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May 24, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
43:35
Shut up and Conform
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, guys.
Lots going on in the world today, but in just a few minutes we're going to get to a discussion on our first to memorize.
We're going to talk with Jeff Ozain, who is a student at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law.
I've gotten to know him.
Most of you remember our interview with Matt McPherson, who owns McPherson Guitars, but also Matthews Bowes.
He works at Matthews.
I've gotten to know Jeff for a while, him and his lovely family.
You're going to hear from him about really where the eroding of First Amendment rights are on a college and a campus, but on a law school campus, when you have students of the law who are going to be out in the practicing law who actually diminish an understanding of what the First Amendment actually means.
We've always talked about the Second Amendment.
The First Amendment is something that is really vital to public discourse.
You'll hear a lot from Jeff here in just a few minutes.
But I can't go without saying tonight is a big event and we've seen it over the past week.
Folks are jumping in the presidential primary race on the Republican side.
Tim Scott went at it just the other day, gave a very impassioned kickoff to his Presidential campaign.
Tim is a great guy.
I've known Tim for a while.
Just one of the better people in life you ever want to meet.
Now he's stuck his foot into the presidential race.
Very well funded, by the way.
$2 million raised since his kickoff the first of the week.
Got $24 million in the bank.
Not enough to finish the race, but definitely enough to get him started.
So we'll see how he picks up if the race picks up.
For him, but now also the long-awaited arrival of Ron DeSantis is coming to Twitter tonight, by the way.
I always thought it would be pretty interesting, though.
Wouldn't it be interesting if this would be also the night that Donald Trump returns to Twitter?
Who knows?
That would be an interesting thing.
All of a sudden, he returns and does a Twitter Live at the exact same time Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis are announcing their campaign.
Wouldn't that be a straight-up baller move?
Anyway, Rhonda Sanders is coming into the race tonight, been long awaited.
Some think it's been too long for him to wait, but he's got plenty of time.
We'll see how it works out.
Donald Trump is still firmly in control of the polls in this race, but we'll see how it all works out tonight.
But right now, it's time to dig into those First Amendment rights like you and I are, like I'm exercising right now, you're listening to right now.
With Jeff, I want you to hear it.
It's worth sharing.
Be a part of it.
And right now, just after this commercial break, we'll be right back.
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Alright, Jeff.
Good to have you on the show.
I mean, we met last year at one of the first Liberty events.
Excited about, you know, the prospect of what's going on.
Finding out more about Matthews.
Of course, we've had, you know, the show on Matthews.
It was a really good time.
A lot of confidence on that.
But Jeff...
One of the things that I learned about you while we were there, in addition to having a beautiful family, a wife and child and all, was that you were back in school.
You were in law school and doing it in a little bit different way.
Let's sort of lay the groundwork for how that all happened.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's a non-traditional law school program.
It's a hybrid J.D. program.
It's accredited by the ABA and that sort of thing.
But unlike a traditional law school student, I do most of my work asynchronously, at night, online.
And then I'm only on the law school campus, which is over in New Hampshire, about three to five weeks a year.
And so it's a I think it's an excellent program.
I'm glad that the ABA is going that route because it allows working professionals like myself to stay in our careers, stay in our locations, and Keep time with our family and while doing a law school, you know, on the side, per se.
Well, and that is because I actually, when I went back, I was one of the non-traditional law students as well.
I went back at age 38. I started back, but I started full time.
I left my job.
In the middle of it, got elected to the Georgia House, which my school had a night program as well.
And they let me go back and forth between day and night program, which actually I graduated my three years.
I did, you know, pass the bar.
But those are helpful, I mean, for folks, like you said, that can't just up and maybe want or want to up and uproot their life and move somewhere.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think we see that trend, you know, and I think it's a useful trend and a helpful trend, and it's finding its way, it's filtering its way slowly in education.
I mean, it's been in the workforce for a while.
You know, me personally, I could never work from home, I don't think.
You know, I need to be in the office every day, you know.
I need those patterns, but it does work for some people.
I've been one that has had to adjust In the last couple of years to really being at home, I travel a lot, but my office, I've tried to go back to, and I'm, of course, with Leidener Law Firm, and I don't practice day-to-day anymore, but I'm still affiliated with them and help where I can.
But I had an office, which was about 30 minutes from my house, and it just got to be saying I was doing more and more away because the trend is, you know, away from that traditional workplace environment now.
Yeah, it is for better or worse.
I hope that we bounce back, you know, a little bit, but especially in education, especially, I mean, you know, education is important, but there's a fair element of education that's just checking a box, right?
You know, it's not my number one priority as a working professional, as a father, and as a husband.
You know, it's somewhere down the list, which is, I think, different than a traditional law school student as well.
I mean, that's, you know, for a lot of them, the most important thing they have going in their lives.
And so to have an accredited program that will accommodate, you know, life, you know, I think it's important.
Yeah, I think a little bit too is something I've talked about on the show here is that it's interesting to me that the bigger, you know, schools and even the schools like, you know, you're talking about here and others, The mainline universities keep going up in cost and cost and cost, but yet they're also offering, and I confronted a university president one day and said, how can you charge the same for a class that you teach entirely online as you do in one of your buildings?
And they get real defensive about it because they realize that if they start losing that money, they start losing some of that control.
Oh, yeah.
See, yeah.
I mean, even on our law school, I have suspicions that the hybrid JD students, I mean, we're paying as much or more because we're out-of-state residents than residential students, and we're on campus using those facilities three weeks a year.
You know, I imagine, you know, for the most part, we're carrying the law school now at this point, which, you know, hey, it's a business model.
I think it's fine.
Right.
Well, they do what they do.
Well, one of the things that I learned, I am, and I think you and I have, I think, spoke briefly over this over the year and That we've gotten to know each other a little bit.
It's interesting.
The blending of work and faith and school...
And I was one of those that was, interestingly enough, came out of...
College, a little more conservative.
By the time I went to seminary, got a master's, which sometimes is different, I was actually more conservative when I came out.
And by the time I was in law school, it was set in and I became, again, more conservative.
And I thought it was mainly because you're in an environment where you're actually having to test what you believe.
You know, it's just one of those things, as long as you believe it, but you're not really tested, you can sort of squirm.
But once you get there and have that test, You know, it begins to show what you truly believe in life and faith and everything else.
And I'm leaning to that to say that before our listeners today on the podcast, and I'm so glad to have Jeff on, is Jeff has experienced what we're seeing across the country in a lot of these institutions, law schools, master's programs, colleges, universities, and even in our elementary schools and high schools now.
Is this profound bent of those educators to the left and a non-openness to what you and I would both consider academic freedom.
You've experienced that in law school.
And I'm not going to tell the story.
I want you to tell the story and we'll just pick it as we go.
So you went to law school.
Tell me about how that developed.
You started an organization, the Free Exercise Coalition, these others.
How did that all come about by you doing this, by your time in law school?
I want to frame where I think law school is at and where I think most of academia is at.
It used to be a place where you could test yourself, to test your beliefs, to have your voice in conversation, debate your beliefs in the conversation, in the public conversation, and discuss those beliefs.
But we've been fighting to simply exist and to have a voice at all.
Traditional Christian beliefs aren't necessarily tolerated anymore and are not necessarily welcome in the public conversation that it must be and it should be in a public institution, especially a law school, because I mean, like you said, this is where we form ourselves.
It's a very important time to really understand what you believe, why you believe it and be able to defend that.
And so, you know, that kind of goes back to back when I was doing Why undergrad educations and things like that, you know, and I think it's a lie that a lot of people tell themselves, I think it's a lie that Christians tell themselves a lot, is, you know, we have to pass this certain threshold.
You know, we have to be prepared enough to share our faith, or we have to be prepared enough to live on fire for Christ, or Or whatever it may be like, okay, after school, I'm going to do this.
After I get a career, I'm going to do this.
You know, after I start a family, you know, then I'll have a reason.
I'll be prepared to share what I believe.
Well, you know, those thresholds, they don't work.
Classic Christianity doesn't work.
You know, we're called to seasons in our lives and we're supposed to be living for Christ.
How he leads us in those seasons.
And so there's always been a healthy amount of regret for myself.
For my undergrad, you know, I wasn't a very outspoken Christian.
I'm not so sure that people would have even known I was a Christian, right?
And then, you know, my first year, two years in law school, you couldn't walk on that campus and know that a Christian was ever there.
I'm not so sure many people knew that I was a Christian.
Even though I feel like I'm very well grounded in the faith and leading my family in that direction, I'm passionate about realist liberty, First Amendment law, and Christianity in general, and I believe it has a space.
And so last year, a group of fellow Christians and myself, we started the Free Exercise Coalition.
And the Free Exercise Coalition was just going to be a small student organization on our campus to, one, Help inform the student body, especially those that are interested, about First Amendment law so we can learn it together.
Because in my constitutional law class, we don't have a single lecture on First Amendment law, on the free exercise clause.
Oh wow.
Let me jump in here right quick for a second.
You had constitutional law with not a First Amendment.
I mean, for those of us that go through law school, that's a two or three class discussion just to touch the surface.
Yeah.
And we had a chapter in the book and, you know, I don't think we even got there.
We certainly didn't have, you know, a lecture.
So, you know, and, you know, I'm a hybrid JD student.
If you're a You will have options for more electives.
You could take a First Amendment elective and things like that, but hybrid JD students couldn't.
So we saw a real need.
There's a lot of students that were uncomfortable asking for religious accommodations.
A lot of students that, you know, like myself, I didn't know if I was the only Christian on campus, right?
And so to be able to show people that, hey, there's a space here.
This is like you have a lot of protections as a religious student, as a Christian student on campus to share what you believe on campus.
You're supposed to, you know, faith in general, religion in general, you know, must be shared, you know.
If it's a tenable religion at all.
And so we just started the Free Exercise Coalition and we went for affiliation at the law school.
To go for affiliation at the law school, you had to go through the Student Board Association.
So in this case, it's law school students acting as government actors, acting on behalf of the university.
They're directly underneath one of the deans that oversees the whole process.
And they really drew issues with my organization, with our organization.
And they drew issues with us because we had our board members, the leadership team of the Free Exercise Coalition, or FEC, subscribe to a statement of beliefs.
And our statement of beliefs were very broad, very generic.
I mean, I believe we could have Dennis Prager, Billy Graham, the Pope, all sign on to it.
Basic Judeo-Christian principles.
Now, we were open membership.
Anyone could be a member.
We have humanists that are members, Buddhists that are members, the whole spectrum of Christianity.
So, you know, we're We're very open.
Anyone can come be a member, but the leadership team, it's only sensical that the leadership team is like-minded.
So here, we wanted our leadership team to be bold and to have a basic view of traditional Christian values, of traditional Judeo-Christian values, and certain interpretations, especially in this climate.
So we had three negative recitations.
One negative recitation, Was that same-sex marriage is incompatible with Judeo-Christian worldview, that gender ideology is incompatible, and that abortion is incompatible.
And obviously that, you know, threw up a firestorm.
I knew it wasn't going to be well accepted, but that doesn't matter because we're allowed to share what we believe.
And that's mainstream Christian values, by the way.
It's nuts that even on campus, we've had a lot of pushback from Christians.
We have to qualify our version of Christianity as traditional Christianity, which is just nuts to me.
I have to say I'm a traditional Christian to make sure I Well, Jeff, what is the opposite of that?
I mean, I'm being facetious.
As a pastor for years, as a chaplain in the Air Force, I mean, I get what you're saying, but it is interesting to me that that has become a definitional issue of whether you agree with it or not, you don't have to have faith.
You don't have to believe.
But why is it now that standards in Christian faith, as opposed to anything else, The democratic ideology is you have to be pro-choice.
Why is that not an exclusion and not looked upon when a Christian says, I'm opposed to more than two genders.
I'm opposed to abortion.
Is this a young person thing?
Where do you see this?
The flip side of this is straight relativism.
Jean-Paul Sartre, a famous humanist, he said that if you take humanism consistently and apply it consistently, it's completely unworkable in a society.
You have to have a right and you have to have a wrong.
Religion claims a transcendent truth, a transcendent morality, A transcendent definition of what right and what wrong is.
Therefore, you know, it's incumbent on us as Christians.
We believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, that it is the transcendent truth.
It is our definition of right and wrong.
We must be able to delineate that.
You know, there can be ultimately no gray area in what right and what wrong is.
And obviously we have Convictions where, you know, my right, I might be convicted a little bit differently than you, but it is important, and it is important for a leadership team to be like-minded and to interpret Scripture similarly, okay?
And that's what we were doing with our, you know, with our statement of beliefs.
And, you know, we're not going to push that on...
Other people, because ultimately, if you're not a Christian, I mean, all I want to do is I want to tell you about the love of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ loves you.
He died for you, and He made a way for you to spend eternity with Him.
Sin separates us from our Creator, separates us from true joy in this world, and we'll get there.
But right now, Jesus Christ loves you, right?
And that's kind of like the message and the framing that we wanted ourselves to be.
We're open to everybody.
And ultimately, I mean, we're just interested in helping religious students to, you know, showing them free exercise clause, exception clause.
These are the rights that you have, you know, this is what you're able to do.
Symbolism, you know, we were happy to help the Hindu student, the Jewish student, anything, you know, along those lines on for religious accommodations at the law school, symbols in their communities at the law school, and that sort of thing.
Well, it turned into, you know, our affiliation meeting.
I'll jump back to that at the SBA. I mean, it was, you know, at least an hour of nothing but attacks on our Christian beliefs.
I mean, We were oppressors, hateful bigots.
Since then we've been, I guess it's a new term now, but Christian nationalists, white supremacists, which is ironic on a lot of different levels.
And they used the law school community's feedback as a basis to deny our affiliation.
Now we're going in a winter break.
I'm like, well, I guess I have to sue them because it's not right what they did.
And so I was going on a path.
I have two weeks off.
You know, I can definitely write a complaint in two weeks and have it on file and try to get this righted because it's just...
Asinine where it's going.
And I reached out to our friends at First Liberty, and they, just for advice of where to go, I didn't think it would be a case that they'd be interested in.
And they were more than happy to jump in and help.
It was on Fox News in a week, you know, it blew up pretty crazy.
And so since then, you know, Obviously, we've been somewhat ostracized on campus.
We are now affiliated.
The SBA would not do it, but the administration stepped in and affiliated us to avoid a lawsuit.
A lot of students, before First Liberty got involved, even said that the law school is so risk averse, but they should take a risk and deny us affiliation because it didn't look like we had national backing.
So these are law school students that realize the law, realize that, hey, we're going to be legally liable if we stop this group, but they're probably not powerful enough.
They're probably not big enough to assert their rights well.
And so the law school should stop them now, create a precedent that this kind of hate speech, these kind of hate groups aren't allowed on our campus, just because they're the little guys.
And we can't do it with the big guys, but we'll do it with them, which is just completely backwards from the entire point of like, you're in law school to identify the law, learn how to properly navigate the law, and so forth.
So, I mean, it's all completely backwards.
Well, it's amazing to me that they would even come up with that.
I mean, because, you know, again, I'm a little bit older, but I go back to the old Atticus Finch view of the law, okay?
You know, or even if you wanted to get in to be funny, you know, the...
Some of the newer movies, law is reason-free from passion, which is not really true, but at the same point, you go into law wanting to help people.
In fact, people ask me all the time, how did I go from being a pastor to being a lawyer?
I don't think I changed any.
I'm still a pastor and a lawyer, but at the same point, I did it because I saw so much of what I did as a pastor that could be helped by what I could do as a lawyer because you're helping people, and One of the things we've got to get back to normal here, and you've brought this up, I think, here, is that the way our system and our Constitution has developed is that that individual right, that personal liberty, whether you are the only one who claims it, you still have rights under the law.
And for that to be cast aside, you can be the biggest atheist, devil worshiper, whatever, or the biggest Jesus lover.
You have same standing.
You can be Jewish, Hindu.
You have same standing under the law.
Right.
I mean, that's why we're not a democracy, because it's not mob rule.
We're a constitutional republic because we respect the individual liberties and the individual freedoms, which is, by the way, a traditional Judeo-Christian value that was imported into the founding of our nation.
It is funny that you bring that up about radical atheists and radical believers and religious persons and so forth.
Our campus has gotten so toxic.
There's been full student walkouts on the campus where they won't even go to class.
They'll walk out, have it all televised.
There's been countless news articles left and right on this.
They're trying to frame our group certain ways.
It's a framing war.
But, you know, there's been full walkouts and the campuses, I mean, it's toxic, but it's dangerously toxic at this point.
I mean, the anti-Christian rhetoric on campus is very apparent and so apparent And the law school administration won't do anything, but the Secular Students Alliance on campus, radical atheists, radically opposed to our beliefs, wrote an op-ed in support of us on campus, gave myself a Champion of Civil Liberties Award for this year on campus, just to try to like...
Hammer back on the narrative of, hey, this is a public institution.
We don't agree with them.
That Jeff guy is crazy.
You know, he's like radical in his beliefs and we think his beliefs are wrong.
However, he has space to share his beliefs in the conversation and we'll debate him in the conversation and they've tried to hold debates with me and with my group and with CLS and their group and, you know, The radical groups on the other side.
And those debates have been canceled because they're platforming us.
And so this is the Secular Students Alliance where, you know, we don't have much agreement on anything at all.
But, I mean, they know where the law is, they know where our rights are, and they see how toxic the campus is being.
And the law school administration won't do anything.
If anything, they'll just disadvantage us for many different reasons.
And a lot of professors hate that we even exist, hate that we're on campus, hate that we're in their classes.
And so they stepped in and went to help us, which is just remarkable.
It actually, it shouldn't be remarkable, right?
Because, I mean, this is like, you know, a basic legal analysis and a basic societal belief of, like, what our republic is.
Right.
And this is, look, I mean, we're not also, you know, for those who may be following this, this is New Hampshire, University of New Hampshire.
This is where it's at, Franklin Pierce Law.
It is interesting to me, and I'm just, okay, and I'm being funny here a little bit.
Have they not went after the name Franklin Pierce on the law school yet?
Oh, they have, yeah.
There's a renewed debate on that this year.
They, you know, they see a lot of brand equity in the name Franklin Pierce because it's a big intellectual property school.
People know it for that.
And in rebranding, you know, they potentially could lose a lot of that.
So the law school, to their credit, has pushed back against that canceling a bit.
We'll see how long they hold out, though.
Yeah, it's interesting, though, because here's a man who said that the abolitionist movement was a threat to national unity by the Democrats.
I mean, this is, okay, you know, again, I've seen less so far.
But let's take it.
Where does it stand right now as far as campus?
You're what now?
Two years in?
Three years in?
Where are you at in school?
Yep.
I'll graduate next May.
So I'm a 3L. The school has to put up with me for at least another year.
Plenty of time to make decisions.
Useful impacts.
But yeah, so as it stands now, we're an affiliate student group.
We're a student group where, you know, I'm rarely on campus.
The next time I'm on campus is in a few weeks.
We'll see how that goes.
There's been a lot of people saying that they won't go to campus.
There's professors that won't go to campus if I'm on campus.
What is their reasoning there?
And again, I'm not trying to be funny here.
Sure.
The reasoning, to use that term loosely, is it's not based on anything.
It's baseless.
The people that actually know me, the professors that know me, the administration that knows me, You know, I'm not hearing this from.
It's from the professors that don't know me.
It's from the students that don't know me and that have framed me and framed our group in a certain way that we're hateful, that we deny their existence, you know, that we're dangerous and so forth.
And so, you know, it's That's what they have to do because, you know, it's not easy to cancel and to stop just a Christian that wants to share about the love of Christ, right?
Because that looks bad.
If you're framing them as, oh, it's a Christian that wants to tell people that he believes in this God that loves them, right?
And by the way, how much do I hate you if I believe that there's an eternity and that there's a way to get to eternity and I don't tell you about it, right?
If I love you, and if I'm trying to love you as Jesus Christ loves you, like we're commanded, then I need to tell you about it, or it's not coherent.
As it stands now, we exist as a student group.
We've had a semester-long dispute with the law school.
We remain legally adverse.
We have a complaint filed at the U.S. Department of Education.
Under some Trump-era regulations protecting religious students.
There is legislation up in New Hampshire right now that we've gone and we've testified in favor of that would add protections.
And this is bipartisan legislation, by the way.
The legislature sees a shortcoming in the state of public institution.
And by the way, in the live free or die state.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, we're public institutions are trying to stop, you know, certain viewpoints from even entering the conversation.
And so one of our largest disputes this entire semester has been the law school has created a public forum.
They put up the pride flag for the Lambda, the diversity coalition student groups on campus.
And we simply asked, okay, You have this public forum.
We also want our voice in the conversation.
We think it's important.
And so we asked them to put up the Christian flag.
Well, that turned into a huge deal.
That turned into much consideration, you know, months long consideration about whether or not they could put up the Christian flag.
Or, more likely, whether or not they could stop us and insult themselves, right?
Didn't First Liberty just sort of get that question answered last year?
I mean, come on, really?
Yeah, and it's all ironic, too.
Yeah, like, the aside percentile clause issue is a big question, but...
But last year was also Shurtleff and Shurtleff v.
Boston.
New Hampshire is in the first circuit.
I mean, we're an hour and a half away from Boston and Shurtleff was a unanimous decision.
The Biden administration supported it.
All these nonprofit firms on both sides supported it.
It's not really a question.
If you create a public forum, if you're having the pride flag hanging up there, you can't stop The student organization from hanging up the Christian flag, too.
Well, that's been the entire debate and a very long-winded debate until last night.
Last night, it was finally resolved.
And it was finally, like, literally hours ago, it was finally resolved from the dean of the law school emailing the student body and saying, we've thought long and hard about this, and we are going to take down the pride flag because They want to take away the forum because it's so repugnant to have the Christian flag up on campus,
supposedly, that they'll even take down the pride flag so they can stop the Christian flag, a basic symbol, from being in our cafeterias, just in an indoor cafeteria.
And they're obviously doing that to try to insulate themselves because they Finally, officially denied our request to hang the Christian flag, right?
Yeah, so now they just take everybody away.
Yep, so now they just took it all away.
Which, hey, I mean, I don't think a public university should be in the business of endorsing viewpoints, okay?
But if you're going to endorse viewpoints, then you better not just be picking viewpoints so you can censor other viewpoints and disadvantage other viewpoints.
And so No, I, you know...
No, I want to jump in there because, I mean, here's a concern I have as we sort of, you know, tie a knot around this a little bit.
Folks, I want to encourage you to follow this.
I mean, this is, you know, in the news up there.
It's at University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce Law School and it's something that's going on.
But it's a bigger concern as someone who's removed from academia now.
I've been away for 20 years almost, but 15. And it's...
But what concerns me here is these are the legal minds that are being trained to be the advocates, to be the voice of justice, if you would, in our country.
And if they're coming out of law school with an inherently flawed view of what the First And I think, and Jeff, we just hit this a few minutes ago.
It doesn't matter what your belief is, faith is, anything else.
You have a voice in the public square in the United States.
That is just the First Amendment right.
And as Christians, I want to warn Christians here, don't be doing the same thing.
Okay, don't be going and saying, well, I don't want the gay pride people out here marching.
No, because if you take them out, they can take you out.
And we've got to get back to this.
But does it concern you when you look at your classmates, when you go back on campus?
And I mean, I had some interesting discussions about more liberal view.
But is it more now, 10 years from now, when these folks are the public defenders, when these folks are the, you know, even criminal defense attorneys or intellectual property lawyers, or this bias toward, I want everything safe and government is okay.
Does that bother you looking ahead?
Yeah, giving away our freedom for safety has always been the major debate in a free society.
You give away your freedom for government power so they can keep you safe.
That's always the tension.
And on a law school campus, Um, our speech is violence, right?
We're a hate group where we have apparently hate speech, which is, which is nuts.
And again, it's baseless, but that's how they have to frame it.
And so do they give power, give away freedom to the law school, to the administration, to the, the, the public education system to censor us to protect them, right?
Um, which, which, you know, I've never been more disappointed.
I thought the space was not really a question.
I thought it was just more informing people of space, but instead we've been having to fight to exist, fight back for the space.
So I haven't been more disappointed in that.
I haven't been more disappointed in, you know, we're fairly well ostracized now on campus, you know, not too many students appreciate us.
But there are a few and a few of varying ideologies, you know, In the administration that we won't agree on anything, professors that we won't agree on anything, and students that we won't agree on anything.
Now it's a very bare minimum, and even in the legislature and so on and so forth that have come out to support us, that still recognize where the space is, very much disagree with us, but are willing to allow us a voice.
And that comes from the SSA president, And so forth.
So it is very encouraging from that standpoint.
And at the end of the day, I mean, yes, we're a free society, I hope still.
This is a public institution.
I think everyone should have a voice.
I want all the student organizations to exist on campus and to be passionate on campus and to share what they believe.
in the public sphere so we can debate and so we can have a dialogue and see each other as humans and have a conversation because that's how a free society works and that's how law school should and must work and it should filter down from law school right into the rest of academia into the workplace and so on and so forth is we need to be able to have conversation and You know, may the best worldview win.
Exactly.
You couldn't have said it better.
And I think that's the concern because just as a reminder, folks, I mean, if you're out there and you're listening to this and you disagree with everything Jeff and I've said, that's fine.
You have that right.
But remember, if you try to suppress our right to say it, Yours is next.
And what's really amazing to me is for many of these groups, and in all fairness, many of their views were suppressed.
They were the ones that, and now the minute that they get recognition, they're turning around and suppressing the other side.
It boggles the mind here just a little bit.
I want to turn, before we get gone, though, you are a, of course, you work for a great company.
We've known this.
Matthews, Matt McPherson has been on the program before.
Great time.
You're also a hunter.
Last hunting season was pretty good for you.
You went out, got a pretty elk.
Yeah, yeah.
Had a good elk, a 350-inch elk, if you know anything about that, and had a good whitetail in Wisconsin.
This hunting season we're going after muleys, and next year we got Yukon moose and grizzly on the books, so.
Oh my gosh.
I mean, do you need somebody to like hold the bags, you know, go with you?
I mean, we can do a podcast and a video.
I mean, you got some of my top hunts on the list there.
And full disclosure, we've been hunting and using, I use Matthews all the time from great graciousness of Matthews.
Hurt my shoulder a little bit last year.
So, you know, my season went back real quickly, but But I'm already back out.
And I told you, Jeff, and we talked about this, I'm saddle hunting.
I'm trying to get it to move around.
Have you tried that?
Yeah, for the first time, you know, I've been the one that would make fun of saddle hunters, you know, pretty religiously.
But yes, I tried it for the last time last year.
And honestly, you know, certain situations, that's the way to go.
So yeah, I'm gonna get used to it more.
I got it late in the year last year, got my equipment.
And now I'm actually, you know, getting out practicing doing stuff because you have to get used to it.
It's a different feel.
Yeah, and I don't like heights, and it takes me forever to get up the tree, sat on it, you know, hanging your sticks the whole way.
It's like, I'm hugging the tree.
I got my lineman's belt just nice and tight.
Oh, I agree.
I agree.
But anything to get a deer right.
Oh, yeah.
And I'm using, I'm practicing now on a bigger tree.
We had one of our trees in our backyard trimmed up.
I didn't realize what was going to do it, but it's a bigger tree.
So my sticks still go around it, but now I'm having to reach and it's like, you know, and I used to be able to go up ladders.
I was a fireman.
I'd go up ladders.
I go, you know, now it's like, you know, there's a certain point in age.
It's like, hey, wait, I can fall here.
This is a problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It works out.
Yeah, about 12 feet is my threshold.
I start getting too shaky that I can't even get a bow back.
Well, that's when I get up.
And fortunately, North Georgia Mountains, about like some of your ways, I can get up on the side of hills.
So if I can get up 12 feet, I'm about 15 to 20 feet above the valley.
So I'm okay checking that out.
Folks, if you don't believe these riots are important and in every day, I mean, you hear these stories going on.
I wanted Jeff on here today, one, because he's a good friend, and I'm proud of what he is doing.
And he's standing in the gap.
And First Liberty, folks, if you don't know about them, go look them up on the internet.
First Liberty, great folks down there.
Kelly Shockford, Mike Berry, a lot of other great folks down there.
They do good work.
And you've heard them here on the podcast as well.
But if we don't stand up for this as believers, as people of faith, we don't stand up for our rights.
Believe me, the other side is standing up for theirs.
And do we want to be pushed out of the marketplace?
And I think that's the very essence going back of Christianity, the Christianity that I know started by, you know, going marketplace, you know, standing in the arena, so to speak, as we go back to Paul, standing in that arena and say, hey, I'm gonna tell you about this unknown God that you worship.
Let me tell you about him.
And it was interesting because even back then, folks, He was criticized, he was ostracized, but he kept the debate, and he was able to discuss.
And I think that's what we've got to focus on.
I'm worried about a country in which we worry more about safe spaces than we do about truth.
And Jeff, thank you for what you're doing.
We're going to get some more updates from you as time goes, and I'll keep people informed here.
But keep up the fight, because it's worth the fight.
And for those who are uncomfortable with this, Get over it.
I mean, that's who we are as a country.
That's why this country, I think, has existed and the way it has for so, so many years is that ability to express ourselves.
And the First Amendment is paramount in that, again, Second Amendment and others.
But when you can't speak and you're ostracized from the stage, that's when the bad happens and we can't allow that to happen.
So, Jeff, thanks so much.
Give a hug to your bride and the little one for me.
And again, thanks for being on the show today.
Thanks, Doug, and thanks for having me on.
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