Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Roger Simon in studio to discuss America’s values, a growing disdain for God, and the social creation of transgenderism.
Leahy: All-star panelist, Roger Simon in studio. Roger, this week, we really can’t talk about anything other than the Covenant Presbyterian shooting of six innocent souls by a deranged mentally ill 28-year-old woman who identified as transgender. Now I look at these things Roger and I look at what kind of tactical things should be done.
And so let me just tell you a couple of things specific to this incident. We had a fellow named Aaron Spradlin with Pale Horse Security company talk to us about this. And then actually our friend Dennis Farrier at Fox 17 wrote a story about it.
In essence, they said, look, if you’ve got a school or anything that needs to be protected and you’ve got glass windows, glass doors, you need to put on either ballistic film onto existing doors so that bullets will not penetrate and allow access, or just order the ballistic glass so that bullets won’t penetrate it. That’s step number one. They didn’t at Covenant.
Simon: Evidently.
Leahy: Yes. Evidently. And of course, you think about this and it’s a small K-6 school with 200 kids. It has been around for 22 years and obviously, hindsight is 20/20. But if you have a small school right now or anybody who has a school and you’ve got glass openings, you must get ballistic film and or ballistic glass it seems to me. Step one, right?
Simon: You can go all over neighborhoods where there’s a lot of crime, you can see that everybody’s got steel gates.
Leahy: Now there’s one other thing, our friend John Harris at Tennessee Firearms Association had said the following: Tennessee’s private schools have the authority to establish firearm-friendly policies.
The legislature passed laws and signed in law in 2016 that said you can set up your own private carry policy for whatever school you have. That’s been in effect for seven years. It seems to me that those are two tactical and practical things that if you operate a school you must do today.
Simon: Too bad it’s only in Tennessee. I agree with you completely. What we’re battling is an overall decline in values in America. There was a recent poll, and I think it was Pew. It’s only a few days ago, so I should remember who did.
Leahy: Might be Gallup.
Simon: One of ’em. In the last couple of years, a drastic lowering of values in this country, including religious belief which is cut half out of 20 percent of the country. In that atmosphere with no overall values and beliefs on the part of the public other than in interestingly enough, the only one that went up was a belief in money.
Leahy: I saw that.
Simon: How sad. Anyway that being the case, you’re going to get situations like this regularly. If no one believes they’re going to hell, let’s put it that way, they’re going to go and shoot up anything. I don’t know how to even put my head around it, but obviously, those tactical solutions are mandatory. That’s the least that you can do.
Leahy: It almost reminds me a little bit, I don’t know if you’ve been to Mexico City or Mexico and you go down there it’s been, I think 20 years since I’ve been to Mexico, but when I went down there on a business project, you’re going around Mexico City and you look at the banks or the schools, there’s somebody with a machine gun outside there. And I thought, man, this is a bad sign for society. Roger, here in the United States, we’re sort of moving in that direction.
Simon: Definitely. I’m a Jewish guy and I’m very aware that there’s a similar thing if you go to Paris and where there are quite several Jews living there, there are people with machine guns standing in front of their institutions. This is the way of our unfortunate world. And as weaponry gets more powerful is necessary.
Leahy: Roger, we’ve known each other for a long time. We’ve not specifically talked about this, but this actually might be a good time to bring this up. I was raised Catholic and I believe in God.
I am an evangelical Christian. You said you’re Jewish. Would you consider yourself that you were born Jewish and culturally Jewish, or would you say that you are believing in Judaism and believe in God?
Simon: I believe in God. I don’t believe in all the specifics of any religion although I certainly followed the Jewish tradition and I’m a part of it. And I respect it. And as with Christians, I know here in Nashville, many of my friends are evangelical Christians. I see all different kinds of beliefs. That’s fine. The overall belief in God is probably what we need.
Leahy: You would then agree with probably Oz Guinness, who’s talked about this, the Golden Triangle of Freedom that it, that faith requires virtue creates freedom.
Simon: Yes.
Leahy: And it’s a golden triangle that just keeps repeating.
Simon: I totally agree with that. I think you’re right, actually.
Leahy: And why are there institutional pressures out regarding a lack of God in America today?
Simon: Whoa. Big question. The thing about that is that years ago I would’ve said, oh, it’s a lot of neuroses.
Leahy: You would’ve said that years ago.
Simon: And now I have to look at the, what we call the e word, evil.
Leahy: Sometimes you say, and I framed that a very specific way because when people talk about a neurosis like that, you would say what evidence do you have? If there’s an organized conspiracy, I don’t know if there is an organized conspiracy, but it’s like any kind of movement where people have a similar mindset. They are aligned. They don’t have to have an organized conspiracy to act in concert.
Simon: True. And now, all of a sudden I’m starting to realize why Sodom and Gomorrah exist in the Bible.
Leahy: Tell us why you feel that way.
Simon: I think things in our culture have just gone too far. I’m all for tolerance of people because I agree with Lady Gaga in most interest in they were born that way.
Leahy: You’re talking about the gay thing. But some percentage of people are gay or are born that way. Some people are actually, probably I think influenced by social pressures. But the whole transgenderism to me is absolutely a social creation.
Simon: Yes. A very minute portion of humanity is born intersex, as they say.
Leahy: Like one-tenth of one percent?
Simon: I think we all have compassion for people like that. The illusion that’s going on and the big lie is that people weren’t tolerant and compassionate about people who got a bad deal.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
