All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 26, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
51:01
THE TRUE MEANING Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep988
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Thank you.
Thank you.
Some people say a Happy Christmas.
Well, I won't say Happy Holidays.
But I want to get beyond the Christmas festivities to ask and answer the question, what is the true meaning of Christmas?
I want to reveal who Christ is and how Christianity differs significantly from other religions.
Walker Wildman, he's vice president of the American Family Association, joins me.
He's going to talk about how a political divide is sitting on top of a moral divide, which is itself sitting on top of a spiritual divide.
Hey, if you're watching on YouTube or Rumble or listening on Apple, Google or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
America needs this voice.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
We're right back the day after Christmas, and I hope you had a great one.
A traditional Christmas with family and friends and good food and Christmas carols and some cool presents and all the rest of it.
This is the way we celebrate Christmas really all over the world.
And yet, I thought I would focus today on the meaning of Christmas.
Now, it is customary for people to say, oh, the season is way too commercial, and all the focus is on food and presents and Santa.
And there are even some Christians who say, well, Santa's really kind of a pagan figure, and this doesn't really belong in Christmas.
And we need to focus on the true meaning of Christmas.
Well, yes, but what is that true meaning?
So I thought I would kind of spontaneously reflect or just kind of riff about what I think that true meaning is.
And I want to do this in a little bit of an unusual way because it's not the way that you probably heard it.
If you went to church on Christmas Day, you get a Christmas message.
And the Christmas message is typically a reading from Scripture.
About the child in the manger, the journey to Egypt, the magi or the wise men, and then a kind of reflection or disquisition on the reading itself.
But I want to go about this a different way, which is to think about what is the significance of Christmas at all?
Like, what happened?
We're talking here about an historical event.
And by the way, the historicity of Jesus is not really open to debate.
Well, I mean, everything is open to debate, but in other words, mainstream historians who are in no way Christian recognize that Jesus was, in fact, an historical figure.
By the way, so was Muhammad, let's say, a historical figure.
There was a Muhammad.
And this is important because there are religions that anchor themselves in history, and there are others that don't.
If you think, for example, of the...
Kind of paganism, Greek and Roman paganism that preceded Christianity.
It was based on the idea of all these gods, you know, from Jupiter to Zeus to Athena, that these gods live on Mount Olympus.
Mount Olympus is a place on Earth, but there is no Mount Olympus, at least not on the Earth.
And these gods, at least in the way that they're described, clearly don't exist on the earth.
That's why we use terms like Greek mythology.
And there are some people who think and have thought over the years that Christianity is kind of like that.
Gee, there was this guy, Jesus, who doesn't even really have a last name, and he's written about by these other four guys, and they don't have last names.
And how do we even know any of this even happened?
Well, it did happen.
And there's attestations to Jesus by Josephus, the Jewish historian, by Tacitus, the writer from classical antiquity.
And Tacitus, by the way, is hostile to the Christians, but he goes, they've got this, basically describes Christians as like a gang of robbers, and they've got this gang leader, you know, Jesus.
So there we go.
He's referring to an actual movement of people and an actual leader.
And he knows that leader's name and he has the correct name.
So you have these non-biblical citations.
Which have convinced mainstream historians that there has to have been a Jesus, let alone if there wasn't a Jesus.
How do we explain the fact that he had followers?
How do we explain the fact that the followers were persecuted and many of them put to death?
How do we explain the fact that a Christian movement arose to follow the teachings of this man, Jesus?
None of this would make any sense if there wasn't a Jesus.
So there was.
I think it is interesting that even though we talk about Christianity as a universal religion, it spread all over the world.
By the way, it took a long time for it to do that.
It originally spread through the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire spread through much of Europe, but Christianity remained for much of its history primarily European.
But then in the aftermath of the Counter-Reformation, the Counter-Reformation being the Catholic We're good to go.
England, of course, slipped out of the grasp of the Catholic Church and became Anglican.
So basically, the Catholic Church was losing at home, meaning losing in Europe.
But the Catholics did something rather remarkable, and that is they decided, okay, well, let's start winning everywhere else.
Let's go to Asia.
Let's go to Africa.
Let's go to South America.
And now you begin to see massive...
I mean, basically, South America is largely Catholic, although evangelicals have made some recent progress there.
You've got lots of Catholics in Asia and the Far East.
So the Counter-Reformation began this process of universalizing Christianity.
But nevertheless, the point I want to make is that Jesus was not some kind of a universal guy...
Jesus was a Jew.
And he was a rabbi.
He preached or taught in synagogues.
And when Debbie and I went to Israel for the first time, now I guess a couple of years ago, we're sort of struck by the Jewishness of the place.
Now it seems like crazy to say, obviously it's Jewish.
But what I mean is it's Jewish in a different sense than say, for example, Holland is Christian.
Because Holland is completely different from what it was, let's say, four centuries ago.
Holland is transformed into a kind of secular culture where the original stamp of Christianity is very hard to discern.
It's kind of like if you go to New England.
Yeah, you see some congregational churches and you see people wearing dowdy outfits like the Puritans, but how many New Englanders now remind you of the Puritans?
Very few.
Or if they have a Puritan streak, it takes a very different expression.
It takes on a woke coloration, for example.
But the point is, when you go to Israel, it's sort of like you're in the land of the Bible.
And even though...
Thousands of years have passed.
Two thousand years have passed.
Nevertheless, it's sort of recognizably the same.
And the people are recognizably the same.
They look like characters from the Bible.
They live like characters from the Bible to some degree.
For example, the biblical world was a very tribal world.
Think of Abraham.
It's like that now.
Now, when I think of Jesus and history, here's an interesting fact to remember.
And that is that, at least from our point of view, Jesus is exactly in the middle of human history.
If you take Jesus' death, 32 AD, as basically the year zero, I'm thinking of the old division between BC and AD after the death of Christ.
And even though there's some new nomenclature, let's call it BCE and CE, it's pretty much the same thing, now given a somewhat secular expression.
But here's the point.
And that is that human history began...
Approximately two to two and a half thousand years before Christ.
There's no recognized history before that.
Who can you name?
Can you name a single person who existed more than, let's say, 2500 BC or before?
No.
All the early cultures, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and so on, date back to about that period, 2,500 years ago, 2,000 years ago.
So you have the beginning of history.
2,000 years later, you have Christ.
And guess what?
It's been about 2,000 years since then.
So the point I'm just trying to make is just mathematically, Christ is right in the middle between the very beginning of history, about 4,000 to 4,500 years ago, and Christ is about 2,000 years ago.
And in fact, inaugurates, even in our most secular calendar descriptions, inaugurates this kind of new era.
So when we come back, I want to focus on what this new era is all about.
And what does it mean for us today?
We've got to be realistic about our December diets.
It's kind of the worst month of the year in terms of eating right.
I know I'm going to find myself where I'm already finding myself eating a few treats and meats and dishes and leaving not a whole lot of room for the right stuff.
Now, this is not entirely easy because Debbie is going to be on my case and in fact is on my case.
But I do have my ways.
I'm not going crazy, but hey, I am lightening up a little bit.
But here's what I'm also doing.
Balance of nature.
Fruits and veggies in a capsule every single day.
It's made from whole fruit and veggie ingredients.
And I'm not going to skip taking those daily supplements.
That's one thing I want to get right because feeling good is important to me.
Especially now in the holiday season.
So join me in pushing back against the dreaded December diet crash.
Get balance of nature today.
Use my discount code AMERICA. Sign up as a new customer.
You get 35% off, less free shipping, and a money-back guarantee.
Remember to use discount code AMERICA. Sign up as a new customer, 35% off free shipping and a money-back guarantee.
It's a really good discount.
Here's the number to call, 800-246-8751.
Again, it's 800-246-8751 or go to balanceofnature.com and don't forget to use discount code AMERICA. MyPillow's excited to announce the MyPillow Christmas season extravaganza.
Get this season's flannel sheets as low as $59.98.
They won't last long.
Get them while you can.
The famous MySlippers, these haven't been on sale for over a year, but regular price $119.98, but now for a limited time $59.98.
And the six-piece towel sets back in stock, limited quantities, only $29.98.
So they're Hundreds of MyPillow products.
Something for everyone on your Christmas list.
Or just put yourself on the list.
Get some bathrobes, duvets, quilts, town comforters.
There's so much more.
Here's a number to call.
800-876-0227.
Again, 800-876-0227.
Or go to MyPillow.com.
Use promo code Dinesh and get big discounts on all the MyPillow products.
Flannel sheets, $59.98.
The six-piece towel sets, $29.98.
That's not all.
They're extending the 60-day money-back guarantee until March 1st, 2025, plus all orders, $75 or more, ship absolutely free.
I'm continuing my discussion of the meaning of Christmas.
And the meaning of Christmas is that God enters the world through...
Jesus Christ, his son.
What a wild idea.
And I say what a wild idea because we're somewhat habituated to it, but the strangeness of it is not apparent to us.
And one way to think about the strangeness of it is to contrast the way that the Christians see it from the way other people see it.
So let's take, for example, the ancient Aztecs.
The Aztecs were constantly sacrificing human beings on a mountain.
This is at least the way that they were observed when Hernán Cortés came and discovered Aztec human sacrifice.
And the Aztecs were doing it.
Why?
Because they believed, well, their premise was right, that human beings are sinful, are corrupt, Fall short of the standards that they should, and therefore they have to atone,
they have to pay homage, they have to have bloody sacrifice, and this will be the way to appease God's Or the gods' anger or retribution for human actions.
Now let's think about most of what the Aztecs are doing here is, at least their premise is correct.
Human beings are in fact corrupt.
They are in fact sinful.
The Aztecs are also right that some sort of blood sacrifice is required.
In order to do proper atonement.
Now, why is that?
Why does there have to be this kind of sacrifice?
What can't you just do as we in modern civilization?
I'm going to atone for my sins by, you know, I admit I was wrong to do them.
Well, first of all, that is not any kind of atonement.
Atonement actually means a recompense, to make it whole.
So, can you make a catalog of every sin you've committed, either against God or against somebody else, and go and atone for it?
Go and make full recompense?
There are lots of sins for which the deed is already done.
You can't do recompense at all.
You think of something somewhat outlandish, or probably not something you and I would ever do, but think of someone who's committed murder.
They've killed a guy.
They can't bring him back to life.
So no amount of, I'm sorry, I did it, I shouldn't have done it.
Yeah, you shouldn't have done it, but what are you doing to atone for it?
The truth of it is nothing.
You can't atone for it.
The most you can do is admit that you shouldn't have done it in retrospect, but you can say, well, I promise never to do it again, because that's not really any atonement at all, because you shouldn't be doing it again in the first place.
So the point is that the Aztecs actually are a little ahead of us in recognizing that wrongdoing, particularly on a large scale, whether it's conquest or whether it's other forms of atrocities, these things require some kind of sacrifice.
But the Aztec view is that man has to be sacrificed to God.
And of course the Christian inversion, I think you know where I'm kind of going with this, is that in the Christian view it's the exact opposite.
There is an atonement, yes.
There's even a sacrifice, yes.
And there's even a blood sacrifice, yes.
And the blood sacrifice does require putting someone to death, yes.
But the blood sacrifice is being carried out by God, unbelievably, the sacrifice of His Son.
So, I think if the Aztecs knew about it, they would not be able to put their heads around it because it would seem crazy that God could, number one, become man, and number two, perform this kind of a sacrifice.
It just seems like it would be beyond comprehension, and in fact, it is.
Now, What Christianity is a response to, I think, is the fact that you have a human problem that is insoluble at the human level.
And let me describe it kind of this way.
When we think about the story about the Garden of Eden, I'm not going to focus on whether this was in fact a literal incident or a metaphorical incident.
In my view, quite honestly, it's both.
It is literally true.
It happened like that.
And it has a bigger meaning that goes way beyond the specific...
In other words, it's not just about Adam and Eve and Adam and Eve disobeying God.
Something much bigger is at stake.
And what's at stake, I think, is pretty clear that God is essentially giving Adam and Eve a choice, which is to say either you do it your way or you do it my way.
That's the point of God's don't eat of this tree because God never gives a reason God basically says, this is the way I want it to be.
And either you go my way, you recognize that my way is the best way for your life, or you choose to do it your way.
And the simple message of the Garden of Eden is that Adam and Eve decide collectively, jointly, together, no, we'd rather do it our way.
We want...
To be free.
Free of who?
Free of you.
Free of God.
And God says, all right, well, if you want it that way, then you can't be that way over here, because this is the Garden of Eden after all.
But I will have a world for you out there, and it will be a world of natural laws, and it will be a world of free will, and you will in fact get to do it your way.
Now, some of you...
Some will follow my will and follow me, but even they will be doing it voluntarily.
They will do it out of free choice.
And others, of course, may choose, regrettably, not to follow my will, do it their own way.
So, this is the world that we live in.
This is the world of today.
This is the world, if you may say, that is out of the immediate and direct sovereign control of God.
Why?
Because man wanted it that way, and God agreed to let it be that way.
So in this world, you have human beings who recognize that they are constantly aspiring to something good, something beautiful, something perfect, and falling short of that.
This is the human condition.
We want to be this way, and yet we are that way.
We want to be up here and yet we are down there.
We constantly are falling short and you can think of all the different religions of the world with their codes and their commandments from Judaism to Islam as elaborating a complex scheme of do's and don'ts to try to overcome this barrier or this gap between the way that the world is Down here and the way that it ought to be up there.
And you can think of these codes and commandments as a kind of ladder.
And so there are many attempts to enforce a virtue of one kind or another.
Let's wear the parda and the veil, and that's going to be a mark, a sign of, let's say, female modesty, for example.
But that's not necessarily female modesty.
It is the outward expression of female modesty.
And that's kind of one of the problems with a lot of the codes and commandments is that they are for show or they are on the outside only.
And the inside remains the same or remains, if you will, in the state of sin or the state of corruption.
The problem is that human beings...
Having fallen away from God, don't have it within themselves to be able to scale this ladder, to reach God at all.
And so this is the point of the Christmas intervention.
That's what it is.
It's kind of a divine intervention.
And instead of human beings trying to climb up and up and up toward God, God decides to come down and down and down to the human level.
And that's really what this birth of Christ in a manger means.
And because God is humbling himself in a very direct way, think of what it means for God to sort of descend or condescend to a human level.
It would be like you or me, to take kind of an outlandish example, it would be like you or me deciding to become a flea or to become a bug.
In other words, it requires so much of a lowering of ourselves to do that.
And I think this is actually why Jesus is born into such humble circumstances.
Because Jesus is introducing a completely new way of being in the world.
Prior to Christianity, the people that you aspire and look up to in the world were always great men.
Alexander the Great, and this guy is an emperor, and that guy is an aristocrat, and this guy...
Greatness was symbolized by people who were really at the top of society.
If you think of a lot of the heroes, for example, of the Iliad and the Odyssey, people like Achilles and Agamemnon and Hector...
All of them, without exception, are kings.
They actually rule over kingdoms in ancient Greece.
But Christianity introduces the idea of the low man.
Jesus is kind of a nobody.
He's a carpenter.
The apostles are nobodies.
They're fishermen.
And on the rare times where you get somebody who is a somebody, they often are on the wrong side of it.
Say, Jesus goes to the rich man.
You want to follow me?
Just leave your stuff.
Come with me.
Nah, I don't think I'm going to be doing that.
So...
Jesus introduces the idea in society that the low man can be elevated morally, spiritually, become a kind of object of aspiration and admiration.
And this is the way that God redeems the world.
Not from the top, you may say.
God comes down from the top into the earth and becomes man.
But this man is a very humble man.
If you measure his life by itself before the resurrection...
It's a man who seems to end in defeat.
Jesus gets a big following, but the following melts away.
Ultimately, his own friends, you know, his main apostle, Peter, betrays him, and he ends up dead on a cross.
And it looks like the Christian story is going to end in defeat.
But, of course, then comes the resurrection.
Then comes the ultimate victory.
So you've got this incredible narrative of God coming into the world.
That's the symbolism of Christmas.
Jesus living for 33 years in the world and ultimately He does the work.
He's the one who triumphs over sin and our redemption comes ultimately not from being sinless, not even aspiring to be sinless.
We should aspire to be sinless, but we're not going to succeed in that aspiration.
So our ultimate redemption comes from sort of clinging to the robe of Jesus and claiming His sacrifice As being sufficient for our redemption.
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the increasing cost of health insurance?
Have you had enough of not having control over your healthcare dollars?
Introducing ShareRight.
It's healthcare done the right way.
At ShareRight, you're not just a number, you're part of a caring community.
And forget about paying excessive premiums.
With ShareRight, you stand to save 30% to 50% compared to health insurance.
So think about what you could do with all those savings.
But it's more than just savings.
ShareRight ensures you have access to the care you deserve.
Precisely when you need it, from routine checkups to unexpected emergencies.
With ShareRight, your healthcare is their top priority.
Empower yourself today.
Take control of your healthcare costs.
Visit ShareRight.org slash Dinesh to learn more.
See how much you can save.
Visit ShareRight.org slash Dinesh that's ShareRight.org slash Dinesh for healthcare done the right way.
Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast a new guest, Walker Wildman.
He is vice president of the American Family Association.
He's also a spokesman for AFA. He's been on CNN, Fox News, other major media.
He's also chief executive officer and on the board of directors of the AFA Action.
He lives in Tupelo, Mississippi.
You can follow him on x at Walker Wildman, W-I-L-D-M-O-N, and the website is just afa.net, afa.net.
Walker, thank you for joining me, especially thank you for making time in the Christmas season.
Certainly, Merry Christmas to you and Happy New Year.
And it's been, I think you'll agree with me, a heck of a year with an explosive climax Trump's election and...
Really a different path for the country going into 2025. So how are you feeling about this moment as we look across the shoulder of 2025 ahead of us?
Yeah, I describe this 2024 election season.
Thankfully, it's past us now, although we have the inauguration coming up.
I describe it in two ways.
The first way is a reprieve.
I believe as a Christian that this opportunity that we've been given as a nation is really a reprieve, right?
Because we've been really in a season of judgment over the last four years.
It's been a disaster on multiple fronts.
But also, it's an opportunity.
You know, I genuinely believe this is a generational opportunity.
If not a 100-year opportunity at lasting impact for America, and not just politically, but culturally as well.
So this is a reprieve on one hand, we're grateful, but it's an opportunity on the other hand, and we just can't squander the opportunity that we've been given.
It's interesting that you are interpreting these events, and I think rightly so, as a Christian and through the Christian lens.
There were many people who said, certainly going back to 2016, but to some degree even this year, That Trump is a kind of unlikely general for any kind of Christian renaissance or Christian restoration.
He's this whimsical guy.
When we think back, we had guys like George W. Bush and even H.W. to a degree, who were a little bit more about wearing their Christianity on their sleeve or at least being a little more openly identifying with evangelical Christianity.
I take it you don't share this kind of Christian ambivalence or nervousness about Trump.
Do you see Trump in the mode of the figures in the Bible who might be a little bit checkered in terms of their past, but like God chose them nevertheless?
Yeah, this false view in evangelical Christianity over the past 10 years, specifically regarding President Trump, this false view that God can't use him because maybe he's done things in his past that we wouldn't do, it's really a false view of Scripture and a false view of the Bible from a Christian perspective.
And it's ignoring human history, right?
So when you really examine the personal lives and the past history of some of those monumental figures in not just American history, but world history as well, they're imperfect people.
They're flawed people.
But it's undoubtedly a fact that God, the God of the Bible, is using President Trump For the good of this nation, right?
That's an undisputed fact.
I mean, you can't look at how he just keeps prevailing and keeps prevailing, both literally, you know, with his life on the line, and then politically as well and legally.
I'm not sure.
The reality is that he's being used in mighty ways for the advancement of not just freedom, but liberty and prosperity and human rights and multiple avenues, including the preservation of one of the greatest nations on Earth, which is America.
So yeah, I don't buy into that, you know, let's bash Trump, because...
He did some things in his past.
Look, if we look at everybody's past, even the names you mentioned, there's going to be unflattering facts that we find.
So yeah, President Trump is being used by God.
He's a blessing on this nation.
And we need to influence him in a very positive manner.
And that's what I think the opportunity here is.
I think also, Walker, just to extend the same interpretive logic that you've been deploying here, wouldn't it be also fair to say that God has been using the Democrats in a negative way.
You mentioned a season of judgment, which I take to mean that, look, this country has made a lot of—I mean, not just the country, the people in the country and the government— We have made a lot of irresponsible and bad decisions.
A lot of our problems, from the death problem to the breakdown of the family, are doing.
Who else do we have to blame?
And to some degree, bad actions incur bad consequences, so that, you know, God is a God of forgiveness and mercy.
And of course, that's what the Christmas season represents, is Jesus' entry into the world and the possibility of forgiveness for all men.
But there is also, I don't think we should forget that God also is a guy who imposes penalties.
Talk a little bit about how you see the last four years, because they've been a difficult four years.
Some of us actually wondered if we would kind of come out of this kind of darkness.
But you're saying that God has been overseeing that too.
Yeah, the Democrat Party, I mean, they're the party of evil and the party of lawlessness.
And to your point, you know, when you look throughout history, you know, governments can either be a force for good or a force for evil, in favor of evil.
So you can look at various, you know, nation states in the past that have been weapons of evil, even modern day nations that do very bad things and oppress their people.
But the Democrat Party, you know, they've done just that.
And they're really—when you look at their platform and their ideals, they're very destructive in nature.
I always, you know, make a statement that the Democrats don't really create anything.
When you think of all the institutions that have been good institutions in American history and in the West, the Democrats and the Marxists haven't created any of them.
They always hijack institutions.
So they're not— Democrats, by kind of definition, they aren't really creators and visionaries.
They really infiltrate things and destroy things after they've already been created.
And America is no exception to that.
So yeah, the Democrats typically destroy things.
Everything they touch just catches on fire.
And then the people suffer.
And that's what we're seeing with the crime in New York, this horrendous murder in New York City and the subway in recent days.
This is terrible.
And so when you put bad people in charge, you have no moral standard, no compass, no respect for America, no appreciation for our founding fathers, then the people suffer.
And that's a fact.
And we've seen that the last four years.
We saw it under the Obama reign, and we've seen it in administrations past.
You know, I think you're making a really important point here I want to highlight.
And that is that if I think back a generation to when I first came to America, we tended to think about the Democrats as being bumbling fools.
You know, Jimmy Carter was like a symbol of American incompetence.
And this began a long conservative trajectory over 30 years of always sort of like instructing the Democrats on how things really work.
This is how foreign policy really works.
And this is how the economy really works.
And this is how you can have better families and stronger communities and so on.
I think what we're realizing is that today's Democrats, there is an element of incompetence to be sure, but when you look at, just take the example that you mentioned.
You've got a burning individual in a subway who has been set on fire by a man who is then fanning the flames of that fire and then sitting on a bench and watching another person burn.
Now, to me, the really telling thing is what happens next.
A cop walks by and he kind of looks over like, oh, that's interesting.
But he doesn't do anything.
He doesn't try to apprehend the suspect.
He doesn't try to douse the flames.
I mean, you almost feel like you're living in a, I mean, this looks like one of those macabre horror movies, you know, in which the world is turned upside down.
But this is the fruit of democratic policies, isn't that what you're saying?
Yeah, it is, absolutely.
And this is, if you had to pick like one exhibit, one example to display kind of the depravity that we're at in our nation, and I think we can agree on two things, right?
We can agree that America has an opportunity at kind of restoration and regeneration, but also we can look on the other hand and say, hey, look, we're still not really in a good place here, right?
So let's don't get too relaxed and too celebratory on President Trump's victory.
But New York City's Exhibit A, I mean, this...
You mentioned the breakdown of the family.
A lot of this comes from that.
When you look at kind of trace back, hey, how do we get number one?
How do we get illegal immigrants in our nation?
Because clearly they don't respect their family back home.
Why do they depart their family?
Well, come here to earn an income.
Well, that's not loving to leave your family to earn an income.
But then you look at the way that the officer behaves kind of nonchalantly.
Now, I don't know the full background here.
So maybe he was going for like a fire extinguisher, kind of out of picture.
But either way, he was way too chilled, given the circumstances, right?
I mean, you would think adrenaline would take over.
But we've got a generation and generations that are very kind of cold-hearted.
And this is a culture where we have abortion on demand, virtually, and people view children as commodities, right?
We can purchase them.
We can get rid of them.
And when you have that type of culture where human life isn't very valued and precious and sanctified, then you get instances like this where not only do you have an illegal immigrant, Catching someone on fire, an innocent person on fire, but then you have a bystander videoing it.
And it's like, who on earth, in their right mind, with any type of heart, videos someone suffering and then doesn't intervene to help?
I mean, it's just this TikTok world that we live in where everything's got to be on video at all costs.
So yeah, we've got a cultural problem of people not being taught morals and decency and how to care for others.
So we've got a lot of work to do on that front.
I'll be right back with Walker Wildman.
He's VP, Vice President of the American Family Association.
I'm talking to Walker Wildman, Vice President of the American Family Association.
Follow him on the website AFA, American Family Association, afa.net.
You know, Walker, you've described this landscape in which we're living now, in which our politics is sort of imbued with moral conflict, but also spiritual conflict, good versus evil.
Do you think that the younger generation, your generation coming up into this age is alert to this and recognizes the dangers ahead?
Is there some kind of a cultural renaissance occurring, at least among some young people?
I guess my question is, are you hopeful or are you despondent about your generation?
Yeah, I think if you would have asked me that 10 or 15 years ago, I would have been a little bit more kind of doomsday and apocalyptic and negative about the answer.
But I do think we're trending in the right direction.
That's how I like to describe this.
I think we're trending in the right direction.
The numbers are still pretty bad, like when you poll young people on how they view the world and how they view moral issues.
It's definitely not glamorous at this juncture, but I think we're trending in the right direction.
And when I say that, You look at some of the more modern, more recent surveys of young people, and I'm talking probably, you know, 18 to 30, let's just say.
And you ask them how they view the world, how they view some of the hot-button issues, the social issues, and how they view marriage and family.
You're starting to get some trends in the right direction.
I think a lot of young people and people my age have come to the realization they've been living in this kind of this hip culture of singleness is cool.
Who needs to get married?
As a matter of fact, if we do get married, who needs to have children?
They're cumbersome.
They're a burden.
Let's just make this this all about me.
I think people like that are that are my age have kind of lived that culture for the last five, 10, 15 years and they're they're over it.
I mean, they're over it.
They realize how empty it is, and they're realizing the importance of getting married, the importance of a career, and the importance of having children.
And that's really the challenge that we have in America, is combating this Childlessness and this population decline.
I mean, Elon Musk points this out like every week, it seems like.
But we're at a rapid decline of domestic births in America.
We've been under replacement levels, under 2%.
For since the 70s.
And when I say that to people, they're shocked.
They're like, we've been under 2% since the 70s.
I'm like, yeah, like mid 60s.
That's a long time to not be having, you know, replacement levels of births in America.
So but I do think young people are realizing that, hey, maybe our grandparents and great grandparents didn't have it all wrong, like when they got married when they were 19 and then they had three or four children.
Maybe that's not so bad after all.
So I do think we're trending in the right direction.
It seems like the latest data shows that young men in general are trending more conservative.
Certainly in the most recent election, it seems like there was a kind of a gender gap with young women in particular pushing in the liberal direction.
And that seems to be, well, almost the opposite of what you might expect.
I say this because if you take the attitude that marriage isn't important, you know, let's play the field, kids aren't important, you would think that that would be a description of the attitude of the young male.
And that by contrast, the young woman would be like, no.
In other words, you would expect women to trend conservative and men to trend liberal, especially on the sort of issue of marriage and family.
How do you explain the fact that young women who I think have the most to lose From contemporary culture, nevertheless are either stubbornly holding on to their liberalism.
I mean, I kind of know where they got it in the first place, right?
There's been an engine of indoctrination for your generation that goes back to grade school and continues through college.
So I'm not talking about where you got it in the first place.
But I'm talking about having your eyes open and going, this is not what I actually want.
My life will be a lot better.
So why are men getting the message and women not, or less so?
Yeah, I think the men are beginning to realize that liberalism is bad for monogamous relationships and monogamous marriage.
And here's why.
You know, feminism, modern feminism, that's been completely corrupted, it teaches that women don't really need men.
And so our whole welfare system is set up to actually disincentivize marriage.
So not to mention the whole toxic masculinity assault and basically the demonization of all things manhood.
When you factor all that in, I think these young men are realizing that, hey, this whole – Liberal thing is actually working against me.
Like, hey, I'm trying to find a good wife, someone to marry, and I can't find them because they all think my masculinity is toxic and they want me to wear the tight skinny jeans and they want me to do feminine things and I just want to be a man, right?
So I think they're realizing that.
There's a lot of truth to that.
Some of this is common sense and instincts, and there's a lot of truth to it.
I think that's why young men are trending conservative on a lot of these issues.
I think one reason that women are actually trending liberal, when you look at the surveys, it's actually pretty drastic how women are trending liberal, and it's showing up at the ballot box as well.
But The women, as I said, are being taught that men aren't really needed or they're optional.
And we've got this kind of modern technological state that we live in where the things that used to be necessities of life that you needed like a husband and a wife for aren't really necessary anymore.
And I watch these old Western movies.
And Yellowstone's one that I think of.
But the need for men and women in marriage was, like, essential for survival, right?
I mean, the women needed the men to protect them because it was the Wild Wild West, and the men needed the women for a variety of needs, including helping take care of the children and the home.
And being kind of a caregiver and a provider.
And so there's these unique gifts that men and women bring to the table.
And when you have a culture that completely, you know, drops a bomb in the middle of that respect that men and women are uniquely different and they both bring a variety of skills to the table, when you drop a bomb in the middle of that, And then a decade or two later, people start to realize that, hey, this whole thing's not working out.
This whole ditching reality, ditching biology, and acting like there aren't men and women and there aren't distinctions between the two, this whole thing's just not working out.
So that's what young men are beginning to realize, I believe.
Pretty fascinating.
I mean, I take it that what you're saying is that, you know, the human nature doesn't really change.
And even though circumstances change, the mutual dependency of men and women actually remains, even in today's culture.
There's nothing about today's culture that says that you don't need dads, you don't need moms.
And so the architecture of human society is not so fundamentally different that it has changed human nature in some way.
Let's talk about something else, and that is woke corporations, and I'm thinking specifically here about Target.
Talk a little bit about the boycott of Target, the shareholder lawsuit against Target, and where that stands in the courts.
Yeah, so American Family Association, which is who I represent, AFA, we've been around since 1977. And one of the things that my grandfather, Don Wildman, did effectively was he launched boycotts.
He started this with TV advertisers back in the kind of cable television days.
And then that most recently displayed itself as far as activism goes in boycotts with the Target boycott.
Now, this goes back to 2016, so this seems like...
Forever ago, but the boycott's still active.
But the boycott was in regards to their bathroom policy.
And this is really on the heels of Poster-Burkfell.
There was the whole debate over North Carolina's bathroom bill, HB2. And then Target all of a sudden came out and said, hey, yeah, we're good with dudes in women's restrooms.
And so we came out with a boycott because it endangers women and children.
In these Target stores, which is a large proportion of their audience and their customer base, that boycott was one of the largest and most effective 1.5 million that we have to date on the signature list.
But fast forward to 2023, several years later, the boycott's still active, but there's also other groups taking action on this.
And America First Legal, headed up by Stephen Miller, they actually are representing multiple shareholders in a lawsuit against the Target Corporation for basically breaching They're fiduciary duties.
So many people, number one, some people get uncomfortable about boycotts, but I tell people that, look, if the same burger joint messes up your burger six times in a row, what are you going to do?
Well, you're going to boycott them, but you're not going to call it a boycott, but you're dissatisfied with their service, so you're not going to go there anymore.
So whatever you want to call it...
America First Legal is in a suit with Target now, and it's over their fiduciary responsibility.
Because what we need to understand is that it's one thing for a private, non-publicly traded company, a private company, to do whatever they do.
And if they make bad business decisions, it kind of is what it is, right?
Because they're a private company.
But when you talk about publicly traded companies like Target, for example, that's a whole other ballgame.
And there's this thing called fiduciary duty where the CEO and the board of directors, they really need to be acting in the best interest of profitability.
And so this lawsuit is really bringing that question up as to whether promoting transgenderism and the LGBTQ agenda year after year, month after month for Target, is that really in the best interest of profitability and growth for the company's profits?
And the answer to that's no, but whether this survives kind of the legal threshold in this civil lawsuit, that'll be interesting to see.
Well, it seems that the latest development is that the district judge in Florida said, hey, listen, Costargett had made a motion for the case to be dismissed, as if to say, this is on the face of it, legally worthless.
But it looks like the judge goes, nah, We're going to let this proceed.
So this is in no way suggesting that the suit is going to prevail.
It may prevail or it may not, but I guess the latest news is that the suit is very much alive.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Yeah, the motion was not granted by Target to this district court judge.
And so America First Legal has prevailed on that manner.
So it's going to move forward in the process.
Who knows if it'll reach a jury trial or not.
But the shareholder activism is something that AFA has been involved in the last 12 months or so.
And there's a lot of conservatives getting involved in shareholder activism.
I've spoken before Apple's board of directors on multiple issues, including censorship and deplatforming conservatives on the App Store.
So there's a lot of momentum.
I know we've seen Jerry Starbuck make a lot of headway with Tractor Supply, John Deere, et cetera.
So there's a lot of optimism on the corporate engagement front and on the shareholder engagement front for conservatives.
So I think the momentum is moving in the right direction.
And we see, you know, companies have the last six or 12 months have been monumentous.
A lot of companies kind of backing away from DEI, backing away from the woke garbage.
And so I think we just got to keep the pressure on.
Yeah, good stuff.
Walker, many, many years ago when I was doing some writing on Jerry Falwell and the Christian right, I had the pleasure of talking to your grandfather.
I've gotten to know your dad and come in studio at the American Family Association a couple of times.
We're meeting for the first time now online this way, but I'm glad to see you're taking up the family cudgels and keeping the fight going.
So keep it up.
Great stuff.
And by the way, have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
I really appreciate it.
Thanks for joining me.
Thanks, Dinesh.
▲
Export Selection