
The American Soul
The American Soul
Feminism's Damage: The Lost Joys of Motherhood
What happens when a society decides that separating infants from their mothers is normal? As I drove past a daycare at 6:00 AM, I witnessed a heartbreaking scene—a child less than a year old being handed to a complete stranger. This moment crystallized one of modern America's greatest tragedies: we've systematically removed children from their mothers in pursuit of a distorted vision of progress.
These children are denied experiences once considered fundamental—crawling into mom's bed in the morning, taking afternoon naps at home, playing freely in their own yards, or making messes in the kitchen alongside their mothers. When exactly did we convince ourselves this arrangement was best for children? The feminist revolution promised liberation but delivered a different reality, one where children spend their formative years with strangers while mothers rush between work and home, perpetually exhausted and guilt-ridden.
Scripture provides clear guidance on marriage and family that we've largely ignored. God designed men and women differently—not to compete but to complement each other. Marriage isn't meant to be a 50-50 arrangement where spouses battle for power and autonomy. Rather, it functions best when husbands and wives embrace their distinct, God-given roles as outlined in passages like 1 Corinthians 11, Ephesians 5, and 1 Peter 3. When we reject this divine blueprint, we don't achieve equality—we diminish both men and women, making them less than they could be together.
Are we ready to honestly assess what we've lost? Our collective rebellion against God's design—through feminism, abortion, or the rejection of biblical marriage—carries consequences beyond individual families to our entire society. The deteriorating state of American family life suggests the bill for these choices is coming due. Perhaps it's time to reconsider the divine pattern that once provided a foundation for human flourishing and family stability.
The American Soul Podcast
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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, whatever part of the day you're in. I sure do appreciate y'all joining me, giving me a little bit of time, attention, a little piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely. Time, attention, a little piece of your day I will try and use it wisely. I know y'all have other things pulling on you. I'm very aware of that because I have so many things pulling on me. So that's why I make that comment at the beginning of each podcast is to let you know I'm aware and also to try to remind myself to use your time wisely. For those of y'all that continue to share the podcast and tell others about it, thank you so much. Y'all help it to grow Very grateful for that. And for those of y'all who continue to pray for me and for the podcast, thank you most of all. I need those prayers for a number of reasons, and so I'm very grateful for your prayers.
Speaker 1:Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace and your forgiveness. Thank you for all the many blessings that you bestow upon us, father, so many that we forget or refuse to acknowledge. Thank you for clean water to drink and clothes to wear, food to eat, a roof over our heads, ac in the summer and heat in the winter, cars that run gas to put in the cars, maybe puppy dogs or kitty cats or birds or whatever else we have in our lives. Father, thank you so much for all these things and for those who don't have them. Please be with them, comfort them, help us to provide those things that are necessary. Help us to feed the hungry and to give water to the thirsty and to clothe the naked, to warm those who are cold, to visit those who are sick, those who are in prison, to care for the widow and the orphan. Be with those who are hurting, father, for whatever reason, who are going through illness or injury or heartache. Help them to feel your presence. Illness or injury or heartache, help them to feel your presence.
Speaker 1:Be with our missionaries around the world, father, and in our own backyards, who are striving to bring more lost to you through your Son, jesus Christ. Help us to encourage them and support them and walk alongside them. Be with our pastors, our priests, their wives, their children. Comfort them, bless them, give them courage and a strong faith. Help them to lead in fear of you, father, and be with our political leaders, too, and be with those who are listening to the podcast, wherever they are today. Father, be with their families, comfort them, give them wisdom and courage and a strong faith. Help us to do your will, to follow the commands of your Son, jesus Christ, to love you with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And please forgive us our sins and help us to flee from immorality of any kind. And God, my words here, in your Son's name, we pray Amen.
Speaker 1:Have you made time for God today? Have you made time for Jesus Christ? Have you made time to read the Bible, to talk to God, to pray? You know, the older I get, the more that analogy really fits.
Speaker 1:God is just like we are as parents. He just wants to hear from his children. It doesn't have to be fancy. You know, as a parent, you don't need your kid to call you from college, or call you when they're 30 or 40 years old and have some eloquent speech all lined up. You just want them to call and talk to you. So, at any rate, and if you're married folks, are you acting like it? You know we go through this every day, and if you don't know how to act like it, we haven't done this in a while. Maybe we'll do it again soon and read through all those verses for marriage.
Speaker 1:But 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Peter 3, titus 2, ephesians 5, hebrews 13, 4, proverbs 5, 19, song of Solomon Read that. Read it each day if you need to, until you get used to understanding and fulfilling your roles and responsibilities as a husband or a wife, because they're different. They're not the same. No matter what the world says, men and women are not the same. We'll never be the same and we shouldn't be the same. God designed us to complement each other, not to compete with each other. Compete with each other. When we are competing, when we're trying the whole lie of 50-50 in a marriage, all we're doing is making each other less than we should be. We're not strengthening the marriage, we're weakening it. When we fulfill our God-given roles and responsibilities, which are different, we complement each other and we make each of us better than we could be alone, and we make each of us better than we could be alone, and that's one of the lies that the left and feminism has done such a good job selling. Is that? That's not true? I had something else. Let me see if I can find it real quick. Oh yeah, two things.
Speaker 1:This is an old note. It's something I wrote to myself a while back. I'm not going to belabor this point, but there's no honorable excuse for property taxes for American citizens on their primary residence and land. Folks, we're forcing citizens to rent their land from the government that doesn't own it to begin with. In America, we own the land, we own the resources, the people, and so it just it bothers me a lot and it should. It should bother us all. There's just no honorable excuse for that. It's un-American. The government shouldn't get to dictate that we rent our own land and property, especially just anybody. Once you've owned that land for a few years, the government should never again get to charge you taxes and threaten to take away that land from you or your descendants. But this is what I really wanted. This is the note.
Speaker 1:I was driving last I don't know last week. One of the ways that I drive in the morning sometimes takes me by a daycare, and this particular morning it did. I went that way for whatever reason. It's about six o'clock, maybe just a little after six o'clock in the morning, and a young kid was being dropped off and it was just heartbreaking for me to see and it's heartbreaking every time to see those kids be taken into a stranger and they're not even a year old. Some of them are, I mean, some of them are two or three, but they're not even a year old. Some of them are, I mean, some of them are two or three, but they start less than a year old and and their mom or their dad is dropping them off and they carry them in and they drop the kid off with this total stranger. And honestly, it doesn't really matter whether it's a stranger or a grandparent or a neighbor, we're dropping them off with somebody else.
Speaker 1:And it's not right folks, it's not the way it's supposed to work. How in the world did we ever think that it was a good idea for kids to be taken away from their mother and given to somebody else to be raised? And it doesn't matter if it's a grandparent, that's still not the mother. It doesn't matter if it's the nicest old lady neighbor in the world, it's still not the mother. When do those kids get to sleep in? When do those kids get to crawl into bed with their mothers in the morning, or to take a nap at home in the afternoon with their mother next to them, or to take a nap at home in the afternoon with their mother next to them? When do those kids get to run and play in their own home, in their own backyard, with their brothers and sisters and their mother? When do they get to run around the kitchen and cook and make a mess and probably drive their mother nuts? Yeah, but be around and fill that house with laughter, with love God, folks, we have some very, very, very high bills coming due. In America, abortion seems like the chief one, second only to outright rejection of God and Jesus Christ, separation of God and state. But maybe feminism and the destruction that it's done to marriages and families isn't so far behind. In fact, maybe it's worse, even as much damage as it has done than abortion, as much damage as it has done than abortion. And either way, both of them spring from rebellion against and rejection of God. Man, we've got some high bills coming due, folks, and you can see it.
Speaker 1:Oh, one other little side note that I just happened to see. There was a Democratic state senator or representative in the state of Texas, I believe, that was a Muslim and that got signed in with his hand on the Koran. Okay, so a couple things. One, this is a Christian republic and so the Koran holds no weight here at all, and so that oath, that signing in, is null and void to begin with, and the votes cast by that representative or senator ought to also be null and void to begin with, and the votes cast by that representative or senator ought to also be null and void because there's no guarantee, there's no honesty, there's no oath there, because it's to a false god. And this is a Christian republic, not a Muslim republic, which couldn't happen to begin with. Muslims wouldn't allow a republic, they would not allow liberty. Couldn't happen to begin with. Muslims wouldn't allow a republic, they would not allow liberty. Anytime you see increase in socialism, communism, leftism, like you see in Europe, and Islam, you see a direct correlated decrease in liberty and there's just.
Speaker 1:I hope I'm wrong, folks, I do. I haven't said that in a while, but I would love love to be proven wrong. I would love for God to stretch his hand down and have some miracle happen are either a fight or willing slavery under the tyranny of leftism, socialism, communism, fascism, nazism. You know that whole bucket of isms or Islam Just doesn't seem again. Besides a miracle from God Almighty, there doesn't seem to be a third door from God Almighty. There doesn't seem to be a third door.
Speaker 1:1 Corinthians 11 Christian Order. Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ. Now I praise you because you remember me in everything and hold firmly to the traditions, just as I delivered them to you. But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of a woman and God is the head of Christ. Every man who has something on his head while praying or prophesying disgraces his head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head. But every woman who has her head uncovered while praying or prophesying disgraces her head, for she is one and the same as the woman whose head is shaved, for if a woman does not cover her head, let her also have her hair cut off.
Speaker 1:But if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, let her cover her head, for a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man, for man does not originate from woman, but woman from man, for indeed, man was not created for the woman's sake, but the woman for the man's sake. Therefore, the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head because of the angels. However, in the Lord, neither is woman independent of man, nor is man independent of woman, for as the woman originates from a man, so also the man has his birth through the woman, and all things originate from a man. So also the man has his birth through the woman, and all things originate from God. Judge for yourselves.
Speaker 1:Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not even nature itself teach you that? If a man has long hair, it is a dishonor to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for a covering. But if one is inclined to be contentious, we have no other practice, nor have the churches of God. But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part I believe it, for there must also be factions among you so that those who are approved may become evident among you.
Speaker 1:Therefore, when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper, for in your eating, each one takes his own supper first, and one is hungry and another is drunk. The Lord's Supper, for I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he took the cup, also after supper, saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself.
Speaker 1:Verse 2. Many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world. So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you will not come together for judgment. The remaining matters I will arrange when I come. Huge, a lot of this in chapter 11 is you need somebody with a little bit higher pay grade or rank than me to talk about, but some of the things are pretty self-evident. Verse 32, but when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.
Speaker 1:We forget a lot of times I do anyway, maybe you all don't that God's goal is seemingly, from reading scripture, right. His goal is to get us to him and whatever that means, that's what he's going to do. And sometimes that's not comfortable, sometimes that's extremely uncomfortable and painful, maybe physically, maybe emotionally, spiritually. But his goal, god's goal, is getting us home to him and so, whatever that takes, if we're really looking, striving for him, that's what he's going to do. I was talking to an extremely close friend that I consider a brother recently and we were talking about Abraham and Isaac and how painful, unbelievably painful, that must have been to put his son up on that altar and think that he was going to have to kill him, to put his son up on the altar and think that he was going to have to kill him. I wonder if God doesn't do that with us.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, when we've made idols and put them before God, Maybe, spouse, maybe you know, a lot of times we say the things that we view as a society is really bad. Well, we've made drugs an idol, or sex an idol, or alcohol an idol, or TV or social media or whatever you know gossip. We made those things idle. That's easy to say, but what if it's something that society really looks on as good and healthy? What if we made one of our children our idol? What if we made one of our kids more important than God? What if we made our kids more important than God? What if we made our spouse more important than God? Those are viewed as pretty good things, usually if we're really caring about a child or caring about a spouse.
Speaker 1:But what if we took it too far? And what if God took away that spouse that we love so dearly or that child that we love so dearly? How would we react to him? Some of y'all probably listening right now are getting pretty irritated with me just talking about it. But do we think about that? If there's something in your life, even something that society says is really good, and God took it away because you had made it more important than him, would you be upset when you finally figured that out? And I don't mean upset from losing whatever it was that you loved. But when you finally figured out that God was doing what was best for you, would you still be angry at God or would you be grateful? You know the proverb God disciplines those he loves, like a father the son he delights in.
Speaker 1:I remember sometimes being disciplined by my father and I didn't like it very much at all. In fact, I resented the heck out of it and I really didn't like him very much at the time. My mother as well when I was younger. But now, looking back, I'm very grateful for the effort that they put in to disciplining me when I was doing something stupid. Do we look back at God like that, when we finally mature enough to realize that we were making an idol out of something, just some thoughts. Where did we go? Oh, talking about eating and drinking together. Right, it just kind of goes back to loving our neighbors as ourselves. Are we concerned, when we come together, about putting others first? Are we concerned about getting what's ours, getting our rights, our dues? I'm afraid too often the church even we're really concerned about making sure that people look at us really well, as opposed to focusing on taking care of those around us.
Speaker 1:Verse 18, for in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you, and in part I believe it. How many church bodies have you been a part of where people were divided about the silliest things? How many denominations do we have in the Christian church where we're more focused on promoting that denomination than we are promoting Jesus Christ, where we're more offended by someone saying something condemning about our denomination or attacking our denomination than we are when they attack Jesus Christ? And it's not that Christ needs us to stand up and defend him, folks, that's not the point. The point is, where do our loyalties really lie? Are we really loyal to Christ or are we loyal to a denomination? Are we really loyal to Christ or are we loyal to some other person? All right, I want to make sure we get to. There's a lot of other stuff we could talk about here, folks, some great stuff.
Speaker 1:The very first part of this, talking about men and women, if you want. I mean you want to see what is so wrong with the world today as far as roles and responsibilities of men and women, and particularly inside the church. Go back and read some of these, like verse three Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ. That's not gray, folks, it's not unclear. It's very clear. Christ is the head of every man. That's the authority of every man, and the man is the head of a woman. The authority is with the man. Whether it's your father, if you never get married, or whether it's your husband, if you get married, there's a man in your life as a woman that has authority over you. It is what it is, folks. I mean it's the way it's designed, it's the way it works best.
Speaker 1:Verse 7, for a man ought not to have his head covered, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For, indeed, verse 9, for, indeed, man was not created for the woman's sake but woman for the man's sake. The woman was created to be the man's helper, helpmate, to encourage, to support Right. That's not the way society functions anymore. Helper, helpmate, to encourage, to support right. That's not the way society functions anymore. That's not the way we function inside the church.
Speaker 1:That irritates a lot of people. There's some of y'all right now listening that are irritated. You don't like that, and yet that's the way it functions best. It's like having a machine that runs best in a certain form, but we don't like that form. We want to change it right. Like tires. This is a dumb analogy, folks, but it's the first thing that popped in my head. It's having round tires versus having square tires, and we've decided that we like square tires and so that's what we're going to put on the vehicle and it'll still run, but it's really rough and it's destroying the vehicle as it's running. That's maybe not such a bad analogy for feminism regarding marriage and sex and families we left off with, oh yeah, bachelorder. Let's see where we go next.
Speaker 1:Delaven Bates. Us Civil War Rank Colonel, highest rank, brevet Brigadier General, US Civil War. 30th US Colored Troops, us Army, July 30th 1864. Cemetery Hill, petersburg, us Army, july 30, 1864, cemetery Hill, Petersburg, virginia, gallantry, in action where he fell shot through the face at the head of his regiment. Mohawk, accredited Mohawk, herkimer County, new York. Not awarded posthumously Wow, even though he was shot through the face. Presented June 22, 1891. Born March 17, 1840, richmondville, schoer County, new York. Died December 19, 1918. Aurora Nevada, buried Aurora, cemetery. Aurora Nevada, no, nebraska, united States. Told y'all I was bad at the state abbreviation.
Speaker 1:Delavon Bates, us Civil War. Norman F Bates. Norman Francis Bates. Sergeant, us Civil War. Echo Company 4th Iowa Cavalry, us Army, april 16, 1865, columbus, georgia. Capture of Flag and Bearer, accredited to Grinnell, foshek County, iowa, not awarded posthumously. Presented June 17, 1865. Born November 6, 1839, derby, orleans County, vermont. Died October 16, 1915, los Angeles, california, united States. Buried Forest Lawn Memorial Park D-23-3, lindale, california, united States. Buried Forest Lawn Memorial Park D-23-3, lindale, california, united States.
Speaker 1:Norman Francis Bates. Richard Bates, one more also known as Wyndham Richard Bates. Rank seaman, conflict era interim 1865 to 1870, uss Winooski, us Navy, may 10, 1866, right after the Civil War off East Port Maine, for heroic conduct in rescuing from drowning James Rose and John Russell, seamen of the USS Winooski off Eastport, maine, 10 May 1866. Accredited to New York, not awarded posthumously. Born 1829 in Wales, died December 7, 1889, brooklyn, new York. Buried Cypress Hills National Cemetery. Buried as Wyndham R Bates, brooklyn, new York. Richard Bates, another one of the immigrants from Wales right A whole different kettle of fish than the immigrants we have coming today in a much better way than what we have coming today.
Speaker 1:All right, we're going to read a little bit, because we didn't get to on the last podcast, our election sermon by Ezra Stiles, president of Yale Rostals. President of Yale. Besides a happy policy as to civil government, it is necessary to institute a system of law and jurisprudence founded in justice, equity and public right. The American codes of law and the lex non scripta, the sentis consulta and the common law are already advanced to great perfection, far less complicated and perplexed than the jural systems of europe, where reigns a mixture of roman, gothic, teutonic, salic, saxon, norman and other local or municipal law, controlled and innovated and confused by subsequent royal edicts and imperial institutions, super inducing the same mutation as did the imperatorial decrees of the caesars, jewish civil or Roman law.
Speaker 1:A depuration from all these will take place in America, and our communication with all the world will enable us to bring home the most excellent principles of law and right to be found in every kingdom and empire on earth. These, being adopted here, may advance our systems of jurisprudence to the highest purity and perfection, especially if, hereafter some flutter brackton coke, some great law genius should arise and, with vast erudition and with the learned sagacity of a tribuninus, reduce and digest all into one great dual system. But the best laws will be of no validity unless the tribunals be filled with judges of independent sentiment, vast law knowledge and of an integrity beyond the possibility of corruption. Even a bacon should fall from his highest honors the moment he tastes forbidden fruit. Such infamy and tremendous punishment should be connected with tribunal bribery that a judge should be struck into the horror of an earthquake at the very thoughts of corruption. The legislatures have the institution and revocation of law, and the judges, in their decisions, are to be sacredly governed by the laws of the land. Yeah, there's some Latin there that I don't know. One thing here, though, folks, is our judges ought to be so terrified of corruption and bribery that they can't even fathom doing either, and they ought to be so. Their level of integrity ought to be so much that their concern is first and foremost following God and the principles, the laws of our land. And we absolutely do not have that in our supreme court today. And all you have to do is look at some of the recent decisions that we've had, or just the decisions that we've had over the last 80 years in the supreme court, to see that we have not had a body filled with men who ruled in fear of God, that were absolutely repulsed and terrified by the thought of corruption and bribery.
Speaker 1:But I pass on to another subject in which the welfare of a community is deeply concerned, I mean the public revenues. National character and national faith depend on these. Every people, every large community is able to furnish a revenue adequate to the exigencies of government, but this is a most difficult subject, and what the happiest method of raising it is uncertain. One thing is certain that, however, in most kingdoms and empires the people are taxed at the will of the prince. Yet in America the people tax themselves and therefore cannot tax themselves beyond their abilities. But whether the power of taxing be in an absolute monarchy, a power independent of the people, or in a body elected by the people.
Speaker 1:One great error has, I apprehend, entered into the system of revenue and finance in almost all nations, that is restricting the collection of money. Two or three millions can more easily be raised in produce than one million in money. This, collected and deposited in stores and magazines, would, by bills drawn upon these stores, answer all the expenditures of war and peace. The little imperfect experiment lately made here should not discourage us. In one country it has been tried with success for ages. I mean in China, the wisest empire the sun hath ever shined upon, and here, if I recollect aright, not a tenth of the imperial revenues hath been collected in money. In rice, wheat and millet only are collected. Forty million of sacks are collected, 40 million of sacks, 120 each equal to 80 million bushel and raw and wrought silk, 1 million pounds. The rest is taken in salt, wines, cotton and other fruits of labor and industry at a certain ration or sent and deposited in stores over all the empire. Are sent and deposited in stores over all the empire. The perishable commodities are immediately sold and the mandarins and army paid by bills on these magazines. In no part of the world are the inhabitants less oppressed than there.
Speaker 1:England has 1,100 million property real personnel and commercial and 5 million souls. Their ordinary revenue has for many years been 10 or 12 millions and during this war the national expenditures have been annually 20 millions. A great part is raised by excise, by the land tax, not above a fifth or sixth, although the annual rental of England is really 60 millions. The funded debt has arisen from 123 millions AD 1775 to 230 millions in 1783, and can never be paid. It is unparalleled in the annals of empires that six or seven millions of people ever discharged so heavy a burden. The Roman imperial debt was once, in the times of the Caesar's, 300 million sterling, when the empire consisted of 30 million of people. One emperor, at his ascension, wiped out 20 millions and the Goths and vandals settled the rest to the ruin of thousands. May god preserve these states from being so involved.
Speaker 1:The present war being over, the future increase of population and property will in time enable us with convenience to discharge the heavy debt we have incurred in the defense of our rights and liberties. The United States have now 250 millions of property, pretty equally shared by 2 or 3 million people, and our national debt is not 10 million sterling, which is to the whole collectively, as it would be for one man possessing an estate of 250 pounds in land and stock to oblige himself to pay 10 pounds. The interest only of the British national debt upon 6 or 7 million people is above 10 millions sterling annually. That is greater than the whole national debt of the United States upon half that number. Our population will soon overspread the vast territory from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, which in two generations will become a property superior to that of Britain. Thus posterity may help to pay for the war which we have been obliged to fight out for them in our day. It will not, however, be wise to consign to posterity so heavy a debt, lest they should be tempted to learn, like other nations, the practice of public injustice and broken national faith.
Speaker 1:One thing that Elon Musk has exactly right today is that we can't keep spending the way you're spending. There's going to come a day, just like with every family, you spend money on your credit cards. At some point the bill collectors come calling. You can't just keep spending as much as you want forever. We don't have. We do have a taxation problem in America, but the problem isn't our ability to raise taxes. The problem is we spend it recklessly. The problem isn't that the taxes aren't high enough. The problem is that our spending is too high and we spend too much money on frivolous things, wasteful things like supporting criminals, illegal immigration, supporting welfare and a number of other ways that we waste money. Folks, all right, we'll move on. So we're going to get back into Fox's Book of the Martyrs and we're still talking about the valleys of Piedmont.
Speaker 1:Then they solicited a considerate body of troops of the King of France in order to exterminate the Reformed entirely from the valleys of Piedmont. But just as the troops were going to march, the Protestant princes of Germany interposed and threatened to send troops to assist the Waldenses if they should be attacked. The King of France, not caring to enter into a war, remanded the troops and sent word to the Parliament of Turin that he could not spare any troops at present to act in Piedmont. The members of the Parliament were greatly vexed at this disappointment and the persecution gradually ceased, for as they could only put to death such of the reformed as they caught by chance, and as the Waldenses daily grew more cautious, their cruelty was obliged to subside for want of objects on whom to exercise it, after the Waldenses had enjoyed a few years' tranquility, they were again disturbed by the following means the Pope's nuncio, coming to Turin to the Duke of Savoy upon business, told the Prince he was astonished he had not yet either rooted out the Waldenses from the valleys of Piedmont entirely or compelled them to enter into the bosom of the Church of Rome, that he could not help looking upon such conduct with a suspicious eye and that he really thought him a favorer of these heretics and should report the affair accordingly to His Holiness the Pope.
Speaker 1:Sung by this reflection and, unwilling to be misrepresented to the Pope, the Duke determined to act with the greatest severity in order to show his zeal and to make amends for former neglect by future cruelty. He accordingly issued express orders for all the Waldenses to attend Mass regularly on pain of death. This they absolutely refused to do, for which he entered into the Peatnames Valleys with a formidable body of troops and began a most furious persecution in which great numbers were hanged, drowned, ripped open, tied to trees and pierced with prongs, thrown from precipices, burnt, stabbed, racked to death, crucified with their heads downward, worried by dogs, etc. These who fled had their goods plundered and their houses burnt to the ground. They were particularly cruel when they caught a minister or schoolmaster whom they put to such exquisite tortures as are almost incredible to conceive. If any whom they took seemed wavering in their faith, they did not put them to death but sent them to the galleys to be made converts by dent of hardships.
Speaker 1:The most cruel persecutors upon this occasion that attended the duke were three in number One, thomas and Camel, an apostate, for he was brought up in the Reformed religion but renounced his faith, embraced the errors of potpourri and turned monk. He was a great libertine given to unnatural crimes and sordid solicitous for the plunder of the Waldenses. Two Corbus, a man of very ferocious and cruel nature whose business was to examine the prisoners. And 3. The provost of justice, who was very anxious for the execution of the Waldenses as every execution put money in his pocket. Persons were unmerciful to the last degree and wherever they came, the blood of the innocent was sure to flow.
Speaker 1:Exclusive of the cruelties exercised by the duke, by these three persons in the army in their different marches, many local barbarities were committed. At Pignerol, a town in the valleys, was a monastery, the monks of which, finding that they might injure the reform with impunity, began to plunder the houses and pull down the churches of the Waldenses. Not meeting with any opposition, they seized upon the persons of those unhappy people, murdering the men, confining the women and putting the children to Roman Catholic nurses. The Roman Catholic inhabitants of the Valley of St Martin, likewise, did all they could to torment the neighboring Waldenses. They destroyed their churches, burnt their houses, seized their properties, stole their cattle, converted their lands to their own use, committed their ministers to the flames and drove the Waldenses to the woods where they had nothing to subsist on but wild fruits, roots and the bark of trees, etc.
Speaker 1:Some Roman Catholic ruffians, having seized a minister as he was going to preach, determined to take him to a convenient place and burn him. His parishioners having intelligence of this affair, the men armed themselves, pursued the ruffians and seemed determined to rescue their minister, which the ruffians, no sooner perceived than they, stabbed the poor gentleman and, leaving him weltering in his blood, made a precipitate retreat. The astonished parishioners did all they could to recover him, but in vain, for the weapon had touched the vital parts and he expired as they were carrying him home, the monks of Pignarol having a great inclination to get the minister of a town in the valleys called saint germain into their power, hired a band of ruffians for the purpose of apprehending him. These fellows were conducted by a treacherous person who had formerly been a servant to the clergyman and who perfectly well knew a secret way to the house by which he could lead them without alarming the neighborhood. The guide knocked at the door and, being asked who was there, answered in his own name. The clergyman, not expecting any injury from a person on whom he had heaped favors, immediately opened the door. But perceiving the ruffians, he started back and fled to a back door. But they rushed in, followed and seized him. Having murdered all his family, they made him proceed toward Pignerol, goading him all the way with pikes, lances, swords etc. He was kept a considerable time in prison and then fastened to the stake to be burnt. When two women of the Waldenses, who had renounced their religion to save their lives, were ordered to carry baguettes to the stake to burn, burn him and, as they laid them down, to say Take these, thou wicked heretic, in recompense for the pernicious doctrines thou hast taught us. These words they both repeated to him, to which he calmly replied I formerly taught you well, but you have since learned ill. The fire was then put to the faggots and he was speedily consumed, calling upon the name of the Lord as long as his voice permitted.
Speaker 1:Folks, I know this stuff is rough At least it's rough for me. I assume it's rough for y'all but it's history that we need to remember. You need to remember what has gone on, what persecutions have occurred and what happens when you allow a denomination any denomination that's not really interested in Jesus Christ and God to get total power, and what happens to the widow and the orphan, women and children, the poor and the needy when they're under the power of those evil organizations. And I think it's important to remember because it gives us some motivation, some reasoning, not to just go peacefully, quietly into the night and do the best we can to protect those the widow and the orphan, the poor and the needy. It's a lot like people that want to try and erase, for example, the history of the Confederacy in the United States. There's nothing good that can come from that, from erasing history.
Speaker 1:Then we forget the lessons that we've learned and you can see that in Communist China, soviet Union, communist China, soviet Union. You know communist China. Now you can look at the dance soup that traveled around the world, shen Yun or something like that, I can't remember the name of it and the CCP, the Chinese communist party. They just hate these people because they teach history through dance. They teach what China used to be like before the communists came in and tried to wipe history, whitewash history. You saw that a few years ago when Russia had the Olympics. And you know, at the beginning of each Olympics they kind of do a little bit of history of the nation where the Olympics are being held. Olympics were being held and Russia really had a hard time getting through those years where communism was really in total power, when they were really strong, and all the atrocities committed, for example, by Stalin.
Speaker 1:You see that in the Muslims when they come into certain areas and try and just completely wipe out history. Why? Well, if you can wipe out history and you can educate children in falsehoods, then you can control the population. It's one of the reasons that people don't like a Bible-literate society, because Bible-literate people are very hard to enslave mentally and socially. History of the Rise, progress and Termination of the American Revolution Mercy Otis Warren. Pick up where we left off here, maybe, if I can find it. Well, there we go.
Speaker 1:Valor is an instinct that appears, even among savages, as a dictate of nature planted for self-defense. But patriotism, on the diffusive principles of general benevolence, is the child of society. This virtue, with the fair accomplishments of science, gradually grows and increases with civilization, until refinement is wrought to a height that poisons and corrupts the mind. This appears when the accumulation of wealth is rapid and the gratifications of luxurious appetite become easy. The seeds of benevolence are then often destroyed and the man reverts back to selfish barbarism and fills no check to his rapacity and boundless ambition, though his passions may be frequently veiled under various alluring and deceptive appearances. You kind of have to wonder if we're not at that point in America where we've become so affluent, so opulent, we live in such luxury that we're no longer. We claim to be civilized, right, but then we murder tens of millions of our own children. That's about as barbarous as you can get folks. We claim to be educated, we claim to trust the science, but do we really act like that?
Speaker 1:America was now a fair field for a transcript of all the virtues and vices that have illumined or darkened, disgraced and reigned triumphant in their turn over all the other quarters of the habitable globe. The progress of everything had there been remarkably rapid. From the first settlement of the country, learning was cultivated, knowledge disseminated, politeness and morals improved and valor and patriotism cherished in proportion to the rapidity of her population. Again, with children, folks. Do we do this? Are we cultivating learning? Are we disseminating knowledge, true knowledge? Are we improving politeness and morals? You know so many people make light of that today. They laugh at being polite and having morals. Even in families, christian families, you'll hear people laugh about the necessity of being polite, right. Are we cherishing valor and patriotism? Do we teach our children that, these Medal of Honor citations that we read through so often? Are we teaching our children to cherish valor and patriotism? This extraordinary cultivation of arts and manners may be accounted for from the stage of society and improvement in which the first planners of America were educated before they left their native clime.
Speaker 1:The first immigrations to North America were not composed of a strolling banditti of rude nations. Like the first people of most other colonies in the history of the world, the early settlers in the newly discovered continent were as far advanced in civilization, policy and manner, in their ideas of government, the nature of compacts and the bands of civil union as any of their neighbors at that period, among the most polished nations of Europe. Thus they soon grew to maturity and became able to vie with their European ancestors in arts and arms, in perspicuity in the cabinet, courage in the field and ability for foreign negotiations, and in the same space of time that most other colonies have required to pare off the ruggedness of their native ferocity, establish the rudiments of a civil society and begin the fabric of government and jurisprudence. Yet as they were not fully sensible of their own strength and abilities, they wished still to hang upon the arm and look up for protection to their original parent. The united voice of millions still acknowledged the scepter of Brunswick, firmly attached to the house of Hanover, educated in the principles of monarchy and fond of that mode of government under certain limitations, they were still petitioning the king of England, only to be restored to the same footing of privilege claimed by his other subjects, and wished ardently to keep the way open to reunion consistent with their ideas of honor and freedom, our founders still at this point. They didn't want separation from Great Britain, they wanted the monarchy, they wanted to be subjects. They simply wanted to be on the same footing of privilege claimed by the other subjects of the crown.
Speaker 1:You have to have rule of law, folks. Everybody has to be treated the same under the rule of law. Huge problems, the central problems with illegal immigration, outside of the immorality of it, that we're hurting the widow and the orphan, the poor and the needy, that we're going against Christ's commands to care for the least of these when we support illegal immigration Just on a civil side. It undermines rule of law because citizens are required to abide by the law, but the illegals are not Automatically upon entrance into the country. They're breaking the law.
Speaker 1:We don't treat American citizens that break into a bank the same way. If you break into a bank, we're not concerned about whether you're going to go to jail and leave your wife and your kids behind. You made that decision when you came here, when you broke into the bank, that decision when you came here, when you broke into the bank. And yet with the illegals, we're supposed to suddenly feel this shock at the fact that you would separate men from their wives and children. And yet if American citizen, no matter how poor or destitute they were, if they broke into a bank, if they shot the guards there or even just roughed them up, there would be no concern about whether that American citizen was going to end up having to go to jail and abandon their wife and their children. You have to have the same laws across the board, folks, and then that's a great.
Speaker 1:I'm getting off track here, but people that don't even respect the Bible but try and use the Bible as a whipping stick for Christians, those Old Testament verses Deuteronomy, leviticus talking about caring for the stranger, those are great. That ought to be our immigration policy, because what the left always conveniently leaves out, what the Muslims always conveniently leave out when they're talking about mass immigration or illegal immigration, is those aliens, those sojourners. They were required to follow Israel's laws, god's laws, and so, as a nation founded as a Christian republic, if we're going to look at that Old Testament stuff, that'd be wonderful, because then, first and foremost, any immigrant coming to the United States would have to either be Christian or would have to agree to follow the general principles of Jesus Christ. I'm 100% on board with that. That's how our immigration policy ought to be. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:While the representatives of all the provinces had thus been deliberating, the individual colonies were far from being idle. Provincial congresses and conventions had, in almost every province, taken place in the old forms of legislation and government, and they were all equally industrious and united in the same modes to combat the intrigues of the governmental faction which equally forfeited the whole, though the eastern borders of the continent were more immediately suffered, but their institutions in infancy, commerce suspended and their property seized. Threatened by the national orators, by the proud chieftains of military departments and by the British fleet and army, daily augmenting hostilities of the most serious nature lowered on all sides, the artillery of war and the fire of rhetoric seemed to combine for the destruction of America. And we'll leave it off there for today. God bless y'all. God bless your families. God bless your marriages, if you're married. God bless America. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listen, I'm glad you're here. We'll talk to y'all again real soon. Folks looking forward to it.