincoln declared a day of fasting and repentance.
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  Now why did Lincoln as the United States, that's beautiful
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  fasting and repentance. He gave us a simple explanation
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  for it. If you read the great decree
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  that he issued on that day. He said we need a day of fasting
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  and repentance because we have forgotten God.
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  In our hubris, in our pride, in our wealth, we have forgotten
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  God. And when you forget God, things
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  begin to go very, very, very badly, very, very quickly
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  actually. So Lincoln reminded us we need
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  to remember God. In a way that's the first pillar
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  of Fidelity Month. It's remembering our dependence
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  on a loving and powerful God in whose image and likeness we and
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  every other member of the human family are made.
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  That's the fundamental source of our inherent dignity and moral
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  inviolability as human beings. We really can't expect to treat
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  ourselves properly, and certainly not to treat others
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  properly, when we forgot the source of our fundamental human
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  dignity, our fundamental human rights.
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  So this is not a new problem. It's a renewed problem because
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  we're back in the condition that Lincoln found the people in, in
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  the midpoint of the Civil War. We've forgotten God now.
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  Now, it's not that, like, people in large numbers disavow God or
• 15:17
  formally embrace atheism. Our, our the atheism that's our
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  danger is not the formal atheism of, you know, Christopher
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  Hitchens or Richard Dawkins or something like that.
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  It's what Pope John Paul the Great called practical atheism,
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  that is. Yeah, sure.
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  We would check the box on a, on a test that says is there a God
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  or is there not a God? We check the we check the box.
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  There is a God. Most Americans would.
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  But is God salient in your life? Do you honor God?
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  Do you honor God by honoring others as creatures made in the
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  image and likeness of God? Do you remember even in your own
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  personal affairs, that you yourself are made in the image
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  and likeness of God? And certain responsibilities
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  come with having that dignity, having that status. 1 needs to
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  treat oneself as well as others as a creature made in the image
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  and likeness of a loving and all powerful God.
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  So those are some sort of considerations that I think we
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  should bear in mind when we reflect on our current condition
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  and what the real challenges to us are.
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  Well, when you're talking about apathy and secular humanism,
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  that just calls to mind late stage empire to me.
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  And the collapse of the empire could take it could take 100
• 16:34
  years, even longer. But like how optimistic are you
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  that that we can reverse that? Oh, well, I, I guess I'm by
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  nature an optimistic person, but that's not the what's doing the
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  work here. I didn't, I didn't declare
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  Fidelity month because I'm an optimist.
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  I, I do happen to be an optimist.
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  I can't help it. But but optimism.
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  Optimism is a matter of optics. It's not a virtue.
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  I declared Fidelity Month because I have hope and hope is
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  not optimism. Hope is a virtue.
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  It's not a matter of optics. It's not a prediction.
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  It's a commitment. It's volitional.
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  It's saying, look, we can do something here to make things
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  turn around. We can do something here to set
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  things right. We can recover what is lost.
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  We can restore what has eroded. We need to act on that, that
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  hope. It's one of, as you know, one of
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  the great theological virtues, faith, hope and love.
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  Well, hope is right there in the right there in the middle where
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  where it belongs. And so really, Fidelity Month is
• 17:43
  an act of hope. So I got to ask you, you're on
• 17:47
  the Council of Foreign Relations.
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  What? What is that like?
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  Well, the Council on Foreign Relations is an is really a
• 17:56
  think tank as much as it's anything else.
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  It's also a membership organization whose members are
• 18:02
  people who are interested in international affairs and
• 18:06
  especially in peace, in trying to achieve peace in parts of the
• 18:11
  world where war has become the norm now.
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  It is not ideological. There many people on the left.
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  There are some of us who are on the more conservative side.
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  There are some people who are in the, in the, in the center.
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  You don't need any ideological commitment one way or that's not
• 18:29
  like the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the
• 18:31
  libertarians or the, or the socialists.
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  And it's a place where we can have a sharing of views.
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  You'll, you'll hear speakers talk about Ukraine, talk about
• 18:42
  the Middle East, Israel and Palestine, talk about the
• 18:45
  challenges we face now from China, of course, or the the
• 18:51
  problems of nuclear proliferation.
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  It's that sort of organization. I was invited to join the
• 18:58
  organization as a result of the work that I was doing back in
• 19:01
  the early 2000s as a member of the President's Council on
• 19:05
  Bioethics under President Bush. Issues in bioethics are
• 19:10
  obviously these days international issues.
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  They're not simply issues within this or that nation.
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  We're, we're talking about technologies that affect the
• 19:18
  whole of humanity. So my work was observed by
• 19:23
  people who are associated with the, with the council.
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  And so they elected me to membership and said, you know,
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  we really like your participation in the council,
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  you know, across the range of our activities, but most
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  especially because we're facing these bioethical questions that
• 19:38
  are really novel. And no one has yet figured out
• 19:40
  exactly how we should be thinking about these things.
• 19:42
  But you're one of the people who is at least trying to think
• 19:45
  about these things. So please come and join us,
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  which I was happy to do all. Right.
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  So, so I got to ask at the expense of being laughed at.
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  I mean, what, how, how would you respond to someone who says,
• 19:58
  hey, like CFR is just like one arm of the New World Order?
• 20:05
  Well, that's not what it is. It's, it's an organization that
• 20:10
  has members drawn from across the political spectrum who like,
• 20:14
  you know, myself on the conservative side, or you know,
• 20:17
  plenty of people on the, on the liberal side, and then lots of
• 20:21
  people who are in the middle who have disagreements about all
• 20:24
  sorts of things, including some very fundamental things.
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  But we sit down together and we hear each other's arguments and
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  we, we listen to different perspectives from, from speakers
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  representing a range of points of view.
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  And then everybody can, you know, make up his mind for
• 20:38
  himself. There are no rules about what
• 20:40
  you have to believe. There's no oath you have to
• 20:42
  sign. There's no commitment you have
• 20:44
  to make to this school of thought or, or that school of
• 20:47
  thought. We're not proposing a world
• 20:49
  government or, or anything like that.
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  We certainly don't count ourselves as a, as a world
• 20:54
  government. I I was proposed for a
• 20:57
  membership by two very distinguished conservatives and
• 21:00
  Norman Podhoretz and the late William F Buckley.
• 21:04
  Gotcha. Those are scarcely New World,
• 21:08
  New World Order people. Are you familiar with CS Lewis's
• 21:13
  space trilogy That Hideous Strength?
• 21:15
  Yes, I am, yeah. So how, how prophetic do you
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  think that is? And specifically the idea of
• 21:23
  like concentric circles of influence have become
• 21:27
  increasingly small and have a disproportionate influence on
• 21:31
  the wider population? Yeah, I do.
• 21:33
  Worry about that. Yeah, I do worry about that.
• 21:35
  They're, they're, I mean, I'll give you an example, OK?
• 21:38
  The Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme Court of the
• 21:40
  United States is, this is in my area because my main work, as
• 21:44
  you know, I think is in philosophy of law and my
• 21:47
  secondary field is constitutional law.
• 21:48
  So a lot of what I do has to do with the courts.
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  And of course, especially with the Supreme Court of the United
• 21:52
  States. The courses that I teach are
• 21:54
  largely the breeding materials are largely Supreme Court cases.
• 21:59
  So look at Supreme Court today. The Supreme Court has nine
• 22:04
  members. 8 of them are graduates of one of two law schools.
• 22:09
  Now, it happens to be one of those two law schools is the one
• 22:12
  I myself went to. But eight of the 9 justices went
• 22:18
  to either Harvard Law School or Yale Law School.
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  The 9th is Amy Coney Barrett, who went to Notre Dame Law
• 22:24
  School before Justice Barrett joined the court.
• 22:27
  All nine were graduates of either Harvard or Yale Law
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  School. That's a pretty narrow slice of
• 22:33
  America. And then if you look at where
• 22:34
  their undergraduate degrees came from, again, it's a small 3/3 of
• 22:39
  the 9 went to Princeton where I teach now, you know, Princeton's
• 22:43
  a little. It's not even by university
• 22:45
  standards, it's a small university.
• 22:47
  We're not a big university. We're 1/3 the size of Arbiter
• 22:49
  Yale, for example, And I don't know, probably a 10th the size
• 22:53
  of the big Midwestern state universities like, you know,
• 22:56
  Ohio State and University of Illinois and places like that.
• 23:01
  And yet a disproportionate number of people in the upper
• 23:05
  ranks have come through these elite educational institutions
• 23:09
  where, again, I myself, you know, went through.
• 23:13
  But that's generally speaking, not a great thing.
• 23:17
  I mean, it's just not a sufficiently broad slice of the
• 23:22
  country and the culture to give you what I would consider a, a,
• 23:29
  a broader, a better because broader vision and set of
• 23:34
  background experiences and understandings and perspectives
• 23:37
  and and so forth. So I think this is a real
• 23:40
  danger. I don't think there's any
• 23:41
  question about it. And, and it wasn't like this was
• 23:44
  always the case for most of American history.
• 23:48
  You didn't have eight of nine justices coming from Harvard and
• 23:51
  Yale. Yeah.
• 23:55
  And then the other insight in that book is that ultimately,
• 23:58
  when you uncover Mr. Global, the guy behind the the, the curtain,
• 24:03
  it's, it turns out to be Satan himself.
• 24:05
  Yeah, that's beyond my pay grade.
• 24:09
  I I don't I, I haven't found Satan anywhere yet.
• 24:16
  OK, OK. Fair enough.
• 24:17
  All right. Last question on my end.
• 24:20
  So you you do have a beautiful friendship.
• 24:24
  Perhaps I could say it with Cornell West, who has very
• 24:27
  different views from yourself. He's a charming man.
• 24:31
  I ran into him in the airport not too long ago when he was
• 24:34
  running for president. Can you just give us some
• 24:37
  insight into that relationship? Yeah, it is beautiful
• 24:41
  friendship. He's a very dear friend,
• 24:43
  brother, really. That's what he called you.
• 24:46
  Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's true.
• 24:49
  And you know, his, his daughter's a Tune who was an
• 24:52
  undergraduate here at Princeton and is now a, a graduate student
• 24:56
  doing her PhD in German here at Princeton, calls me Uncle
• 24:58
  Robbie. And I refer to her as my, my
• 25:01
  niece a Tune. And you know, we've been close
• 25:02
  ever since she was actually in, in middle school or high school
• 25:06
  here in Princeton at Princeton Day School.
• 25:09
  So Cornell and I do have very profound political and
• 25:14
  ideological and differences and differences on some important
• 25:18
  moral questions. But we also have some things in
• 25:21
  common. And among those is a belief in
• 25:27
  the importance of focusing on getting at the truth of things.
• 25:32
  Avoiding just being an idiologue, A dogmatist, but
• 25:37
  being open to pursuing the truth, following a line of
• 25:41
  argument, pieces of evidence wherever they lead, and then
• 25:46
  adjusting one's opinion to bring it in line with one's best
• 25:50
  judgement of what the of what the truth is.
• 25:52
  We we both profoundly recognize our fallibility.
• 25:56
  We know we can be wrong and have been wrong about about many
• 26:00
  things. So we're both interested in
• 26:02
  listening to somebody else who disagrees with us, even on a
• 26:05
  very important question, just in case it turns out that contrary
• 26:09
  to what we happen to believe at the moment, we're wrong about
• 26:12
  this and a better argument can be made for that guy's some
• 26:16
  position. We don't want to shut that guy
• 26:17
  down and we certainly don't want to refuse to listen to that guy.
• 26:20
  We want to hear him even if he's challenging one of our most
• 26:23
  deeply held cherished beliefs, one of those identity forming
• 26:27
  beliefs. And by that I mean, you know,
• 26:28
  one of those beliefs around which we form our own sense of,
• 26:32
  of who we are. So that's a, that's a big point
• 26:36
  of commonality, you know, and secondly, of course, we're both,
• 26:38
  they're committed Christians. So, you know, we we believe the
• 26:42
  basic Christian story that each and every member of the human
• 26:46
  family, no matter who it is, whether we like that person or
• 26:50
  not, or whether we think that person is a atrocious human
• 26:53
  being. We nevertheless think that every
• 26:54
  human being is made in the very image and likeness of God, that
• 26:58
  everyone is precious and to be honored in their fundamental
• 27:05
  dignity, even if you have to oppose them when it comes to
• 27:08
  moral and political questions. And that's a pretty powerful
• 27:15
  shared belief as well. We also deeply believe in the
• 27:21
  life of the mind, the vocation of scholarship and teaching.
• 27:24
  We're both deeply committed to that.
• 27:25
  We've, we've got our lot, literally bet our lives on, you
• 27:29
  know, we, we could have done other things, you know, much
• 27:32
  more lucrative things, but we didn't do that because we both
• 27:36
  felt called to The vocation of teaching and scholarship of
• 27:40
  truth seeking really is what it comes down to.
• 27:43
  And so that's a, that's a, that's a common bond.
• 27:46
  And so for now, more than 20 years, we've been teaching
• 27:50
  together, lecturing around the country together, singing
• 27:54
  together. We both love music and singing,
• 27:58
  praying together. We pray together regularly.
• 28:01
  Every time we're together, we end up spending some time in
• 28:03
  prayer together. And and this is effortless.
• 28:07
  It takes no effort on my part. It takes no effort on his part.
• 28:10
  We don't have to force ourselves because we disagree so much
• 28:13
  about politics. We don't have to force ourselves
• 28:15
  to be nice to each other or anything like that.
• 28:17
  It's the most natural thing in the thing in the world.
• 28:21
  And it's been a real blessing in my in my life.
• 28:24
  And you know, I need to be challenged and he thinks he
• 28:26
  needs to be challenged. We don't want to become
• 28:28
  complacent. And you know, when we, when we
• 28:32
  argue about an issue, when we debate an issue, more often than
• 28:37
  not, we don't change each other's minds, but we always
• 28:40
  deepen each other's understanding.
• 28:42
  I come, if, if Cornell and I debate an issue, I'm going to
• 28:46
  come out of that conversation with a much deeper
• 28:49
  understanding, even if I still think I'm right.
• 28:53
  And boy, that, you know, that's, that's, that's great.
• 28:57
  That's money in the bank. That's gold.
• 29:00
  How beautiful is that? I'm tempted to ask you to to do
• 29:02
  a little prayer here. I have AI have a suspicion that
• 29:05
  you're good at it but. I wish I, I wish I were.
• 29:09
  I'm afraid I've tested your patience enough on this short
• 29:12
  interview, so I won't do so any further.
• 29:15
  But I I would like to tell you that it's, it really is a
• 29:18
  privilege to talk with you and I really admire your work and
• 29:23
  yourself as a person. So thank you for being that
• 29:25
  example and thank you for handing on that torch.
• 29:28
  I'd like to the to the rest of the nation and hopefully the
• 29:31
  world. Well, the greatest thing about
• 29:32
  the, the, the vocation that I have, the greatest thing about
• 29:36
  the, the things that I do is I, I get to teach the most
• 29:40
  wonderful students. They really are determined truth
• 29:44
  seekers and courageous truth speakers.
• 29:48
  They have been such a blessing in my life.
• 29:52
  You probably know or know of some of my students.
• 29:55
  I shouldn't mention any because I'll leave others out that are,
• 29:59
  you know, that I'm equally proud of.
• 30:00
  But you'd probably know Ryan Anderson or Sharif Girgis or
• 30:04
  Muskella or Danielle Mark or Rabbi Mayor Soloveitchik or
• 30:10
  gosh, the list goes goes on and on.
• 30:13
  Well, Ryan Anderson was recently appointed to the President's
• 30:16
  Committee on Religious Freedom. As was Rabbi Soloveitchik.
• 30:19
  Yeah, so I've gone on to on to that Commission and and you
• 30:25
  know, my students are now making me so proud of them.
• 30:27
  They they're they're off in academia doing important work.
• 30:31
  They're in government service doing important work.
• 30:35
  They're in law. Obviously, I'm in an awful lot
• 30:37
  of my students end up going to, to law school and they're doing
• 30:40
  great good in careers in law. Some of them fighting for very
• 30:43
  important causes like religious liberty and the pro-life cause
• 30:46
  and other very input marriage, very important causes.
• 30:51
  They go into business. Many have become very generous
• 30:55
  philanthropists, doing a lot of good in the world with the with
• 30:58
  the business skills that God has blessed them with.
• 31:01
  So gosh, I'm, I'm just, I'm just a blessed man, especially when
• 31:05
  it comes to my students. So blessed me.
• 31:06
  That must be, must be so fulfilling to see that.
• 31:09
  It is amazing is the greatest thing.
• 31:11
  Next to having grandchildren, which is the greatest thing in
• 31:13
  the world. Having those students is just
• 31:16
  amazing. Thank you for being a tree
• 31:19
  speaker, Doctor George. My pleasure, thank you for
• 31:22
  having me on. Bless your show.
• 31:24
  Thank you.