The American Soul
The American Soul
The American Soul: Navigating Difficult Times with Reagan's Wisdom
What happens when a nation forgets its spiritual foundations? In this thought-provoking episode of the American Soul Podcast, we journey through the critical connection between Christian faith and American liberty that often goes unacknowledged in today's political discourse.
The conversation opens with a profound reflection on trust—do we truly trust God when we've surrounded ourselves with modern safety nets like insurance and retirement plans? Using the biblical story of Moses, who left Egyptian luxury for desert uncertainty, we examine how complete dependence on God has become increasingly foreign in our security-obsessed culture.
A sobering segment on human trafficking reveals the dark irony of our national conversation: while we continually process historical slavery, we often overlook modern slavery happening through trafficking and abortion. The call for an abolitionist approach—not half-measures—echoes throughout this powerful discussion.
The heart of the episode features an examination of Ronald Reagan's transformative 1964 speech "A Time for Choosing," which warned Americans about government overreach decades ago. Reagan's prophetic declaration that "if we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to" resonates even more urgently today as we witness the steady erosion of religious liberty and traditional values.
Drawing from John Adams' wisdom that our constitution was designed only for a moral and religious people, we confront an uncomfortable truth: a government "of the people" only works when those people are virtuous. Without Christian principles as our foundation, the American experiment will inevitably fail, regardless of which political party holds power.
Join us as we explore what it means to be faithful citizens in an increasingly secular age. Share this episode with someone who cares deeply about America's future, and remember to make time for God today—our liberty depends on it.
The American Soul Podcast
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1791934/subscribe
Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well, wherever y'all are and whatever part of the day you're in. Sure do appreciate y'all joining me and giving me a little bit of your time and a little piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely. Hopefully it will piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely. Hopefully it will give us all or help us all grow a little bit closer to God and Jesus Christ and help our nation here in America or around the world, grow closer to God and Jesus Christ as well. For those of y'all who continue to share the podcast and to tell others about it, thank you so much. Very, very grateful for y'all, for your efforts. For those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast, thank you Even more. I desperately need and I'm grateful for those prayers. Father, thank you today. Thank you for you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ, and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy and your grace and your forgiveness of sins. Thank you for all the many blessings that you bestow upon us as individuals and as a nation. Thank you for the time to record this podcast. Thank you for the people that listen to it and share it. Be with them. Be with their families, guide them, surround them with your angels. Protect them from evil of any kind Me and mine as well. Father, please Be with our leaders, not only politically, but in the pulpit as well. Be with those men who lead us, who teach us about you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Be with their wives. Be with their children. Guide us, lord, in all that we do. Give us humility. Forgive us our pride and our vanity, our gossip, our sexual immorality, our lusts, our cowardice, our unbelief, our judgment of others. Help us to overcome them all, father. Be with our educators, those who teach our children at home, public school, private school, in our churches, out in the community, in different areas. Give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith. Be with those children, father, who have been abandoned across the world. Help us to care for the widow and the orphan. Do your will each day. Give us perseverance, give us a calm spirit, give us your peace and your joy. Father, be with those who are hurting, those who are scared, those who are anxious, those who are heartbroken for whatever reason. Please, father, give us strength, give us courage. And God, my words here today. In your son's name we pray, amen, amen. Have you made time for God today? Have you made time to read his word? Have you made time to read his word? Have you made time to pray? Is he at the top of your priority list, in the middle of your priority list, the bottom? Do you trust him?
Speaker 1:Been listening to a sermon for the last couple of weeks a series and they've been talking about Moses. And you know we live in this society today. I'm going to talk about taxes a little bit, but we live in this society today where we have insurance for everything, right, and I'm not saying that's a bad idea at all, don't misunderstand me. And I'm not saying that's a bad idea at all, don't misunderstand me. But you have to kind of wonder how much we really trust in God today, because that's a pretty modern invention and having access to it is really modern, right. Usually it was just the wealthy who had enough money to kind of serve as insurance, if you want to use it that way.
Speaker 1:But I was thinking about Moses just now, when we were praying, actually, and you know he got chased out into the desert, Not with the Israelis even, but before that, when he murdered the Egyptian, he fled from Pharaoh and from Egypt. He didn't have any insurance, didn't know where he was going. Really, probably there was no fallback plan, right, there was no bank in a different city that he could go to and pull some money out and then start over. And he came from the height, I mean the very pinnacle of society he was. He was the son to Pharaoh there. You know, maybe he was going to be Pharaoh one day and he went to nothing. He went to hurting goats, right, camels, whatever it was.
Speaker 1:How much do we really trust God? I know I find myself often anxious about money, and as a husband, as a provider, some of that is okay, being concerned about how you're going to provide for your family. But I think, for myself at least, and I'm assuming for quite a few of y'all as well, that healthy concern quickly morphs into, very quickly morphs into something unhealthy, where we start to become more focused on and more worried about money coming in and how we're going to be taken care of one day as far as insurance or retirement, et cetera, as opposed to God, and there's a couple of examples that we're going to talk about today. Examples that we're going to talk about today. Well, there's, there's one in particular that I can think of and it's a. It's an article again out of the epic times Again great newspaper. If you, if you haven't got it, if you're a fan of newspapers at all, highly recommend it. It's got some great sections in it news, an opinion section. It's got a life and tradition section that talks about family marriage. It's got a little bit of gardening, a little bit of cooking, a little bit of art and music Just a great, great overall newspaper. Can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 1:And this article is titled Trump Advisor Alina Haba Sounds Alarm on Human Extortion and it's by Amel Akin, if I said that, right, and Jan E Jekielek Probably didn't say that right. At any rate, I'm not going to read through the whole article. I am going to talk about a couple things. So it focuses on children in particular, children and women being exploited via sex trafficking, human trafficking, and one of the things it talks about is the fact there's a quote in here in this article that Habba pointed to examples such as cyber interactive pornography that encourages people to hurt children. Right, just in case you didn't know, that was out there. She also noted that the issue, just in general, of trafficking children worsened under the Biden administration during the border crisis.
Speaker 1:I was reading that and it struck me, folks, as one of those things where we think, maybe and I I'm using that really loosely that we're being helpful and kind and loving when we're not. You know, supporting illegal immigrants like supporting illegal immigration. The act itself sounds really good until you start to kind of break it down and you realize, for example, that if you vote for illegal immigration, you're not actually voting for yourself to help the illegal immigrants. You're voting for somebody else to write. You want to bring them in, but you want somebody else to deal with them. Nine times out of 10, you want to use somebody else's money to provide services. You want to take somebody else's money, somebody else's representation. You want to take somebody else's job to give to an illegal immigrant.
Speaker 1:Because that's what it does, folks, if you have an illegal immigrant that gets a job, that gets work, that sends their kid to school, that uses emergency room, hospital room services, they're automatically taking something from an American citizen who could have used that, would have used that right and it's not out of your taking account. It's no skin off your back. You're not opening your door to welcome the illegal immigrant to live in your house and give them part of your house and give them part of your land. You're offering up land and house and resources and representation voting again, right, because our system, our representative voting, is based on population, which is insane. That it uses non-American citizens to justify representatives, that's absolutely atrocious, but nonetheless, that is the system and so you're giving away all those things that belong to somebody else. It's not kind and caring.
Speaker 1:But it talks about some of these children, right, that they were kind of tricked into coming over the border like they were going to be given this new life, and then they get here and instead of this new life they're sold as prostitutes, are sold for slave labor, child labor in America, right. And then you have some who the government agencies try to place these children in a foster home or something and what ends up happening is it's fake and the children are essentially re-trafficked. So you get them across the border, you get them out of this horrific situation with these cartels, you get them to some place that's supposedly a safe and then they're taken from there again and lost by the government agency and re-trafficked. There's a few different examples in here. It's a great article. Again, trump advisor Alina Haba sounds alarm on human extortion. It's by Amel Akin and Jan Jekalik, if I said that right.
Speaker 1:But the second point, the bigger overall point that really struck me when I was reading this article is we have been messing around with this idea for the last several decades of still suffering the repercussions of slavery, and we are because we're still dealing with this. We're still dealing with this race discrepancy, discrimination I don't know how you want to label it, but the problem is that we've made it into something it isn't anymore, and all you have to do is look at your hyper successful, look at Oprah, look at LeBron James, look at so many of color, of different skin colors, different ethnicities I had them in the Marine Corps all different kinds that achieved high rank. And so we're still playing this game as if we're dealing with slavery from 160 years ago and we're not. And yet we have this very real slavery of human trafficking, of child trafficking, and we still don't really talk about it as a nation, we still don't focus on it. We talk about all the horrors that went with slavery in the early 1800s, but we don't talk about the horrors of abortion as far as demanding that it be abolished. Right, the abolitionists, the people that wanted to get completely rid of slavery. That's where the conversation has to be about abortion. The abolitionists, again, the ones that wanted to get rid of slavery. That's where the conversation has to get about human trafficking, and particularly via illegal immigration.
Speaker 1:It has to not be some half measure, some half step. It has to be complete, absolute, Completely. Abolish it. Interesting article, if you like. The newspaper highly recommend taking that 2 Timothy 3. Difficult times will come. Amen to that.
Speaker 1:Huh, I realize this that in the last days, difficult times will come, for men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips without self-control, brutal haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power. Avoid such men as these, for among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women, weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth. Men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith, but they will not make further progress, for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Janus' and Jambres' folly was also. Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions and sufferings such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra. What persecutions I endured. And out of them all, the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, but evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of knowing from whom you have learned them and that, from childhood you have known the sacred writings, which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. Adequate, equipped for every good work. A few things out of these last verses here 15, 16, 17,. And that from childhood you have known the sacred writings.
Speaker 1:Do we teach our children the Bible? Do we read it consistently, over and over again each day? Or is it something we just take our kids to Sunday school once a week? If that, probably not. Right, because when we get involved in sports and extracurricular activities, that's way more important than God. And so we don't have time for church on those weekends when we have softball or baseball or tennis or volleyball or basketball or whatever else. We got to go to the sports first or rodeo right, because that's way more important. How many of us teach at night? We sit here and we watch Amazon, netflix, hulu, scroll our phones, social media right, because that's important. We need to relax, we need to kind of rejuvenate, but we wouldn't get any kind of relaxation or rejuvenation out of Scripture. We wouldn't get any peace or comfort there from praying. We certainly don't need to read through it with our kids. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 1:And one of those sacred writings which we so often and one of those sacred writings which we so often ignore, right? The sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus, not in anybody else, folks, not in the Protestant, any Protestant church, not in the Roman Catholic Church, not in the Greek Orthodox. There's no salvation in those denominations, only as much as they lead a person to Christ. That's it right. That's the job and that's possible of any denomination that truly sticks to God and Jesus Christ. It's certainly not. Salvation isn't through Mary or Joseph or Peter or Paul or any of the disciples, or any Pope or priest or pastor or bishop or cardinal or anybody else through all the ages, only through Jesus Christ. Verse 16,.
Speaker 1:All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work.
Speaker 1:A lot of times when I find myself really wanting to say something to someone or online, and maybe most of the time, I need to remember the proverb about even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent more often, and that where words are many, sin is not absent. Many sin is not absent. But in those moments when I feel really called to say something, do I use scripture and do I use it as a justification for my own commentary, which is what I consider the more important part, right? Or do I just put that scripture out there? I think probably a lot of times.
Speaker 1:The safest thing for us to do is to simply lead with scripture and not follow with our own personal commentary. I don't do a very good job of that, I'm working on that. Um, I don't do a very good job of that, I'm working on that. And you certainly don't want to use scripture inappropriately, which I think it can absolutely be twisted. But maybe the whole point is just to focus on scripture, more Verse one. But realize this that in the last days, difficult times will come for men will be men will be lovers of self, lovers of money. That in the last days, difficult times will come For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, and it goes through. All this list right? Treacherous, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. And this whole list right. Gossips, unloving, irreconcilable, without self-control, brutal haters of good. And what does he tell us at the end? Avoid such men as these, don't be around them. Don't even be around them, not just like kind of don't talk to them much but don't even be around them. Avoid them. And the lead-in right difficult times will come.
Speaker 1:Great sermon recently talking about what happens when you've prayed and prayed, and prayed and prayed and you're just not getting an answer, or at least you feel like you're not getting an answer and the pastor was pretty honest. You know he talked about he and his wife and how they prayed over the years and they kind of have this code red list of certain people that they pray each morning and each night and he said some of the people on that list each morning and each night. And he said some, some of the people on that list. We've had prayers answered, sometimes in extraordinary ways, and some of the people on that list we've been praying for for years and we still don't have any noticeable answer. And I can't do the topic justice at all right now. The only reason I brought that up, folks, is he does a great job of explaining why that might happen and giving encouragement to continue to pray. Continue to pray.
Speaker 1:My only point in telling you is that if you're in one of those situations, if you've got financial trouble right now, if your marriage has fallen apart right now, if you've got a child that is rejecting you as a parent or a parent that is rejecting you as a child, know that you're not alone, that there are definitely others going through those trying times, those difficult times, and then know right verse 12 out of 2 Timothy, chapter 3, indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. We have brothers and sisters around the world right now that are being murdered, imprisoned, raped because they follow Jesus Christ, no other reason. Because they follow Jesus Christ, no other reason. And I'm not belittling whatever problems you may have in your life right now, but merely to remind us all right, everybody that follows Jesus Christ is going to have problems, because Jesus Christ isn't the same as the world. The world is vastly different than God and Jesus Christ, and so if we're going to follow God and Jesus Christ, we're going to look different, and that may mean that we look different to those that are supposed to be closest to us.
Speaker 1:It may mean that we're persecuted by enemies that openly hate us, right Like some of the Christians are dealing with and at the hands of Muslims in Nigeria and Syria and other places around the world communist China, north Korea. Or it may be that in our own family, our parents, who are supposed to love us, reject us. Our children, who we've poured so much time and energy to walk away from us, our friends who we thought were our friends, turn their back on us, maybe even our spouse, who's supposed to be the closest person in the world to us who loves us more than anybody else In the world to us who loves us more than anybody else. Maybe they Reject us, treat us with a lukewarm attitude. Maybe you've got a job when you don't go along with what everybody else does and that kind of Makes you an outcast.
Speaker 1:Whatever it is, folks know that you're not alone, you're not the only one going through it, and that God has told us that we're going to have these problems because we follow him in this life, but folks, but, but. But in the next life, for all eternity, we will have stored up for ourselves treasures in heaven. We will get to spend eternity with God and Jesus Christ, where there's no more tears, no more sorrow, no more sadness, no more broken bodies, no more broken hearts. More sadness, no more broken bodies, no more broken hearts. And try and be encouraged. It should be greatly encouraging. All right, I stumbled across this.
Speaker 1:It took me a while to find that last speech of Reagan's that we went through, and while I was doing that, I stumbled across a speech that we've read in the past parts of. I think. It's been a while and it's called A Time for Choosing and it's a speech that Reagan worked on over the years in multiple different places. This particular one was October the 27th 1964. And it was kind of part of a transition in his life from his previous career of acting and from his previous political life as a Democrat into his political career, leading to being governor and then president, and his political shift, also from Democrat to Republican. And so we're going to read through at least a little bit of this, thank you. Thank you very much, thank you and good evening.
Speaker 1:The sponsor has been identified, but, unlike most television programs, the performer hasn't been provided with a script. As a matter of fact, I have been permitted to choose my own words and discuss my own ideas regarding the choice that we face in the next few weeks. I have spent most of my life as a Democrat. I recently have seen fit to follow another course. I believe that the issues confronting us cross party lines.
Speaker 1:Now one side in this campaign has been telling us that the issues of this election are the maintenance of peace and prosperity. The line has been used, quote. We've never had it so good end quote. But I have an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn't something on which we can base our hopes for the future. No nation in history has ever survived a tax burden that reached a third of its national income. Today, 37 cents out of every dollar earned in this country is the tax collector's share, and yet our government continues to spend $17 million a day more than the government takes in. We haven't balanced our budget 28 of the last 34 years. We've raised our debt limit three times in the last 12 months and now our national debt is one and a half times bigger than all the combined debts of all the nations of the world. We have $15 billion in gold in our treasury. We don't own an ounce Foreign dollar. Claims are $27.3 billion and we've just had announced that the dollar of 1939 will now purchase 45 cents in its total value.
Speaker 1:I went through real quick, folks. I mean I spent 15 or 20 minutes kind of stumbling around and I can't tell you how much money you pay in taxes each year, but I just did a few. I didn't even talk about death tax or excise taxes. You know where the government takes money from you that you earned when you try and pass it on to your children, right? Or a gift that you give to another person again money that you earned and they take a little chunk of it simply because you're giving it to somebody else, right? I didn't even talk about those, but just your basic sales tax, property tax, income tax, right? And I didn't even look at the gas tax, the amount of money that they charge us as a tax in fuel with each gallon of fuel, whether it's gas or diesel, that we get, right?
Speaker 1:I had added up to figure out that out of every dollar that I earn for my family, some form of government takes at bare minimum this is bare minimum again, folks, this is the low end. It takes about 32 to 33 cents. So before I even get my dollar home when I've earned it when I did the work, some level of government somewhere has already taken 32 to 33, 34 cents out of that dollar. And I know some places across the nation are far worse. And I know some places across the nation are far worse. I've heard of a couple places where that number is up around 50 plus percent. That's ridiculous, folks.
Speaker 1:There's no justifiable excuse for government taking 30 cents out of every dollar that a person owns. Taking 30 cents out of every dollar that a person owns. Much less, 50 cents or more out of every dollar that a person owns. There's no moral justification for that at all. But these numbers that Reagan read right, they were from the 60s and you can only imagine that the situation has gotten much worse, especially when you start talking about balanced budget and how much more we're spending each day than we're taking in.
Speaker 1:If an American citizen can't spend more, right, if you put money on a credit card, there's going to come a point at which you reach the limit and if you don't pay that off, the bill collectors are going to come. They're going to come, and rightfully so, because you borrowed their money that you didn't have and you couldn't pay it off. Pay it all. The government should have to function, just like the citizens. In the Marine Corps, one of the things they hammered was you can't ask of your Marines anything that you're not willing to give. The government demands that we live within our means, and yet they don't do the same.
Speaker 1:As for the peace that we would preserve, I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace or do they mean we just want to be left in peace. There can be no real peace while one American is dying someplace in the world. For the rest of us, we're at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. And, it's been said, if we lose that war and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers. There is no greater enemy to our nation than Christless conservatism, second to that, leftism, communism, socialism, islam. We're giving away our liberty, which is the freedom to live the way we want to, just so long as we don't hurt others, because we're rejecting God. And if we end up losing America and going into a dark ages, a thousand years from now, people will look back in astonishment at the fact that the people who had the most willingly rejected the source of those blessings and willingly gave their liberty away in order to be shackled with chains in slavery. If you think there's peaceful coexistence with the left folks with Islam? You're wrong.
Speaker 1:Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said we don't know how lucky we are. And the Cuban stopped and said how lucky you are, I had some place to escape to. And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth, and this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man Folks. That's the whole point.
Speaker 1:You have a lot of people today that like to throw out their government of the people, by the people, for the people. It sounds great, but if those people are not moral and virtuous, if they do not follow the principles of God and Jesus Christ, it's ridiculous to think that that's a great principle in and of itself. Hitler was one of the people. Stalin was one of the people. Mao was one of the people. The people put them into power Before they became dictators. The people chose them. Before they became dictators, the people chose them. They didn't just automatically wake up and go out on the street and say, hey, I want to be your dictator or I am your dictator. And it happened. People chose that path in each of those countries. Why? For the same reason we talk about so constantly and I wish I was more eloquent folks. I wish I could drive this point home better with words, but I can't.
Speaker 1:The Second Amendment without the First Amendment, without a people who follow the principles of Jesus Christ, is worthless. It's worse than worthless, because all you're doing then with the Second Amendment is putting guns in the hands of immoral and evil people whose only moral foundation acre is their own opinion on any given day. A government that's beholden to the people. Right, he says that is no other source of power except the sovereign people. That sounds great, but if those people are evil, if they're immoral, if they've rejected the principles of God and Jesus Christ and therefore true, that's no great principle. That's the problem. That's what so many of us fail to understand today. It's the thing that made America function so well. It's that at the core, we had the principles of God and Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:I cannot help going back to John Adams' comments again and again. Our constitution, our government is only made for a moral and religious people. He's right about one thing though Reaganism here. Actually, he's right about a lot, but this is the last stand on Earth. There is nowhere else to escape to folks. Actually, he's right about a lot, but this is the last stand on Earth. There is nowhere else to escape to folks. You're not going to go to Antarctica. This is the issue of this election. So he was. This was talking about that presidential election.
Speaker 1:I believe, at that point, in our capacity for self-government, or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well, I'd like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down Up man's old-age dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course, those who have rejected our principles on God folks. That's the point. Leftism, humanitarianism, whatever you want to call it, socialism, communism, that's the downward spiral, the up spiral toward liberty right as he said, toward freedom here, consistent with law and order. That's just a different definition of liberty freedom consistent with not hurting others. That liberty has to be to God and Jesus Christ. The New Testament tells us that liberty is where the spirit of God is. So when you get rid of the spirit of God, when you reject God, you lose the ability to have liberty.
Speaker 1:In this vote-harvesting time they use terms like the Great Society. Or, as we were told a few days ago by the President, we must accept a greater government activity in the affairs of the people. But they've been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves and all of the people. But they've been a little more explicit in the past and among themselves. And all of the things I now will quote have appeared in print.
Speaker 1:These are not Republican accusations, for example. They have voices that say the Cold War will end through our acceptance of a not undemocratic socialism. Another voice says the profit motive has become outmoded. It must be replaced by the incentives of the welfare state or our traditional system of individual freedom is incapable of solving the complex problems of the 20th century. Senator Fulbright has said at Stanford University that the Constitution is outmoded. He referred to the president as our moral teacher and our leader. And he says he is hobbled in his task by the restrictions of power imposed on him by this antiquated document. He must be freed so that he can do for us what he knows is best. And Senator Clark of Pennsylvania, another articulate spokesman, defines liberalism as meeting the material needs of the masses through the full power of centralized government.
Speaker 1:Folks, don't you see it? Do you still not see the connection between God and Jesus Christ and liberty, on the one hand, and the connection between leftism, socialism, communism, islam and totalitarianism and despotism and evil on the other? Our form of government is only phenomenal Because of the principles of Jesus Christ. Again, john Adams, if we don't have a moral of virtuous people, we can make our government whatever form we want to make it. Folks, we can elect whoever we want to elect for as long as we can, you know, pretend to have elections, but all we're going to be tyrannies and tyrants Without God. It's all semantics. And the left has been telling us this for years. Folks, it's just like in education.
Speaker 1:John Dewey, back in 1929, told us specifically the main purpose of education was to separate children from God and from their families. Again, he phrased it the church and their families. But that's what he meant. It's God, not any particular denomination. Well, I for one resent it when a representative of the people refers to you and me, the free men and women of this country, as, quote, the masses end quote. This is a term we haven't applied to ourselves in America.
Speaker 1:But beyond that, the full power of centralized government. This was the very thing the founders sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. They also knew, those founding fathers, that outside of its legitimate functions, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector of the economy. Now, we have no better example of this than government's involvement in the farm economy.
Speaker 1:Over the last 30 years, since 1955, the cost of this program has nearly doubled. One-fourth of farming in America is responsible for 85% of the farm surplus, percent of the farm surplus. Three-fourths of farming is out on the free market and has known a 21 percent increase in the per capita consumption of all its produce. You see that one-fourth of farming that's regulated and controlled by the federal government. In the last three years we've spent $43 in the feed grain program for every dollar bushel of corn we don't grow.
Speaker 1:Senator Humphrey last week charged that Barry Goldwater, as president, would seek to eliminate farmers. He should do his homework a little better, because he'll find out that we've had a decline of 5 million in the farm production or the farm population under these government programs. He'll also find that the Democratic administration has sought to get from Congress an extension of the farm program to include that three-fourths that is now free. He'll find that they've also asked for the right to imprison farmers who wouldn't keep books, as prescribed by the federal government. The security of agriculture asked for the right to seize farms through condemnation and resell them to other individuals, and contained in that same program was a provision that would have allowed the federal government to remove 2 million farmers from the soil. At the same time there's been an increase in the Department of Agriculture employees. There's now one for every 30 farms in the United States, one for every 30 farms in the United States. And still they can't tell us how 66 shiploads of grain headed for Austria disappeared without a trace and Billy Sol Estes never left shore.
Speaker 1:Every responsible farmer and farm organization has repeatedly asked the government to free the farm economy. But how? Who are farmers to know what's best for them? The wheat farmers voted against a wheat program. The government passed it anyway. Now the price of bread goes up. The price of wheat to the farmer goes down. I don't have it in front of me. I don't think. Let me look real quick. It's interesting this comment he made about the desire to remove two million farmers from the soil. I don't think it was in this week's paper. Million farmers from the soil? I don't think it was in this week's paper.
Speaker 1:The Epoch Times does this little excerpt each week on communism out of this book. I've talked about it once briefly. Yeah, I don't have it. I think it was last week's paper. But there's one interesting comment here.
Speaker 1:Killing by famine that was part of this. How the specter of communism is ruling our world. The Holodomor famine left more than 1 million Ukrainian children orphaned. Many of them became homeless and had no choice but to beg for food in the cities. To eliminate this embarrassment, stalin signed orders authorizing police to shoot children as young as 12. During the famine, bodies of starvation victims could be seen all over the streets of the capital of Soviet Ukraine at the time. That wasn't really what I wanted, folks, but it's an interesting little tidbit on the cruelty of the left. Communism, socialism they all go in the same bag together. But it was the farmer displacement, because that's exactly what the Chinese and the Soviet communists. They did, right, they took farmers away and displaced them. And that's just one of the many things, the similarities, and here the left is doing the same.
Speaker 1:Phenomenal little speech by President Reagan before he was president or governor. We'll come back to it and talk some more about it. God bless y'all, god bless your families, god bless America. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listening If I didn't say it. God bless your marriages if you're married. We'll talk to y'all again real soon, folks, looking forward to it.