Special Episode: Be The Light Today W/Adam Hosey

0:04 All right, the date today is September 10th, 2025, and I don't need to tell everyone out there what's happened. And I knew I was going to have to say something about it. And my buddy Adam called me up. He's been on before Adam Hosey. And he said, I think we need to talk about this. And I said, I think you're right, Don't want to. But I feel like, I feel like stuff has to be said here at the moment 'cause I think we're at an inflection point in our country. And before we get into all that, I want to do something a little bit out of the ordinary here today that I, I normally don't, I always say a prayer with my guests before the podcast. And usually that's off the recording because quite frankly, I want to make sure that you, the listener, you're getting the most out of your time, right?

1:12 And so I like to just jump right in. But today I'm, I want to open this with a prayer and I want to want everyone to be kind of be Privy to that. And if you're listening to this, I know it's recording, but feel free to say a prayer with him. I I with me I, I think, I think we could use it. So I'll say a prayer and then we'll dive in our dear kind Father in heaven, we come before thee at this time shook as we've watched and almost real time some one of your children's lives be snuffed out senseless senselessly in a place where he should have been probably the safest. We come humbled, understanding that life is precious and that it is so fragile, Father, And we'd ask tonight that you would just be with, with Charlie Kirk's family, give to them a greater portion of the Spirit than they've had this far, if at all possible, to take at least some of the sting away for for a brief respite.

2:34 Father, we'd ask that you would bless all those who had to witness that, bless them with peace. And we know that in the days to come, there'll be much healing that needs to be done. And we ask that you would send forth your spirit to do that. Father, we pray for our country. At this moment. I feel as though we are at A at a tipping point or an inflection point and that we're going to need to not a lot more of you in our lives than we've had to this point to be able to navigate what comes next. Father, help us to be the people we need to be. Help us to be the disciples that we have to be, to point people towards Christ and not towards violence and darkness.

3:24 We would ask that you'd bless all the first responders, that they might be able to apprehend the subject, the the suspect, and that no further loss of life may happen. And we just ask for your spirit as we sit down and have this talk tonight, that we might be measured, that we might speak truth, and that we might be in tune with Thee. And we ask for all these things humbly, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen. Well, Adam, I wish we were here under better circumstances, but nonetheless, here we are. Here we are.

4:04 I was, I was talking to a friend today after this all broke and I said I think this, I think this is probably on par. I understand he's not a politician, but I think this is on par with not with with the JFK assassination. I was thinking the same thing. I think as as JFK was to Texas, Charlie Kirk will be to Utah. And I think this will be one of those things that that if society makes it that long, will be looked at and analyzed for years to come.

4:55 And it's going to be a a time that I think marks the calendars. I'm about to be 48 now. And I was thinking back throughout my life and, you know, you had 911. You had the at, you know, before that, the advent of the Internet, economic collapse in 2008, continuous wars, divided at home, the list goes on. These events, I think are going to come no matter what. We can certainly do our best and we should do our best to to stop them. But I think the bigger question is how do we respond now? How do we respond as as children of God, as disciples of Christ, as as just human beings, one to another? And that's what I think we're going to, we're going to go with tonight because I don't remember a time in, in this nation's history.

6:06 And I've studied a little bit about the country and about the nation. I don't think we've been this divided since the Civil War maybe. And it's it's it's not showing any signs of slowing down. The only thing I think we can control is how we respond. And that's where I think we're going to go tonight. So Adam, again, man, I apologize. It's under these circumstances. But I'm glad you're here with me. Yeah, man. So I agree with you about the division, but I think this division is in, in some ways it's more nihilistic in character because you know, in the South, in, in the, in the Civil War, you had these southern states that had this very obvious political alliance. And it was, it was known by all parties and who the Confederacy would be if they seceded.

7:01 I mean, Joseph Smith predicted it. We know, you know, decades in advance, but even people that weren't prophetic, that were just analyzing the situation in 1857 knew who would be the Confederacy. And maybe there were some questions about, I don't know, West Virginia or something. But for the most part, it was fairly clear cut. It was kind of like, you know, Northern Yankee culture that had its mentality, especially after the Industrial Revolution had really, you know, sort of come into swing and this old guard, good old boy Southern agrarian culture. And there was this divide, and it was geographic and it was. Tied up in. Political. Oh yeah.

7:41 Sorry to bug you, but I think I I don't think your your microphone is picking up. I think it's picking up the laptop's microphone. Hold on. There we go. How about that? That's much better. OK. Sorry about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So. If you want to take that from the top, I can stitch it or we can just continue. No, no, no, no. Just just use it. Yeah, just use it. It's fine. It's fine. This is one of those off podcasts. So I think it was, you know, it was tied up with, you know, like these kind of neat political alliances. And now, you know, the, the, the division is real in the way that you describe it, but it, it's not like it's not like clear cut, you know, you'll hear people say red States and blue States and you'll hear people say liberals and conservatives and urban and rural.

8:28 But the problem is, is it's, it's almost like, and I hate to just go on the Mormon podcast and then say the most Mormon thing possible, but it's kind of like the division between the people that are trying to do the will of the Lord and those that have beholden themselves to, if not the adversary directly his causes. And it's, it's like, you know, imagine that. Imagine that in this like ugly cosmic dualism, there was a physical fight between the forces of good and evil somewhere. Where does it take place? Because, you know, I mean, in the Civil War, it happens in the border States and maybe the South gets bold and makes an invasion, but for the most part it happens in the southern border states.

9:15 And we know like, you know, there's organized armies and these kinds of things. Like a lot of this political a lot. Oh God, it's it's like a nebulous enemy. We have the media that has this narrative that they have to push, and we've got institutions that have been just godlessly liberalized beyond any average American's imagination. And we've got people that push these divisive racial narratives and that push narratives about, you know, just how Trump and his supporters are all unrepentant Nazis. And it's just like, it's almost like the division is in the mind of each side, this caricature of evil. And and the problem is it doesn't have neat boundaries and neat sides.

10:05 And like the concern that I have is where does that, where does that go? Like, you know, like, OK, in the, in the case of the South, you know, you don't like the North, you'd secede, but or in the case of West Virginia, don't like Virginia, you secede. But like, what do we do? Because people that hate each other and hate their world, the worldview of of the sort of like the opposing worldview and that and that just like have this this vitriolic contempt for people that don't think like them live right next to each other in a lot of major urban areas. And so, like, my concern is, where does this go?

10:46 Because what I don't see is a way that this turns into anything other than, first of all, pushing the divide further down the throats of your average American, who is now going to be even more skeptical of their neighbor that they may have had a political disagreement with in 1995. And they could have still drank beer together, but is now going to hate everything about them. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I, I don't see a way that this doesn't push your average American just further to the right and hard because the guy they killed was the guy whose whole purpose he was the, the, the, the, the, the dorky, friendly, warm spirited dad whose whole purpose was just debating your average person about the things that they thought and you killed you brutally murdered in front of hundreds of millions of people and his his wife and his kids. The guy who was the symbol of like friendly moderate discourse on the right.

11:44 And if you wanted to push him further to the right. Your average young 21 year old man that doesn't really have a whole lot that he stands for and doesn't have a lot of hope in his life and doesn't have good economic prospects and doesn't do well with women and lives in this soulless age of pornography and technology and all these things that are robbing him of the things that it means to be a human. You are going to push those people to the right and harm and it's going to come quickly. I'm concerned that what they're going to do is they're going to make real ass Nazis in America as these types of things continue to happen. That is, is one of my, my biggest fears and that is really where, where, where I want to spend the majority of our time tonight. We can't control what's happened to Charlie Kirk, right? It's done right.

12:37 There's there. We pray for his family. We get ready to stand in service any way we can. That's what we do now. But above all else, and I know that this isn't an extremely right now unpopular opinion, but we have to remain peaceful. We have to now not allow ourselves to go over the rest, go over the Cliff with the rest of humanity. We now have to dig our heels in because it's going to be incumbent upon us now that that we provide the alternative. Adam, we were talking about not Charlie Kirk, but something I'm going to bring up next.

13:23 Just a few days ago, right? If I'm not mistaken, I, I have a lot of phone calls. So you can you can tell me if I was wrong here, but I think I was talking about during the the Savior's time, there was a feel there that every faction, Rome, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, they were feeling Jesus out to see which side he was going to be on. And to their chagrin, he wasn't on anybody's side. He was on the side of God. He was on the side of truth. He was on the side of of right. And I think that's where we have to be now, right? We are going to be asked, I fear, in the coming days and weeks and months to choose a side. And I think we have to figure out how we stand for truth and don't go over the Cliff with the rest of humanity. Because I warn you now, in the strongest way I know how, if you strike out an anger, if you look for vengeance by your own hand or the hand of any mortal, we will lose. Yep.

14:34 I look, I understand the founding of America, and I'm not a guy who believes that that that violence is never the answer. But we're not there yet as a people. No. And we can't allow ourselves to be that way. And Adam, you made a statement there that that, that I think we that deserve some some exploration. What do you mean that there's not a a better way to make authoritarians or Nazis in America? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm so I'm using Nazis to mean like, you know, like fascist right wing state first nationalist brown shirts that would expend any class viewed as a threat to authoritarian power. So but that's a lot of syllables. And so I just say Nazi.

15:22 But what I mean by that is like, OK, so, so, so think about what we've seen in the news media over the last six years. And what I, what I, when I say news media, what I really mean is not just like how the news has reported the things. That's part of it because that's the narrative that the establishment, the power brokers of the world want us to have to see, but also the events. OK, so think about COVID, right? I mean, how long was Alex Jones all the way back to the 90s? Even that guy that the the the tinfoil hat conspiracist that lived an eager that got killed. That was like the predecessor to Alex Jones. I forget his name, but he would he did a radio show in the early 90s and he was talking about, man, you know, one day the medical establishment is going to claim a state of emergency and they're going to use it to take all of your freedoms and declare martial law and all, right. I mean, they didn't declare martial law, but unfortunately, because our society has just become so weak and feminized, they didn't have to.

16:23 They just had to say, look, you don't want to kill grandma, do you? And you see, this is how in my mind, feminism has kind of like perverted, the sort of like the, the, the kind of like natural order of the household. I, I think that the, the COVID scare was at least in the case of like major urban centers, a lot of like very domineering, busy body women berating their husbands to also do the thing that they are scared of. And so you got this whole populace that was just basically scared into compliance to not go outside, to not go to church, to not interact with their friends, to do all these kinds of things. And this was there were people predicting this for like 20 years.

17:04 And when it happened, it was just like, it was like the nightmare came true. So you have COVID. Then there was the Black Lives Matter riots. So that was wild. OK, So at first, I was like the, like, the first couple hours when this was on the news, I remember thinking like, well, this is kind of a Tea Party moment because, you know, there's evidence out there that George Floyd was on drugs and, like, was really sick. And he kind of just like, suffocated and all these. OK, fine, that's probably all true. But we know that the cops are the boot of power. So when it is time to enforce COVID regulations, it is the cops who will do it. And in the first hour or two of those protests, they went to the police station and they burned it. And I was like, man, this is kind of reminiscent of the Tea Party, sort of.

17:53 But then it was the business next to it and the business next to that and the stuff that a bunch of regular people owned. And then you got the Kyle Rittenhouse thing. And so all, all this is going on. And after you've just been told that you have no choice but to stay in your house for, you know, to, to, to not see your dying grandmother. Now they tell you the same officials tell you, well, racism is a public health crisis. And so you can go outside and congregate in big groups and not wear masks. And as long as you're protesting George Floyd's murder, that's acceptable. Like what a what a my, you know, what word I want to say, but I won't say it there. Like like absolutely mind bending logic. And so your average person is seeing this going well. I mean, what, like you just told me I couldn't see my dying grandma.

18:46 And now you're telling me that this is perfectly acceptable. Then, you know, all that stuff happens and, and, and, and then you get you get Kyle Rittenhouse, which was, I mean, I mean, I don't know if anybody, you know, listening to you watch the trial, but this guy was absolutely persecuted by the prosecutor in Kenosha, WI the video evidence. He did everything he could to get away. It was a stupid decision, by the way, for him to be at that protest with a gun. If that was my kid and he came home, I'd have smacked him in the head. But I mean, at the end of the day, in the very legal definition, he was not out there just like murdering people. He was defending himself from people who were trying to kill him. But that becomes another incendiary, very inflection point.

19:33 And if your view is that is of the liberal mind state, you look at that and go, what, a miscarriage of justice. People that Trump likes can just get off with whatever they want. And if you're a conservative, you look at that and go, holy hell, I don't have the right to defend myself anymore. And how do you reconcile disparate worldviews like that? And then you continue on down the line over the last few years, you know, you've got the January 6th stuff, so you watch the January 6th stuff on video and it's like, mostly like 62 year old, like women and men kind of like, you know, sort of like randomly putzing around the White House. And there's a couple psychos. Like there's the one dude, I wish I could frame this photo in my, you know, the, my office where he's got like his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk and he's like looking at her picture in his hands.

20:16 And you know, that's hilarious. But, but I mean, there was a lot of like crazy stuff going on. There are people breaking windows and, and, and smashing into like certain parts of business. But then we find out that. Well, there's all these FBI informants that were like egging all these people on. And so now it's the same thing. Again. If you're a liberal, you look at this and you go, well, this is treason. They tried to commit a revolution on Inauguration Day or right before it or whatever. And if you're a conservative, you look at this and go, well, this was all a big setup job. It was like, it was like Randy Weaver selling the shotgun to the ATF or something, you know, and keep going. And so then Trump gets elected again. He almost gets assassinated twice and the first time it actually hits his ear there's I don't even know anybody that doesn't think that that was either set up by by the Trump administration themselves to make him to sort of lionize him or by his enemies. Everyone I know thinks that that is a conspiracy of some kind. And your worldview will inform what kind of conspiracy you think that it is.

21:14 And then just the other day, you've got this girl on this train in North Carolina that gets brutally murdered by a guy's, a black guy, and he just kills her. And then he stands up, walks off the train, says, I got that white girl. And he walks off the train. And the media doesn't report on this. And then it's leaked that I think it was CBS or maybe it was ABC says, well, the reason we don't report on that kind of stuff is because it would inform a, a negative racial bias. And you go what? Like, So what you're saying is you actually have a specific narrative that you're pushing. And then finally you get Charlie Kirk, the average happy cheery dad whose whole stick is debating people.

21:55 And by the way, I disagree with Charlie Kirk on probably way more than most people in your podcast because I have a very different take on foreign policy and American engagements in the Middle East, etcetera. But that's just who this guy was. He was just like a friendly, cheery dad who would, like, walk around and debate people. And so, OK, you look at all of these events, well, what's going to happen? Trust in major institutions. So not just the media, the media first and foremost, but the public health institutions from COVID, the justice system, from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial or from this, this guy on the train, your local authorities when it comes to some of these cover ups, like the prosecutor in Kenosha, your, your, your security services, the CIA, the FBI, like trust in every major institution is going to collapse.

22:49 And when people when stuff like that collapses, people become fearful. When they become fearful, they gravitate towards strong leaders. Don't let anybody ever forget that Hitler came to power in the midst of an absolutely miserable economic crisis in Germany due to war reparations from World War One. I blame Woodrow Wilson for all of Germany's economic woes at the time. We'd get into that another podcast if you want, but at the end of the day, and he comes to power in an economic landscape where everyone is just absolutely losing their minds over economic and political and personal instability and crime is rampant.

23:33 And man, we just need one guy who is so strong and authoritative that he can sort this out for us. And that is what you are going to get by by fomenting all of this mistrust in institutions. And you see, the further right that people go or the further left, the closer they are to authoritarian dictatorship, The question is just are you going to get Hitler or Stalin? And that's the problem that we have one. 100. Percent. I think we could have. 100% as I my worst fear is that people give in to their to their rage right now.

24:16 Yes. Adam, are you familiar with the Bubba effect? A little bit. Why don't you, why don't you make sure I am familiar and then we'll talk about it. So the Bubba effect and this, this comes from a buddy of mine who was he was in the Army. That's all I'm going to say right there. But he had told me he's like, one of the things that that we that we were taught about was the Bubba effect. And I'm like, well, that's kind of a silly name. Like what? What is the Bubba effect? And he's like, let me paint you a picture. It's easier if I paint you a picture. Imagine some guy goes into a town and does something horrendous to somebody and rather than let him go, the population, some of the population have become upset because the authorities haven't done their jobs and they take matters into their own hands. And it goes to, to a, a kind of a, a vigilante system, right? And they, they just execute the guy who committed the crime. And then the police come to arrest Bubba, the guy who actually did the vigilante justice. And then the rest of the town says you can't take Bubba. You know he was wrong, but you don't get him. That on the surface may feel good to somebody here in that scenario will that evil doer got his. But as soon as that begins to

25:48 happen, we have social cohesion tears apart. And once that's torn apart, we've got no other recourse. We lose because, and I look, I'm going to call it like I see it here. The other side wants you to strike out right now. That's what they want. They want you so angry that you strike out. Why do they want you to strike out? They'll live with you striking out for the next however many years Trump is in power or his cronies. But at some point they're coming for you again when you do that. And this time they'll come down from on high and they're going to they're going to take everything from everybody, right? Your First Amendment rights, your Second Amendment rights, the whole thing, this, no matter how it goes down, whether this was just a ravaged lone shooter who was out of his mind, who killed him or whether this was a calculated hit, it does not matter.

26:52 They don't it doesn't matter what what it was because they want you to strike out. That is what they're counting on. And if you strike out, we all lose. You know, you're me out on this. Everybody just you're going. We're going to have to start choosing Christ's way and not and not our way. Don't look for the wins to come from the Republicans, the Democrats, anybody else. The Savior is where the answers lie right now. Yep. And I think that this, this founding of this country was divinely inspired. And I think that the principles of freedom are the things that really truly give you a safe and secure and prosperous society. And I think one of the great dangers is that as people get more fearful, they are they, I mean, I think Benjamin Franklin was the one that said, you know, he who would trade a little liberty or who you would trade liberty for safety deserves neither and gets no deserves deserves an either or something. I don't know.

27:53 I'm going to butcher the quote. But basically the idea is if you go trading your freedom for promises of the government to protect you, it's going to turn out badly for you. And also by the way that the government, so they suck at everything they do. So they're not even going to be able to protect you very effectively. You know, I think one of the things is and and this is this is some so Chalmers Johnson. So my arena of like, but you can't even call it expertise. I'm just like a random guy with an opinion. But I guess my area of interest for the last 20 years or so because I was young when Iraq War 2 happened, is in Afghanistan is foreign policy. And so I relate this to like a foreign policy analogy. You know, Chalmers Johnson wrote a book in the early 2000s or the 1990s called Blowback. And basically what he said is, is like essentially violence begets violence.

28:36 That wasn't his words, but that was the point. You know, like like 911 was. There's a lot of things that went into 911. But but but 911, I mean, the lead hijacker, Mohammed Atta wrote down what he was thinking when he did what he did. And and when the I came up with the CIA or the FBI got a hold of, you know, the stuff that he had written to people that he knew and he had this like little manifesto and all this. He basically said that the reason that he joined up was because of US support for the Israeli war in southern Lebanon, where women and children had been killed. And so he joined up because he wanted to go and attack the United States for having supported Israel in this war in southern Lebanon. Well, if you go back further, Israel starts the war in southern Lebanon because of violence committed against them.

29:19 If you go back further, the violence was committed against them because of something that happened with Israel. And it's like it's just this never ending cycle of upward escalation when you when, when violence begets violence. And the problem is, and this is where blowback comes into play is a lot of times those, those consequences are not foreseen. You know, like, who would have thought that Israel goes to war in southern Lebanon. And that means that an Egyptian grad student jumps on a plane from Hamburg, Germany, flies to Florida for however many months, gets his training from Saudi intelligence officials, and then ends up bombing the World Trade Center. Like the, the the problem is, is violence begets violence, but you can't predict where the next violence is coming. And all of this stuff, all of this stuff is the enemy of freedom.

30:02 It is, see, war is, there's a, there's a saying war is the health of the state, but really violence is the health of the state. Fear is the health of the state. The reason that war is an effective tool to conjure up state power is because people are afraid of war. They don't want to die. They don't want people to kill them. And so that tool becomes a really effective way to wield power. And if you think about it, we live in an era where there's just like, no, really, like strong and like, and I don't mean strong, like, yeah, I'm a big tough guy. But like, truly, you know, like, strong, grounded men of God in positions of leadership that are willing to take bold stances even in the face of, you know, public pressure and public opposition because it is the right thing to do.

30:50 Like, major institutions are generally not led by people like that. But those are the people that find off ramps in episodes of major conflict. And if we don't have anybody like that, you know what's going to happen. The conflicts are just going to keep on escalating. And everybody's got to remember that fear and violence are the enemies of your freedom. So if you like your First Amendment and your Second Amendment and your 4th Amendment and you know all of them, the way you preserve that is by not being a part of this rabid cycle of escalation. Hold on. My computer is I had to plug in my computer. I didn't plug in. Rookie mistake.

31:31 No, you're good. Like like you said, we're going. Not quite live, but close. Yeah, All right. We're good. All right, So what was your initial reaction when you first saw what had happened? Well, well, when I so it depends when I saw the first video, which is from far away, the first thing that I thought was, Oh God, I hope that just grazed him. Then when I saw the close up video, I was like, oh, he's dead. I mean, that was there was just there was no way anyone survives that. And, and my reaction was, you know, like this guy's got kids, man. And oh, he's like, he's just like the nice guy. You know, you didn't, you didn't pick the, the inflammatory militant.

32:24 You know, you didn't pick the guy like Alex Jones that sits on his camera and yells. And I'm not saying it would be justified if it was Alex Jones. Of course it wouldn't. But I'm just saying that like the optics of this are going to be so inflammatory to people on the right because you picked the nicest of them. You picked the moderate guy and. Dude was less spicy than Ben Shapiro. Yes, yes, that is a great way to put that. And that's the guy you picked with two kids and this very nice wife that shows up in his photos occasionally and all these kinds of things and at his events and and that's the guy you picked. I just think, like, if you could find a way to drive more people on the right hard right, I can't think of what it would be.

33:10 I mean, in my mind, that is the only foreseeable outcome here. And that was what I thought at first. I was like, well, I guess the Overton Window just shifted to somewhere between Mussolini and Nazi, or Mussolini and Hitler, you know? I'm familiar with the Overton window, I've talked about it on here before, but why don't you tell people what that is? The way that I think of the Overton window is basically like the bounds of accept acceptable public discourse and ways of viewing an event. So like, you know, like our example, you know, like a really, a really good example of this is in America, at least for a while now, the, the the Overton window is probably best explained at least in the way that I understand it, by like by highlighting the extremes. So in America now, if you were a public figure and you were accused of being a communist, that is like a slander. But if you were accused of being a Nazi, that's like a real slander.

34:02 And so that tells you that that window of publicly acceptable opinion is somewhere to the left, right, because it would be worse to be a Nazi than a communist. Now, in, you know, actual history, of course, communists killed millions of more people than Nazis. They're all awful authoritarians. And I think, you know, Hitler and Stalin and Mao SEI tongue are all just languishing in outer darkness together. But but the fact that one of these was sort of like less incendiary than the other tells you where that window is. That's how I understand it. Yeah, it's, it's also used in in political negotiations, right. And we see this quite frequently. Like we saw the the Democrats were the master of this, by the way.

34:45 They would come out with some crazy far left stuff and say this is our proposal. And the Republicans would be like, whoa, no, we can never go that far. Well, then the Democrats would come back with still crazy, but way less crazy. Not way less crazy, just less crazy, right? And that's the window it shifted. Right, hold it to the. Left. Yep, they pulled it to the left, right. And they did it by opening the window wider in the initial hey, let's do this, and then it closed back down a little bit. But nonetheless, they still got the window open. Yep, and I mean and you know.

35:25 I forgot. Oh, go ahead. No, you go. I. Was just going to say, you know, I, I read the opinions of some of these, you know, young political commentary types on the Internet. And I mean, there is a growing number of people who are OK with being like, yeah, Hitler was a great figure in Europe, which tells you where this is going. I mean, there's there's there's a substantial number of young white American men in particular, and there's still not a huge amount, right? I mean, your average American guy is like Hitler. That guy was terrible. But it is way more than in the past where these young political commentators are saying things like, yeah, you know, I I like being identified with the brown shirts because he was a, you know, guardian of European culture against the tidal wave of, you know, communism. And dude, I mean, that is like, I just cannot think of something that could be more damaging to the cause of the American project, you know, I mean, like, you know, we are endowed with an from our creator with inalienable rights. Like that is the antithesis of the state gives you rights, you know, and that is the authoritarian mind state is that the state gives you rights.

36:49 And that was the Nazi party's, you know, mentality. That was their philosophy, is that your rights flowed from whatever helped the state, you know, in its pursuit of its ambitions. And I just, I just that Overton window man, especially among young men. And, and by the way, you know, let's talk about this for a minute. OK, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna get off into something else in the culture war. But I think this is, I think this is true. Young men are childless and unmarried and less sexually active and but like, not because they're less licentious just because they can't get married and less less prosperous and less hopeful for the future than young men have been at any documented point in American history.

37:39 And my great concern is that that is the recipe to generate a bunch of people without a cause that are looking for one. And if you give them, if they do not have the gospel in their hearts, they've got a gospel shaped hole and it's going to get filled by something. And it could be the state or the culture of America or something like that, that becomes the authoritarian statist idol for them to hopefully find something meaningful in their lives where they don't currently have it. And I think that's a risk. I also think the risk in that is that it's like, you know, in Vietnam, they used to call some of these like sort of perpetual cycles of like bombing and these are called the self licking ice cream cone essentially like just just, you know, it just creates its own, it just eats itself.

38:32 And and so one of the other things I think is the problem is, is women in the aggregate in the modern American culture have moved to the left. So men are young men are moving to the right and they're feeling terrible about things. Women are feeling reasonably good about things, at least in polling and stuff. I have questions about what that really means that like a soul level. But they're feeling reasonably good about things and they've got careers and a lot of them have independence, but they're moving even further to the left and they're less interested in children, they're less interested in families and all these kinds of things. And So what I see happening there is that problem making itself worse among young people. And I almost see this, this political divide as, how would I describe it, this political divide as like inherently one that would produce the worst outcomes.

39:24 Because when I think about these young men that are looking for something that is going to fulfill them and all these kinds of things, and they're fearful for the world and they're not optimistic and whatever. I mean, that is that is literally this is book written by Trevor Aaronson. So this probably blows away a lot of your readers, but I promise you this doesn't come from www.conspiracy.com or anything. This is absolutely just real stuff from real FBI reports. But there's this book from a guy named Trevor Aaronson, who was a journalist for salon.com back when salon.com actually did journalism in like, the 2000 and, you know, 5 to 13 range before they were just a liberal rag. And he wrote this book called The Terror Factory. What he did is he went through all of the supposed terror plots that were busted by the FBI inside the United States of America.

40:07 And it turned out that, like almost all of them were just all set up jobs. Like there was one where there was like some mentally disabled Pakistani kid who was like perpetually online living in his dad's basement, and he got set up by some FBI agent who told him that his uncle was training. Al Qaeda fighters to be on the Pakistani pole vaulting team or something like that, because they were just like the most in shape in the Pashtun regions. And so he sent his uncle money, he thought, and he ended up going to prison for this. And I think that's the story. Something insane like that. That's not exactly. It's something crazy like that ended up going to prison for this. But but the guys that actually, like were prepared to commit real, you know, acts of terrorism were inevitably young, hopeless, unmarried, childless men without jobs looking for a purpose to fulfill them. And like, this is the thing.

40:58 This is this is the most dangerous element of society. And they're the ones that need the gospel to truly be able to sublimate their inner masculine urges that are destructive in nature and channel them into positive energy and the kind of thing that builds the Salt Lake Temple. And so instead, if they don't have that because they don't have the gospel and we live in this godless age of, you know, screams and, and, and nihilism and, and just general confusion, they're going to fill it with something. And my concern is that it is going to be with authoritarian ideology, the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1940s.

41:38 Every man is religious, I don't care what anyone says. Every man is religious. It just depends on who your God is, right? Yep. And look, you and I both come from pretty godless backgrounds, right? And we figured out by the grace of God, I want to say right that. Amen. That you need something bigger than yourself to believe in if you're going to make it through right? There's no, there's no coincidence there that when you go to an, A, a meeting, one of the first things they'll tell you is you got to surrender yourself to a higher power. They don't tell you who it has to be. It could be Jesus, it could be, you know, Allah, it could be Buddha, it could be the Flying Spaghetti Monster from outer space.

42:32 But you better surrender something over something that's bigger and better than yourself, or else you're you're not going to make it interesting. Studies done about cancer patients or people facing horrendous situations, the more faith they had, the more ability they had to get it out. Every man is religious. For some men, it's a deity. For other men, it's the environment. For some men, it's the state. And the state is the problem. And I want to go back to something. And that is the story of Moses found in the Pearl.

43:13 Great price. So he's up there. He's on the mountain. The Lord comes to him. He's kind of wiped out and tired. And then another being of light shows up and he says, hey, here I am. I'm back. Worship me. Moses knows, though, you're an imposter. You're not the Savior, you're not God the Father. You are an imposter and we hear that Satan then like yells and causes the ground to shake so badly and then departs almost every time. Evil wants you to beg for the evil that they have to give to you. Yep.

43:57 Every time. It doesn't matter if it's Lucifer himself on the mountain with Moses, or political factions. When, when the violence gets bad enough, when the unrest gets bad enough, people will cry out for a strong man, as you were alluding to someone just to make it stop. And there will be a man or a group of men who are prepared to give you what you're asking for, right? Yep. How do we avoid that train wreck? We avoid that by not playing into the trap.

44:44 And look, I asked you what you your thoughts were as as soon as you watched it. I wept when I first saw it. Then I got pissed. Yeah. Then it was we need to go round up the blankety blanks. That blankety blank did this and blank the mainstream media and the whole ball of wax, right? But I had to stop for a minute and say none of this is productive, right? I'm only feeling worse and worse as I do this. It feels good in the moment. There's kind of some catharsis there and it's OK to experience that, but it's not OK to get give into that. We have to look at a better way than what has been modeled for us up to this point.

45:37 Riots they're not going to do with, they're not going to do it. You're you're going to play into their hand. They'll send the National Guard whatever it takes. What happened up at the Capitol January 2020 is what they want. Yes, that is what they want. Don't give them what they want, correct? Because as soon as you do, you are now the enemy. They. Will come. They will come for your freedoms and it won't stop it. Just the guns. Let's get that off the table right now. You want to know how a society like Britain ends up being Britain where you can go to jail for quote, dead naming someone. And that's where you would use the word he instead of she. If it was a male that said he was a female. How does that happen?

46:28 It happens because of some sort of intimidation. This is one more part of that. That is what you will lose. What we deem as godly and a divine will be considered outlawed if we strike out. It is so important in this moment to remain peaceful. Yeah, I mean, so I think what we need, so there's this concept that I just really admire in like Quranic studies, which is this idea that the Quran was written intentionally to have like multiple layers of meaning.

47:12 So you'll hear the esoteric and exoteric described, but but if you really get into the scholarship, the idea is that there's potentially infinite levels of meaning, right? And so a real story can also be an allegory. And I think, I think that that is the, and I'm gonna get the book wrong. But what is that in, in Judges or Chronicles where the, the woman rolls over on her baby and then she, they, they so, so, so for anybody not listen, anybody listening that doesn't know, right, I have to consider the possibility. There are people that have not read the Bible that are, that are listening to the story. So there's these two women that are living in a house together and they both have newborns. And I think it even specifies that they're harlots or something like that.

47:53 So they both have newborns and they're sleeping at night. And back then, of course you would have slept with your baby. And one of the women rolls over onto her baby and kills it, suffocates the baby. And the two women wake up in the morning and one woman finds the dead baby next to her, but she she recognizes that it's not her baby. It's essentially the other woman swapped the babies. So now what do you do? Right? Like, how do you, like, you could see how the, the, that could just immediately turn into escalatory violence. I'm just going to kill you and take the baby.

48:33 But then now what? Now you've got a dead baby and her mother in your house. And then that could turn bad for you. And then your kid could be motherless now. And I mean, it sounds like the kids already fatherless if they're heartless. And so you could see how like violence begets violence. And So what happens is the two women go to Solomon and Solomon in his wisdom, remember, Solomon prayed. He was told to ask for whatever he wanted from God, and he prayed for wisdom that he might rule his people effectively. So I think that's really, really important. God granted him because that's what he asked for. He said, give me wisdom. And God said, OK, if that's what you want, that's good. He said you could ask for anything, but you ask for wisdom, I will give it to you so that you could rule the people. So these two women go to Solomon and then there's the live baby. They've got the live baby with them and, and, and, and they both say, hey, this is my baby.

49:23 And the other woman rolled over on him and, or on her own baby and, and killed him. And so this baby that's living is mine. And they both say this and Solomon says, all right, give me the baby. And so they give him the baby and he says he's going to cut the baby in half and he's going to give 1/2 to each of them. And what he's doing is he's calling their bluff. And so the, so the, so the one woman whose baby, the live baby was not the woman who rolled over on her baby says, yeah, let's do that. Give me half the baby and her half the baby, 'cause then we'll, you know, whatever. And the other woman says she can have him, it's fine. And Solomon says, then that makes you the mother because you are the one who has selfless love.

50:05 That's not his exact words. But that's the point is she has selfless love. Well, so I think there's like multiple layers of meaning right there. One of them is like the proper kind of love for a parent to a child. And the other one is like, how sick and twisted do you have to be to to try and steal someone's baby? But then another layer of meaning, and this is where I think it's kind of like a true story and also an allegory is that I think Solomon in that role serves as an allegory for the kind of judicious wisdom that we have to have at the helm of a system that is truly rooted in law. And I think that like we have no Solomon's right now. And that's what we need is like somebody that has that kind of pressure, not even somebody, but like a system that has that kind of prescience and wisdom.

50:56 And I think we had that. I think that's how this country was founded. But I think from the start, you know, the freedoms had been whittled away. And I think I think there were periods of extreme diminishing of freedoms, like, you know, basically all the wars. I mean, you're, you know, during the Civil War, you know, one of the things they don't tell you is the number of journalists. Abraham Lincoln jailed, it was some insane number. It was like half of the journalists operating in the Northeast. Extra judicial killings, like, you know, all kinds of things that were happening in during the Civil War. And they're all kinds of freedoms that people lost. And then in the First World War, they lost a little more in the second. They lost a lot. I mean, that was a full scale government takeover, the economy. And then and then, you know, Vietnam and Korea, they were sort of like, you know, they were healthy for the state, but kind of blips on the radar for freedom.

51:42 And then you got 911 and we really lost a lot. And then COVID, which I guess was not a war, but was as good of one in terms of being a boon for, you know, those that would take our rights. I mean, we're to a place now where this is a very unrecognizable state of affairs versus what Thomas Jefferson would have known. And I think we had freedom and we had a system that was, you know, righteous in its mechanism of judgement and was like, sort of like the manifestation of the wisdom of Solomon. But we've lost that. And I think that's what we need is some way to restore that kind of rule. I don't know how we're getting there, though.

52:22 That's the crisis. Well, it's funny, you know, one of the things I had thought of probably 5-6 years ago. The only way that I think we can truly win this is by kind of making the government irrelevant. And let me explain what I mean by that. I'm not saying go total anarchy. What I'm saying is stop making everything the state's responsibility. You see your neighbors struggling, you go relieve his his suffering, right? Look, last time I checked Jesus didn't say hey if you see someone struggling, go ahead and give more to Caesar and then ask Caesar to go fix it.

53:09 Yes, correct the. Savior gave a direct mandate to go help your neighbor, correct? Look after the widows and the orphans to take care of those who are in in distress. He didn't farm that out to a big organization, he said. You go do it. This is your Commission that I am giving you. Well, and if you think about it, sorry, go ahead. If we want that kind of system back, then we have to take responsibility for it, right? We have to be the change we want to see. And you said something else that was interesting, right? We don't have anybody in that system right now with the wisdom of Solomon, because this time I think God wants us to do it.

53:56 I think we've tried the whole let's get the one man to fix that, right? Whether that's the one man in religion or whether that is one man in the government, it does not work, right. We have to be that change we want to see. Yep. That comes with some work and that comes with a hell of a lot of responsibility. Well, you know what I do think that the, the lessons of the last 50 years have taught us is that like, you know, like to, to, to, to, to go down this path of, of how do you keep your freedom? Well, first of all, not being violent. Violence always begets more violence and it begets a loss of freedoms. But if we wanted to restore our freedoms, I think first of all, and this is like, this is just so cheesy for me as a Mormon, not a Mormon podcast to say this, but like, I mean, we get people got to find Jesus, man, like they got to do that. That's, that's like, we got it.

54:44 I feel like there's two things we got to get the gospel out there. But then the second thing is to make the government irrelevant. I think we need, like, a culture of civil disobedience. So one of the reasons that the Soviet Union collapsed, and you can read this in accounts at the time, is that, like, at some point, people just stopped listening to them. Like, you were supposed to get your bread from the bread line. You know, the local factory that gave you your allotment based on the number of children you had and how old they were and all that type of stuff. But eventually, people just started setting up bread shops, and they were illegal, and they didn't have any currency they could use because the ruble was so completely devalued. But they, like, traded things for this stuff. And eventually, and I'm not saying that we should just, like, suddenly, you know, have a barter economy, and that's the way out. Maybe if things get bad enough, we have no choice. But, like, people just kind of stopped listening. And then, I mean, that might have been the greatest miracle of the 20th century, that the Soviet Union fell without any major wars.

55:42 I mean, you got all of these old factions in Europe and in Central Asia that could have absolutely gone to just genocide a war. And there've been some lingering conflicts, you know, Russia and Georgia, Russia and Ukraine. You know, there was some some violence between, oh God, was it like the Turks, Turkmen and the Uzbeks or something? But for the most part, you know, the Czech Republic and Romania and Belarus and Bulgaria, I mean, a lot of these countries just, they just saw the Iron Curtain fall away and no one killed anybody. And it was basically just freedom was restored. And it was because they just didn't listen anymore. They're like, yeah, whatever. It doesn't matter. You have some stupid law and I don't care. And I think right now, you know, one of the things is like, we saw this during COVID too.

56:27 You know, I never once wore a mask in a store ever during COVID. And I had several people that were like, put your mask on and I'd be like, OK. And then I just didn't. And nothing, no one ever did anything about it. And, and, and it got to a point where in my town that I was living in at the time, which was in Arizona, it's called Wickenburg. It's a little cowboy town on the middle of nowhere. In the very beginning, everybody in the store was wearing a mask except me. I was like the alien. By the time like the early 2021 rolled around, nobody was doing it anymore. Even the employees weren't. And what, even though there was, there was a, there was a, there was a rule in place in Maricopa County that like your business had to require this and had to enforce it. And they just didn't. And like that's the power of us taking accountability for our own welfare and that of our neighbors. And if we find Christ, we have the incentive to do that. You know, one of the things that I think is really what's really interesting that you said is the idea that we outsource these functions to the government, right? And if you think about it, there's really no function that at this point we haven't, if we haven't outsourced that, we've tried, we've outsourced our health to the government, right? We, I mean, public health is outsourcing health to the government, you know, I mean, and just just think about this or I'm not going to get like off in a conspiracy land here, but just think about like the hepatitis B vaccine. Hepatitis B is a vaccine that is given to a one day old infant to protect against a sexually transmitted disease disease and its immunity wears off by the time the kid reaches sexual maturity.

57:58 Like there is no point to that. And yet millions and millions of parents have hospitals administer that to their children when they're born because they trust that the government has their health interests and understanding in mind. We've outsourced our childcare to the government, you know, or at least to other people who are not our children before they get to school age. And then once they get to school age, then it is really just outsourced to the government. We've outsourced our security to the government. How many layers of, you know, in Texas here, for example, where I live in, in, in just one area, I have city police, county police, what are called the local district constables. I live 4 miles from the border.

58:41 So there's also Border Patrol down here. There's the state police and occasionally, well, I guess they're a part of the state police, but then you'll see like the Rangers. And so I've got like 7 or 8 police jurisdictions that have, you know, enforcement jurisdiction over my like, house where I live. And, and, and, and, you know, like, I'm not saying that we don't need a, a police function or something, but like, you know, we, we call the, we call the cops when, you know, I don't know, we hear a noise outside. Like maybe it's kind of just the job of like a man to go investigate the noise before we, you know, call the government to come and save us.

59:23 So that's that famous Ronald Reagan quote, which of course is hilarious because of how much bureaucracy Ronald Reagan created in his lifetime in Iran Contra and a massive debt and all these kinds of things. But he said, you know, what, what's the thing that you don't want to hear? I'm from the government, I'm here to help. And, and, you know, like, I mean, we just, we outsource all of these functions to the governments and they do a terrible job. We also have welfare to the government. You know, once Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty started, you know, we used to have these things called mutual aid societies. Encourage anybody to go read this. This is absolutely true. These things called mutual aid societies and it's groups of people that would get together on some like common basis and then they would just help each other in, you know, in ways that were like material. And so like, you know, you might have them along like racial or ethnic lines, maybe have like the Chinese mutual aid society in San Francisco or something, or you might have them along religious lines. You've got the Methodist Mutual Aid Society of, you know, southern Milwaukee and, and you got all these little groups of people that are just trying to help other people. Because we didn't think that it was the government's job to do it.

1:00:22 And then Lyndon B Johnson starts this war on poverty. And what do you know, poverty, which had been declining in the United States for 200 straight years, just flat lines. And now it's the same as it was back then in terms of the rate of poverty. You know, we've outsourced all of these things. And it's like if we just, like you said, if we sort of just made them irrelevant through a process of civil disobedience and taking our lives into our own hands, not like in a vigilant any kind of a way, but just in like, I don't care what you have to say sort of a way. I'm gonna do a better job than you are 'cause you suck anyway, 'cause you're the government. And if we could just, I say that like it's so simple. Just spread the gospel. That is probably the antidote, you know.

1:01:05 No, it absolutely is the antidote, right? I almost feel a loss of words at this point. Yeah, Because I just feel like it, it's hopefully this is the thing that shakes us from from our apathy on this, right? Hopefully this is the last time we have to see this and to to to have to witness something horrible. You know, there, there is one thing I would I would point out here, which is, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm curious your opinion on this. So I guess maybe this is half a statement and half a question. But when it comes to like high profile assassinations and assassination attempts, I don't know that there's ever really a lone wolf.

1:01:54 You know, people say, oh, well, what if this is a what if this is a lone actor, you know, and, and he just, he's just some guy and he's got a chip on his shoulder and whatever. But is there a soul in America that believes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted by himself? You know, You know. It's, it's a good point. And I'm going to be honest with you, I'm not ready to go quite there yet just because this is all really fresh, right? And I, I don't want to start speculating on anything that I can't, can't come up with a reasonable hypothesis for, right. But I do think what you're saying speaks to, to something else, right? And that is just the amount of distrust we have. Yep.

1:02:34 From, from, from our, our systems, right? We look, they, they fostered that they came by it honestly. But nonetheless, it's still detrimental. And so I'm not saying we should believe a lie, but I think I think sometimes we need to set with things for a minute and let them soak in before we we go there. Well, and I certainly have, I certainly have no like conviction that it, you know, I don't know, it was some state actor or something, but but in 2025 America, you have to wonder, you know, like I mean, and, and, and the lies have been so blatant. You know, I remember this to bring it back to foreign policy. I think a lot of your older, well, not older listeners, but maybe listeners like in their 30s and 40s and 50s will remember this.

1:03:19 In the in the mid 2000s, we were still on the hunt for Bin Laden and all that stuff. After 911, they kept like, you know, supposedly issuing these videos of like Bin Laden, you know, talking in these caves and all this kind of, and this again, this is not from www.conspiracy.com. This is all, this is all actually debunked in places like, you know, the New York Times and the Atlantic and stuff. They were playing these videos of bin Laden supposedly giving these speeches about, you know, America being the great Satan and all these things which he which he absolutely said. But supposedly he's he's giving these speeches like on the run and we're just like trying to figure out where he's transmitting from. And also almost all of them turned out to be old recycled tapes that most Americans hadn't seen, that weren't even doctored. They were just replayed by the news media as look at this new tape that bin Laden's, you know, American PR arm released for us to play for you, to tell you how much he hates you. And it turned out to be, you know, there was one that was in 2004 that was really famous that turned out to be from a 1997 speech that he gave to some, you know, I don't know, some jihadist group in Jordan or some something like that account. But like, that is a blatant lie from the people that are supposed to be feeding you the truth. And so I, I, I have absolutely no idea for all I know could have been someone deranged psycho with a chip on his shoulder over who knows what kind of sick thing, you know what I mean?

1:04:41 But having been lied to so many times by the powers that be in the media establishment, if nothing else, as an American in 2025, you almost just have to ask the question like, what could be at play here? And I have no answers for that, by the way. I have spent zero time reflecting on that. It's just like an instinctive reaction that I have to an event like this is could be some nut job. Could there be more? I I don't know as of right now and I've been watching the news here. That's why I've been looking away a little bit. There's still no no shooter in in custody. They released the one person of interest and so there's there was a.

1:05:21 Video that they that they released they it was like an accident. Somebody was like filming the crowd and on the top of one of the buildings in the distance, you could see somebody running away and then like either going down like what like a flight of stairs or like diving over an edge or something. But essentially they just like disappear off the top of the building and so there was someone up there. Yep, absolutely. I I don't think it's happenstance. This happened in Utah in the reddest county in America. Yeah, right. I think that's and, and I'm not going to speculate on that. I'm going to let everybody else kind of figure out what that means.

1:06:05 But I don't think that was an accident. And I do think there's some significance there that we have to be aware of as Mormons. I think there's some stuff there. But like I said, I'm not ready to broach that yet. This is all really fresh, but I felt like something had to be said. Yeah, I mean, in terms of like cosmic significance, you could, you could kind of like, I mean, it's just, you know, if, if it's all if, even if it's all part of some cosmic plan, a good one or a bad one. The adversaries are gods and I guess maybe at the end it's all part of God's plan because it's the plan of salvation. But it but if it's all part of the adversary's plan, I mean there is some kind of like rub your nose in the collapse symbology to a friendly, upstanding, kind of moderate family man being assassinated in what is probably the most gospel filled county in America of that size. Yeah, no, it it's true.

1:07:09 I I couldn't help but think about that. Yeah. I'm going to say a few more things here and then we're going to have to run here. Yep, that's but I've held on to this story for, I don't know, trying to think back when this was probably since since late winter, early spring, I got a call. Gosh, I thought I'd be years before I shared this. I got a call. It was like I said back in in late late winter, early spring from one of my kids and she had been through something absolutely horrific.

1:07:58 And thank God I have brothers near me. I mean that thank God not not like in the say it just haphazardly, but thank the Lord Almighty that I had brothers around me at that time because 1 jumped in. We we rode together to go get my daughter and Adam. In that moment, I was, I was only wanting blood. All I wanted, I wanted to find the perpetrator and I wanted to be done with them. And I had just released an episode about the Oath of vengeance where I made the point in that, in that podcast that praying the oath of vengeance, which interestingly enough, is the only covenant that you were explicitly told to go talk about outside the temple, that you'll teach your kids this. It's actually a pretty civilizing doctrine, right? Because what it says is, is that you're not going to be the arm of justice or the hand of God's justice, but that you're going to pray that God's justice is done. And tonight I feel like that is probably more applicable than in a lot of other nights after what

1:09:33 we saw. Yeah. Adam talked earlier about finding the off ramps on this highway of self destruction we seem to be on. If you haven't got off that highway, now is the time. You don't have very many off ramps after this from here. The next stop I think is is destruction if we don't get it together and get it together quickly. I, I would, I would, I would say, I think people need to realize they need an off ramp. So if you are on a team, if you are on team MAGA or Team Blue Sky or Team whatever, and you don't see teams as a vehicle to an outcome that is better than the one that we have now, but you are a part of 1 and it's not just team God, then you might need an off ramp.

1:10:26 You know, and I'm not saying that like, you know, you shouldn't have voted for Donald Trump or something, right? Like I think, I think that teams can be useful vehicles to the achievement of ends, which are better than the things that we have now in the political arena especially. But you can't be beholden to 1. You can behold, you can be beholden only to God. And if you feel like you're on a team, you probably need an off ramp. Yep, that off ramp, just just as Adam said, that's Jesus, right? That is, get your lives in order, right? And by order, I don't mean just get your monthly household bills in the line. That would be great too.

1:11:12 But more than any of that, you have got to plant your feet on the rock of revelation and of the gospel. Yep. Because that's the only thing, if you allow, if you wait to make the decision until the decision's in your face, there is a good possibility you are going to choose wrong. I guarantee you all the people that showed up in Washington in January of 2020, none of them have the thought of going into the capital and doing going through there, right? Look, is that the worst thing that could have happened to America? Absolutely not. But nonetheless, a lot of people put themselves in a lot of silly positions to get hammered and a little more revelation. And I think people would have shield away from that because they were egged on, right?

1:12:05 And I think that in some way, whether it was planned or whether they're just going to take advantage of a situation again, they want you to strike out. And it's going to be so easy to do. I was just on social media all day off and on looking at stuff. And to listen to some of the vitriolic, quite frankly, demonic things people were saying about Kirk's death was infuriating beyond measure. But nonetheless, we have to say peaceful, we have to be better than what we have been before because quite frankly, our kids, freedom and well-being rest on that. So tonight I think that.

1:12:57 Oh, go ahead. No, you first. I was. Just saying, I think it's important to remember too, that like, you know, when you find, when you find God, when you find the gospel, when you find Christ, you know, Mormonism is kind of uniquely positioned as like the religion of freedom, right? I mean, I mean, you've heard it a million times from everybody. We all have our free will to, you know, make the right and the wrong decisions. And the Lord gives us the opportunity to make the right ones so that they're meaningful and we've earned the credit when we make them. And it's in the DNC. We believe that governments are instituted of God for the security of, you know, for securing of liberty and property and for the free exercise of religion. And I mean, it might as well be the Declaration of Independence. And the whole point is, you know, freedom is God's way and, and, but you need God to be able to operate in a state of freedom.

1:13:48 And so the political outcomes here for whoever is on a team cannot be less freedom. It must be. Did I freeze? You did. Oh man. Well, whatever. No, go ahead and finish that if you can. Where? Did I leave off? What was the last thing you heard?

1:14:30 If we want to live in a state of freedom. Yeah, if we want to live in a state of freedom, we need God. Like that's kind of the problem, right, Is if you've got freedom, but then you have a bunch of nihilistic, you know, violently disposed people, then you have chaos. And so, you know, you got to find God and you got to find Christ and the gospel. And that's the off ramp. But the off ramp means freedom. That is the proper order of political society. And if you're, you know, disposition towards the reaction of all of this is less freedom, then you've got it wrong. You need more God and that will mean more freedom for all of us in the long term. Absolutely. As I went back, I I just kind of didn't exercise and and look, I've watched Charlie Kirk videos for a few years now and like you were saying, didn't agree with him on everything. But he made a lot of excellent points that deserved consideration and I honestly felt like he was a good example of how you disagree agreeably.

1:15:35 Right. That's the biggest point. He he disagreed very agreeably and there were certain videos where you saw even those he was arguing against walk away feeling like gosh, I disagree with him vehemently, but he's not a bad guy. Yep, right. And excuse me, his death will amount to not much unless we learn that lesson now. Yeah. He had better start figuring out how to disagree agreeably or we don't stand a chance. Yep.

1:16:18 And that is where it's at. How you do that is you get so familiar with the Savior, you make him your goal, you make Him the center of your life and all your relationships and all of your dealings with man. And you can get to that point that Charlie Kirk was at. Amen. But if we do not walk up to that example that was set for us, it will amount to nothing. Yep, and I for one am not ready to go down that road. So tonight as you gather your kids up and you say your prayers, you read your scripture, we doubled those efforts to get closer to the Savior because it's just not yours that's on the line, or even your kids for that matter. In the coming days I fear we're going to have to be the people that say don't go down the dark Rd., don't go looking for blood, turn around, come this way, come towards the God of light and life.

1:17:21 Right now I can't think of a better scripture to quote than the one out of the Old Testament. Choose this day. Life or death. Those are the choices that are placed before us right now and the natural man. It's going to feel real good to strike out, but that way leads to death. Being peaceful, loving your children and your wife and your, your chil and your, your, your neighbors and even those you disagree with, I think is becoming more important by the minute now. And we now have to be the people that we all coveted and said we were going to be.

1:18:10 And I, I just hope we do that. I hope. I hope if there's some good that comes out of this, it's an inflection point at which we all stop for a moment and and realize that maybe we need to tone things down just a bit. And I want to say this, don't ever sacrifice on your principles, right? Stand your ground on your principles. I'm not saying to become weak in those things. You need to stand for them. But I think Gandhi showed us a lot of things, right? And Gandhi talked about he modeled his movement after the movement of the New Testament, which is peaceful, nonviolent disobedience. Yep.

1:18:57 If we can go down that road, we win, Yep, But if we get violent, we lose. So that would be my prayer tonight is find, find the bit of light in you that you don't think you have because it's there. And as a guy who failed at that, fortunately I didn't do anything stupid when I had to go get my daughter. I wanted to real bad. I understand that. And I think maybe, I think maybe today of all days is why I had to go through that so I could talk to you about this with authenticity. You want blood, I get it, but only more blood and death. Lead down that road in hell.

1:19:42 Stay peaceful. Love more than you. You hate. Gather your family together. Hold them tight. Tonight, say a prayer for Charlie's family. They're going to need it in the coming months and weeks. Pray for our nation. Pray for our survival. Pray that God's will will be done in these and leave it in His name. And I leave this with you, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Amen. Adam, anything you want to add before you you take off, brother. No, I mean, I think that was a good way to conclude I'm I'm fearful that that blood instinct in a godless nation is going to be more powerful than it ought. But we will pray that it will not. I'm oddly hopeful at this moment. Hurt, yeah.

1:20:32 Wounded, but oddly hopeful. I hope this is, I hope this is the inflection point we need. I hope, you know, I there was an account in the Civil War right before the Civil War when things were just about ready to go to gunshots in America, where a man was beaten halfway to death in the Senate. Well, by another senator. I think this is that moment for us. We're going to get to choose what it is we want to do. And I think and I hope and I pray that we've, we've done the work necessary.

1:21:16 So Adam, I love you, brother. We'll we'll talk again soon. Yes Sir. Love you too man. And we will. We'll talk soon for sure, hopefully on a subject that is more, yes, uplifting and happy than this. Yes, absolutely. Well, dude, I appreciate you jumping on. I appreciate you offering to come on. I was just planning on doing them, you know, something solo tonight. But when you said you wanted to come on, I'm like, well, yes, thank you. So you were definitely inspired there. Yeah, Hopefully this was insightful for somebody that listens to this and it does some value of some kind. That's all I can hope for. I hope so too. All right, dude, hang out for 5 minutes, all right?

1:21:57 Yeah, man. All right. Bye everybody.