Transcript

AFA offers biblical insight on issues that others aren't willing to touch

>> Jeff Chamblee: Every day, AFA offers biblical insight on issues that others aren't willing to touch in the hopes that you'll become a world changer. That's why we're offering an in depth, worldview training course called Activate. Thirteen different professors teaching 18 sessions, all available online, including a printed workbook to help you apply what you've learned and one year access to AFA streaming content to give you even more resources. Find out more about Acctivate and sign up today at Acctivate.AFA.net Today's Issues continues M on AFR with your host, Ed Vitagliano.

>> Ed Vitagliano: And welcome back, Ed Battagliano sitting in for Tim Wildmon this week, the whole week, folks. Tony Battagliano joins me in studio. Dr. Alex McFarland joins us from his home in South Carolina. And now Steve Paisley Jordal, and he's living up to the name today, joins us.

>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah, I was asked to do this yesterday, and so I'm doing it. Yep, there we go.

>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah. And folks, I do, I do want to remind you, we, we are working through, we've, got some new equipment and we're working to, you know, like, and you get a new computer, you get a, you got to restore your preferences so that it operates the way you prefer. And so we're working on some of that.

>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah, technology. And it's hard to find the buttons on. I get it.

>> Tony Vitagliano: Appreciate Brent. Appreciate the job Brent's doing.

>> Ed Vitagliano: Absolutely. Brent and Jonathan Coker and others, Mark Cantrell, who have been in here trying to sit on the floor.

>> Steve Jordahl: Yesterday, I felt like we were in nascar. We pulled up to the Pit stop, we stopped, we ended this the, the show and people were diving under the.

>> Ed Vitagliano: Desk trying to, engineers tried to make adjustments to the sound and the microphones. And yeah, they're doing a great job. We do appreciate them. So. All right, Steve.

>> Steve Jordahl: All right.

>> Ed Vitagliano: We've talked it up here the last couple of days. I've been looking forward to the thing we're going to be discussing. Why don't you get us rolling?

Ben Shapiro has a theory about political violence that's very interesting

>> Steve Jordahl: All right, so I've been listening. One of the things I do on the way when I drive home is listen to different podcasts. I got several that I listen to. Ben Shapiro is one that I've been listening to, and he has reduced what we're seeing now with political violence down to, some very, very interesting theory. first of all, if you want to hear this from his own lips, the last couple days, he's recited this several times on his podcast. Go to his podcast, listen to the last few days shows. You'll hear all of this in its own words. I'm taking all of this verbatim. This all belongs to Ben Shapiro. I am just rehearsing it here with a little bit of his sound clips. The other thing, he's got a new book, it's called Lions and Scavengers. And it basically, this is laid out in there, but it divides the world into two groups. The lions who want to produce things and the scavengers who want to tear things down. And, and so I would recommend that to anybody as well. But he has a theory about political violence and this is what he says. When you hear about an act of political violence, your mind automatically goes to certain groups of people. You hear that a mosque, has been shot up, you think white supremacist or, Muslim radical, right? literally nobody in the whole world, when they heard about or saw the Charlie Cook shooting, said, oh, that's someone who is radicalized over the marginalized tax rate. Right, right. That just isn't one thing.

>> Ed Vitagliano: That doesn't drive it.

>> Steve Jordahl: It doesn't. There are certain things, not all ideologies are the same. Listen to cut 10.

>> Ben Shapiro: There are certain ideologies that create violent ramifications, that it's inherent in the ideology that there will be radicals of the ideology who engage in violence. Not all ideological movements are the same. The sort of flattening of all ideologies into, oh yes, all ideologies are equally likely to lead to violence. That is not true.

>> Steve Jordahl: Your mind automatically goes to one of five, violent ideologies when you hear about political violence. And they all have something in common, according to Ben Shapiro. Cut 11.

>> Ben Shapiro: There are, however, ideologies that breed violence, that breed them. And you can spot those ideologies. The ideologies that breed violence usually have three features in common. Feature number one is a conspiratorial view of the universe in which a shadowy cabal of very powerful people are conspiring to make your life worse, to ruin your life. Your failures are not your own. They are the faults of this shadowy cabal, this evil cabal of people. You can't quite name them. Second, a belief that your specific group or you personally are targeted for destruction by that shadowy cabal. Which leads to number three, a belief that violence is self defense.

>> Steve Jordahl: A cabal is a secret group, especially powerful people that work together behind the scenes to achieve goals. That's what a cabal is. and you can see this when in the trans, when you talk to a transgender person and they say, erasing me because we say a boy cannot be a girl. Well, you're now threatening me that way.

>> Ed Vitagliano: And your words are violence.

>> Steve Jordahl: Your words are violence because they're erasing me. Therefore, I have a right to retaliate with, violence. So political violence in this country is going to be perpetrated by one of five violent ideologies. According to Ben, if you take out this. If you forget about the guys that are just simply crazy, that go and shoot somebody because they're mentally deranged. Cut 12.

>> Ben Shapiro: And we know which ideologies fit that bill. Trans ideologies fit that bill. Because the basic idea there is if you say a man is a woman, you're trying to harm me, you're trying to erase me, and therefore I am justified in ending the pseudo trans genocide by doing physical harm to you. Left wing Marxism has this view. Rich people are a threat to poor people. They've stolen from poor people. The only way to fight the rich people is to kill them. A murderer kills a United Healthcare CEO. He totally deserved to be killed. Free Luigi. White supremacist ideology. Failures of white people in any way, shape or form are a result of a systemic, of an evil system that has been cultivated by people of color and, or Jews, and therefore violence against them is totally justified. BLM had the same aspect. There, are systems of racism and oppression in the United States, and the only way to fight back against those systems is to loot businesses and burn them down and to do acts of violence and then excuse them. Radical Islam makes the same claim. Other civilizations are more successful. Not that those civilizations are more successful because, you know, they pursue better things. It must be because they are exploitative and terrible, and thus they must be wiped from the planet.

>> Steve Jordahl: So when the liberals, the Democrats, say, we gotta bring the temperature down and stop the political violence, they need to be more specific. We need to stop the political. The transgender movement needs to stop the political violence, or the radical Muslim movement needs to stop the political rhetoric. And they're not doing that.

>> Ed Vitagliano: So give the name of the book. Again, this comes, Ben Shapiro. You were listening to his podcast. He's laying this out, but it's a condensed version of the book he wrote. We want to do him a solid. And what is the name of the book?

>> Steve Jordahl: Lions and Scavengers.

>> Ed Vitagliano: All right, if you are interested, interested in what Steve, has laid out from Ben Shapiro's podcast, pick up a copy of that book and we are going to discuss some of These ideas for, probably a good part, good chunk of the time we have remaining.

Ben Shapiro lays out similar outlines of what we are facing in this country

All right, Alex, I know, that you have discussed issues like this. I've heard you, speak, a, number of times, and you lay out similar outlines of what we are facing in this country. What are your thoughts about, Ben Shapiro's, insights?

>> Alex McFarland: Well, as always, I mean, brilliant, pithy, insightful. And I think he's right. I mean, those five groups that he laid out, Islam, left wing Marxism, white, supremacist, blm, and trans ideology. And, you know, it's interesting. Like, I tried to find the number of riots that occurred, in the aftermath of the George Floyd, death in May of 2020. And there's not really a number on it. But listen to this. the majority. The majority of the BLM gatherings. And I'm not. I'm not demonizing or making judgments. I'm just reporting facts that, in. In 2020 alone, 20 people died at BLM gatherings. And you know, the thing about it, in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk death, no windows were smashed. There were no cars burned in major American cities, no businesses looted. No, because, you know, for one thing, the. The Judeo Christian worldview gets it right about morality, humanity, the human nature. See, here's the thing. Here's one difference. I'll throw it back to you. In a secular worldview, humans are not fallen, sinful, but they're expendable.

>> Ed Vitagliano: Right?

>> Alex McFarland: They can be aborted or murdered. But in a Christian worldview and a Jewish, Judeo Christian worldview, humans are fallen and sinful. Yet humans are valuable because we're made in God's image. We're image bearers.

>> Ed Vitagliano: Well, Tony, I like, what Ben laid out there. I think it's accurate. I do appreciate the fact that. That he acknowledges that on the issue of race, you have two groups at opposite extremes. You have white supremacists who feel threatened by people of color, who feel oppressed by them and endangered by them. Therefore, they have the right to be violent. But BLM's the same way, only with the opposite kind of, worldview. White people are the threat. We've been through that for five years. white people are all racist. This is systemically racist country. white people can never not be racist. You find a lot of white people who agree with that because they are sympathetic to the BLM movement, but that violence is justified. In the aftermath of these riots, in 2020, you. We saw and heard Democratic Party leaders talking about, well, I'm surprised that the Nancy Pelosi, I think famously said, I'm surprised that the, these riots haven't continued. And Kamala Harris said, well, maybe they should continue so. Because there's no other option.

>> Steve Jordahl: Right.

>> Ed Vitagliano: That's what Ben Shapiro is saying.

>> Tony Vitagliano: Yeah.

>> Tony Vitagliano: And I think about, Was it Tim Waltz's wife talking about, during the 2020 riots, she would open her windows to smell the burning tires and she, What did she say? She, like, I'm, misquoting. But basically she, she. She liked the smell of it because it was people carrying out and fighting against injustice.

>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah.

>> Tony Vitagliano: I mean, by the way, Alex, I did just a quick bit of research. The amount, of money that cost for insured damages, in 2020 is estimated to be between 1 to 2 billion dollars. Broke record, records. And by the way, folks, I'm sure, you know, our insurance, everybody's insurances are going up. You can think some of that, at least in part to the 2020, riots and the increase there. Yeah, it's, it's driven, It's a, it's a separation of worldviews. I think Christians, Alex's point about, you know, like.

>> Tony Vitagliano: For instance, the aftermath of what happened from. With Charlie Kirk's death is that Christians, should be aware and are aware of the grace that they've been shown, by God through Jesus, Christ, our Lord and Savior. And so punishing the innocent, is not something that comes natural to Christians. Matter of fact, it's antithetical to what we believe. So we are not going to be inclined to punish those who had, nothing to do with, with what we experienced. and government's job, on the other hand, is to punish the wicked and only in those who have committed crimes, and only those who have committed crimes. Whenever you have. But whenever you have this humanist approach and this humanist outlook on life.

>> Steve Jordahl: You.

>> Tony Vitagliano: get that justification that, that leap from where I'm at in the situation I'm in. And it's not my fault to. I'm going to make people pay for the situation I'm in who have had nothing to do with it. I think about the. I go, I've talked about it a couple of times. The United Health Care Net CEO, I mean, just murdered in the street. And Luigi Mangione targeted him because he attributed his own suffering and his own situation, he was in. And he put the blame solely on, the CEO of that organization. Not thinking about, didn't take into consideration his family, what he may have gone through, that. That was a man who actually worked his way up through the company. and so there was no consideration for that. It was only the victim mindset of how I've suffered and who can I blame for that suffering.

Steve Martin: People of a revolutionary mindset run out of patience with status quo

>> Ed Vitagliano: You know, Steve, one of the things I've noticed, I've done a lot of reading over the years about revolution, became interested in it when I was actually, before I became a Christian, when I was at Boston College. read a book by Crane, Brenton, who's political scientist, called the Anatomy of Revolution. It's very insightful. But one of the things I've noticed is that people who are of a revolutionary mindset, they run out of patience with the status quo. you see this on the left a lot, not just on the, with Marxists, but towards that side of the political spectrum. They don't. Especially now that Trump gets elected, gets elected twice, and they run out of patience. They don't think they can make the changes, the fairly substantial changes they want to make to, quote, unquote, fix America, because America keeps voting in people like Donald Trump. So we have to do something drastic. And that is what revolutionary movements often do. They are trying to build. They make the same mistake over and over again. They're trying to build a utopia, they're trying to build the kingdom of heaven on earth. And we can't get there because group X is in the way.

>> Steve Jordahl: Right.

>> Ed Vitagliano: And we can't vote them out of the way. We can't reason with them out of the way because they're stupid or they're crazy or they're evil. So we're going to have to take the next step. And I'm seeing amongst young people, a fairly substantial chunk of them, the willingness to take that next step.

>> Steve Jordahl: Well, and we're seeing a little bit of this in an abbreviated version from the conservatives in the wake of the assassination, when they find somebody online that was, happy about Charlie Kirk's death and they dox this person and they find out where they work and they get them fired and everything, and everybody's jumping up and down, oh, look, taste your own medicine. It feels good. But I'm not so sure, Alex, that it's a godly response.

>> Alex McFarland: No, it's not a godly response. And I mean, we're paying the price for decades of, moral knowledge being suppressed.

>> Steve Jordahl: Yep.

>> Alex McFarland: I mean, really, I mean, even, you know, there have been sports riots where, you know, fans burned cars and things like that, but kids have to be taught right from wrong. And there has to be this, you know, in Romans 13:1 through 7, which is 1 of the passages about God's sanctioning of good civil government. Romans 13:3 says, Rulers are not a terror to those who do good works, but a terror to those who do bad works. And in the language of the Greek, it's phobia. in other words, evildoers, lawbreakers, insurrectionists, murderers, rioters should be afraid of the government.

>> Ed Vitagliano: Right.

>> Alex McFarland: And therefore abstain from doing evil things. Because, you know, when people know there's a price to pay, there's not only accountability to man, but ultimately accountability to God. You know, maybe people will think twice before doing bad stuff. And. But here in America, even though our whole, you know, declaration, preamble, Constitution and Bill of Rights. Hey, by the way, not to mention 50 out of 50 state constitutions. Do you know, all 50 state constitutions reference God. but kids for several generations have been taught, you know, it's all about your self esteem. You know, there is no moral truth. abortion is okay because it's not a human life. Homosexuality and gay marriage is okay. And now, you know, we've got passionate defenders of gender fluidity, which if anything could be more objectively true that men and women are different. You know, it should be that. But we must have a revival of moral acknowledgment, because we're looking more and more lawless and our suppression of morality is the cause of it.

Matthew 24 says because lawlessness has increased, people's love will grow cold

>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah. And I, I, and then Steve, we're going to kick it back to you. But I always go back to Matthew 24, and Jesus is talking, about world crisis or the end times, depending on your eschatology. But he says, and I think this is a principle for any particular time, he said, because lawlessness has increased, people's love will grow cold. And I think that is true whether it's in the middle of World War II or whether it's in America of 2025. Christians especially have to be very careful that we don't allow Christian love to grow cold as we witness the lawlessness, that we are experiencing. Because it's very easy to hate. it's. And I don't want this to happen in amongst Christians. For example, when, Irina was, a Zaruska, I was the girl killed on the train in Charlotte. It's very easy for Christians to fall into the trap of saying, well, it's all black people, okay? Because, Decarlos Brown killed a white Girl. Okay, that, to me, is evidence that our hearts are growing cold and we're not thinking Christianly about a particular situation that is clearly evil and lawless. Same thing with the Charlie Kirk assassination. We got to be very careful. We got to guard our hearts and make sure we do not sin against God in our anger and frustration at the evil being committed.

New records show that Arctic Frost was broader than just an electoral matter

>> Steve Jordahl: Okay, we have a couple minutes left. Can I change this up? You want to go back over the Grassley thing that we ended on yesterday?

>> Ed Vitagliano: Oh, this is the, the frost.

>> Steve Jordahl: The Arctic frosting.

>> Ed Vitagliano: Yeah, let's. We're not giving it a whole lot more time, but let's try.

>> Steve Jordahl: Yeah. So this is, what Chuck Grassley said about a whistleblower at the FBI. Cut 15.

>> Chuck Grassley: Arctic Frost was the FBI case opened and approved by antitrust trump FBI agent Tebow. Arctic Frost then became Jack Smith's elector case against then Citizen Trump and now President Trump. These new records show that Arctic Frost was much broader than just an electoral matter. The case was expanded to Republican organizations. Some examples of the group that Ray FBI sought to place under political investigation included the Republican National Committee, Republican Attorney General's association, and various Trump political groups. In total, 92 Republican targets, including Republican groups and Republican linked individuals, were placed under investigative scope. Arctic Frost.

>> Steve Jordahl: Ed.

Tony Perkins: Changes need to be made at a very structural, foundational level

>> Ed Vitagliano: Okay, so, Tony, I've never had to go up against the federal. The might of the federal government. This is the problem. This is what the founders did not want to have happen, which is why we have a federalist system and we have, separation of powers and we have checks and balances, was to prohibit or to prevent, I should say, a central government growing as powerful as our federal government has grown. I've never had to fight that power in a courtroom. I think anyone who does that, if they don't have outside help, will go bankrupt. This is probably why a lot of people just give up and just plead down to lower charges because you can't beat the federal government. But to see this kind of power used against political enemies. We saw that throughout, the eight years between 2016 and 2020, and, 2024. That's. That's terrifying.

>> Tony Vitagliano: Yeah.

>> Tony Vitagliano: This is why accountability is so important. And I know that.

>> Tony Vitagliano: I know that, you know, this is being released while we have a Republican administration in office. you know, and some people bristle at that, maybe even some people who are in positions, of authority in these organizations. But accountability is so important. Changes need to be made at a very structural, foundational level in our, justice system. The Department of Justice the FBI, you know, our foreign intelligence, organizations. We need structural changes because part, of the net that they were casting as to organizations they're keeping an eye on. Let's not forget about Catholics. Going to mass was a red flag. And what it is, it's a portrayal and a targeting of conservatives and Christians as being the number one enemy, when in fact the majority of violent acts are being carried out from leftist organizations. it is very frustrating to see that, and I think one step that they could take, in my opinion, I don't know, you know, we may have to have somebody come speak constitutionally about this or where it falls. But identifying antifa as a terrorist organization is more justified than grandmas, going to parent, parent, teacher conferences or Catholics attending Mass. In my opinion. That's a good first step for me to show the sincerity and accountability and restructuring our justice system.

>> Ed Vitagliano: very good. And what we need to also consider doing is going back to the Constitution, separation of powers rather than the aggregation of powers in Washington D.C. nothing really but harm has come from that happening over the last half century or more. All right, folks, thank you for joining us. My thanks all who have helped us, Lord willing, we'll see you here tomorrow.