Live from Music Row Friday 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. – guest host Christina Botteri welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio who outlined several issues wrong with the 1619 Project and how it was the Democrat Party that has historically always been against minorities.
Botteri: In the studio with me, the original all-star panelist. And we were having an animated discussion over the break about a great many things. But Crom, you wanted to circle back to some of the things that we were talking about in the previous segment with Dr. Ibram Kendi. Tell us about that.
Carmichael: Dr. Kendi is a big supporter of Critical Race Theory and is a big supporter of the 1619 Project. And the 1619 Project essentially posits is that our country started in 1619 when the first Black slaves, and there were between 20 and 40 who arrived in Jamestown and that’s when the country started.
And that all of what happened since then in our country is because of slavery. And that our Declaration of Independence is because of slavery. Our Constitution is because of slavery. Our economic growth is because of slavery and all these different things.
They ascribe all that. But slavery was not unique to this geography. And I say this geography because we weren’t a country until well after that. We had to fight a war of independence to become our own country and to have our own laws, and not live under British laws.
The original slavery in this country was a British institution. It wasn’t a constitutional institution because we didn’t have a Constitution. But what they posit is that all this economic growth and everything wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for slavery, and we wouldn’t have the government institutions.
So they say that all of our government institutions are based on slavery also. Well, there was a lot of slavery in the world for hundreds of years prior to 1619. And if slavery ends up generating the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, our form of government, and our robust economy, if it does all those things, then why didn’t it do it in other countries that had even more slavery?
They should even be more robust than ours. But it didn’t happen in the other countries because the 1619 proposition is fundamentally flawed in kind and Kendi promotes that as truth. When somebody gets up and promotes something that is false as truth, we call that person Anthony Fauci. (Botteri laughs)
Botteri: Duh duh duh.
Carmichael: (Chuckles) So Kendi promotes a Critical Race Theory that maintains that there is systemic racism. Now, I will argue that there is institutional racism and there’s always been institutional racism.
And the institutional racism that we’ve had has been something that the Democrat Party has pushed for 200 or 300 years. The Klu Klux Klan was at that time what Antifa is today. It was the militant wing of the Democrat Party, the Klu Klux Klan.
It’s amazing to me that Biden goes to Tulsa and says what he says, not recognizing, I guess he didn’t even know that it was the Klu Klux Klan that did in Tulsa 100 years ago and what happened to the Black business community and the Black people in Tulsa.
It was the Klu Klux Klan. The Klu Klux Klan was formed by the Democrat Party. It was exalted at many Democrat conventions during those years. The Jim Crow laws that Biden says are terrible, those are Democrat institutions.
And so here you have Kendi, who is talking about the history of our country but he completely ignores the fact that the Democrat Party was the party of slavery and is the party today that forces Black and Hispanic children to go to terrible schools.
He ignores every bit of that because he has a different agenda. And part of his agenda is to make $25,000. for each one of his speeches. So he’s a very wealthy guy and he’s a very famous guy.
The book I’m reading right now is a book about Muhammad Ali. It’s called The Left Hook That Dazed Ali and Destroyed King’s Dream. Because Ali could have chosen to support Martin Luther King. King’s dream speech was in 1963. That was the year of the dream speech. That was about the same year that Ali became a Muslim.
Botteri: After, by the way, Democrats killed the Civil Rights Act I think that would be for the second time. The Civil Rights Act was brought up by Republicans in 1957 for the first time. It took several iterations before it finally passed.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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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.
Photo “Ibram X. Kendi” by Montclair Film. CC BY 2.0.
Live from Music Row Friday 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. – guest host Christina Botteri welcomed Fox Nation contributor and host of “No Interruption,” Tomi Lahren to the newsmakers line live from Santa Monica, California to discuss mask freedom, Gavin Newsom recall efforts, and the growing homelessness in the Golden State.
Botteri: And on the line with us right now is the one and only Tomi Lahren. Tomi, thank you so much for joining us this morning. How are you?
Lahren: I’m happy to be here. And I got to tell you guys, I’m not Nashville, Tennessee, this morning. I am in Santa Monica, California – and I got to tell you, I’m really missing some Tennessee.
Botteri: (Laughs) Oh, no! So what you’re saying is you are wearing a mask? (Laughter)
Lahren: I refuse to do that. I don’t know if anybody follows me on Twitter or on Instagram, but I think that they are well aware that I am unmasked and at full capacity at one of those things.
And you know what? I’m actually proud to say that a lot of Californians, even though they don’t officially lift their little mask mandate until June 15, a lot of Californians aren’t playing ball anymore.
So I have to say, maybe a little bit of Tennessee is rubbing off on the Golden State. I love to see it.
Botteri: Oh, that is great news. I’m serious, all jokes aside, that is great news, Tomi. Thank you for sharing that. That kind of makes me glad, because it is a beautiful place, Santa Monica and all of California, for that matter, it really is.
And to just be all hold up. Can we just talk about it for one little second, what a weird sensation it is to wear these dumb masks? Because when you’re at the airport, that’s like a whole other thing.
When you’re on an airplane, but your vision is cut off, your breathing is off. Just everything about it is the worst. I mean, I suppose there are worse things in the world, but not many.
Lahren: (Chuckles) I’ve been calling it a face diaper for about a year-and-a-half-now. But here’s the thing. And this is what I tell people, and I understand it. And this has long been my approach to it.
If a private business or an employer wants to require masks, as we know, I’m all about that. They have the right to do that, and we have the right, not to patronize those establishments. So I fully understand that their right to do it.
But when the government and as we had, as you guys know, in Nashville, when we have the government putting a mask mandate in place, that’s where I draw the line. And I for a long time said this, even when we were in Nashville under that mask mandate and when I would travel outside of the airport, I would say, listen, I’m not going to wear a mask.
If someone wants to approach me and tell me to wear a mask will have a little discussion. But it’s funny when you go unmasked, it’s like people look at you and now they finally feel like they cannot wear a mask because they were just waiting for that one person to be the first one to say, I choose freedom.
And they’ll look at you in relief. And they’ll say, oh, thank goodness. I’m taking my mask off, too. And that’s, my friends, is how we start changing things.
Botteri: I love it, Tomi. You’re totally right.
Carmichael: Tomi, this is Crom. Do you have any thoughts since you’re out there in the middle of California, what’s your sense being on the ground out there, the recall of Gavin Newsom?
Lahren: I have been somebody who’s gone after Gavin Newsom for several years. I used to live here in LA. I lived here for three years, and I became very invested in California politics. And I’ll tell you, the recall is going to happen.
I believe that it will be successful. And Gavin Newsom, for those that aren’t familiar with California and California politics, all the bad policies that have been adopted by the Biden administration, those policies were tested and failed here in California.
And that’s what becoming nationalized, even in Nashville with our Mayor, who I call John ‘Chicken’ Cooper. A lot of the failed policies that he would implement and the taxations that he would use to get out of his own problems.
Those are all ideas that started here. And Californians on the left and the right, because this recall is not just a Republican recall. There are not enough Republicans in California to accomplish what they accomplished with those recall signatures.
These are Californians standing up and saying, you know what? We’re tired of the tyranny, we’re tired of the infringements, you shut us down needlessly. Other states stayed open. Tennessee being one of them, that kind of was able to stay somewhat open.
Florida, obviously my home state of South Dakota. So Californians are looking at their leaders, saying, no more, buddy. And I believe it’s going to be successful. They will get rid of Gavin Newsom.
Carmichael: If they get rid of Gavin Newsom, that’ll be an earthquake in the political world. And I hope you’re right for the sake of Californians. I was looking at an article for the amount of shoplifting in California since California changed the law that you have to shoplift $950 or more each time in order for it to be a felony.
The businesses like Walgreens are shutting locations left and right because their store shells are just being destroyed by vagrants. And actually, now organized crime that goes in and you’ll have a flash mob, and they’ll each steal $500, $800 bucks apiece and walk out.
Lahren: Oh, that’s 100 percent true. And for those in Tennessee that are listening, I know that this seems like a California problem. But be warned, when you start having what they call realignment laws and reclassification where they take what used to be felonies, and they re-classify them as misdemeanors.
This is exactly what happens. And I’ll tell you, this. I’m staying in Santa Monica. And we’re going out to Venice later. I was in Venice yesterday. It’s absolute filth. It’s tents lining the streets, and these people here have become so emboldened that they believe they can do whatever it is that they want.
And it’s those felon-friendly laws that give them that courage to be able to do that. That is happening in California. It’s been happening in California for years. And you’ve already got police department’s here that have been defunded.
And now they’re struggling to refund because they realize what a bad idea it was. But it all comes from those policies. And Tennessee beware because a lot of Californians are fleeing to Tennessee, but they’re bringing their voting records and their voting tendencies with them.
So we got to keep our ears perked up and pay attention to those things as they come in because we do not want to California our Tennessee.
Carmichael: Tomi, what we’ll have to do here in Tennessee is set up re-education camps. (Laughter) Now I have a question for you because you’re on the ground out there and you’ve lived there for three years.
Why do the people of Venice, for example, because I’ve seen the videos and it is absolutely just the only word I can think of that even comes close to it is just absolutely just disgusting. What has gone on there?
Why do the local people vote, the mayor and the city council back into office? Why do they do that?
Lahren: You know, it’s a culture in Venice when they look at homelessness. But just being out there and we’re going to go out there later today and talk about it and talk to some individuals. But people are upset with it.
They don’t like it. I’m looking at these businesses that are finally being able to reopen in Venice and these restaurants. And I was saying yesterday, I can’t imagine going to eat at one of those restaurants because there’s homeless everywhere.
I’m not kidding you. When you step out of the car in Santa Monica or Venice, the smell of pee is so overwhelming that it’s disgusting. I couldn’t even eat outside. And walking outside, it’s disgusting. And it’s a culture that they’ve fostered here.
But not only that, it’s gotten so bad and the lawlessness has gotten so bad that they are homeless people who are actually dealing drugs out of their tents and lighting other homeless people’s tents on fire because they’re having turf wars within their encampments on the boardwalk.
And that’s what average, everyday law-abiding California they’re supposed to walk and run through? I’m telling you, it’s like a third-world country here.
Botteri: I’ve been there and it was there many, many years ago now and walked the boardwalk that you alluded to. And for everybody who’s not been there, you basically have the street and then a row of beach houses and other types of residences and businesses and stuff.
So buildings, basically. And then a broad sidewalk. A big cement sort of sidewalk path that follows the beach line. And then on the other side is the sand. You’ll some workout areas and other sorts of pop-up types of vendors and stuff.
And then you get to the beach proper and then the ocean. And that’s kind of how it goes. And so this is a relatively small area when I was there, Tomi and this was, like 20 something years ago. This was a long time ago because I’m an old lady. (Chuckles)
There were all kinds of panhandling, all kinds of vendors. And they were all mixed up together. And it was back then just kind of an aggressive and very obviously a cultural choice of that area to allow this to tolerate this behavior.
And so I can only imagine what you’re describing now and what these tents are they like on the other side. Basically, you’ve got the buildings and then the sidewalk, and then they’re on the other side of the sidewalk. So people are kind of pinned in into this gore point?
Lahren: Oh no, they line everything. They’re in the middle of the beach. They are next to the sidewalk there next to all different sidewalks. They are next to the boardwalk there on the boardwalk, there is no area where you will not find tents and trash, and makeshift living areas.
I was walking through there yesterday, and I tell you, I was walking through at 8:30 in the morning. Had it been later in the evening, there’s no way I would have gone down there. But looking in these tents there are people in there.
And, of course, they’re passed out. But the number of things that they have accumulated in these tents, these are tent cities. And for people to understand this is not just Venice. This is not just Santa Monica. This is California!
This is everywhere here. It’s in San Diego. It’s for sure. In San Francisco, it is everywhere in this state. It is a culture of homelessness. And I know that other states have dealt with this as well. I know in Austin, Texas, they shot down people’s ability to really reside in their tents like it was a dwelling.
And they did the same thing in Colorado, in Denver. But if that ever comes to Tennessee, I’m telling you, we’ve got a homeless population that’s certainly growing. And it’s not a culture we want to foster.
Of course, we want to make sure that these people are taking care of. But I’ll tell you this that people don’t understand going back to your point on crime, I’ve done a lot of research on this.
A lot of these individuals that are here at homeless, of course, some are down on their luck. Some have mental illness addiction and some are veterans. And of course, we put those people in a different classification.
There’s also a lot of individuals that come to California from other states because they’re either just transients, vagrants or they are sex offenders and felons from other states that come to California because they do not have to re-register sex offenders here, and they want to live their life on beachfront property in the lawlessness.
Botteri: Wow.
Lahren: That has Californians terrified.
Botteri: It’s a terrible situation, and it’s got to be better. There is a great commentary at The Tennessee Star. It’s a deep dive into the homelessness industrial complex. I highly recommend that you read that. It’s fascinating.
Tomi Lahren, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you come back soon. Stay safe; stay well, there, while you’re in California. We’ll talk to you again soon.
Listen to the full third hour here:
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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.
Photo “Tomi Lahren” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Live from Music Row Friday 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. – guest host Christina Botteri welcomed Tennessee Star reporter Corinne Murdock to the newsmakers line to discuss her recent article as racism aficionado Dr. Ibram X. Kendi is positioned as premier speaker for the Christian Scholars Conference at Lipscomb University.
Botteri: We are here to talk about the news and so we are very lucky today because we get to hear from our own Corinne Murdock, who is out there putting together some amazing stories, stories you’re not going to read anywhere else.
And right now, our lead story over at The Tennessee Star is about Lipscomb University’s Christian Scholars Conference which is to host Ibram Kendi’s. ‘How to be a Racist Author’ as a featured speaker.
And they scrubbed the website after The Tennessee Star started asking questions. So the story starts. You can read this right now at The Tennessee Star. Lipscomb University, a self-proclaimed Christian institution, chose How to Be Anti-Racist author Ibram Kendi as a featured speaker for its 2021 Christian Scholars Conference.
The Tennessee Star reached out for more details to CSE Chair David Flier, Lipscomb University spokespersons, LipscombUniversity President Randy Laurie, and Lisa University Board of Trustees Chair David Solomon, but none responded by press time. On the line with us right now is Corinne. Corinne, what do you think about that? Tell us what you found. Tell us the story here.
Murdock: Hey, thanks for having me.
Botteri: It’s great to be with you.
Murdock: So I was doing a little bit of digging on what exactly they were going to have Ibram do. He was pretty much a premier guest speaker. He had, like six whole paragraphs about him.
He was exclusively associated with the conference theme. And I wasn’t able to get anybody as you said, to respond to me from Lipscomb University which is a little surprising, to be honest, after they updated their web page.
Botteri: Now let’s back up a second. How did you get a line on this? What caught your eye about this? How did you come to look at their website that day?
Murdock: We got a tip that this will be happening. It wasn’t widely advertised to the best of our knowledge. It was somebody who been following along with what the university has been doing that reached out to us and asked us if we would look into it.
Botteri: That’s very interesting. So you got a tip. Everybody, you can send tips to Corinne. She put her email address there. And by virtue of this story here, the system works is what you’re saying.
Murdock: Yeah. I’ll you’ve got to do is look it up.
Botteri: So you got a tip. And so you looked into it, you followed up on the tip and sure enough, there are there’s all this material about Ibram X. Kendi, who is the How to Be Anti-Racist author, is his book, right?
Murdock: Yes.
Botteri: So exactly what does he do? What’s his deal?
Murdock: He apparently is the foremost leading mind expert on racism. But if you read his book, which I’ve actually had to read it. My husband was going to Belmont University for a time and they suggested that reading.
It doesn’t ever really define what racism is. It uses racism in its own definition to describe what racism is.
Botteri: Really?
Murdock: Yes, the book is very interesting to read if anything to get an understanding of what is the hot topic, especially when it comes to critical race theory today.
Botteri: Wow. So he’s an anti-racist who wrote a whole book about racism but didn’t exactly successfully define it. Is that what I am understanding?
Murdock: No.
Botteri: So basically, what that means is racism is whatever he says it is?
Murdock: Yes, it’s interesting if you go watch his videos and people ask them to describe what racism is and anti-racism is, they’ll say, a system of racist policies within a racist system and race. You know, he just goes on and on, but he never gets to what that term means. He’ll never tell you.
Botteri: Wow, that’s fascinating. Hang with us through the break.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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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.
Photo “Ibram X. Kendi” by Larry D. Moore. CC BY-SA 4.0.
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. – guest host Christina Botteri welcomed Fox Business contributor and Wall Street expert, Liz Peek, on the newsmakers line to discuss the compromising position of Joe Biden and why he will not pushback on China.
Botteri: And on the newsmaker line with us is the one and only Liz Peek. Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner at the firm Wertheim and Company, and she’s a former columnist for The Fiscal Times, writes for The Hill, and contributes frequently to Fox News, The New York Sun, and other publications.
You can visit her online at lizpeek.com. You can follow her on Twitter, which I highly recommend @lizpeek. And Liz, you’re here to talk with us about Joe Biden’s China problem.
Peek: (Chuckles) Good morning. Well, he has one. And the problem for Joe Biden is that Americans are increasingly questioning where the Wuhan virus came from. And the mounting evidence is that, in fact, it was created in a lab not originally coming from bats or any kind of intermediary animal.
The Chinese have tested tens of thousands of animals and discovered no such virus exists that they can find it. And even some of our own experts with air quotes, like Anthony Fauci appear to think, yes, this is possible that this came from the lab.
So the question is, what is Joe Biden going to do about it? And I think voters are going to want him to stand up to China on this and other issues, by the way, too. And he can’t. He can’t because he needs China’s help in selling our own or I should say Joe Biden’s own very radical climate agenda to American voters.
Joe Biden basically wants to take offline or incredibly efficient low-cost energy structure and replace it with higher-cost renewables. That will mean everyone’s electricity prices go up and further damage our competitiveness with overseas companies.
And the only way he can even possibly argue that this makes sense is if China does the same thing. China has not done the same thing. They’ve made only the vaguest promises. And of course, China’s emissions are twice those of the U.S. growing very rapidly, whereas ours have not been increasing.
It is completely a fool’s mission to undermine one of the core geopolitical strengths of the United States, such as our incredibly abundant fossil fuel reserves without China making some sort of concession.
And Xi Jinping knows this. He knows this is a very fraught issue for a lot of voters in the U.S. Joe Biden needs his help in terms of Xi Jinping also making climate promises, which so far he’s not done. He also needs Xi Jinping to make sure that we can get back in the Iran nuclear deal.
Right now that’s unacceptable because the Iranians refused to make any changes to the original program. And Xi Jinping has sided with the Mullas and saying, no, no, their original deal is good enough.
Biden, really, if this is the cornerstone of his foreign policy, which it appears to be unbelievable, he needs Xi Jinping to work with him and get this done. But the most important thing probably is that the Chinese may have compromising information about the Biden family.
We know that there are a lot of financial transactions that included obviously Hunter Biden, but also possibly his father, which originated during the time he was vice president and the point person for Obama in China.
A Senate committee basically concluded that, in fact, the Biden’s might have extortion vulnerabilities because of what went on in not just China, but also other countries. And the FBI, let us not forget, is investigating Hunter’s activities for possible money laundering.
It’s a criminal investigation, again, involving his transactions in China. So I think the Chinese government is absolutely ruthless. They will not at all hesitate to leak out damaging information about the Biden family unless Joe Biden kind of plays along.
And I think this was true when Joe Biden was elected as true. Today, the media and social media giants covered it up and stood in the way of American voters finding out about these compromising situations in China.
Now, pretty much it’s gotten out there and I think this is potentially a huge problem for Joe Biden but also, let’s face it, for the United States.
Botteri: Yeah. You’re not kidding. That’s quite a lot to take in. I think the question that a lot of people have is, what can Joe Biden do? What can he get? What can he offer? What does he have that China wants? Is it to stand aside and let China just take over Africa in its entirety?
Is it to allow no change in their emissions standards? I guess, to their credit, China hasn’t made any promises that they’re not fulfilling. They’ve basically said, what? The U.S. cut our emissions? No, thanks. (Peek chuckles) No, we’re not doing that. But even if they did, would they?
Peek: I think you ask a good question. What do they want from Biden? What they want from Biden is basically for the United States not to impede their march towards supremacy. They want to be the number one industrial nation in the world.
Obviously, they’ve made enormous progress towards that end. But Trump was a hiccup. He was a speed bump. I think President Trump did our nation a great service by calling out China’s truly criminal activities, stealing billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, according to some government sources, in our intellectual property, cheating the United States on trade, but also the world on trade.
China is a bad actor. It has never gone along with the strictures of belonging to something like the World Health Organization, as we have seen recently, or the World Trade Organization.
They cheat, they lie. They do whatever is necessary to further their own cause. We had a President, briefly who put America first. There’s no question that Xi Jinping puts China first.
Okay, that’s acceptable as long as he behaves within the norms of conventional international behavior. But he does not. And I think the answer to your question is he wants Joe Biden basically to ignore what’s going on in China in specific about the virus.
Joe Biden will orchestrate a pretend investigation. He’s asked our intelligence agencies to double down on their investigation. He will go along with a rebooted WHO investigation. The World Health Organization.
None of those things is going to get anywhere because the Chinese are basically not allowing their scientists to talk to the Western investigators. They’re not allowing those investigators into the lab to look at their research materials for their procedures.
Little by little, though, it is coming out that this is probably the origins of the virus. And I think what they’re going to demand is that basically, the West do nothing about it. You’d be interested to know, maybe, and your listeners might be interested to know that Australia, to their credit, actually did challenge the origin theory a year ago about where this virus came from.
Australia really demanded answers and was very aggressive about it. In response, China has unleashed an unbelievable trade war against Australia, for which about 20 percent of their exports go to China.
China and Australia have very big trading relationships. China has blocked or sanctioned or now prohibited the importing from Australia dozens of goods. That’s how seriously they are on the attack on this and how aggressive they will be.
What we need to do and what Biden may or may not be able to do is really get the entire EU block and the UK organized with us demanding answers from China and putting out their potential penalties.
Whether it’s trade sanctions or whatever that result if, in fact, China does not cooperate. I don’t think Biden will do that. I don’t think he has the forcefulness to do that. And as I say, he has seriously serious vulnerabilities if he does.
Botteri: You mentioned the pretend investigation, and I just can’t help but wonder are there any real investigations in the Biden administration right now having to do with the serious issues? Are any of the investigations real?
And then something else that kind of struck me. I’m not the person who came up with this, but I think it’s a very provoking thought and one that we should all remember. And it is this. In China, globalism is nationalism.
Peek: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that has served them well. Again, whatever serves China’s interests are acceptable to China is acceptable to China. And certainly globalism and the fact that the United States will enter into agreements, for example, the Paris Climate Accord is an absolute horror for the United States.
And sadly, because we have this climate-industrial complex now in the U.S. and so little real analysis of the costs of the kind of measures that Joe Biden wants to put through. There is nothing that Xi Jinping would like better than to have America try to cut our emissions in half, as Joe Biden has promised.
Look at California. California is a state which has embraced renewables with great enthusiasm, and their electricity costs are nearly twice that of the rest of the country. Their gasoline costs are probably 30 percent.
Botteri: And growing. Liz Peek, thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you come back again soon.
Peek: Thank you.
Botteri: You always a delight. Thank you so much.
Listen to the full second hour here:
– – –
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.
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. – guest host Christina Botteri welcomed co-creator of the Theology of Home and author of the book Awake, Not Woke, Noelle Mering to the newsmakers line to outline the three elements of her book that define the woke culture and its infiltration into the church.
Botteri: Right now on the newsmakers line, I am so excited to introduce our next guest, Noelle Mering is a fellow at the Ethics and Policy Center. She’s the author of the book Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology. Noel, thank you so much for joining us this morning on The Tennessee Star Report.
Mering: Nice to be here. Thank you for having me.
Botteri: Thank you. Tell us about your new book.
Mering: Yeah. So it’s published by TAN Books. It just came out a couple of weeks ago, and it’s really my research and interest in what’s happening with woke culture. And I treat it more or less like a religion.
So I go through its origins, its dogmas, and its methods of indoctrination, but then also the restoration, the way to restore the culture out of this situation. Yes, I’m really excited about it and eager to be talking more about it. It’s one of my favorite subjects. (Chuckles)
Botteri: (Laughs) Well, let’s get started. So what was the genesis of the idea to address this? Where did the idea for Awake, Not Woke come from?
Mering: I’ve always thought of been interested in the intersection of Christianity and politics and how that plays itself out. And obviously it’s a hot topic, and there are lots of differences.
The big topic I think I got really interested in the woke stuff in particular because I started writing articles about things that were happening in the culture and noticed a certain pattern that this movement that’s about social justice tends to be quite merciless and actually unjust ultimately.
But it really operates on confusion and sort of plays on a pre-Christian precept to walk alongside the marginalized and suffering, which is a true and good precept. But what I kept noticing is that it takes that and sort of manipulates that instinct and then brings something that not really just out of it.
And so that seems important and interesting to note and to try to figure out why the movement was acting this way.
Botteri: Wow. What did you find and what are the things that you discuss?
Mering: I go through the historical genealogy, which is a big topic, too, but rooted in Marxism and then neo-Freudism, and post-modernism. The central dogmas that I found to be driving this movement and uniting it are three fundamental distortions.
One places the group over the person to the point where the person is reduced for the sake of the group. And really there’s a lot of tribalism there. Secondly, it emphasizes the human will over our reason or nature.
So what we desire becomes the definition of who we are, even above and beyond what is rational or natural. Meaning, like natural law, an intelligible human nature is a bodily meaning.
We see this really acutely in the transgender movement, for example. And thirdly, it emphasizes human power over authority. It really defines any hierarchical structure to be oppressive, even the structure of a supernatural hierarchy.
And God himself ultimately finds to be the target of this movement, because there are three things that are reduced. And those three distortions are the person’s reason and authority.
And the woke which is ultimately three characters, just the logos meaning the mind, the reason of God manifests in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the author and authority of all. And I do think that he is the ultimate target of this movement.
Botteri: Something that I’ve seen over the course of several years now, but it seems to be sort of snowballing is a social justice movement in the church. And as a Methodist, I’ve had a tough time for a long time reconciling their pacifist stance – and that’s a discussion for another day.
But we see a lot of progressive tenants being expressed in the church right now, especially in Catholicism. If you follow the Pope at all, he’s basically a South American-Marxist.
Are we allowed to say that? It’s something that seems to be snowballing and gaining a lot of traction in the Protestant religion as well – the Protestant doctrines. Where is that coming from? If the goal of racism is to destroy God, why is it getting so much traction in the churches?
Mering: That’s a great question. The two primary targets of Karl Marx were the church and the family. Christianity and the family. And I think that there’s been a lot of inroads because Christians are swimming in the same waters as the regular culture.
So one of the main goals was to really break down the sexual morals of the culture. First and foremost, you’re attacking the father by making him unfaithful and by encouraging him to be licentious and follow sexual passions.
And then this turns women in, makes women distrustful because obviously family stability and cultural stability rely on the family unit. And it also makes children rebellious because a father is really kind of an icon of authority.
We see it in his deeper voice and his broader shoulders and his commanding stature. There really is an authority just imbued in men, and it sort of calls them to inspire something higher.
And if they don’t, then it really becomes abusive and just about human power when it’s not grounded in moral law. Once these things happen, social pathologies become rampant, and they’re in the church as well.
And I think we see that. Once our socials were wounded and hurt by all these social pathologies and the breakdown of the family, we become very susceptible to a replacement version of the Christian life and what virtue means.
And so all of a sudden we’ve gradually stripped at this narrative meaning of the family life, and the faith has become watered down. And then here comes the work movement, introducing this new narrative where all you have to do to become good is to agree with the ideology to fight.
There’s this boogeyman out there of oppression. They see oppression in everything. Every interaction is built on oppression and power. That’s what the ideology is saying. So if you can just fight this boogeyman.
And the boogeyman is not always the boogeyman. That’s why it’s powerful. It’s real sometimes. There’s real racism. There can be real misogyny. There are real instances of these things.
But rather than taking them to be incidences that you can point out and identify and try again, it becomes this invisible, pervasive, controlling dynamic in society. And so I think Christians have really been duped in a lot of ways into thinking that this is what the new way to become virtuous is.
It’s just to become woke. And all of the other normal traditional channels of virtue have been seen as being oppressive or judgmental or these sorts of things like old-fashioned. I think it really starts with a loss of human virtue and then becomes prey to tyrannical ideology in that way.
Botteri: Well, that’s disturbing. Os Guinness, the philosopher from Hong Kong, of the Ale Guinness family – he coined the phrase the Golden Triangle of Freedom and said that liberty is only possible without these three elements being the Golden Triangle of Freedom.
And you can read about this at the Tennessee Star with our Constitution series. And the three elements are faith, virtue, and freedom. Liberty cannot exist without those three elements there.
And so the question is, can we have liberty without faith or virtue? What do you say, Noelle?
Mering: No, it’s extraordinarily difficult. And this is one of the ways that you lose your liberty is by losing your virtue. Alexis de Tocqueville said that America is great only so long as she is good. And once we lose our moral goodness moral compass, then we can’t control ourselves from interiorly, we have to be controlled externally.
Botteri: That’s a lot to think about.
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Photo “Noelle Mering” by Noelle Mering.
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